Angels Fall First by Nathan Squiers

Author:Nathan Squiers [Squiers, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tiger Dynasty Publishing
Published: 2024-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

Zeek was starting to think he was two people living in one body.

There was, of course, the doctor in him: the caregiver; the part of him that, in all honesty, had been the root cause of everything else he’d ever been or done. Even the other part of him was a product of the first. To protect himself and, in turn, be able to guarantee the health and safety of those he cared about, he’d turned himself into a fighter. He couldn’t remember if he’d considered himself a warrior all those years ago, but he wouldn’t deny that he’d never not felt the warrior’s spirit within him. After he’d joined with Xander and his eclectic ilk, however—after formally being given the title of “warrior”—Zeek had felt right with it. He’d gotten to be both back then, caregiver and warrior, and, looking back on those times, he supposed those were the times when he’d felt most himself. That sense of balance between two otherwise diametrically opposing personalities became what the anapriek defined himself by. “Like Yin and Yang?” Xander had once offered with that knowing smirk of his, and Zeek had wanted to give the legend a swift thwak with his staff for the comparison.

He’d hated how right it had been.

But then that fateful and faithful day came when Xander went AWOL, hijacked a television station, hacked the Internet, and, with ten bold-yet-suicidal words—“My name is Xander Stryker, and I… am a vampire.”—he’d unmade everything: his clan, society, and the world. He’d even managed to unmake himself in the process, finishing off that now-famous-and-infamous broadcast with the global spectacle of him being savagely beaten by an enemy poised to shape the broken world as he saw fit. While Zeek was sure that there had been many who’d initially disregarded Xander’s message to the world, he was just as sure that the violence that followed had them starting to believe. There were few, himself included, who hadn’t been positive they’d just witnessed a murder. Estella, however, hadn’t accepted it, and, in true Stryker-fashion, she’d done the impossible: she’d found him, and she’d brought him back alive. Even now, whenever Zeek looked back on that moment, he cringed at just the attempt to think that word: “alive.” Because, no, he hadn’t been. Not really. Not in a way that should have mattered; certainly not in a way that should have kept him alive, let alone allowed him to come back. But, in true Stryker-fashion, he’d done the impossible: he’d undone all the damage to his body—all the broken bones, all the obstructed organs, and all the torn and mutilated tendons and muscles—and then—Because of course he did!—he’d gone off and done the same for the world.

More or less.

Zeek couldn’t begin to dispute that the city-clan of New Trepis was leagues and legends ahead of what the Trepis Clan had been, and he’d be lying if he said that any other clan, neither before nor after the New World War, had ever boasted the sort of success and power as what the Strykers had created.

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