The Witch's Eye (42 page)

Explosions
and gunfire ravaged the ship.  Ronan wrapped his chain around a gun-toting gargoyle, dragged it down and cut its throat with the longknife. 

The sky was
on fire.  Flame and blood lanced past the ship.  Something on the ground was shooting at them. 

Ronan looked over the side. 
The isle was wreathed in mist and smoke, but he caught glimpse of a massive stone circle surrounded by jagged obsidian columns at the middle of the crater.  Creatures emerged from the fog on the beach, animated corpses whose bodies smoked with charnel flames. They pointed at the sky, and it burned.  Streaks of fire tore through the air.  An escape pod exploded, and a vampire warship buckled and collapsed as its turbines turned to ash.

Ronan ducked beneath a vampire
’s claws.  He slashed its face open with the longknife, ripped out its throat with the bladed knuckles, wound the chain around its arm and threw the creature into the sky.

Danica struggle
d against an entire squad on the upper deck.  He had to get to her. 

T
he Southern Claw cargo ship crashed into the sea.  One of the Bloodhawks plummeted to the ground in a stream of smoke, while the other valiantly struggled against a pair of vampire warships.

A blast of
dark lightning roared through the air and struck the vampire command ship.  The forward hull flew to pieces. 

Ronan wrapped his chain
around the deck railing and dove to the floor.  Everything was spinning.  Blasts rippled across the ship.  His arm seemed to snap as the vessel spun down towards the stony beach. 

The impact was deafening.  Steel and rock
slammed against his body.  Ronan tasted blood.  His body jerked sideways, and the chain went taut around his wrist.  The back of the ship exploded.  Arcs of fire and fuel shot everywhere.  Hot wind scraped his face.

The ship
screeched to a halt at the edge of a massive crack in the earth.  Ronan rolled end over end.  The sky flipped.  He fell over the side and into open air.

The chain
went tight and stopped his descent.  Ronan growled in pain as his arm wrenched in the socket.  He dangled under the edge of the ship and over the head of a deep ravine, which sloped at a steep downward angle towards some twisted ruins in the distance.  Sharp rocks lined the ravine walls, and thick streams of icy water flowed along the downslope channel.  The ring of mountains loomed overhead.  They’d crashed next to the entrance to the crater, at the edge of a scar on the island that hadn’t even been visible from the air.

Vampire bodies plummeted down the slope.  Some of them fell into
cracks and crevices and vanished from sight, while others were shredded to pieces by the rocks.  More fell in the water or vanished into the fog as they slid towards the ruins. 

Ronan hauled himself
back up towards the ship, link by link.  His muscles burned.  He locked his eyes on the mist-shrouded sky. 

Exhaust winds struc
k him in the face as he threw his arms up over the side of the vessel.  The starboard engine had dislodged and twisted into a vertical position, but still continued to run at full power. 

Danica was nowhere in sight.  He saw vampires
on the beach, locked in battle with the undead of the island.  Gunfire and guttural growls echoed into the chill wind.

A clawed hand reached down and
grabbed him by the throat.  Cold dead fingers tightened their grip and lifted him painfully into the air.  Lady Riven stared at him with hollow eyes.  Her pale skin had been burned and bruised.  She squeezed as she lifted, and he gasped for breath.

Ronan kicked
her in the stomach, and she dropped him to the iron floor.  The turbine engine was a dozen paces to his left, and the edge of the deck was at his back.  Flames and smoke billowed around them.  Everything smelled of fuel and blood.

Lady Riven growled.  Her lips peeled back
and revealed wicked black fangs.  Her silver cloak had fallen back, and the cold runes on her undead flesh glowed.

Ronan
’s chain had snapped, but he pulled out the longknife and slipped on the bladed knuckles.  He drew his cowl across his face.  If this was to be his last battle, he’d make it count.

I hope
you make it, Dani.  I’ll miss you.

Riven came at him with incredible speed.  He ducked
beneath her black talons, but an armored elbow took him in the gut.  Her foot slammed into his side, cracking ribs. 

Ronan slashed
at the vampire and ripped open her cheek.  Black blood flew onto his arm.  He twirled the knife around and ducked beneath another slash.  She drew a double-bladed short sword made of glistening ice-blue steel.   

Ronan and Riven cut
into each other.  A nearby explosion rocked the ship.  He saw fliers overhead, warships and Razorwings.  Blasts thundered up and down the beach. 

Their blades and arms locked. 
Her sword tip pressed close to his face, but he shoved her back and tried to work his own blade into her throat or the points on the knuckles into her eyes.  Neither of them gained an inch of ground. 

They pushed against one another.  She was stronger.  It was only a matter of time.

She forced him backwards, towards the engine.  The sound of chopping filled his ears.  Adrenaline flooded through his body.  He sensed the rotor blades in their circular housing at his back, and knew he was just a few feet away.  The turbine wind rippled his cloak.  His legs strained as he slid across the deck, closer to his end.  He and Riven were practically face-to-face.  She snarled and snapped her jaws. 

He glanced b
ehind him.  The rotors were there, barely three feet away.  Their motion filled his senses. 

Not like this.

His muscles tightened.  He focused his vision.  Found the core within himself, the killer inside, the killer he’d always been. 

He entered the Deadlands.

Ronan twisted, crouched and spun.  Riven moved with him, but her own strength carried her forward, and she fell over his body and into the suction of the turbines.  The vampire dame exploded in a grisly spray of meat and metal. 

The turbine sputtered, jammed
and exploded.  A sharp blade ripped into Ronan’s side.  Pain flared through his already broken ribs.  Another blast threw him backwards.

He tumbled o
ver the edge.  The ship spun away in his vision.  He struck the ground hard, and ice burned his body as he slid.

He fell into b
lack water.  Grey rocks sped by.  Icy fluid shot into his lungs.  The current pulled him towards the nadir of the ravine, and everything went black. 

Ronan dreamed his old dream of a dark field beneath a dark sky.  There were no bodies this time, just a thin river lit by a ghostly moon.

He
saw Danica and the blonde boy.  They sat and stared at him from across the water.  They were quiet, and seemed at peace.

Somehow he felt he
’d failed them both.

He woke sometime later on cold grey sand.  Ronan’s cowl was soaked and stained with blood.  The ground was wet, and the air was silver with fog. 

His body ached all over.  He
felt light-headed and dizzy as he tried to rise.  Everything seemed to tilt.  The ground slid beneath him.  He stood, stumbled, and fell into shallow ice waters that chilled his limbs.  He stood again.

Everything was quiet.

The ruins were ancient black stones that had been sundered by water and wind.  Scant traces of old runes were barely visible beneath the weathered rock face.  They reminded Ronan of the shrine at the top of the steps.  The place he’d refused to go.  For some reason, it felt like home.

We all wind up where we
’re supposed to be in the end.

Something
moved behind him.  He felt the presence more than heard it, and his heart went cold. 

B
lood ran down his side.  His armor and cloak had been shredded.  Ice burns from the fall covered his body. 

Ronan looked up the slope and realized he
’d slid down to the depths of the ravine.  He could just barely make out the ruined vampire ship far above. 

It was nearly dark.  He was all alone.

Only I’m not
. 

He
sensed the motion again, just behind him at the perimeter of the ruins.  There was more than one of them.  He smelled blood and animal musk.  Ronan heard something like growls, and something like knives.

He
somehow still held the longknife and bladed knuckles.  He took a deep breath, and readied his weapons.  He’d never been so cold. 

Part of him wanted it to be the blonde boy
standing there when he turned around.  He wanted to speak to him again. 

I don
’t want to die
, he thought.  But he knew that wasn’t up to him.  Not anymore.

The growls
came closer.  An icy chill ran down his spine.

He looked up and saw a
jet of light streak across the sky.  The shooting star burned blue in the night.  It matched the color of Danica’s eyes.

Thank you
, he thought. 

Blades in hand, he turned to meet his fate.

TWENTY-FIVE

EYE

Danica ran. 

The remains of the
vampire warship sat at the edge of a steep cliff.  Writhing humanoid silhouettes locked in battle on the fields of smoke.  She heard tearing and blood, gunshots and flames.  Vampires ripped each other apart in the maze of fog.  Danica used the vapors as cover.

Keep moving
, she told herself. 
Keep moving
.

She’d lost Ronan.  He’d been with her on the ship, but
then the Witchborn had set the sky on fire, and in the chaos of the crash he’d disappeared.  She looked around desperately, but the black energies of the island practically blinded both her and her spirit.  She conjured a crimson blade and burned through the mist, which thickened as she moved deeper inland.

She
stayed low.  Pain wracked her back and legs, and there were cuts and burns on her face and chest.  Her armor was torn, and her skin was cold with sweat. 

Keep moving
.

Explosions filled the sky.  Razorwings
crashed to the ground, their bodies aflame.

S
he saw Lynch running behind a pair of Ebon Cities Slayers, and closed in on him.  The first vampire turned as she approached, but it barely had time to draw its blade before she hacked it down.  The second vampire fired its hand-cannon, but her spirit deflected the shot and sent the shrapnel into Lynch’s leg.  He fell screaming.  Danica’s spirit ripped through the vampire and skewered its neck and head.

She
came up to Lynch as he lay helpless on the ground.  His eyes widened with fear.  Without a word she took him by the throat and punched him in the face with her metal fist, over and over again.  His skull burst.  Blood and brains sprayed onto the ground.  When she was done she left his twitching body in the sand.

The open beach was
covered with corpses and scattered pockets of combat.  Vampires and Witchborn met each other with blade and claw, but the vampires were no match for their diseased cousins, and they fell, infected by black shadows.

Danica dodged around them.  She made
her way to the pass that led to the crater.  The Eye was there, and she had to destroy it. 

A blast shook the ground.  She turned and saw the remnants of
a Southern Claw escape pod, now just a mess of black shrapnel and twisted steel.  More ships exploded up in the sky.  The clouds seemed to be made of charcoal fumes.

Danica turned.  She couldn
’t go back.  She had a chance, while the vampires were distracted, and she had to seize it.  She might never get another one.

She ran through ember smoke.  Witchborn
appeared in the sickly mist.  Normally ravenous, they stood still and at attention, their eyes suffused by a gold-red glow.  Each of the corrupted vampires was as black as pitch and covered in crackling veins.  Their ebon claws held beams of bloody light, and the collective web of necrotic fire had turned the sky to a napalm pool.

Danica
unsheathed Claw.  She didn’t even remember finding the weapon after the crash, but the blade was there, heavy in her grip. Smoking runes on the sword’s face shone in the fading light. 

The first Witchborn
made no motion as she cut it down.  The second Witchborn went just as easily.  The third and fourth slowly turned to regard her, but she decapitated them before they could defend themselves.  Black blood covered her arms. 

She killed a dozen
Witchborn in the space of seconds, and kept moving.  They slowly pulled away from their reverie as she dodged in and out of their ranks and hacked them to pieces.  As each of them fell the dark cloud around it hissed and sank with a sickening gasp.