Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) (16 page)

The two of them emerged into a clearing surrounded by twisted trees.  Ronan smelled old fires and oil.  A hanged skeleton dangled from a large branch, creaking back and forth in the wind.  The sky was visible from the clearing, flat and dead.

The prisoners were there, face-up and spread-eagle, tied and staked to the earth with sharp stones.  Their clothes were tattered and torn, and blood and dirt caked their skin in layers of grime that had turned them bone white. 

Ronan’s lips went dry.  He cautiously stepped forward, but Danica quietly told him to stay back.  The dozen or so people lay in a wide checkerboard pattern across the clearing.  All of them were perfectly still, and as Ronan let his mind drift to the Deadlands he clearly saw that they were dead. 

The first body belonged to a Southern Claw ensign whose chest had been caved in by an impact that had smashed bone down into his heart.  His wounds were black and seared, and some viscous fluid that wasn’t blood oozed from his corpse. 

Another soldier had been sheared in two, and only a stringy mass of sinew and intestines connected the halves of his body. 

A third man’s skull had been crushed, leaving grey and red matter and bits of bone to cook in the bone-dry heat. 

“
What happened here?” Danica said.

“
Someone killed them,” Ronan said.  “I would have thought that was obvious.”

“
Don’t be a dick,” Danica said off-handedly.  She approached the body of a young woman who’d been ripped open from groin to neck.  “I don’t see any footsteps.  Not even theirs.  No blood on the ground.  No signs of a struggle.” 

“
It’s like they were flown here,” Ronan said. 

The air was tense with potential, like an engine about to kick to life.  The whispers they’d heard outside the trees had faded to the background while they’d walked the path, but now that they were in the clearing Ronan heard the voices again, stronger than before. 

Something was coming.

“
Laros,” Danica said.  She knelt next to the blonde man.  He was tied down like the rest, his arms and legs secured by stakes, his mouth slightly agape.  There was no sign of violence – he might have been asleep.  Ronan saw Jade, similarly tied and unconscious, her hair a tangle of mud and clay.  “He’s alive,” Danica said. 

“
Peachy,” Ronan said.  “Then let’s cut them loose and get the hell out of here.  Something’s on the way.”

Danica sliced through Laros’ bonds.  He didn’t stir, but Ronan saw the warlock draw a shallow breath. 

Ronan watched the perimeter.  He sensed something out there, and it was closing fast.  He was tempted to return to the Deadlands, but he waited, wanting to hold off until the last moment.  Fatigue was catching up with him, and the last thing he needed was to enter that place and not be able to come back. 

He slung his rifle over his shoulder and drew his kodachi as he knelt down next to Jade.  Her breaths were shallow and her skin looked jaundiced.  Her lips were black, painted by some sort of forest root.  Ronan cut her loose and lifted her up over his shoulder.

He heard them at the edge of the clearing: incessant voices and chattering teeth, sharp and raspy breaths and the echo of dripping ooze. 

“
Danica,” he said.  “Trouble.”

They appeared from nowhere, a dozen floating creatures draped in shadows.  Their flesh was as pale as the moon and their eyes were blank pools of ice.  Darkness seeped around their bodies like waves of rippling oil.  They hovered a few inches off the ground, their hands and feet hanging limp and their heads lolling to the side.  The air burned with their hunger and turned rank from their dead breath.  

“Shit!” Danica said.  She had Laros up over her right shoulder, holding him tight with her super-humanly strong bloodsteel arm while her free hand gripped her assault rifle. 

“
Run,” Ronan said quietly.

“
What are…”

“
Run,” he repeated, but he didn’t hear his own words, because at that moment he stepped into the Deadlands. 

The world bled color, shifted to black and white.  His physical body was behind him, a shadow of his truer self, left in the wake of his dream-haze motion.

Rippling pulses of darkness came at him.  The bodies were hosts, captives, barely living prisoners snatched from the wastelands.  The crashing Skyhawk was a meal to the creatures, who were just living pulses of darkness, shadowy wraiths without corporeal form.  They latched like parasites to the bodies of the living, and though their presence slowly leeched life from their hosts.  They thrived on the physical sensations they gained through the possessed, the intoxicating rush of heat and cold, fear and pain.  The living were their drug.

The first one came close, its shadows lashing like tendrils.  He saw the beats between its motions, saw the narrow window of vulnerability in its incorporeal defenses, a shade of a moment where the physical and intangible joined and intersected between worlds.  That was where he struck.

Wraith blood spattered onto his face as he swiped through the human vessels of spectral puppeteers.  Blue and lustrous skin split and oozed ectoplasmic gore.  Vaporous pressure pushed at him as remains exploded around his body.  His muscles twisted and burned, and rasping voices clawed at his ears.

He moved through the line of corpses and severed their ties.  Bodies collapsed to the ground in pools of blood and shadow.  Corpse-flesh rippled and peeled away.  He moved blindly though walls of writhing darkness.   

It was hard to avoid the bodies on the ground.  He tripped on a corpse and nearly fell to his knees, but his connection to the Deadlands drove him forward, committed to the motion even if it would result in his own death. 

Dead eyes leered at him.  Not human, not anymore, just flesh vessels, hollow shells of skin filled with ghost matter.  Organic vehicles with wraith pilots, the vehicles of the damned.

Smoking claws tore into his skin and jagged limbs scissored against his blade.  The air rang with steel.  He turned, twisted, ducked and sliced.  He was only dimly aware of Danica and her black blade, an anathema to those horrors.  The wraiths recoiled from her in fear.

He was back on the path, with Jade on his shoulder.  He didn’t remember getting there. 

Brambles and thorns tore at him like jagged nails.  The ground rushed by fast.  He heard his own labored breaths, felt sweat and blood pour down his skin.  The budding night stretched overhead, an ebon scar in the canopy.

Danica was behind him with Laros slung over her shoulder as she sliced at the ghosts.  Bodily vessels fell to the ground and exploded in gory splashes. 

Everything blurred to a mash of heat and motion.  Brambles snapped as Ronan sliced through them, ignoring the path, taking the fastest route through the Deadlands.

Creasy and Grail were waiting when he and Danica emerged from the trees.  The warlock’s spirit blanketed the forest in a tidal wave of cold blue flames.  Ronan dove down, shielding Jade with his body.  He heard shouts and phantom screams.  

He’s adrift, floating through a void of mist and ash.  He sees the wraith forms, looming shadows like tall men, stretched silhouettes with pinprick eyes and vaporous armor.  They come at him, and he meets them with his blade. 

There’s a darkness inside him.  He hadn’t even known it was there, but it’s both his armor and his fuel.  The things recoil from him, push back when they see the boiling black shadows swimming under his skin.  His flesh blisters with cold.  Bones turn to ice.  His blade glows black like a new moon. 

He steps forward and tears the ghosts apart, this time severing not just the connection to their corporeal hosts but to the aether where their phantom cores reside.  Undead hearts burst beneath his assault.  Apparition blood drips from his face.

They’re gone, savagely torn to pieces.  Dark filth oozes from his fingers.

Claws, not fingers.

His massive jaws are awash with wraith remains.  His muscles are knotted with tension.  He smells living creatures nearby.

One of them rises, his eyes glaring white.  Frosted energy drips from his fingers.  The wolf knows what he is, knows what he must do, even if the others only see the disguise, the hot-hearted shell of what he used to be.

He lashes out.  Black claws fall on white armor.  Darkness melts the man’s sun-hued shield and raw cold pours through the air. 

He hears screams.  He hesitates – they used to be his friends. 

The notion drips away like sweat.  The wolf is in control now.

The blonde man releases a blast of flame.  Claws of light meets claws of darkness.  Something cuts to his core.  The white warrior drives a blade through his blackened heart, and the darkness inside him ejects like blood squirting from a wound. 

Ronan fell.  Laros was on top of him.  Grail was trying to pry him off, but it was Danica who stepped up and hurled the blonde mage back with her steel arm.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” she shouted.  “Ronan, are you okay?!”

“
I knew he…never liked me…” Ronan gasped.  It was difficult to breathe.  Blood trickled from his lips.  He tried to rise, but he had no strength. 

Laros watched him with wide and maddened eyes.  He seemed out of control, unaware of what was happening.  He held a bloody blade in his trembling hands –
My kodachi,
Ronan realized – and gore stained his forearms.

Ronan looked down and saw that he’d been stabbed in the stomach.  Everything started to fade.

Even as he lost consciousness he felt the last vestige of the thing inside him melt away.  Off to a find a new body to hide in.

TEN

RAIJIN

Raijin was a city of towers.  Tall razor spires pointed to the crimson heavens.  Each citadel was lined with spikes and capped with gold and bronze domes which reflected the blinding sunlight.  Thick walls of sandstone and arcane steel blocked off the wastelands, their battlements set with bolt throwers, porcupines and iron poles sparking protective war hexes.  Everything was black and brown, from the walls to the people to the clothing they wore.  It was a dark splotch in the desert pale.  Even the waters of the moat were briny, which Cross thought probably wasn’t good.

Still.  It’s
water
.

The procession waited behind them.  Cross, Ankharra, the survivors from the Skyhawk and the soldiers from Black Dust Station approached the city on the backs of camels and in wagons, the merciless sun beating down on them.  Cross pulled back his hood and lowered his cowl as the Nezzek’duulian warlock had advised, for that would show those guarding the city he had nothing to hide. 

The camel grunted beneath him.  He reassuringly patted the side of its face and made soft cooing sounds. 

The city gates opened before them.  Dark flags rippled in the dry wind.  Bows and cannons aimed down at them, and Cross tasted sorcery in the air, a wave of spirit energy that swept over them like oily rain.  People moved about on the battlements, soldiers and citizens come to see these strange people, these bizarre visitors, the first to Nezzek’duul in many years. 

Just inside the gates, behind their protective crowd of soldiers, were the Masters of the City.  And even though Jaffe had tried his best to describe them ahead of time, Cross still found himself in awe of the creatures. 

The crowd parted, and the visitors rode into the city.

It had been a hard journey.  Creasy’s spirit had imparted knowledge of the route to Ankharra so they wouldn’t lose their way.  They gathered their supplies and set off early the next morning, around the same time the rescue team left to go track down Laros, Jade and any other survivors they could find in the dead forest to the east.

Cross watched them go with a sense of foreboding.  He wasn’t sure what was happening between him and Danica, and he was worried about Ronan, was also acting stranger than usual.  He readied his pack and checked his boots as he watched the four-man rescue team ride towards the dawn sun, their long shadows trailing them across the ground.  He had a terrible feeling he wouldn’t see them again.

Everyone is on edge
, he thought bitterly. 
That’s what happens when you vanish for a few months.  Even though you know them, they’re not the same people you left in Thornn.  How could they be?  Too much has happened.

“
You okay?” Flint asked. 

The former Marine was behind him, readying his own pack and checking the MP5 he’d been given.  He was dressed in a Southern Claw uniform now, a simple black and tan set of cammos with a light armor coat and high leather boots, a utility belt and a bandolier with ammo and grenades. 

“Not really,” Cross said, and he looked back at the departing crew.  “I should be going with them.”

“
From the looks of it, your lady friend could use some space,” Flint said. 

“
Yeah,” Cross said.  He finished lacing up his boots.  The camp was alive with noise and motion as the soldiers and surveyors started to move out.  The air was pale red, and the land was thick with shadows.  Golden beams of light spilled over the slate horizon and cut through the sky like swords.  “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”