Vampire Warlords: The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page B

Fortress . He smiled a sickly smile. It was also known locally as Warlord's Tower.
      The world was a blur for Graal. First, he could smell woodsmoke. Then he could smell the sea, a distant tang of salt, the taste of fresh sea breeze. Stunned, for the blood-oil magick sending was like being punched into the earth by the fist of a giant, Graal gradually fought for his senses to return. He heard distraught sobbing. He breathed, breathed deep, and inside him clockwork went tick, tick, tick.
      Graal moved his head to the left. Kradek-ka lay unconscious, blood leaking from his eyes. His flesh was pale and waxen, and at first Graal thought he was dead – until he heard a tiny stepping of gears, witnessed the gentle rising of Kradek-ka's chest. Then Graal looked right, and jumped at the savagery of the sight…
      Bhu Vanesh was there, seven feet tall, narrow, smoke-filled, long arms and legs crooked. One hand held a limp figure, a plump woman bent over backwards, blood dripping freely from where her throat had been entirely ripped out. Her eyes, dead glass eyes, were staring straight at Graal. He shivered. Bhu Vanesh turned a little, as if sensing Graal's return to consciousness. Blood-slit eyes regarded him, but Bhu Vanesh did not break from his task: the task of feeding. His second hand held another woman, this time slim, petite almost, and wearing the white apron of a kitchen attendant. She had long blonde hair, very fine, like silk, which spilled back from her tight entrapment revealing her throat, pale and punctured and quivering.
      As Bhu Vanesh sucked vigorously on the plump woman, his eyes watched Graal. Graal stared back. Then Graal's gaze shifted to the slim blonde woman's eyes, and they were frightened, face contorted in pain. Her hands were clenching and unclenching, and for a moment Graal felt sympathy which was instantly dashed against the jagged towering shoreline of his cruelty.
      Graal stood, and watched, and knew with a malicious joy that Bhu Vanesh was weak. Weak from the Chaos Halls. Weak from travelling the lines of blood-oil magick; the Lines of the Land.
      Eventually, the plump woman closed her eyes. She shuddered. She died. Bhu Vanesh withdrew his fangs with squelches, and dropping the plump kitchen woman with a newly slashed throat, he lay the blonde on the kitchen tiles, and slit his own wrist with a talon. The black and grey smoke coiled back, and a thick syrup oozed free. He allowed this to drop into the slim blonde's mouth, and then knelt back on haunches and watched. Graal said nothing. There was nothing to say.
      The blonde started to writhe and contort, her body spasming, trembling, muscles growing taut then slack, taut then slack. Black oil seemed to bubble at her mouth, then flowed out of her eyes and ears and quim, staining her white uniform and pooling under her body.
      Graal looked left, out through a narrow window. He was uncomfortable watching the vampire change. It reminded him too much of his youth, and some very bad times. Bad times which had been excised from his memories – until now.
      Graal observed the dawn, a wintry grey-blue sky. Distantly, he could make out the sea, and a phalanx of seagulls crying as they swept past his vision. Gollothrim. The Port of Gollothrim. The Fortress. Was it still occupied? Graal shivered. They'd soon find out…
      Returning his gaze, he saw the transformation was complete. The blonde woman stood, and seemed uneasy in her shell. Her eyes were now black – jet black, and unnaturally glossy as if filled with a cankerous honey. This, this was the sign of a Vampire Warlord's servant. Graal remembered, now, his thoughts flowing back through a long history, a longer deviation.
      "You." Graal was snapped back to the living, the present, and realised Bhu Vanesh was pointing at him. Graal stared for a moment, then glanced at the woman. She was smiling, showing her own vampire fangs. Dead, but alive. The undead. Not like the