Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7)

by Steven Montano

  He pushed forward, driven by instinct. A single bullet struck his leg and made it buckle, forcing him to his knees. It occurred to him even as he tried to regain the strength to stand that he was still waiting to feel the pain.

  The gunman appeared through the walls of smoke, dark mask fixed in place and goggles over his eyes, reflective armor holding off the flames. Ronan thought for a second it was the blonde boy, come back to finish the job after all of these years. Part of him wanted that release.

  No. She’s still out there. You aren’t allowed to die, not yet. You have to save Shiv.

  Coppery blood swept through his mouth as he threw himself forward. Gunfire ripped next to his head and deafened him as his thin black blade pierced the man’s gut, splitting him open and sending him to the ground.

  Disorientation hit Ronan like a blast of scalding water. He sensed that Abraham was no longer there, so he pushed his way out of the room. The back area of the shop was a smoke-filled office packed with more racks of weapons and barred cages holding rare metals. Another door led to a long hall.

  Shit.

  He was slipping out the Deadlands. Pain rushed in at him like a tide, and he was suddenly so weak he could barely support himself. The front room was fully on fire and his pack was still there, by now incinerated with the rest of it.

  Ronan shut the door and pushed himself against the wall. It was a struggle to keep his eyes open. Everything was slipping away, and before he could take another step, it did.

  “God dammit, Ronan. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  His vision faded in, and Ronan found himself staring at the stars. The air was still and frozen, a shock to his skin. He was exhausted beyond measure, and even with the icy atmosphere Ronan felt himself barely clinging to consciousness. His mind was filled with haze and hurt, and voices echoed and faded like he’d fallen into a tunnel.

  He was on a slow-moving truck, lying on the bed of a military grade transport which rumbled along the uneven hills, crushing stones as they drove near rows of dead trees. Untended fires off the sides of the road burned in the night, and Ronan spied slight warriors armed with razored bows patrolling the wastelands.

  Lith.

  Ronan slowly sat up. He tasted acid on the night current, smelled burning meat. The moon was full and bright.

  There were others on the truck, armed men in dark armor seated in two rows of seats that ran the length of the walls around the bed. The vehicle shifted violently, but Ronan dragged himself up with aid of the chains on the rear door. If the half-dozen men didn’t want him to rise they made no motion to stop him. His clothes were soaked, and there was an uncomfortable tightness in his back. He felt drugged.

  “That was a hell of a nice shop,” Abraham said. “I ought to take it out of your ass.”

  The black marketer sat on the bench next to him, dressed in combat armor, his white eyes bright in the night. A thick bandage had been wrapped around his forearm where Ronan’s knife had sunk through.

  Ronan rubbed his sore ribs and realized his weapons were gone.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asked.

  “Lots,” Abraham said. “Right now, we’re taking a ride.”

  Ronan looked out across the broken hills and scattered dead forests.

  “We’re heading towards Seraph,” he said.

  “Close,” Abraham nodded. “Ath.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “You’re not in any position...”

  Ronan moved fast. The man seated behind him wore a Noveske N4 Diplomat slung over one shoulder; fatigued or no, Ronan had spent a lifetime training to kill others, and that meant making sure they couldn’t kill him first, so in a fluid motion he slid the rifle off and away from the other man, cracked his elbow against the soldier’s forehead and turned and aimed the gun at Abraham’s face before anyone else could move.

  “I’m in perfect position,” Ronan growled. “Talk. Why did you try to kill me back in your shop, why didn’t you finish the job…and what the hell is going on here?”

  “I can answer that,” a woman’s voice said. “But only if you put down the gun and stop acting like an infant.”

  Ronan caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, a woman near the head of the truck. Her cloak was black and heavy, and she was surrounded by a tightly wound spirit which uncoiled and spread out in a dissonant grey and green fog. The specter solidified around her thin body as she stood and stepped forward, unaffected by the rocketing motion.

  Ronan had only met her a couple of times before. He hadn’t trusted her then, and he sure as hell didn’t trust her now. She’d aged, though that did little to affect her exotic beauty – if anything, it had enhanced it. Pale skin, deep red hair, emerald eyes that pierced through to his very core. A serpent tattoo wound its way along her neck. She exuded raw sexuality, a virulent energy which folded space around her like a burning wave.

  “Hello, Ronan,” she said. “Lucky for you I was in town, or else Abraham would have gutted you like a fish after you fell unconscious.” She smiled demurely. “I believe you need my help.”

  “Warfield,” he said. “I’d say it’s nice to see you, but I’d be lying.” He glanced at Abraham, who smiled. Ronan breathed deep, decided he was fucked no matter what happened, and lowered the gun. To his surprise, none of the mercenaries moved.

  “Be nice, Ronan,” she said. “You and I can help each other.”

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “You want to find Bloodhollow,” she said. “And I want you to help me find Eric Cross.”

  Ronan blinked.

  “Honey, Cross is dead. He’s been dead for nearly a decade.”

  Warfield just shook her head.

  FOURTEEN

  FIRES

  Year 25 A.B. (After the Black)

  Hasker’s unit, The Bloody Teeth, consisted of three-dozen battle-hardened commandos and a handful of Raza and Troj. Out of an entire army of bad men, they were worst. Any qualms they might have ever possessed of not killing innocents had been abandoned long ago, and it sometimes seemed they went out of their way to maximize civilian casualties, even if said citizens were supposedly under Coalition protection.

  Two warships accompanied an aerial troop transport, a squat and ugly vehicle that looked like melted sea-glass. The vessels cut across a sky pregnant with oil clouds and dry storms. Cross ran a hand through what was left of his short dark hair – he’d cut nearly all of it away since being forced into servitude with the East Claw Coalition – and his fingers passed over the scars on his face and scalp.

  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, ever
ything 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.