The Witch's Eye

by Steven Montano

  They’d used Danica’s directions to guide them. She spoke dreamily, suffused in a drug-induced haze. She and Ronan were chained to the deck of the lead warship like pieces of cargo and kept under the watchful eye of a half-dozen vampire commandos and the human traitor, Lynch.

  Lynch’s master, the pale Lady Riven, hovered over the deck in a cross-legged position, her pale cloak billowing like a flag in the wind. She was lean and tall, and her black hair bore streaks of blonde. Enormous fangs were barely concealed beneath her bulging lips, and she wore an arcane head-piece on her brow that hummed whenever Danica opened her eyes and spoke. Whatever they’d given Danica wasn’t Narcosm, but something that granted Riven control over her, likely the same substance they’d used on her back in Lorn.

  Ronan’s body ached, and he still bled from where the net had cut through his armor. The cold wind whipped against his face and froze in his lungs. Like Danica, he was tethered into a kneeling position with his hands bound behind his back.

  The crimson light of the setting sun cut across the sky as the ships floated low over waters filled with bodies and cracked ice. Waves pounded the bone-addled beach below. Thick smoke and towers of black stone surrounded a shadowy crater at the heart of the isle.

  Danica’s eyes were locked dead ahead. She sat rigid. Her face was lined with fatigue.

  The sounds of battle raged behind them. The Southern Claw cargo vessel was putting up a fight, but even with the Bloodhawk’s aid the vampire weaponry was just too much for the bigger, slower craft, and the ship’s fate had been sealed the moment the Razorwings punched through and deposited Slayer squads on its deck.

  The chains painfully pulled at Ronan’s neck, but he was able to crane his head around far enough to look at Lynch, who watched him with malice in his eyes. Ronan smiled.

  His mind went back. He saw fields of jade and steel, ripples of shadow and light. A world bleached of color, everything but the red. The blonde-haired boy waited at the top of the steps.

  Ronan.

  He heard the voice in his head. Danica’s voice.

  Can they hear you? he thought back to her. The vampires?

  I don’t think so, she answered. She made no movement, and he tried not to look at her and give her away. My spirit is helping me resist them, she thought to him. Riven has me locked under her control, but my spirit is fighting back. I may even be able to channel him, but I’ll have to make it count.

  The isle was directly beneath them. There were broken stones and blood-stained ruins on the shore. Churning clouds of lightning-stained fog swirled in angry columns around the crater ahead. Ronan smelled the tang of death.

  Just tell me when, he thought. He kept his head bowed. His fingers tensed behind his back.

  The air turned colder.

  “Lady Riven!” Lynch yelled. “There!”

  Ronan’s gaze followed Lynch’s fingers. A half-dozen slim metal shapes fell through the blood sky.

  Escape pods. From the cargo vessel.

  Explosions tore through the air. Bloodhawks and vampire warships exchanged fire.

  Lady Riven came down from her floating position and stood on the deck right in front of Ronan, giving him a clearer view of her lithe form and severe face. She wore a battle-dress of silver and white fur over dark leather armor. Her bladed gauntlets and spiked boots oozed shadow, and her pale skin was rune-cast and icy. Dark hair was tightly secured with clasps of razored steel.

  She pointed a bladed fingernail at the escape pods, and at that silent command two of the vampire warships broke formation and flew at them.

  Ronan turned and looked at Danica.

  “Did I ever tell you,” he said, “what happened to the blonde boy?”

  Riven looked at him suspiciously, but then she nodded at Danica, which evidently granted her the permission and ability to speak.

  “You told me you let him live,” Danica said. “You left the Order, and then a few years later…”

  “…he came to kill me. The Triangle sent him. They sent the one person in my entire life I’d spared to kill me. I’m sure they found it amusing that my attempt to maintain some…shred of humanity…would be the cause of my own death.”

  Ronan remembered when the blond man had hunted him down in that dive in Kalakkaii. He saw his weathered face in the dirty light and the smoky fumes in the air. He tasted the sweat, and felt the pollution. He saw blood on his hands.

  The sound of a nearby explosion brought him back to his senses. One of the pods had been destroyed. A spirit flew from a different pod and shredded a vampire warship into a mess of shrapnel and black blood.

  “You let him go,” Danica said.

  “Yes,” Ronan said. His chest ached. He swallowed. “And then he killed himself. Maybe he feared what they’d do to him if he failed. Maybe he did it to prove a point…to show me I’d thrown my life in the Order away for something that had never actually existed.” He looked at her. “My whole life has been a lie. I let him live to save my soul, but my soul was already gone.”

  “Touching,” Lady Riven said. Her voice was and thick, like black honey. “You humans. You give yourselves to your weaknesses.” She drew her blade, a wicked scimitar covered with spines.

  “That’s right,” Ronan said to the vampire. He knew he was about to die. “For a long time I didn’t think I was human…but here I am. Because even though he’s dead, I’m still alive.”

  He looked at Danica.

  Now, she thought, and he braced for the blow.

  Danica’s metal arm ripped through the chains like they were made of glass. Flames soaked the steel. Scalding wind blasted across the deck and threw vampire shock troops into the sky.

  Ronan’s bonds twisted and snapped. He desperately grabbed hold of the deck as the ship listed sideways.

  Danica’s eyes glowed crimson. Ronan flattened himself just before she released blasts of explosive power from her fingertips. Vampires fell, torn in half by saws of bloody light. Pieces of the ship exploded beneath her onslaught.

  A length of chain was still looped around his wrist, but otherwise Ronan was free. He kept low, and had to fight to maintain his balance. He wound the chain around a vampire’s neck and pulled it down, snatched away its serrated sword and sliced off its head.

  The ship leveled out, but he could feel them rapidly losing altitude. Danica’s spirit covered her body like armor. A jagged half-blade of light protruded from the knuckles of her metal hand.

  Ronan took cover behind a bulkhead. Vampires fired needle-launchers and hand-cannons, but Danica’s spirit repelled the salvo. She hacked a pair of gargoyles to pieces as they swept in to flank her.

  Riven and Lynch retreated behind their troops. Undead with combat armor, blades and firearms swarmed up from below deck. The ship was ablaze.

  Danica’s spirit fanned around her body like blazing wings. She was a phoenix of flames and blades, and she leapt fearlessly into the ranks of vampires, gargoyles and war wights. Her spirit cut through enemies like paper, and they burned when they touched her molten shell.

  She can’t keep that up for long, Ronan thought.

  He rolled forward beneath a barrage of needles and sliced a vampire gunner’s head in two. Ronan pulled a black machete and a longknife off the corpse, and was surprised when he found one of the bladed brass knuckles from Rourke’s ship lying on the deck just a few feet away. He scooped it up and ran.

  Explosions and gunfire ravaged the ship. Ronan wrapped his chain around a gun-toting gargoyle, dragged it down and cut its throat with the longknife.

  The sky was on fire. Flame and blood lanced past the ship. Something on the ground was shooting at them.

  Ronan looked over the side. The isle was wreathed in mist and smoke, but he caught glimpse of a massive stone circle surrounded by jagged obsidian columns at the middle of the crater. Creatures emerged from the fog on the beach, animated corpses whose bodies smoked with charnel flames. They pointed at the sky, and it burned. Streaks of fire tore through the air. A
n escape pod exploded, and a vampire warship buckled and collapsed as its turbines turned to ash.

  Ronan ducked beneath a vampire’s claws. He slashed its face open with the longknife, ripped out its throat with the bladed knuckles, wound the chain around its arm and threw the creature into the sky.

  Danica struggled against an entire squad on the upper deck. He had to get to her.

  The Southern Claw cargo ship crashed into the sea. One of the Bloodhawks plummeted to the ground in a stream of smoke, while the other valiantly struggled against a pair of vampire warships.

  A blast of dark lightning roared through the air and struck the vampire command ship. The forward hull flew to pieces.

  Ronan wrapped his chain around the deck railing and dove to the floor. Everything was spinning. Blasts rippled across the ship. His arm seemed to snap as the vessel spun down towards the stony beach.

  The impact was deafening. Steel and rock slammed against his body. Ronan tasted blood. His body jerked sideways, and the chain went taut around his wrist. The back of the ship exploded. Arcs of fire and fuel shot everywhere. Hot wind scraped his face.

  The ship screeched to a halt at the edge of a massive crack in the earth. Ronan rolled end over end. The sky flipped. He fell over the side and into open air.

  The chain went tight and stopped his descent. Ronan growled in pain as his arm wrenched in the socket. He dangled under the edge of the ship and over the head of a deep ravine, which sloped at a steep downward angle towards some twisted ruins in the distance. Sharp rocks lined the ravine walls, and thick streams of icy water flowed along the downslope channel. The ring of mountains loomed overhead. They’d crashed next to the entrance to the crater, at the edge of a scar on the island that hadn’t even been visible from the air.

  Vampire bodies plummeted down the slope. Some of them fell into cracks and crevices and vanished from sight, while others were shredded to pieces by the rocks. More fell in the water or vanished into the fog as they slid towards the ruins.

  Ronan hauled himself back up towards the ship, link by link. His muscles burned. He locked his eyes on the mist-shrouded sky.

  Exhaust winds struck him in the face as he threw his arms up over the side of the vessel. The starboard engine had dislodged and twisted into a vertical position, but still continued to run at full power.

  Danica was nowhere in sight. He saw vampires on the beach, locked in battle with the undead of the island. Gunfire and guttural growls echoed into the chill wind.

  A clawed hand reached down and grabbed him by the throat. Cold dead fingers tightened their grip and lifted him painfully into the air. Lady Riven stared at him with hollow eyes. Her pale skin had been burned and bruised. She squeezed as she lifted, and he gasped for breath.

  Ronan kicked her in the stomach, and she dropped him to the iron floor. The turbine engine was a dozen paces to his left, and the edge of the deck was at his back. Flames and smoke billowed around them. Everything smelled of fuel and blood.

  Lady Riven growled. Her lips peeled back and revealed wicked black fangs. Her silver cloak had fallen back, and the cold runes on her undead flesh glowed.

  Ronan’s chain had snapped, but he pulled out the longknife and slipped on the bladed knuckles. He drew his cowl across his face. If this was to be his last battle, he’d make it count.

  I hope you make it, Dani. I’ll miss you.

  Riven came at him with incredible speed. He ducked beneath her black talons, but an armored elbow took him in the gut. Her foot slammed into his side, cracking ribs.

  Ronan slashed at the vampire and ripped open her cheek. Black blood flew onto his arm. He twirled the knife around and ducked beneath another slash. She drew a double-bladed short sword made of glistening ice-blue steel.

  Ronan and Riven cut into each other. A nearby explosion rocked the ship. He saw fliers overhead, warships and Razorwings. Blasts thundered up and down the beach.

  Their blades and arms locked. Her sword tip pressed close to his face, but he shoved her back and tried to work his own blade into her throat or the points on the knuckles into her eyes. Neither of them gained an inch of ground.

  They pushed against one another. She was stronger. It was only a matter of time.

  She forced him backwards, towards the engine. The sound of chopping filled his ears. Adrenaline flooded through his body. He sensed the rotor blades in their circular housing at his back, and knew he was just a few feet away. The turbine wind rippled his cloak. His legs strained as he slid across the deck, closer to his end. He and Riven were practically face-to-face. She snarled and snapped her jaws.

  He glanced behind him. The rotors were there, barely three feet away. Their motion filled his senses.

  Not like this.

  His muscles tightened. He focused his vision. Found the core within himself, the killer inside, the killer he’d always been.

  He entered the Deadlands.

  Ronan twisted, crouched and spun. Riven moved with him, but her own strength carried her forward, and she fell over his body and into the suction of the turbines. The vampire dame exploded in a grisly spray of meat and metal.

  The turbine sputtered, jammed and exploded. A sharp blade ripped into Ronan’s side. Pain flared through his already broken ribs. Another blast threw him backwards.

  He tumbled over the edge. The ship spun away in his vision. He struck the ground hard, and ice burned his body as he slid.

  He fell into black water. Grey rocks sped by. Icy fluid shot into his lungs. The current pulled him towards the nadir of the ravine, and everything went black.

  Ronan dreamed his old dream of a dark field beneath a dark sky. There were no bodies this time, just a thin river lit by a ghostly moon.

  He saw Danica and the blonde boy. They sat and stared at him from across the water. They were quiet, and seemed at peace.

  Somehow he felt he’d failed them both.

  He woke sometime later on cold grey sand. Ronan’s cowl was soaked and stained with blood. The ground was wet, and the air was silver with fog.

  His body ached all over. He felt light-headed and dizzy as he tried to rise. Everything seemed to tilt. The ground slid beneath him. He stood, stumbled, and fell into shallow ice waters that chilled his limbs. He stood again.

  Everything was quiet.

  The ruins were ancient black stones that had been sundered by water and wind. Scant traces of old runes were barely visible beneath the weathered rock face. They reminded Ronan of the shrine at the top of the steps. The place he’d refused to go. For some reason, it felt like home.

  We all wind up where we’re supposed to be in the end.

  Something moved behind him. He felt the presence more than heard it, and his heart went cold.

  Blood ran down his side. His armor and cloak had been shredded. Ice burns from the fall covered his body.

  Ronan looked up the slope and realized he’d slid down to the depths of the ravine. He could just barely make out the ruined vampire ship far above.

  It was nearly dark. He was all alone.

  Only I’m not.

  He sensed the motion again, just behind him at the perimeter of the ruins. There was more than one of them. He smelled blood and animal musk. Ronan heard something like growls, and something like knives.

  He somehow still held the longknife and bladed knuckles. He took a deep breath, and readied his weapons. He’d never been so cold.

  Part of him wanted it to be the blonde boy standing there when he turned around. He wanted to speak to him again.

  I don’t want to die, he thought. But he knew that wasn’t up to him. Not anymore.

  The growls came closer. An icy chill ran down his spine.

  He looked up and saw a jet of light streak across the sky. The shooting star burned blue in the night. It matched the color of Danica’s eyes.

  Thank you, he thought.

  Blades in hand, he turned to meet his fate.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  EYE

  Danica ran.<
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  The remains of the vampire warship sat at the edge of a steep cliff. Writhing humanoid silhouettes locked in battle on the fields of smoke. She heard tearing and blood, gunshots and flames. Vampires ripped each other apart in the maze of fog. Danica used the vapors as cover.

  Keep moving, she told herself. Keep moving.

  She’d lost Ronan. He’d been with her on the ship, but then the Witchborn had set the sky on fire, and in the chaos of the crash he’d disappeared. She looked around desperately, but the black energies of the island practically blinded both her and her spirit. She conjured a crimson blade and burned through the mist, which thickened as she moved deeper inland.

  She stayed low. Pain wracked her back and legs, and there were cuts and burns on her face and chest. Her armor was torn, and her skin was cold with sweat.

  Keep moving.

  Explosions filled the sky. Razorwings crashed to the ground, their bodies aflame.

  She saw Lynch running behind a pair of Ebon Cities Slayers, and closed in on him. The first vampire turned as she approached, but it barely had time to draw its blade before she hacked it down. The second vampire fired its hand-cannon, but her spirit deflected the shot and sent the shrapnel into Lynch’s leg. He fell screaming. Danica’s spirit ripped through the vampire and skewered its neck and head.

  She came up to Lynch as he lay helpless on the ground. His eyes widened with fear. Without a word she took him by the throat and punched him in the face with her metal fist, over and over again. His skull burst. Blood and brains sprayed onto the ground. When she was done she left his twitching body in the sand.

  The open beach was covered with corpses and scattered pockets of combat. Vampires and Witchborn met each other with blade and claw, but the vampires were no match for their diseased cousins, and they fell, infected by black shadows.

  Danica dodged around them. She made her way to the pass that led to the crater. The Eye was there, and she had to destroy it.

  A blast shook the ground. She turned and saw the remnants of a Southern Claw escape pod, now just a mess of black shrapnel and twisted steel. More ships exploded up in the sky. The clouds seemed to be made of charcoal fumes.