Andy Remic - Soul Stealers

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.