The skyline was a haze of red shadow and black dust. There was no source for the light sinking down from the heights of the cavern, no crystals or flames, but it was getting more difficult to see with each passing moment as thick clouds of gun and firesmoke streamed up from the damaged city. Ronan wasn’t sure how many men Lucan had, but there was no way they could keep this up.
They kept to the shadows and watched battles at the edge of the city. Coalition Troj knifed their way through flesh golems and massive Ebon Kingdom’s zombies. Gun battles echoed up and down the streets between men and undead. Coalition forces engaged Ebon Kingdom regulars in bloody melees that left bodies splattered across the walls.
“There,” Lucan said. “I see her.”
Shiv was flying – more accurately, she was floating, held aloft by some phantom wind which kept her elevated above the carnage. The cavalcade of spirits surrounded her like a bladed fog. Vampires shot at her and missed, as their bone needles and hexed rounds dissolved against the swirling mass of energies around her. Gargoyles drew close and burned away, their flesh melted by the pulsing shield. She was pale and quiet, her arms to her side, her dark hair blowing in the dank wind. Ronan saw her eyes, pale and shining, pinpricks of starlight in the gloom.
More shapes in the underworld air, hanged men converging on her. Dark cloaks fluttered in their own necrotic breeze, decayed hands held open, crackling white energy bursting off burn-black flesh.
Magewraiths.
On the ground, a pair of war wights tore through a Coalition war-walker and ripped the machination to shreds, then devoured the screaming soldier inside. Guts and blood ejected onto the stone. Ronan and Lucan tried to avoid the undead, but they were seen.
Up above Shiv shifted her hand, and a bolt of ice and lightning tore through the first Magewraith. It fell silently, its cloak fluttering like wings as it dashed onto the stones below.
Ronan drew his katana and almost stepped into the Deadlands without even thinking.
Not yet. Not yet.
The war wight’s claws were enormous and thick, and each finger was the size of a knife. Its bald head was pale and cracked, a maze of blood veins and decay. The dark-armored brute was fast, and Ronan barely moved in time to avoid being gutted. Three blades passed along his chest, so sharp he barely felt the cuts until moments later when the skin parted and blood rolled out of his leather vest. Pain came then, sharp and searing, the shock of it almost overwhelming.
Up above, the second Magewraith expanded its mouth unnaturally, opened its hinged jaws to release a furnace blast of black flame, but in the moment before the energy released Shiv’s spirits tore into the creature’s maw. The creature dropped and burned, fire-ruined.
But the third one had her. Ronan saw it push its way through her shield and take hold of her neck in its gangly hands, but before he could move to help her the war wight was on him again.
He moved with precision, without thinking, almost slipped into the Deadlands without meaning to, and the moment’s concentration it took to draw himself back nearly cost him his life. Bladed fingers seized at him and scraped stone as he ducked away. Ronan sliced forward and hacked off its arm, sending it to the ground. The wight persisted, but with only one arm its attacks were ungainly and disorganized, and Ronan easily backed out of its reach before cutting in and up, splitting the skull and felling the brute in a splash of old blood and raw bones.
Shadowclaws descended from above, vampire elite with pale flesh and night black hair, rabid fangs and forlorn claws. Bone rifles spewed needles, and it was all Ronan could do to back away as shots buried in the ground at his feet. Sharp pain ripped through his thigh, and another needle struck him in the arm, but he kept moving.
Lucan floated up and moved ahead. His body was aglow and flared without sound in a flash of cobalt. Cold energy spread from his fingers and swept across the vampires one by one, slowing them, crystallizing their bodies and riddling them with cracks, first their weapons, then their arms and legs, until eventually they shattered into dust on the floor.
Ronan ran for where he saw Shiv and the Magewraith descend into the shadows. Ruin and rubble obstructed him, and he passed some of Lucan’s men as they hacked a vampire apart with their machetes, shouting and screaming with rage. More men were at the edge of the courtyard firing hexed crossbow bolts into gargoyle fliers, who exploded in bursts of blood and brick-grey skin. From the other end of the courtyard Coalition soldiers fired a motor gun and pelted the area with explosive blasts which tore Lucan’s soldiers into meat mist. Ronan slashed through four Coalition mercenaries and was on his way before they even hit the ground, the blood draining from their bodies.
He moved through the alley and into another courtyard, the remains of a blasted building marked at its edges by a ring of black dust. Shiv was on her back, the Magewraith on top of her. Spirits roiled and spasmed. The Magewraith’s clawed hands were around her throat, but Shiv fought back, held tight to its decayed wrists and gritted her teeth, and her eyes were aglow with burning sapphire light. Chill and grey-glowing energies seeped from the struggle and scorched the ground cold, made it brittle. Magnesium white flames burned Ronan as he stepped across the courtyard. He pushed through the blinding pain, stepped up and severed the Magewraith’s head from its shoulders before it even knew he was there.
The backlash of power threw Ronan back. He twisted and toppled, landed hard on his side. The wind flew from his lungs. He floated in pain, felt himself falling away.
Just give me time to tell her. Please.
Back. The world rippled into sight. Shiv was over him, her face and hair made dark in silhouette against the backdrop of the burning sky. He couldn’t see her clearly but without thinking reached his hand up and stroked her face, and she didn’t recoil, as she always did in his nightmares, but held it there, his calloused and blood-stained fingers pressed against her smooth, beautiful skin. She was all the things he’d dreamed about, in those rare moments when he dreamed. She was the one good thing in his life, the hope that had kept him alive all those dark years.
“Ronan,” she said, and for a moment they just sat there, hidden in the dark, while the city of Bloodhollow fell apart.
“You...” he said. “You saved me.”
He felt a tear splash on his face. She lifted him up and wrapped her arms around him. Ronan’s heart swelled with the first true joy he’d ever felt in his entire cursed life.
Lucan found them. Shiv didn’t question when they told her what had to happen, what they had to do. Time was running out.
They passed back through the city, down forlorn alleys and lanes made wide by explosions and conflict. Smoke and blood and noise filled the cold atmosphere as invaders from the present and future filed through the outer walls, all of them intent on seizing the last beacon of humankind’s hope.
Lucan’s giant, a nameless Doj with dark flesh and cruel hands, hacked through Scarecrows and Troj with his enormous blood-stained maul, the metal grinding through meat and bone. He was on fire, immolated by flamethrowers mounted on Coalition war walkers, ungainly machines like enormous robotic men with no faces, motor guns and missiles and blades attached to their shifting armored bodies. The giant tore through them, one by one, but in the seconds that passed before Lucan could come to his aid the Doj fell. Lucan howled in rage and sent scorching wind to envelop the rest of the walkers: flames passed into air vents and ignited the pilot’s lungs as they breathed in napalm. The machines were left sputtering and motionless while their pilots burned alive.
Ronan fought through zombies and humans. They were everywhere, legions of corpseflesh and walking dead. The city was alive with conflict. His arms were weary and his body had been pushed beyond the point of breaking, but even with the Deadlands within reach he stayed away, because he knew this time he wouldn’t come back, and now he had something worth living for.
Shiv was next to him, aglow with power, a corona of blue-white light. Spirits twisted and burned at her command. They threw men and un
dead back, froze the earth and ignited the sky. The ghosts ripped through enemies like they were made of paper.
It wasn’t enough to repel the invaders. Lucan’s soldiers were losing ground and losing their lives, and in spite of their devotion they were also losing their nerve. They broke, started to fall back.
The city had been overrun – the only thing that kept all hope from shattering was the fact that the Coalition forces were also engaged with Ebon Kingdom’s assault squads, warriors they were ill-equipped to deal with.
Ronan, Shiv and Lucan fought through the city. A Razorwing and its crew descended from the time-eaten portals above, its scaled wings ridged with armor plate and blades. Shiv and Lucan brought it down with colliding tidal forces of explosive spirit magic, waves of burning power which scoured the beast raw and left little but bones. Ronan moved ahead of them down the back alleys and narrow lanes, leading them away from the larger conflicts. His sword and his face were soaked with blood by the time they neared the temple.
Shiv was with him, a presence in his thoughts and at his side. They’d said little, but the way she looked at him, the way she insisted he stay close, told him she wasn’t afraid, not of him. He could almost imagine them in some other place, some other time, a place without war, and though he knew that would never happen the thought bolstered him on as he hacked through undead soldiers and mercenaries, as he challenged a Troj warrior and brought it down with two quick strikes, as they twisted their way through dark alleys and finally came within sight of the temple, a simple dome structure where Warfield and Felix were making preparations, where Dani and Cross would return and they’d seal the Breach and be done with this once and for all, or die trying.
You saved me, he’d told her.
Ronan had never felt so alive.
TWENTY-FOUR
STAND
They drove though the smog of war.
A Razorwing was torn open by a mortar blast, and as its skin split its innards and blood sprayed on the ruined structures of Bloodhollow like sloppy rain. Fires burned all over the city and filled the already thick atmosphere with gritty plumes of burning smoke. The sound of gunfire seemed more distant than before, but that was only because most of Bloodhollow’s defenders were dead, and the Coalition troops were engaged with the vampires further to the north.
Besides human and undead remains Danica glimpsed gutted Gorgoloth and even Vuul, their coagulated blood seeping slow from their wounds and hardening like concrete in the stale air. Smashed Coalition machinery and mangled bodies were everywhere, crushed and blasted apart.
Danica hacked her way clear of a pair of black zombies, severe looking creatures with scorched flesh covered with blood runes, their sharp white teeth filed to points and their claws wreathed with soulfire. The creatures unhinged scissored jaws and snapped at her, but a wave of searing heat threw them back long enough for her to force the blades into each of the zombie’s necks; she removed both skulls with a dual swiping motion, and both of their smoking bodies collapsed to the ground.
Noise and heat and chaos crashed in at her like harsh ocean waves. Coalition troops fired on one another and vampire strafe bombs detonated over areas of the city they’d already seized. She looked up at the false sky and saw a hail of gore and bullets.
Many of Bloodhollow’s structures had been destroyed, and the streets were filled with black smoke and choking fog. The ground was cracked and uneven beneath Danica’s feet, and with the presence of so much haze and burning vapor it was difficult to tell if she was moving closer to the fighting or further away, so she simply wrapped her spirit tight against her skin and carried on.
She passed humans, Lucan’s followers, survivors and vagrants from the wastelands given new life and duty in defending this place. Many of them bled out from horrid wounds as they stared up at a false sky, knowing it was the last thing they’d ever see.
There was no way to tell how many of the invaders had been destroyed or how many forces they had in reserve. It seemed the vampires were winning.
A wedge of armored Shadowclaw scouts, undead juggernauts and war wights had penetrated deep into the city and hacked down everything in sight. Danica shadowed them for a time, carefully watching them through broken stones and over smashed ramparts to see if she could gauge their destination. It was only as she drew closer that her spirit detected the subtle difference in their energy signature, smelled the oddly altered taint in their necrotic aura and the black fuel they used to power their foul machines, which told her they weren’t what they seemed.
That elite squad of undead wasn’t from the Ebon Kingdoms, but New Koth. They were headed for the temple, the heart of the city and the place where they could access the Breach, where the barrier between worlds was weakest.
“Danica!”
Cross came bursting through the fog. Blood ran down one side of his face, and his armor jacket was torn and shredded. She caught him as he fell but kept her eyes on the Kothian squad while they blasted human defenders and Coalition rivals, determined but careful not to draw attention to themselves so the Ebon Kingdom’s forces wouldn’t notice the subterfuge. Tall shadows stepped away from the nooks of falling buildings and joined their ranks, dark armored Scarecrows.
“We have to stop them,” she said. “It’s New Koth. They’re using the battle as cover to get to the temple.”
“I see them,” Cross said as they followed the undead strike team into the maze of turrets and fallen bridges. They stepped through walls of smoke and the shells of tumbled structures. Explosions rang everywhere. “Looks like they’re camouflaging themselves amongst the vampire regulars.”
“The Ebon Kingdoms forces are from the future,” Danica said. “There’s nothing regular about them.”
“Okay, you got me there,” Cross said with a bitter laugh. He handed her magazines for her G36C as he reloaded an HK416. “But there’s another strike team that’s also making their way towards the temple from the other side of the city, and they are Ebon Kingdoms. And they mean business. They’re being led by a mean-looking sonofabitch of a revenant in some of augmented body armor.”
“Sweet,” Danica said dryly. “Then let’s delay these bastards and meet up with Lucan, shall we?”
There were forces waiting to help them, the armed humans citizens of Bloodhollow along with the Vuul, Lith and Gol mercenaries. They’d taken up position at the outskirts of the temple with swords, guns, bows and explosives, a score of rugged warriors set to do battle from behind the cover of sandbags and fallen stones.
The New Koth forces would be the first they had to deal with. The undead approached from the southern alleys, and before long the Ebon Kingdom’s unit Cross had mentioned would arrive from the northern part of city. Every other road to the domed temple’s courtyard was blocked off with high stone walls and iron girders, and even fliers would have to navigate narrow crevices and razor-sharp palisades that would hopefully slice their wings to ribbons.
A last stand, Danica thought, and a chill ran up her spine. All they’d been through, all she’d seen, from the backwoods bunker and abusive family she’d grown up with to life as a mercenary, then a Revenger, then a mercenary again. She’d done plenty of things she wasn’t proud of, things she could never erase from her memory no matter how hard she tried. She’d learned to trust, learned to hope, learned the true meaning of pain and learned what she had to do to carry on. And she’d done some good in her time, in spite of herself.
Now is as good a time to die as any.
Cross was by her side. He grabbed her hand and held her close. Her heart swelled. She looked at him; they both had tears in their eyes. They kissed, desperately, knowing it might be the last time.
Guns firing and claws bared, the New Kothian attackers blazed into the courtyard. At the point where the forces met came a savage bloodletting. The Vuul were at the front of Bloodhollow’s forces, and they met battle-armored zombies and mercenary war wights head on without fear, their war cleavers splitting corpses in two.
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The New Kothian infantry pressed on, remorseless. Razor claws and rived blades sawed through the stalwart Vuul. Swords wielded by grinning Scarecrows tore through the lines and 20mm shells ripped into the ranks, severing limbs and spattering black-blood and grey flesh in a cacophony of noise.
The Vuul fought on, teeth bared and grey muscles flexing. Mauls and swords and hammers cracked through moldered skulls.
War mages, warlocks and witches from the wastelands linked hands and sent bolts of dark light into the New Koth mass, setting corpses alight and igniting rows of bodies. Decayed husks folded in on themselves, immolated and cracked to pieces.
Danica fired with abandon as she moved to the front. Noise and faces, blood and explosions. Her spirit swept out in a wave, a battery force of red power like a tide of molten blood. Bloodhollow warriors fell in behind her as she swept an arc ahead. Her spirit tore Scarecrows down and smashed through a line of war wights, crumpling their armor inward until their bodies were crushed.
Cross slashed through wights and zombies like a man possessed. Dark blood stained his face and he moved like a demon, swinging his dual blade with deadly accuracy. He growled as he hacked into a Scarecrow’s midsection, leapt through the air and brought a clawed zombie to the ground.
They were losing ground and falling back. The New Koth undead were too strong.
Chaos from the entry road, thaumaturgy and gunfire. Bloodhollow soldiers, more of them, bow and blade-armed Lith in dark leather armor, chain-yielding Vuul and humans with guns. Danica saw Ronan cleave through enemies with his katana.
She felt energy snap through her. They had the Kothians in a cross-fire, and she screamed for everyone to fall back and shoot low to avoid hitting their comrades.
But the line started to fall, even with Ronan and Lucan’s force at the Kothian’s backs. Too many had died, and the ground was soaked through with blood. Zombies and war wights pressed on, driven by turncoat vampires now in service to New Koth, their buzzing machetes drenched with Vuul and human remains.
Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) Page 32
