Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) (14 page)

Nothing alive.

He’d been sent there to find someone.  A girl.  A girl who’d been kidnapped, but she was already dead, one of the many remains smeared on the walls.  He smashed his fist into the steel, not feeling where blood gushed from his torn knuckles. 

I’ve lost another one.

He moved back towards the entrance and smelled the blood of those criminals as they drew near.  The frozen night was full with vehicle fumes and angry shouts.  A wolf snarled so loud it was like its breath was the source of the wind.  Guns locked and loaded, blades ripped free.

The Black Ice Marauders had returned, only they were short a leader.  Rage was already dead.

Ronan didn’t hesitate.  He moved out of the building in a blur, a shadow.  He held the kodachi in his off hand while the other wielded the katana.  His cloak slid to the ground, leaving the assassin in just his dark armor and cowl.  Greying black hair blew loose in the winter wind. 

Things seemed to move in slow motion.  Everything was in haze, a shadow-addled mist of silver smoke.  He smelled brimstone and bile, tasted stench and fear. 

Gunfire rang out, but he barely heard it.  The shots should have struck him, and maybe some did, but he moved with such swiftness and surety it was as if his body had cleaved to the shadows.  Ronan’s instincts took over.  He didn’t think, didn’t react, just
was
.  Slayer’s instinct, pure killer.

Throats opened.  Intestines spilled to the cold ground.  He ducked between men and gutted them as they turned to fire, and their bullets went wild and roared into their allies.  Ronan sensed as the hot blood of his enemies splashed across his face.

A rifle butt caught him in the back.  He took his attacker’s head with the katana, then cut down two men with one strike and tackled another to the ground before stabbing him through the eye.

The wolf was on him.  Teeth of daggers, eyes like pits.  Muscle and fur that eclipsed the night.  Its pale form was massive, a horse in a wolf’s body.  Ronan pulled away, barely avoiding snapping teeth.  Stones ground against his back as he fell.

There were two more Marauders.  One took hold of Ronan from behind with an arm around his throat and held him for the wolf; the other one was in the distance with his rifle ready, laser sight flashing. 

The wolf bore down.  Ronan snapped his head back against his assailant’s hockey mask and broke the man’s nose, then used the kodachi to tear through his groin.  Blood jet everywhere as the katana sailed forward and into the wolf’s eye, straight through the orb and into its brain.  Ronan rolled away as the monstrous creature crashed into the snow.

A shot sounded.  He let the kodachi fly.  The bullet zipped past him and the blade tore into the sniper’s shoulder, pinning him to a sandbag.  Screams echoed out.  Ronan moved towards him.

The boy’s eyes went wide.  Ronan saw his own fearsome visage in their reflection, black clothing and armor bloodied and torn, his face masked behind his Shemagh and his hair lined with ice and blood.

He fell out of the Deadlands, and his heart nearly stopped.  One moment he crashed through a world of blood, the next he toppled to his knees on the hard-crusted earth.  His breath froze in his chest, and his bones were wracked with pain.  Exhaustion flooded through him.  His head suddenly pounded so hard he was surprised blood didn’t shoot from his ears.

Ronan lay there a moment, gasping for breath.  He struggled up from the ground, his body ice-cold and dripping with blood.  He looked at the youth.  The sniper was pale and thin, with short-cropped dark hair and wide eyes.  His black armor was new, cut tight and practical, unadorned by most of the nihilistic fetishes and excessive décor of his fellows.  The kodachi was still jammed through his shoulder and pinned him to the sandbags, and he tried in vain to remove it.

The assassin hefted the katana in his hand as he walked up and looked at the boy.  Ronan was exhausted beyond measure but tried not to let it show – coming out of the Deadlands had nearly killed him.  He could only assume he’d survived for some purpose.  He didn’t believe in higher powers, but he was coming to trust the notion of fate, even after all the spider had done to him and his friends.

“
Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” he said.

The boy looked at him in fear and pain.  He was defiant, and Ronan respected that.  It meant he’d feel obliged to kill the kid quickly.

When the boy didn’t answer Ronan shook his head and stepped forward to finish him off.

“
Wait!” the youth shouted.  “I know where Bloodhollow is!”

Ronan paused, and made sure to turn the sword so it glinted in the moonlight.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he snarled.  “Bloodhollow is a myth.”

“
No, it’s real,” the boy said.  “I swear.  I was thinking about leaving this outfit to head down there, see if I could help.”

“
Help with what?” Ronan snarled.  “They need some innocent people raped or killed?”

“
I don’t want to be doing this shit!” the boy shouted.  “But this was the only crew I could find.  We have to survive, and there’s no way I’m going to those Coalition bastards, not after what they did to my brothers!  They burned them alive...”

“
Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Ronan said.  “Save it.”  He raised his blade, and the boy cringed.

“
I’m telling the truth!” the boy said.  “I heard it from a merc we killed, a guy who had ties to the White Children.  He said Shiv was going there, and she was expecting to run into some trouble, so they were taking on new people!”

Ronan hesitated.  Razor hard memories flashed through his mind.  Promises broken, painful good-byes. 

“Where?” Ronan said.

The boy looked at him, terrified, but still determined to hang onto his only bargaining chip.

“I can take you it,” he said.  “Swear to me you’ll let me live at least long enough to lead you to Bloodhollow.”

Ronan drew an angry breath.  He wasn’t in the habit of dealing with the trash he was paid to hunt, and he wasn’t about to start now.

“No,” he said.  “You’ll tell me where it is.”  He put the katana away and pulled out a cloth pack filled with bamboo slivers and sharpened needles.  The once-Marauder started to cry.

It took less time than he expected, and in the end the boy begged Ronan to kill him.  By dawn the assassin was on his way.

SEVEN

REPTILES

Year 25 A.B. (After the Black)

She saw the city on the fourth day.  Danica had come within sight of the coast and quickly realized it was entirely overrun by Ebon Cities warships, long dreadnaughts with bladed howitzers and ice-net perimeters, vast floating monoliths of bone and skin weighed down with twelve-inch guns and groaning turbines which held them afloat just over the shore.  Razorwings patrolled the air, and their armored riders watched the land below with long-bored bone rifles and spears tipped with crackling red energy.  The waters were turgid and gory, slick with something like blood. 

Danica kept to the trees, where she navigated ice-laden brush and avoided mounds of bones heaped high, the remains of God knew how many soldiers. 

As twilight approached on the fourth day the forest floor glowed blue.  A glaze of frozen sunlight hugged the eastern sky.  The air was jarringly cold, and it was all she could do to allow her spirit to only warm her skin enough to keep her safe and conscious.  They’d always had that conflict, both before their transformation and after.  He always wanted to keep her safe, no matter the cost to himself.

Just like Eric.

No.  She couldn’t think about that.  There had been little sleep for her as it was without letting her mind go there.  No tears would bring him back, no burying herself with guilt would change what had happened.  All she could do was move forward. 

She owed him a debt, and she would see it paid.  For all they’d been through together it was somehow fitting he wouldn’t be with her for this, to see her as she’d once been, as she’d
always
been and would always be, even if she’d chose to ignore that part of herself for so long. 

She was a killer.  Not a hero, not a leader.  She was born to make blood flow, and that was exactly what she’d do.

It was Eric’s turn to rest.  He’d done enough, risked enough, and now she traveled into darkness alone.  He wasn’t there, and he wasn’t coming back, and it was as tragic and as simple as that.  She hadn’t realized how little there was to live for without him: vengeance seemed as good a reason as any.

It was the fact that they hadn’t said goodbye that hurt the most. 

Danica paused in a shallow ravine.  Hurt welled inside her and she couldn’t let it.  She’d lost Ronan, noble, insane Ronan, who’d sworn to protect her when she’d been controlled by the vampires of Lorn and everyone else seemed intent on abandoning her.  She’d never forget the night at the camp when he’d made clear his intent to help her no matter the cost, and again on the shores of the Loch, when she’d witnessed a man come back to life, his soul bared, the humanity he thought he’d never had clawing its way to the surface.  And her repayment was to forget about him in light of Cross.

And Shiv.  It had been so easy to form a bond with the girl, so easy to forget the terrible power she wielded.  Danica remembered her fear when she’d learned what they’d needed her to do, when they’d called on her to use her unexplained mastery of lost souls to wage war on the vile forces of Nezzek’duul.  She saw so much of herself in the girl, felt a kinship with her she had with few others.

Gone, now, all of them gone.  Danica was alone, more alone than she’d ever been, and that realization nearly broke her in two.  Flashes of others she’d lost came to her, Cole and Kane, Ash and Grissom, Vos and Creasy and Flint. 

But no loss wrenched her heart as deeply as that of Eric.  She’d denied her feelings for him for years, and he’d watched, and waited, too afraid or too kind or too stupid to press the issue, and the same had been true for her.  So much time wasted when they could have been together.  So much time.

Get a hold of yourself
, she thought, and her spirit wrapped warm around her, filled her skin and body with heat.  The night had grown darker, and she rested near the edge of the waters.  She didn’t fight him off but let him hold her close, his ethereal embrace the last soothing touch she’d ever know.  Danica breathed deeply, controlling the hurt.  She just wished she could stop looking for Eric every time she stopped to rest, and every time she woke.  It was one of the reasons she’d chose to avoid sleep.

She rested seldom, keeping to the darkness and moving under cover of the trees.  A hollow pain had taken root in her chest, and it took her some time to realize it was sadness.  She tried to fight through it, to cast it aside, but it wasn’t going to happen.  She’d have to live with it. 

Her pace slowed.  Night bled to dawn, a sullen and swollen morning gripped by a winter chill.  Her throat was dry from breathing icy air and her boots cracked through crusted snow.  The trees were thinning, and soon she was crossing over headlands of broken shale and granite slate, bone-white and covered with strange rings of stone.  Smoke trailed into the air, the by-product of small fires recently put out.  Danica smelled hex and the scent of guns and oil.

At the edge of the clearing she saw the city, far to the south.  Bridges of rock crossed over slow running streams and a small waterfall turned platinum in the pre-dawn glow.  Shelves of stone resembling crooked stairs led to an enormous limestone cliff which lifted away from the landscape.  The distant city was strangely organic, smooth and shaped like a fragment of the mountain.  Watchtowers and spires curved into natural cones of spiraled quartz, a blood-red igneous fortress at the edge of a tar and ash-filled lowlands.

Meldoar: home of the Gol.  Their secretive city-state was sheltered from prying eyes, even their human compatriots whom they’d aided for years in the struggle against the vampires.  Little was known of the diminutive creatures except that they were refugees from their own world, lost souls trapped in artificial organic shells.  Their false bodies resembled those of dwarves, misshapen and ugly, stunted and broad, and the Gol always covered their pocked and scarred features with thick robes and cloaks.  Whatever they lacked in stature they more than made up for in ingenuity and resourcefulness – Gol were by their nature engineers and craftsmen, smiths and artisans, and though they had no magic of their own they were capable of utilizing the new Earth’s vast array of unnatural phenomena to their own ends, crafting dirigibles and weapons, railroads and arcane irrigation systems, new forms of thaumaturgic farming.  Danica had only known a few in her life, chief among them Maur, the team’s engineer and pilot, whose stoicism and insistence on referring to himself in the third person had forever ingrained him in her memory.  Last she’d seen him he was bound for this very city.

Danica started across the fields of rock, keeping out of sight and moving in the cover of the ice-blue trees as dirty wind pushed her hair against her face.  She caught the unnerving scent of copper, like blood.  It would take some time for her to find a clear way to the city, but she knew it was the only real destination she had, even if it would take another half a day to actually reach it.