Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (24 page)

Reptilian citizens scattered all around them. 
Window panels slammed shut
and klaxon alerts
blasted out
like air-raid signals. 

Most of the Grey sentries hesitated, as if unsure
of
what to do.  Even though Kane and the others were surrounded, the soldiers held back, and those who did engage didn’t use their blades but
instead
tried to grapple the captives, who in spite of being shackled at the wrist
still
put up a valiant fight. 

They want us alive.  They didn’t expect us to give them this much resistance.

Jade shaped her spirit into a cone of razor air and scattered the scaled soldiers.  Bodies flew and fell hard to the steel city floor.  Sol pelted reptilians with his considerable fists, and Ronan
hacked at
anyone who came close.  Maur stayed close to Ronan, spotting for him and barking orders as to who to
slice up
next.

Enough!
Kane’s own voice shouted at him. 

The Grey Clan sentries stopped in their tracks.  Jade was held still with a dazed look in her eyes.  A nimbus of crackling black fire surrounded her head in a net of ebon steel.  Sharp points aimed in towards her skull from the inside of the sphere, solid midnight knives that hovered less than an inch from her skin.

A tendril of shadow energy ran from the sparkling orb back to a reptilian hand.  Unlike the others, the creature that held the arcane whip was largely human
,
save for a greenish tint to his skin and scaly ridges on his brow and jaw.  His fingers ended in dark claws, and he was dressed in a
n
armored coat made from oily skins and toothed shoulder plates.  The arcane harness slithered and
wrapped around his hand like a
snake made of electric smoke. 

Stop this!
The voice shouted again, Kane’s own voice, the reptile mage’s word translated in his mind. 
One more move and I’ll crush her mind!

“Maur says ‘Screw that!’” Maur yelled, and he broke away from Ronan and tackled the mage around the midsection.  Both of them crashed to the ground.  The net of electric energy evaporated from around Jade’s head.  She fell in
to
an unconscious heap. 

Kane moved to help her, but the Grey Clan warriors unfroze and swarmed them.  Kane was violently knocked to the ground.  Bodies piled on top of him and seized his limbs.  He swung and struggled, but a series of vicious kicks and fists hammered his sides.  His vision went black and white. 
Metal
scratched and pounded his body. 

His vision dimmed.  Kane only dimly registered the fact that Maur had somehow overcome the Grey mage and turned the tendrils of
dark
energies back on him.  The crackling head-cage that had gripped Jade now surrounded the mage’s skull, and he stared blankly into the air while Maur held the warlock’s wrist tight.

“Maur says let us go, or you’ll be cleaning
his
brains off the street!”

“
That won’t be necessary
”
,
a voice said
.  This time, the voice was real, and it was human
.

Kane was on the brink of passing out.  Everything hurt.  He couldn’t move, and the weight of angry bodies pressed down on him.  The world blurred.

The speaker
came into view
.  He was tall and lean and had
thick brown hair.  A jagged scar, obviously left by
a
creature’s claw, ran
down the left side of his face, and
the eye on that side was
clouded
.  The man dressed all in black and wore an armored coat, and even through the green sludge Kane saw the slash sigil of Black Scar on his uniform.

“Burke…” Kane groaned.  Everything faded.

He dreams of water.  He floats in the middle of the
sea.  He’
s a little boy again, and that
’
s strang
e because he’d never actually seen an open body of water
until
After the Black
.  

There is no land in sight.  The plank of wood he
clings to
looks
like it was once part of a sailing ship, bu
t the rest of the vessel
is gone
, c
laimed by the pitch black ocean.

Clouds roil in the sky
.  The waves froth and churn with violent motion
. 
He swallows freezing seawater. 

He
’
s never felt so alone. 

Kane woke in a cold sweat. 

The air was normal again: there was no gel to breathe, no green haze.  He was alone in a sealed room.

Not good.

Kane’s head throbbed, and his hands were wet with refuse and
the
dank water that dripped down from the green-grey ceilin
g.  He was in a holding cell, a
metal c
hamber
that contained
a shallow pool, broken furniture and a pair of massive portal doors with wheels for handles.  It all reminded him of the vampire city-state of Krul, and for a moment that’s where he thought he was.  He struggled to remember what had happened, where he’d been. 

Kane sat up, went to his knees, and tried to focus.  He steadied his hands on his legs and
breathed deeply, just like he used to do with Ekko
whenever the stress of a situation was too much for him to handle. 

Ekko had taught him a lot of yoga.  He had difficulty remembering most of it now, but at least he was able to get through some of the simpler motions.  She always used to guide him through the tougher steps.

I miss you
, Ekko
.
  I wish you could come back to me.

Tears rolled down his face and into his beard.  Kane did his best to stay calm.  The events of the past few days slowly came back to him, and he tried his best to make sense of it all.  They’d been taken prisoner by a common enemy of the vampires, treated like dirt, and…
altered
somehow,
a
s well as
shown visions of
a damn creepy place
.  Kane had the sense th
at he, Ronan and Sol had
been prepared for something.

Congrats, dude.  Your first time out as a leader and you manage to take everyone straight into the weirdest shit yet.

He knelt and meditated for what felt like a very long time.  He
’d
woke
n
up without a shirt, and after a while his skin grew cold.  The air tasted like seaweed and brine.

Eventually the door opened
, but there was no one there
.  Darkness poured through the doorway.  The wind was cold and heavy. 

Kane cautiously stood up and stepped forward.  He expected something to leap
through
at any moment. 

Open air waits be
yond the doorway.  The world h
e steps into is impossibly dark and vast.  Hard wind
cuts
up steep cliffs of brown rock covered
with twisted black thrush
.  The air is thin and cold and filled with ebon mist
.  H
e
walks
through the door
and realizes
he’
s been relocated to
an
impossible height. 

H
e emerges from a square
building made of rusted steel. 
The structure is covered with many doors
,
a
hub at the center of a small island of rock and thorny undergrowth. 

Only a narrow ledge surrounds the structure.  One wrong step and he
’
ll find himself in open air, as the island stands thousands of f
eet above the surface, on the ti
p of a narrow tower of red stone.  The wind tears against him, and he feels the ground shift from its force.

A dark landscape
waits
far below
.  Everything drowns in
blood-colored shadows
. 

The
sky
is
filled with choking dust and grit.  Black fumes congeal the air. 
A
nother
cold gust of wind
nearly
p
ushes him
over the side
,
but
he twist
s
himself so
it
blows him back
towards
the building
instead
.  He falls hard against the wall.

Wow,
he shouts, but his voice is
just
a thought, a deep sound that resonates through his mind
.

Kane?

Ronan comes around the corner.  He looks colder and thinner tha
n
usual. 
Sol
is
with
him.  All
of them appear
inconstant,
and
darker. 
S
hadows cling to them.

Guys,
he says, and the sensation is strange.  His voice is not a voice
, but an echo
.
  What the hell is going on?  Where are Jade and Maur?

There’s no sign of them,
Ronan says.  Kane sees his words thicken and fall like sludge rain.

Sol’s
eyes
fall
on something
in the air
behind Kane. 

What the hell is
that
?