by Max Turner
I drew Ophelia’s rapier from the sheath. Luna pulled back the sliding mechanism of her pistol to load a round into the chamber.
“Really, Istvan,” Timur said. “You’re going to overthrow the New Order with a handful of children?”
“Run!” Istvan shouted.
The sound that followed was guttural, like a growl. He lunged into the air. His legs and arms shortened and shifted underneath his body. His nose and mouth lengthened. In the next instant, I was staring at a huge wolf, his tawny coat streaked with white over his left ear and shoulder. He hit the ground on all fours and launched himself at Timur, who drew his scimitar and rose out of range. The column of smoke beneath him took the shape of a rearing horse.
A wall of vampires streamed forward. Survivors from Iron Spike Enterprises. Charlie, Luna and Suki opened fire. Flashes lit up the hold.
We have come for you, Zachariah, said a voice. A beautiful lady draped in wisps of white silk stepped out of the mist. The others didn’t seem to see her. She was tall, with large eyes and full lips. Her limbs and torso were so slender she seemed almost alien. The Changeling’s runes were carved into the skin across the top of her chest, running shoulder to shoulder, then down to the tip of her right hand.
Do not be troubled, she said. I am here to help you.
I heard more gunfire and snarling. It seemed muted, as though it were happening a great distance away. The air was thick with clouds of spent gunpowder. The odour, normally pungent, was fading, as was the smell of vampire blood that spilled with each burst of Charlie’s gun.
Someone roared. Vincent had turned. He was the Beast now. Stronger, faster, hungry. He fell upon a group of vampires surrounding Istvan, his claws and fangs like razors. Luna was beside him. Pestilence sprang from the shadows behind her. She turned and fired and he melted back into the darkness. An instant later, he emerged next to me.
Leave him, said the beautiful woman.
Pestilence vanished. To my left, Charlie was being smothered in a cloud of smoke. I caught a glimpse of turban and metal, then the sparking of swords. War’s scimitar moved in a foggy blur. Some of the strokes Charlie blocked. Some he slipped. Some glanced from his armour. For each blow delivered, he swung back or shot or stabbed. There was a lot of rage in him. And Istvan, too. He was a terror to the vampires, who melted from the shadows to attack him. And there were many. I stood watching, my feet paralyzed. I tried to take a step, but it was as if my boots were bolted to the floor.
Rest now, the woman told me.
A deep lethargy settled into my bones. Time seemed to have slowed. One of the girls cried out. She had copper hair and pretty green eyes. I struggled to recall her name, but my mind was tangled. The lean woman with the dark eyes was right in my head, demanding my attention.
Rest … she insisted. Let your mind be at ease …
Luna … the girl’s name was Luna. She was staring at me. I could tell she was shouting by the way her mouth moved, but I heard nothing over the quiet strains of the woman’s voice.
Rest …
Luna stopped speaking when a vampire with a fat, pasty face emerged behind her and clamped his hand around her throat. His other arm circled her waist. She pointed the gun behind her and pulled the trigger. It would have put a round through his spine, but the clip was empty. I should have been helping her, but that would have displeased the woman with the raven hair. Her dark, bottomless eyes were fixed on mine. As the chaos swirled around us, she stood as calm as a pale reed. Elegant and hypnotic.
Rest …
My sword felt heavy. So did my eyelids. I fell against one of the cargo boxes, then slid to the floor.
It is not your desire to harm others … Put your sword aside and close your eyes.
I placed the sword beside me. My eyelids began to droop. They rose again when someone beside me shrieked. It was another girl, not the pretty vampire with the green eyes, a blonde with dimples. She was being dragged, screaming, behind a row of metal boxes. I could tell by her movements that she was human. On her own, she would not survive.
There is nothing you can do to help her, the woman said. And why should you? She is nothing.
She is a friend.
You will make new friends. And they will honour and fear you.
I didn’t want to be feared, and I didn’t want to rest. The night was dark and cool. I was a vampire. This was not the time for sleep. I tried to push myself to my feet, but my limbs were too weak.
A tall, dark figure emerged from the fog. He looked like a spectre, his face hidden beneath a black cowl. A sickle appeared from somewhere inside his billowing shadow. He was going to cut me down. A terrible fear took hold of my mind, drowning out the woman’s voice. But the figure passed by, drifting towards a strange-looking wolf with a streak of white over its shoulder. The wolf changed into a man and grabbed a duelling blade from one of the dead vampires at his feet.
Death has come, said the woman. Our triumph is at hand.
War, Pestilence and Death. Three of the four Horsemen were here. I remembered what Baoh had said on the Dream Road: together, they are unstoppable.
One was missing. Famine.
No, said the voice. We are here, all of us. And your thoughts are true. Against the New Order there can be no victory.
Her voice was musical. I could feel her sense of elation. But something about it was wrong, like a chord with one dissonant note echoing deep beneath its fellows, throwing off the feel of things. She was not to be trusted. I should not have been listening to her. I had to help my friends.
There is nothing to be done. It will soon be over.
I pushed at the woman’s voice to get it out of my head, but she dug deeper. The soothing richness of it changed. An intense pain followed. I screamed and pressed my hands against my head, but I couldn’t make it stop. I shouted for her to get out and pushed harder. It made the cargo hold spin. I tipped sideways to the floor. Shadows flitted past. More vampires were coming. My friends were surrounded. They couldn’t hold out much longer.
It is pointless to resist.
I gathered my strength and pushed one last time against the voice. It was not like Pestilence, a squirmy, crawling presence I could net and drag out. This was more like a deeply rooted barb. Each time I tried to pull it loose, it felt as if I was tearing my own mind apart. As I pushed, the pain grew. Then my mind said enough is enough, and I collapsed into darkness.
CHAPTER 23
FAILED RETREAT
I DON’T REMEMBER much about my mother. She died when I was two. My father became the only permanent fixture in my life, so when he died, things fell apart. I woke up in a mental ward surrounded by strangers, with no sense of what was wrong with me or how to cope. I often went days without speaking. It happened at those times when I felt most alone, when I missed my father terribly and couldn’t accept that I would never see him again. I wouldn’t eat or sleep or move; I simply retreated into my mind so I could speak to him in private.
Even dead, my father was a constant presence in my thoughts and dreams. So when I passed out, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him standing over me, fedora in hand, his khaki shirt and pants covered in dust. He reached down to help me to my feet. “In a pickle again, aren’t you, son.”
I glanced around. Suki was out of sight. Vincent was bleeding, dead vampires at his feet. Istvan was cornered, the phantom of Death bearing down on him. Luna was nose to nose with Pestilence, fighting for her life. Charlie looked positively rabid, battling in a noxious cloud. The woman, Famine, was staring at me, her black eyes wide with malice. All of them were frozen, as if someone had stopped time at the instant I’d fallen unconscious.
“She’s in my head. I can’t push her out. I blacked out from the pain.”
“Pain is a good thing, son. It reminds you that you’re still alive.”
I had a bit of trouble swallowing this.
“Pain is temporary,” he said. “But loss … loss is permanent. Quit now, and everything that matters to
you will be gone forever. What is pain compared to that—to be haunted by cowardice till the end of your days?”
I thought the word cowardice was a bit extreme.
My father pointed his fedora towards my sword, still sitting on the ground. “If you stay here, in the comfort of your own thoughts, while others around you suffer, what else could you call it?”
I had no answer for that.
“You’d better wake up now, Zack. Your friends need you.”
“How can I help them? I can’t even stay conscious.”
“You’re only helpless if you believe you are.”
“So what do I do?”
“Stop making excuses, son, and do what is right. The rest is just details. Now get moving. People are counting on you.”
He reached out and ruffled my hair the way he always did. Then he smiled.
My eyes popped open and the pain came back. Famine was standing over me, only a sliver of white visible around her dark pupils.
“Stop making excuses, son, and do what is right …”
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the tunnel of light, thinking it might break the hold Famine had over me, but she was there, in my mind’s eye, staring the same baleful stare. I couldn’t look away, but I knew that my sword was somewhere beside me. I started groping along the cold, steel floor.
Do not touch that weapon! Do not even think it!
Every nerve in my body caught fire. I screamed. My back arched until I thought it would break. I’d only experienced this kind of pain once before, the night I’d burned alive saving Luna from Vlad. An image of him dying in the sun flashed through my mind, my hand around his throat, the heavyweight champion of all vampires at my mercy. The image rattled her. My pain abated for just an instant. In that moment, my fingers fell upon the sword hilt.
Do not touch that!
The burn intensified. I kept screaming.
Drop it, or you will suffer pain without end.
Then I would suffer. I stood and raised my sword. My whole body was shaking. I took a step towards her.
STOP!
I took another step, then another. A shadow rose up in front of me. The fire in my limbs died. I caught a glint of white from the corner of my eye and moved just in time to stop Pestilence from slashing at my face with his long-fingered hands. His intervention seemed to break Famine’s hold. He tried to grab me, but I kicked him away, then followed with an overhand stroke that would have taken his right arm off at the elbow had he not slipped through a shadow on the floor.
Famine was gone. Her voice was quickly replaced by the sound of Suki screaming. I stumbled past Istvan, who was locked, blade to blade, with Death. Sparks flew as they circled one another, their weapons crashing together like shafts of silver lightning. Vincent was still fighting. Bloodied and limping, he growled in rage at the ring of vampires surrounding him.
The smell of blood was all around. I could feel the killing urge rising in me—a kind of blood lust that affected vampires who were starving. Or crazy. I’d been caught in its grip twice before. Once when I hunted for the first time and killed a deer, and again when I tasted human blood for the first time. The intensity of it, then as now, was like a maelstrom. All I felt was a desire to kill.
I didn’t resist it. I had failed to act aggressively on the roof of Iron Spike Enterprises and others had paid for it. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. I stepped forward. My blade sang in deadly arcs as I swept the vampires away from Vincent with the power of a tidal flood. Like a thousand pounds of water crashing down the mountain. Fast. Fluid. And unstoppable.
Some escaped. I let them go and made for the vampire who’d taken Suki. He was tearing at her collar. He saw me, and his hunger turned to fear. I cut him down before he could scream.
The next thing I remember was setting Suki at the base of a container. Vampires were all around me. I kicked and stabbed and snarled and they melted away. I didn’t pursue anyone. The battle would be decided by the Horsemen. They were the ones I had to stop.
Luna called out. Pestilence was trying to pull her into the darkness. She punched him again and again, but he wouldn’t let go. I charged at him. His eyes widened in alarm, then he vanished into the dark space between two cargo boxes.
I heard my name. Charlie was shouting at me. I spied him in an aisle between two towering rows of boxes. Vincent was draped over his shoulders, unmoving. He was a boy again, fragile and thin. Blood seeped from a wound in his back.
“Zack, help Suki!” Charlie said, running. Luna and I followed after him. Suki was moving slowly just ahead of us, her pace hampered by a gash in her thigh. Luna put a shoulder under her arm. I looked back. The shadow of Death filled the aisle. He was closing quickly, sickle in hand. I slowed to wait for him. The space was narrow. I could hold him off and buy them time.
Luna turned back. Don’t lag behind! Run!
Running wasn’t an option. Death was too fast. I had to block the exit or Suki would never make it out.
“Where is Istvan?” I shouted.
He took the case and fled.
I ground my teeth and tightened my grip on the sword. For a fleeting instant, I wondered if this whole thing had been a set-up, if he’d led us here on purpose so he could get the case and whatever was inside.
“RUN!” Luna screamed.
Pestilence emerged from the shadows again. Instead of grabbing Luna, he took hold of Suki’s arm and snatched her away. Luna tried to yank her back but was pulled off balance from behind. It was Istvan. He had reappeared and was shouting for us to run.
Pestilence bit down on Suki’s neck. She screamed. Charlie stopped when he heard the noise. He set Vincent’s body on the deck and started running back. I lost sight of him as more vampires dropped from above and walled him off.
“Zack,” he shouted. “Zack, help her!”
I couldn’t. Death’s shadow passed over me. I felt the chill even before he struck. He was taller than I was. Heavier. Stronger. His sickle fell against my sword with the weight of a boulder. The impact forced me to the ground. I rolled to my feet and parried his next few strokes. Then our blades crossed so we were chest to chest. My feet were splayed wide. My balance was perfect. I felt strong. And ready.
He pushed me to the ground like I was a child.
Suki was still screaming. I risked a backwards glance. Luna and Istvan were defending the unconscious Vincent. Through the fog, more vampires came crawling down the cargo boxes, black silhouettes within the darkness. Suki’s blood was like a lure. They swarmed around her.
Charlie was hacking like a madman. “Zack! ZACK! I can’t get through.”
I rolled to a knee, my blade high. Death moved in. A rapid exchange followed that sent me sprawling again. By this time, a group of vampires had circled behind me. None of them made any move to attack. They glared at me instead, like a wall of giant carrion birds, eyes ablaze. Through their legs I could see Charlie. He’d fought his way closer to Pestilence. War descended from the other direction, his legs a horse-shaped cloud.
Suki stopped screaming and her head flopped backwards. The front of her torn shirt was scarlet. Charlie reached out to snatch her away, but Pestilence pushed her towards War, whose scimitar snapped forward in a lethal arc. Suki’s body tipped sideways. A part of her fell the other way, a flash of blond. Then the swarm of vampires surrounded her corpse and started tearing it apart.
CHAPTER 24
DEATH
LUNA SCREAMED. I’d lost sight of her. Charlie shouted and attacked Timur, his sword a reckless streak of silver. The Horseman turned into smoke and spun away. Istvan was at Charlie’s back and pulled him towards the others. Both disappeared from view as more agents of the New Order, rabid and hissing, appeared from every nook and cranny of the ship to chase them off.
I was still lying prone, frozen by what I’d just seen. I was so shocked by Suki’s death, I don’t think I moved for several seconds. I just stared back and forth between the place where she’d been murdered, and
Death, who watched, unmoving, his eyes hidden beneath the shadow of his cowl.
Pestilence stepped from the shadows on my right. He was licking Suki’s blood from his fingers, snickering. Tendrils of smoke gathered on my left, then solidified into War. He folded his hands over his chest. Famine returned last and stood behind Death, her dark eyes and raven hair faint shadows in the fog.
The Four Horsemen—unstoppable.
I rose to my feet. Death stepped forward. My knees and hands were trembling. Fear was taking hold. I squeezed my sword grip to steady myself, then forced my left foot forward and assumed the standard guard position, my blade pointing at his torso.
Empty your mind, someone said.
The voice belonged to a young man. I didn’t recognize it, but he had to be somewhere nearby. I quickly glanced around, but only the faces of my enemies were visible.
Empty your mind.
I’d never really understood this. How did a person think of nothing? The very notion seemed impossible. And after what had just happened to Suki—
The past cannot be changed. You must stay in the moment. There is only you and your opponent. His appearance, his words and contempt, they mean nothing. Hope, fear, pain, fatigue—set them aside. Clear your thoughts and feelings, so all that remains is your skill against his. In the end, this is all that matters.
I felt limp. The killing urge was gone. So was my confidence. All that remained was a cold terror. I took a deep breath and tried to clear my thoughts, but all I could see in my mind’s eye was Suki’s headless body being ripped apart.
Empty your mind.
Death attacked. Our blades met once, twice, three times. He battered my sword away then chopped down on my wrist. The plates of platinum within my Kevlar suit took the brunt of the blow. It still hurt, but his sickle didn’t cleave flesh or shatter bone.
He swung again. I met the stroke with an armoured forearm and countered. I faked high but changed the path of the blade so that it would fall across his thigh. He jumped back and I missed.
He is reading your thoughts, the stranger told me. Put your fear aside. Empty your mind …
