Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) (17 page)

The cleanup took some time.  Danica and Alvarez harvested the Dracaj for trophies, skulls and skins that would be useful to the Gol engineers.  Meldoar’s magical research facilities always needed more raw materials to work with. 

Danica stored the bloody trophies in a steel case next to the hangar door.  Gold-green sunlight glittered off the churning waters, and within a few minutes Meldoar’s sloped walls came into view, wreathed with artificial mists and guarded by spiked battlements covered with howitzers and thaumaturgic bolt-throwers. 

She thought about Cross.  That sense of loss returned like a blade in her chest. 

This is what we fought
for, she thought, hoping he’d somehow hear her. 
A chance to end the war. 

She just wished he could be there with her.  The sun was less bright without him to share it with.

EIGHT

WALLS

Year 35 A.B. (After the Black)

10 A.S.C. (After Southern Claw)

Day broke, stunning the horizon with gold-white light.  The airship stayed close to the craggy mountain face before punching through the drifts of soiled black mist.  Jags of bone and coiled rock jutted from the slopes of the valley like broken fingers, and the churning clouds glowed with bursts of lightning.  The sun seemed frozen, hazy and frosted like molten metal.

Shiv stared out as she huddled against the cold.  The viewport was covered with grit and dust, but even through the smudged glass she clearly made out the shadows of the old tower on the north ridge.  The needle of black rock and corroding metal had been hollowed and abandoned years ago, but even with its vampire inhabitants long since removed the citadel still oozed shadows, and a nimbus of soiled fog curled away from the forgotten stronghold, the remnants of the corrupted machines and chattel sorcery once used to power the structure’s defenses. 

Eventually they’ll figure out that we’re hiding in an abandoned Bonespire
, she thought. 
Until then we have to enjoy our luxury accommodations for as long as we can.  If only we had a hot tub.

Gyver brought the ship in while Ruiz manned the guns.  Rorn, Tam, Cask and Jahl gathered the equipment; they didn’t want to be out in the open for more than a few moments, not only to avoid overexposure to the caustic atmosphere but to get inside Warfield’s protective resonance field as quickly as possible.  Ilfesa Warfield, a black market dealer and smuggler, had somehow devised the only reliable means anyone had found to keep from being detected by the Ebon Kingdom’s powerful reconnaissance, and she sold that technology to the White Children at a hefty price.

They passed the outer marker and heard the familiar beep echo over the scanners as they came within range of the Bonespire’s concealed guns.  Humans were incapable of using vampire tech, but Carver and his crew had managed to retrofit the bone cannon’s swivel mounts and guidance systems to accept more mundane howitzers and Flak 38s, and using old-fashioned camouflage the Resistance had managed to keep the weapons concealed, at least for the time being. 

Shiv shuddered, but tried to steady herself.  Her nerves were electrified with worry and her heart rattled in her chest. 

They lived on the verge of annihilation.  Every day could be their last, and everyone knew it.  Every time they went to sleep there was no way to be sure they’d ever wake up again; every time they left on a mission there was no way of knowing if they’d ever come back.  Fear clung to her, threatened to crush her.  Sometimes she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Your father didn’t bring you up to be weak
, she told herself.  There were too many people relying on her, looking up to her, for her to let her fears take control, but sometimes it all seemed too much, and all she wanted to do was lie down and never rise again.  She hated herself for that.

Voices of the lost echoed at the edge of her thoughts.  She heard them constantly, saw them whenever she closed her eyes: the unquiet dead, the forlorn spirits of those thousands killed during the Ebon Kingdom’s purge of the Southern Claw.  There was never a moment when they weren’t with her, when they weren’t singeing the back of her mind.  Images played at her from the depths of the frozen dark, and every morning when she woke she had to fight her way through the crusted silhouettes of the dead, looming and hopeless presences that smothered her with their needs and begged her to help them. 

Those tattered souls clung to her like a shroud.  She wasn’t alone, and never would be again.

They left the confines of the ship and crossed through Warfield’s barrier.  The air was grey and tasted stale, and the flash of lightning played off the rib bones of ancient beasts, which protruded from the ground like curled spears. 

Guns were trained on them as they entered the narrow alcove which granted access to the Bonespire, hex-charged weapons that disrupted incorporeal patterns and ruptured the coiled dark organs of creatures like war wights, revenants and battlewraiths.  Shiv nodded to Jorv and Kreen, two young men who’d been recruited into the White Children after they’d witnessed their parents being brutally murdered when the vampires stormed Seraph; until a few weeks ago they’d grown up in the care of Priest, a mysterious drifter who made it his business to seek out lost youths and take them under his wing, caring for them and training them until they were old enough to make their own way.  Lucky for the resistance Priest was a friend, and many of his charges wound up joining their ranks.

The inside of the spire was grim and dark, and the Resistance had done little to alter the structure except making it safe to inhabit.  Everything with any military or scientific value had been stripped from the Bonespire when the vampires evacuated; Shiv always wondered why they hadn’t just destroyed the citadel to ensure it never fell into enemy hands, but she wasn’t about to complain.  The Bonespire had proved to be an incredibly safe place to hide, and though there was little within they could make use of the tower itself was highly defensible.

Shiv moved down the corridor, intent on meeting with Terrell before he left on his next mission.  He and Mace were for all intents and purposes her lieutenants, and while they deferred to her judgment she was the first to acknowledge they had infinitely more experience than she did; while she’d learned quite a bit from her father, Cross and Danica, she still considered herself a novice when it came to tactics and strategy, and she didn’t like making decisions without having more adept minds point out the flaws in her plans.  Terrell had grown restless as of late, ever since Mara had vanished, and she knew he’d continue to volunteer for missions as an excuse to get out and search for her, even though the hard reality was his wife was likely dead and gone.

He won’t accept that, as well he shouldn’t.  We have so few left.

She thought of her father, thought of Cross and Danica.  She thought of Ronan. A pang of loss like a seized breath lodged in her chest, but she couldn’t afford to pay it any heed.  She missed them dearly, but they were all gone.  She had to remember all they’d given her, all she’d learned from them. 

You can’t dwell on what you’ve lost. 

“
We’re going to restock ammo,” Cask said, and he and the others split off, leaving her with only Jahl to escort her the rest of the way to the central chambers.  She didn’t need him – they all knew she was more than powerful enough to protect herself – but they had a few rules among the White Children, and one of them was that no one was ever left alone, even when they thought they were safe.  Jahl was dark-skinned and stoic, heavily tattooed on his face and arms in an almost tribal fashion, his bald head and heavy lips midnight dark.  His chiseled chest glistened with sweat in the dim red light which spilled from torches on the walls – it was always uncomfortably warm inside the abandoned Bonespire in spite of the sullen and unending chill of the wastelands – and he walked with a grim countenance, his hand on his knife and his feisty spirit coiled about his thick biceps like a spring of metal and flame. 

They’d die protecting her.  Only a few of them had said the words, but it was the pact they’d made, from the moment they’d all had the dream of the White Mother passing on the mantle of leadership to this unnatural and dangerous child.  The only Kindred to have survived the Ebon Kingdom’s decisive strike, would-be savior of the Southern Claw and the proclaimed guardian of humankind.

And none of that means a damn thing if I can’t even protect the people most important to me. 
She watched Jahl and realized with a sense of cold fear how little she knew about him, that in truth she knew little about any of the White Children.  She knew where they’d come from, yes, had even spoken to many of them at great length, but part of her had refused to let them get close to her.

My heart is frozen.  I’ve lost everyone I loved, and I don’t want to lose anyone else.

The halls of the abandoned Bonespire were long and dark, wrought of sleek stone glistening with industrial oils.  The air smelled of metal shavings and gasoline.  Thick fluid dripped from the ceilings of many of the rooms, and every door, alcove and shaft was bladed and sinuously curved like something organic, as if the entire structure was part of some great beast, a razor-edged predator of obsidian and charred steel.  The place was utterly quiet save for the clack of boots moving down the hall. 

The twisted corridor gradually sloped upwards.  Strange glyphs covered every surface, Ebon Kingdoms code that none of the White Children could decipher.  The ceilings grew tall as they moved closer to the spire’s core.  Sharp edges protruded into the corridor, spines and thorns with hollow tips, whatever poisons they once contained long since depleted.  Thin pools of briny fluid sluiced across the floor. 

Shiv’s ghost consorts kept trying to move in and protect her, but she willed them away.  When she was younger and just coming into her abilities it had been difficult to latch onto lost souls but ultimately easier to control them.  Manipulating a mage’s arcane spirit was never easy, but taking hold of the free roaming ghosts and corralling them to strike at her enemies had been alarmingly simple.  She’d vanquished an Eidolos, a powerful witch and a Maloj in the distant lands of Nezzek’duul by summoning the spirits of the slain to take revenge on those who’d killed them.  Now she had trouble keeping those same spirits away.  They called to her day and night, recognizing her as a sort of beacon, a medium who could understand them when no others could.  Ever since the war began only the vampires had been able to tap into the energy of lost souls, but they annihilated those spirits with their chattel sorcery, turned them to little more than fuel for war machines and necrotic experiments.  Shiv’s means and magic were much more subtle and gentle.

And now I’m paying for that. 
Sometimes she wished they’d leave her alone, but she knew that wouldn’t happen.  She was the last Kindred, and the source of her power was to drive those souls to fight as her vassals. 

“
Shiv,” Mace said.  She snapped from her reverie.

The Bonespire had once been commanded from a central featureless room, perfectly round and smooth like the inside of a sphere, with a single stone walkway which spanned from one side to the other.  Forty feet wide and utterly cold and quiet, a vampire Commandant could survey everything in and around the tower by tapping into the eyes and ears of every undead creature under his command.  Now, without any of its grim power available, the chamber had lost most of its functionality, but it was still highly secure against even the most sophisticated forms of arcane scrying, and it was an easily located meeting spot in an otherwise labyrinthine and multi-leveled needle of twisted corridors and jagged walkways.

“Mace,” she said with a nod.  Jahl nodded to them both and then took his leave.  “Where’s Terrell?” she asked.

“
On his way,” Mace answered.  He was a bear of a man, tall and broad-shouldered with thick grey hair and a thicker beard.  His eyes were large and expressive and filled with kindness, oddly out of place on his otherwise stony face.  “I’m sure he’s going over what complaints he’d like to lodge before he joins us.”

Shiv couldn’t help but giggle. 

“He’s not that bad,” she said.

“
No,” Mace answered.  “He’s worse.”  He watched her for a moment.  “So you found Quinn?”

Shiv stiffened.  It had been disturbingly easy to kill him. 

“Yes,” she said.  “And I saw the message.”

“
So it’s true,” Mace said.

“
Yes.”

“
They knew of the same location we did?” he asked.

“
Yes.  Along the range east of Crucifix Point, buried in the mountain.”

“
Do we have any idea how much time we have?” Mace asked.

“
Not long,” she said.  “We’ll have to move fast.”

“
This will be the most important thing we’ve ever done,” Mace said, tapping his hands together nervously.  His thick wolf-hide coat brushed against the accumulated frost on the stone bridge as he paced back and forth, and his leather and metal armor creaked and echoed through the room.  The air smelled like a grave. 

“
If the prophecies are true,” Shiv said, “then finding Bloodhollow could mean ending the war.”