“Get up, Preceptor,” the first voice insisted.
Stoyan, his memory supplied. Figured. Stoyan was always a persistent sonovabitch.
“We need you,” Stoyan said, his voice quiet and close. “The Dogs need you. Landon Nez is killing us. We’re being purged.”
Eventually they would go away.
“He doesn’t give a fuck,” Bale said.
“Pass me the bag,” Stoyan said.
Someone knelt next to him.
“It’s not gonna matter,” Bale growled. “He’s all fucked up. He’s laying here in his own piss and vomit. You heard that dickhead at the door. He’s been in this shithole for weeks.”
Hugh heard a zipper being pulled open. Something was put in front of him. He smelled the stench of rotting blood and decomposition.
Bale kept going. “Even if he sobers up, he’ll crawl right back into the bottle and get shit-faced.”
Hugh opened his eyes. A severed head stared back at him, the brown irises dulled by a milky patina.
Rene.
“He can’t even stand anymore. What are we going to do, tie him to a stick and prop him up?”
The world turned red.
“To hell with this.” Bale leaned back, readying for a kick.
Rage drove him up before Bale’s foot connected with the severed head. He locked his hand around Bale’s throat, jerked him off his feet, and slammed him down onto the nearest table. Bale’s back hit the wood with a loud thud.
“Hallelujah,” Lamar said.
Bale clawed at his arm, the muscles on his thick biceps bulging. Hugh squeezed.
Felix loomed on his right, reaching for him. Hugh hammered a cross punch into the big man’s nose with his left hand. Cartilage crunched. Felix stumbled back.
Bale’s face turned purple, his eyes glistening. His feet drummed the air.
Stoyan locked his arms on Hugh’s right bicep and went limp, adding his deadweight to the arm. Felix lunged from the left and locked himself onto Hugh’s left arm, trying to force an armbar.
The world was still red, and he kept squeezing.
Water drenched him in a cold cascade, washing away the red haze. He shook himself, growling, and saw Lamar holding a bucket.
“Welcome back,” Lamar said. “Let go of the man, Preceptor. If you kill him, there will be nobody to lead your vanguard.”
The void gnawed at him, the big raw hole where Roland’s presence used to be. Hugh gritted his teeth and forced himself to concentrate on the head on the table in front of him.
“When?” he asked.
“Six days ago,” Stoyan said.
“What did he do?”
“Nothing,” Stoyan said. “He did nothing.”
“Rene was out,” Lamar said. “He and Camilla walked off after you were forced out. Went civilian. Rene took a teaching job in Chattanooga, high school French.”
“He wasn’t a threat to anyone,” Stoyan said. “They killed him anyway. I came to convince him to meet with you and found his body. They left him on the floor of his kitchen.”
His throbbing head made it hard to think. “Camilla?”
Stoyan shook his head.
Rene’s wife didn’t make it. Pain stabbed at Hugh, fueling his rage. Rene hadn’t been a great soldier. His heart was never in it, but he’d tried. He’d always talked of something better. Of living life after he was done.
“He and Camilla aren’t the only ones,” Stoyan said.
“Caroline?”
“Dead,” Bale said.
“Purdue, Rockfort, Ivanova, all dead,” Stoyan added. “We’re it.”
Hugh surveyed the four men. Stoyan, dark-haired, gray-eyed, in his mid-thirties, looked haggard, like a worn-out sword. Felix, a hulking mountain of a Dominican, leaned back, trying to stop a nosebleed. The bridge of his nose skewed right. Broken. Bale sulked in the corner. About five-eight, five-nine, with dark red hair, Bale was almost as broad as he was tall, all his bulk made up of bone and slabs of thick, heavy muscle. Lamar perched on the edge of the table to the far right. Tall, black, with a body that looked twisted together from steel cables, Lamar was closing on fifty and the age only made him harder to kill. His hair was trimmed short. A neat beard traced his jaw. He’d been an intelligence officer once and never lost the bearing. A pair of thin, wire-rimmed glasses rode his nose.
The second-in-command, the silent killer, the berserker, and the strategist. All that remained of his cohort leadership.
“This is the way things are now,” Stoyan said.
“Nez is going down the roster of the Iron Dogs and crossing out the names,” Lamar said. “Nobody is safe. We’re all tarred with the same brush.”
The Iron Dogs. His Iron Dogs, the elite private army he’d built for Roland. The name made him wince inside. The void gaped wider, scraping at his bones.
He’d led the Iron Dogs, and Landon Nez led the Golden Legion, the necromancers who possessed mindless vampires, piloting them like remote-controlled cars. The Iron Dogs and the Golden Legion, the right and left hands of Roland. He’d hated Nez, and Nez hated him, and that was the way Roland liked it.
Hugh would’ve found a way to kill Nez eventually, but he’d run out of time. Roland had purged him.
The memory punched him, hot and furious. Roland standing before him, devoid of all life and warmth. At that moment Hugh would’ve settled for rage, fury, sadness, anything. But there was nothing. Roland stood before him, cold.
The words scalded him. “You’ve failed me, Hugh. I have no further use for you.”
He remembered every sound. He remembered taking a breath and then the lifeline of magic that anchored him to the man who’d pulled him off the streets vanished. The void had opened, and all became pain. It bit at him now, its fangs shredding his soul.
His purpose, his teacher, his surrogate father, everything that was right and true in this fucked up world was gone. Life had no meaning. And he didn’t even fully understand why.
The four men were looking at him.
“How bad is it?” Hugh asked.
“We’re down to three hundred men now, with us,” Stoyan said.
A few months ago, Hugh had left five cohorts of the Iron Dogs, four hundred and eighty soldiers each. He’d hammered them into an elite, disciplined, trained force, the kind of soldiers any head of state would cut off his arm to have.
“There are more out there,” Stoyan said. “Some are in hiding, some are wandering about without any direction. Nez has bloodsucker patrols out. They are hunting us down.”
What the hell had happened since he was banished? “Why?”
“Because of you!” Bale snarled from the corner.
Hugh looked at Lamar.
“Roland discovered an unpleasant fact,” Lamar said. “We do not follow him. We follow you. You are our Preceptor. We’re viewed as untrustworthy.”
Idiots. He stared at them. “You swore an oath.”
“Oaths go both ways. Show him your arms,” Lamar said.
Stoyan yanked his sleeves up. Jagged scars marked his forearms.
“It’s the same old story,” Lamar said. “Roland wanted some land that was occupied. He offered the town money, but they refused to sell.”
“He told me to raze the town,” Stoyan said. “And hang the civilians on trees to send a message. I told him I was a soldier, not a butcher. He crucified the lot and hung me on the crosses with them. Thirty-two people. I watched them die for three days. I would’ve died there.”
“What saved you?” Hugh asked.
“Daniels saved me. She pulled me off the cross and let me go.”
The name cut like a knife. It must’ve shown on his face because Stoyan took a step back.
Kate Daniels, Roland’s long-lost and newly-found daughter. The reason for his banishment.
Hugh shoved the name out of his mind and concentrated on the problem at hand. Roland would’ve known Stoyan would refuse the order to butcher civilians. That wasn’t what the regular cohorts did. The d
ark arm of the Iron Dogs, which would’ve wiped the village off the face of the planet without question, no longer existed. Roland was painfully aware of that. The order had been a test of loyalty, and Stoyan had failed. Roland didn’t just require loyalty; he demanded unquestioning devotion. When he failed to receive it, he must’ve decided to destroy the entire force.
A waste, Hugh realized. Hugh had sunk years into building the Iron Dogs, and Roland tossed them away like garbage.
Much like Roland had thrown him away. No, not thrown away. I was his right hand. He’s cut me off. What kind of man cuts off his own hand before going into a fight?
This new heretical thought sat in his brain, burning and refusing to fade.
He groped for the tether of magic to banish the uncertainty and found only the void. It sank its fangs into his soul. The invisible tie had connected him and Roland even when the magic waves waned and technology held the upper hand. It was always there. It had linked them since the moment Roland had shared his blood with him. Now it was gone.
The void scraped the inside of his skull, the new sharp thoughts seared Hugh’s mind, and he had no way to steady himself. An urge to scream and smash something gripped him. He needed liquor, and a lot of it.
The four men watched him. He’d known each one for years. He’d hand-selected them, trained them, fought with them, and now they wanted something from him. They weren’t going to let him alone.
“Unless we do something, none of us will be alive this time next year,” Felix said.
“What is it you want to do?” Hugh already knew, but he asked anyway.
“We want you to lead us,” Stoyan said. “The Dogs know you. They trust you. If they know you’re alive, they will find you. We can pull in the stragglers and hold against Nez.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.” To stay awake and anchored to reality, with the void chewing on him. He would go mad.
“I’m not asking.” Stoyan stepped in front of him. “I trusted you. I followed you. Not Roland. Roland didn’t make me promises. You did. You sold me this idea of belonging to something better. The Iron Dogs are more than a job. A brotherhood, you said.”
“A family, where each of us stands for something greater,” Lamar said.
“If you fall, the rest will shield you,” Bale said.
“Well, by God, we’re falling,” Stoyan said.
Fucking shit.
Rene’s head stared at Hugh from the table. He’d saved Rene back then, many years ago, in Paris. He’d saved him again and again, in battle. In the sea of shit and blood that Hugh made, that was the one good thing he had done. Nez had killed Rene for one reason only – to stab at him. No matter what he did from now on, Hugh would always have Rene’s death. He would carry it.
He’s dead now. Because of me. Because I wasn’t there. Because he was here instead, wallowing in self-pity and trying to drown the red-hot vise that clamped his skull.
Hugh studied the head, committing every detail to memory, and hurled the image into the void. The old days were gone. He would fill the bottomless hole with rage or it would drive him insane. Either way it made no difference.
“Do you know why you’re still alive?” Lamar asked. “Every day, every week, there are less of us, but you’re still breathing. If we found you, Nez can, too. I bet he knows exactly where you are.”
“I’m alive because he wants me to be the last,” Hugh said. “He wants me to know.”
Nez wanted him to watch as his necromancers tore apart everything Hugh had built, and when nothing was left, he would come calling to squeeze the last bit of blood out of the stone. Nez wanted him awake and sober. No fun chasing a dog who didn’t run. Fine. He’d be awake.
Lamar smiled.
“What do we have?” Hugh asked.
“Three hundred and two men, including us,” Stoyan said.
“Weapons?”
“Whatever each one of us carries,” Bale said.
“Supplies?”
“None,” Lamar said. “We’re close to starving.”
“Base?”
Felix shook his head.
Hugh’s mind cycled through the possibilities. Rock bottom wasn’t the worst place to start from, and the Dogs who’d managed to stay alive were probably the smartest or strongest. He had three hundred trained killers. A man could do worse.
“We have the barrels,” Stoyan said.
“How many?”
“All of them.”
Life kicked him, then blew him a kiss. “Good.”
Hugh strode to the door and flung it open. Fresh air greeted him. A small, ugly town sat in front of him, little more than a street with a few buildings and a rural road, leading into the distance and disappearing between some fields. A sunset splashed over the horizon, dying slowly, and the three street lamps had come on already, spilling watery electric light onto the stretch of road in front of him. He remembered the oppressive heat, but the air was cooler now.
“Fall or spring?” he asked.
“September,” Lamar told him.
“What is this town?”
“Connerville, Tennessee,” Stoyan said.
The last thing he remembered was Beaufort, South Carolina.
“Where is Nez?”
“In Charlotte,” Lamar told him. “He’s set up a permanent base there.”
Far enough to keep out of Atlanta and the surrounding lands. They belonged to Daniels now. But not so far that Nez couldn’t bring the Legion down if Roland became displeased with his precious daughter.
Stabilize three hundred Iron Dogs, arm them, and find a base to keep them alive. Simple to visualize, complicated to execute. Most of all, he had to convince Nez that attacking them now wasn’t in his best interests. If he kept the Dogs alive through the winter, by spring he would have enough people trained.
The bottle of moonshine called to him. He didn’t have to turn around to know exactly where it was, tempting him to do what severed limbs did - wither and rot. And while he rotted, his people would die one by one.
No. No, he owed Nez a debt. He was Hugh d’Ambray, Preceptor of the Iron Dogs. The Dogs paid their debts.
Magic rolled over the land. Hugh couldn’t see it, but he felt an exhilarating rush that tore through him, washing away the headache that pounded at the base of his skull. The electric lamps winked out, and twisted glass tubes of fey lanterns flared into life with an eerie indigo light.
He raised his hand and let his magic flow out. A pale blue glow bathed his fingers. Felix grunted as his nose knitted back together.
Hugh picked up Rene’s head. They would bury him tonight.
“Find me some clothes. And call Nez. Tell him I want to talk.”
2
Black Fire Stables spread across twenty acres about a two-hour horse ride east of Charlotte. The large, solid house sat in the middle of the lawn, on a rolling hillside, with stables to one side and a covered riding arena to the other. The tech was up, and the inside of the house glowed with warm electric light. Sweet green grass stretched into the distance, to the wall of the forest, shaded here and there by copses of pines, their needles carpeting the soil in a brown blanket. Red and pink roses bloomed at the gate. A rooster perched on the fence. As Hugh rode up, it cocked its head and gave him and the men behind him the evil eye.
He’d brought Stoyan, Lamar, and Bale with him. He needed Lamar’s take on Nez’s strength, and Bale’s axe would help to cut them out if things went sideways. He’d sent Felix to gather what was left of the Iron Dogs, and by all rights, he should’ve sent Stoyan with him too, but that would’ve meant listening to Bale and Lamar bickering the entire way with nobody to shut them up except him. There was only so much he could take.
Hugh halted his horse before the gate. The borrowed mare Stoyan had found somewhere wouldn’t cut it, especially not with Nez. They had to appear strong. He needed a horse, a war stallion. Problem was, he had no money.
Until a few months ago, money had been an abstract concept.
He understood prices, he haggled on occasion, but he never worried where it came from. It was something he traded for goods and services, and when he needed more, he simply asked for it, and in a few days, it was there, in the appropriate account or in his hand. Now all of his accounts had been cut off. He didn’t have a dime to his name. He must’ve earned money somehow to keep himself drunk, and he vaguely remembered fighting, but most of the months between his banishment and Rene’s head had vanished into the darkness of an alcoholic haze.
The door of the farmhouse swung open. Matthew Ryan hurried out, stocky, balding, a big smile on his broad face, as if nothing had changed. The past stabbed at Hugh. You were something. Now you’re nothing.
“Come in, come in.” Ryan pulled the gate open. “Maria just got the table set. Come in!”
They rode up to the house, dismounted, and went inside.
The dinner was a blur, superimposed on the composite of his memories. He’d come to this ranch three times before. Each time he’d been treated to dinner and left with a horse. He sat there, watching his people attack mashed potatoes like starving wolves and tried to get a grip on reality. It kept slipping through his fingers.
After dinner, he and Ryan sat on the back porch of the house, beers in hand, watching the Friesians run through the pasture. The Friesians were his breed: jet black, built like light draft horses, but fast, nimble, and lively. He’d gotten his last three stallions from these stables. He’d paid at a premium for them, too. They were his mark - vicious black horses with flowing manes.
On the far right a stallion ran a lazy circle around his pasture, black mane flowing, his coat shiny like polished silk, high-stepping gait… Black fire in motion. Yeah, that one would do.
“I need a horse,” Hugh said.
Ryan nodded.
Here came the part he detested. “I can’t pay you now.” The words tasted foul in his mouth. “But you know I’m good for it.”
“We heard. Terrible business, that,” Ryan said. “Work for the man for years and have nothing to show for it. Shame, that’s what that is. A damn shame.” He let it hang.