Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (28 page)

Teeth
sink
into his
neck
.  He screams
and shoots the top of the
vampire’s
head
off
before h
e falls back
wards
through the hatch
.
The fangs break off and remain lodged in his wounded skin.

Everything
turns
end over end.  He loses direction.  Som
ething
hard smashes
against
his back, and knows it isn’t the floor. 
Blood swims in his vision
.  B
lack air engulfs him.

He hears shouts.  He’s no longer sure where anything
is
com
ing
from.

He hangs suspended
from
the iron ladder. 
T
he harness that connects
him
to his weapon
i
s caught on steel rivets in the wall, and his boots
are
tangled in the
ladder’s
rungs.  He
can’t feel any pain
.

The world is upside-do
wn.  Dark steel drip
s
with gore
through
an air filled with black shadows.  He gazes up
at
the floor and down
at
the ceiling.  H
e
dangles
halfway between the two
ends
of the tower
. 
Blood flows down his arms and neck. 

He reaches up (down) and pulls the fangs
from
his
neck
.  A jet of blood shoots out and soaks his face
before it
rains to the ground.

Ronan
climbs up
(down)
to get him
. 
Sol
fires up
(down)
into
the
horde of vampires.  They
are nightmares
that scale
the walls
,
nude and unarmored
creatures
with
black hair
and pale flesh
covered
with
blood runes and shadow tattoos.  They
crawl down
the steel,
fast and
relentless
even as
Sol
’s gunfire
cuts them apart
and they plummet up and then down
,
past Kane’s swimming vision
,
to splash into mounds of blood flesh at the top
(
bottom
)
of the tower.

He screams.  His vision
goes
dark
, a pulsing beat of
black
visions, pale dancers on a distant vampire shore,
undead
matrons around statues of
shadow flesh
, undead cities
that move
like great beasts across the landscape. 

His heart pound
s,
and
then
it
slows
.  Impure blood flows through his veins and turns them black.

Ronan reaches him on the ladder and
fires into the vampires. 
H
e somehow untangles Kane
with one hand
and hoists him over his shoulder. 

Gravity
is gone
.  He feels like
he
’
s floating.  His strength has left him.  Everything fades in and out.

He hopes they’
ve succeeded.  He has the sense they
’
re
supposed
to destroy this place, to stop the vampires from
finding something
,
and they aren’t doing it
for the Grey Clan,
and
certainly not for Burke, but for the
people
he cares about.  The
people
he fears he will never see again
.

H
e falls into a nightmare-plagued slumber.

Kane woke
.  He was
back in th
e steel room.  This time he wasn’
t alone.

He sat up and
vomited
blood.  He felt something in his mind, some dank presence
that
saturat
ed
his skin.  He looked down and saw that his veins were still black.  His body was wracked with hurt
.  B
lood
flow
ed
down his neck.

“What…?”  His voice hurt.  Tubes had been inserted into his sk
in. 
A brown-haired woman in black
Revenger’s
armor
knelt down beside him and
dr
e
w his stained blood into a syringe.  He saw crawling black insects
in the glass.

He wanted to throw up again, but Ronan grabbed his shoulders.

“Hang on
,
” he said.  “Just…hang on.”

Kane looked around.  The door was open
, and
just
outside the room were
industrial steel chambers
filled
with tables and chairs and medical equipment.  He saw Grey Clan mov
ing
boxes of supplies,
and he
heard
a
clamor of activity.

He saw
Jade
,
Ronan
,
Maur
,
Sol
and Burke, the bastard Burke, a Black Scar warden and a cold-hearted
murderer
.  He was accompanied by
more Revengers, as well as a contingent of
Grey Clan.

“
All of you
…
” Kane started to say, but he coughed up another
mouthful
of blood.  “
All of you…can go to hell…
”

He fell back, and passed out again.

TWELVE

PREY

The sky
bleeds red and black.  Clouds loom and twist like screaming faces.  He presses ahead through the black wind.

The City of Thorns is far behind him.  He walks across a
dust
sea.  A forest of brambles, thorns and rock waits in the distance, but first he
has to
traverse
field
s
of
clay and black water
.  Cracks in the ground
remind him of scars
. 
Dark ice
and petrified wood crack
beneath
his boots
. 

There is no faster
route
to take
, and that knowledge claws at him.  He has to hurry.

Because h
e knows what the Shadow Lords are after
.

He carries on
without rest
.  His shadow body grows weary.  He fades in and out.  His blade is all that keeps him stable.

I’m turning less real.  Soon, I’ll be just like them, like the natives. 

Will I remember who I am?  Will I remember why it’s so important
that
I succeed?

He can’t
think about
it for too long.  He leans into wind filled with grit and debris and makes for the black forest in the distance.

He steps into a graveyard of trees. 
Dark filigree and necrotic ash drift
at the perimeter of the forest
and
form a wall of ice shadows.
The wind
blows around the woods as if forbidden to enter.

T
he air is dark red
.  The t
rees
are
as
pale
as
bones.  Wind-felled trunks litter the forest floor like casualties.  Tangled roots make the way treacherous.  Witch’s hair hangs down from
branches
like petrified spider’s webs. 
Most of the trees are bare, as if some great fire ripped through the
area
without leaving any burns. 

He follows a
path bordered by twisted brambles and smooth stone.  Shadows cling to everything like moss.
  Trees root inside one another
.  They grow inverted
or thrust
back
into the ground
like swimmers
.  Rocks split and bleed darkness
that gathers
in thick pools.  Leaves hang petrified
in the air
. 

He walks slowly, wary of upturned roots that pulsate and ooze
a
briny substance.  His blade is ready, a dim shine in the forest corridor.

He knows
these are
forbidden w
oods.  Even the Shadow Lords don’
t come here, for they fear
the
rule
r of
this place.  The Eidolos warned him,
but even it could put no name to the master of the woods
.

The n
arrow
earthen
path gradually gives way to
dark and dust-covered stone
s that are
flat and low and
clustered
together like teeth.
 
Hoarfrost and petrified mushrooms push against his boots.  The
path widens
into a creek bed, a low and elevated channel filled with shattered
rock
a
nd derelict tree limbs.  There’
s no way to determine if the ground is moist or not.  Everything is too black.

Strange sounds call through the distant sky.  He looks up and sees a storm of shadow just beyond the trees. 

Enormous t
oppled logs
litter the ground
in the forest
, juggernauts
of wood
covered in dark growths and insects.  Vines curl and unfold like languid snakes. 

The air is cold and still.  He hears the wind beyond the trees, but
he doesn’t
feel it. 
He can’t
hear
much besides the alien birds
and the crack of forest growth beneath his boots. 

He’
s covered in shadow.  He loses his grip. 
He feels his mind slipping. 
He doesn’t re
member
his name.

The obelisk.  Remember that.

The obelisk.  The source of human magic.  Its likeness was drawn on the wall of the dark shrine, surrounded by another image of six cloaked men reaching for it. 

It was there, somehow.  It had fallen through the Carrion Rift and wound up in the Whisperlands.

I should have realized it before now.  I should have seen it coming.

The Shadow Lords are intruders in the Whisperlands.  They rule by show of force, but to rule isn’t their goal.  They don’t care at all what their presence does to the realm, or to those trapped inside it.

They know the way out.  That’s why the Eidolos has sent him to find them, to challenge them.  They aren’t from this world.  They are here for a purpose.

They search for the obelisk.

I can’t let them have it.  I don’t know what they want with it, but if the stone falls into their hands then the Southern Claw will be lost.

Remember the obelisk.

And Snow.
  Remember Snow.

He will not forget
her
.  Not ever.  She
’d
died so he could succeed, so
that their
mission
hadn’t
end
ed
in vain.  To fail now would be a desecration of her very memory.

He walks deeper into the night woods.  He feels eyes on him.

The river bed opens to a wide beach on a black shore.  Massive trees, some of them hundreds of feet long, lay toppled in a catastrophe of black wood.  Roots dangle like melting blades.  Stones shift into silt and sand beneath his feet.  The ravine flows under the trees and empties
in
to a laggard flow of ebon waters
covered in steam
.  The far shore is barren, and beyond it
stands
the rest of the shadow-smothered forest. 

Something waits
for him
on the opposite shore.

At first he can’t make it out
, as
the
large
figure blends into the darkness.  A grey disturbance surrounds it like a sullen cloak, a twist in
the atmosphere, like the
being
wa
s cut from somewhere else.  It shimmer
s like a heat haze
.  It is
out of place
,
only temporarily present. 

It is derelict
.  A
refugee, just like he is
.

Whatever it is
,
it
watches,
and it
waits
.  It’
s twice as large as he is. 

T
entacles
made
of oil
writhe just beneath the surface of the water
. 
He hears a ripping sound, like a great wound has opened
.  The tendrils leap up and smother the ghost silhouette
with thick necrotic unguent.  Even from across the shore he smells the stench of hog’s blood and animal waste,
of
decay and dead sap.

Darkness creeps
all over
the master of the forest.  It is a dread conflagration of nightmares
that controls this wasteland of trees.  It
feed
s
on creatures
who attempt
to pass through its domain. 

He
hears
the lost voices of
scattered ghosts.  The entire forest is filled with the remains of the lost.  The dark smell of condemned souls burns in the wind.

This is the forest of a hunter.

The beast is humanoid.  Its t
hick arms end in curled claws.  Forest topiary
surrounds it
like armor.  Shattered antlers fuse to its head, and its torso is
wrapped in
a tapestry of bone blades.  The spine of some slaughtered wilderness beast extends from the hunter’s arm
and
twists and sharpens to
form
a curved blade, a spear
of shadow
.  The creature’s mass is blood and darkness held together by iron-hard sticks and forgotten bones. 

Its body billows and expands.  Smoke pours from the
gap
s in its grisly armor.  Behind it, gutted
animal
remains an
d hollow shells assemble into a host
of beast soldiers.

He readies himself to face the hunter. 
Power surges through
Soulrazor/Avenger
.  Chill energies course
into
his veins.  Shadows fleck away from his body like dried mud.  The light from his
weapon
pushes
the
darkness away.

The
hunter’s
a
ssault is
swift and brutal.  The shadow
creature
is suddenly within arm’s reach.  He d
oes
n’t see it cross the wate
r, doesn’t see it move at all unt
il it’
s on top of him.

Blood grease limbs thrust at him with
the
bone spear and Soulrazor/Avenger barely deflects
the attack
in time.  His body falls to the ground, battered and bruised. 
There’
s
blood on his face
.  F
orest roots dig into his back.  He rolls away from the next blow, which hits the earth and sends up clods of silt and stone.

It’s difficult to find his footing
on the rocky shore.  He swipes at the
hunter
, rips away root flesh and rot, and the beast howls
with
a voice like a horde of dying animals.  His ears twist and bleed at the sound.

The bone blade knocks his
weapon
away.  Pain shoots through his hands.  The joined sword falls into the water.  He chases after it.

A blow takes him in the back.  He flies through the air and lands
on top of
a massive log.  A branch
cuts
straight into
his leg.  Pain sears through
the impaled
limb.  His scream carries into the sky.

The beast looms over him. 

H
e tears the branch away.  It snaps like a bone, and the pain shoots up his leg and into his stomach.  His vision blazes white.  He falls.  Up and down bleed together.  Wood fragments spray onto his face as the shadow man strikes the tree where he’d been and nearly cleaves
it
in two.

He falls into the water
,
a
blood broth filled with gristle and rotted meat.  He tumbles head over heels.  Mold fluid seeps into his lungs.  He struggles to the surface,
spits
out muck and grime, falls back down.  He bobs, weightless, along the surface. 
The fast-moving river carries him away.

The hunter beast is in the distance.  Trails of smoke twist from its arms and into the sky. 
Flaming missiles bear down and scorch the skin of the river.  He sees the waters burst and turn foamy where the small meteors strike. 

He swims as best he can.  Bone fish and slithering dead things push against him and threaten to drag him
under
.  He can barely see as he
tumbles
through dingy waters.

He narrowly avoids jagged rocks.  The waters
become
more violent.  He feels himself going down
.  He sinks
closer to the
bottom of the river.  Soon he’
s lost in
the
shadows and stones. 

He
’s
on the shore.  He doesn’t remember getting there.

His clothes and skin are saturated, and his
body is
covered
with
forest
debris
.  Pale leaves cling to hi
m
as he painfully pushes himself up from the rocky ground.  His arms shake, and his back is stiff with pain.  The wound in his leg peels open when he tries to move, and he almost screams
again
.