The fourth and final short story in Black Library’s Digital Horror Week 2019, Peter McLean’s Blood Sacrifice returns to the story of Corporal Cully and the Reslian 45th as a sequel to Baphomet By Night. Digging in on a dreary hive world under the watchful eye of a new, by-the-book sergeant, the endless waiting is wearing on Cully and bringing back painful memories. When the opportunity arises to make a little money off the books Cully jumps at the chance, but what should be a straightforward job becomes something much worse when an abandoned medicae facility turns out to be anything but.
A deeply bleak house of horrors story bringing together characters from Baphomet By Night, No Hero and Predation of the Eagle, this fully hammers home the ‘war is hell’ theme that McLean’s writing typically exemplifies. There’s plenty of explosive Imperial Guard action, but while Cully is driven by training and duty he’s also tired, twitchy and wracked with guilt, and this is really about how his fragile mental state interacts with the fundamentally horrifying nature of life in the Imperium. Things get very grim here, Guard-issue heroism boiling down to grit and fear and pain in a story that’s disturbing, compelling and 40k to the core.
