Wulfen

Chris Wraight

His smell makes my nostrils pucker. Somehow, even amid all the grime and misery of this place, I can still detect his stink, like a clot of sweaty blood that won’t dislodge.

‘Name,’ I say again, wondering if he is capable of answering me.

He stares back, looking through me, slumped against the walls of Cell 7897, his limbs slack and his palms upturned.

I stare back at him, forcing myself to go through the prescribed procedure. Coteaz will want details of all of this. I do not wish to disappoint Coteaz; no sane woman would.

He is painfully thin. His cheeks are cadaverously sunken, his uniform hangs loosely about him. I can see a griddle pattern of ribs under his torn flak jacket. A hastily stitched regiment badge hangs from his chest. It bears the words ‘Creed’s Blade’.

All the other subjects have the same badges on their uniforms. I find the name ridiculous. Everything about these people is ridiculous. They were brave but stupid.

Perhaps there is little difference.

‘Tell me your name.’

The cell is just like all the rest: metal walls running with corrosion, lit up by a single dirty lumen bar. It is dank, overheated, thick with the accumulated verdigris of human misery.

I wonder for how many centuries it has been in use. I wonder how many men and women have found themselves here, locked deep inside Coteaz’s fortress-moon without hope of release or recovery. None of them, I notice, took the time to scrawl their names on the wall or leave marks indicating their presence. Perhaps they would have done so if they had been incarcerated in some other kind of institution, one where a hope, however small, remained that they would see sunlight again.

But this is Coteaz’s place. They do not need to be told that to know that their lives are over. Only a very few are brought into the sunless chambers of the Inquisitor Lord; those who are damned, or have witnessed damnation, or who know too much, or who do not know enough.

‘You can still serve. Even now. Give me your name. That will be a start.’

I know his name. His name is Mattias Morbach. I know that he was once a sergeant in the 345th Cadian Armoured, and that he had a wife and family on Ulthor before it was destroyed. I know that he joined up with the Creed’s Blade regiment soon after that. Perhaps he was driven by grief; he does not seem to me to have the wide-eyed idealism of some of the others I have seen.

I know all the things I am asking him to tell me, but information, at this stage, is not important. I wish him to start with the simple things, and then perhaps we will be able to move on to those things that are less simple. So many of those poor souls brought here can no longer talk at all. I wonder if he is one of them.

I crouch before him. My soft leather boots crease. I feel my fur-lined cloak settle over my shoulders and the holster of my bolt pistol pinch at my armoured waist. I am warm, and I am beginning to sweat. Briefly I consider removing my cloak, but it would diminish my presence and I am reluctant to lose the trappings of authority.

I am Alisa Damietta, inquisitor of the holy Ordo Malleus. I have standards to maintain.

‘I know you have suffered. Tell me your name. You can still serve. We are not wolves, we are here to help you.’

Then he looks at me. I wonder what I said to unlock his attention. His eyes swim into focus, which is obviously painful for him. For the first time he seems to realise where he is.

‘Morbach,’ he mumbles. ‘Sergeant.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘That is a start. Let us build on it.’

He keeps talking. I am pleasantly surprised. None of the others got further than giving me their name. I listen. He tells me how he joined up with Creed’s Blade, what their hopes were, how they planned for the attack. I am moderately interested in this and ensure the words are recorded for further analysis. Perhaps someone in authority on what remains of Cadia can be implicated for the fiasco. It always helps to have someone to blame.

‘Good,’ I say. My voice does not do soft cadences easily; I have to work to keep it encouraging. ‘Now tell me what happened when you got there.’

He doesn’t reply at once. The stink of fear returns; an animal response.

‘Do you mean...?’ he begins.

‘Yes,’ I say calmly. ‘Tell me what happened on Voidsoul.’

The world’s name makes him shiver. Despite the uncomfortable ambient heat he seems incapable of getting warm.

But he starts to talk, and he keeps talking. Perhaps he needs to. I record all these words and listen carefully as they are stored.

‘We could see it from space before we landed,’ he says. ‘Red, like a scab on the void. Saw things moving across it. Thought they were clouds. Storm clouds. Remember thinking the descent will be tough. That was my main concern: might not make it down, miss out on the fighting.’

He gives a strange half-smile, a wry one, and his lips twist awkwardly. I see that he is breathing more heavily. His pupils start to dilate and a thin gloss of sweat forms on his forehead.

‘But we did. Somehow, we got down. Carriers discharged early. Landers shot down, too fast, far too fast. Everyone on edge. Knew something was wrong – air in the crew chamber suffocating. Everything vibrating, coming apart. Heard screaming. From outside. Checked my weapon, and my hands were shaking. Served for twenty years. Seen plenty of bad things. Hands never shook before.’

I watch him carefully. I note the red rims around his eyes and the twitching of his dry fingers. I see saliva at the corners of his mouth. I see his pupils dart back and forth.

He is there now. He is back on Voidsoul with his foolish brothers.

‘Made planetfall. Doors opened. Holy Throne, I don’t... I don’t have the words.’

He thinks, he remembers. His brow creases into withered folds.

‘The sky. Like… boiling blood. Everything stank. Hot metal and smoke. Couldn’t hear anything, not on the comm, not from anything. Screaming just made you want to cover your ears and cower. The air was screaming. Understand? The air was screaming.’

I begin to make preparations. I have seen men lose themselves in testimony such as this. I don’t want to kill him unless I have to, so must be careful. For all that, I feel a vestige of pity for him. No human should witness what he has witnessed.

‘Some couldn’t get up – just wept in their harnesses, rocking like children. I got up, though. Started to break out. We ran down the ramps, trying battle-cries, trying to see where the standards were raised. Saw landers explode as they came down, hundreds of them, flaming. Saw the sky blister, like… boils. Like boils bursting.’

He shudders. He sweats.

‘They came,’ he says, and gaunt horror fills his face. ‘Swarms, thousands, over the red earth, flickering, shrieking. Saw them rip through whole battalions, carving them up. Like slabs of meat, gorging on blood, gulping it, gargling into it. Striding, trailing smog and guts, grinning, tearing. Red horns, teeth like black needles, and their eyes... The eyes...’

I sense the time has passed; he is falling into apoplexy. I should stop this, but I wish to learn more.

Let me be candid: I wish I could have seen what he has seen, if only for a second. The neverborn are my life’s study, but I have never been to one of their worlds. How could I? They would devour one of my kind in the space of a heartbeat. But part of me, a forbidden part that condemns me, wishes to glimpse what terrible places spawn the creatures of our nightmares. I will no doubt be punished for that yearning one day, but still it remains.

So I let him speak.

‘We tried to ascend a ridge, one running up from where our lander had come down. Somehow a command group had reached the summit. They’d got a banner up. Remember running towards it, tripping over rocks as sharp as knives, hearing my comrades being cut apart. Took seconds, just a few seconds, and so many had already died. Knew I was next. Emperor damn me, but I wanted to die! Shaking so hard I couldn’t carry my weapon. Wanted to vomit but my body wouldn’t let me. They followed us. So fast!’

He gets more agitated. I withdraw, ready to prepare a sedative. This is interesting, and I resolve to petition Coteaz for more time with this one.

I don’t know how I miss his movement. He looks so near to death – he should be incapable of anything but an exhausted torpor – but he suddenly bursts up from the floor. His eyes are raging, splayed wide in terror and desperation. He does not see me; he sees the creatures of Voidsoul. For a moment, I am exposed.

He goes for my face, fingernails raking. I jerk back, feeling his skin-and-bone frame clatter against my gilt-edged breastplate. He screams at me, and his dehydrated spittle sticks against my cheeks.

I twist around, striking him on the shoulder with my closed fist. He crumples instantly, and something snaps under his skin. I follow up quickly, smoothly, drawing my pistol and cracking the grip across his temple.

He falls, out cold, scrawny limbs akimbo on the metal. Spots of blood mark his soiled uniform and drip onto the pressed-mesh floor. I am tempted to hit him again, just to discharge the shame I am already feeling, but I do not.

It is then that I see something on his neck, something I had missed before.

I stoop over him again, noting his trembling breaths and twitching fingers. Something is embedded in his flesh just below his shoulder-blade. The rough fabric of his jacket has come open, exposing grey, bone-stretched skin underneath. An angry weal disfigures it, raised and tight to the touch.

I probe gently, pressing gloved fingers on either side of the wound. The skin breaks and a foul swell of pus emerges. It is followed by a thin object, smooth like a pine-needle but triangular in shape, slightly curved and tapered, as long as my finger from knuckle to tip.

I withdraw it carefully. It has the look of a talon or a claw. Knowing where he has been, my first instinct is to destroy it, but something holds me back. I do not sense any corruption in it, and my sense for such things is usually good.

So I take it. I stow it in a capsule at my belt and pull away from the twisted body of Mattias Morbach. I regret that I allowed matters to get out of hand. He is scheduled for destruction; if I had more time, I might discover something of value.

I pull myself upright and dust myself down. A residual trace of mortal stink lingers on my fine apparel, a hazard of such dreary work. I turn, depressing the rune on my glove’s lining that will open the doors and allow me to leave the cell.

I am calm. The momentary exertion did not seriously trouble me. I have certainly experienced more taxing episodes when confined alone with a prisoner.

As I walk into the corridor outside, however, my belt feels heavy at my waist. This troubles me. I do not know why.

I walk quickly, heading up from the cell levels to the laboratoria. I go past dozens of locked doors, each one cut from unburnished metal and marked with a single number. The numbers are not in order: I pass 568, then 3458, then 998. Some numbers are missing entirely. Coteaz has his reasons for such a scheme. I do not know what it is, but then he is privy to esoteric knowledge that I am not.

The air remains humid. I hear the groans of the incarcerated. From lower down I hear the echoes of screams. Perhaps they are the result of prisoners’ nightmares, or perhaps the excruciation chambers are in use. Such sounds have been a part of my life since I arrived here five years ago; I barely notice them now.

I climb stone-cut stairs. Parchment scrolls hang from the walls, flaky with age. Each one has a benediction inscribed in High Gothic. The ink is brown. It is old blood.

At times I wonder if such theatricality is necessary, but Coteaz is one for the grand gesture.

‘I do nothing that is not needful,’ he once told me, his stern eyes shadowed by feathered ice-white eyebrows. ‘Nothing.’

And though I remain unsure about that, I trust him. I trust his knowledge, his commitment, his iron will. He inspires me as much as he scares me, which is, I suspect, exactly how he likes it.

I reach the level where the chirurgeons practise their trade. I pass through brightly lit chambers, each one lined with white tiles and harbouring arcane machinery. I see rows of coloured vials and racks of scalpels. I see half-dissected cadavers and strapped-down live subjects, their eyes bulging and fearful.

I keep walking until I find Chirurgeon-General Oskar Kieem. His apron is streaked with blood and his hands are pink from recently removed latex. He sits at his pedestal desk tapping on a data-slate. He does not look pleased to see me.

‘Damietta,’ he acknowledges, dipping his bald head.

I take the talon and show it to him. His eyebrow does not raise; he has no eyebrows. He has no hair of any kind.

‘What is this?’ he asks.

‘Embedded in a subject,’ I say. My voice is severe. Kieem is a proud man, and needs to be reminded who is in charge. ‘Why was it not detected during incoming quarantine?’

Kieem looks at it carefully. He tries to hide it, but I can see he is embarrassed. The wrinkled skin at his collar flushes a pale pink.

‘I do not know,’ he says. ‘We have had so many bodies to process. Perhaps–’

I do not let him finish.

‘Sloppy,’ I say. ‘I should report it.’

His flush grows.

‘Of course,’ he says.

‘Give me your expert judgement,’ I say, offering him a way out. ‘Is it tainted? Something I should worry about?’

He turns it over in the palm of his hand. Then he reaches down to a lead-lined drawer and takes out what looks like an array of spyglasses held together by a cage of metal. The brass rim has esoteric devices hammered into it, and I recognise wards against corruption engraved in the lenses. He adjusts dials and slides switches before looking at the talon through it. A soft green light bleeds out across his flesh. The machine hums. It smells of ammonia.

He studies it for some time before turning the device off. He hands the talon back to me.

‘I see nothing untoward,’ he says.

‘Then from an animal.’

‘Perhaps. If so, I do not know what kind. Beasts are not my speciality.’

I put the talon back in its capsule. I am relieved to find that it possesses no corrupt essence, but the mystery of its presence still remains.

‘I will make enquiries,’ I say, turning away from him.

‘And will you…’ he begins. ‘Will you report the failure?’

I do not answer. I keep walking, going back the way I came, leaving Kieem wondering. It will be useful to me to have him guessing for a while.

But he does not, in truth, matter much. My next appointment will be of more consequence.

‘No,’ says Coteaz.

I do not dare ask again, but I hesitate, just for moment, before acquiescing. That is rebellion enough.

In that minuscule pause, I look at his features as if for the first time. I see the scarred bald pate, the tanned skin as tough as flak-mesh, the immense shoulders with their ruffled, furred pelt standing proud. His armour is polished gold and his livery is blood-red. Even without it he would be broad-set and intimidating; within his timeworn plate he looks scarcely less imposing than an Angel of the Adeptus Astartes.

When he looks at me, it is as if he scrutinises me naked. I have many gifts and do not cow easily, but I cannot shake that belittling sensation. Of all his many powers, that is perhaps the most lethal and insidious: the capacity to make the mighty feel like children.

‘By your will, lord,’ I say, bowing my head.

Inquisitor Lord Torquemada Coteaz, High Protector of the Formosa Sector and Scourge of the Daemonic and Unclean, continues to look at me harshly.

‘You wish to object?’ he asks.

I do not. I wish for nothing but to escape his dominating presence. But I persist for a little while longer. I have been told I am a stubborn soul.

‘None of the others talked like he has,’ I say. ‘If I had a little more time, I might discover more.’

Coteaz does not look impressed. He places his heavy gauntlets together with a dull clink. Those hands have ended the lives of thousands. He moves them like a blacksmith might move his hands – heavily, deliberately, in the knowledge that they are the tools of his sacred craft.

‘Discover more, Inquisitor Damietta?’ he asks. ‘This is what we know of these fools. They formed themselves into an army called, fancifully, Creed’s Blade. They launched a suicide mission to the daemon world E678, which they call, fancifully, Voidsoul. Nearly all of them died. The few that survived are now mad or mute. Those who retain the use of their tongues rant only of their nightmares.’

As he speaks, he continues to stare at me with his dark eyes. I wonder exactly what horrors those eyes have seen.

‘We know that a daemon world is a world of nightmares,’ he says. ‘We do not need to be told it again in every detail.’

I swallow. There is little point in trying to hide my nerves.

‘Then what is the purpose of interrogating them?’ I ask.

Coteaz’s expression does not change. He does not smile, he does not frown. I have rarely seen his stony visage express anything other than imperious disdain.

‘One of them, one day, might tell us something we do not know,’ he says. ‘This one has not. He is broken. His usefulness is over.’

He towers over me. He keeps his killer’s hands clasped.

‘He will be annihilated, just as scheduled,’ he orders. ‘Now go. Sleep. Your next shift starts at dawn.’

This time I do not hesitate. He has indulged me more than I might have expected; I must not press my luck.

‘Yes, lord,’ I say, bowing in defeat.

I have never disobeyed him before, but this night I do so twice.

The first transgression is one of bodily weakness: I cannot sleep. I writhe in my bunk, feeling the sheets twist around me like fetters. It is too hot. The air is too still, too moist.

I open my eyes and push myself up. My vest is damp and clammy. In the darkness of my cell I see visions of another world. I see the vistas described to me by Morbach. I see a horizon of boiling blood, and brass-coloured plates of stone coating a core of angry magma. I see the sky screaming and men dying, hundreds at a time.

‘Lumen,’ I say, and the narrow chamber flickers into light.

I swing down from my bunk. I stumble to the wall-mounted ewer and splash water on my face. I dress, donning jodhpurs, a stiff tunic, boots and my cloak. I take my pistol. I do not take my armour – that would take an age to assemble, and I already feel time is pressing down on me.

I glance at the chrono above my bunk. It tells me that in four hours Morbach will be dead. As I watch the runes count down, I make the decision to disobey Coteaz for the second time.

The corridors outside are deserted and echoing. It is the deep of night, and the fortress interior is like a city of stacked tombs. I hurry along, feeling furtive and hunted. I have no need to feel this: I am an inquisitor with full licence to roam where I will.

But I cannot fool myself. I am doing this because a compulsion has been awakened in me. I am indulging that most base and trivial of sins: curiosity.

I reach Cell 7897. Morbach is lying where I left him, tangled and supine on the floor. I close the door behind me and crouch over him. His smell assails me again; it has got worse with time and confinement.

I withdraw a vial of combination adrenaline and locquazine from the casket array at my belt and load it into a syringe. I push the needle into Morbach’s withered arm, depress the plunger and wait for the results.

He awakens moments later, disorientated and shivering. I stay close, looming over him. I want him to be as scared of me as he is of his dreams.

‘Finish what you were saying,’ I order.

I see the confusion in his addled face, but he will not resist for long. The chem-mix already fizzing in his bloodstream will bring him to lucidity quickly. If he talked before, he will do so again.

‘Quickly,’ I say, feeding the word with a resonant threat-harmonic. ‘Speak quickly.’

He stares at me. He cannot tell where he is. Only when he starts speaking do I see that he is back on Voidsoul again. I doubt that he will ever truly leave.

‘Up on the ridge,’ he rasps. ‘They were coming up after us.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Keep talking.’

And the words spill out.

‘Dying, all of us dying. Fired my lasgun, aiming at something in the sea of teeth and horns. Don’t think I hit anything. Could we even hurt them? Don’t know. Didn’t see one fall. It had all been a mistake, a hellish mistake.’

His eyes swivel, as if scanning for targets. I watch him carefully. If he attacks me again, I will be prepared.

‘Saw one come for me. It bounded up the slope, bodies still in its claws. It saw me. It pounced. I could do nothing. Transfixed. It moved like men do in dreams – flickering, shifting, jerking. That was it. I was dead.’

Despite myself, I smile.

‘You were not dead,’ I say. ‘What happened?’

‘Don’t know,’ he says.

Then he smiles too. This time it is not wry; it is wistful. His face is transformed by it. He might almost pass for human again.

‘Don’t know what they were,’ he says. ‘One got me, grabbing my shoulder. Pain was terrible. Hurled away, right through the air as if I weighed nothing. Landed hard, nearly blacking out. Remember blood down the inside of my helm visor. Armour torn open.’

His smile lingers.

‘It had thrown me clear,’ he says.

‘What had?’

Morbach looks at me, his eyes drawing into focus.

‘One of the beasts,’ he says.

‘Beasts?’

‘In the armour of men. Massive, grey, howling. They were unstoppable. Brutal as the creatures that swarmed around us. They charged through the blood and smoke as if born to it. The monsters screamed back at them, but the beasts did not hesitate. The beasts could hurt them. They did hurt them. They made them yowl.’

He chuckles at the memory.

‘What were they?’ I ask again, pressing him. I remember the talon. I remember old myths, rumours, legends. I begin to wonder.

For a moment Morbach does not answer. He is lost in some reverie, a rare recollection of defiance amid a bloodsoaked swathe of shudder-cold memories.

‘Saw one of them clearly,’ he says, musingly. ‘The one who threw me? Maybe. Stood straighter than the others, like a man, but far greater. He carried an axe that glowed with blue fire. His beard was as grey as ash, long hair matted. He looked at me, just for a second. Eyes were mournful. Never seen a face so grim. So noble.’

Morbach’s smile fades.

‘Then he was gone, stalking off, his old cloak rippling in the wind.’ He looks down at his hands. They are still trembling. ‘Those of us still alive, a pitiful tally, we boarded the few landers that still remained. Remember clambering into the crew bay. My shoulder was agonising and inflamed, but I didn’t care. We got out. Limped back home. The rest you know.’

I am fascinated. Coteaz was wrong: this is something new. None of the others have given coherent accounts of what happened on Voidsoul. I see the conviction of truth in Morbach’s eyes, and wonder what else we can learn from him.

I struggle to contain my excitement. We have so few weapons against the daemonic. Since the ravaging of the Gate we are hard pressed. If allies exist, capable of cutting down the neverborn on their own cursed worlds, then we must learn more of them.

I get up.

‘Try to remember everything,’ I say. ‘Every detail: any symbols on their armour, any words they spoke. This is important. Your soul may yet be saved. I will return soon. While I am gone, try to remember.’

He looks at me strangely, confidently.

‘Do not fear for my soul,’ he says.

I slip out of the cell, taking care to lock the door as I leave. The space outside is empty and hung with shadows. I hasten down the corridor towards the stairway. I reach the spiral shaft and pick up the pace, taking the steps two at a time. I ascend one level, then another. As I climb, I activate the comms-stud at my collar.

‘A message for the Lord Inquisitor,’ I say, hurrying.

A servitor replies.

‘State nature of message.’

I curse. Coteaz is always busy, but time is short and I know he will be difficult to persuade.

‘Priority summons from Inquisitor Damietta. This will not–’

The lights blow.

Everything plummets into darkness. For a moment I am lost in shock. Then I regret the fact I do not have my armour-helm. I have no dark-vision and little protection. I draw my pistol and crouch low, listening.

I try to re-establish a comm-link, and get nothing but static. From far below I hear muffled bangs, like krak grenades going off.

My heart starts to race. I click the safety off and begin to move, creeping back down the stairs. I listen carefully, trying to make sense of what is happening. I hear movements from the levels below – doors slamming, more distant crashes, the echo of bootfalls. I try to gauge numbers, positions.

Then alert klaxons begin to sound. Emergency lighting flickers on, limning the corridors in blood-red. I spit another curse – my concentration broken – and start to move again.

I reach the corridor just above the level containing Morbach’s cell. It extends away from me, occluded despite the floor-level glow. Rows of locked doors line each side, intact and monolithic. The stairwell down is at the far end, a hundred metres distant. I barely make out its open aperture; just a black void amid the shadows.

I pad down the corridor. No noise emerges from any of the cells as I pass by; their inmates have barely enough life left in them to breathe, and if they have heard the disturbances then they will do nothing more than huddle against the far walls, eyes open and breath shallow.

I hear more noises from below – something like coarse snuffling, or maybe growling, breathy and hot. The hairs on the back of my arms rise. I smell cordite. I smell… other things; musty, bestial things.

I reach the spiral stairwell and edge downwards, keeping my pistol pointing ahead of me two-handed, going silently. My heart is thumping.

I reach the base. I am in a circular antechamber at the head of the cell corridor, less than ten metres in diameter. It is darker here, almost pitch black – something has happened to the emergency lumens. I can just make out the outline of the blast doors I need to pass through. They have been broken open and hang at angles from the frame. They are thick, those doors. Their edges are jagged, as if something has bitten into them.

I hesitate. For some reason, my nerves betray me. This shames me – I have seen combat on a dozen worlds against many foul creatures – but still I feel the cold touch of fear snaking down my spine.

It is then that I realise that I am not alone.

I turn, slowly, and see two points of light in the dark. They stare back at me, liquid and luminous. A vice of horror seizes my stomach.

I fire once, twice. My aim is not good – I am panicked. Two shells explode out and detonate in flashes of white against the far side of the chamber. In those two freeze-frames, stark and jagged with jolting movement, I glimpse fragmentary aspects of what lurks there.

I see something huge, far bigger than me. I see armour pieces glinting, curved and lined with brass. I see a shaggy jowl, dripping with loops of saliva. I see yellow teeth pared back in a snarl, and ragged flails of pelts and leather. I see golden eyes, rimmed black and sunk into a bestial, hirsute face. I feel the rush of air as it leaps across me, veering effortlessly through my shots and bounding clear. Its stink overwhelms me, pungent and musky, before it is gone.

I shrink back, my arms shaking. It broke through the blast doors, shouldering the remains aside and crashing free.

Swallowing my fear down, I go after it. I clamber through the door-wreckage and out into the corridor beyond.

The space is silent. The aroma remains, cloying and potent, but I see no sign of its owner.

I edge forwards, sweeping the pistol muzzle gingerly. My heartbeat thuds heavily in my ears.

I reach Cell 7897. I already know what I will find. The doors are broken. The interior is deserted. No blood, no sign of struggle. Morbach is gone.

I look at the shattered doorway. It has been built to withstand immense impacts, but it has been ripped apart. I can see gouge marks on the steel, deep like stonemason’s grooves. I run my finger lightly along those marks. They come in fours, running parallel.

I remember Morbach’s last strange, confident look.

Do not fear for my soul.

I lower my weapon.

From deep down, buried in the heart of the fortress’s dungeons, I hear more noises – echoing, damp growls, hammer-blows, sporadic gunfire.

I make no move. I would not be fast enough. They have got what they came for. They are leaving now.

When Coteaz arrives I am still standing there, staring at the floor of Morbach’s cell. He is in full armour, as imposing as ever. The electric nimbus of his thunder hammer lights up the dark places, glossing them with a blush of gold.

He is furious. His face is tight with it. This is his place, ringed by hexagrammatic wards and layer upon layer of sentry walls. He had thought it inviolate. Even now, even after all that has taken place on Cadia, he still trusted in stone and metal to keep the bad dreams out.

‘What did you see?’ he demands.

I feel no fear of him this time. I am still unsettled by what I witnessed; beside that, Coteaz’s fury feels little more than mortal petulance.

‘I do not know,’ I say, truthfully.

He clenches a fist in frustration.

‘How can this be?’ he hisses, pacing around the cell.

He is as impatient as he is angry. He has nothing to fight. He has been humiliated, but he has no target to take his choler out on.

He turns to me again. He looks suspicious. I return his gaze equably.

‘All of those retrieved from Voidsoul,’ he says. ‘All of them. Gone. Their cells empty, no trace remaining. None of the others touched. How did they do it? Our grid has not been compromised.’

I have no answers. All I can see is the animal face in the dark – something like human, but so changed. I shudder to recall it.

As I think of something to say, we both freeze. A new noise has broken out, far away, beyond the perimeter of the fortress walls, audible even over the drone of the klaxons.

I listen, and it makes my blood run colder. Even Coteaz is stilled. I see his gauntlets grip the hammer-shaft more tightly.

They are howling out there. Out on the dark surface of the fortress-moon, under the hard, unmediated light of the stars, they are howling.

Coteaz scowls to hear it. The sound smacks of deviancy. If he could destroy those beasts, he would. I am sure he has already dispatched kill-teams to hunt them down, each one moving fast and armed to the teeth with forbidden weapons. I am equally sure that none of them will find anything but echoes.

I release the capsule at my belt and the talon falls into my palm. I look at it again, dull in the light of Coteaz’s metallic nimbus.

It is long, gnarled, old-looking. An animal’s, perhaps. Or maybe a man’s, his body changed by ancient arts of gene-sorcery, then tempered in the fires of daemon worlds. That is possible too.

I remember what Morbach said.

Stood straighter than the others, like a man, but far greater. He carried an axe that glowed with blue fire. His beard was as grey as ash, long hair matted. He looked at me, just for a second. Eyes were mournful. Never seen a face so grim. So noble.

‘So what were they?’ demands Coteaz.

I shake my head.

‘I do not think we will ever know,’ I say.

That is almost certainly not true. Archives will be scoured, leads hunted down. Coteaz is thorough. In time, he will at least have a name to pin on the creatures that broke into his interrogation chambers and took his subjects from him.

But I care little for that. As I listen to the last of the howls dying out and fading into silence, a new thought occurs to me.

They came for the ones who had witnessed them. They came for those who knew of their existence and had evidence that such half-breed things walked among men. No citadel of the Inquisition could keep them out.

I clutch the talon in my palm. I feel it dig into my softer flesh.

I have been told too much. I know too much. The after-echoes of the howls still linger, eerie and ephemeral.

Do not fear for my soul.

I let my curiosity get the better of me. I followed leads I should not have followed. I thought I was doing the hunting; perhaps that was a mistake.

They were unstoppable.

They came for him. They came for all of them.

And so I wonder then, remembering Morbach’s unexpected confidence, surrounded by claw-marks and emptiness, when they will come for me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Wraight is the author of the Space Wolves novels Battle of the Fang and Blood of Asaheim. He has also written the Space Marine Battles novel Wrath of Iron, along with Schwarzhelm & Helborg: Swords of the Emperor and Luthor Huss in the Warhammer universe. He’s based in a leafy bit of south-west England, and when not struggling to meet deadlines enjoys running through scenic parts of it.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2013 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Raymond Swanland

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