He’d been raised to be a monster, and yet had somehow found the core of the man inside. It was difficult to still sense it these days, but he knew it was there, the human heart beneath the bitter shell, the soul in the machine. Danica Black had helped him find it, just as he’d helped her find her own battered soul after it seemed the Ebon Cities had wiped everything she was away.
Sometimes he wished things had turned out different between them, that he’d have found some way to make something happen that he knew never could.
He shook himself. No need to dwell on that now. She was dead, and he was here, and that was all there was to it. He had a job to do.
Just as the sunlight faded and the white world turned dark the Black Ice Marauders emerged from their soiled fortress. They started to throw tarps off their snowmobiles and ready their machetes and assault rifles for the night’s hunt. They were a motley bunch, dressed like beasts of the winter wilds – their pale armor and coats were lined with fur and held together by straps of leather and steel, and their hockey masks were painted with blood and coal. After a few minutes all dozen-and-a-half of the group was out in the open, a small host of raiders.
They went about their preparations with calculated efficiency – Rage and his group had been doing this long enough to know how to move through the motions quickly, minimizing their exposure to the cold and taking only those articles of equipment they absolutely needed to take down whatever borderlands outpost or caravan they’d set their sights on. Rage always had a specific target in mind: the wastes were too vast and dangerous and the pickings too slim for them to wander without a clear destination.
Ronan saw Rage, a thin and wiry man with a pair of one-handed throwing axes he wore strapped across his back. He gesticulated dramatically, doubtlessly informing the others of how much blood they’d spill and girls they’d steal and how unstoppable they were and...
Blah, blah, blah, blah. I can’t even hear you and I’m already wishing you’d shut up.
Ronan kept watching, and finally the wolf came into view. Rage’s white Bloodwolf was legendary in the wastes, as much a part of the man’s reputation and mystique as his brutal tactics and his ability to hide from what few authorities there were left. The brutish creature was at least six feet tall at the shoulder, its greasy white-and-grey fur mottled with plates of chitin and bone. Its breath steamed into the night, visible in the light of torches they’d lit at the perimeter of their camp, and its dark eyes were like cold moons. It bared its teeth and Ronan saw the glow of its razor smile through the sniper scope.
Now all he had to do was wait. It wouldn’t be long now.
The temperature continued to drop. The Black Ice Marauder’s torches burned low, but within a half-hour they fired up their snowmobiles and were on the move.
Ronan waited, perched behind frozen scrub oak, and watched with his lips going numb and his eyebrows lined with ice. His back was stiff and his elbows were raw from his lying on the ground for so long; the grip of the rifle seemed to have grown into the inset of his hand.
The Marauders went in pairs, zooming off in slightly different directions across the barren plains. The air was full with the sound of buzzing engines.
Ronan waited till they were gone, then moved down the slope and into the shadow of their concrete tower. He’d been motionless for hours, but his sense of physical discipline allowed him to move even with muscles stiff and his body sore. He slid fast down the hill, dodging sharp stones and cracks in the ground. It would have made sense for Rage to have posted a sentry, but Ronan had kept careful count of every Black Ice Marauder who’d emerged from the stronghold, and if there was anyone still on watch it was someone he hadn’t seen yet.
He came to the tents, heard the cloth rippling in the black and icy wind. Ronan drew his katana and approached slowly, his boots crunching ice and stone. The shadows in the tents were thick, and Ronan smelled vehicle fuel and salt as he passed barrels of preserved food and boxes of Molotov cocktails. Sleeping bags and rolls of blanket lie stuffed behind sandbags, and boxes of what appeared to be wheat and rice had been stacked up to be used like tables.
Ronan listened to the shrill whistle of the wind as he advanced on the tower, flexing the blade in his grip as he put a palm on the door. There was no handle, only a keyhole, so Ronan jammed his kodachi blade inside and twisted. Even without stepping into the Deadlands his sense of hearing was keen, and he’d been raised to pick out sounds no normal ears could detect, so he knelt down and placed his ear to the metal and listened to the grind of the tumblers. There was no way he could pick a lock with a dagger, but Ronan was able to turn the mechanism enough that a well-timed and perfectly placed blow to the door with the palm of his hand was enough to jar it loose enough that he could then rise in a swift motion and kick it down.
Darkness waited inside, and the gloom was thick and smelled of rust. Ronan advanced with his blade tip forward, one hand held out to guide him. The interior of the tower was almost pitch, and beneath the groan of the wind he heard water running down the walls and clanging metal in the distance, a resounding chime like someone repeatedly and rhythmically striking two pipes together.
The blackness pressed in on him like breath. Ronan moved slow, using his free hand to navigate the rusted rivets and jagged steel plates on the walls. The air became stale the deeper he went. Shadow vapors burned his eyes, and the walls seemed to be closing in.
He heard something, felt something. Breathing, and not his own. There was something there with him in the dark.
Shit.
Ronan was falling. His lungs swelled with cold and his teeth clenched. He felt the void of the distance, the rancid and frigid touch of lost souls. The darkness shifted, polarized so he stared through a milky mirror. Everything but his body slowed. Muscles tensed, fingers tightened.
He stepped into the Deadlands.
Creatures with horns shifted and clawed at the edge of the darkness. Pale fangs and dripping eyes, coiled appendages wrapped around the ethereal borders of the inner tower. Spectral watchdogs, ghostly hounds left to search out intruders. He’d heard rumors that Rage was a warlock, a man who’d carefully learned to conceal the manipulations of his spirit so he’d go unseen by Ebon Kingdoms detection measures. Now Ronan understood how: Rage left his spirit there in the tower when he went into the wastelands, and they remained separated by distance but connected by tangential chains of aether, his soul extended and left remote.
He’d detected Ronan’s intrusion, and soon he’d return. Ronan didn’t have much time.
Rage’s spirit roiled in at him like a wave of grisly water. Ronan dodged slithering tentacles, sensed as they snarled against his body even if he couldn’t feel the actual pain. He dodged past the tangle of clawed limbs, a forest of boiling ghost flesh. Clouds of white dust parted before him as he sailed into a striking position, his katana held high. Ronan barreled towards the phantom beast’s heart. Ghost blood splashed over his eyes and teeth.
Ronan kept pressing the attack. He felt Rage’s pain, sensed as the wiry man’s heart seized and stopped from over twenty miles out as his arcane spirit was torn to pieces. Ronan took grim delight in hacking that ghost apart.
He kept moving. He saw smears and stains on the walls, the places where the Marauder’s victim’s had been spattered as they were brutally tortured to death. Rage and his crew had been responsible for a number of vicious kidnappings, and very rarely had their victims been returned in anything resembling a decent condition. He tasted that fear and death, smelled the tears and agony. Flashes of writhing women and men appeared like polarized images in the darkness, ghostly silhouettes in the murk.
His blade grew hot in his hands. He needed to slice into something, needed to kill, and there was nothing there living.
Nothing there living.
Ronan desperately scoured the black innards of the citadel. Workbenches, sleeping cots, munitions and maps. Reserves of rations and dried meats, more rooms filled with blood and dank fluids. Nothin
g and no one alive.
Nothing alive.
Some part of his mind was still attached to the flow of normal time, to the place where everyday people lived. Ronan in the Deadlands wanted to find things to hunt, to destroy; his senses were stretched taut like skin over old bones, and the flow of blood in his mouth made his gums ache. He snarled at nothing, and the sound echoed all around him.
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 happen
ed. 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.
Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) Page 10
