Marcus Hamilton leaned back in his comfortable black leather office chair and stared out through the windows at the city spread out before the Wolfram and Hart building. He looked out at the stars shining in the night sky and took a deep breath closing his eyes and he imagined himself…

A sharp pain in his head brought him back to reality, his masters reminding him whom he belonged to now. Squinting his eyes and groaning in pain, Marcus reached out and grabbed a handful of tissues to stem the flow of blood from his nose. A knock at his door signaled the entrance of his assistant. A short man with a balding head who also happened to be one of the many zombies that worked for Wolfram and Hart was the fifth assistant that Marcus had gone through. He was punished too much when he killed his assistants especially when they annoyed him, but this last assistant was also his first assistant whom he had killed in a fit of rage some nine hundred years ago.

Marcus was glad his nose was bleeding because zombies smelled bad to his heightened senses. Rotting meat and flesh was never his favorite smell.

“Sir your eleven ‘o clock appointment his here.” His assistant, Rolan, said not bother to help his boss with the flowing blood. He like all his assistants knew there were times that their masters punished Marcus for transgressions that they knew nothing about.

“Cancel it.” Marcus growled. He wasn’t going to allow a client to see him bleeding. They needed to know that Marcus was nearly invulnerable if not completely invulnerable. A bloody nose would wipe that idea out of their heads.

“Yes, sir. Also the vampire wants to talk with you when you have a moment.” Rolan said then left the office to tell the client that the meeting was postponed to a later date.

Marcus growled. He hated vampires as much as he hated zombies.

Eventually his nose stopped bleeding meaning the rupture in his brain had healed. He threw away the blood tissues, then stepped into the private bathroom in his office to clean up his face and hands before going to deal with the souled vampire.

***********************

Eventually his neck healed and Marcus returned to consciousness. Standing up, Marcus cracked his neck and looked around. Part of a marble column collapsed down toward him, and Marcus pushed the heavy marble away from him with one arm. Moving like a sailor on the deck of a sailing ship, Marcus made his way through the collapsing building and out into the night streets.

Once outside the collapsing building, Marcus dusted his suit off with his hands and looked around. He saw demons flying overhead along with a wrym, heading away from the building. Marcus figured they were heading to wherever Angel and his bunch were making a stand.

Marcus sighed. The Wolf, Ram and Hart were silent in his head for the moment. Too busy dealing with the vampire and his gang to have time to punish Marcus for failing to stop the vampire.

With great care and long practice, Marcus hid deep within his mind the idea of drinking his blood that Marcus had purposely given the vampire hiding away from his Masters.

Once that was done, Marcus looked over the completely collapsed building that had been the Wolfram and Hart building and wondered what was going to happen next.

*****************************

Marcus stood in the foyer of the Tokyo branch of Wolfram and Hart and watched the vid screen before him. On the screen President Lin Tai Shun was speaking about the world wide earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and rapidly melting ice caps. Pictures were coming up around her of the calamities she was describing.

Earth was dying. Even the oldest of demons would not be able to live on it soon. Marcus wondered what his masters were planning.

Behind him, someone screamed. Marcus turned to see five men enter the building along with twenty young girls that Marcus immediately recognized as slayers. While the slayers took out the guards the five men began to chant.

Marcus was about to intervene when his assistant ran up to him. “Sir! The other branches just reported that they are being hit as well.”

Marcus look from his assistant, to the five chanting men dress in dark green robes. His mind was suddenly filled with screaming from his masters as the men continued to chant. The screaming was causing Marcus great pain, and he fell to his near, blood coming from his ears, nose and mouth. His assistant tried to help him, but the zombies hands suddenly shriveled and fell from his body.

“Help!” Rolan screamed as his body began to dry up like an old mummy. Marcus was too busy dealing with the screaming in his head and the pain building.

The last thing Marcus saw before he blacked out was the face of a smiling old man dressed in green robe kneeling down beside him his hand reaching out to touch him. Then all faded to black.

**************************

When Marcus awoke he found himself lying nude upon a strange metal bed. There were metal shackled binding him to the bed at his wrists, ankles, waist and throat. He could smell the magic on the bonds and with a slight test of his strength Marcus knew he was unable to break his bonds.

Closing his eyes, Marcus reached to his masters hoping they could help free him only to find that he was alone in his mind for the first time in nearly a thousand centuries. He delved deeper, confused and a bit frightened, calling out to the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart.

There was no answer on this plane of existence or any other that Marcus could reach with his mind.

A door opened and swirl of scents reached Marcus’s nose. He smelled humans, plain ordinary humans enter the room. One of them walked over to the bed Marcus was imprisoned upon and laid one hand upon his chest and another on his forehead.

“They are gone.” The man said to the others in the room.

“Then our work is done. We must begin transferring our library to the ship and then we can enter cryo sleep with the others.” One of the other men said.

“What of the dragon?” The one who still had one of his hands on Marcus’ chest.

“We will place him in cryo as well. He will be of great use to us on the new worlds.” The man not touching Marcus said.

Marcus growled, he was not about to trade one set of Masters for another set.

The man touching Marcus patted Marcus’ chest in an attempt to sooth him. “It will be alright. We are making better worlds.”

And with that the man left the room with one last pat on Marcus’ head.

Other men came and placed Marcus in a cryo chamber still bound by the magicked steel bonds.

His last sight before entering cryo was that of the label on the shoulder patches of the men who where placing him in the cryo chamber. It read in both Chinese characters and in English the words “Blue Sun”.

*********************************

The ark ships left the dying planet. Most of the ships had been built by Blue Sun Corporation and carried with them not only cryogenically frozen people, but animal embryos, plant cells, and even some bacteria. Some of the lesser demons, those who could pass for human, were aboard some of the non-Blue Sun ships, while a few demons who could not pass for human had been captured and placed in cryo on two of the Blue Sun ships.

One of those ships carried the last dragon from Earth trapped in human form by his former masters held in stasis by his new masters. Several decades later the ships reached the system where robotic drones sent fifty years earlier had been working non-stop to terraform four of the many planets and moons in the new system.

As they entered the system and asteroid that had been diverted from its normal course by the gravity of a passing comet slammed into one of the Blue Sun ships knocking it off course from the other ships. As the other ships headed from Londinium, the planet that had been first terraformed and was ready for human life, the damaged ship’s computer tried to compensate and managed to crash land some three hundred miles away from the landing site.

The ships automated systems took care of the fires, and began the process of waking its cargo earlier than it had been programmed to in order to save the cargo’s lives.

In the wrecked bowels of the ship, several cryo containers had been damaged and the demons within them were dead from the crash. One container however was open and the live cargo within slowly began to awaken.

When a small drone from the ship hovered over to the cry container to check the status of the cargo, a hand shot out from the white clouds of vapor surrounding the cryo container and punctured through the drones body. Electricity snapped as the drone lost power and then Marcus Hamilton, once slave to the demons known as the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart sat up in the cryo chamber and threw the destroyed bot against a nearby wall. He looked around the destroyed ship with his icy blue eyes, then stood ice and water vapor falling away from his nude human body.

Using his immense strength, Marcus punched through a wall out into the freedom of the newly terraformed world. In the distance he saw the other colony ships landing in the makeshift port some miles away from the wreckage.

His masters were dead, but the spell that had trapped him in a human body still worked. Marcus longed to spread his wings and fly away the wreckage and those who thought to be his new masters. Instead, he walked away from the wreckage into the surrounding new growth forest of the terraformed planet making sure not to leave any trace that Blue Sun could use to find him.

Thinking to himself, Marcus knew he need to find himself some clothes and try to hide amongst the thousands of humans who would soon awaken to the new world. Eventually, Marcus hoped to get away from the core worlds and out into the dark black of space where he could keep one step ahead of his would be masters.