The Horus Heresy: Vengeful Spirit

Cebella Devine slumped back onto her knees, convulsing as her arteries pumped litres of blood into Albard’s lap. The exo-suit twitched and spasmed as it struggled to interpret the signals coming from her dying brain.

Eventually it stopped trying.

8

Albard watched the life flee Cebella’s blood-limned eyes and let out a dusty sigh that he had been keeping inside for over forty years. He pushed his stepmother’s corpse from his lap and gathered his strength. It had almost been too much to fight her. He was little better than a cripple, and only hatred had given him the strength to kill her.

Looking down at the dead body, he blinked as – just for a moment – he saw the carcass of a mallahgra. Steel struts of armature became bone, furred robes became animal hide. Cebella’s too-tight skinmask was the scarab maw of the mountain predator that had taken his eye and cursed him to this augmetic that filled his skull with constant static burr.

Then she was Cebella again, the bitch who had murdered his own mother and replaced her. Who had birthed two unwanted siblings and poisoned them both against him with talk of old gods and destiny. He should have killed her the moment she first came to Lupercalia and insinuated herself into House Devine.

His lap was sticky with her blood. It smelled awful, like bad meat or milk left to curdle in the sun. It was the smell of her soul, he decided. It had made her a monster, and once again it seemed as though her outline blurred, becoming the mallahgra of his nightmares.

Albard dropped the scalpel onto his stepmother’s body and cleared his throat. He spat phlegm and brown lung gunk.

‘Get in here!’ he shouted, as loudly as he could. ‘Sacristans! Dawn Guard! Get in here now!’

He kept shouting until the door opened and his mother’s pet Sacristans warily pushed open the door. Their half-human, half-mechanised faces were not yet incapable of registering surprise, and their eyes widened at the sight of their mistress lying dead before the fire.

Two armed soldiers of the Dawn Guard stood at the doorway. Their expressions were very different to those of the Sacristans.

He saw relief and knew why.

‘You two,’ said Albard waving a hand at the Sacristans. ‘Kneel.’

Ingrained obedience routines saw them instantly obey, and Albard nodded to the two soldiers behind them. In the instant before he spoke, he saw them not as mortals, but as towering knights of House Devine. Armoured in crimson and bearing glorious pennants from their segmented carapaces, he saw himself reflected in the glassy canopy.

Not as the half-man he was, but as a strong, powerful warrior.

A god amongst men, slayer of beasts.

Albard pointed at the kneeling Sacristans.

‘Kill them,’ he ordered.

The Sacristans raised hands in supplication, but twin las-bolts cored their skulls before they could speak. Their headless bodies slumped onto the stone-flagged floor next to Cebella.

Albard waved the two soldiers – or were they heroic knights? – forwards. It seemed that their steps were surely too heavy to be those of mortals.

‘Strip that witch of her exo-suit,’ said Albard. ‘I’m going to need it.’

FIFTEEN The Cave of Hypnos / White Naga / Angel of Fire

1

A new Land Raider had been found for the Warmaster. Equipped with a flare shield, layered plates of bonded ceramite with ablative ion disruptors, shroud dispensers and frag-launchers, the Mechanicum had repeated their claim that it was proof against all but the weapons of a battle engine.

Horus let Ezekyle kill sixteen of them to remind them of the last time they had made that boast.

The Land Raider idled in the foothills of a mountain chain known as the Untar Mesas. Thousands of armoured vehicles surrounded it, connected together in laagers to form miniature fortresses. The Lord of Iron himself would have approved of the defences arranged around the Warmaster.

An unbroken chain of supply vehicles – tankers, ammo carriers and Mechanicum loaders – stretched back to the coast. Warhounds prowled the line of supply like watchful shepherds, and two Warlords in the colours of Legio Vulcanum stood sentinel over the Warmaster.

Horus climbed into the hills with the Mournival arranged around him in a tight circle. Farther out, Terminators of the Justaerin slogged uphill, looking more like relentless machines than living beings encased in armour.

Ger Gerradon’s Luperci were out there too, unseen in the darkness. Horus could feel their presence like a scratch on the roof of his mouth. Invisible, but impossible to ignore.