sky black.
M ist rolled ahead of the Ebon Cities ground forces. T hick fumes curled forward in a wave of fog that buried the marsh in blue-black smoke. Massive silhouettes were barely visible within, a host of slow-moving behemoth humanoids that moved jerkily. Patches of rotting green flesh appear ed as the figures came to the edge of the smoke. Blank eyes stared ahead. The Doj zombies dragged broken tree-trunks or planks of wood d otted with steel shards and nails. They walked with terrifying precision, and stamp ed their way through the swamp.
Many of the giants held large iron spheres the size of cauldrons. Small holes in the spheres leaked blue-black flames.
“ Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Marcus shouted.
“We can’t leave! ” Burke hissed. “Rake is inside now with Cross and the God-damn ed spy!”
“Then get us in there!” Kane shouted. “Now!”
Burke looked at Turner. The ship veered as gunfire rapped against the hull. One of the vampire warships had spotted them, and several more moved to intercept.
“Do it,” Burke said, and he nodded at Raal, the human-like Grey Clan sorcerer. Mourne stood close by. Raal nodded to the pilot, and the ship lurched sideways.
The world tilted. Kane’s insides twisted. Black explosions and tracer fire came so close the walls rattle d. Th e engines groaned and fired as the ship dipped closer to the sodden earth.
The Grey Clan skiffs turned to intercept the vampire warships.
Kane felt voices slither through his mind.
Kill black blood will eat the world you will kill lick gobble swim in our oceans black oceans beneath blood moon sickle cut the life from world’s veins twist bleed till nothing left nothing suck you dry the blood the blood is lost
“Gah!”
Kane’s head pounded so hard he felt like he’d caught a brick right between the eyes. He fell to his knees and tried to fight off the voices.
“It’s t he vampire collective consciousness,” Turner said. “We need to take him out. ”
“Whoa, what?!” Kane shouted. He looked at Turner. “You said I was fine!”
Marcus pulled a 9mm Beretta from a shoulder-holster and aimed it at Kane ’s face, but before he’d even released the safety Ronan had a kodachi to his throat.
“You’ll be dead before he is,” the swordsman growled.
“He’s being drawn into the vampire collective…” Turner yelled, but Kane barely heard her. Images flashed through his mind, painful stabbing visions that made his eyes wince and his heart g o cold. An obelisk of black ice. A grim stone bust of an ancient bearded man. Razors that fell like rain. Cold light at the end of a dark shaft. Eyes like mirrors, staring out from rows of pale faces.
I’m seeing what they see, he realized. I’m slipping closer to them.
“Contact!” someone shouted, and moments later the ship buckled. Ballistics struck the hull. Glass and steel ripped apart. Cold wind sc rap ed through the opened aircraft and suck ed Grey Clan and Revengers into the sky.
Cold sliced in to his core. The suction of air pulled Kane off his feet. Everything went end over end. He saw Maur wrestle for the controls as the dead pilot fell forward in a shower of sparks. Ronan accidentally sliced Marcus’ s throat as the ship lurched violently. Burke grabbed Turner and shielded her from the glass and steel that blasted through the bridge.
Kane grabbed Jade and held onto the bench. The horizon flipped. Everything spun. For a moment they hung weightless, suspended in mid-air as the ship fell.
Shit, was all he could think, and he knew it was a stupid thought, but it was all that went through his mind as the vessel drifted out of the sky. Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!
The ground blasted against them. Iron and metal bent inwards. The ship landed upside down: they seemed to crash into the sky. The ceiling was the floor, and it buckled in. Kane twisted around and positioned himself to absorb the brunt of the impact for Jade.
Even after they were still, h e felt like they were upside-down, stuck to the roof of the world.
Whispers growled through his mind. He ignored them by bit ing his own lip. He thought of Ekko, how she’d been mostly vampiric the last few hours of her life.
She went through this, this exact thing you’re going through now. She made it. She fought for you till the very end. You can, too. You owe it to her.
“Kane…” Jade groaned.
“Get up,” he said. “We have to get out of here.” Kane rose, aware of the gaping cuts in his leg. Blood poured from his skin where a piece of shrapnel was embedded in his calf, but he didn’t feel it, and he decided that was for the best.
Metal beams dangled from the floor overhead, and glass covered the ceiling beneath them. Sparks rained down from above. The roar of cannon fire and bomb blasts echoed through the air. The ship was rent and torn and oozed oil and fuel. He smelled fire and blood and heard groans of pain.
Several Grey Clan had been injured or killed in the blast, torn apart by the impact or the explosions. Others lay maimed. Grey-green blood was everywhere.
Sol was dead, impaled on a piece of steel.
“Kane!” Ronan shouted. “Let’s go!”
“Where’s Maur?!”
“Maur is here!” the Gol coughed. Kane couldn’t see him through the haze of smoke, but he knew the voice.
Burke was bloody and bruised, but both he and Turner had survived. Neither of them seemed all that concerned with the loss of Marcus.
“ Look!” he shouted.
They saw u ndead through the shattered windows. The roiling blue fog advanced like a vehicle across the ground. The rhythmic advance of undead giants sounded like massive drums as they closed in on the ship.
“Ronan, grab Maur!” Kane shouted. He looked at Jade. “I have to get to that city,” he told her. “Are you with us or not?”
Jade looked around. She seemed at a los s.
Another blast hit, a mortar shell that landed less than a hundred yards away. The walls rattled. W ater and mud splashed down outside.
“Jade?!” he yelled.
“Yes!”
She ran over to Sol and pulled off his pack.
T hey ran along the inverted ceiling of the crashed vessel. Cables and wiring sparked and oozed hydraulic fluid. Kane, Ronan, Maur and Jade raced out of the shattered viewport. Raal, Mourne, Burke, Turner and a handful of Revengers and Grey Clan followed close on their heels as they leapt down o nto the muddy field. They grabbed as many weapons as they could on the way, and Kane found himself with an M4A1. Ronan grabbed an MP5 A2, and Maur had a SIG SG 552, a weapon nearly as large as he was if not for the removed stock and the fore-grip. Burke and the Revengers held HK G36Ks, and they fired into the mob of giants.
The grey mist hung thick and low, and t he marsh ooze was deep and slick. Kane sank up to his ankles in fluid that smelled of brine and puss. T hey s loshed their way towards the nearest walkway, which suddenly exploded beneath a mortar shell, leaving nothing but ruined splinters.
They turned towards t he ruins of Voth Ra’morg, which were still half- a-mile mile away. Thunderous blasts and the roar of engines screamed through the sky as the Grey Clan vessels exchanged fire with vampire warships. Razorwings and gargoyles soared overhead.
Kane and the others had landed between the Ebon Cities’ waves of advancing troops: t he Tr o j were ahead of them, engaged with the Scarecrows near the city, while t he mob of undead giants was at their backs, still a good distance off but moving slow and steady.
“We are so screwed,” he said.
“Not yet,” Ronan said. His shemagh was o ff, but Ronan still wore a cloth wrap around his lower face. Even then, Kane could tell he was smiling evilly.
