Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7)

by Steven Montano

  Daezarkian weaves currents of necrotic force, draws power from human slaves tethered to his battle-throne. Their feet bleed on the salty landscape. Chains scrape against their tender flesh.

  The energies keep them masked and widen the path before them. The gap in the horizon cracks open like gristle. Darkness bleeds through the sky.

  It won’t be long now. They see the battle rage in the distance, hear the artillery shells and explosives. The shadows loom over Rath’s doomed forces. The roiling darkness splits off into hunter-wolf shapes which cut their way through the vampire ranks.

  Daezarkian and Jadira see eyes in the storm, pulsing orbs like bitter moons. They smell burning stars and melting skin.

  They march quickly, for they can broker no delay. The Black is far reaching, but not omnipotent. It has no reason to believe the citizens of the city have already fled, and by the time it finishes off Rath’s sacrificial defenders the vampires will have left Malefia forever.

  Thousands of slaves die in the exodus, burned to cinders by necrotheurgic energies as their life force is used to conceal the mass of fleeing vampires and widen the dimensional rip.

  They must cross over at a precise point. If they fail, they’ll spill into the remains of The Black’s home world, a place filled with nothing but shadow and bubbling chaos. Worse, Daezarkian knows he cannot close the rip even after the last of his kind has gone through. This new world is not capable of supporting the vampire anatomy, not without some link to Malefia. Some connection must be maintained.

  The humans cry out in pain. Those who cry too loudly are silenced. There’s some malcontent among the vampires, for they’re not allowed to feed on their human chattel. Some whisper that the Grim Father has gone soft, finally taken by the whims of his queen, but those close to him know the truth.

  He will kill every last human if necessary. Whatever must be done in order to save his people.

  They pass through the barrier.

  There’s no telling moment, no defining sensation or threshold. They travel towards the rip for hours, always seeming to move further away even though they know they’re gaining ground. The grey landscape and steaming fields stretch on endlessly, low broken hills that melt away into sharp valleys and crumbling buttes. The ghastly procession stays out of sight, watching the battle in the distance from beneath their soul magic shroud.

  The bodies of human slaves litter the valley behind them, bled out and dry, husks of pale skin left to rot in the dust.

  Jadira will no longer travel with Daezarkian but maintains her own pace, riding a great lizard with her closest friends and advisors. The gulf between the monarchs is noticeable.

  The vampires are frightened. They know their forces are dying to The Black’s overwhelming strength, and they can only hope that the sacking of Rath will take longer than expected. When their subterfuge is discovered, all will be lost.

  And, suddenly, they arrive.

  One moment the rip looms above them like a boiling storm

  the next they walk under clear skies. The ground is brown and damp. Yellow stalks sway in the wind. They smell water and honey in the air.

  The storm still looms behind them. For a moment they think they’ve escaped. The vampire refugees are all there, an impossible trail of undead and panicked mounts. Steel vehicles look transposed against the colorful landscape, the fields of wheat crops and corn stalks. The sky is deep blue, and the hot sun ails them to look upon it.

  It all lasts only moments before everything is torn apart. Daezarkian’s efforts to widen the rip prove to be too much. The breach tears open, and worlds crash together in a maelstrom of violence.

  A sky that had been bright and sunny suddenly roils with thick red clouds. The ground cracks and melts. They feel a sense of wrongness, of things pushed together like glass and skin.

  It only takes a few moments for them to begin to forget where they came from.

  They hear the devastation from miles out, the collapse of cities and the drying of seas, the burning skies and hordes of people being sucked through the rip. Things exit the reality, pulled away like debris in a windstorm, and other things are blown through.

  The air is blood. Hundreds of vampires are lost instantly, pulled apart in the storm, sucked into a black sky that folds in on itself. The earth splits, and dark things emerge. Histories collide. Worlds melt.

  Daezarkian, too, is affected. He feels his memory and his power slipping away.

  Realities come unfolded. Tendrils of consciousness eke away like sand through clenched fingers.

  There’s one chance. The vampire theurge-king stands at the foot of the storm and calls on all of the power he can muster. Screams fill the sky.

  Continents crack. Cities collapse as places from other worlds overwrite them. The sky is filled with roiling storms.

  Daezarkian focuses. He hears Jadira scream as she’s taken by the chaos, grabs her hand and tries to draw her back. He doesn’t want to lose her, but he can’t hold on to her and still do what needs to be done. Her eyes plead with him, understanding his sacrifice. He has no choice.

  He never did.

  He conjoins her power with his own to draw the energy needed to close the rip, to cease the destruction he’s caused, but not completely. This new world can’t support their undead physiology – its power centers are too much in flux, its weylines too weak. He must maintain a connection to Malefia, doomed through it is, in order for his kind to survive. The sealing of the breach must be perfect, open enough for them to survive but closed enough to stop any more bleeding of worlds.

  The remaining human slaves are killed along with thousands of others, denizens of this new world, this place forever altered by the vampire’s arrival. Their screams echo into the bleeding sky.

  When it’s done, the rip is sealed. And the universe is forever scarred.

  PART FOUR

  FALLING

  Blood runs down the hill. The East Claw Coalition troops have been brutally killed, but they’ve given as good as they’ve received, and Reaver sees the remains of at least three vampire warships and the desiccated husks of several kaithoren, their razored beaks and barbed appendages still smoking in the dusk breeze. The tree line is full with fog and debris from wrecked ships. Hundreds of shell casings litter the ground.

  Reaver slowly moves into the clearing, his captive tied and bound and walking behind him with her smudged and bloodied face lowered. Her uniform is stained with ash and blast marks, and one sleeve is missing and torn along the back. She doesn’t put up much resistance as they make their way across the wastes, towards Crucifix Point.

  He inspects the warships. The voices of the vampire collective are still muffled in his mind, distant. He’s like a sailor stranded at sea. If any of the warships have working comms left he can try and get a message back to Rath. He has to let them know he’s alone, that he needs support. He needs to be told what it is he’s supposed to do.

  Most of all, Reaver needs to have the memories erased.

  They come at him in a flurry now, unrequited, and he senses that they wouldn’t be so overwhelming if they only made sense. Toiling in the fields, digging ditches with black-armored guards looking on. Flying low over dark forests, a cloud of blood on his trail. Lost in a frozen city, holding her in his arms as she dies. On a train in a desolate land, searching for a way home.

  Reaver wants them to stop.

  He’s wrapped his decaying face with a cloth, if only to keep himself from being easily identified as undead from a distance, though he doubts the effort will much matter – he can see what he is in every reflective surface, notes it in his prisoner’s eyes.

  Reaver keeps her tethered with a length of wire he secures from the wreckage, tied loose so as not to hurt her. It occurs to him that’s a strange thing for him to do, but he doesn’t question it. He’s well aware that his behavior is odd, that he isn’t acting properly since his mind hasn’t been wiped and he’s severed from his link to command. Once he’s back in circulation
everything will be fine.

  And if not, he’ll be obliterated.

  She watches him with fear, but doesn’t speak. She’s remained quiet, making no demands, rests when he allows her to do so, eats when he hand-feeds her rations. His intent is to keep her alive. She might have useful information about the Coalition, or maybe she can provide him some leverage if he runs into more of General Wulf’s soldiers.

  But he knows that’s not why he wants her to survive: something about her presence makes him comfortable, like she’s buried somewhere in his memory. Recollections of feelings flash through his undead mind, notions of familiarity, of belonging. She reminds him of the blonde girl, of that there is no doubt, but he can’t piece together why that’s important, why that matters. It shouldn’t. Those pieces of his soul have been removed, replaced with armor plating and thaumaturgic nodes. Nothing human is left.

  That’s where you’re wrong, he tells himself. They left more than they knew. The memories will fade – that is inevitable, and if it doesn’t happen on its own it’s guaranteed to occur when the necrotheurges pump black fluid into his veins and send jolts of chemical electricity through his reinforced skull.

  The notion of losing those few memories he’s reacquired...frightens him. And that’s a problem.

  He has to focus. He has a mission, and he needs to find a way to get a message to Rath. They can communicate with the soldiers of his Wing, have them rendezvous with him.

  “What are you thinking?” the girl asks.

  They walk through the wreckage. Remains have been splattered across the open ground like red-black wings. Smoking debris lay twisted among pipes and bent metal. The insides of the ships are splayed like rib-bones, the black steel dripping machine fluid and pooling in the dirt. Drifts of smoke fall over the trees like walls of shifting stone, and the air is strangely hot in spite of the crusts of ice which cover the ground.

  Reaver stops and looks at the girl. He knows how horrible he must seem to her, how frightening. He has a brief flash of memory strike him like a blow to the gut – himself in reflection, young and lean and alive – but it passes quickly enough that he’s able to disguise the effect it has on him.

  “Quiet,” he says. She nods sullenly, and holds her bound wrists before her as she follows where he leads. Her hair is cut so short she could almost pass for a man so long as she’s wearing full armor, but her jacket was shredded in the crash, and her slim but voluptuous form is on display. Memories of longing fill him, something he can never act on again.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  “Not sorry,” he says, his voice rasping and monstrous. “Quiet.”

  Someone has already been through the site and stripped it of anything with value, including weapons and all radio or thaumaturgic communication equipment. The fuel tanks have been drained, and every soldier who wasn’t completely decimated in the battle has been relieved of their weapons, armor and packs, while the vampires have been de-fanged or beheaded. Greasy streams of grey-black smoke waft up from the undead bodies, which sizzle as their insides boil out. They were destroyed a few hours ago, and in another few hours their useless husks will have dissolved entirely.

  The sun is rising. Reaver realizes they’ve been moving all through the night. He needs to let his captive rest.

  Not wanting to stay in the bruised clearing, Reaver leads them into the trees. The clouds have been gradually dropping for hours, and the temperature hovers just above freezing – even though his skin isn’t affected by temperature variations his body notes the chill, and his undead muscles and artificial blood pump slower, significantly delaying his reaction time. Unsettled wind sends ash sleet spiraling around the rocks and trees. No soil softens the headland, and the pines are gnarled and dry. The ground is the color of rust.

  The stench of gas is thick in the air, which Reaver guesses is as responsible as anything else for his captive’s drowsiness. She seems barely awake as he marches her up the hill. Though he doesn’t feel pain or fatigue Reaver notes that his body is in need of repair. A deep gash in his shoulder has drained him of significant fluids, and he feels bullets and small blades shift inside his torso, but it would be difficult to remove those foreign objects without causing even more damage. Fighting against the wind for hours hasn’t done either of them any good.

  “You need sleep,” he tells his captive. “We’ll make camp.”

  Reaver directs the girl to wait as he climbs up a shoulder of granite and looks north, where there are more stunted trees, granite bluffs, broken rocks and burned scrub. He spies a creek bed a few hundred yards out and decides that’s as good a place as any. The wind gusts at them from the south as they make their way along the rock lands and out of the thickest trees, pressing their cloaks against their backs and carrying the scent of fire, copper and death. Mist wreathes the land below, but Reaver knows that beneath the fog lies a jagged headland of deep crevices, razor bluffs and masses of necrotic fluid which seep in from the diseased bay. The sun rises behind the clouds, and while it would be best to have light as they make their way into the valley he needs to give his charge rest.

  She’s slowing me down. Best be rid of her.

  It’s a thought he doesn’t act on, though he knows he should.

  Reaver and the girl work their way down into a draw. The wind dies as the temperature drops. Winter-killed thistles have choked the banks. A trickle of water darkened by something dead on the rocks above runs down the slope, so Reaver moves them up and around the eviscerated body of a highlands elk and finds them a spot upstream, towards the black shadow of an undercut. The cave there is shallow and smells of rats, and fish bones lie half-buried in the gravel floor.

  “Lie down,” he says. “Rest.”

  He sets down his pack and pulls out a wool blanket, which he tosses to the back of the cave. The girl watches him with fear in her eyes as he undoes her bonds and moves to the cave mouth, positioning himself with the human-made M4A1 rifle he’s recovered so he can stand watch without being seen from the outside and still block the entrance.

  The girl stands there in the cave behind him, defiant in spite of her exhaustion. She rubs her wrists where they’ve gone raw beneath the bonds.

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  He looks at her, and sees another woman, from another time. Some part of him misses that woman, longs for her company.

  “You need rest,” he says. He sometimes wonders what he used to sound like in life, and he doubts it was anything like the grated and hollow noise he makes now, a machine grinding underwater. “You have two hours before we start moving again. I suggest you use them.”

  The girl watches him, and he feels her eyes on him even as he turns away and looks out at the rock and tree-strewn hillside. The clouds are gathering.

  After a time the girl lies down, but he can tell by her breathing that she isn’t asleep.

  She doesn’t trust him to keep her safe. He could tell her not to worry, that he’ll stand watch and make sure nothing comes for her out of the wastes, but he doesn’t. She wouldn’t believe him.

  He sees her lying beneath a cloak of leaves, earth and dry soil. The sky smells of ozone.

  The ruins of the airship are spread across the forest. Trees have snapped beneath the crash, and a trail of bodies and wreckage leads into the foothills. The world is pale and still, and clouds smother the sky.

  He’s there, among the survivors, jailers in black armor, captive vampires and humans. The air is thick with the stench of smoke and freshly torn bodies. Powdered ash pushes against his legs.

  He sees her there with him. She’s stronger than he is, and always has been. They don’t need to speak. They’ve been through much together, and will go through so much more.

  The skies are cold, a white prison pressing down on them. He looks up through the clouds and breathes in the harsh winter air. The world feels unsettled. Things are about to change for them, and not for the better.

  But in spite of his fear his heart is at peace
. He’s where he needs to be.

  He looks at her, and nods. They’ll keep each other safe. He believes that, and so has she, and in the end they’re both proved wrong.

  Reaver’s eyes snap open. He doesn’t sleep, is no longer capable, and yet something draws him away from his vigil. It’s as if he’s dreamed, like he still remembers what that even means.

  He shifts and scans the darkness. Pyramid readouts and sparking runes flicker and fade, not functioning properly due to the damage he sustained in the battle. He hears the girl’s soft snores behind him; she’s succumbed to her exhaustion, and somehow he’s allowed his focus to waver.

  The darkness spins as he orients himself. The sky outside the cave is moonless, starless, and utterly cold. The cloth wrap around his face has all but frozen there.

  In the absolute quiet he hears something stir on the hillside. Something dead. He notices a ripple in the darkness, a shift of displaced shadows surrounded by a cloud of formaldehyde and burning cold.

  At first he thinks it’s the Ebon Kingdoms, a scouting or rescue party sent to determine what’s happened to Harpy and her band, but that notion is quickly quelled when the first Scarecrow steps into view. Tall, gangly and covered in iron hide armor, the stretched and emaciated undead soldier is easily nine feet tall, with a wingspan that makes it near Doj size. Another moves in the darkness below, and both clearly display the orange and black of Fane. Their wide boots crunch ice and dust as they climb the hillside, 20mm rifles slung over their shoulders, their skulls visible beneath the rotted flesh that’s been pulled tight against the bone.

  Reaver readies the rifle and backs away from the cave mouth. If he was alone it would be easy to elude their notice, but humans give off a stench easily recognizable to undead still in command of their olfactory faculties, and if she wakes and learns what’s going on there’s no telling how she’ll react.

  He doesn’t intend to give her up. In a quick motion Reaver winds the cord around the girl’s wrists and binds them behind her back, then pushes a cloth into her mouth and pulls her deeper into the cave and out of sight. He slings the M4A1 over one shoulder and secures the cloth tight around his face, though he isn’t sure why. Maybe it’s something he used to do when he was still alive. He draws one of the short blades given to him by the Ebon Kingdoms and keeps the other secured to his back.