Warhammer 40K - [Blood Angels 00] - Blood Debt by James Swallow (Undead) (v1.0) by me

Author:me
Format: epub

12

The Blood Angels marched the survivors into the frigate’s launch bay, forcing them into a huddled

group in the middle of the deck. Medicae servitors probed and examined them while Space Marines with loaded bolters walked in steady watchful orbits around the poor wretches. They had all expected to die on the shuttle, but to be rescued by these crimson-sheathed giants was like the hand of the God-Emperor himself reaching down to scoop them from the jaws of death. Panic and terror had been replaced with a different breed of fear, one borne of reverence and a lifetime of awe. A hatch in the wall irised open to admit one of Simeon’s officers, a taciturn codicer in blue armour, his grizzled face lined with age. The Space Marine took a few steps and stumbled to a sudden halt, his jaw dropping open.

One of the Blood Angels guarding the refugees caught sight of his reaction and approached him. “Brother Varon? Is something wrong?”

“Daemon!” Varon suddenly shouted the word, his finger stabbing out at a nondescript woman

in a tattered evening dress, rocking gently side-to-side amid the rescued. Corded muscles stood out on the psyker’s neck as his preternatural senses tasted the psychic stench of something monstrous hidden inside the cowl of her flesh.

The other survivors threw themselves aside as the woman sighed, each of them all too familiar by now with the ways of the change.

Her body twitched and deflated, crumbling in on itself. A swarm of black motes issued from her eyes, her nostrils, ears and mouth. The Blood Angels opened fire on reflex, cutting down those too slow to get out of the way, laying a spread of bolt shells into the host-corpse. The dead woman flew apart in wet hanks of fast-decaying flesh, but the dark-thing was already free. It looped around like a streamer of liquid shadow and threw itself at the psyker Space Marine becoming a glistening spear. Varon marshalled all his ability at once and channelled his Quickening into a mental shield; for an instant he thought it might have been enough. The force of the daemon’s murderous attack shattered his ephemeral defence like brittle glass, melting into the ceramite armour protecting his chest and tearing him inside out like a long and bloody streamer of meat. The shade came around, trailing Varon’s blood and viscera, and beheaded a screaming Chapter serf with callous abandon, playing with the disorder it was creating.

In the frigate’s chirurgery. Stele bolted awake. He reeled up from the examination table where he lay, scattering trays of instruments and knocking aside the medicae servitors tending. “It’s here,” he spat, “aboard the ship!”

The shadow-creature warped the flesh of human and Astartes alike murdering them by forcing unholy new shapes from their bodies. Some perished as their bones and organs were forcibly altered into eight-pointed stars and hate glyphs. The daemon enjoyed this recreation, but it was secondary to the real reason it had come this far.

With a breathy sigh, it left its toys behind and the creature gathered up enough sustenance from the shrivelled dead.

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