Vampire Warlords: The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles Read Online Free PDF

mother even when her mother shouted at her, neglected her, allowed her to starve. Nienna laughed bitterly. Oh yes. Her mother. A good strong woman, everybody said. A religious woman. Pious. When she died, she had earned a place in the Bright Halls. But Nienna remembered a different aspect to her character. Nienna's mother, Kell's daughter – Sara, the daughter who had disowned Kell and swore never to speak to him again. Well, to Nienna she was a cold woman. A hard woman. A woman of iron principles. A woman who made Nienna's flesh creep, made her hackles rise, a woman who'd made her life a misery with constant religious studies, muttered prayers and the eternal, submissive worshipping of the bloody gods!
      Damn the gods, thought Nienna.
      Let them burn in the furnaces of the Blood Void!
      Let them rot in the Chaos Halls!
      Yes. Kell might be a hard man, a drinker of whiskey, a pugilist, he might be a butcher and all the other things people called him – and what she had seen. But he had a core of goodness, Nienna knew. He had a kind heart. A kinder soul. And to her, no matter how others tried to deviate matters, he was still a hero. He was Kell. Kell, the Legend.
      Sleep finally came.
      And with it came a dream, a dark dream, a dream in which Bhu Vanesh hunted her, panting and giggling through a dark, deserted city, through empty streets and temples and cathedrals, running over slick greasy cobbles. And as he caught her, his fangs gleamed and he reached for her succulent throat…
      As Nienna tossed and turned in her sleep, so Myriam's eyes flickered open. She uncurled, like a snake unfurling from the base of an apple tree. Myriam stood, and stretched, revelling in the feel of new muscles, new bones, and the death of the cancer within. How could cancer survive in a being which was itself a predator? A cancer on civilisation? How could cancer cells eat her own, when her new vachine cells were far more aggressive and vicious and violent than anything Nature could possibly conjure? Where Nature had failed, man had stepped forward. Myriam's eyes narrowed. In her opinion, the vachine were the pinnacle of evolution. It could get no better than this.
      Gently, she reached down. Beneath Kell's arm was sheathed his Svian, his reserve blade for when Ilanna was lost. It was also, according to ancient, esoteric legends (although Kell would never admit it as such), a ritual suicide blade. For when times got bad. Real bad.
      Myriam withdrew the Svian. The pattern of Kell's snoring altered, then he snorted and relaxed again, and she toyed with the blade for a few moments, running her finger up and down the razor edge. A bead of blood appeared on her pale white finger. She licked it clear, tongue stained berry-red for just an instant. Then it was gone, the blood-oil was gone, and she gave a little shiver.
      Inside Myriam, something went click . She felt the rhythm of springs and counter-weights. She felt the spin of gears. She felt the stepping of advanced clockwork mechanisms, entwined with her flesh, her bones, her organs. And Myriam revelled in her advanced evolution.
      Could she let anything get in the way of her vachine existence?
      Could she let Kell get in the way?
      Of course not.
      And something pulsed deep in her mind. In her heart. In her clockwork.
      She felt the need growing. Growing strong. And Myriam did so need to feed. It burned her, like a brand. Like birth. Like death. Like existence. Existence.
      Myriam lifted the Svian blade. It glinted in the reflected luminescence of the mineral-layered walls.
      Her eyes shifted to Kell.
      And her smile was a cruel, bloodless slit…

CHAPTER 2
    Warlords
     
 
    General Graal was sucked through the blood-magick lines, and it felt like dying, and felt like being born, and eventually he was lying on a cold tile floor in a kitchen, staring up at the smoke-stained, wood-beamed ceiling in the High Fortress at Port of Gollothrim. The High