Free Darksiders: The Abomination Vault by Ari Marmell Page B

from around the outcropping, churning snow and drifting mists clouding its hooves.
    “Dust!”
    Dust stuck his head out from where he’d buried himself in Despair’s stringy mane. Death hadn’t the first idea when the crow had sheltered there, and wasn’t about to give the wretched little beast the satisfaction of showing his surprise.
    “Make yourself useful, bird. Keep an eye out for anyone coming our way.” Then, after a brief but vitriolic tirade of screeches, “Yes, it’s cold and windy and you won’t be able to see very far. Do it anyway.”
    Death waited until the angry squawking had faded, directed Despair to stand guard at the largest entry to the offshoot valley, and once more planted Harvester shaft-first in the snow. At a languid pace that might, in anyone else, have signified reluctance, he approached the hill of snow.
    He raised his arms, hands outstretched as though to rip the clouds from the sky. Sounds that were scarcely syllables, let alone words, rolled dully from behind the faceless mask.
    A trio of ghouls, very much like those he’d left working on his home, burst from the snow as though they’d been buried here, rather than worlds away. Instantly they fell to, chucking snow between their legs with both hands very much like digging dogs. A second chant, and skeletal arms slithered up from below, also working to scoop away the thick, freezing skin of the hill.
    And finally, Death lowered his left arm, reaching out with his right. The air blurred and darkened, rather like clear water filling slowly with ink. The blackness spread, bulging andgrowing, until it formed a ghostly hand many times the size of Death’s own. Darkness dripped from its hazy borders; tendrils of shadow linked it to the Horseman’s own fingers. With slow but steady strokes, the massive appendage made swift work of the mound’s slope.
    In a surprisingly short time, the guts of the artificial hillock were exposed to the open air. Death snapped his fist shut, dispersing the hand of shadow and dispatching the skeletal limbs back whence they came. The ghouls he chose to maintain a while longer, sending them to aid Despair in guarding against unwanted company.
    The bulk of the stockpile consisted of demonic corpses, frozen and preserved since the days of the Nephilim rampage. A few of them, disturbed by the digging, tumbled off the heap to sprawl near Death’s feet. Most were imps, the lowest of the demonic castes: flamecallers, duskwings, the occasional shadowcaster. These he ignored. A rare few were of greater power—primarily the Knights of Perdition and their Hell-spawned mounts, twisted shadows of the Horsemen themselves—and these he carved apart with Harvester, just in case a spark of life might linger even after all the gruesome wounds and all the centuries.
    Why the enemy would want the bodies of the demons gathered, the Rider wasn’t certain. Study? Examination of their fangs and claws, or the wounds that had killed them? A search, perhaps, for weapons or parts of weapons that might have been lost
inside
their victims?
    Or simply a means of clearing them out of the way for a more arduous, meticulous search?
    He dug deeper, ignoring the acrid stench of dead demon, clear through the freezing ice and the thick, oozing sludge that had once been half a dozen varieties of unnatural blood. And at first, he was relieved. Blades and cannons, pistols and shields,and all manner of far more peculiar devices—these he found, mostly in bits and broken slivers, only occasionally whole. Yes, they might have located Affliction this way, and perhaps a few other usable weapons, but nothing nearly so catastrophic as he’d feared.
    Hope was not a feeling to which Death was accustomed. He rarely had any
reason
to hope for anything, and even more rarely was he sufficiently optimistic to do so. But he began to hope now, to believe that, just maybe, he’d grown alarmed over nothing.
    It was a pleasant feeling, for the precious few