Soul Stealers: The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles (34 page)

    "This is a place of blood-oil magick," said Myriam, gently, and drew her own short sword. It was silver, and it glowed, just a hint, but enough to show it was no ordinary weapon of base metal. "And the Soul Stealers are strong here, Kell, so strong… stronger than you could ever comprehend."

    Nienna and Saark were running, and Kell turned back to Myriam. His intention was obvious. Never leave an enemy behind; especially not one with a bow. Ilanna came up, black butterfly blades dull by comparison to Myriam's silver sword, but infinitely more threatening. He launched at Myriam, but she danced back, silver sword parrying the blow. Again, something whistled past Kell, so fast he did not see, and something fine and hard wrapped around his face. With Ilanna in one hand, he clawed at the substance, pulling at it but it wriggled, and he saw it was a fine gauge golden wire. More whistles and moans of wind surrounded him, and suddenly there was a flurry of activity as the Soul Stealers passed, their flight one of magick, and the gold wire wrapped around Kell's face and head and neck, and the wire was around his arms, pinning them against him and strapping Ilanna to him, and he fought and struggled, but they drew tight and he screamed as they cut through clothing, cut into his flesh, then they were squirming, moving, writhing as if they had a surreal intelligence, a form of metal life, and Kell's legs were tightened and he hit the bridge, watched the wire as it seemed to
expand
and grow and wind around him, and around him, until he could not move, could barely breathe, locked to his axe like a dark lover.

    Kell watched, witnessed Saark and Nienna hit the bridge further along. There came light slaps as the Soul Stealers landed on the stone, vachine fangs bared, eyes crimson and burning. They moved close to Kell, and Tashmaniok knelt, and stroked his face and beard interwoven by gold wire, and she smiled, then turned back to Myriam who had sheathed her sword.

    "Bring him," she said, and in raw agony Kell passed into darkness.

CHAPTER 16

Warlords

Vor, capital city of Falanor, sat in silence, desolate, a ghost town. Fine snow whipped along the dead streets. Darkness bled into corners like leaking ink. Occasionally, lightning cracked the sky like a bad egg.

    On a hill overlooking the city squatted the Blood Refineries. They were dark, brooding, terrible in their monstrous design and purpose. The wind hummed around the huge vachine-built edifices, as if conveying a lament for the slaughtered, the drained, and the desecrated.

    Above this gentle storm of snow, there came a crackle of high electricity. Not lightning, but a web of incandescent fingers which trailed across the sky in bursts, illuminating the clouds, melting the snow, filling the sky with a lightshow of wonder and bestial primitive ferocity. The only audience were encamped soldiers from the Army of Iron left behind to guard the Blood Refineries, and they emerged from tents and shielded eyes, gazing up in wonder, heads tilting, mouths forming lines of compression… and of understanding.

    "So it begins," said one, his words a whisper in the storm.

    More crackles leapt across the sky, this time blood red and turning the night into an electric storm of crimson. The Refineries started to hum, to vibrate like caged animals in shackles desperate to break free. The horizontal bursts of electricity filled the sky, no longer bursts but sheets of sparks and webs and fire, which finally
discharged
with tornadoes of bright burning light against the Blood Refineries… and the world was filled with noise and concussion and raw energy as General Graal, hands raised in the Black Pike Mountains, on Helltop, on the Vampire Warlords' Seat of Power, so he drew this source of blood-oil magick and allowed it a channel
home.

     They had assembled on Helltop, and Graal walked along the line of Granite Thrones, his back to them, showing contempt for their weakness, but also hiding his joy at their capture. Kell was dumped to the slick smooth ground, and he grunted as he hit the floor and glared up at Graal with undisguised loathing. Nienna was weeping, the wires which bound her cutting into flesh and drawing blood, and Saark said nothing, his mouth a bloodless slit. Graal turned.

    "Stand them up."

    Unceremoniously, the Soul Stealers dragged Kell, Nienna and Saark to their feet, and they shivered as the cold mountain wind kissed them, and gazed around at the silent dark gathering. There were soldiers from the Army of Iron, a silent honour guard for their General and Watchmaker, Kradek-ka. Of the three Granite Thrones, two were occupied. The first, by a young woman with long, golden curls and the fangs of the vachine. Her face was slack, drugged, her eyes rolled back in a skull which showed the marks of a beating. Her throat still sported a huge puncture wound, halfhealed by advanced vachinery, and softly through the silence, the tick-tick-tick of her clockwork could be heard. On the second throne was a strange, crumpled, black-skinned creature, his skin more like insect chitin than real flesh. He was tied, as were Kell and Saark, with tight golden wire and although they could read no expression in his face, his eyes held a deep and ancient rage… and yet also understanding, and submission, and cooperation. For Jageraw, this was the culmination of his purpose and his existence. This was his destiny, and they needed no bonds.

    Kell hawked, and spat on the ground. Distantly, thunder rumbled through the mountains, the Black Pikes displaying unease and raw, limitless power. He scowled at Graal, and looked slowly around, at the soldiers, at Kradek-ka who displayed a facial expression of intense focus, and then to the Soul Stealers and Myriam, their vachine subordinate, who had helped capture them and truss them like goats ready for sacrifice.

    "At last. Kell. You have arrived. We have been waiting for you."

    Kell growled something incomprehensible, and spat again. "I made a grave mistake the last time we met, Graal. I should have carved you out a skull-bucket and pissed in it. However. The error is mine, but one I'll not make again."

    Graal gave a low, level laugh, but his eyes held no humour. He looked up at the torn sky. Then back to Kell. "Can you not feel the
shift
in power, Kell? Old man, can you not feel the vibrations in the air, and smell the sickly-sweet blood-stench of a hundred thousand victims? They are coming back, tonight, and all we lacked was the final Soul Gem. My beautiful daughters, here," he moved around Tashmaniok, his hand sliding around her hips as he walked, and she tilted her head to smile at Kell, a dazzling show of beauty, "they did well to find it and deliver it to evil."

    "What horseshit is this?" snarled Kell. "We have no Soul Gem!"

    "But you do," said Graal, voice lover-soft, moving close to Kell, "and it is buried inside," he touched his own chest, "integrated with the heart, and it will be such a shame to cut it free because, sadly, a side effect of removing the Soul Gem is… death."

    He turned and moved back to the Granite Thrones. He reached out, and touched the huge solid artefacts, face serene, for he knew everything was ready, everything aligned, in place, and nothing – not even Kell – could stop them. Nothing on earth could stop the Vampire Warlords.

    Graal raised his arms to the sky, and the sky crackled with horizontal sheets of crimson electricity. The Soul Stealers moved to him, stood slightly back, pale faces bathed in a glow of blood-oil magick. The wind shrieked through Helltop like a million banshees. The snowstorm whipped and snapped, and the sky, still full of awesome primal power, an awe-inspiring
Summoning
, turned red and black as it filled with blood-oil streaks of energy. The snow itself turned red, into frozen blood snowflakes, and crimson flakes fell around Helltop like tears from the slain, which is what they surely were.

    "They are coming," said Graal, and looked to Kradek-ka. "Are you ready?"

    "I am ready," said Kradek-ka, face impassive.

    Kell struggled against the wires which held him, then glanced across at Saark. "Lad? Can you hear me?"

    Saark looked at Kell, weariness and defeat shining in his eyes like emerald tears. He gave a single nod.

    "Can you help me get free?"

    "I doubt it," whispered Saark. "And even if I did, you would slay me."

    "What are you talking about?" hissed Kell, face a contortion of effort and fury. Around them, the bloody snow thickened, and more discharges rent the sky. The wind howled like death, moaned like a widow, screeched like a castrated priest.

    "I was bitten. I am changing. I will become like her." He gestured to Myriam with a nod of his head. His voice was as bleak as a midwinter sacrifice. Then he looked at Kell, full in the eyes, face contorted in fear. "You are the Vampire Hunter," he said, voice almost sardonic. "I will never sleep soundly again." His eyes dropped to the floor, his dark curls whipped by the savage wind.

    "Listen, lad," growled Kell, trying to control his temper, "the only one I'm going to kill around here is that annoying fucker Graal. So get your claws out, or your vampire fangs or whatever, and get me free of this fucking wire! You hear?"

    "I cannot," said Saark. He was filled to the brim with melancholy. He had resigned himself to death. He sighed, like a tumbling fall of worlds.

    "You will not!" snapped Kell, and watched uneasily from the corner of his eye as Kradek-ka drew a long, curved, matt black blade. "Help us get free, you dandy bastard! Look. I promise I'll not kill you. There. I've said it. You can't let them do this…"

    Saark shook his head, tears running down his cheeks. "Truly, Kell, it is out of my control."

    Kell stopped his struggling. The gold wire bit his flesh like razors. He was pinned to Ilanna, the greatest of slayers, and the irony was he could not get a hand free to wield the mighty weapon.
If only I could get one arm
free,
he thought.
I would welcome the orgy of violence! I
would bathe in blood again. Just like the Old Days.

    Suddenly, the energy and horizontal sheets of lightning and fire died, along with the wind and the snow. The sky was a terrible, flat black, as if they gazed up into a slab portal of nothing, a huge and endless void. Silence settled like ash. The world became an incredibly still place.

    "What's your next trick?" shouted Kell. "You going to pull a rabbit out of a horse's arse?"

    Graal stared at Kell, as if seeing him for the first time. Then he gazed down, down at a small pool of black which nestled at floor level before the Thrones. The Arteries of Skaringa Dak. The life-blood of the mountain itself. Kell blinked, seeing the pool for the first time; it was black, black as ink, black as moonlit blood, black as the Eternity Void.

    Graal spoke, and when he spoke it was as if he communed with the mountain, with Skaringa Dak Herself. "Mighty Vrekken, hear my call, rise up for me, rise up and do my bidding!" and his hands crackled with bloodoil magick and Graal knelt, and plunged his hands down into the pool and his eyes were closed and blood ran from his eyes and ears, staining his pale white skin red, and his body vibrated and twitched as if in violent epileptic spasm, and then Graal kicked backwards, sprawling to the ground at the foot of the three Granite Thrones, but quickly stood, coughing up blood and spitting it to the rock. He grinned over at Kell, teeth stained, then towards the motionless figure of Kradek-ka.

    "We need the Soul Gems," he whispered.

    Kradek-ka approached Anukis, and her eyes seemed suddenly normal and sane as she gazed into the face of her father, the father who had nurtured her from womb to womanhood and whom she had trusted with all her heart. "No," she said, golden curls trembling, vachine fangs baring as the dagger plunged into her chest, tearing through white cotton and cutting deep through to her heart… Anukis screamed, and started to thrash madly despite her golden bonds, splashing blood upon the Thrones, and Kradek-ka grasped her throat, steadying her, and cut a deep circular hole in her chest, the tip of the knife slicing through skin and breast-bone to prise free the Soul Gem which had lain dormant inside her, a parasite, beating with her heart since birth.

    Kradek-ka took the Soul Gem, and turned to Graal, and behind him his daughter writhed on the Granite Throne in the throes of death, blood bubbling up her throat and down her chin like a crimson mask. But Kradek-ka ignored his kindred, and lifted the Soul Gem for Graal to see. It was small, the size of a thumbnail, and a perfect cylinder of matt black which gleamed under a coating of Anukis's blood-oil.

    "And the next," said Graal, blue eyes shining. His words, although softly spoken, carried across the surreal, impossibly quiet plateau of Helltop.

    Kell's head snapped left, to Saark, then down, to Nienna, who was watching with a kind of morbid fascination as Kradek-ka approached the corrugated black creature that was Jageraw.
They think one of us carries
a Soul Gem!
screamed his mind, suddenly. But which one? And something pierced his mind like a splinter, and he smiled a sour smile as he realised what made him special, what made him such a terrible, evil killer. There was something alien inside his flesh. Something which had corrupted him. Something in his heart, put there during the Days of Blood.

    In silent shame Kell replayed his past, the horrific deeds he had committed, and surety settled in his mind like honey in a pot. The Soul Gem was inside him. It had polluted him. Turned him bad, like an alien cancer. And now they were going to cut it free. And then he was going to die… but at least die a pure man, at least die a
good
man. Now, he truly understood.

    Kell struggled against the wires, and Nienna looked up at him and she smiled, and it was a terribly sad smile that filled him with an empty, rolling void. He could not stand for this! He would not stand for this. But the more he struggled, the more the golden wires bit his flesh until he was slick and slippery with his own blood and his own lacerated skin. "Bastards," he was growling, "bastards!" he screamed, his voice booming across Helltop and the Black Pike Mountains but it did not matter, it made no difference as Kradek-ka's blade sawed through Jageraw's chitinous armour and the creature made no sound, made no struggle, even as the blade bit flesh and cut through to his heart, prising out the Soul Gem on its tip to lie, nestling in Kradek-ka's palm like an excised insect.

    "The Hexels hid you well," said Kradek-ka, and his eyes were locked to Jageraw's and he smiled, head tilting. "The Soulkeepers gave you the weapons to live, little boy. They turned you into something… something
else
. So you could protect this Soul Gem, the First Soul Gem, until the time of the Summoning. We owe you a great debt."

    Jageraw nodded, and closed his eyes, and died in silence.

    Something seemed to sweep across Helltop. It was an
emotion
, a
pulse
of energy. "They can feel us," said Graal, licking bloodied lips. "The Vampire Warlords acknowledge us."

    "One more," said Kradek-ka, and turned towards Kell, and Saark, and Nienna.

    "One more," nodded Graal, and walked slowly forward, the Soul Stealers close behind, their footsteps matching his, their white hair glowing in the odd light from an unseen moon.

    "You were the hardest to hunt down," said Graal, his smile crooked, his words hoarse.

    "Let me fight you!" raged Kell, struggling with all his might, blood slick across his entire body and soaking his clothing as the golden wires bit. "I'll not die like this, you fucking whoreson! Not on the end of a butcher's knife! Let me fight, I say!"

    Graal tilted his head, and turned, and stared strangely at Kell. Then he laughed, a chuckle so base and evil it sent Kell into a paroxysm of fury. But his words stopped Kell dead.

    "Not you," said Graal, and reached out, and stroked Kell's bearded cheek. "You do not have the Soul Gem, old man. Whatever gave you that idea?"