'Blood Sacrifice' – Peter McLean (Black Library)


I've pretty much got over my 'Warhammer Horror is just the same as regular Warhammer fiction, isn't it so what's the point?' phase... Well almost ;o) I still have my moments but these days, I'm more about just enjoying it for what it is and having fun getting just a little scared. Because there is some creepy stuff happening in the darker corners of the Warhammer 40K universe, and in hospitals too if 'Blood Sacrifice' is anything to go by.

'Blood Sacrifice' continues a story begun in 'Baphomet by Night', also by Peter McLean and a story that I totally neglected to read before getting into 'Blood Sacrifice'. I've got a soft spot for 'hospital horror' and my money wouldn't quite stretch to both tales, you know how it is. If you find yourself in a similar spot, the good news is that 'Blood Sacrifice' is a relatively self contained tale that stands very well by itself, with little hints of 'what came before' as a bridge between this tale and its predecessor. If you're anything like me, you'll find yourself picking up 'Baphomet by Night' anyway as 'Blood Sacrifice' really is creepily good.

Corporal Cully of the Reslian 45th is bored. Three months on the hive world of Voltoth, waiting for an enemy to fight, have shredded his nerves. Little does he know that what is to come will make him crave those times… After two decades of battle and facing horrors that would leave many minds broken, Cully thinks he's seen it all – but an unsanctioned mission into a seemingly abandoned medicae facility will test him to his very limits… and beyond.

'Blood Sacrifice' is a tale of how the sins of your past will always catch up with you, no matter how nice a guy Corporal Cully is (and he is, well I liked him anyway). More than that though, 'Blood Sacrifice' is a story that lulls you into thinking that it's just a regular Warhammer short story, and there's nothing to worry about here, before having the horror literally explode through the wall and be right up in your face. It's like McLean knows that the Warhammer 40K setting is horrifying enough anyway and uses that to his advantage, like an extra layer of camouflage for what is really going on.

And then things get really grotesque, just like the medical bay in 'Event Horizon', with dank corridors leading into the kind of body horror that you'd expect to find in an abandoned hospital in the 41st Millennium. Just seeing that is bad enough but McLean forces you to delve further into by asking you what is the more horrifying, what you are confronted with in the medical bays or the fact that this might not be a unique occurrence. Life is cheap, in the Imperium, after all... Who knows? What I do know is that there is plenty to shock here (amidst those horrible moments where you know something is coming but it hasn't quite got here...) and our Imperial Guardsmen 'heroes' are ready to meet it head on with an impressive amount of firepower. 'Blood Sacrifice' is like the best of both worlds in that respect; military grade ordinance and body horror all wrapped up in a well paced and put together story. Does McLean give away the ending a little too soon? Maybe but it didn't bother me too much, all good horror has a hefty dose of the inevitable...

I hope that one day, all these short stories will be released as a print anthology; they deserve a wider audience than just the Kindle.In the meantime though, 'Blood Sacrifice' certainly sits proudly with the better Warhammer Horror stories that I've read. Now I need to go and read 'Baphomet by Night'...

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