exuded death. To Wood, she looked no better than a rotting corpse. 'And I knew you were coming. I could smell your dead stink from a hundred paces.'
Lorna hissed, claws slashing, then rolled right under Wood's sword, and slashed her claws across Fat Bill's belly. She opened him like a bag of offal, and his bowels spooled out as if from a reel, his hands dropping his sword and paddling at his entrails with mad scooping motions as he tried to hold himself together.
Lorna leapt back as Wood's sword whistled past her throat, and she was smiling, and Fat Bill slammed to the floor of the roof and made panting noises as he slowly died. He waved a bloodied hand at Wood. 'Kill her, kill her!' he groaned, 'don't fucking bother about me!'
Wood ran at Lorna, her face showing surprise for a moment, but she back-flipped away. His sword slammed at her, cutting a line down her pale arm, and the flesh opened but no blood came out. She grabbed the wound, and the smile fell from her lips.
'You see, you cut like any other bitch,' snarled Wood, and anger was firing him into the realms of hatred now. This wasn't just another vampire. This had become personal.
'You didn't kill me last time,' taunted Lorna, and they circled. She darted forward, claws slashing for his throat, but his sword flashed up cutting her short. She leapt away, and back-flipped up onto the battlements. She turned, and let out a howl, and below vampires swarmed from still, silent, dark buildings. They began to climb up houses and factories and towers, towards the hidden old soldiers. Faces gleamed like pale ghosts in the moonlight. Snow melted on necrotic flesh, making them shine.
Wood ran at her, but she leapt over him in an amazing high arc, a back-flip but Wood anticipated the move and leapt at the same time, his sword ramming up in a hard vertical strike, entering her body at the core of her spine and emerging from under her breasts in a shower of black blood.
Wood landed, panting, and turned fast. Lorna had continued her somersault, landed, and cradled the point of the blade emerging from her chest. She stood, the sword straight through her to the hilt, and smiled at Wood. There was blood on her lips. On her fangs.
'Bastard,' she said, and ran at him, and Wood's hands came up but she grabbed him, and she was awesomely strong, and she pulled him into a bear hug and Wood found the point of his own sword pressing into him, into his chest, and then driving in through flesh and bone, and he gasped and it burned and steel grated on bone. Lorna was close. Close enough to kiss. Her breath stunk like the grave, and her pretty dark eyes were fixed on Wood.
She leant forward. 'How does it feel, Command Sergeant Wood? How does it feel, not only to die, but to see all your old friends die?'
Wood gasped, and pain swamped him for a moment, the world turning red and hot and unbearable. Then he caught himself from falling into the dark pit, and turned, and saw the vampires stood across the rooftops. There were several hundred. Out of the shadows rose the old soldiers of Falanor, Kelv the Axeman, Old Man Connie, Bulbo the Dull, Weevil and Bad Socks and so many more. So many men. So many soldiers. So many memories. They were surrounded, and outnumbered…
Lorna kissed Wood, first on the lips, then on his ear. Her fangs lowered towards his neck. She jerked him tighter, into her, a metal conjugation of the blade. A hard steel fuck. And her fangs caressed his neck, as she savoured the moment of the hunt. She seemed to sniff him, and taste him, and enjoy a lingering moment.
Below, on the rooftops, the vampires attacked…
Kell and Myriam crept from house to house, from street to street. They kept to shadows and moved with an infinity of care. Their aim wasn't to take on the vampire army. Their aim was to slaughter its Warlord.
'You were right,' whispered Myriam, close to Kell's ear, her words tickling. 'He's in the tower. How did you know?'
Kell grinned a skeletal grin in the darkness. 'Intuition. These vampires. They have some fucking ego, that's for sure. Come on.' They moved on through gloom, through falling snow which smelt of a distant, frozen sea. They could hear the sounds of battle now, shouting, screams, the echoing, reverberating cries of attacking vampires and slap of steel on flesh. Kell and Myriam did not talk about it. There was nothing to talk about. They simply pushed on, forward, further into the realm of the vampire.
Ilanna was drawn. And ready.
Myriam carried her Widowmaker in one gloved hand, and her vachine fangs were out. They gleamed in the darkness. She was as ready for battle as she could ever be.
They drifted like ghosts. Somewhere, a building burned. Vampires were screaming in the flames, and the roasting of flesh smelled like cooked pig interlaced with something subtly… human. Kell nearly puked, so they pulled back, crept down a different alleyway. As they left the black smoke behind they could see the Warlord's Tower.
They crouched and watched it for a while. Around the base were perhaps a hundred vampires, lounging in the snow, some walking, none talking. They seemed lethargic, sleepy, without any focus.
'What's the matter with them?' hissed Kell.
'Lack of fresh blood. They grow tired. Soon, they'll turn on one another. You'll see.'
'How do you know this?'
'I feel it in myself,' said Myriam, smiling and showing brass fangs. 'We're not so different, them and me. No matter what they say, no matter what they think. They believe we are a deviant offspring; the Soul Stealers told me we were the more ancient race. We have our clans far to the north, in the cold places where humans don't travel. Me and Saark; we are parts of those vachine clans, now. Part of a distant, clockwork world. Part of an ancient heritage. One day, they will call us. And we will not be able to resist.'
Kell stared at her, then shrugged. He got a sudden feeling the vachine of Silva Valley nestled deep within the Black Pike Mountains had been just a glimpse of what the vachine really were. Of their size, their might, their ferocity. Images flashed dark in his mind. Of huge clockwork vampire armies. Vast, cold and mechanical. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. And Silva Valley had been an offshoot, rebels almost. And the vampires thought they had birthed the vachine – when in reality, it had been the other way round.
Kell shivered. It was too much to comprehend. Not here. Not now.
'That's a battle for another day,' he said, finally, and saw the curious look in Myriam's eye. He held up a finger. 'No. Don't even consider trying to convert me to what you have become. You had a good reason for becoming vachine, Myriam. A damn good reason. But I'm happy to die like any other old man.'
'You can live forever,' she whispered, and kissed him on the cheek.
'Sometimes, I think it's better to die,' he said, with an inherent wisdom he did not feel. Then he blinked, and shrugged off her vachine spell. He grinned. 'Come on, lass. How do we get in?'
'Up there.' She pointed to another tower, and between the two ran twin cables. 'It's for passing messages, from the Warlord's Tower to servant quarters. We can climb across that.'
Kell looked at the awesome height, with an equally awesome fall to iced cobbles below. 'I can't bloody climb across a cable like that!' he scowled. 'I'll fall! I'll die!'
'No,' smiled Myriam. 'You won't. You're Kell, the Legend.'
'I wish people would stop saying that,' muttered the old warrior, and sheathing Ilanna on his back, followed Myriam to the second, smaller tower. It was unguarded, and they entered through a doorway that looked like a broken mouth,
Into the breach, thought Kell, and chuckled. Somebody up there has a fine sense of humour!
They climbed a massive circular stone staircase for what seemed an age. Kell's knees complained. His back complained. He complained, but in an internal muttering monologue which had served him well for many a decade in the army. Years of running through mud, carrying logs, wading through rivers, staggering under heavy armour, fighting with a heavy shield on one arm, axe in hand, bodies falling before him, beneath him, carved like fine roast beef…
Kell blinked. A chilled wind scoured him.
The view from the tower ledge was incredible, spreading away through a fine haze of snow. Fire burned throughout the Port of Gollothrim. Vampires screamed and shrieked. Again, he could hear the sounds of battle, but could not determine the armoured units of Falanor men, of Blacklippers and criminals he had created. Here to fight for you. Here to die for you. So get on with it! Kill the Warlord. Then we can go home.
Is it ever that easy?
It always begins with a small step.
