Page 1 of Tin God

Prologue

The wind vampire flew over the frozen plateau, hunting for signs of life in the clear night. The sky was lit by a newly waning moon, and the earth beneath her was threaded with river valleys so fine and numerous that they reminded the hunter of the unfurled leaf of an ancient fern.

She smelled smoke in the distance and turned toward it.

The small wooden house was surrounded by dense forest, nestled in a narrow river valley flanked by snowy peaks. There was nothing for miles except trees, wild animals, and a drifting group of human pastoralists she could easily avoid.

She’d found him. A thrill hummed in her blood.

Finally.

She had been hunting her quarry for centuries.

The isolation was impressive. There was nothing permanent in the vast landscape save for a tiny human village on the banks of a lake on the other side of the plateau.

The wind vampire she hunted was the last of his immortal bloodline.

His brothers were dead. His sire was dead, and she’d killed his grandsire thousands of years before he’d been born.

But flowing through this vampire’s veins was immortal blood that the hunter had sworn an oath to destroy.

She perched in the branch of a pine tree, watching the cabin where glowing gold light flickered through small glass windows. Snow fell through the branches of the pine, drifting and dancing in the air, triggering a faint memory of sunlight and laughter she had nearly forgotten after endless years.

The house in the valley was built in the traditional manner of the Russians who had come into these lands, made of stacked logs with a steep roof to channel falling snow to the sides of the dwelling. There was a spiked wooden fence that surrounded the compound to keep predators away from the frozen meat hanging from the eaves.

Humans would see that as a barrier, but it wouldn’t stop her.

Humans also wouldn’t detect the faint scent of frozen human blood from the bodies hidden in the snowdrifts, but she could smell it through the ice and the snow.

It was too cold in the winter to bury human bodies, but the ground around her was thick with bones. She could hear them whispering as they moldered in the earth. These immortals had been hunting in this area for many seasons.

From the house, the faint sound of music drifted in the air, interspersed with affectionate endearments in the Russian tongue. She’d spent two years learning it so she could stalk this prey. When she had killed him, she would do her best to forget.

Rumors that her old enemy’s blood still lived had reached her in Tibet, centuries after she had believed Temur’s line to be extinguished.

This vampire had done his best to hide from her; he knew fate would find him should she discover his existence.

She floated from the pine branch down to the ground, dislodging flurries of snow like flower petals swept into the night air and snatched away by a breeze.

Her legs were wrapped in heavy wool and fur, her feet in thick leather boots. From a distance, she probably looked like an animal.

Shewasan animal.

Her feet landed in the snow, and the crunch of ice that reached her ears sounded loud as a gunshot.

The hunter lifted from the ground again, floating over the blue-lit surface of the frozen landscape. The sky was clear, and the stars shone in cold judgment.

There would be no mercy from the sky, just as there had been no mercy in Temur’s blood.

It would end tonight. Finally it would end.

She flew around the house, looking for an entry point, searching for anything that would allow her silence. She hated noise. She hated all this, but it needed to be done.

Some blood needed to die. She would never sire a child, so her own sire’s blood would die with her. It was the best. It was necessary.

She spotted a blackened window at the back of the house and arrowed toward it. The weight of the bronze blade was heavy at her side, bound to her thigh next to a dagger and a thin, short rapier she’d paid a smith in Kashgar to forge. It was carefully designed to pierce between ribs and precisely reach the heart where a swift flick of her wrist would end a human life in seconds.

She had no need for the rapier that night, but the blade brought her delight. It was the only satisfaction the hunter took from life, the ability to end it with such swiftness that suffering was barely a thought in the mind of her victims before they were gone.

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