The Witch's Eye (20 page)

I don
’t belong here.

That feeling, that voice again.  She had vague recollection of something she
’d seen, some memory that had resurfaced when she’d learned the location of the Witch’s Eye. 

That man again
.  He was someone important.

Her spirit roared to life.  At first she tried to
force him back into his steel prison, but then she heard what had alerted him.  The revenants heard it too, and they turned towards Wolftown’s gates.

Whoever it was moved quietly, but not quietly enough.  Dragon cast out her spirit.  The
revenants readied their weapons and vanished into the shadows.   

She
heard the shuffle of feet.  Her spirit detected four life-forms – all human – as they entered Wolftown.  One of them was a warlock, and before she could call back her spirit he noted its presence.  The intruders stilled, and waited.

Dragon breathed in.  She felt Renaad and Cristena
’s eyes on her.  She motioned them to hold.  The humans were on the other side of the barricade, just inside the gates.  Dragon saw the machinegun nest above her. Large sandbags were piled to either side of the smoldering building.

Her spirit dangled at the edge of her grip.  She heard
hands grip weapons, leather on metal.  Claw in hand, Dragon crouched in the shadows.  Her stomach clenched with anxiety.  It shouldn’t have – she’d killed before, many times before, but this was different.

These weren
’t vampires.

Renaad and Cristena must have sensed her hesitation, for she saw them
ready for combat.  Their dark blades glittered in the crackling firelight.  She wanted to call out for them to stop, but she knew they wouldn’t, and she had no choice but to follow. 

S
he was one of them now.

They rounded the corner and faced the humans.  Gunfire split the air.  Spirits
collided in exploding blade shards and acid smoke.  Swords and chains crashed, and the air turned to a chorus of howls.

The battle
only lasted a few seconds before the first mortar blasts struck the city.

TWELVE

COLLIDE

Ronan dreamed of corpses.   

He st
ood on a black field beneath a skeletal moon.  The bodies waited for him, just like always, dozens of naked grey cadavers neatly arranged in rows of cold meat. 

Ronan step
ped carefully through the field of flesh.  He was nude and unarmed, and his skin was as frozen as the corpses he’d left there on the ground.  He remembered how and when he’d killed each and every one of them, whether he’d performed the deed as a young initiate, or later as a mercenary or criminal. 

His b
reath turned to ice.  Doubt gnawed at him.

What can
my worth be
, he wondered,
when all I leave behind are bodies?

Ronan jerked awake.  He’d dozed off in the back of the dune buggy. 

The distance
from the southern edge of the Bone Hills to the walls of Wolftown was further than it looked.  Cunningham was a capable driver, but the ground was littered with holes and cracks that forced him to make numerous turns to avoid overturning the vehicle. 

“Maur?”
Ronan said.  He had to talk loud to be heard over the dune buggy’s engine. 

“Yes?”

“Was the ground this chewed up when we were here last?”

“Maur doesn
’t think so.”

“Look,” Moone said. 

“Cunningham,” Traven said.  “Slow down.”

The
flames they saw weren’t from the bonfires that normally burned in Wolftown to warm its citizens and cook its meat – the settlement was actually on fire.  Grimy smoke plumed from piles of smoking bodies outside the city.

“Shit,” Moone said.

“Stop,” Traven ordered Cunningham.  “We’ll go on foot from here.”

“Should we leave the buggy this far out?”
             

A boom sounded from inside the city.  Traven
’s eyes glowed ice white as he stood up and held his palm out.  A corona of flickering light danced along his fingers like he’d stuck his hand in a flame. 

They were
just under a klick away from town.  Ronan narrowed his mind and entered the Deadlands.  The world slipped away.  He heard the sounds of combat, blades and skin deep in the settlement.

“Can you mask
the sound of the engine with your spirit?” he asked Traven.  “It may be a good idea to have a quick way out, and that means having the vehicle close.”

Traven considered, clearly unhappy with the notion, but as his spirit transmitted information back to him Rona
n watched his expression change to one of worry. 

“Vampires,” he said.   “Lots of them.”  He narrowed his eyes.  “Take us closer,
Cunningham.  Be ready to split at a moment’s notice.”

“I
’m ready to split
now
…” Cunningham answered.

“Maur
agrees,” the Gol spoke. “Is it necessary to get any closer?  It’s been discovered that vampires are in Wolftown…what more is needed?”

“
We don’t know what they’re up to,” Reza said. 

Traven took a breath, and nodded. 

“Cunningham…take us in.”

They readied
their weapons.  Ronan flexed his fingers and readied the Norinco 56-1.  Maur had his Mac-10, Cunningham and Moone were both armed with MP5A2s, and Reza had a FN F2000 Tactical fitted with a long scope. 

The buggy drew close to the gates.  The holes in the ground smoked darkly
.  Ronan thought the wounds in the earth had been made by explosive blasts, probably mortar shells.  Clawed footprints in the dark soil indicated they’d been made by non-humans, likely Troj.

“Fane,” Ronan said.  “They must have come through here.”

“There’s a lot of malign spiritual activity,” Traven said.  “My spirit is having trouble detecting anything.”  He signaled Cunningham to stop about 200 yards from Wolftown.  There was no sign of movement.  “It may be dangerous for me to go in with you…”

A sharp blast of cra
cking steel and exploding metal rang through the air, followed almost immediately by what sounded like some maddened animal’s scream.  The smoke and haze in Wolftown was lit from within by a flash of red and black.

“Screw this,”
Cunningham said, and he was ready to peel away, but Ronan reached up and put his hand on the younger man’s arm.

“No.  We need to check it out.”

“There may be dozens of vampires in there,” Cunningham said, “and we’re too damn close.”

“Can you detect anything?” Ronan asked
the warlock.  Traven shook his head, and said his spirit was still confounded by the overabundance of death energies in the area.  Mage spirits were vulnerable and sensitive to the fading ghosts of the recently slain.  With time and experience most mages learned to shield their spirits from those desperate and dangerous phantoms, but sometimes there were too many to avoid, or else they were too maligned for even an experienced witch or warlock to combat.  That had become especially true with the Ebon Cities’ recent advances in using death energies as fuel for their war machines.

“Nothing?” Reza asked.

“No,” Traven answered.

“Then we don
’t know shit,” Ronan said, and he climbed out of the dune buggy.  To his surprise, Moone and Reza followed, and Traven wasn’t far behind.  Maur moved to come with them as well, but Ronan motioned for him to stay.  He needed someone to keep his eyes on Cunningham, and Maur seemed to get the idea because he nodded, albeit reluctantly.

Ronan, Traven, Reza and Moone slowly
entered Wolftown.

“I
’m going to be next to useless in here,” Traven whispered.  “I’ve never been this close to so much corrupted death energy.  It feels different from Ebon Cities magic.  More…twisted.”

“
It could be Kothian,” Ronan said. They moved past piles of black timber and banks of melted salt.  “Or something we haven’t seen yet.”

“
That’s
what worries me,” Traven said.

Moone and Reza took
the point.  The icy wind kicked dust in their path, and the sun had melted to a red stain behind the greasy clouds.  Ronan held the Norinco ready and loosed the kukri secured to the side-draw scabbard behind his back, as the weapon was smaller and quicker than the katana he carried slung over his shoulder.

Traven
’s eyes shone.  He motioned a stop.  They’d come to the edge of the compound, just inside the outer gates.  A large flame cannon nest sat in front of a small building made of steel and stone.  Clawed and decimated bodies were everywhere. The charnel stink in the air was heavy, and the smoke pained their eyes. 

Moone and Reza took up position
on the other side of the nest.  A .30-caliber was mounted on a swivel rack up above.  Ronan looked at Traven, who stood struggling for breath.  The young mage looked lost.  His hands shook as he tried to hold onto his spirit. 

“Traven?”
Ronan urged.

The warlock
nodded.  Sweat poured down his face.  He held a finger up to his lips, pointed at the building, and made a circling motion with his fingers. 

S
omething waited for them on the other side of the structure.  Everything went silent.  Ronan heard the wind, and the sound of ice on the ground cracking beneath his boot seemed to roar like a cannon. 

A pair of
revenants leapt from the shadows, one male and one female, both armed with blades and chains.  The male’s hand-cannon spewed red-white blasts, and Traven’s shield barely rose around Ronan in time.  Metal fragments flew away like iron flies.

The air exploded with gunfire.  The
two revenants dodged in and out of the darkness, and a third assailant, a howling spirit, came flashing forward like a nightmare of hot knives.  Traven’s spirit responded with a barrage of ice and sand.   

Ronan heard
a shell whistle through the air seconds before it landed.  The building exploded.  White light crashed against his skull.  He flew backwards, and pain hammered his body.  Ronan tasted blood. 

His
eyes stung, but he forced them open.  He’d landed near the city gates.  He rose to his feet.  Another blast landed and rocked the walls.  The tang of artillery smoke washed over him. 

Ronan
stumbled forward.  The male revenant leapt out of nowhere with a curved blade aimed at Ronan’s throat. He ducked just in time, and the attack sliced through the wall behind him. 

His opponent
moved lightning quick.  Adrenaline flooded through Ronan’s body.  He tried to take aim, but the revenant kicked his rifle away.  Ronan drew his kukri, sliced the hand-cannon in two and kicked the revenant in the abdomen to force its body back.  The creature hissed and revealed fangs slathered with undead spittle.  Ronan drew his katana so he held a blade in each hand.

E
xplosions shook Wolftown.  Shards of stone and glass rained down.  Smoke from arcane flames clogged his lungs. 

The
revenant came at him again.  Ronan ducked beneath the assault.  His katana sank deep into the creature’s throat and his kukri punched through its torso.  Sharp steel raked across his chest, and Ronan growled in pain as he twisted his blades loose.  The revenant’s stomach fell open, and its head rolled off its body.

Another blast came down.  The air was a swirl of smoke and noise.  Someone screamed,
and he followed the sound.

Moone was dead, his
body a ruin of blood and cuts.  Ronan grabbed his gun and looked for Reza and Traven, who were both lost in the smoke.  Artillery fell all around them.

Fane.  It has to be.

Ronan covered his mouth and ran into a cloud of hex fumes and shattered particle drift.  Whirling debris stung his eyes and face.

Traven
huddled near a low wall of broken stone.  He was locked in arcane battle with a human witch wearing her spirit as a husk of obsidian armor that concealed her features.  Reza, in the meantime, crouched next to Traven and fired at the female revenant, which used the broken debris of a small building for cover.  Smoking bodies were everywhere, human, wolf and unnaturally dark-skinned vampires that leaked shadows.

Ronan
shot a burst at the revenant.  Reza signaled him to move to a flanking position, so Ronan cut left and dove down next to a tattered tent.  It was difficult to move quickly without slipping in viscera or tripping on wreckage.  He and Reza coordinated their fire, and the revenant ducked behind a shattered well. 

Magic energies turned the air brittle.  The witch
’s armor cracked beneath Traven’s barrage of acid missiles and razor fire.  Dead winds scoured the ground.