Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (36 page)

Danica
expected
one of the
heavy blade
s
to come crashing down on her back, or for one of those ridiculously long arms to reach out and grab her.  Their height was terrifying
.  She felt as
if she
walk
ed
through a forest of
rotting
flesh.

Nothing happened.  She
made it
to the end of the
hall
.  She felt her spirit in the distance, a murmuring echo
,
a sad memory.  He was still restrained.  She hadn’t thought Fades were so powerful
. 

They must have
given
me
Narcosm, after all. 

A
door made of brass and copper
stood at the end of the corridor
. 
H
er
hand
cuffs opened on their own accord and
clattered
to the floor.  A simple steel helmet and a pair of black gloves had
been left
on
a short
stone
pedestal
by the door
.  Bleeding vines wrapped their way up the walls.  Danica smelled blood and sap. 

She gathe
red up the
equipment
. 
A
crowd
roared
on the other side
of the door
.  She could only
guess that
her opponents had already started
to
fil
e
in
to
the arena. 

Danica stood at the door
and waited
.
  She
was
sh
a
k
ing
all over
,
and
she felt like a piece of metal had caught in her chest
.  She didn’t want to see what waited for her on the other side.
 

It’s going to be okay.

“Screw it.”

She opened the door.
  Floodlights
nearly blinded her. 
P
risoners
atop
the walls
roared with approval
as Danica
walked through the door
.  She smelled fuel and felt the burn of vehicular fumes.  The roar of engines rattled the ground.

The
underground
arena
housed
a massive
racetrack
made
of scorched earth and sharp granite
. 
Bridges,
canyons
and dark pillars
stood
in the distance. 
The track sat in a giant bowl of
black
rock
with
a low wall
around the rim
. 
The staging area
was
elevated above the track itself, which dipped down
to
a
shallow
valley filled with smoke
,
flame
s
and jagged stone
s
. 
The behemoth cavern of Black Scar prison hung overhead, a permanent underground night.
 

“You like it?” Rake asked.

He, Burke and Raven stood on a
large
iron platform
that
hover
ed
some
twenty feet above the floor.  Steam and smoke billowed
from
its turbine engine
s
.  A number of small land vehicles had been spread out
across
the staging area
directly ahead of Danica
. 

“It’s
real
f
ancy,” she told Rake.

“Burke thought you’d like it
, s
ince you were at a race when we nabbed your cute little ass.”

“Is there a point
to this conversation
?” Danica shouted up to
him
.  “Aside from you getting to
act like
a dick?”

“We have time to kill,” Rake said
off-handedly
.  He spoke quietly,
but
she heard
his
voice clear
ly in spite of the noise
.  Sometimes i
t was easy to forget that he was a
warlock.  He
held
such
utter control over his spirit
that
it never
so much as
shifted or
even
made its presence known without his
approval
.  Danica could only barely detect her now, a slithering whisper lost in the din of background noise.  “I’m real
ly disappointed in you, Danica,” he said.
“
You’re a whore
.  Did y
ou know
that?
”

“Am I?” she laughed.  “And how is that?”

“Because you had to go and sleep with the enemy,” he said coldly.  “You had to put your chips in with the
Southern
Claw…and with that warlock.”  The platform lowered
till it nearly touched the ground
.  The exhaust blew dark dust
everywhere
. 
Danica stood firm.

The platform hovered closer.  It could have knocked her down had they wanted it to. 
Rake
stood with his arms crossed; he was
just
a few feet away.
 
Danica
pictured herself
using her
helmet
as a weapon and bashing in his skull
, but she knew he and Raven
were
just waiting for her to try something
. 

“You know you’re going to die, right, Dani?
” he said. 
 
“
I just want you to know that
your friends
are
all
going to die, too.
  I’ll see to it myself.
” 

She
gave
him a cold look. 
He
just
smiled.  T
he platform r
o
se
back into the air
.

Black watched the
m ascend
.  Hatred burned in her heart.

The other contestants in
the
race
were
among
the
luminaries of Black Scar prison. 
They’d
all
been there for a good stretch of time
and had all
served time under
Danica’s
watch, which was
undoubtedly
why Rake had selected them. 

All of the racers wore matching
black
leather body armor.  They were forced to change out there in the open, much to Black’s chagrin, and the hoot and holler of the prisoners up above was
punctuated by a number of
rape threats
.
 

Danica ignored them.  She had purpose now
: to make Rake pay
. 
Her earlier resignation to her fate had dissolved.

One way or another,
I’m
living through this.

Markos and Cassandra were
siblings
from the Reach
who’d
once
been
part of a roaming band of marauders
that
preyed on settlers and workers
in the borderlands
.  Both
of them
were blonde-haired
,
pale and tall, and they bore matching blood scar tattoos on the right sides of their faces.

Jorgo
lon Creel
, aka
“
Jorgo the Red
”
, was a
muscular
serial killer who’d slaughtered fourteen people in the city-state of Ath.  He’d skinned his victims and used the hides to build a ship he believed would carry him to safety
when
the world flooded. 

Vance Creyzak was a Vuul mercenary who
did
jobs
for the Ebon Cities scouting human settlements and military outposts.  The grey-fleshed maniac had a reputation for being a vicious hand-to-hand combatant
and
had
an unsavory taste for human females, who rarely survived his attentions.

The
racers
present
were
each
given their choice
of
vehicle. 
The first
person
who completed the
race
circuit
, which looped down into the valley and back again,
w
ould be
allowed to live.  They were
, of course,
given full reign to kill each other
during the race
, though no weapons were provided.
  Danica knew that probably wouldn’t happen until
the race started
.

Danica selected a bladed
motor
cycle,
a
modified Tiger 800XC
, the same model she and Lara used to ride around on
.  Steel armor plates had been
welded
to the front and sides, and the wheels were reinforced with metal studs and sealed with anti-puncture coagulant.  Razor spines and a
thaumaturgic
engine powered the sleek black and red cycle.

I must be nuts.  I haven’t rid
de
n
one of these things in years.

The twins took a dune buggy each.  Jorgo requisitioned a small pickup truck with spiked ram plates and retractable chains.  Creyzak took the wheel of a converted vampire war wagon that had been stripped down to its chassis, but the oversized stone and steel wheels still
looked
formidable enough to crush
other small
vehicles. 

The racers made ready to begin when
a
sixth contestant
was pushed
into the underground arena
by a pair of Scarecrows
.

It was Cole.

“You bastard!” Danica yelled up at Rake
.  Rake just smiled
and waved.

“Dani!” Cole shouted.  Danica tried to run to her, but there was a great deal of open ground between them, much of it covered by Scarecrows armed with hand-held cannons.  The grinning-skull sentries formed a wall of armored dead flesh between the women
and
kep
t
them apart.  Cole
had
already
been dressed
in her dark armor
before they’d brought her out
.  She looked so small amongst the corpses. 

“Lara!” Black shouted back. 

“Time to go,” Rake shouted from above, and the racers took their positions
under the careful watch of Scarecrow weapons
. 

Cole was s
hoved into an armored
orange-and-white
El Camino
equipped with
a
ram-plate.  She looked at Danic
a.  Even from a hundred yards away
Danica saw the frightened tears in her eyes. 

Her pulse raced.  She shook with panic.

No.  Get a hold of yourself. 

Black
got
on the motorcycle. 
Motors
flared to life
all around her
.  Exhaust and gas fumes
filled
the air.  The vehicles were poised at the
top
of a
dark,
steep hill
.  The hill dipped down t
owards a
gully
that ran like a cut down the middle of a narrow and elevated
mesa
.  T
hat mesa, in turn, led to a
nother
hill
covered with a
forest
of razor sharp stones
.  F
rom there the track ran down to the lower level of the arena.