Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (27 page)

The sky grow
s
darker. 
T
he fliers
h
ang
back
in the air, a host of gargoyles armed with nets and axes. 

He
checks
his
ammo, and
realizes
the weapon
has reloaded itself.

Well
that’s
handy. 
I guess t
his hasn’t been
too
difficult
,
Kane says.

The gates to the citadel
open again
, and a
Creed of vampires emerges.  They
wear
blue-black armor with bladed epaulets and
yield smoking hand-cannons and pikes.  Their greasy pale skin shines dull
y
in the autumnal light
.  D
ark hair is pulled back in severe top-knots.  Fangs glisten and drool with anticipation. 

The
hollow tower
behind them is
a shaft of red
fog
and black steel
filled
with equipment and machinery parts.
 
More undead wait inside.

The
gargoyle
s
descend
and move to flank
the
three men
,
while
the Creed advances on their position.

Ronan gives
Kane
an angry look
.

Don’t say it,
Kane
says
.

They battle
their way
through the citadel. 

His arms grow weak from
shooting
the wrist-cannon and swinging the
saber
.  Ronan and
Sol
fight
beside him
.  They t
ear thr
ough red armor and black fliers and
scorch the air with metal
,
fire and blood.

The vampires never stop coming. 

Even after the first Creed falls, another
emerges
from
deep
er
with
in the Citadel.  Not all of the undead
in the Bonespire
are soldiers – they
fight
wight
technicians
and
zombie
surgeons, skeletal
laborers
and ghoul
messengers,
hulking mountains of zombie flesh meant to carry large
loads. 
Only
the vampires
are meant for combat
,
but
they still
j
oin in the attempt to throw back the three-man
assault
. 

The gargoyles
,
also
,
come at them in
seemingly
unending waves
.  The me
n tear the air
apart
with thaumaturgic ammo. 
T
hey
shoot
and
cut down
silhou
ette fliers and send bloody bodies
crashing to the ground
.

They
battle
half-
automaton flesh walkers
,
monstrosities of ebon iron fused
to
patchwork assemblies of smoking skin.  Dozens of eyes leer at
Kane
as he ducks beneath steam-driven hammers and blasts through
limb joints to topple
the golem
s
.

P
oisonous air
fills the inside of the citadel
, making t
heir
lungs burn and
their
eyes sting. 
 

A vampire armed with twin blades descends
upon them from
the height of the tower, an unseen void of shadow
over their heads
.  This
undead
is some sort of champion, a leader accompanied by two
more
red-armored vampire fiends with dark hair and iron fangs
.  Their e
yes
are
hidden
behind thick goggles
,
and
they wear
twisted tattoos on their
dead
flesh. 

Z
ombies pour out of vents in the floor
and emerge from
hidden storehouse
s
of mutated
skin
.

Kane feels superhuman
.  He
is
more
in th
at
shadow
world
,
better
, stronger
.  He senses
an
arcane presence in
him and
around him,
some
subtle augmentation that
not only
allows
him
to
breathe and exist in an environment that by all rights should be caustic
to humans
, but to excel in it
.

It occurs to him this is what the Grey Clan did to them
on the ship
: prepared them for battle
on
this
dread world of shadows.

The
melee
is
a blur of motion and noise. 
E
verything
becomes
instinct and reaction.  Years spent in gladiator pits and dodging psychotic Bl
ack Scar inmates
forever alter
ed
his sense of reality when
he
fight
s
.  His body becomes
an
engine.  Weapons are an extension of
his arms
.  Killing is as easy as breathing.

The vampire
leader
is skilled. 
Kane uses
the
saber
to deflect
it
’s
swift
attack
s.  He dodge
s
ghouls armed with short knives and zombies with rotating saws
attached
to their
limbs
. 

The Citadel protects itself. 
Kane
feels its alien intelligence, some vast
and
controlling entity
that lurks
with
in
the walls
.

A
sword
slashes
into
his side.  He bites through the pain. 
The wound is the price
he pays so
the vampire
leader
come
s
too
close
to
dodge
Kane’s
gunfire
.  H
e blasts its pale skull into paste.

Ronan and
Sol
battle the
other
vampires and
shoot their way
through ranks of ghouls.  The air is blood meat mist
,
shrapnel and
gun smoke
.  The air outside has whipped into a fury of black powder and razor rain.

He finds a dark iron ladder bol
ted to the bleeding walls
,
and ascends.  His hands grip pitted
metal
soaked with oil and blood.  Gouts of dark steam
leak from
the
iron tower
.  He
climbs
up
a tube of jagged rust edges and leering bone faces.  Phantoms
melt
through the
walls
.

A vampire appears
out of
a hatch, and
Kane
shoots
it
until its body turns to
pulp.  Another comes at him from behind
.  It flies
through the
air as if on wings, and he wrestles with it
for
a moment before he cracks its fanged mouth against the wall and sends it plummeting to the floor a hundred feet below, where Ronan and
Sol
tear through
the
undead ranks.

He sees munitions
and glass spheres as he climbs;
rooms filled with corpses await
ing
animation
;
strange whirring devices of thaumaturgic potential
;
bio-organic machines,
skin pulled taut
over
control panels
;
strange workbenches covered with beakers and vials of bubbling fluid. 

He and the others have
been sent to destroy a research station.  The Ebon Cities
has come to
this black wasteland
with a purpose.  T
hey mean
to find something.

The
apex of the
Citadel lies
hidden
beyond a steel hatch
at the top of the ladder.  The
rotary-style
door
swings
up
into a
cold
and utterly black
chamber. 
His
wrist cannon glows
blue-green
and
illuminat
es
the
darkness
. 

The room
is filled with sarcophagi.  Flat
black coffins crafted from iron
have been
bolted into the walls so
the
vampire inhabitants
can
step in
side
and sleep vertically. 
C
orpse dust
form
s
a
runic circle
i
n the
middle of the
floor
.  Cold iron candelabra
s
dangle from the ceiling
and paint the room with flickering silver light
. 
A
black mirror
stands at the far end of the chamber.
 

He
readies his weapon and
carefully enters the
vampire barracks
, his heart in his throat
. 
The hairs
on his neck freeze.  He walks slowly, careful to
a
void the circle at the center.

The coffins
remain
sealed. 

He walks
up to the black mirror.  It’
s somehow darker than the
rest of the
lightless room, an utterly blank void that seems to suck
away
the ambient glow of his armaments. 
Deep iron mists float
within
the mirror’s
face
.  The frame is made of bone and steel. 

He shoots the mirror.

The glass explodes
and
throw
s
him back. 
Shards cut
his face and arms.

The coffins
fly
open.  Half of them are filled with undead
that
move with chilling speed.  He
stands in
a chamber
filled with
warrior corpses.

Kane roars as he
sweeps
the room with gunfire
.  He
can
only
see
by the flash of
bullets
and exploding blood. 
F
anged mouths his
s
.  E
bon claws reach
for
him. 
A
sea of pale bodies
swarms in
.

He blasts his way back
to
the hatch
door
.  Claws tear
skin
from
his arms.  He shoves the
wrist
-cannon into a vampire
’s
mouth and bl
ows
open
its skull.  Another
one
tries to take him down but he
shoots
through it
s torso
.  He
slashes behind and ahead
with his blade
.