Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) (37 page)

“This place, this city, was built over what’s left of the original Breach between worlds,” Lucan said.  He kept his eyes on the mural, and didn’t turn around.  Cross, Danica and Maur stood behind him, looking up at the dome and the staircase leading to the roof.  The room was cold and still.  “Though much of the physical reality of the places affected was re-written, rending the notion of a ground zero almost absurd, the crack that formed here is as close as anyone will ever get.  It was here where the vampires spilled through to earth.  They caused such tremendous damage to the fabric of the universe during their desperate attempt to escape their own world that other realities were sucked in, as well.  That’s why there are Gol,” he said with a nod towards Maur, “and Gorgoloth, and Sorn, and so many other things that once never existed, at least from a human’s perspective.  That’s why magic was made possible, why humans still recall some details of their old world while others remain elusive.”  He looked down.  “It’s right under us.  The crack is miniscule now, sealed up long ago, but that seal was never completed.  And because of that, it can be broken again.”

Cross had seen some of the damage, those tunnels of darkness where the barrier was wearing thin.  He squeezed Danica’s hand, and she squeezed back.

They stood silent for a moment before Cross stepped forward.

“
You said the vampires were trying to escape,” he said.  “Escape from what?”

“
They spent millennia destroying their own world,” Lucan said, his eyes distant and glassy, his voice soft.  “A dismal and cold place of black marshes and ebon moons.  They waged war constantly, never ceasing to understand that the power they released with their bastard weapons and command of lost souls would draw attention.  They always thought themselves the ultimate predators – all other life forms on their world feared them, kept to the shadows to avoid becoming food or slaves.  It never occurred to them there might be something worse.”

“
Jesus,” Danica said.  “The Maloj.”

“
They are merely a representation,” Lucan said with a grim smile.  Every word broke the silence and echoed, like he spoke to them from the bottom of a well.  He never moved his eyes from the mural, and he held his hands folded and kept his dark cloak pushed back from his leather armor.  He watched the painting of the crack as if he hoped he could heal it with his gaze.  “Just a small fraction of the power you call The Black.”

“
What is it?” Maur asked. 

“
It is oblivion,” he said.  “A liquid universe of pain, of power, of dire intent and vengeful thought.  It is a mass of madness and murderous rage.  It spans the borders of its own universe, filling it from end to end like water in a sack.  But the vampires broke the walls.”

Lucan turned and looked at them, his breath frosting as he spoke, his long blonde hair hanging down over his scarred face. 

“What you call the Maloj are drops of water from that mad sea,” he said.  “They worked to subvert the vampire’s world, destroying it from within by lending them more power with which to wage war.  The Maloj thrive on spreading destruction, for their sole purpose is to annihilate.  They crave light, and life, so they can consume it.  Hunger is all they know, all they feel.  No one knows what formed that dismal mass of tortured souls – perhaps it’s a prison, or some dark place crafted by the whim of an ancient and evil god.  The Maloj are chained in darkness and hate the living with all the substance of their black and twisted hearts.  Wherever they came from, they want
out
, and the vampires gave them the chance.

“
The creatures of Malefia realized their mistake too late, when much of their world had already been devastated.  The skies bled magic which melted their great spires and cities, and the undead citizens found themselves in a position they never would have imagined: they were the prey.  The darkness of the Maloj was wiping them out and subjugating them as easily as the vampires themselves had done to countless other races.  In their desperation they turned to Daezarkian, the Grim Father, a mad theurge-king who managed to use the very world-twisting energies the Maloj leaked from the pores of their dismal bodies, coupled with the sacrificed souls of thousands of human slaves and the undead essence of his own wife-queen, to create a way out.  A gate.”  He held up his arms.  “And it led here.”

“
Holy shit,” Cross said.  “And when they used this gate, they...royally fucked everybody.”

“
That’s putting it mildly,” Lucan said with that same wry grin.  “They crossed over, bringing as much of their world with them as they could without allowing the Maloj to follow.  The sheer scale of the event was beyond their comprehension.  Places they’d never known existed were affected, the ripples of reality-altering physics too much to yield safely predictable results.  Worse, not just space but
time
was affected.  Pasts and futures co-mingled, histories of some worlds blended with the futures of others.  And because it was reality itself that was being altered few knew the truth.  Even many of the vampires have forgotten.”

He stopped talking, and they stood in silence.  The chamber was utterly cold and desolate. 

“How do
you
know this?” Danica asked after a time.  “How would you recall all of this, if no one else can.  Who...
what
...are you?”

“
He’s a Soulweaver,” Cross said.  “Though I’m hard-pressed to explain what that is.”  He addressed Lucan.  “I met your kind in the Whisperlands, when Jennar was trying to make it so I’d open another portal to The Black.”  He looked around the room.  “I might have even been here in Bloodhollow, in a sense.  Your brothers were much more...snake-like.”

“
There are few of us left,” Lucan said.  “We observe.  We are architects, artists, but we lack vision.  We watch, we repair, we rebuild.  We have no home of our own, and haven’t for millennia, not since it was destroyed by the Maloj.”

Something was happening outside.  Cross stepped back to the door and looked into the vast cavern, so massive it was like a stone sky.  Hundreds of tunnels led off to a network of caves and passageways, many of which went to the surface, though from the way Lucan described it one was likely to get lost for months trying to navigate the confusing labyrinth.  Cross saw more of Lucan’s followers – his “assistants”, he liked to call them, a combination of humans, Lith, Gol, even Gorgoloth and Vuul – setting up sandbags and flame cannons, machine guns and tents and boxes stuffed with ammo and medical supplies.  They looked nothing like soldiers, just creatures from the wastelands, dirty and unkempt, the last defenders of the city of Bloodhollow.

“Maur is sorry to hear of the loss of your world,” the Gol said to Lucan.

“
Yes,” Danica nodded.  “I’m sorry.”

“
That was so long ago none of us really remember it,” Lucan said sadly.  “We’ve spent our existence watching other worlds, enjoying them from afar.  We try to not to change things, except to help, to better, and never in any intrusive fashion.  It’s not our way.”

“
But you helped
me
,” Cross said.  “When I was lost in the Whisperlands, and Jennar...one of the Maloj...was trying to open another gateway to The Black, you
did
interfere.  Just as you are now.”  He took a breath.  “Why?”

“
Because we’ve grown attached to Earth,” Lucan said plainly.  “After all, we did all but wipe ourselves out defending it.”

Cross nodded.  Danica’s eyes widened. 

“Jesus...”

“
That’s why we’re still here,” Cross said.  “Isn’t it?  Without you and your brothers there to hold things together that Breach would have destroyed Earth, would have destroyed
all
of those worlds.  The vampires wouldn’t have escaped, because they’d have damaged everything so badly it would have fallen apart.”

“
We weren’t entirely successful,” Lucan said.  “That’s why the Breach is still here, a splitting seam, a crack where we held back the tide of the Maloj.  That’s why other portals have opened, like the one Azradayne created.  That’s how travel is possible between different times, different realms.”

“
Why this place?” Danica asked.  “Why now?”

“
When The Black occurred – the event, when the Grim Father created the Breach and his world spilled over into yours – we did everything we could to stop it, but we weren’t strong enough, and the Maloj knew we were here.  It wiped most of us out as we were making the final push to seal the gap and stabilize what we could.  Our bodies were failing.  The decision was made among the eldest of our kind to sacrifice our lives to seal the way once and for all.  That life force had to be held in a reliquary of some kind, a repository capable of holding our power, our wills...”

“
The swords,” Danica said with a grim laugh. 

“
That was
my
idea,” Lucan said proudly.  “I enjoyed your myths and fantasy tales, and it seemed as good a receptacle as any.  Most of the elders were fused to two different artifact blades, the weapons you’ve come to know as Scar and Claw.  Two of us would remain behind and watch over the world after The Black.  You see, we didn’t want to seal the Breach completely for fear we’d do even more harm – everything was balanced, and though millions had died the worlds themselves had survived, but if we undid the stitching it could all come apart.  So we two remained: myself, and the one you’ve come to know as the Pale Goddess.”

Cross was shaking.  It was all too much, but there was more, and though he wanted to run away screaming he had to hear Lucan out.

“There were just those two of us left when the most powerful Maloj we’d ever encountered attacked”, Lucan continued.  “He nearly destroyed us, and while we were able to use our power to imprison him deep in the earth of an alternate world the damage had already been done.  His destructive power scattered us, and both of us were discorporating.  Desperate, we tried to shunt our own energy into the other two blades, Avenger and Soulrazor, but we didn’t act fast enough.  My powers and my consciousness were scattered, and vestiges of my power littered the world – some had gone into Soulrazor, which had been forged from the very meteoric steel piloted by The Sleeper when he’d ventured to our world to destroy us, while some had fused into a number of individuals, men who held no clue that they carried a part of me inside of them. 

“
This vessel,” he said, indicating his own body, “that of Lucan, was the most powerful, but there were more, each of us unaware of who we were.  The same was true of the other, but she bore some memory of what she’d been, and she carried on where the rest of us could not.  She, too, had had her consciousness scattered, but not to as many vessels.  Much of her energy was shunted to Avenger, and the most powerful aspect of her soul, the White Mother, guided humankind to rebuild and defend against the threat of the Ebon Cities.  The others – the Woman in the Ice, Korva, a handful more now long dead and forgotten – retained more power and more memory than I did.”

“
But she’s dead now,” Cross said.  “That’s what I was shown – the Maloj found her, and destroyed her.”

“
True,” Lucan said.  “But before she died she chose to pass her powers down to a few others, for she knew that when the time was right they’d manifest those abilities, and do what needed to be done.”

“
The Kindred,” Danica said, and she looked at Cross with terror in her eyes and fear in her voice.  “Shiv.  God, Eric, it’s Shiv...and I lost her...”

“
Just listen,” Lucan said, his tone growing angry.  “We couldn’t act before  because I was lost, and the White Mother couldn’t do this on her own.  She didn’t even know the location of the Breach, of this city called Bloodhollow we ourselves had built over the rip.  None of this could fall into place until the swords were brought closer together, for they’d been lost in our battle with The Sleeper, scattered as we were.  They fell into hands where they didn’t belong.

“
But now you’re
here
,” Lucan said, almost giddy, excited like a schoolboy, and in its own way that was terrifying.  “With the four blades plus this girl Shiv and myself we can finally seal the Breach.  I’ve been analyzing the weylines, examining the fracture...”

“
Hold on,” Maur said.  “Maur recalls you just said that was dangerous – that sealing the Breach could damage
everything
.”

“
I think now it can be done,” Lucan said.  “With all that humans have learned about planar geography, about hex patterns and thaumaturgic algorithms, about transubstantive locationism and arcane geometry...all of that knowledge
you
hold in your head,” he said to Cross, “all of that information gleaned from the Tome of Scars we never had access to back when The Black occurred, we can now do what we couldn’t before.  We can seal the Breach and end the threat of the Maloj.  Better yet, we can end the threat of the vampires, once and for all.”

“
How’s that?” Danica asked.  Cross stepped closer.

“
The vampires cannot fully abandon their home world,” Lucan explained.  “They’ve never been able to, and they learned this even before the two worlds had merged.  The necrotic power that fuels Malefia, that burns in their very atmosphere, is what allows them to exist.  They left the Breach open intentionally, but in the chaos of The Black they lost its location.  They’ve been able to create small gates under their control, but they’ve never been able to maintain them, and they know that if the true Breach ever fell into human hands their very existence would be in jeopardy.  Not since Daezarkian’s first successful experiment have the Ebon Cities been able to craft a long-lasting portal back to their world.