Free Soul Stealers: The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles by Andy Remic Page B

before being accelerated in a swirling chaos across the room to hit the wall. Saark felt like his head was turned inside out, his teeth rattled in his skull, strings of bowels ripped out through his arse-hole. Kell groaned, and staggered to his feet with blood pouring from his nose. He lifted Ilanna, teeth grinding as the wall of albinos advanced… and at their core there was a tiny, ragged albino woman, with straggly white hair and bright crimson eyes and a face that was ancient, and lined, and haggard, and Kell knew upon what he looked for this this was an albino shamathe , a dreaded white magicker, and Kell shook his head and knew he had to kill her fast and put her down in an instant for her magick was awesome, potent, a product of earth and fire and blood and raw wild dark energy–
        Ilanna slammed up, blades gleaming, but the second energy impact picked Kell up and pulped him against the wall, where the entire brickwork buckled and collapsed outwards in a shower of rubble and dust and broken beams. The armoury croaked and sagged, walls groaning, and Kell was half-buried under a pile of bricks as the air around him and an unconscious Saark rippled and surged and then was seemingly sucked back into normality like a rubber band returning to its original shape.
        The albino shamathe cackled, and capered forward like a jester, but a tall soldier stepped to the fore, placed a hand on her cavorting shoulder and calmed the witch. "Well done, Lilliath," he spoke, words gentle, and drew a long black blade. "But… I will finish this." Lilliath nodded, hair wild and wavering.
        Jekkron, tall, elegant, a warrior born, loomed over Kell who was groaning, eyelids fluttering. The old soldier had lost his axe amidst bricks and snapped timber joists. He opened his dust-smarting eyes and snarled through bloodied teeth but the albino smiled, and gave a single nod of understanding; his black sword lifted high, then hacked down at Kell's throat.
        
    
    
    

CHAPTER 3
    Clockwork Engine
        
    
    "So, he has betrayed us?"
        Silence echoed around the Vachine High Engineer Council. The two Watchmakers present squirmed uneasily, for this entire concept was anathema to everything in which they believed, and aspired. "That's impossible."
        "Why impossible? A canker, by definition, should be impossible. We are the Higher Race, the Blessed; we are at the pinnacle of flesh and technological evolution. What then is a canker? A mockery of our genetics, a mockery of our humanity, a mockery of our vachine status. The vachine should be perfect; the cankers remind us we are not. How, then, can it be construed that Graal's betrayal is an impossibility?"
        Another voice. Old. Revered. Serious. "He has served us for a thousand years. You… young vachine do not understand what General Graal has done for us. Without him, and without the work of Kradek-ka, we would never have achieved such an exalted state; we would never have reached our current evolutionary curve, plane, and High Altar. Graal accelerated our species.
        Without him our race would be dead."
        Silence met this statement. Great minds contemplated the implications of their discussion.
        A voice spoke. It was young, nervous, a chattering of sparrows next to the wisdom of the owl. "The clock work is all wrong," said the voice.
    "Meaning?"
    "The algorithms… they tell of the Axeman."
    "What is this Axeman ?"
    "The Black Axeman of Drennach."
        Again, another pause. Around the table, some of the elder vachine lit pipes and puffed on smoke laced with the heady narcotic, blood-oil. A silence descended. Several elder vachine exchanged glances.
        "The clockwork engines are never specific, but they speak of a terrible killer, an axeman named Kell – but is he friend or foe? The machines will not say. They just bring up his name again, and again, and again." "We