Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) (41 page)

They’re at the border, and they smell life on the other side.  They want it,
need
it.  The very scent of the untainted makes their jaws slaver with anticipation.

Shiv stood at the center of the madness.  She was unafraid and unflinching, and Cross saw her change before his eyes.  The air rippled with heat and blued her skin, made it glitter like she was carved of ice.  Her very soul was stained dark by the tide of energies. 

The Black Witch shriveled in fear.  The magic she’d stolen from the Maloj wasn’t enough to keep her safe.  Shiv had given the Skaravae strength, took their scattered forms and molded them into one.  They were a burning wave of sharp vapors, slicing into the Witch who’d enslaved them. 

Cross watched, afraid.  He wanted it to end.

The ground cracked as the assault went on, an unending tide of ebon power.  Sweat ran in rivulets down Shiv’s neck, and her hair stuck to her cheeks.  Her eyes were solid and dark.  Thin lines appeared on her flesh, spirit runes, the lives of the lost told in arcane spirals painted on her skin.  She became a book of souls.

Finally the sound faded, and died.  Cross’s shield fell to pieces as the air stilled.  Dust drifted down, and the cyclone dissipated.  The heart of the storm glowed silver before it went out like a dying star. 

The Black Witch was gone.  Her charred bones lay on the ground, so fragile the breeze scattered them like glass powder. 

Shiv stood at the center of the four buildings, her arms held high, the blood light dimming around her body.  Nothing moved.   

The changes were still there – her skin had frosted to faint blue, lightly brittle like she wore snow crystals, and the dark runes painted on her arms and face twisted like rivers.  Her hair was darker, almost black.  When she turned Cross saw that her eyes were onyx and green, and the pupils were gone.  He swore she’d grown, that she’d aged years in the space of seconds.  She was nearly a woman grown.

Cross waited.  He wanted to go to her, but he didn’t understand what was happening, and knew he might
never
understand.  She was important, perhaps the most important creature who’d ever lived. 

I’ll protect you
, he silently promised. 
I swear it.

She slowly walked back to him.

She seemed at a loss.  She looked around at the sky and the ruined city, which was now free of shadows, just a pale and empty place torn apart by war and the passage of years. 

“
I…I don’t know what happened…” she said.

Cross took her shoulders in his hands.  She was so cold. 

“It’s okay,” he said.  “It’ll be okay.”

He hated lying to her, but he didn’t know what else to say.

Danica and Ronan found Creasy and Laros. 

Creasy was barely alive.  He’d stolen Scar away from the Witch and used it to kill Laros in the hopes of slaying the black wolf within.  He'd somehow been separated from his spirit, but once the storm vanished she’d returned to the warlock in time to heal his near mortal wounds.  Without her he’d be dead, and as things stood he was far from healthy.  He seemed dazed, and it would be quite a while before he was able to move at full speed.  His spirit had nearly drained herself repairing his body, and a dark taint still afflicted his skin, like he’d contracted some sort of shadow sickness.  There was no telling what powers Scar possessed, what dark magic it commanded.

They had four swords now.  Cross wished he knew the significance of that, the purpose behind it. 

Laros was dead.  There was no bringing him back, and while Cross and the White Councilman had never gotten along the older warlock had been a good man, a servant of the White Mother and a protector of the Southern Claw. 

He deserved more than this
.

They gathered in the ruins of a nearby building, where they collected their supplies and nursed their wounds.

Flint kept Shiv close.  His eyes were filled with fear, and he kept looking at her like he expected something terrible to come out. 

She and Cross had spoken little since she’d emerged from her battle with the Black Witch.  Flint looked to Cross for some explanation as to what was happening with his daughter, but Cross could offer him few assurances.

“She can clearly take care of herself,” he said when he pulled the older man aside.  “She saved us all. 
Again
.  If not for her the Witch would have drawn that wolf bastard out and become even more powerful.”

“
And that’s…supposed to make me feel better?” Flint asked. 

“
I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Cross said.  “I have no explanation.  I’m sorry, Flint…I don’t think there’s anything I can say…”

“
It’s all right,” Flint said.  He looked more like an old man with each passing day.  “She’s alive,” he said.  “And she’s my daughter.  That’s enough.”

“
She may be the one who can save us all,” Cross said. 

“
What do you mean?”

Cross looked at her.  She sat with Danica and sorted the remaining MREs and water flasks.   Creasy was asleep on a disintegrating couch, while Ronan stood by a broken wall and watched the street with one hand on the hilt of his katana. 

They were still so far from home, with no idea of how they’d return.  The best they could do was make their way deeper inland, try to find some Nezzek’duulian settlement that was uncorrupted by Eidolos and renegade witches and hope they’d come across a way to escape north across the Ebonsand Sea. 

“
She’s special,” Cross said.  “And I think protecting her is the best thing any of us can do.”

Flint was about to say something when a monstrous call echoed through the night.  A sound like tearing, or blades scraping on stone.  A bestial and inhuman cry.

A wolf’s howl.

The Maloj wasn't dead: it had been freed.  It was out there.  And it was coming for them.

PART THREE

PREY

TWENTY-THREE

HUNT

Danica had hunted before.  When she was young, growing up in a bunker with her highly dysfunctional family, they’d tracked Ebonbacks and giant elk and other mutated creatures roaming the plains west of the Bone Hills.  She’d learned to use a rifle, bow, machete and handgun, how to preserve the blood and skin, how to tan hides and craft bones into useable items. 

It had taken supreme effort not to turn the rifle on her father, who visited her bed almost every night, or on her mother and brother for letting that happen.

Later, after she’d left the military and become a Revenger, she’d hunted men.  Some had been guilty of the most horrible crimes imaginable, rapists and murderers and pedophiles and terrorists and thaumaturgic saboteurs.  Some hadn’t.  It didn’t take much to get someone sent to Black Scar prison – money was usually more than enough.  And when there weren’t enough prisoners coming in via normal channels Rake had no trouble sending Danica and the other Wardens to areas that had been decimated by raids or sickness, where they rounded up any survivors and shipped them to the red diamond mines, from which few returned.

How many people have I killed?
she wondered. 
How many have I sent to their deaths?

Now it was time to hunt again, only this time what they hunted wasn’t human.  And it was already hunting
them
.

After a short rest they left the confines of the small building they’d taken shelter in and moved to the edge of the city.  Shiv directed them.  Danica still didn’t understand how she knew the things she did, how she spoke to the spirits and manipulated them, a witch without being a witch. 

Shiv was powerful beyond understanding.  For years humans had thought they knew how things worked, thought they knew the rules, but in the past few weeks that had all started to come apart.  Everything was changing. 

They had to get home.  But first they had to kill the wolf.  They couldn’t just leave it to terrorize Nezzek’duul, and they couldn’t wait for it to find them before they found it.

Danica, Cross, Ronan, Flint, Shiv and Creasy left the city, keeping low in the shadows of the southern walls.  There were just six of them left, six from the nearly forty who’d survived the crash.  Ankharra, Crylos, Reza, that annoying bastard Wiley, all of those soldiers…all gone.  And yet somehow the six of them were still alive.

Maybe not for long.

It was difficult to know what time of day it was.  The dark cyclone made by the Black Witch’s ritual had lent the illusion of night, but now that she was gone the sky was cold and red, a bloody taint like iced meat.  Raw wind scraped across the broken plains.  The corpses of massive war beasts were strewn amidst shattered rickshaws and small fires. 

The Sundered had returned to the desert.  There was no way to know how many had survived, but those few who were left seemed content that their duty was done now that the Black Witch was dead.  The task of hunting the wolf fell to the foreign survivors.

Cross kept Danica close.  She knew how he felt about her, and she thought she knew how she felt about him, but she still wasn’t sure how to tell him, or what to do about it. 

“That way,” Shiv said.  “It’s in the hills.”

The lands west of Tenjin were riddled with broken ridges, deep clefts of shallow valleys and fields of salt and dust.  The air smelled stale and dead, and every shadow seemed to stretch like a river of oil.  Twisted trees bent in the cold wind. 

The region was vast and stark.  It was hard to imagine it had ever been living.  The hills stretched for miles before reaching the railway and the road they’d traveled on before. 

Danica pulled her armor coat tight.  Cross knelt down by her side.  They were nearly out of ammunition, and they had only scant firearms to begin with.  Danica’s G36C was down to three full magazines, Cross was using the Model 36 revolver, and Creasy had his shotgun and an HK45, the former of which he gave to Flint since the warlock wasn’t sure if he had the strength to withstand the kick of the 12-gauge blasts.  All but Shiv still bore some trace of the pale spirit unguent, but now that the Black Witch and her spirit armies were gone there wasn’t much need for it. 

Shadows blew past them like smoke.  They were a hunting party of the lost.

“
It’s trying to reach the station,” Shiv said.  “It’s looking for a way to get back to the ship.”

“
Why?” Ronan growled.

“
Does it matter?” Creasy said.  “We have to kill it.”

“
Can we?” Flint asked.  “I’ve seen those damn things.  They’re nightmares.  I thought I was going to die just looking at it.” 

“
We have to,” Cross said.  “We don’t have much choice.  We can’t let it get to a populated area.  Too many people have already died on account of that bastard.” 

Cross stood up.  Danica could tell just by looking at him how tired he was, how worn.  His face was slick with sweat and blood and his eyes looked hollow.  Soulrazor/Avenger was slung over his shoulder; Danica felt its power, though she never had before.  Claw was attenuated to the other blades, and it seemed to make Danica aware of their presence.  Creasy still had Scar, and she sensed its raw and dark potential.  He was the only one who’d touched it aside from the Black Witch, so it seemed only sensible he retain possession, at least for the time being. 

“I’m more concerned about what happens if the Maloj gets back to more of its own kind,” Ronan said.  “At least two more came through that gate.”

“
Whatever it wants, we have to stop it,” Danica said.   

She looked at Creasy.  Even though they’d done their best to heal him his injuries had been severe, and it would be several hours before he’d be able to move at more than half speed.  His spirit could lighten his load, but the effort would prove draining. 

Creasy saw Danica watching him, and must have seen the doubt in her eyes.  “I can hold my own,” he said.  “Don’t worry about me.”  He looked at Shiv.  “How much of a head start does that thing have?”

“
Not much, I think,” she said.  “But it moves fast.”

Cross stared out across the plains, his eyes cold with resolve.  Danica hadn’t seen him so determined in a long time.  She knew he would never forgive himself for the lives lost on his watch. 

How can you love me?
she wanted to ask him. 
How could you and I possibly be meant to last?

Maybe they weren’t.  Maybe they were only built for the moment, for the short time they had together. 

And maybe that’s enough. 

“
Let’s go,” he said.

They cut across the desert and made for the distant hills.  Danica regretted losing the airship and the aid of the Sundered – the flying vessel and those fast-moving cats would have come in handy hunting the wolf.