below the nose. Blood splattered the flags. Myriam speared her adversary through the eye, and he fell in a limp heap.
Myriam turned back to Kell. 'I thought you were going to fall off!' she snapped.
'Me too.'
'Your arse would have made one mighty huge crack in the cobbles.'
'I'll lay off the ale and puddings when this is over, that's for sure.'
Myriam grinned, and released a long-drawn breath. 'Another one's coming. It feels like they were waiting for us!'
'I didn't expect anything less,' said Kell.
Division General Dekull stepped from the shadows, a large man with a bull-neck and a hefty scowl. He had thinning brown hair and large hands, each one bearing a sword. He was a formidable opponent, equalling Kell in size and weight, but carrying less fat.
Before Kell could speak, Myriam charged, light, graceful, sword slashing down. Dekull swayed slightly, a precise movement, and back-handed Myriam across the chamber where her head cracked against the wall. It was a sickening noise, and made Kell wince.
'At last, the mighty Kell,' said Dekull, voice a rumble. 'We've been… waiting for you. Let's say your reputation precedes you.'
'I won't ask your name,' said Kell. 'And the only thing that precedes you is the foul, rotten-egg stench.'
Dekull's face darkened. 'You should learn some respect, feeble, petty, rancid mortal.'
'Respect? For your kind? I'd rather show you my cock.'
'I'm going to teach you a lesson you will never forget, boy…' snarled Dekull, vampire fangs ejecting, shoulders hunching, swords glittering.
Kell laughed, an open, genuine sound of humour. 'My name is Kell,' he rumbled. 'Here, let me carve it on your arse, lest you forget.'
Kell moved forward, wary, and Dekull charged with a roar which showed his vampire fangs in all their glory, glinting with reflected firelight from the orange glow outside.
Kell felt the killing rage come on him, and it was now and here and the time was right. He was no longer an old man. He was no longer a weary, aged, retired soldier. Now he was strong and fast and deadly; he was a creature born in the Days of Blood and he revelled in his might, prowess, superiority, and although he knew this was a splinter of blood-oil magick, a dark magick, a trick and a curse instilled from his dead wife trapped inside his mighty, possessed axe – he locked the information in a tiny cage and tossed away the key with a snort. Now, he needed this energy. No matter how dark. No matter how bad. No matter how inherently evil.
Now, he needed the Legend.
Kell needed the Legend…
Kell slapped the swords aside, left right, a fast figureof-eight curving from Ilanna with intricate insane skill, and front-kicked Dekull in the chest. But Dekull came on, crashing into Kell, who grabbed Dekull's ear and with a growl wrenched it off. Dekull screamed, a shocking high-pitched noise as blood erupted, and Kell crashed his fist – still holding the flapping ear – into Dekull's nose, breaking it with a crunch. Then Ilanna lifted high, keening with promise, and slammed down, cutting Dekull from collarbone to mid-chest allowing the huge man to flap open. Dekull staggered back, almost cut in two, his arms a good eight feet apart. Swords clattered to the stone, useless, released by limp twitching fingers.
Kell rolled his shoulders, and stared into Division General Dekull's eyes. They were glazed in disbelief, but he was still alive, still conscious. 'Damn,' muttered Kell, clenching and unclenching his hands. 'That cold out there, it spoiled my bloody stroke. Here, lad. Let's have another go, shall we?' The second blow started where the first had ended, cleaving Dekull clean in two. Entrails and internal organs slopped to the floor, along with fat and muscle and skin and neatly severed bones. Kell turned from the dead vampire and stared through the portal.
Myriam had regained her feet, swaying and holding onto the wall. She sensed a change in Kell, and kept well back. He was different. He wasn't just dangerous; he was deadly. Deadly to everyone. She licked her lips and his terrible raging eyes fell on her. There was insanity there, wriggling, like a corrupt worm at the heart of a corrupt apple.
'Kell?'
'Yes?'
'Bhu Vanesh. Through there.' She pointed.
'Stay here,' said Kell, with a torn, sickly grimace. 'I wouldn't like you to get in the way.'
Kell strode forward, through the archway, up several steps and into a huge circular chamber. It was devoid of furniture, but thick rugs covered the walls and windows keeping the room in perpetual darkness. The floor, also, was completely filled with thick embroidered rugs, each showing complex patterns of blood-oil magick invocation, or scenes of rape and mutilation from ancient battles.
Bhu Vanesh sat in the centre of the chamber, crosslegged, long limbs relaxed, his smoky skin squirming with half-formed, drifting scenes of his distilled depravity; the eating of flesh, the biting of throats, acts of decadent arching screaming deathrape, the joy of giggling child murder, the orgasm in the hunt of the innocent, the frail, the stupid…
Bhu Vanesh.
Greatest of the Vampire Warlords.
The Prime.
Bhu Vanesh…
The Eater in the Dark.
Kell halted, and Ilanna clunked to the carpeted stone. His eyes burned like molten ore. He smiled a grim smile that had nothing to do with humour, and glanced down at the pile of child corpses, a small pyramid of desolation nestling pitifully beside the Warlord. There were perhaps thirty or forty babes in all, drained to husks, nothing more than bones in mottled flesh sacks.
'Interrupt breakfast, did I, you corrupted deviant fuck?' snarled Kell. His voice was bleak, like breeze over leaden caskets. Like the solitary chime of a funeral bell.
'Welcome to my humble home, Kell, Legend,' spoke Bhu Vanesh, and smoke curled from his mouth, around his grey vampire fangs, around his long long claws which reached out towards Kell, as if imploring the old man to lay down his axe.
'Well, I got to say it, this ain't your home, Vanesh. It's time for you to go back. Back to the Chaos Halls. Back to the Keepers. You know this. You know it's time you left my world.'
Bhu Vanesh's eyes flashed dark, like jewelled obsidian in smoke pools. He stood, a long, languorous uncurling imbued with restrained power. He towered over Kell, and his long legs seemed to sag at knee joints which bent the wrong way, and his arms reached almost to the ground and ended in vicious-looking curved talons. And all the time his smoke skin curled and twisted, depicting scenes of murder and cruelty and evil sex and deathrape and the hunt. The hunting of women. The hunting of children. From Bhu Vanesh's past… His History. His Legacy. Faces flashed in quick succession across his smoke skin. All begging. Pleading. Screaming. Dying.
Darkness, desolation, fear, hate, all emanated from the Vampire Warlord like a bad drug. A stench of hate. An aroma of evil.
Kell swallowed.
Something grabbed him in its fist.
Fear, a rancid ball of fat, filled his belly and throat and mind.
It took him over. It rolled into him, and filled him like a jug to the brim.
Kell wanted to puke. He wanted to scream. He wanted to die…
It was all he could do to meet Bhu Vanesh's piercing gaze.
'You dare to come here and challenge me?' snarled the Vampire Warlord. 'You, nothing but a smear of shit on the vastness of time and purity, nothing but a wriggling, deformed babe fresh from its mother's stinking syphilitic cunt, nothing but a smear of organic pus from the rancid quivering arsehole of Chaos?' His voice had risen to a roar. The walls seemed to shake. Brands flickered wild in their brackets, almost extinguishing with Bhu Vanesh's open raw wild fury. He took a step forward, head lowering to Kell's level, and his huge long arms lifted threateningly. 'Turn around, you fucking pointlessness, and leave me in peace.'
Bhu Vanesh began a slow turn, back to his pile of suckled corpses, his face and demeanour filled with disgust,
