Andy Remic - Soul Stealers (Clockwork Vampire Book Two)

ALSO BY ANDY REMIC

Combat-K War Machine

Biohell

Hardcore

ANGRY ROBOT

A member of the Osprey Group
Midland House, West Way
Botley, Oxford
OX2 0HP
UK

wwwangryrobotbooks.com
Bite me!

Copyright Andy Remic 2010

Andy Remic asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-0-87566-068-8

EBook set by ePub Services dot Net

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This book is dedicated with the utmost love, affection, humour and joy to my wonderful little boys, Joseph and Oliver.

PROLOGUE

It was an ink-dark dream. A razor flashback. A frozen splinter of time piercing his mind like a sterile needle. Nienna, beautiful Nienna, his sweet young granddaughter; they stood by the edge of a wide, sweeping river, spring sunshine warming upturned faces and glinting like diamonds amongst swaying reeds. Kell was teaching her how to fish, and he guided her hands, her long tapered fingers a contrast to his wrinkled, scarred old bear paws, hooking the bait (at which she pulled a screwed-up face) then casting out the line. They sat, then, in companionable silence, and Kell realised Nienna was watching him intently. He turned, scratching his grizzled grey beard, eyes meeting her bright gaze, and she smiled, face radiant. "Grandfather?" "Yes, little monkey?" "Isn't fishing you know, unfair?" "What do you mean?"

"Well, it's like a trap, isn't it? You dangle the worm on a hook, and the fish swims along, unsuspecting, and you whip him out and eat him for supper. It's really not fair on the fish."

"Well, how else would I catch him?" said Kell, frowning a little. He chuckled. "I could always throw you in you could swim after all the little fishes, catch them in your teeth like a pike!" He moved as if to grab her, to toss her into the deep waters, and she squealed, backing away fast up the bank and getting mud on her hands and clothes. Nienna tutted. "Grandfather!" "Ach, it's only a little mud. It'll wash off."

What Kell had wanted to say was that all life is a trap, a deceit, a bad con trick from a clever con artist. Life leads you on, life dangles tantalising bait on a dulled hook of iron the bait being happiness, good health, wealth, joy and you reach with both hands, mouth gaping like a slack-brained jester in the King's Court, but Life is a bitch and just when you think you've found it, found your dream, the line snags and you're yanked by your balls, guts and brain. Hooked, and slaughtered. That was Life. That was Reality. That was Sobriety. But Kell kept his mouth shut. Kept it shut tight. He didn't want to spoil the moment, this simple joy of fishing with his talented, optimistic granddaughter beside the Selenau River.

Now, Kell and Saark stood on the high rooftop of the shattered, teetering tower block in Old Skulkra. This was their trap. The bait had been laid by General Graal, his Army of Iron, his disgusting twisted cankers, and they had been snagged like fools, like nave hatchlings, cornering themselves in Old Skulkra with an impossible task and a terrible fight.

Kell clutched his black axe Ilanna to his chest, gorespattered knuckles white, face iron thunder, and Saark was tense, slim rapier wavering before him, his face a shattered silhouette of half-broken fear.

Below, in the bowels of the old stone block, something ululated, high-pitched and keening and far too feral to be human. It was followed immediately by a flurry of snarls, and growls, and heavy thuds and a scrabbling of brass claws clattering and booming through velvet black.

It was the cankers and they were coming for fresh blood.

Kell's face was a thunderstorm filled with bruised clouds. Saark's face was hard to read, battered from a beating at the hands of Myriam's men, and his blood seeped through a torn and dirt-smeared shirt from a recent stab wound. Kell took a deep breath, nose twitching at fire from distant funeral pyres in the wake of the recent battle; he lifted Ilanna, and seemed, for a moment at least, to commune with the battered axe. The cankers drew close. The two men could hear the beasts' heavy breathing on the stairwell.

Suddenly, a pulse seemed to pound through the ancient, deserted city; through the world. It was subsonic, an esoteric rumble; almost an earthquake. Almost. Saark allowed breath to hiss free between clenched teeth. His fear was a tangible thing, a stain, like ink. He glanced at Kell. "We're going to die up here, aren't we?"

Kell laughed, and it contained genuine humour, genuine warmth. He slapped Saark on the back, then rubbed thoughtfully at his bloodied beard, and with glittering eyes said, "We all die sometime, laddie," as the first of the cankers burst from the opening in a flurry of claws and fangs and screwed up faces of pure hate.

With a roar, Kell leapt to meet them

As the first canker leapt, so Kell's mighty axe slammed down in a savage overhead blow, splitting the head in two, right down to the twisted spine-top. Flesh, brain and skull exploded outwards, and mixed in there with muscle and bone shards were tiny, battered clockwork machines, wheels and cogs twisting and turning, clicking and shifting, clockwork gears clacking, and in a blur Kell stepped back, dragging his axe with him as the first canker corpse hit the ground and he swayed from a swipe of huge claws from the second snarling beast, Ilanna singing as she hammered left now, butterfly blades horizontal, cutting free the canker's arm with a jarring thud and a shower of flowering blood petals. The beast howled, but a third heaved and shouldered past, huge and bulky, the size of a lion, a disjointed, twisted lion with pale white skin bulging with muscle, like overfull bowels pressing against maggot flesh in an attempt to break free of a pus-filled abdomen. The canker was covered with a plague of grey fur, tufted and irregular, and its forehead was stretched right back, its huge maw five times the size of the human mouth which had formed its template, skull open like an axe-chopped pumpkin showing huge brass fangs which curled down from rancid gleaming jaws and were decorated with knurled swirls, like fine etchings in copper. The canker's body was covered in open wounds, and within each wound thrashed clockwork, a myriad of tiny, spinning wheels, gyrating spindles, meshing gears, but whereas the