As Gedd reached the warehouse, the wind rattled hard against the windows, and a metal sign outside hinged on a bracket swung dementedly. A thick patina of rust obscured the name on it. A ramp of snow had accumulated out front. Driven by the wind, the door pushed hard against it but could not dislodge the snow. It did yawn wide enough for Gedd to enter without needing to move it.
She was about to go in when she paused at the threshold.
A marking, something recent, had been etched into the frame. She turned and looked over her shoulder but all she saw was snow. Even the wretches in the doorway had gone. A child could have made the mark, an idle act of petty vandalism. She filed the thought away for later use.
The storm lessened the moment Gedd went inside, reducing to a howl that shook roof tiles and plate sidings. Metal pillars supporting the warehouse’s frame creaked ominously but held.
‘Better…’ said Gedd, blowing onto gloved hands.
It was dark within. Shafts of light from outside peeked through cracks in the roof but did little to lift the dinginess of the interior. No power meant no illumination.
She called out. ‘Hello… Peacekeepers. If someone is in here, make yourself known.’
No answer came, but for a slight echo.
‘Because I’ll bloody well shoot you,’ she said in a quieter voice. ‘Creepy as…’
Gedd threw two flares out into the shadowy expanse of the warehouse like a fisherman would cast a hook into the sea. The stench of sulphur and polymeric resin touched the still air.
Crates and other containers, and the strangely anthropomorphic shapes of long-dead machines caught the edge of the light.
She snapped the head off a third flare, using it as a torch, and delved into the darkness.
It wasn’t long before she found the first bodies.
A maintenance pit had been put to use as something arcane and ritualistic. Standing at the edge, Gedd crouched down and touched her fingers to a smear of solid candle wax. She counted seven other such sites, all arranged around the circular pit. It was large, at least thirty feet across, and accessed via a wide slope that led from the upper part of the warehouse floor.
‘What in the name of the saints…’
The machinery, the tools and other trappings one might expect to find had been pushed aside. In their place she saw heavy-looking chains, half buried in snow, and six partially frozen corpses attached to them. Two sets of chains were empty, either unused or their captives had escaped. Or been set free.
‘Oh, now I am actively disliking this place.’
She thought about contacting Klein and getting him to bring the troops, but remembered what Meroved had said. She would not disobey him.
Instead, she listened, trying to discern if she was truly alone. Gedd only heard the wind, wailing a lament and pulling at the roof tiles as it tried to get in.
An ill feeling wormed into her gut, a sense of unease she found hard to dislodge. Meroved had told her to observe and investigate. She had to press on. The Verifier felt heavy and reassuring, holstered to her hip. She had come this far.
‘Saint’s piss…’
Exhaling a held breath, Gedd took the slope.
Once inside the pit, Gedd approached one of the bodies, a woman. She had suffered some physical deterioration from the adverse conditions, but the wounds to her face, arms and chest looked like they were made prior to death. Sigils Gedd didn’t recognise had been cut into the flesh and showed some evidence of healing. Clothes, little more than ragged, gossamer robes, had darkened with the blood. The chains had similar configurations carved into each link. Some of the links had been broken.
‘What is this all about?’
Closer examination of the bodies revealed something that Gedd did not expect. Her skin crawled at the sight of it and she wondered if this was what Meroved had meant when he referred to an encroaching darkness.
Each of the corpses had some minor transfiguration. Tiny bone nubs protruding from the forehead; black lesions across the back, face and neck; a tongue split into a ragged fork; needle-like teeth; a partly distended jaw, now broken; lengthening of the limbs, toes and fingers; loss of hair and the extension of the spinal column. She catalogued all of it, writing down her findings on a data-slate that she tucked back into her slicker when she was finished.
The changes could be birth defects – Gedd had seen wyrds with similar afflictions – but she suspected and feared they were not.
She was sweating in her gear, despite the fact it was colder than a Valhallan winter. Gedd wanted to turn around and get the hell out, but something kept her rooted. She hoped it was a sense of duty. There was something else in here, beyond the pit. Gedd kept moving.
Chapter Thirteen
City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light
There was something wrong about the figure standing twenty feet in front of Meroved. It was a man, that much he had managed to interpret from its shape and build, but his head was bowed and he wore the anonymous overalls of a hive labourer. He had yet to step into the light after the hololith of Ylax Orn had faded, and stood remarkably still. It was almost as if he wasn’t breathing.
‘I am Meroved, once of the Ten Thousand, servant of the Emperor’s Light. Come forward and make yourself known.’
‘I know who you are.’
The voice definitely belonged to the man, but it was inhuman and entirely too deep and too resonant, as if more than one person were speaking at once.
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘No…’ said Meroved, stepping back as he moved into a fighting stance, ‘but I know what you are.’
‘So confident, so sure of yourself… Do you think he was the same? Would you like me to tell you how he died?’
‘Why don’t you shut your mouth and try to kill me instead?’ Meroved holstered the pistol. He wanted to do this hand-to-hand.
‘Oh,’ said the daemonhost, lifting its night-black gaze from the floor and revealing all the horror of its unholy countenance. ‘I would be delighted to.’
Two shiny horns protruded from its forehead, framing a face elongated by the rigours of the warp. Its mouth was a pallid scythe-slit, filled with needle-sharp teeth. Its nose was long and edged like a dagger. Patches of dark discolouration covered its skin like a colonisation of plague.
As it advanced on Meroved, it seemed to stretch. The skin tautened, then ripped, revealing gleaming bone beneath. It teetered on spindly legs. Its overlong arms swept down from its body like an ape’s. The ribcage bulged then broke apart, the jagged edges of bone becoming gnashing teeth and the red place within, a maw. Its neck distended, uncoiling in peristaltic fashion until the now diminutive head wobbled on a grotesque tentacle of flesh.
The clothes it had once worn sloughed away, caught by some unseen fire and turned into burning scraps that fled on a stinking breeze, until it stood naked and foul as the night it was spawned. Spoiled meat and rancid milk tainted the air.
Meroved roared, never taking his eyes off the stalk-like daemon as it bore down on him with unnatural vigour.
He missed the first blow struck at him, his own cut with the vibro-sword glancing off rubberised flesh. Meroved lost his feet, a whipping arm taking his legs and dumping him hard on the ground.
Tasting blood, he realised he had bitten his tongue.