Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) Read online

  “Of course you did,” Harpy says. “Unless you were taken by some sort of...fancy.” Her voice is cold and dry, without inflection. Her large eye watches him like a frozen maelstrom. “Do you think of your old life often, Reaver?”

  “Yes,” he says without hesitation. “But the theurges fix me.”

  “In what way?”

  “They make me forget. Then I don’t think about such things anymore, and I can focus on what Lord Drake requires of me.”

  “You’re a long way from Lord Drake,” Harpy says. “And your precious theurges.”

  “I’m sure any of the liches here at Basilisk Claw can repair me,” Reaver says, even though he doesn’t want to.

  “No need,” Harpy says. “Your humanity is part of why I summoned you.”

  Harpy turns in mid-air, never leaving her cross-legged position, and hovers towards the far end of the black chamber. Reaver watches her, confused, but after a moment he follows, his boots stamping loud on the brick and iron floor.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Reaver?” Harpy asks him. Screams echo from deeper down the corridors. Pools of brackish fluid gather beneath strange chrysalis-like formations on the walls, organic pods of diamond and bone. Reaver feels the cold intensify, and the purple-sludge in his veins thickens.

  “No,” Reaver says as he follows Harpy further into the darkness. “I thought it was because I needed fixing.”

  “We all need fixing,” Harpy says with a cruel laugh. “But that’s for another day.”

  They come to an enormous bone portal, an ovular white disc which blocks off the passage. Icy white light shines on streams of dusty smoke billowing up from the floor. Faces have been carved into the walls, leering and skeletal visages rendered of iron. Drifts of salt have gathered on the ground.

  “What do you mean?” Reaver asked. “We must be kept functional, must be kept loyal. If we don’t...”

  “...then we are useless,” Harpy finishes. “You repeat the Ebon Kingdom’s dogma well, Reaver. Almost as if you actually believed it.”

  The bone door opens. The sound of grinding fills the air, a gnashing of stone teeth. Sickly red light pours out of the chamber on the other side.

  “We are the dregs,” Harpy says as she floats into a large chamber, an open and moist room filled with bloody fog and curved columns of sinew and gristle. Reaver sees canisters of ammunition, crates of both Southern Claw and Ebon Cities weapons, modified vampire warships, the skeletons of ancient and horned beasts. The dull red glow emanates from a number of jagged crystals propped on short iron cylinders set in the floor, a network of crimson bulbs that pulse and fade, pulse and fade.

  “The dregs?” he asks.

  “The unwanted,” she says as she floats forward. She holds up her arms and the smoke at the periphery of the room slowly dissipates, revealing the chamber’s other occupants standing motionless in the dark: an enormous brute of a zombie with blades sprouting from his shoulders, his red skin fused with armor and steel, his rotted face concealed beneath a mask; a lithe war wight, her dark hair pulled tight and clasped with blades and bones, her face replaced by an iron mask of a seductive skull and her blue and yellow armor riddled with thaumaturgic vents and weapons mounts; a vaguely human shaped corona of blue-white smoke with cold flames buried beneath the unstable spectral skin, like a man lit from the inside by a nuclear fire.

  Harpy turns to him.

  “We are less than they are,” she says. “The vampires stand atop the order of this new world. They eat what they want, and we get what’s left.” She smiles, and her sickly leather-like face creaks and oozes red puss. “The scavengers.”

  Reaver looks at the others, and they watch him with cold and distant eyes.

  “What is this?” his metallic voice demands.

  “We have been given a mission,” Harpy said. “We are to accompany two vampire Creeds, part of an elite Wing, and help them carry out a vital assignment.”

  “Apprehend,” Reaver says.

  “Destroy the threat,” Harpy says with a nod. “Welcome to my team, Reaver. We are part of Razor Squad. Our mission is to find Bloodhollow, so the vampires can destroy it.”

  FOUR

  DEAD

  Year 35 A.B. (After the Black)

  10 A.S.C. (After Southern Claw)

  The sky was thick with fire. Great plumes of gold-black smoke cascaded low over the shattered houses at the edge of the dead river. The air tasted of sulfur, and the chattering of mad teeth carried on the wind.

  The vampires had already taken so many prisoners they had more than enough to last them for decades, so rather than bolster their surplus they released necrotic toxins on the conquered villages and settlements they had no intention of re-populating and filled them with choking clouds of venomous smog. The caustic vapors ate away the lungs and hearts and soiled the bloodstream, a quick but painful process that had a perfect kill rate. The dark magic purged the brain with cold electric power and connected it to grim totems of foul soul energy back in Tanith, which transformed the newly dead victims of war into mindless undead hordes, grim and shambling markers for the vampire territories.

  The ruins of the Southern Claw were thick with the walking dead, animated corpses whose only drive was to devour human flesh. Sometimes the hordes were commanded by revenants, especially in zones of strategic importance, but in more isolated areas like Wolftown there was no need for the zombies to be under any sort of control.

  Shiv looked through the nautascope at the smoldered ruins. Over a decade had passed since Creasy’s settlement was devastated by Fane’s armies, laid to waste for no reason other than that they stood in Wulf’s path as his mercenary forces advanced on the city-state of Seraph. With only a few stone and steel structures built within the concrete and tin outer walls it was a wonder the entire thing hadn’t fallen apart.

  Corpses stumbled through the settlement, slowed by both the bitter cold and the simple fact that there was nothing there in Wolftown for them to feed on. The spirit-powered scope revealed to Shiv details of what lay inside the buildings as well as specifics regarding what was out in the open – thirty-seven zombies, each recently crafted, most still retaining much of the strength and power they had in life – and after a thorough sweep of the area she knew without doubt that what they searched for was there.

  Shiv handed the nautascope back to Jahl.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It looks safe, but I know better,” she said.

  “There’s been no sign of vampire activity in this area,” Ruiz said. He was a short-haired and stoic individual, born and raised After the Black. He’d never known any other time.

  Just like Shiv. She remembered the stories her father had told her, tales of a world free from vampire influence, when the sun shone and the worst troubles he’d had were deciding where to move his new family and finding work after he’d gotten out of the Marine Corps. Everyone had been concerned with money and eating healthy, with equal rights and stopping the wars in places called Afghanistan and Iraq. There had been no Ebon Cities, no Grim Father, and no Maloj. Shiv had trouble imagining such a place, but she saw how much he’d loved it and missed it, even if The Black itself made it difficult to recall what had come before.

  Shiv turned and looked at Ruiz and Jahl and the rest of their troop – Gyver, Tam, Rorn, Cask and Moone. The ranks of the so-called White Children were drawn thin those days, and a seven-person team was about all she could afford to send to carry out any given task. Most of her lieutenants thought it foolish for Shiv to risk herself on missions such as this, but she’d learned to lead by example.

  I have to be in the field. They have to know I’m with them, that I take the same risks they do. It was what Flint would have done. It was what Eric would have done.

  She shook her head. It was best not to think about them.

  The dead should stay buried, her father used to say.

  “Spread out,” she said. “Jahl and Cask, cover us from that ridge,” s
he said with a finger indicating a shelf of stone at the top of the hill behind them. “Rorn and Tam take point. Ruiz, Gyver, Moone with me. We’ll move in fast, take out only those dead that impede our path to the target. Understood?”

  They nodded, though she noted their reluctance. Even though spirits were more than capable of handling a small horde of mindless zombies all it took was one to get through the arcane suppressing fire and land a lucky bite to get them all killed. The crafted Ebon Kingdoms’ plague traveled fast, and if any of them were infected the rest of them were as good as dead regardless of any thaumaturgic precautions. There was also the inherent risk they took every time they used magic – the vampires had come up with ways to track the source and signature of thaumaturgy, and now every time humans used what was truly their last capable weapon they ran the risk of exposure. Things weren’t like they used to be: the vampires outnumbered the humans, especially since the pockets of resistance hadn’t been able to reconcile their differences enough to put together any sort of unified front, and for the White Children that meant staying hidden was one of the only options they had left.

  But she knew the main reason the others were reluctant to carry on was because Shiv was risking her own life. They had to find Bloodhollow, but without her, they felt, there was no resistance.

  This is too important, she’d told them. If we can’t find Quinn, we’re as good as lost.

  Mountains of ice and shadow loomed all around them, cold blue peaks covered with dull red sheets of frost cleaved so the peaks resembled hunks of frozen meat. Rancid cold wind carried the odor of wet dogs. A sliver of pale blue sky could be seen through a gap in the cobalt clouds, a hint of purity the world had lost. Gnarled trees covered the landscape like the spines on a creature’s back. Long abandoned shells of old cabins and bunkers stood at the tip of the narrow valley, and walls of ancient power lines loomed like totem poles. The ground from the river to the mountains was flat, frost-riven and dead. The husks of lost big rigs and skeletons of abandoned highways were just visible beneath the dust. Half-submerged vehicles jutted from the bone-addled loam like swimmers struggling for the shore.

  Peaks seemed to ooze across the valley, slumbering titans of black rock and blue snow. Even with the death on the riverbank a few shaggy horses roamed the edge of the milky waters, avoiding drink because of the undead but not in any danger themselves; they somehow knew the zombies would never feast on anything but other humans.

  Rorn and Tam moved forward, down towards the riverbank opposite Wolftown. The airship faded behind them, masked by snowbanks and shadows. It was an older model, a Skyhawk built for speed with minimal armaments and armor, but thaumaturgic enchantments rendered the craft all but invisible to human and undead eyes and vampire technology.

  There was a klick of flat ground littered with scrub and low stones between the Children’s position and the edge of the river, and from there it was a few hundred feet across the sluggish waters to the undead-infested shore. Thorns and briars twisted up through the mud near the muddy waters. Rorn and Tam moved forward, two hardened mercenaries out of Blacksand, once-pirates turned freedom fighters, both of them seasoned military veterans wearing dark fatigues and cammo-lined skin.

  The shambling horde turned towards them as they neared the edge of the water. Hundreds of dead grey eyes stared out from the far shore, unblinking. Faces had been partially crushed and mottled hair clung to the greyed flesh like vines. Teeth chattered from behind ripped lips, and the torn cheeks leaked maggots and slime.

  The zombies sensed meat, and tried to move in for the kill. Moldered bones creaked and dry throats rasped as the dead pushed towards the water, their bodies shoving into one another. Rorn and Tam took turns firing controlled bursts to the heads, which sent the undead down in splatters of sickly meat. Bodies bumped into one another as the mass of grinning cadavers shifted towards the river, pushing and knocking each other into the thick red sludge in their attempt to claw their way to the food on the other side.

  Shiv felt a chill run down her skin as she strode towards the rocky shore. Gyver and Moone were at her side, the blonde-haired engineer with his grenade launcher and the assassin with his twin blades, but it wasn’t their weapons which comforted her nearly so much as just their presence. She’d had most everyone in the team at her side for several months, the longest she’d been able to keep a group in once piece without losing someone to their myriad of enemies. They’d become familiar to her, and knowing they had her back made her job that much easier.

  A rifle shot cracked from the ridge. The barrel of Cask’s enormous Barrett smoked, and the tang of thaumaturgic energies Shiv sensed in the air indicated that the smiling and bald-headed Jahl had infused the .50 caliber round with his spirit’s explosive potential, marked by a grim green-blue signature which sparked the air with corrosive light. The screaming missile tore down the plains and slammed into the first wave of corpses as they shambled into the waters, detonating the line of rotting bodies with electric blue flames. Explosions rippled through the sea of skin.

  Ruiz’s spirit, who if she was anything like her warlock counterpart would be stocky and brusque and covered with tattoos of women in various lewd positions, shielded Shiv and the others on the shore from the greasy organic fallout. Chunks of skin rained down and spattered into the waters, a gory hail of organs, blood and limbs. The air reeked of decayed innards.

  Shiv moved forward. Ruiz’s spirit hardened the air into a second shield, a solid belt of telekinetic force stretched across the blood-thickened water like a bridge. Zombies writhed and fell apart beneath Jahl and Cask’s pyrokinetic onslaught, and those that didn’t were mowed down by close-range gunfire and soiled blades. Shiv kept her face shielded as her soldiers hacked through the wall of collapsing flesh.

  They moved across the bridge. The masses of undead were slow but deliberate, and only a few dozen had been wiped out by Jahl’s blast. Already more corpses piled forward from the ruins of Wolftown, their bodies oozing guts and blood. Hisses of dead breath steamed the chill morning air in a dissonant chorus of once-human growls. Faces and bodies and decaying teeth pressed round them in walls of grey skin.

  Clouds of stench and vapor swept over them. Shiv took a deep breath, held it, felt power boil inside her. The only known living Kindred, Shiv had the ability to channel other people’s spirits or the souls of the lost and awaken them to their true potential. Her power subtly allowed Jahl and Ruiz to maintain their magical effects without overextending themselves, and neither warlock was forced to use the level of energy normally needed. Now her eyes shone blue-white, a spectral glaze which allowed her to view the forlorn ghosts of all of the people who’d died in the forsaken valley. Many more than the residents of Wolftown had perished there – entire ships filled with human prisoners had come, loads of frightened chattel deposited into the bowl of smoking earth where they were summarily executed by exposure to the Ebon Kingdoms’ necrotic gases. She felt their death rattles, heard their cries. Their final moments re-lived, a throng of terror, anger and sadness.

  The bodies shifted forward through dripping walls of steam and acid fog. Shiv watched their glowing faces, saw the dissipating spirits roam molten. She let the anger burn through her. Cold lanced down her arms and icy bile built in her chest. Voices echoed around her, the whispers of the lost, slicing across her skin like a gelid blade.

  A measure of ruthlessness was necessary when manipulating the dead. Once, when she was younger, she’d felt pity for them, and a sense of guilt had always settled when she’d been forced to manipulate those energies. She’d grown up hard: most of those emotions had boiled away.

  Shiv snapped her hands forward. Pain cracked through her fingers. A sheet of power peeled away, razor sharp. Ghastly steam purged from her stomach and out of her mouth, burning drool she nearly vomited up as explosive vapors swirled forth.

  Spirits screamed through the air – the ghosts of the lost, the abandoned and forlorn souls of all those slaughtered in the valley, ret
urned to roost in the decaying corpses that used to be their homes. Phantoms made weapons, apparitions who poured across the landscape in a wave of frozen flames. They rent their own human shells to pieces. Shiv felt some semblance of recognition among the spirits, fleeting recollection of what they’d been, what had happened to them.

  Meat and gristle and sickly green blood exploded across the ground. Nauseating stench spilled along with bucketfuls of greasy black innards and stale gore. Ruiz’s shield blocked tidal explosions of human filth.

  Shiv marched through it all, protected by the spirits she’d summoned, vagrant wraiths dominated by her will. Unlike Ebon Kingdoms soul magic the spirits came willingly, and she didn’t shape them so much as used what they offered. They were a horde of the vanquished.

  Not a single zombie was left standing. The shore was awash with grey skin and black blood, oozing cadavers and steaming pools of boiling human slime. The smell was overpowering, but Shiv had smelled worse.

  The ruins of Wolftown were a shell. Long abandoned corrugated tin shelters and crumbling adobe walls still smoked from when Fane had burned the settlement out. Skeletal remains were piled against the few standing structures, small round buildings reinforced with concertina and sandbags and topped with the remains of weapon turrets and lookout towers. The interior of Wolftown was desolate, a smoking field of burned waste and piles of long scorched debris. Danica had told Shiv about this place, a hunter’s refuge that had been sacked years ago.

  Ruiz, Gyver and Moone were right with her, their weapons drawn and eyes alert as they watched for any signs of other undead. Shiv’s boots fell on drifts of ash and bone. The soiled remains of ruined corpses came up to her ankles, and her pale cloak was soon covered with dismal remains. She adjusted her leather armor, rubbed her hands together for warmth and checked the blades at her belt.

  There was nothing to fear there except for the man they’d come to find. She heard him huddled in one of the few remaining structures in Wolftown, breathing lightly in the hopes that he wouldn’t be discovered. His spirit pulsed weakly from behind the cracked walls, a dim murmur cowed by the presence of so many forlorn ghosts – they were an anathema to arcane spirits, hunter fish in the sea of dead. The man himself wasn’t much stronger, and as Shiv turned the corner and looked into the hollow shell of the building she saw him crouching, his eyes wide with fright, his hair disheveled and his once clean armor all but rotting away from his skin. His gauntlets were stained with rust and blood and he looked at her for a moment like he wasn’t sure if she was real, like she was another one of the apparitions he’d been avoiding for days while still laying enough enchantments down to avoid detection by the zombies.