*
The short passage ended in a stairway. Might as well. The more time I bought the guys, the better.
I reached the next floor. A round room lay before me, the top floor of a low tower under a simple roof. Arched windows turned its wall into a latticework of stone and night sky. As good a place as any.
The air smelled of thick smoke. To the left and to the right, the castle burned. Flames shot out of the fissures fracturing the stone walls.
The vampires were almost at my heels.
I stopped in the center of the room and raised my sword. I could probably grab a few of the undead with my mind, but any trained Master of the Dead would be fighting for control, and Hugh’s guys were unlikely to be weak amateurs.
The first vampire scuttled out of the opening and moved to the right of me. It moved on all fours, as if it had never walked upright. A thick pallid hide shielded its body, the network of lean muscle running over its back and limbs. I could count every rib. A spiky ridge thrust along its back. Its head stretched forward as if someone had taken the bones of its skull and pulled them to support the oversized jaws. A pre-Shift vampire.
The older the vampire, the more the Immortuus pathogen transformed the original human body. This one was really far gone. No traces of a person remained.
The bloodsucker stared at me with glowing red eyes, like two coals in an old fire. I’d encountered pre-Shift vampires before and always in connection with my father. They shouldn’t have existed. Before the Shift we had no magic, but there it was, a lethal, undead abomination.
Another bloodsucker joined the first. They stared at me with starved eyes, filled with mindless, endless hunger. Given free rein, they would slaughter me and keep going until they ran out of things to kill. Only the steel cage of the Masters of the Dead would keep them in check.
The undead horde spilled into the room.
The first bloodsucker unhinged its jaws and a clear cold male voice issued forth. “Lay down your sword. Put your hands on the back of your head.”
I simply looked at him. I could feel the undead mind, a hateful penlight in the nearly empty skull.
“Lay down your sword or we will be forced to subdue you.”
Subdue me, huh. “Why don’t you try?”
A vampire lunged for my legs. I cut across his neck. My blade barely grazed it. The bloodsucker withdrew. Undead blood dripped on the floor. It called to me, the magic in it shivering and twisting, alive on its own.
“There is no need for violence.”
I laughed. The glowing sparks of the vamp’s mind taunted me. I’d always wanted to crush one. Just squeeze it with my magic until it snapped like a flea caught between two fingernails. I’d never tried it. I always had to hide my power.
The undead shifted in place, moving into position. They would rush me in a minute.
“When a vampire dies while the navigator is controlling its mind, the navigator’s brain thinks he died instead of the vampire. Two outcomes are possible,” I said, gathering my magic. “One, the navigator goes catatonic. Two, he goes mad.”
The vampires stared at me.
“Which one do you think you will be?”
“Apprehend her,” the male said.
I reached with my magic, grabbed the nearest undead minds, and squeezed. The heads of the three vampires right in front of me exploded. Bloody mist splattered onto the stones and neighboring bloodsuckers. Undead blood spilled onto the stone floor. Two vampires in the back screamed in a high-pitched female voice, a mindless gibberish howl.
A vamp leaped at me. I sliced it with Slayer, grabbed more minds, and squeezed again. More heads exploded, the undead blood spray blossoming like crimson carnations. Its magic begged me to touch it.
Another bloodsucker leaped, while the third raked its claws down my back. I crushed their minds one by one, until only one remained, the one whose navigator had ordered me to surrender.
Hot crimson painted the stones of the tower around me. Its scent enveloped me. Its magic called to me, pulling me, pleading, waiting and eager, like a cat arching its back for a stroke. What did I have to lose anyway?
I reached out and answered the blood’s call.
The undead crimson streamed to me, pouring out of the headless corpses, merging together into currents like capillaries flowed into veins. The thick, viscous liquid pooled around my legs. I pumped my left arm and let the blood from the cut drip into the puddle of red below.
The first drop landed and the reaction it set off sparked through me, like a rush of adrenaline. The blood twisted about me, suddenly malleable. It coated my feet, my legs, wound about my waist, and climbed higher, covering my body. It wasn’t well-formed, not an armor yet but a flexible coat that felt like an extra layer of skin, that wrapped around me like crimson silk. It felt like I was dreaming.
The lone vampire knelt on one knee and bowed his head. “My lady,” the navigator said.
I raised my hand. The blood silk ran down my forearm, hardening into a three-foot spike. I shoved it forward. The bloodsucker’s eyes flared bright red—the Master of the Dead had fled its mind—and I rammed the spike into its skull, scrambling its pitiful excuse for a brain.
The spike crumbled into dust. The bloodsucker toppled over. I moved and the blood moved with me, pliant and light. So that was how one made blood armor.
A roar tore through the night. A giant lamassu swept through the sky toward me. The scales on its stomach glowed with orange, reflecting the flames below. Beautiful . . . So large, like a dragon come to life. It swooped closer and rammed the tower’s roof. Stones rained down around me. A chunk hit my shoulder and bounced off the armor. The wind from the lamassu’s wings buffeted my face.
It flipped around, diving for me.
Reality smashed into my magic-addled brain, shattering the dreamlike haze. Oh shit.