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

to do what needed to be done.
    “Yes,” he said.  “I swear it.”
     
    And he looks, and there she is, hours later.  They must have moved him when he lost consciousness, but he’s back in the vision now, and he sees her kneeling over a mound of ash at the blackened edge of the forest.  Ronan and Shiv are vanished and gone, and Danica weeps over a body that isn’t his.  Her tears are quiet but steady, and she’s shaking with fear, rage and loss.  He feels her pain, wracking through his body like a physical force.  Tears shake loose from his incorporeal form. 
    He wants so badly to reach out to her.  She seems so close, like he’s standing right there, a phantom at the edge of the clearing. 
    Predatory shadows prowl the sky, and the air is loud with wolves.  She can’t stay long.
    I love you , he says, but all that comes out is a whisper of cold wind, lost among the trees.  Danica hangs her head and cries, but not for long, because she’s strong, has always been strong.  She’ll carry on, because that’s how they deal with fear and weariness , how they live with loss.
    They carry on . 
    No, he says, but his voice is nothing but a distant echo in the sky . He can’t lose her.  He wants to reach out, to take hold and pull her close, to be back with her again, the two of them, carrying their friends across the wastelands, the closest thing they’ll ever have to paradise.
    But he can’t.  He’s just a shadow, and she’s beyond his reach.
    After a while she turns and walks away, and then she’s gone.
     

     
     
     
     
     
     
    PART TWO
    SIGNALS
     

     
     
    The crowd of human resistance fighters are lined up near black pits filled with smoking green gas and curled bones the color of rusted blades.  Flames fill the sky, and orange and black clouds circle into shifting vapors overhead.  Iron and steel structures fume with heat.  The moon is pale, as dead as the earth it stares down on.
    Reaver watches from behind his iron mask as the humans are executed.  Rows of vampires stand at attention.  The looming citadel at their backs is the color of blood, while the dark streets are clean and silent.  Smoke from burning flesh fills the air like a fog.
    Dissonant vampire dirges echo into the sky.  To Reaver they sound of broken glass and grating metal, just shattered and warbling crashes of random noise.  Rasps, dead breaths, air escaping punctured lungs.  He wonders if they sound beautiful to the vampires.
    Faded memories of music play through his necrotized mind, a vague recollection of time he’d spent with others.  Smiles, drinks.  Feeling like he was home.  The memory fades. 
    He breathes deep.  He doesn’t need to, but that doesn’t stop the reflex, the memory of something he used to do.  He still blinks even though his eyes have long since crusted over and serve little purpose, for it’s the power of the soul-infused fluids in his rotting veins that grants him strength and consciousness, just as his link to the dismal core of vampire intelligence lends him direction and purpose. 
    All he needs are his hands and his skills.  They’re why he was reanimated: that core, that human aspect they need.  Otherwise he’d be just another meat sack, a zombie or a war wight. 
    He shouldn’t be thinking that.  He wonders why they don’t know, seeing as how he’s linked into their collective.
    Thinking again.  Stop.
    If he has to think, it needs to be about what lies ahead, for the hunt is underway.
    That’s why he was brought to Basilisk Claw, one of the new outposts on the frontier of the Northern Fang Territories, replacements for the outdated Bonespires.  Red metal poles wave skin flags in the icy breeze as fliers pass far overhead, Razorwings and Bloodshadows, edged vampire warships leaking smoke which smells of brine and blood. 
    Sometimes he sees her face, but he doesn’t know who she is.  She haunts him, and he desperately wants for her to stop. 
    This shouldn’t be