Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) by Steven Montano Read Free Book Online Page A

every chance I get.”
     
    They took shelter in The Black Hag, the tavern Cross used to frequent.  The three of them – her, Cross and Kane – had spent that first night there together after he’d asked them to join him working for the Southern Claw, taking freelance missions the regular military couldn’t or wouldn’t handle.  It had taken quite a bit of convincing on his part to talk Elias Pike into letting it happen, and they’d dealt with a lot of opposition in their time, especially from Laros and the White Council.
    We were family.  She looked at Cross as he propped Shiv’s head up on a pillow and she made sure Ronan was secure.  They put both of their charges in the office, a room with only one point of access at the end of the main room, where she and Cross would sleep so they could keep an eye on the reinforced staircase leading to the surface.  It was cold as hell down there, but she and Cross sat near a small blaze her spirit started near the center of the room, and they warmed themselves while they drank wine turned sour and ate MREs.  We still are.
    They both shed their armor coats and sat on a bundle of blankets, with another draped over their shoulders.  The chill was hard there underground, but the crackling flames kept them warm, and they left the door to the office wide open so the heat would filter through to their companions.  They also left the grate in the ceiling open wide to release enough smoke that they wouldn’t choke; it was a dead giveaway to their location, but there were only so many concessions they could make.
    “Danica,” Cross said.  There was caution in his voice, bordering on fear.  “Whatever happens...”
    “ Don’t,” she said.  He looked taken aback, but she shook her head.  “Not now.”  She leaned in and kissed him, and even with their lips so scarred and dry and their skin so grimy and worn he was the softest thing she’d ever felt.  He breathed slow and took her in his arms, and there she stayed, never wanting to let go.
     
    They slept in shifts, Danica taking the first watch.  The night was oddly silent and distant, and for a time she was able to forget what waited for them outside, and what wasn’t there.  She checked on Ronan and Shiv and huddled near Cross and their small fire, a circle of light in the darkness.  She watched him sleep.
    When it came Danica’s turn to rest she dreamed of wolves, then of Shiv, and then of Kane.  She couldn’t make any sense of the dreams – they were more flashing images than sensible impressions, fleeting moments strung together by her cracked consciousness – but when she woke the warmth and happiness she’d felt the night before had all but washed away, and all she felt was terribly afraid.

     
    THREE
    TORN
     
    They followed the Nightblood River.  Once they reached the junction near Stone Bridge they’d turn east for Ath.  The mist rose, and they found blood on the trail their first day out of Thornn – the drops had fused to the frost-addled ground, red on grey, a ring of coppery gel like a cycle of blood stars.  There was too little for it to have been a game kill and too much and too patterned for a gunshot wound, which meant only one thing: vampires had feasted in the area, and recently.
    Cross looked ahead from his crouched position.  Towers of white smoke lifted from the other side of the rise; they weren’t quite close enough to determine the source, but they doubted it was anything good.  The ground was brittle basalt and dark chert.  They stood at the base of a system of knife-edged hills, dead forests and moraines thick with parallel ridges of blasted grey and black debris.  Rimefang Loch was just visible past the ice fields west of them, silvered by the pale glow of the sickly sun. 
    “What happened here?”  Danica was at his back, standing watch over the sleds as dank clouds gathered to the north.  Thornn’s walls loomed in the distance behind them, high and straight, its