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

happening to him, these random flashes of memory.  He wonders why he doesn’t go to the theurges, why he’s hiding this away, harboring this secret, this betrayal.  He doesn’t know the answer.
    Basilisk Claw stands at the edge of vampire territory.  The Southern Claw is gone save for the so-called White Children and their young leader. The East Claw Coaltion is a bigger threat – Wulf and his forces won’t be content to rest with their holdings for long, and though no major offensive has been mounted yet it’s only a matter of time before the war starts all over again, this time with a more ruthless human enemy.
    But even the threat of the Coalition pales in comparison to the danger of Bloodhollow. 
    An order is issued – soundless, wordless, a summons, like something has latched into his chest and pulls at him.  Reaver leaves the rank and file of the undead as they watch the slaughter and walks down a wide and jagged lane, dark stone and iron streets, thaumaturgic metal steaming with acid fog and blood smoke.  Rivers of industrial sludge run through grooves in the road.  Alleys are filled with broken bodies and discarded limbs.  Twisted buildings stand hedged in by sword-like minarets and sawtooth pillars.  Massive guns, razor launchers, bone cannons and gore sprayers are mounted on low turrets manned by vampires and war wights who watch Reaver pass with cold and calculating stares.  The air smells of muck and hemlock; gouts of steam shoot from between the buildings at irregular intervals.
    Reaver walks, drawn by the summons of the lich called Harpy.  He’s never met her in the flesh, but her tactics are lauded even by the vampire aristocracy.  Like Reaver she’s among the elite non-vampires, the type of creature which a decade ago would have been driven out by the dead aristocracy on account of their inferior status, for only vampires can hold positions of rank or power.  Thinking like that led to the formation of Koth and all of the problems with the Old One; that mistake is hurting the Ebon Kingdoms still, since New Koth is at least ostensibly an ally of the Coalition.
    Rows of corpses have been propped up as a wall, the bodies drained of fluids, the skin as pale and reflective as the surface of the moon.  Eyes sewn shut and hands nailed to their sides, they have been pressed shoulder to shoulder, a fence of cadavers held in place with hexed wires tied around black iron poles.  Reaver wonders how many of those victims he’d sent here himself.
    Who was I?
    Again, that doubting his role, his place.  It isn’t right.  His instincts tell him to report himself, to handle this before it becomes too much, before something happens.  But he doesn’t.
    Maybe that’s why Harpy is summoning me , he realizes, and in a way it’s a liberating thought, for it means this conflict within him will soon be resolved, and he won’t have to think anymore. 
    Reaver approaches Basilisk Claw’s central square, where a blood sacrifice is taking place.  The square if dominated by a wide central altar standing twenty feet high, an elevated dais of rounded iron and stone mounted on pillars of stained nickel.  Vampires stand silent and watch the event, their armor black and spotless, their eyes like cold mirrors colored with flickering lights cast by gas-burning torches at the perimeter of the yard.  Iron catwalks overhead block out sight of the blood and lightning clouds. 
    A dozen humans are held face-down over a pool at the center of the dais, a wide cup filled with gore.  Their hands and feet are mangled as they struggle against their bonds, but they’re held in place by brutish zombie theurgeons and skeletal doctors who gather the blood as it falls into smoking iron jars.  No one screams – their vocal chords have already been severed, and their naked and writhing bodies are so starved and sucked of life they can barely put up any resistance.  Reaver looks away and wonders if he knew any of those people