The Ultramarines Omnibus

by Graham McNeill

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pasanius. ‘Just some rubbish.’

  LEONID STROKED LARANA Utorian’s cheek, tears spilling down his face as the burning pain that had been his constant companion since he had been taken from Hydra Cordatus sent another spasm of hot fire into his belly. He knew that he did not have much time left – the cancers had devoured most of him already – and, looking at Larana Utorian, she did not have much time left to her either.

  They were the last of the 383rd and the fact that they would die together gave him great comfort. He thought back to the men and women of his regiment and the last time he had fought beside them at the fall of the citadel. They had been magnificent.

  Castellan Vauban, a courageous and honourable warrior. Piet Anders, Gunnar Tedeski and Morgan Kristan: his brother officers. And not forgetting Guardsman Hawke, the worst soldier in the regiment, whose unexpected depths of courage had very nearly saved them all.

  They were all dead, and soon he and Larana Utorian would be with them again.

  Colonel Leonid looked up, hearing a sibilant hissing, and drew a sharp intake of breath as he saw the two daemons stagger from the lake of blood. Both were ravaged and battered, their armours torn and rent by the mighty blows they laid upon one another. The violence of their struggle had devastated much of the cavern and portions of it continued to rain down in avalanches of rocks and rubble.

  The Heart of Blood reeled from a terrible blow dune to it by the Omphalos Daemonium… the Slaughterman… Leonid was not even sure he understood the distinction between these two beings, or that he wanted to even if there was one.

  The daemonic Iron Warrior hammered its long billhook against the Heart of Blood’s unguarded flank and hurled it backwards into a giant pile of mortuary tables and swinging cadavers. Bodies and debris clattered down amid the ongoing destruction and Leonid saw the Slaughterman turn and cast its gaze around the chamber.

  No, Ultramarines, you do not escape my vengeance so easily…

  Leonid cried out as he heard its filthy, loathsome voice in his head.

  The Sarcomata shall feast on your souls for all eternity!

  Leonid saw the eight daemons that were the servants of the Slaughterman dissolve once more into their smoky aspects, swirling in the air for a moment before speeding after Uriel and Pasanius.

  ‘No!’ shouted Leonid in rage. ‘You will not have them!’

  The Sarcomata ignored him, too intent on their prey, until he remembered their hunger for corruption. Leonid pulled the frayed collar of his uniform jacket away from his skin, slashing the rusted edge of Larana Utorian’s dogtags across a swollen, cancerous melanoma growing on the pulsing artery of his neck.

  Polluted, dirty blood spilled down his skin, pooling in his collarbone and soaking his uniform jacket. He smelled its coppery, unclean stink and shouted, ‘Over here, you daemon spawn! This is what you want, isn’t it?’

  Almost as soon as his polluted blood sprayed out, the smoky comets of the Sarcomata twisted in the air and sped towards him, scenting the malignancies devouring his body as the choicest sweetmeats.

  Colonel Leonid slumped to his haunches and pulled Larana Utorian tight, reaching into his breast pocket and removing something round and flat.

  ‘All dead, all dead, all dead, all dead…’ whispered Larana Utorian.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Leonid. ‘We are.’

  Red mist enfolded them, sickening and moist, then vanished in an instant, leaving the two Jourans surrounded by the cancer-hungry Sarcomata, their writhing-maggot touch stroking their swollen sicknesses.

  The daemons bit and tore at their flesh and he cried out in pain.

  For the briefest instant, his eyes met those of Larana Utorian, and he saw the last fragment of her mind reach out to him.

  She smiled at him and nodded.

  Leonid pressed the detonation stud of the grenade he had taken from the crushing machine next to Obax Zakayo, obliterating them and the Sarcomata in the white heat of a melta blast.

  ‘No WAY OUT this way, Ventris,’ said Honsou, gripping his axe and widening his stance ready for combat. The master of Khalan-Ghol and a score of Iron Warriors had emerged from the passageway just as the Ultra-marines had reached it, and Uriel saw that there was no way past them. The silver-eyed daemon-thing that had called itself Onyx stood apart from the Iron Warriors, its movements tentative.

  An Iron Warrior with the brutal face of a killer and a mohawk stood next to it, a huge gun that resembled a bolter with an underslung melta pointed at the daemonic symbiote.

  The cavern continued to rumble as the two daemons fought at its heart, but a stillness held sway here, as though the universe held its breath and awaited the outcome of this particular drama.

  ‘It is over, Honsou,’ said Uriel. ‘Your fortress has fallen.’

  ‘I can build another,’ shrugged Honsou. ‘This one wasn’t really mine anyway.’

  ‘True, but it’s Toramino’s now,’ shouted Pasanius.

  ‘Yes, or at least whatever his sorcerers and artillery leave of it once they have pounded it to rubble,’ said Honsou.

  The Iron Warrior pointed towards the ugly red skies overhead. Tell me though, is this your doing as well, or another of your master’s sorceries?’

  ‘My master?’

  ‘Come on, Ventris!’ laughed Honsou. ‘The time for games is long past. Toramino!’

  ‘We have no master save Lord Calgar and the Emperor,’ said Uriel.

  ‘Even now you play your games,’ sighed Honsou. ‘Well, no matter, it ends now.’

  ‘Aye,’ agreed Uriel, raising his sword before him. ‘It ends with your death, traitor.’

  ‘Perhaps, but you’ll follow me into hell a heartbeat later.’

  Uriel shook his head. ‘You think that matters, amid all this? I will fight you and I will kill you. That will be enough for me.’

  ‘Fight me?’ said Honsou, spreading his arms to encompass his warriors. ‘You think we’re going to fight a duel? My warriors and I outnumber you ten to one! What makes you think I’d give you a chance to trade blows with me?’

  The Iron Warriors aimed their weapons at them, knowing that blood was soon to be spilled here, but waiting for their master’s command before unleashing death.

  Pasanius leaned close to Uriel and said, ‘You take the ten on the right and I’ll take the ten on the left.’

  Despite himself, Uriel chuckled and stood back to back with his oldest comrade.

  ‘Courage and honour, my friend,’ said Uriel.

  ‘Courage and honour,’ repeated Pasanius.

  The two Ultramarines prepared to charge as the Iron Warriors cocked their bolters.

  THE HEART OF Blood fell to its knees, the Omphalos Daemonium’s billhook tearing into its warp-spawned flesh and opening a great gash in its body. Dark ichor spilled down its armour and its strength was fading: too long imprisoned within the depths of Khalan-Ghol had robbed it of much of its diabolical vigour and power. Another blow smashed into its chest, sending it hurling across the width of the chamber.

  ‘Eternity awaits you!’ roared the Omphalos Daemonium. ‘An age trapped in fire will be nothing to torments you will suffer!’

  Smoke and rubble fell in a constant rain from the walls, crashing anything exposed on the cavern floor.

  ‘You cannot destroy me. I am the Heart of Blood!’

  The Omphalos Daemonium ran towards it, fierce, vengeful hunger burning in its eyes. The Heart of Blood sprang to its feet and lashed out with its whip.

  The blow struck its foe’s head, drawing a bellow of pain and a spray of dark blood as it severed one of its gnarled antlers.

  The Heart of Blood staggered away in the respite its lucky blow had gained, wading back into the lake of blood, feeling the invigorating fluid enter its immaterial flesh and new strength seep into its essence. But this was poor, stagnant blood, polluted with the taint of psychic energies and devoid of the hot, urgent nourishment it needed to defeat its foe.

  As the Omphalos Daemo
nium came after it, memories thrashed and screamed in the Heart of Blood’s skull, though it had not the faculties left to recall them. The lunacy that had consumed it during its incarceration had robbed it of any clarity of thought save that it needed blood, desired blood… craved blood!

  A powerful vision of a great fortress swam across the fluid landscape of its memory – no, not its memory, the blood-soaked memories of the Avatar of Khorne, the creature the armour had become in its absence…

  A battle alongside the Iron Warriors, a sorcerous foe in yellow armour – one of the corpse-god’s followers – and a howling gale of gore that thundered like a hurricane and fed its spirit with unimaginable power.

  Something in this memory was the key it needed to defeat its rival and drive the Omphalos Daemonium back to the fiery prison the Heart of Blood had confined it to for an age.

  A single word penetrated the Heart of Blood’s fug of amnesia and lunacy.

  Bloodstorm…

  THE FIRST BOLT took Uriel low in the gut as he charged, tearing through the knotted mass of scar tissue that covered the wound dealt to him by the tyranid Norn Queen.

  He was too close and the bolt was moving too quickly for it to detonate within him, but it exploded a fraction of a second after punching out through his lower back and peppered his flesh with searing fragments.

  The second shattered on one of the few remaining portions of his armour, the hot shrapnel scoring upwards across his cheek, and the third blasted a chunk of his side to red ruin.

  He staggered, but kept going, hacking his fiery-bladed sword through the neck of the Iron Warrior that had shot him. Pasanius was hit four times, his armour deflecting the majority of the impacts, but unable to save him completely

  The sergeant fell, dragging down the Iron Warrior before him and breaking his neck with a loud cracking noise.

  Another round hit Uriel and he fell to the hard ground.

  Bolter rounds filled the air. Uriel heard a cry of pain and surprise.

  Yelling voices and more shots.

  He tried to push himself to his feet, feeling sharp pain flare as he moved, and wondered why he was not dead.

  Bellowing roars of hatred echoed from all around them, howls of furious anger and anguish. Even over the stench of blood and death that filled this place, Uriel could make out the stink of wet, raw flesh and realised what was happening.

  Blood sprayed from a ragged stump of an Iron Warrior’s neck and Uriel shouted in triumph as he saw the battered but unbowed form of the Lord of the Unfleshed hurl the grisly trophy to one side before leaping onto another Iron Warrior who fired wildly into the attacking monsters.

  ‘Iron men die!’ he roared as the surviving creatures of the Unfleshed fell upon Honsou’s warriors.

  The mohawked warrior shot down the fused twins, the white-hot blast of his gun obliterating the creature with a hiss of superheated air. Onyx nimbly dodged the brutal, clubbing blows of a pair of the Unfleshed, spinning around them and hamstringing them as he danced aside from their attacks.

  Uriel saw Honsou retreat from the attack of the Unfleshed, and rolled onto his side, dragging his bolter around.

  He realised how much he missed the ministrations of his armour as the pain from the burning fragments of the bolter shell stabbed into his back. Pasanius lay atop a dead Iron Warrior, two large exit wounds blasted through his back.

  ‘Pasanius!’ called Uriel.

  His sergeant turned his head, and Uriel saw his face was deathly pale, his cheeks ashen and sunken.

  ‘Don’t you dare die on me, sergeant!’ shouted Uriel, putting down his sword and bringing his bolter to a firing position.

  ‘Aye, captain,’ said Pasanius, weakly.

  Smoke and the thrashing combatants conspired to obscure Uriel’s aim, but eventually he was able to draw a bead on Honsou.

  ‘Now you die, traitor!’ whispered Uriel as he squeezed the trigger and a crash of rubble and smoke exploded beside him.

  But in the instant before he lost sight of Honsou, he had seen the master of Khalan-Ghol pitched backwards, his helmet spraying ceramite fragments and an arc of crimson.

  BLOODSTORM…

  The two daemons faced each other in the depths of the lake of blood, their shared hatred a physical thing between them. Swirling eddies of power gusted around them, the energies both had expended in their battle having drained them almost to the point of extinction.

  There were no more words to be said. What could two beings that had been enemies since the dawn of time have to say to each other at this moment?

  Words were now only for mortals and those with a future to remember them.

  The Omphalos Daemonium had prepared for this moment ever since it had been freed by the random actions of two mortals, and its strength was by far the greater.

  But the Heart of Blood and the Avatar of Khorne were once again the same creature, and the blasted armour had feasted on the death of an entire galaxy of souls. Both daemons were evenly matched, but none could yet see the other destroyed.

  Bloodstorm…

  The Heart of Blood spread wide its arms and gave vent to a shout of hatred that parted the vital fluid of the lake and sent a tidal wave of blood spilling outwards from its centre. A rippling whirlwind of raw, red hunger swept from the Heart of Blood’s armour, spreading throughout the chamber like the pressure wave of an explosion.

  A lashing storm of hate-fuelled energy roared around the ruined domain of the Savage Morticians, lashing like a blind, insensate monster and driving the Omphalos Daemonium back from the Heart of Blood with its unstoppable power.

  The bloodstorm enfolded the few, cowering mutants that had hidden beneath the shattered machines and rubble of the chamber. It scythed through their flesh and blew them apart.

  The bloodstorm tore into the mutilated ruin of Obax Zakayo, finally ending his suffering in an explosion of red bone.

  The bloodstorm streaked past the fleshy wombs of the daemonculaba and, one by one, they exploded like great fleshy balloons filled with blood.

  The bloodstorm hurtled around the circumference of the chamber, an ocean of blood swept up in the etheric whirlwind as it howled back to the Heart of Blood at its epicentre.

  The mighty daemon swelled to monstrous proportions, its armour and weapons blazing with barely-contained power as it sought to master the energies ripped from the ocean of ripe blood it had just feasted upon.

  Now it was ready.

  Now all things would end.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  HOWLING RED WINDS swept through the Halls of the Savage Morticians, the harsh metallic reek of blood catching in the back of Uriel’s throat. He rolled onto his side and scooped up his sword as the fury of the hurricane scouring the air swirled around them, tearing at their flesh with harsh lashes.

  The Iron Warriors dived for cover as the etheric whirlwind tore through the cavern and the Unfleshed were hurled from their feet by its power. The desperate battle broke apart as the combatants found shelter or held onto giant boulders to prevent themselves from being swept away.

  Uriel gasped as the very life was leeched from him, feeling as powerless as one of the weakling newborns left to die on the mountains of Macragge. But at the edge of the cavern the power of the bloodstorm was at its weakest and they were spared the horrors of those closer to the Heart of Blood.

  Pasanius grunted in pain and Uriel watched as the dotted blood on his back liquefied and was snatched into the air by the vampiric storm. His own wounds ran freely as they fed the terrible daemon at the heart of the chamber.

  ‘Not like this…’ he hissed. ‘Not like this!’

  Then, it was gone – the sudden silence unnerving after the tempestuous violence of the diabolical storm. Uriel pushed himself to his knees, grimacing in pain as those around him began to recover from the hellish experience.

  The Unfleshed howled in pain. Without the protection of skin to save them from the worst effects of the bloodstorm, their bodies looked wasted and gaun
t, pale and anaemic.

  Uriel used a fallen surgical table to pull himself to his feet, the pain from his gunshot wounds and cracked bones sharp and biting. His enhanced metabolism had clotted the blood and already formed scar tissue over the wounds, but he was still terribly injured.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged Pasanius. ‘There’s no way out here. We have to find another way’

  ‘I don’t know that I can,’ said Pasanius, but Uriel did not give him a chance to argue further, pulling the sergeant upright over his groans of pain. Eventually, Pasanius nodded slowly and said, ‘All right, all right, you’re worse than Apothecary Selenus.’

  Painfully, Pasanius sat himself against a pile of rubble, freshly-dotted blood gummed on his chest from multiple bolter wounds.

  THE SOUNDS OF the battle raging in the centre of the chamber continued to echo, but there was a renewed fury to the roars and clash of weapons. As the bloodstorm abated, Uriel heard savage laughter, brazen and malicious, and felt a sick sensation in his bones as his soul recoiled from its evil.

  Through the swirling dust and cascades of rock, Uriel saw the furious climax of the two daemons’ battle, the sight of such incredible power taking his breath away. The Heart of Blood towered above the Omphalos Daemonium now, swollen to three times its size, and its sheer physicality was like nothing he had ever seen before.

  Even the Bringer of Darkness had not awed him as much with its dark majesty. Its nightmarish presence had filled his thoughts with tormented visions of his own darkness, but this…

  This was something else entirely.

  Where the Heart of Blood walked, death followed. A red mist came in its wake, a bloody veil that glistened with wetness, and its weapons clove the air with every stroke, leaving dark trails that split the very world open. The daemonic Iron Warrior fell back before it, battered and broken, the armour torn from its body and its wounds spewing ichor from every cut.

  Each mighty blow of the Heart of Blood forced it to retreat, its parries growing more clumsy with each backwards step it took. It desperately fell back towards the hissing daemon engine that had brought it here, its screaming stacks billowing shrill screams of anguish.