The Witch's Eye (41 page)

Cross
kept moving.  A Southern Claw soldier stumbled out of the galley holding his stomach in.  His mouth sputtered blood.  Cross pushed past him.

He saw
vampires with curved blades and talons soaked with gore.  One held a re-curve bow shaped like a bladed claw.  Smoke blasted from the ceiling.  He tasted fire and fuel as he came to the messdeck.

Flint was on the
floor, bleeding.  Shiv stood over her father and protected him with a fire-axe she’d taken from an emergency station.  She shook with fear.

Cross threw himself forward.  Soulrazor/Avenger took
the first vampire in the face and splattered its skull across the wall.

The second vampire
raised its bow. Cross dodged sideways, and an arrow raced past him, but the vampire nocked another.  Cross dove behind an upturned table, but the explosive shot blasted the wood into splinters.  Noise hammered his ears. 

The third
arrow pierced his left arm.  He screamed as the blade drilled into his flesh, and realized with horror the arrow was attached to a length of wire.  The vampire held the line with one hand and unsheathed a serrated sword with the other while it licked its razored fangs in anticipation. 

Cross didn’t struggle, but
ran right at the vampire with his sword held high, hoping to catch it off guard.  The creature side-stepped away from the off-balanced attack with ease and brought its mirrored weapon up for the kill.

Flint
shouted and drove the fire-axe into the vampire’s back.  The cable came free.  Shiv pulled her father back.

Cross
’s blade plunged deep, and greasy blood splashed onto his face as the vampire fell.

“We have to get out of here…”
The pain in his arm was blinding.  Cross knew he was on the verge of losing consciousness.  He snapped the arrow off at the base and screamed. 

“You
’re both hurt,” Shiv said.  Blood soaked Flint’s side, and he was doubled over. 

“The ship is going down,” Cross said.  “We have to escape.”

“Where are the pods?” Flint asked.

“This way,” Shiv said.  “One of the soldiers showed me.”

They wound their way through smoking darkness.  Another vampire came at them from around the corner, but Cross hacked it down with such speed there was no question the blade controlled his motions.  Two quick cuts and the creature crumpled to the floor. 

A blast shook the walls.  Wood and steel exploded.  Cross picked S
hiv up and carried her.  Flint stayed right with them, armed with an M4 he took off a dead soldier.  Cross found one as well, and they aimed their guns ahead as they raced through exploding shadows. 

A
nother blast sounded nearby.  The ship lurched and fell.  The floor dipped.  It wasn’t a freefall, but it was close. 

“Hurry!”

Shiv led them to the escape pod.  A vampire leapt out from under a pair of dead soldiers.  It snarled and aimed a rotating needle gun at Cross.

A blade came out of nowhere and sliced the vampire
’s head clean from its shoulders.  Grail stepped out of the shadows.  The masked Lith pointed at the pod entrance, a small steel door with a single window.  He drew another curved blade and motioned them to get in.

Cross had to
throw his body against the door, but it finally gave.  Cold air exploded from within.  The pod was barely the size of a canoe, ovular and tight, with a single pilot’s seat and barely enough space for the others.  He ushered Flint inside, who took the controls, and then Shiv.  Grail motioned Cross to get in, so he did. 

Fire tore
down the corridor.  Grail leapt away from the flames and clamored into the pod.  Cross shut the hatch and sealed it with a spin of the handle.  The inside of the escape pod was nearly pitch-black.  They strapped themselves into seats spaced out along the wall.  Cross’s arm pulsed with hurt, but already the bleeding had stopped.

Need me a while longer, eh?
he thought to the blade.  As expected, it didn’t respond.

“Ready?!” Flint shouted. 

Thin window-ports slid open, and they saw the burning dusk sky.  Cross heard exploding steel and failing turbines.

Flint yanked the release lever
.  Cross’s stomach turned inside out as the pod dropped away from
Marauder
.  They spun into open air, where they hung for long and breathless moments until Flint got the pod’s engine to kick in.  He piloted them towards the isle, dodging Razorwings and cluster bombs that rocked the ship with such force it seemed they’d fly apart.

Please
, Cross thought. 
Let us live.  So we can be there, waiting for the new day.

TWENTY-FOUR

LIGHT

Their destination loomed before them. 
Ronan knew it wouldn’t be long now.  The vampire warships and sea vessels had almost reached the island. 

They
’d used Danica’s directions to guide them.  She spoke dreamily, suffused in a drug-induced haze.  She and Ronan were chained to the deck of the lead warship like pieces of cargo and kept under the watchful eye of a half-dozen vampire commandos and the human traitor, Lynch. 

Lynch
’s master, the pale Lady Riven, hovered over the deck in a cross-legged position, her pale cloak billowing like a flag in the wind.  She was lean and tall, and her black hair bore streaks of blonde.  Enormous fangs were barely concealed beneath her bulging lips, and she wore an arcane head-piece on her brow that hummed whenever Danica opened her eyes and spoke.  Whatever they’d given Danica wasn’t Narcosm, but something that granted Riven control over her, likely the same substance they’d used on her back in Lorn. 

Ronan’s
body ached, and he still bled from where the net had cut through his armor.  The cold wind whipped against his face and froze in his lungs.  Like Danica, he was tethered into a kneeling position with his hands bound behind his back. 

The
crimson light of the setting sun cut across the sky as the ships floated low over waters filled with bodies and cracked ice.  Waves pounded the bone-addled beach below.  Thick smoke and towers of black stone surrounded a shadowy crater at the heart of the isle. 

Danica
’s eyes were locked dead ahead.  She sat rigid.  Her face was lined with fatigue.

The sounds of battle raged behind them.  The Southern Claw cargo vessel
was putting up a fight, but even with the Bloodhawk’s aid the vampire weaponry was just too much for the bigger, slower craft, and the ship’s fate had been sealed the moment the Razorwings punched through and deposited Slayer squads on its deck. 

The chains painfully pulled at
Ronan’s neck, but he was able to crane his head around far enough to look at Lynch, who watched him with malice in his eyes.  Ronan smiled. 

His
mind went back.  He saw fields of jade and steel, ripples of shadow and light.  A world bleached of color, everything but the red.  The blonde-haired boy waited at the top of the steps.

Ronan
.

He heard the voice in his head.  Danica
’s voice. 

Can they hear you?
he thought back to her. 
The vampires?

I don
’t think so
, she answered.  She made no movement, and he tried not to look at her and give her away. 
My spirit is helping me resist them
, she thought to him
.  Riven has me locked under her control, but my spirit is fighting back.  I may even be able to channel him, but I’ll have to make it count.

The isle
was directly beneath them.  There were broken stones and blood-stained ruins on the shore.  Churning clouds of lightning-stained fog swirled in angry columns around the crater ahead.  Ronan smelled the tang of death.

Just tell me when
, he thought.  He kept his head bowed.  His fingers tensed behind his back. 

The air
turned colder.

“Lady Riven!” Lynch yelled.  “There!”

Ronan’s gaze followed Lynch’s fingers.  A half-dozen slim metal shapes fell through the blood sky.

Escape pods.  From the cargo vessel.

Explosions tore through the air.  Bloodhawks and vampire warships exchanged fire.

Lady Riven
came down from her floating position and stood on the deck right in front of Ronan, giving him a clearer view of her lithe form and severe face.  She wore a battle-dress of silver and white fur over dark leather armor.  Her bladed gauntlets and spiked boots oozed shadow, and her pale skin was rune-cast and icy.  Dark hair was tightly secured with clasps of razored steel. 

She pointed a bladed fingernail at the escape pods
, and at that silent command two of the vampire warships broke formation and flew at them. 

Ronan
turned and looked at Danica.

“Did I ever tell you,” he said, “what happened to the blonde boy?”

Riven looked at him suspiciously, but then she nodded at Danica, which evidently granted her the permission and ability to speak.

“You told me you let him live
,” Danica said.  “You left the Order, and then a few years later…”

“…he came to kill me.  The Triangle
sent him.  They sent the one person in my entire life I’d spared to kill me.  I’m sure they found it amusing that my attempt to maintain some…shred of humanity…would be the cause of my own death.”

Ronan remembered when t
he blond man had hunted him down in that dive in Kalakkaii.  He saw his weathered face in the dirty light and the smoky fumes in the air.  He tasted the sweat, and felt the pollution.  He saw blood on his hands. 

The sound of a nearby
explosion brought him back to his senses.  One of the pods had been destroyed.  A spirit flew from a different pod and shredded a vampire warship into a mess of shrapnel and black blood. 

“You let him go,” Danica said.

“Yes,” Ronan said.  His chest ached.  He swallowed.  “And then he killed himself.  Maybe he feared what they’d do to him if he failed.  Maybe he did it to prove a point…to show me I’d thrown my life in the Order away for something that had never actually existed.”  He looked at her.  “My whole life has been a lie.  I let him live to save my soul, but my soul was already gone.”

“Touching,” Lady Riven said. 
Her voice was and thick, like black honey.  “You humans.  You give yourselves to your weaknesses.”  She drew her blade, a wicked scimitar covered with spines.

“That
’s right,” Ronan said to the vampire.  He knew he was about to die.  “For a long time I didn’t think I
was
human…but here I am.  Because even though he’s dead,
I’m
still alive.”

He looked at Danica. 

Now
, she thought, and he braced for the blow.

Danica
’s metal arm ripped through the chains like they were made of glass.  Flames soaked the steel.  Scalding wind blasted across the deck and threw vampire shock troops into the sky. 

Ronan
’s bonds twisted and snapped.  He desperately grabbed hold of the deck as the ship listed sideways.

Danica
’s eyes glowed crimson.  Ronan flattened himself just before she released blasts of explosive power from her fingertips.  Vampires fell, torn in half by saws of bloody light.  Pieces of the ship exploded beneath her onslaught.   

A
length of chain was still looped around his wrist, but otherwise Ronan was free.  He kept low, and had to fight to maintain his balance.  He wound the chain around a vampire’s neck and pulled it down, snatched away its serrated sword and sliced off its head.

The ship leveled out
, but he could feel them rapidly losing altitude.  Danica’s spirit covered her body like armor.  A jagged half-blade of light protruded from the knuckles of her metal hand. 

Ronan took cover behind
a bulkhead.  Vampires fired needle-launchers and hand-cannons, but Danica’s spirit repelled the salvo. She hacked a pair of gargoyles to pieces as they swept in to flank her.

Riven
and Lynch retreated behind their troops.  Undead with combat armor, blades and firearms swarmed up from below deck.  The ship was ablaze.

Danica
’s spirit fanned around her body like blazing wings.  She was a phoenix of flames and blades, and she leapt fearlessly into the ranks of vampires, gargoyles and war wights.  Her spirit cut through enemies like paper, and they burned when they touched her molten shell.

She can
’t keep that up for long
, Ronan thought. 

He
rolled forward beneath a barrage of needles and sliced a vampire gunner’s head in two.  Ronan pulled a black machete and a longknife off the corpse, and was surprised when he found one of the bladed brass knuckles from Rourke’s ship lying on the deck just a few feet away.  He scooped it up and ran.