Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) (9 page)

A dozen humans are held face-down over a pool at the center of the dais, a wide cup filled with gore.  Their hands and feet are mangled as they struggle against their bonds, but they’re held in place by brutish zombie theurgeons and skeletal doctors who gather the blood as it falls into smoking iron jars.  No one screams – their vocal chords have already been severed, and their naked and writhing bodies are so starved and sucked of life they can barely put up any resistance.  Reaver looks away and wonders if he knew any of those people in his old life, or if his death had been better than theirs.

He approaches a grim citadel of gold and iron and onyx lead.  Doors fashioned in the semblance of teeth part before him. 

Reaver enters a chamber so dismally cold that what’s left of his organic flesh curls tight in reaction and clenches against his metal components.  Ice crusts under his boots.  A parade of Ebon Kingdom soldiers marches by outside holding standards of flayed skins and cadavers.  Reaver turns and watches them from just inside the doorway, and for a moment he has a grand view of Basilisk Claw, its striated layers of bladed streets and claustrophobic channels, angled roads and twisted alleys, oddly leaning structures like iron shavings and broken bones, all of it riddled with channels of blood and filth and partially concealed within roiling clouds of burning mist and pockets of flaming cloud.  Industrial gears and grinding metal sound through the sky, and an occasional human cry rings out as prisoners are slowly and painfully executed, their remains carefully preserved by the theurges to better fuel the Claw’s war machines. 

“You’re late,” a voice says.  Reaver is surprised by how human it sounds. 

He turns and beholds the lich.  She is lovely in her own way, delicate and small.  Short hair is all that remains of what looked to have once been long and luxurious locks, and one of her rotting eyes has been replaced with a dark red gem which swirls and turns in place, greasing itself with old blood as the arcane powers within echo and explode like a cluster of stars.  Her robe is grey and silver, simple and unadorned, and much of it floats low beneath her as she hovers in mid-air, legs crossed and emaciated arms exposed to the flickering ochre light.  Fingernails the color of night squeeze down around her knees.  The flesh on her arms and face is blackened and slick with puss, but even then Reaver sees that she must have been young when she’d died, not even a woman grown.

“I came when I was called,” Reaver answers, his voice a growl of metal and bone.  The citadel is hollow and vast, a dark strip of metal grating hedged in by containers and sarcophagi.  Open crates of weapons – iron guns, spear throwers, bone ballistae, claw rifles – stand next to an open locker filled with discarded clothing, and a workbench is covered with vials, tubes and small mounds of silver and black powder.  Reaver smells fear in the air.

“
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,” she 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.