Arcanepath.net

Merlin 4 - Vietnam, 1967.
Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die

Born to be wild
Born to be wild
Steppenwolf – Born to be Wild (1967).

The Tây Nguyên Highlands, Kon Tum Province.
The mist strewn jungles of the Tây Nguyên Highlands streamed by a dizzying rush of psychedelic green, the Hueys UH-1 doors gunners sat in mock positions of arrogant relaxation.
In reality experienced hawk like eyes scanned the tree line below.
The Hueys heaviest passenger looked around the latest motley group he was travelling with, for the past eight nine decades he’d travelled from one conflict to another, maintaining himself while generally fighting with the more humanitarian of aggressors. Usually!

He sat amongst ten specialists, brought in to fight the secret war that now raged behind the United States anti-communist offensive.
Four were the unaware, here to fight the hidden war of counter insurgency, former enemies now here to fight the Viet Minh, two Imperial Japanese exiled from mainland Japan.
Another was Thai a ‘Queens Cobra Battalion’ commando, expert in waging vicious night time warfare, the last an army brat a US infantry lieutenant who’s father was a General in the chain of command.

His gaze passed over the others, each one military specialists, he wondered if they were able to perceive his inhumanness.
Feeling himself growing hot, he quaffed a further three litres of water.
Finally he looked to the four ‘Blackcat’ guards, the CIA’s pet soldiers, each wore a black t-shirt, black beret and sunglasses, each also carried a triple barrelled advanced SMG.

Smiling to himself, he listened to the vibrations of the Hueys rotors resonating with his biomechanical form.

The Nine Worlds
It's so dreamy, oh fantasy free me
So you can't see me, no not at all
In another dimension, with voyeuristic intention
Well-secluded, I see all
With a bit of a mind flip
You're there in the time slip
And nothing can ever be the same
You're spaced out on sensation, like you're under sedation
Let's do the Time Warp again!
The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Lieutenant Fred Broland stood upon the hillock of Whitchurch Down, it looked down upon the Tavistock Cricket grounds.
The twin Vickers Wellington bombers had laid waste to Whitchurch, and everything from East Crowndale road up to Tavistock College, literally everything on the west of Plymouth road.
How on Earth would they cover this one up, he thought.

As if reading his mind, his fellow MI7 officer, Lieutenant Roger Malffin stepped up beside him.
Broland reviewed the map of the town, the destroyed streets, glowing embers illuminated the twilight.
Dawnlight fired cleansing beams of light across the carnage.
Soldiers from the Devonshire Regiment and Royal Marine Commandos from Bickleigh Barracks, picked through the town, using Sten Guns, Lee-Enfield Mk4s and silvered bayonets dispatching the surviving beasts.
Each soldier wore armoured padding around their bodies and arms, metal collars covering their necks.
The chatter of sub-machine guns broke the eerie silence, that and guttural roars.

Questioning of surviving soldiers who had battled the siege, Tavistock had been assaulted over the course of several days, with the outlaying villages and homes slowly picked off, then the creatures, their numbers swelled by their former victims, attacked the ancient Stanary town of Tavistock.
They came from both the North West and the South, the Northerly attack slowed by a small group of soldiers who had been investigating the spate of disppearances.
The south had not been so fortunate, house after house was ravaged, the occupants slaughtered in their castles or dragged into the streets and then sucked dry.

The investigators had managed to pinpoint the source of the infestation, a train and carriages stopped on the North Devon line, a communiqué had reached the citadel in Plymouth, bombers had been scrambled from RAF Chivenor.
The Wellingtons had blown the train to kingdom come and then destroyed the areas of worst infection.
Now on Whitchurch Down, troops under the command of MI7 and the SOE were dispatching the remainder of the Nosferatu, they’d brought every livestock animal and butchered them on the Down, the scent of fresh blood had drawn them from their boltholes.

The scent of so much blood had made them forget the impending dawnrise, the soldiers now played cat and mouse attempting to keep out of arms reach while gunning the ferret like monsters down.
Nosferatu were the lowest form of vampire, hairless, emaciated vampires, rat like fangs with small beady red eyes, however they travelled in packs and their victims turned quickly.
The pair of officers watched as another man in British army field dress trudged across the heath, he avoided several exchanges between soldiers and the Nosferatu.
A sten gun burst blasting a creature into the ground, the marksman quickly moving over the prone monster and viciously smashing a vial against its head, the potent mixture including a hefty dose of garlic essence might as well have been acid as it dissolved the creature into a stomach turning sludge.

Broland noticed that Malffin was holding a disc amulet aloft, threads of sunlight seemed to be drawn to it, he drew his pistol as a Nosferatu broke for the man, but Malffin got there first. Bringing the amulet level he murmured and released a beam of white light across the heath, blowing the monster into a cloud of dust, the third man looked at the ash and nonchalantly returned to trudging up the hillock.
Captain Christian Noyn lit a cigarette and looked across the scene.
Broland looked at the SOE officer, ‘Noyn’ eventually tore his gaze away “Where are we with this?” he asked
Broland replied “A significant number have been drawn here and we’re dispatching them now, when the suns fully up, we’ll start clearing them house by house, the surviving townsfolk have been contained in the town hall while we work out how to sort this out”

“The Prime Minister has been informed” responded ‘Noyn’
“He is adamant that the survivors are to survive and that no reprehensible methods are used to ensure silence”
“That means that we will need to resort to ritual means” stated Malffin
“So be it” responded Noyn “Have we located SOE agent Sabbath?”
“We have” replied Broland, who paused before continuing “However he has attacked by a Nosferatu and is very ill, we’ve also failed to find his wife and child, whom we fear lost”

The three of them fell silent, day or dawnlight had fully broken over the treeline, the Nosferatu sensed this and began to panic, some tried to dig into the soil, others attempted to flee.
The Devonshire Chaplin pressed the infantry and marines forwards, systematically they opened fire aiming for the beasts legs, hobbling them, troops armed with long wooden stakes then pinned them to the ground. Pinned like specimen butterflies, the Nosferatu burst into flames as the cleansing light touched them, the inhuman screaming was horrendous.

Broland turned to Malffin “Did you suffer backlash?”
“Yes, as long as I refrain from further casting for a few hours it should clear”
“Lord Jagged has stipulated that their must be no proof or record of this” said Malffin
The other two men merely nodded
A corporal brought them three tin cups of tea, each man knew that the day ahead would be torturous long, bloody and filled with anguish.