Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

Graal pushed back his shoulders, stepped away from the two corpses, and grinned. This seemed to shock the villagers; maybe they were expecting him to flee. Instead Graal moved fast, fast into them, a fist through a chest there plucking free a beating heart, ducking a sword strike by a clumsy village idiot with no teeth, his index finger driving into a woman's eye and beyond, into the brain, taking a longsword from another man and cutting his legs free in a single stroke and then Graal was into his stride, and into the slaughter, and the sword sang and slew, cutting heads from shoulders, hands from arms, arms from torsos, and Graal took particular delight in slicing a pregnant woman in two from the crown of her head, straight through fat chest and pumping spasming heart and belly and child, right down to her groin. A twin murder with a single sweep. Beautiful! Economical! Damn, in fact it was sheer Art.

Within a few heartbeats of human duration, Graal had killed all the villagers. He heard a cough, from beyond the gates, and kneeling, Graal pulled free a heart with a wrenching tear of clinging tendons and strands of muscle, then strode to the gates, where he surveyed the five stocky vampires, all mounted, all staring down at him.

"Yes?" said Graal, head high, arrogance shining in his eyes despite his youth. He bit the heart like an apple, and savoured the texture, savoured the warm slick muscle in his mouth and throat, and then squeezed the warm organ like a fruit, draining the remaining blood off into his mouth. "You caught me during a moment of indulgence. May I be of service?"

"Mount up. There's work to be done."

"Slaughter?" Graal's eyes twinkled.

"Is there any other kind?"

Graal sat, watching the Refineries, the dripping pipes, listening to the churn of clockwork machinery. All gone, he thought. Long dead, and gone. Just like his mother, the queen, and his father, the king. Killed. Murdered! Slaughtered like human cattle. Graal's lips drew back, making his face incredibly ugly, a baring of the vampire within him, trapped within his now weak flesh, the flesh of the combination, the pathetic shell of the vachine.

We will be free again, he nodded.

We will be free.

He stood, and stretched his back, and rolled his neck, and gazed around. Behind him, the war camp was running smoothly; the albino soldiers ran like – he laughed, a little – like clockwork. They cooked and cleaned, oiled weapons and armour, sharpened blades, tended to prisoners and the cankers; they needed very little organisation from Graal, for they were like insects, workers in the hive, busy with their own little jobs and all part of the Great Wheel.

Graal turned back to the Refineries and waited, patiently, until in the blink of an eye the Harvesters oozed from metal walls, pulling free as if from a thick liquid. They moved before Graal, a triumvirate of consummate evil. Graal smiled. Evil was something he could work with.

"It is complete?"

"As you wish. The blood-oil is refined. Do you not feel the rise in energy? The surge of usable power?"

"No. It will come to me later, in the dark hours."

The Harvesters reared up, long fingers of bone stretching out, and to an onlooker if would have appeared – for just an instant – as if the Harvesters were about to attack Graal, slice his head from his shoulders, peel the skin from his vachine bones. But they did not. They prostrated before him in a low bow, faces pressing the earth in an almost unprecedented show, and one they would certainly never have replicated before any other vachine. The Harvesters accepted Graal as Master. He smiled, controlling his urges of madness and almost panic-fuelled hysterics, for these creatures were so awesomely powerful that what Graal was actually witnessing was an acknowledgement of what he was about to achieve; what was to come, not what had passed.

The Vampire Warlords.

The Harvesters stood. One said, "What of the Soul Gems?"

"Kradek-ka is searching for the one remaining Gem; the other two are… safe, for now. But he knows where to look. We had… help."

"Will he hold strong?"

"Yes, despite his madness."

"And yet, there is still a thorn to be plucked?"

Graal nodded. "Kell. The Black Axeman of Drennach. I know this."

"What will you do?"

"I have sent the Soul Stealers," he said. "Kell is a dead man."

A blur slammed past Kell, whose eyes were fastened on the dark blade descending for his unprotected throat, and Kell knew he would die there, half buried by rubble, head pounding from the force of shamathe magic and he had never felt anything like it, so odd, but the blur came from the edges of his vision and connected with Jekkron, the tall albino warrior, and with a blink Kell realised it was Skanda the skinny little boy, and Skanda's arms and legs were wide and wrapped around Jekkron who took a step back, his face frowning in annoyance at this interruption to murder. Jekkron raised a hand, as if to slap down the annoying boy who clung to him. And then he started to scream, and he started to scream high, and loud, like a woman peeled, like an animal skewered… Skanda hadn't just wrapped around Jekkron, he was burrowing into the man, his head snapping left and right and chewing and tearing flesh, and his hands and feet had claws and they tore into the albino soldier, who staggered now, dropping his sword, both fists beating down at Skanda who eased inside Jekkron by just a few inches, and with a terrible force of magick, ripped Jekkron's skin and muscle from his chest, belly and thighs. Skanda landed, carrying the skin and muscle like a thick white cloak, and Jekkron hit the ground unconscious, seconds from death. His blood flushed out as if from an overturned cauldron.

In the sudden confusion, only Lilliath saw what happened, the rest of the soldiers simply witnessed their leader going crazy and slapping at himself; Lilliath capered to one side, over a pile of rubble, to see a donkey staring at her. Lilliath stopped, crazy hair wavering, and Mary the donkey turned slowly around, and with a vicious bray, planted both hooves in the shamathe's face, sending her tumbling back over the pile of collapsed bricks.

As Jekkron, conscious again and gasping like a fish, struggled to rise with his lack of albino flesh, so Kell grunted and hauled himself to his feet. Skanda stood before him, staring at the gathered soldiers with a face less than human, his black teeth glinting with Jekkron's white blood, and hands lifted up and held like comedy claws. Except the joke was no longer funny.

Skanda fell on the dying soldier, and ripped out his throat with his teeth, and used claws to slice down Jekkron's ribs and pull free internal organs, which he held up for the soldiers to see. Then Skanda bounded forward, and in a sudden wave of fear the albino soldiers scattered, as Skanda screeched and screamed after them, and suddenly Kell and Saark were left alone.

Kell limped to Saark, who was just regaining consciousness. Blood leaked from his ears, making his long, dark curls glossy. Both men stood, and leaned on one another weakly, and Saark gazed down at the terribly savaged, torn-apart body of Jekkron. His eyes fastened on glinting pools of milk blood, nestling in hollows and peppered with drifting brick dust.

"Did you do that to him?" coughed Saark.

"It was the boy."

"Skanda? No! No way could a small child…"

"He is not a small child," said Kell, and with a grunt heaved himself upright and gazed across to the unconscious body of the shamathe. Her face was black and purple. "Your mule has a fine aim."

"Mary did that? Great! And by the way, she's a donkey, not a mule."

"Same difference," muttered Kell. "Come on, we need horses. We need to put leagues between us and them."