Blood Angels - The Complete Rafen Omnibus - James Swallow

by Warhammer 40K

  Stele paused for a moment and patted at his brow once more with his kerchief, rubbing at the aquila electoo. The knots of tension in his muscles were waning, but he still ached from the sheer physical effort of expending his psychic reserves on Vode. He took a deep breath. There had been a flash there in the chapel when Stele’s keen psychic focus had slipped, just for a second. The epistolary instantly knew it, and turned his inner eye on the inquisitor, for one brief moment seeing him for what he was—the manipulator behind the unfolding events. Stele’s whole plan had almost unravelled right there; if Vode had realized that it was he, not Arkio, that was the source of the dark energies in the room, the inquisitor would have died on the end of Vode’s axe. Thank the warp, it was not so, he told himself. Stele managed to recover, pressing Vode to turn his ire on Arkio once more, and things had unfolded as they were meant to. While he conjured sheets of invisible force to protect the young Space Marine, Sachiel and the others had followed the patterns laid out for them and taken things to their conclusion. The actors were playing their parts, just as he had foreseen it.

  The chambers Stele had taken as his living quarters were nearby, and as he approached he could already feel his strength starting to return; still, he would need to take a resting trance in order to be ready for the next progression. He allowed himself a smile. That was the beauty of his plan, the inquisitor considered, the perfection of all the best schemes. It was not that Stele forced these men to veer from their chosen path by sheer brute coercion. Such a performance lacked subtlety and elan. No, Stele’s skills came in the gentle push, the honeyed word in the doubting ear. His expertise was in gently guiding the righteous and honourable into places where it became easy for them to make questionable choices. Men like Arkio and Sachiel. The inquisitor would lead them over one moral line, then another and another, until they were set on a path to damnation.

  He had done it many times; he was good at it. But this would be his greatest work. Before it had been men, sometimes nations, that he led astray. Arkio, Sachiel, the Blood Angels… to turn a Chapter of the Emperor’s most loyal Marines would be his crowning glory.

  The door to his chambers opened under his hand, but Stele hesitated. He felt a presence close by. Inwardly he frowned. Someone was shadowing him, following him through the dim halls of the fortress. Had he been recovered, at his full capacity, he would have sensed the watcher automatically, but his wearied mind still buzzed with fatigue. Careful to ensure he gave no sign of awareness to his observer, he entered the room and allowed the door to remain open behind him.

  The hand of Chaos hides here. The words turned over and over in Rafen’s mind as he kept pace with Stele, careful to keep out of the inquisitor’s line of sight. He had seen the way that Vode had stared at Stele in the chapel, the momentary look of pure revulsion on his face. What had the Librarian seen? Rafen’s gut crawled at the thought of the mind-witchery that passed between the two men. As much as he disliked the arrogant Sachiel, Rafen could not bring himself to believe that the Sanguinary Priest would ally himself with the Ruinous Powers, and for all the changes that had been wrought on Arkio, his sibling refused to consider him a traitor.

  Stele. He lurked in the background, concealed and yet visible, always there with a word or deed when a choice presented itself. Sergeant Koris had died cursing him, and once again Rafen found himself wondering what insight his old mentor had gained in the throes of the deadly red thirst.

  The Blood Angel saw the open door and slipped through it. Inside, the room was muted. The last fading streaks of thin, watery daylight managed to push through thick brocade curtains to illuminate a suite of rooms, dissipating as the sun dropped below the industrial horizon. This had once been the domain of Shenlong’s governor, and Stele had claimed it as his planetside residence in the days after the death of the Dark Apostle Iskavan. Rafen hovered close to an array of tall tapestries that depicted the history of the forge-world, from its discovery in the distant past to the consecration of the planet as a weapons manufactory.

  “Don’t stand on ceremony, Rafen.” Stele’s voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. “Come in.”

  The Marine’s face twisted in a scowl, but he did as he was bid. Stele emerged from a pool of shadows on the far side of the wide room. The light from the window rendered him in shades of grey, like a charcoal sketch on dull paper.

  “Have you come to kill me, Rafen?” he asked conversationally. “Do you wish my death?”

  Rafen scanned the room for any signs of the inquisitor’s hovering servo-skulls and found them humming quietly in the eaves, crystal eyes intent. The needles of small-bore lasguns tracked him as he moved. “Would your murder end this madness, inquisitor?” he replied.

  “Madness?” Stele repeated, taking a seat in a large chair. “Is that what you see in the plans of the Blessed?” He covered his exhaustion well as he sat.

  “Not since the Horus Heresy has Astartes turned upon Astartes, yet I saw the same crime unfold in the chapel.” Rafen’s jaw hardened with anger. “You did nothing to stop it.”

  Stele cocked his head and gave a shallow nod without speaking. Slowly, carefully, he began to gather in what remained of his mental fortitude.

  Rafen did not notice. “Is it not the code of the Ordo Hereticus to seek out and purge that which falls from the Emperor’s Light?”

  “Are you suggesting that Arkio is a heretic, Rafen?”

  “I…” The Marine faltered at the question, unwilling to voice such a thing. “His path… It will lead only to darkness and death.”

  The inquisitor made a noise of dismissal. “Consider this, Rafen. Perhaps it is not Arkio who is the apostate, but Dante.”

  Rafen’s eyes flared with bright fury. “You dare to profane the lord commander’s name?” His hands bunched into fists. “Perhaps it is you who is the agent of disorder here.”

  He expected the inquisitor to become enraged, but instead Stele fixed him with a strong, unwavering gaze. There was a look in his eyes that might almost have been pity. “Comrade brother,” he began, in a fatherly voice, “we are at a juncture of history, you and I. It is no dishonour to be awed by events such as those that have taken place in recent weeks. Your brother’s rise to ascendancy on Cybele, the Emergence that you were witness to in the manufactorium… Lesser men would be broken under the weight of such things.”

  Rafen felt his words of reply dying in his throat, his anger fading.

  “But you, Rafen, you are at a different crossroads. Your choice is one that no other Blood Angel faces. You cannot go forward without first resolving it.” Stele’s voice never rose in volume, but seemed to grow to fill the room, pressing in on the young Blood Angel from all sides. “You are filled with questions and confusion,” the inquisitor continued.

  Unbidden, Rafen nodded to himself. The doubts, the unending distrust that he had carried since the battle for Cybele returned to him all at once. Like a black, suffocating coil, the dark thoughts unfolded from the deeps of his soul. Rafen staggered back a step; suddenly, he felt the consequence of them like a physical force.

  “Why do you continue to question your brother?” Stele urged. “Is it because you truly doubt what he has become, or is it because you are jealous of your younger sibling?”

  “No…” Rafen forced the words out of his mouth. “Father… He…”

  Stele’s presence seemed to permeate Rafen’s perception. “You look upon him and you feel rejected, yes?” He pointed a sharp finger at the Marine, his voice rising. “You see him resplendent in the golden armour of the Great Angel and cry out it should have been me!”

  “Yes.” The reply came from nowhere, startling Rafen even as he said it. “No. I do not… Arkio is not ready!” He staggered backward, his hands coming up to press against his face. Every single doubt and misgiving that had ever plagued Rafen was welling up inside him like a foul surge tide. Clinging wreaths of despair enshrouded him. I am Adeptus Astartes, his mind cried out, I will not subm
it!

  “But you must,” Stele answered, the inquisitor’s voice humming in his very bones. “You must give up your life for Arkio—don’t you understand? It is you that holds him back from true greatness, your influence that ties him down! You always treated him as the lesser, the unready youth, but in truth it was you that feared him.” Rafen was on his knees now, and Stele’s tall form arched over him, towering and monstrous. “You could never admit that his success would be your failure.”

  In the canyons of Rafen’s mind, he relived the moment when he was rejected at Angel’s Fall, when he walked out into the deserts to die an ignoble death rather than face his tribe with his inadequacy.

  Stele saw the memory and honed it into a blade, cutting into Rafen’s will with all the psychic force he could muster. You should have died that day. “You should have let him go alone on to achieve his destiny…”

  “Yes.” Rafen choked on the word, staggering to his feet under the weight of the suicidal gloom enveloping him. “Father, I failed you…”

  Stele could barely contain the cold smile that threatened to break across his thin lips. With one final effort, he rammed home a black psy-knife of pure misery into Rafen’s troubled soul. “You can still save him, Rafen.”

  Save him save him save him save him save him save him save him. The words echoed through his sensorium. “How?” he wailed.

  “Die.” Stele’s voice cracked like thunder. “Die for your brother, Rafen. End your life and free him.”

  Free him free him free him free him free him free him free him free him. “No… no… no!” Suddenly Rafen was running, the corridors flashing past him, the city beyond, crashing through the streets, heedless and broken. You must die, said the voice in his head, betrayer of blood, you must die.

  “I must die,” he wept, falling to his knees.

  Stele’s vision tunnelled and he gasped for breath. The rush of his blood and the thumping of his heart sounded in his ears as he struggled to the chair. The effort of pushing Rafen had left him dry, his psionic will draining the very life force from him to maintain the pressure. He fell to the floor in a heap, a guttural, harsh laugh escaping from his lips. “Rafen must die,” he said aloud, and then sank into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Rafen ran.

  The streets of the city, most of them still without power after the Chaos invasion, opened up before him. Warrens of twisting stone canyons deep with shadows drew the Blood Angel in. He crossed rooftops in shuddering leaps, blundering through bombed-out pits where workshops had once stood. He stumbled through voids cut in the city by lance fire and sites where Word Bearers had been put to death.

  He ran to escape the pain, the black miasma of despair that snapped at his heels, tentacles of darkness always at his back, hungry for him. He was a heedless engine of motion, mind swept clean of nothing but misery.

  He could not stop. If he stopped, the melancholy would engulf him and he would be lost, destroyed by the flood of guilt unleashed from his own psyche. What he had witnessed tore at him like a storm of razors. The transformation of his brother, the deaths of his battle-brothers on Cybele and again on Shenlong, all these things weighed and beat him down. The sheer anguish suffocated him. Rafen watched his comrades die around him, unable to stop it. His mind reeled as he remembered every soul he had known extinguished. He wished that it had been him instead of them.

  Mother, perished in childbirth. Omeg, his childhood friend dead from shellsnakes. Toph the aspirant, torn open by fire scorpions. Crucius, shot on Ixion. Simeon, boiled alive by plasma. Koris, lost to the thirst. Gallio, gunned down…

  Faces, voices, screams, a torrent of them whirled around him. There was some distant part of him calling, some last inviolate corner of Rafen’s soul still begging him to have strength and resist, but moment by moment the voice became fainter and fainter. The touch of Inquisitor Stele’s psychic force had broken open the place inside the Space Marine where he kept his blackest regrets, and now they were free, boiling through Rafen, drowning him in his own remorse.

  Uncontrolled, the Blood Angel found himself falling, tumbling into a steel door. The hatch parted under his weight and Rafen crashed through in a tangle of armour and limbs. Hands clasping his head, he rolled to his knees. Through misted eyes he saw the place where he had come to rest, and a dart of surprise took him for a moment. Around him was a metal-walled chamber, dim and thick with chemical scent. Against one wall, a brass idol of the God-Emperor lay watching him.

  “How?” he asked the cloying air. Perhaps it was the hand of the Emperor that had guided him here, perhaps blind chance or some animalistic muscle-memory, but Rafen’s headlong flight from the Ikari fortress had returned him to the makeshift meditation cell he had created for himself in the ruins.

  Rafen reached out a trembling hand and ran his fingers over the icon; the yellowed metal felt blood-warm to his touch. Under the unblinking eyes of the Emperor, the crushing weight of his guilt came all at once and he let out a moan of anguish, an echoing, feral cry.

  “Holy Master, I have failed you. My life… means nothing. I am broken and defeated, my sorrow unbound…”

  The Marine’s hand dosed around the hilt of his combat knife, drawing the bright steel of the fractal-edged blade from its sheath. His limbs seemed to be working on their own, unwillingly following the suicidal compulsion laid into Rafen’s mind by Stele’s dark influence. The tip of the weapon touched the belly of his torso armour as it dipped downward, the blade inexorably drawn to his flesh.

  It was someone else working him now; Rafen was a hollow puppet, woodenly moving through actions that the black power of suggestion forced on him. The knife kissed the red ceramite of his chest plate and scratched a course across the armour as his hand drew it upward.

  “I am ended…” Rafen’s blade was at his neck, the serrated edge dipping into the meat of his throat. Blood pooled in the lee of the knife as the wound opened, running down the gutter of the weapon, across his bare knuckles and wrist.

  Pain came then, pain, and the smell of his own vital fluid. The sensations pierced the shroud of despair gathered about Rafen’s soul, punching through the fog of his mind. He gasped—and in that moment everything changed.

  A trembling sensation came upon the Blood Angel, every muscle in his body throbbing like a struck chord. The dual pulse-beat of his twin hearts rumbled in Rafen’s ears, the racing thunder of blood through his arteries suddenly a roaring torrent. Adrenaline heat surged out from his chest to fill his hollow core. He was an empty vessel abruptly filled with molten energy. Saliva flooded the Marine’s mouth at the thought of rich vitae on his lips. His vision, clouded moments before with morose shadows, was darkened by a red mist of passion.

  Rafen shook with the raw power that welled up inside him, letting it wash away the insidious venom of melancholy. He knew this sensation well: it was the precursor to the black rage. The Blood Angel threw back his head, the brilliant white darts of his fangs baring. The red thirst was upon him, warring with the psychic toxins left behind by Stele’s potent mind-witchery.

  And still his knife was at his throat, the metal cleaving flesh and threatening to sever arteries. One small jerk of the wrist would be enough. A war was being fought inside the Marine: rage facing despair, fury versus misery, white-hot wrath crashing against cold, soul-numbing anguish.

  “I… will… not… die!” Rafen screamed. He had come too far, fought too hard to be felled by his own inner fears. “I am Adeptus Astartes,” he roared. “I am the Emperor’s Chosen.” Rich blood tricked down his torso armour, staining the white metal wings surrounding the ruby droplet sigil. “Sanguinius, hear me! I am a Blood Angel!”

  His sight grew hazy as prickles of gold-white light unfolded out of the air around him. Rafen’s words choked off in a gasp as a pressure rose inside his skull, pushing at the edges of his perception. He glimpsed a halo of honeyed illumination glitter about the brass icon in the seconds before the light ove
rwhelmed him. Radiance touched his bare skin with delicate warmth, like the kiss of a perfect summer day. Rafen’s heart swelled, the pain, the blood, the misery all swept away from him.

  His vision collapsed to a single point: a face, a figure, a shape opening there in the void before him, coalescing from the fines of dust in the air itself. It towered over him, made him childlike in comparison; it filled the room even though the chamber could never have contained it. The golden form accreted and took on features—eyes, nose, mouth. Rafen gasped, the thought of it thrilling at his lips.

  “Sanguinius…”

  This was no pretender, no Reborn Angel, no mere changed man before him. The mellifluent, achingly perfect face of the Blood Angels primarch bore down on Rafen, a vision of the Great Progenitor of his Chapter invoked from the very matter of the blood surging in his veins. Every battle-brother carried an iota of the Pure One inside him. Since the foundation of the Blood Angels, the conclaves of the Chapter’s Sanguinary Priests had kept the living vitae of their long-dead master in the sacred Red Grail, and on their induction into the Chapter initiates would drink from a holy cup that held a philtre of this hallowed fluid. Rafen felt that blood within his blood sing out as like touched like. The Crimson Angel ran a hand over Rafen’s face and, with infinite tenderness, drew away the bloody knife. Suddenly the blade seemed his again, his body responding to his commands once more and not the suggestions of another.

  Rafen lowered his face to the flat of the knife and licked his own blood; the rich coppery taste was strong and heady. The violence within, the clawing feral might of the red thirst ebbed as he drank, receding—and with it went the vision, the gold aura about him disintegrating. Rafen’s hand stabbed outward, fingers reaching for his primarch. “Lord, help me!” he cried. “What must I do?”