to death in an instant, hours of agony squeezed into seconds.
I hope it hurt , Shiv thought.
She reached out and caught hold of Quinn’s soul – not his arcane spirit, which had vanished along with the smoke and steam, but his own, the specter of his former life, all that was left of his living consciousness. It was weak and afraid, so tortured and battered by the man’s experiences it had little left to defend itself.
He’d been a traitor, a warlock of the White Children fighting against the Ebon Kingdom’s control over the New Fang territories, but he’d decided to go to the other side and betray secrets about the human’s secret hideouts and supply depots, information that even Fane and Meldoar had been unable to uncover in their off-and-on alliances and rivalries with both the Children and with each other.
All of that knowledge poured into Shiv as she gripped and dominated what was left of the spirit, all of the schematics and maps and dates. The vampires had acted on it all quickly – the White Children hadn’t even had time to evacuate their safe houses or change plans that had already been set in motion.
Nothing she saw surprised her – Shiv knew much of what Quinn had told them, so none of the secrets he’d revealed came as much of a shock. But there was something else she sought, something else she needed. While a turncoat like Quinn never would have been privy to any of the vampire’s darker secrets, when he’d been operated on and debriefed she’d hoped it was possible he’d glimpsed some details of his surroundings that might complete a cycle of information Shiv had already been hard at work deciphering.
She saw the operation, as necrotheurges and zombie doctors pulled the flesh from his arms and grafting on the animated and smoking steel; she saw him in a dark cold room, nodes attached to his skull, information pouring from his brain like white-gold honey; she saw him present as the vampires assaulted a cargo train of resistance supplies, saw as it was torn apart by Razorwings and revenants, listened as humans screamed and perished while he just stood there, pitying himself for being so weak, shaken by remorse but in too deep to turn back; she saw the wolf, the shadow, the Maloj, hunted and hounded by the vampires, always escaping their grip, just a step ahead as it hunted for something only it knew about. She’d killed one, the vampires another: there was only one left. The leader.
And then she saw what she needed. The message.
It had been meant for Quinn’s controllers, a brief snippet of information, a schematic relay on some console he’d seen but not comprehended, only he did understand without knowing it, for by hard-wiring him to vampire tech the undead had inadvertently made it so his bio-organically altered subconscious could analyze those encoded frequencies, the High Jlantrian script that to human eyes read like random flashes of bladed pyramids and razor eyes.
Shiv glimpsed the message in the memory of Quinn’s dying spirit and her heart pounded, because it meant maybe there was still hope.
Maps and coordinates flashed: the location of the last bastion, the place where the Lith had predicted the final stand would take place. Shiv captured those images, burned them into her mind so she could compare them with information she’d already gathered. Once she confirmed the coordinates they could proceed, and within a few hours they could be on their way to Bloodhollow, the place where it all began.
The place where they could end the war.
Things were in motion. By her estimation the message had appeared just a day ago, when Quinn was still in the Ebon Kingom’s hands.
There was still time. The vampires were moving on Bloodhollow, but Shiv and the resistance would find it first.
FIVE
VICTIMS
Year 25 A.B. (After the Black)
They brought him in. Pain seared across the soft portions of his flesh.
He’d
I hope it hurt , Shiv thought.
She reached out and caught hold of Quinn’s soul – not his arcane spirit, which had vanished along with the smoke and steam, but his own, the specter of his former life, all that was left of his living consciousness. It was weak and afraid, so tortured and battered by the man’s experiences it had little left to defend itself.
He’d been a traitor, a warlock of the White Children fighting against the Ebon Kingdom’s control over the New Fang territories, but he’d decided to go to the other side and betray secrets about the human’s secret hideouts and supply depots, information that even Fane and Meldoar had been unable to uncover in their off-and-on alliances and rivalries with both the Children and with each other.
All of that knowledge poured into Shiv as she gripped and dominated what was left of the spirit, all of the schematics and maps and dates. The vampires had acted on it all quickly – the White Children hadn’t even had time to evacuate their safe houses or change plans that had already been set in motion.
Nothing she saw surprised her – Shiv knew much of what Quinn had told them, so none of the secrets he’d revealed came as much of a shock. But there was something else she sought, something else she needed. While a turncoat like Quinn never would have been privy to any of the vampire’s darker secrets, when he’d been operated on and debriefed she’d hoped it was possible he’d glimpsed some details of his surroundings that might complete a cycle of information Shiv had already been hard at work deciphering.
She saw the operation, as necrotheurges and zombie doctors pulled the flesh from his arms and grafting on the animated and smoking steel; she saw him in a dark cold room, nodes attached to his skull, information pouring from his brain like white-gold honey; she saw him present as the vampires assaulted a cargo train of resistance supplies, saw as it was torn apart by Razorwings and revenants, listened as humans screamed and perished while he just stood there, pitying himself for being so weak, shaken by remorse but in too deep to turn back; she saw the wolf, the shadow, the Maloj, hunted and hounded by the vampires, always escaping their grip, just a step ahead as it hunted for something only it knew about. She’d killed one, the vampires another: there was only one left. The leader.
And then she saw what she needed. The message.
It had been meant for Quinn’s controllers, a brief snippet of information, a schematic relay on some console he’d seen but not comprehended, only he did understand without knowing it, for by hard-wiring him to vampire tech the undead had inadvertently made it so his bio-organically altered subconscious could analyze those encoded frequencies, the High Jlantrian script that to human eyes read like random flashes of bladed pyramids and razor eyes.
Shiv glimpsed the message in the memory of Quinn’s dying spirit and her heart pounded, because it meant maybe there was still hope.
Maps and coordinates flashed: the location of the last bastion, the place where the Lith had predicted the final stand would take place. Shiv captured those images, burned them into her mind so she could compare them with information she’d already gathered. Once she confirmed the coordinates they could proceed, and within a few hours they could be on their way to Bloodhollow, the place where it all began.
The place where they could end the war.
Things were in motion. By her estimation the message had appeared just a day ago, when Quinn was still in the Ebon Kingom’s hands.
There was still time. The vampires were moving on Bloodhollow, but Shiv and the resistance would find it first.
FIVE
VICTIMS
Year 25 A.B. (After the Black)
They brought him in. Pain seared across the soft portions of his flesh.
He’d
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