Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (15 page)

H
er spirit burn
ed
against her skin. 
H
e
’d
detected something, some danger, and he wasn’t about to sit idly by
while it got closer
.

Danica
hadn’t
actually
seen anything
except for
a
shimmer in the air, a faint disturbance
,
like a shadow
had
pass
ed
in front of the sun
.  W
hatever it
was, it
was gone
now
, lost in the
cacophony
of
shouts and
coins
.  People held
their drinks
high
as another vehicle was demolished in a blast of red fire and black smoke.

Her spirit wrapped around
her.  If there were any Revengers nearby
they’d detect her in seconds, but at that moment she didn’t care
. 

S
omething
had already found her
. 

M
etal rip
ped
open
the air
.  S
omething oozed through the wound
in the atmosphere and
seeped through
like sick honey. 

Danica sent h
er spirit
into the crowd to
find out what the intruder was
. 
I
t
s presence
filled her with dread
.  She
felt like she’d stepped through a cold waterfall. 

S
he drew a katar and wrapped it
with
vitriolic energy. 
Danica
felt eyes on her
.
Vago shout
ed
at
her to sit down
.  H
is bodyguards step
ped
close, but she shot them a look
that made them back off.

Her spirit’s vision broke things down to their baser elements. 
Danica looked through a lens of blood and
saw through
people’s
skin and bones and
sensed
their
life energy
.  She noted the
hexed security measures
in
the arena
, measures
that
hadn’t
been
enough to keep
this
creature out.

It came into view
: the murderwraith
.  To
everyone else’s
eyes it
was
a tall human male
, slightly heavyset with thick fingers and a balding pate.  He wore workman’s clothes and was armed with nothing more than a racing sheet and a mug of green beer.

But through the eyes of her spirit
Danica
saw
the alien presence
for what it truly was: walking ooze, a monstrous pile of
human-shaped
slime and gelatin
that stood
some ten
feet
tall. 

Eyes like bleeding winter
narrowed
as the
slimy
brute
flew
at
her.  The smoking wraith expanded, stre
tched and fused with the clouds before it
condensed into a solid fog giant. 
H
ooked blades took shape at the ends of its cumulus appendages. 

Danica felt ice
vapors
curl
away
from
her skin. 
The rotting wind carried the taste of s
pectral drool.  Claws like scissors unfolded
from
the murderwraith’s form.

Her spirit
shifted
to a
column of dark fire.  Heat flushed her arms.  Her vision narrowed and focused
as
r
age burned in
side her
.

The murderwraith howled.  Knife claws
shot
towards
Danica’s heart
and came
so close her skin
went
blue from
its
icy
aura
. 
Steaming t
eeth evaporated as the carnivorous
ghost
exhaled
clouds of
white frost. 

The wraith’s
leering inhuman face
collapsed
as she blasted through it
with a spiral of ebon flame
.  I
ts phantom body r
etreated
in
a blast of dead fog.

People screamed and ducked
and moved
out of the way. 
Danica
was thankful no one had been injured by the blast
– it had shot straight
through
the
creature
and
off into empty air.

“What the hell are you doing?” Vago shouted.  His bodyguards stood nearby.

They
can’t
see it
, she realized. 
They
haven’t
detect
ed
it
at all
.  An undead that powerful shouldn’t have been invisible. 

“I was being attacked…” she started to say, but a wailing klaxon drowned out her voice.

A
Killraven squad
flew into view from
around a
nearby
building. 

God damn it!
  That thing was just a scout, calling me out, forcing me to defend myself so they could lock onto my
arcane
signature.

“You
’re on your own then, you
stupid bitch!” Vago
shout
ed. 
His bodyguards pulled him back, and they vanished into the crowd.

Shit.

Danica pulled her spirit
in
and
pushed
her way
down the aisles as
the Killravens drew
close
. 
Vago was already gone.  She was alone.

The
Killravens
moved fast
.  S
he
saw
their grey-blue armor and bladed wings
draw within 100 yards
. 
Smoke poured
from
exhaust panels
in
the bottom
s
of the armor packs, and
their
bladed gauntlets crackled with arcane
power
.  A small
cluster
of scout homunculi accompanied the eight-man
crew and
fill
ed
the air like a swarm of enormous bats.  The Killravens spread out
and
dodged
through
the
steel cables and wire mesh
that linked
Blacksand’s taller structures together. 

“Bitch!”

Someone in the crowd shot at
Danica
with a .357 Magnum.  People
shouted and
scrambled
out of the way. 
Danica
knocked the gunner a
side
with a sweep
of
ic
y
wind. 

Another
spectator armed with a knife
came at her,
and Danica ducked beneath his blow and struck him backhanded,
then
kicked him in the solar plexus and sent him t
o the ground. 

Her spirit
flushed
against
her skin and shielded her like armor.  He’d been cooped up for too long, held inactive and hidden
away
, and now his anger flooded to the surface
like a tidal wave.  I
t would be all but impossible to
hold
him
back
. 

The stadium exploded into
madness
.  People ran
for safety
,
but
since most of the crowd was armed random gunshots
rang out
as people attacked what
ever
they
thought the threat was
.  Luckily,
only
a few of those shots were directed at
Danica.  Her spirit deflected stray bullets and fists as she pushed her way towards the edge of the
upper seating
platform. 
S
he leapt over the side. 

Wind rushed up at her. 
H
er spirit push
ed
up
and
against her
with ethereal
force
so that she
fell in slow motion.  H
er stomach turn
ed inside out.  A
drenaline and fear
raced through
her
body
as she plummeted
through
exhaust and explosive fumes.
 

Even
s
hielded,
jolts of pain shot up
Danica’s
legs
as
she landed
down
on the mid-section seating
area
. 
She
rolled forward into an open aisle.  Her heart pounded. 
The air smelled like fear. 

Danica
ran down the aisle towards the exits.  Many of the people in th
e
section
she’d landed in
were still in their seats in spite of the cacophony up above
. 

T
he fighting hadn’t
actually
halted the race
, but there were only a handful of vehicles left on the track. 
A monstrous truck armed with jagged horns ploughed through a dark van as they turned a corner
, and t
he crash
rattled
the
stadium
.

A Black Dog patrol
waited
next to
the
near
est exit. 
Danica
saw t
hree Revengers and a trio of Blood Dogs, smaller versions of Blood Wolves
that were
specially bred
at Black Scar to
hunt down escaped prisoners.  Their
ebon
skin and slathering jaws snapped at her as she
came
close. 

Spectators looked out from the nearby aisles, confused. 
T
he black-masked Revengers leveled their weapons and
ordered
her to halt.

Danica sent her spirit forward as a rush of
cold
wind
and
knock
ed t
he Revengers back
.  T
wo of the Blood Dogs
pushed
past her spirit
and came at her with snapping jaws.  Their
collars
crackled
with hex energies
. 

Black
pulled out her katars, went to her knees and sliced into both
hounds
at once
. 
H
ot blood splashed on her cheeks and face
as t
heir bodies slid past her.   

The third dog
charged
, and before she could move its teeth
ripped into her leg
.  She swiped and kicked the
beast
. 

Gunshots
rang out. 
Revengers
armed with MP5As and auto-shotguns
ran into the seating section
behind her
.  She saw a warlock among their ranks, and she wasted a moment wondering if she knew him before she turned on her heels and ran.

B
ullets
struck
the ground behind her. 
T
he
Revengers
chased Danica right to th
e edge of the rac
e
track, a massive circle of
grey and black concrete
littered
with
dirt
.  S
teel
walls
lined
with blades and flaming obstacles
wrapped around a network of
shifting metal
platforms
and collapsing barricades of electric chain.