Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) (44 page)

Still it wouldn’t die.  It writhed and clawed through metal and stone. 

Ronan stood up, unsteady.  He couldn’t feel anything.  Even as his blood pooled on the ground he shut it all out, the damage, the fatigue.  He pulled his katana from its scabbard and stumbled forward. 

The Maloj turned, its eyes taking him in.  His broken visage was reflected back in those glittering dark orbs.

Shiv’s army hit the ship in a wave of screams and thunder.  Faces and teeth and bodiless mouths swam in a maelstrom of ice and death.  Ronan was thrown back. 

The lost souls tore the Maloj apart.  Weakened by the artifact blades, its body couldn’t withstand the onslaught.  Crusts of black flesh fell like sludge.  Howls echoed through the sky. 

After just a few moments, everything was silent.  The Maloj was gone, scattered to dust.  Ronan stepped out of the Deadlands and fell hard to the ground.

He thought of Danica, and Maur.  He hoped they’d be able to take care of themselves, because he knew he wasn’t going to be around to do it. 

Ronan saw the blonde boy waiting for him as everything faded.  He’d finally come to the end. 

TWENTY-SIX

BANNERS

Cross carried Shiv away from the wreckage, her body limp in his arms.  Her eyes wouldn’t open, and she was hardly breathing. 

“
Shiv!” he yelled.  “Come on!”

Not again. 

The same had happened at the gate on the island, the first time she’d tried to prevent the Maloj from crossing over from The Black.  His heart had broken seeing her lying there after all they’d been through, after how far they’d come. 

Now it was happening again, but this time he had no idea what to expect.  There was no precedence for this new form she’d taken, no prior knowledge for him to tap into about what she was really capable of or what was happening to her.  She’d already proved to be vastly more powerful than Ankharra or Wara had thought possible.  Shiv had manipulated hundreds of lost spirits and forged them into an incredible force.  The fact that the energy was so unfocused and wild was frightening in and of itself, because if she somehow managed to gain better control…

But none of that mattered if she didn’t live.  He’d promised to protect her, to make sure nothing happened to her.

Just like he had with Snow.

“Shiv,” he said.  “Shiv, God damn it, wake up!”  He laid her on the ground.  Her chest moved up and down, so he knew she was breathing, but she didn’t stir, and seemed beyond his reach.  “Shiv,” he said again.  He kept expecting her to answer, to ask him why he was so worried.  It was easy to forget she was still a child – she’d had to grow up so fast, faster than even he or Danica.   

She has to make it.  She has to. 
He saw Snow, burning on the train. 
No.  This is different.  This time she’ll live.

Fear iced through him.  He looked up at the darkening skies.  The bloody sun was rising in the distance, the promise of a new day.  The night’s cold was fading. 

He waited for something to launch at them from out of the dark.  Cross’s body ached all over.  Tears stung his eyes as he knelt down on wounded knees next to Shiv. 

How do we do it?
he wondered. 
How do we keep this up?  It’s too much, too much for anyone. 

He watched her.  All he wanted was to rest, but he knew more pain was coming.  More pain was always coming.

“Eric,” Danica said. 

He breathed deep.  He had to catch his breath. 

“Yeah?” he said.

“
Ronan’s alive, but barely.  Flint is dead.”

And there it was.  He barely heard the words, like they’d been told to someone else.  He saw the soldier’s face and heard his laugh, felt his hard handshake and the resolve in his eyes.  He heard his voice

“
No, God damn it, this is my daughter!  She’s going to live!  I…you…are going to get her home, you understand me?”

and all Cross could think about was how he’d failed him, how he’d failed them both. 

He crumpled forward.  His body wracked with sobs until his chest ached.  Dirty hands pushed his tears away.  He felt like he’d swallowed glass.

“Eric.” 

Danica was there at his side, her flesh arm on his shoulders, pulling him close.  She held him and let him cry into her hair.  He smelled the oil and blood on her skin, felt her spirit wrap around them.  Cross put his hand against the small of her back and pulled her tight against his body. 

He didn’t want to let go.  Not ever.

“
I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m sorry for everything that’s happened.  I’m…”

“
Enough,” she said.  She pulled back and looked him in the eye.  “All right? 
Enough
.  You did everything you could.  You did
more
than that.  You’ve kept us alive and together and fighting even when you weren’t with us.  I wouldn’t be alive if not for you.  None of us would have gotten as far as we had
if not for you.
  So stop feeling sorry for yourself and get your shit together, because we are
not
finished yet!”

He looked into her eyes.  He could melt in them.

Cross looked down at Shiv and Ronan, unconscious in the dirt, and at Flint’s corpse, so quiet and still.  The spirits were gone, yet the air moved fast.  A silent storm approached from the south. 

“
Thank you,” he said.  He heard how exhausted he sounded.  He was so tired.

“
For what?” Danica asked.

“
For being my friend,” he said.

Cold lanced up his spine.  The wind ripped at them yet they felt pulled forward, like they were being sucked into a whirlpool.

“Creasy,” Danica said.  She jumped to her feet to secure Ronan. 

Somehow the Wolftown warlock had sent them through a shifting gate, a translocative vortex that had allowed them to span miles in the space of a heartbeat and reach Shiv in time.  The thaumaturgic signature of the coming storm felt the same, a dizzying torrent of energies, eddies of hex power that stained the air.   

Another portal. 
He wasn’t sure how it was possible, for Creasy must have been dead by now, but Cross felt his body drawn thin as everything fell apart beneath them.  He called out for Danica to grab Ronan while he wrapped his arms around Shiv, and seconds later

Across black waters through scars in the sky skirting the skin of worlds dripping down along the glass face the dome cracked claws faces snarls in the moonlight darkness above and below

Slowly things take form make more sense

Floating, like sailors on an ebon sea.  The glistening waters stretch on forever, never ending.  Black tides carry them to a far shore.  He’s weightless and afraid. 

They cross seas of darkness.  The coasts are dotted with bone towers and burning monoliths.  Pillars of skin and walls of fog line the skull-paved roads.

The soiled landscape has been ruined by pollution and necrotic filth.  Death songs trill through the atmosphere.  Pale bodies walk the corrosive shore. 

They go deeper inland, up rivers of blood and past cities of the dead.  Black iron walls rattle in the dead wind. 

They draw close to the ground at the edge of a white wasteland.  Glacial cold rolls against them as they step into the shadow of a

broken city with high sandstone walls, blasted by scorch marks and powder burns.  Concertina wire dangled from the towers like frayed ropes.  Black smoke billowed from furnaces inside the city.  Cross smelled exhaust and oil, the runoff from silenced industrial machines.

Bitter cold swept at them from across the eastern tundra.  The sky was grey and dark, frozen in a bed of endless black clouds.  Crusts of soiled snow crunched underfoot.  

Cross immediately pulled off his armor coat and laid it across Shiv.  Danica did the same for Ronan, and moments later Cross felt her spirit protect everyone from the rancid chill. 

The troglodytic fortress-city looked broken: its walls were cracked and stained, its towers seemed to have fallen inwards under the stress of the elements, its battlements were unmanned and silent.  Numerous dirt tracks wound up to the city from the shallow field they found themselves in, a clearing filled with broken stones.  A ruined shack sat nearby, blasted apart by some destructive force, and a lone dead tree stood at the edge of a frozen stream.

There was no sign of Flint, or the downed Skyhawk, no sign of anything but the four survivors and the cold and silent wastes. 

“
Where are we?” Danica asked. 

Cross was about to say he didn’t know when he caught sight of night-black flags rippling in the winter wind.  Pale shards had been stitched into the cloth, and even from that distance he knew with certainty they were finger-bones and teeth.

Banners of the Ebon Cities.

“
Shit,” he said.  He turned around and took everything in.  He thought he’d known where they were, but he had to be wrong.  Everything tasted too dead, felt too silent.  There was no sign of anything living, no sound at all aside from the merciless wind. 

Cross walked over to the tree.  A white apple dangled from a dead limb.  Fear spread through his gut like poison.

“Thornn,” he said.  His chest went tight.  “We’re outside Thornn.  The vampires have taken it.” 

And if the visions they’d had as they’d shifted through the gate were at all accurate – the barren and twisted landscape, the desolate wastes along the coasts and rivers, the dead cities and dead skies – then it was more than just Thornn. 

No.  It can’t be.

But in his heart he knew it was true.

The Southern Claw had fallen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Montano keeps writing novels in the hopes that one day he’ll wake up and actually feel like a real author.  Maybe it’ll happen tomorrow.

Steven is the author of the Skullborn (
City of Scars
)
,
the Blood Skies novels (
Blood Skies, Black Scars, Soulrazor, Crown of Ash, The Witch’s Eye
and
Chain of Shadows
),
Tales of a Blood Earth 1
and
2,
and
something black…
.  He’s currently hard at work on
Blood Angel Rising
, a horror novel;
Vampire Down,
the next installment of the Blood Skies series; and
Path of Bones
and
The Black Tower
, the conclusion to
The Skullborn
trilogy. 

He lives in Washington State with his beautiful and intelligent wife, two beautiful and talented children, and a backyard badly in need of some love.

Visit Steven’s official website,
bloodskies.com