Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) Page 11

But no loss wrenched her heart as deeply as that of Eric. She’d denied her feelings for him for years, and he’d watched, and waited, too afraid or too kind or too stupid to press the issue, and the same had been true for her. So much time wasted when they could have been together. So much time.

  Get a hold of yourself, she thought, and her spirit wrapped warm around her, filled her skin and body with heat. The night had grown darker, and she rested near the edge of the waters. She didn’t fight him off but let him hold her close, his ethereal embrace the last soothing touch she’d ever know. Danica breathed deeply, controlling the hurt. She just wished she could stop looking for Eric every time she stopped to rest, and every time she woke. It was one of the reasons she’d chose to avoid sleep.

  She rested seldom, keeping to the darkness and moving under cover of the trees. A hollow pain had taken root in her chest, and it took her some time to realize it was sadness. She tried to fight through it, to cast it aside, but it wasn’t going to happen. She’d have to live with it.

  Her pace slowed. Night bled to dawn, a sullen and swollen morning gripped by a winter chill. Her throat was dry from breathing icy air and her boots cracked through crusted snow. The trees were thinning, and soon she was crossing over headlands of broken shale and granite slate, bone-white and covered with strange rings of stone. Smoke trailed into the air, the by-product of small fires recently put out. Danica smelled hex and the scent of guns and oil.

  At the edge of the clearing she saw the city, far to the south. Bridges of rock crossed over slow running streams and a small waterfall turned platinum in the pre-dawn glow. Shelves of stone resembling crooked stairs led to an enormous limestone cliff which lifted away from the landscape. The distant city was strangely organic, smooth and shaped like a fragment of the mountain. Watchtowers and spires curved into natural cones of spiraled quartz, a blood-red igneous fortress at the edge of a tar and ash-filled lowlands.

  Meldoar: home of the Gol. Their secretive city-state was sheltered from prying eyes, even their human compatriots whom they’d aided for years in the struggle against the vampires. Little was known of the diminutive creatures except that they were refugees from their own world, lost souls trapped in artificial organic shells. Their false bodies resembled those of dwarves, misshapen and ugly, stunted and broad, and the Gol always covered their pocked and scarred features with thick robes and cloaks. Whatever they lacked in stature they more than made up for in ingenuity and resourcefulness – Gol were by their nature engineers and craftsmen, smiths and artisans, and though they had no magic of their own they were capable of utilizing the new Earth’s vast array of unnatural phenomena to their own ends, crafting dirigibles and weapons, railroads and arcane irrigation systems, new forms of thaumaturgic farming. Danica had only known a few in her life, chief among them Maur, the team’s engineer and pilot, whose stoicism and insistence on referring to himself in the third person had forever ingrained him in her memory. Last she’d seen him he was bound for this very city.

  Danica started across the fields of rock, keeping out of sight and moving in the cover of the ice-blue trees as dirty wind pushed her hair against her face. She caught the unnerving scent of copper, like blood. It would take some time for her to find a clear way to the city, but she knew it was the only real destination she had, even if it would take another half a day to actually reach it.

  The shadows were deep as she wound her way across broken trails and thin streams trickling with ice floes. Morning stars shone like diamonds off the sluggish waters. Danica’s spirit kept close, warming her and giving her a sense of their immediate surroundings.

  The airship appeared out of nowhere, pale milky armor and bright halogens cutting through the morning darkness like twin moons. Danica’s spirit moved to defend her, and at that moment he detected something else, a presence moving behind her in the dark. Danica saw the ship, too small and ungainly for a Southern Claw vessel, retrofitted with strange guns which flickered with fire.

  She turned. A lupine shape came roaring out of the dark. Both Scar and Fang had found their way into her hands without her knowing it. Her heart nearly stopped. For a moment she thought it was the Maloj, for the midnight fur and scaled dark flesh looked like the images that still flashed through her nightmares, but as the beast came into the light she saw its moon-slant eyes, its slavering jaws, the red of its mottled coat. Another shape moved behind it, and another. Blood Wolves.

  The vessel’s guns roared as its turbine engines blasted heated air across the ground. Massive rounds ripped through the creatures like molten swords. Danica moved forward and ducked beneath one of the advancing beasts, swinging the blades up in a practiced motion. Skin parted and spilled blood as she carved a perfect X into the beast’s midsection, then rolled away and out of its path before the lumbering body hit the ground. Her spirit exploded away in a wave of pulsing flame, pushing two of the creatures back as they were set alight. The stench of burning dog filled her nostrils.

  In a few moments it was all over: massive wolf bodies lie smoking on the ground, and what was left of the pack retreated into the dying woods.

  “Danica,” a voice came over a loudspeaker from the hovering ship. She turned slowly, trying not to look directly into the light, sure she recognized that voice. “Maur is very happy to see you,” it said.

  She was in Meldoar within the hour, a guest on Maur’s patrol ship and a para-military unit led by a roguish looking human mercenary named Alvarez. He and his shipmates Raine and Delgado were part of a small but reliable contingent of humans who’d been granted asylum in the city in exchange for offering their expert services. The three were amiable enough, but they watched her with a wary eye, understandably distrustful of outsiders. They dressed in a semblance of uniforms, red and black leathers and armor coats with Meldoar’s strange golden M insignia painted on their shoulders.

  Maur hadn’t changed a bit. He handed controls of the ship over to Raine long enough to embrace Danica, and she noted with relief that he looked as if he’d never been injured at all.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said, surprised to hear the tears in her own voice. She held him close, hugging him like the last living friend she had left, which he was.

  “Maur is so happy you made it,” the Gol said, speaking from behind his familiar face-wrap. “But where are the others?”

  She told him, told him everything, the whole sordid side-trek to Nezzek’duul, told him about the Maloj, the Black Witch and the Eidolos, the hunt across the desert and Creasy’s sacrifice and how she lost them all to the bastards of Fane, Wulf and his Raza and other mercs, and though Maur had always been difficult to read by virtue of his race she saw a shine of concern in his grey eyes when she spoke of them, and of how she planned to exact revenge.

  “Maur thinks,” he said as Raine brought the ship over the outer city walls, “that you need rest. You’ve been through much, and there’s a place for you here.”

  They flew over the curved outer shell and into the heart of the rock-like structures, passing through walls of pure red smoke. Spiraling towers of sandstone and burnished steel, walkways like iron skeletons, scaffolds between the narrow lanes, a city built vertical, everyone living in small homes in the sides of twisted citadels, with just smoke and darkness below. Vents of steam erupted up and rocked the hovering dirigibles. Homunculi-piloted baskets loaded with goods dodged between wires and other fliers, Gol in tiny single-pilot vehicles like iron raptors, hang-gliders, floating discs which propelled down the narrow vertical streets. The busy air was illuminated by dawn’s bright grey light piercing through damp clouds. Even from up high the city smelled of garbage and fuel, sparking hex technology and overextended engines.

  They passed boroughs of Gol houses, large columns of stone packed with homes honeycombed into the walls. The depths below were staggering, like the gulf in a black ocean. Maur’s modified airship circled cautiously; Danica clung to the railing and looked out the open port hatch, feeling the chill wind lash against he
r face.

  Maur docked the ship at one of the larger stone towers and the group disembarked into a busy bazaar filled with food stalls, machine vendors and book merchants. Gol were everywhere, much more varied in size and color than she’d have ever imagined, but she noted they all dressed as Maur did, in orange or black or red cloaks and cowls to keep their faces hidden, even from each other. The smell of rot and machines from the outer areas was improved deeper in by the scents of paprika, tomatoes, hot oil, fish, cinnamon, cured meat, roasting potatoes, onions. Maur bought her food, and she ate like she hadn’t in months.

  They would have loved this, she thought, and for a moment she had to stop and prevent herself from being overwhelmed with loss. Cross. Ronan. Shiv. Kane. Cole. Creasy. Ash. Grissom. Don’t forget them.

  She wouldn’t. Avenging them was her new purpose.

  The vampires had won the war quickly, though no one really understood how it had happened. The Southern Claw, undermanned though they were, had somehow managed to hold their own for years, but one day it seemed the vampires decided they were no longer amused by the human’s antics, and in a swift series of decisive moves stormed the city-states and took them in a matter of weeks. People perished by the thousands, and the waters of Rimefang Loch ran red with blood. With the exception of the East Claw Coalition and a small band of rebels calling themselves the White Children, most of the humans either lived scattered across the wilds or else were held up in Meldoar, allied with the well-armed and highly prepared Gol.

  The White Mother had been dead for years. Danica kept the fact that she knew that wasn’t true to herself, because clearly here it was true, and had always been. Something had changed while they were in Nezzek’duul, more than they’d thought.

  It’s like the hunt for Soulrazor all over again. Strangely, the thought was comforting. She and the others had managed to navigate alternate timelines and find the one where Thornn wasn’t destroyed, where Eric had survived. If only she could find the clues, learn where and how things had changed, maybe she could set things right.

  I just have no idea where to begin.

  She was briefed by Colonel Malik, a war-weary veteran she vaguely recognized from her time in Thornn. Malik knew her and the team, which told her some things in this timeline hadn’t changed, but it was hard to know what. It was like her own small-scale version of The Black – worlds altered, blended seamlessly, but trying to figure out what was and wasn’t different was maddening.

  It was the spider’s work: Azradayne. Of that she had no doubt.

  I’ll add you to the list, bitch. First Wulf, then you.

  “You’re very fortunate,” Malik said. “That’s quite a story.”

  She hadn’t included every detail while recounting the tale to Malik, including her assumptions regarding the altered timeline, which she knew would earn her a one-way trip to a padded cell.

  “Yes,” she said. “Very fortunate.” Loss seized in her chest. She took a breath, waited to see if she would stop shaking. She didn’t, even with her spirit gently trying to soothe her. “I lost some dear friends.”

  “We all have,” Malik said with a nod. He was an ancient man, with one eye blasted away and replaced by a patch, leathery skin, a beard that grew crooked, hair white and thinning, and yet the man still looked hard and lean in his Meldoar uniform, as formidable at eighty as men less than half his age. “And how best do we honor them?” he asked in his cracked and gravelly voice.

  “We fight,” she said without hesitation.

  “Not fight,” Maur corrected. She hadn’t heard him enter the briefing room, a simple stone chamber with a long table and a handful of chairs, the sandstone walls decorated with maps and schematics of the city and the surrounding areas. “We survive,” he said.

  Danica watched him.

  Only some of us. She fought back tears. Why me? Why not Cross, or Kane? Why me?

  “Can we count on you, young lady?” Malik asked. Maur nodded for her, and she felt emboldened by his confidence.

  “Of course you can,” she said. “I’ll give you everything I have, help protect your city, collect intel, find supplies.” She looked the Colonel square in the eye. “But know this: I will be leaving. I have promises to keep.”

  Maur looked like he wanted to say something, but held his tongue. Malik nodded gravely.

  As she left the chamber, Danica thought of something Cross had told her once, something he’d learned in the Whisperlands.

  We can be more.

  Can we? she wanted to ask him, though now she’d never have the chance. I believed that, once. Now I’m not so sure. We are what we’re meant to be. After all this time, all of the playacting like I’m a soldier or a hero, I’m still just a killer. Causing pain is all I’ve ever known.

  And that’s what I’ll do now, to Wulf, to Azradayne, to the Maloj.

  I thought for a while I could be something different, but there’s no changing what we are. No going back now.

  There never has been.

  The luminous bodies of golden beasts steamed in the morning cold. Rib-bones pushed through torn flesh, oddly curved and covered with bits of sinew and rotted meat, charred remains petrified in the chill.

  There were a score of the creatures, massive reptile-fish washed up from the Ebonsand Sea onto the Soiled Bank, the unflattering name ascribed to the beaches southwest of Meldoar. Danica watched on high from the bladed warship as it circled low over the churning waves; her metal arm gripped the bar over the open hatch, and the icy breeze pushed her thick red hair away from her face.

  Her spirit stayed close, warming her in spite of the dismal cold. He’d been with her since adolescence, a reassuring voice in the back of her mind and her defender against her brute of a father. She couldn’t imagine herself without him, and even those brief periods they’d been separated hardly seemed real, distant and forgotten nightmares she’d blocked from her mind.

  She was glad to have him – it meant she’d never be alone.

  “Danica,” Maur said through the comm-mike. “Maur wonders if you are ready, or if you’d rather he circle the warship another three dozen times for the sport of it.”

  “Tell Maur he’d better watch it,” Danica said, “or else Danica will take over the controls and he’ll find himself walking home.”

  “Maur understands,” the Gol said with something of a snicker, and Danica allowed herself a smile. It was comforting being back in Maur’s presence. If not for him she knew she’d have given up hope.

  Danica looked out at the horizon. The green-red sun floated low in the purple sky, its hazy reflection sparkling on the surface of the turgid sea. The lands south of Meldoar were salt flats, open plains and stone-riddled dunes topped with ancient bones and the cadavers of creatures washed up from the Loch. There was little true cover out there save for the sun-bleached rocks, and the tide lines stretched hundreds of feet up from the edge of the stony shore. Small crabs, twisted crustaceans and dark-shelled snails littered the beach, a metropolis of clacking hard-shelled life.

  The Rimefang was roiling and fast, never calm even in the dead of night. Its foamy white waters were polluted with dark slicks of oil and muck, and the bodies of strange beasts were just visible under the surface, bobbing in and out of patches of fungus and submerged organic growth. Entire colonies of unseen life warred beneath the surface, aquatic empires of reptilian monsters and ancient intelligences that would never grace the surface with their presence.

  It’s not those I’m worried about, Danica thought.

  The warship flew low over the shore, watching for signs of incursion. Alvarez, Delgado and Raine were behind her in the ship, a sleek crimson steel vessel cobbled together form the remains of Southern Claw Bloodhawks and retrofitted with Coalition weapons stolen from recent skirmishes. The soldiers all dressed in black and red armor and cloaks, the colors of the Gol city they now defended from threats human and vampire alike.

  Danica shook her head.

  What the hell am I doing here
?

  She thought of Eric. Cold fear gripped her, the realization that she’d never see him again. She felt herself shaking, but bit down and breathed deep.

  Use it, she told herself. You’re stronger than this.

  “Anything yet, chief?” Alvarez asked over the comm. He was a lean man, with a perpetual five-o-clock shadow and thick blonde hair. He, Delgado and Raine had all worked together before coming under Meldoar’s wing, a trio of mercenaries who’d shifted their loyalties between various criminal cartels, including some work for Danica’s old “friend” Klos Vago. She wasn’t sad to hear the crime lord had met his untimely demise at the hands of some less-than-enthusiastic henchmen when he’d refused to open his doors to Fane, and while the city wasn’t exactly in good hands at least it was out of his.

  “Nothing,” she said. “You kids may not get to go to Grandma’s house after all.”

  “Are we there yet?” Raine said with a laugh. Delgado, true to his half-Doj heritage, just moved his massive shoulders in the semblance of a shrug.

  “Maur says you should check the port side,” the Gol’s voice rang over the comm. “There’s something interesting there.”

  Danica broke out her binoculars and moved across the tight metal interior of the warship, a space dominated with weapon controls, bolted seats and machinery parts.

  She looked out the port-side hatch. Brine and seaweed washed up on a beach addled with rock-spiders and predatory coral. The air was damp with salt and musk, and Danica had to pull back her hair and tie it up in a bun to keep the wet strands from slapping across her face. Maur was a capable pilot but the cross-winds were heavy, and Danica and the others had to hold tight to keep from being thrown from the craft.

  Maur steadied the warship, and after a moment Danica’s eyes focused on what he’d warned them about. A nightmare of spines and tentacles roiled out on the briny surface of the water. Explosions of bone and sweeping blood-soaked limbs lanced up from the churning waters, claws and pincers layered with oil and musk. Its black skin was clear even in those dark waters, slick and ridged with razor joints and iron spikes, pulsing toothed maws and deep white eyes holding everything around it in a predatory gaze. The aquatic horror must have been a hundred feet across, a deranged armored whale.