Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) (26 page)

Magic will only heal so much
, he thought, and as if in response the twin blades Soulrazor/Avenger tensed against him, thrumming to some beat only they could hear. 

The warship Cross rode rattled beneath a hard gust of wind.  Hasker commanded the other warship, and while that meant Cross didn’t have to look at the son of a bitch it also meant there were more Raza on his vessel.  It also meant he had to deal with Scarn, a rat-faced, muscle-bound murderer who was in surprising shape for a man in his fifties.  Scarn was lined and leathery and had a beard Cross’s father would have envied; he was also the size of a barn, some six-and-a-half-feet, with knotted muscles on display beneath his loose armor jacket and necklace of vampire fangs.  He had a thick voice and beady eyes which stayed murderously locked on Cross.  

Cross, for his part, did his best to ignore the man while he stared out the hatch.  The half-dozen Raza sat close to him, doubtlessly given orders to ensure he didn’t use any sort of magic.  The notion made him laugh – Cross hadn’t been able to use magic in years, and that wasn’t changing anytime soon.

But if I spontaneously regain my powers, don’t you guys worry
, he thought. 
You’ll be the first to know.

They were a stoic lot, humorless, expressionless, their unnaturally pale skin rendered dark by black oil and unguent, camouflage that lent them a harlequin appearance.  Each Raza wore dirtied silver or grey robes and bandoliers stuffed with knives and arcane implements, everything from hexed salts and vials of explosive ectoplasm to razorwire coils and leather gauntlets.  Cross swore the air was colder around them, like they bled frost.

Hasker’s men took up the remainder of the hold, a long and narrow space that backed up to the cargo area, which was sealed up tight and packed with dune buggies and an old APC retrofitted with flame cannons and mini-guns.  The warship was dull and dark, its red-black interior lit only by the scant light from outside.  Freezing air sliced across the floor.

The ship kept low to the ground, skimming the surface of icy swamps and the Bloodnight River.  Twisted trees shook from their passage, and the sound of flight sent mutated wild antelope and vermin tearing across the plains. 

Cross saw the remnants of burned out old settlements and fallen towers.  There were scorch marks where buildings used to be, craters where lakes had once sat.  Reams of ice stretched across the landscape like glacial grave markers.  The burnished gold-red sun cut through pillars of black cloud, lending the wastelands the semblance of a factory district.  Even from inside the vessel he smelled the smoke from outside.  Fires raged in the distance, but it was difficult to tell what exactly it was that burned. 

The transport vessel trailed the warships.  That black juggernaut of edged steel and midnight turbines droned through the air like a metal beast, and its exhaust trailed in twin plumes of dark smoke which smothered the world below.

They’d been in the air for less than a day when Hasker ordered their first detour.  Cross highly doubted Wulf would have sanctioned any side-treks, considering what was at stake, but he wasn’t about to say anything, and so far as he was concerned it didn’t really matter.  There was no way for him to get a message to Danica, not yet, and the longer they took to reach Bloodhollow the more time he had to come up with a way out his situation. 

She can take care of herself
, he told himself. 
You probably don’t even need to worry. 
True though that might have been, he wasn’t convincing himself.  He’d lost too many people he cared about to take that sort of risk.

The first warship, Hasker’s vessel, descended first, and only after Scarn had a somewhat heated conversation over the comm – little of which Cross could actually hear due to the black-clad Coalition soldiers who kept laughing about how many civilians they’d killed, part of some sort of ongoing betting pool – did the second vehicle follow suit, slowing and reducing altitude to pull in behind the cargo vessel.  The world darkened as they made their descent through coal black clouds and icy mists. 

The vehicle shook, the interior lights flashed, and suddenly the ship dropped to the ground with abrupt force.  Before he had a clue as to what was happening the men started filing out as the side hatch doors groaned open.  Floodlights glinted off tight-packed snow and grey soil, and the wind was so utterly cold Cross thought it would stop his heart.  He cinched his armor coat tight. 

“
Move!” Scarn shouted.  “A Squad, I want a perimeter around our vessel.  B Squad, secure the transport and assist Grieg’s men.  C Squad, ready for engagement.”             

“
Engagement?” Cross said, and he pushed past a few Raza and moved over to Scarn.  “What the hell is going on?”

“
What’s you’re assigned squad, Cross?” Scarn said in something more like a growl than actual words. 

“
I report to your mother,” he said.

Scarn moved to grab Cross, but Cross was faster.  That was the sword’s doing.  Soulrazor/Avenger filled his sight as the blade ripped from the sheath, and by the time Scarn reached for Cross the edge was already at his throat.  The mercenary’s eyes narrowed.  Guns were drawn and pointed at Cross.

“I asked you a question,” Cross said.  Scarn watched him for a moment, then snickered and pulled back his sizable hands and laughed quietly.  The guns lowered.

“
Hasker says there’s a depot about a klick west of here,” Scarn said.  “We’re raiding it.  We need supplies, and weapons.”

You assholes have enough weapons,
Cross thought, but he bit his tongue as he quietly slid Soulrazor/Avenger back into its sheath.  He still felt eyes on him, but for the moment it seemed Scarn was going to let him keep living. 
Well, goody.

“
I thought our mission was a priority,” he said.

Scarn smiled coldly. 

“Since when did the hired help ask so many questions?”

Cross ground his teeth, and turned away.  It was best not to press the issue. 

I need to find a way to get a message to Dani. 

Before long Cross, Scarn, a pair of Troj brutes, six soldiers and single Raza war witch were heading west across marshy hills and through dead forests, bound for a dark steel structure in the distance that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades. 

An old Southern Claw supply depot.

As it turned out the place wasn’t abandoned at all.  Maybe sixty people occupied the old supply station, starving refugees by the looks of them, all huddled close and doing their best to stay out of sight.  A moaning wind spiraled marsh water through the blood red afternoon, blasting the sides of the rusted edifice and staining it red.  The squatters began to organize as the Coalition soldiers drew close, a sort of ragtag militia formed in response to Scarn’s advance party, who did absolutely nothing to conceal themselves. 

The unit sloshed through knee-deep water thick with brine and sodden weeds.  Cross was at the rear of the procession with the Raza and a pair of men armed with brush shotguns, and from his distant vantage he could just make out the refugees in their ruined uniforms, splintered helmets, M1 Garands and stained leathers.  They had a white flag raised on what looked like an old crutch; the display of weapons was likely meant to indicate they knew where they stood and would do their best to go down fighting, but the state of their gear made clear a battle wouldn’t be necessary.  These people had survived because they knew when they were beaten.

Cross didn’t even realize the shooting had started until people were already dying.  Loud cracks, rapid gunfire at close range.  The refugees were suddenly dappled with blood as they fell.  Cross felt the blade tense against his back, sensed its desire to be drawn, to slash forth from its housing. 

Arcane whips launched forward even as the refugees were mowed down by Scarn’s forward shooters.  Cross tasted thaumaturgy in the wind, a scalding and icy scent.  Another presence rose, then a third.  He hadn’t noted the hex in the atmosphere, hadn’t detected the presence of arcane spirits, something he’d always been capable of even though it had been over a decade since he’d been a warlock himself. 

The refugees weren’t as helpless as they seemed: at least a few of their members wielded magic, some wild mages hidden amongst the squatters.  Light reflected off the water near the base of the needle-like keep, blood red, a flash of grisly diamond.  Song rose from the swamp, a throaty and echoing call. 

Scarn’s men exploded as discs of silver light sliced through their bodies like phantom saw blades.  The gunfire intensified, and the air exploded with noise. Fire spread across the surface of the water, fanning out as if the swamp was full of oil.  Cross smelled turpentine and blood and heard the screams of men with eyes boiling over and flesh dripping from their bones. 

More explosions burst around him.  He glimpsed through the sea of carnage and saw warlocks pasted against the stone, their frail bodies hewn by short-range ordnance, their spirits whirling away from their dying hands in slow burning motions, plasma spirals and blades of skin.  The red air turned redder.

The Raza responded to the onslaught with her own bombardment of magic.  Cross dropped to the ground and fell face-first into the marsh.  Men screamed and died, firing their weapons into fleeing refugees, the ones without magic, and the starving and rag-wearing vagabonds fell in skeletal heaps, mangled and torn by bullets.  Everything smelled of meat, metal and electricity.  Ash rained down.

Bolts of ice launched from the Raza’s hands and cleaved through the wild warlocks.  Cross saw Scarn run for the cover of the trees while his Troj bombarded the structure with shells from 20mm cannons. 

Cross jumped up and ran, adrenaline pumping through his body.  He closed in on Scarn from behind.  He didn’t remember drawing Soulrazor/Avenger, but he rarely did anymore.  It had a mind of its own, and he’d long given up trying to guess its purpose.

A Troj’s face melted beneath a warlock’s barrage.  The creature turned, firing wildly, and the Raza was torn apart by the rampant blasts.

Cross shouted out, and the moment Scarn turned he launched the blade forward, sending it end over end.  Black and white steel glinted in the crimson light before hacking through the man’s chest and sending him to the ground.

The Raza’s magic backfired as she died, and enveloped them.  A pair of shells tore through her silver robes and splattered her insides across the trees, but with hands held high the pale ice she’d used to slay refugees exploded up and fanned down, falling over the remainder of Scarn’s squad in a burst of shuddering poison snow and explosive pressure.  Cross realized too late that his only protection had been the blade he’d just thrown away.

He tried to run, but his insides froze and his skin went flush in the gelid wind.  A presence slid over him, rageful and translucent, a hemorrhaging spirit whose last vestiges of energy slabbed out around him like he’d fallen into a pool of sludge.  Utter cold lanced through his heart. 

Cross made it three more steps before his vision went black. 

FIFTEEN

COLD

Year 35 A.B. (After the Black)

10 A.S.C. (After Southern Claw)

Shiv thought about Ronan. 

They’d spent months together after they’d woken in the forest, surrounded by flames, cut off and alone.  No sign of Danica, or Cross.  No sign of anything.  The world had passed them by, but they hadn’t aged a day.

He’d protected her.  He spoke little, even seemed to resent being forced to watch over her, though they both knew she didn’t truly need him.  As the Kindred she always had willing guardians at her disposal, things that didn’t fear death, because they couldn’t.  There had once been a time when she’d been unable to call on them, but that had changed on the journey across the Bone March with her father, and with Cross.

Now, they were always with her, even when she willed them away.

Things gathered at the edge of the dome, the cracked barrier surrounding her world, and all Shiv could do was watch.  The howling wind tore at her clothing and scalded her skin.  Her hands were tied behind her to a jagged wooden pole which rubbed raw against her back.  Her wrists ground against the ropes, and her skin was ice cold. 

Lighting shot through the darkness.  The world smelled like something recently ignited. 

Shiv didn’t dare call on the spirits for help.  That was exactly what the Maloj wanted.

It watched her from below, its eyes locked on her.  The cold and dismal presence loomed like a pit below the ice.  Cracks like fine wires wound across the grey-white surface of the lake, so solid and thick it looked like marble.  The wolf was there, gathering his strength, in command of the legions of Koth.

The ice was cold, but the Maloj’s fathomless heart made it colder.  Shiv’s limbs were numb, her lips as brittle as ice.  She stood just at the edge of the shore, her bare feet less than a foot away from the lake’s edge.  Waves of freezing mist curled around her ankles. 

To call the spirits would reveal the truth.  The Maloj had somehow developed an immunity to the power she’d used to destroy its brethren in Nezzek’duul, just as it had grown immune to the unearthly ballistics used by the Ebon Kingdoms to destroy the second wolf back in ASC 5.  Now it could use her spirits if she summoned them, force them to reveal Shiv’s secrets by forging a conduit to her soul.