Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (40 page)

The
dark
tentacles
tighten around
his
limbs and lift him into the air.
A great maw like an open wound rises
from
the water beneath his feet.  It pulls open like a tear
.  T
housands of tiny teeth glisten with poison and filth.

He
hacks through
the tentacles
and
falls into the water.  He twists and kicks and
swallows
the sick fluid
, emerges and gasps for air.
A
nother tentacle wrap
s
around his throat.

Vala charges in and hacks
off
the leathery appendage with an axe.  Kyver grabs
Cross’s
arm and
pulls
him free.  They
struggle
out of the water and make their way back to
shore.
 
Cross’s
body is wracked with hurt. 

The
rest of the
Grey Clan is all
dead.  The vampires feast on
the
remains and howl into the sky.  Several of the
undead
turn and look and run
after
the three
survivors
as they struggle
to escape
the tentacle beast
,
a bulbous sack of meat limbs and drooping mouths.  Teeth grind and twist in
the
gaping holes
all over its body
.

T
he forest is
now
nothing but dead branches.  Whatever
Cross
thought he’d seen had
just
been
an illusion
. 
The same is true of
the mountain: it’
s actually
a stout metal citadel made of twisted edges and serrated walls, towers like spikes and portals like wounds. 
The Citadel is fused to a smelted hill of granite and stained quartz.  Jagged crenellations reach towards the sky like hooked claws. 

The Black Citadel.

The
y run
for
the
doorway
in the base of the
Citadel
. 
Vampires snarl at their backs.  The
tentacle beast
lashes out
, grabs
some of the undead and pulls them to the water, but that does
n’t deter
the relentless mob as they scrape their way through bloody remains and tear across
the
open ground. 
L
ong tongues drip
acid drool and claws
scratch
against
the
ground
.

Vala shoves him forward
through
the
doorway

and time slowed.  The dark walls came into focus.  The light brightened as they moved away from the shadow grime of the Whisperlands.

Kyver shoved Cross ahead and looked back at the door.  The crowd of bestial vampires was less than thirty yards away. 

“Go!” Kyver shouted.  “This is as far as we can take you!”

“What…?”

“I hope your Eidolos friend told you what to do!” he shouted, and he turned back.  Vala
slammed the door shut
,
and t
hey barricaded
it
with a thick wooden beam and
propped up
iron bars that looked like they’d once been part of a portcullis. 

Hazy torchlight suffused the Citadel.  B
its of
sharp
metal protruded from every
wall
,
which
was dirty and covered with rust and dried blood.
Dangling iron braziers swung back
and
forth on metal
chains
that ran up to the height of the
narrow
ceiling.  Thin curls of grey smoke filled the hall with the smell of burning coals. 
The
corridor
that led from the entrance
ran for as far as Cross could see. 

The door buckled behind
them
, and they heard the wild growls of rabid vampires. 
C
laws raked the door
from the other side
and filled the air with the song of knives. 

“Go!” Kyver yelled again.  “We’ll hold them
for
as long as we can…find Azradayne!  Stop her from getting the Obelisk!”

Cross nodded, and ran.  He wanted to say ‘thank you’, but it seemed ridiculous given the circumstances.  They’d used him just as much as he’d used them.  They all had something to gain, and plenty to lose. 

He just hoped he wouldn’t fail them all.

The door buckled again.  The growls grew
louder
.  He glimpsed back
, but
Kyver and Vala faded into the dark
ness
behind him
as he ran
.

He didn’t have much time.

The hall
emptied into
a sort of amphitheater.  Wide and rounded steps led
up
to a platform covered with
large
cages and slabs of ice
turned grey with age
.  Multiple halls led
away
from the chamber. 

Each cage held the skeletal remains of
a
creature,
and
not all of them
were
human:
he saw
Gol and Vuul, Gorgoloth and
thin
and
mouthless Lith
. 

W
hite-grey
illumination bled down through
dirty
skylights in the
tall
ceiling.  Thin sheets of grease ice covered the steps and the upper platform, and old gnarled bones and rocks littered the floor. 

Cro
ss looked down the hallways and saw nothing but shadows
.  He heard the growl of monsters in the distance. 

The air tasted
like smoke
.  With Soulrazor/Avenger in hand he crossed the chamber.  His boots
felt like they were
ready to come apart.  He
looked
down
at himself
and saw that his rotting clothing was brown and black with dirt and shadow
y
filth.  He looked like a beggar.

It felt strange
not having
his
spirit with him.  In the
confusing atmosphere
of the Whisperlands it was easy to
forget
he was so alone
because
everything
there
was always in flux, and
the
unintelligible spectral voice
s
in the black wind
never ceased
.  Here, the isolation struck him, and he felt naked.  He had no ability to scout ahead
or
determine what lay down the corridors
short of investigating them himself
.  He couldn’t sense if anything approach
ed
. 
He was just Cross, barely armed
and alone.

Which means I don’t
stand
a chance
. 

All he had was the arcane blade, which, though powerful, remained something of a mystery.  He was still unsure of its full potential.  It could heal him, and it seemed capable of shielding him
from harm
.  It
could
destroy powerful creatures,
and
it
grant
ed
him more
sword fighting
skill than he actually possessed
. 

Still,
it
decided when it did all of those things.  He had little control over the blade, and little
notion
of
what it wanted.  He sensed intelligence
in
it
,
a
dark and powerful
presence
, but he couldn’t communicate with
the weapon
. 
It frightened him
.

Cross
stopped to
cat
ch
his breath.  His body shook all over. 
Now that he was back out of the black winds all
of
his aches and fatigue caught up with him.  His muscles were sore and his bones felt bruised. 

He
remembered his old life,
back
with the team
.  He felt
like he’d
just seem them
, like
no time ha
d passed at all
.
M
aybe he’d just wake up from th
at
nightmare and be back in the manor, ready to eat eggs
made by Ash’s homunculi
and try
ing
not to trip on Grissom’s damn
ed
giant cat
.  He’d
listen to Ronan and Kane
bicker
,
and
he’d
watch Maur tinker with explosives at the dining table
.  A
nd
he’d see
Danica, and
maybe, just maybe,
he’d tell her how he felt.

But that’s not
going to happen
on its own
. 
You have to get there first
.
You have to earn it.

He steeled himself.  He’d get nowhere standing around.

Cross
made his way
across the room.  Drifts of dust and floating ice crystals hung
in the air
.

A sense of dread overtook him, and h
e
stopped in his tracks.  Something
else
moved in the chamber
. 

He looked up
at
the ceiling
and
saw a massive white spider
, easily the size of an automobile.  It
nest
ed
on
an
iron web
, and its behemoth stomach stretched
like it was
ready to burst.  Hundreds of milk
-pale eggs pulled taut against its
cadaverous sack.  Diamond black eyes shone dark
ly
in the grey-white light. 

The spider
watched
him.  Cross stared
up
at it, petrified.  Dozens of
his reflections
looked
back at him,
one from each of the spider’s many dark eyes,
and
each
image was
slightly different from the others. 
H
e was a different man in
every
one
of them. 

The spider
sat as still as
a stone
.
He
knew for a fact he’d seen it before
.

It can’t be.
  It’s
just
another hallucination.

He ran.

Cross
found himself in a
maze of halls.  There was no sound.  He moved
through
crypts and pas
t
archways
made
of antler and bone.  Razorblade tapestries and iron mirrors lined
the corridors
.  Some areas were bound in darkness so thick it
nearly
suffocated him. 

Eventually he slowed his pace
.  His heart raced, and his skin was flushed with cold sweat. 
G
rime
covered
him, a layer of
muck
so dense he’d never shake it off.  He felt
dirt
beneath his fingernails and around his eyes. 

He looked around. 

Dark murals covered the walls of a wide and long chamber, a sort of meeting hall or assembly area.  Blood-red carpets lined the floor, but like everything else in the Black Citadel they
’d
been
eaten by age,
and were
covered with moth holes and frayed edges.  A long table made of silver and stone took up the
middle
of the chamber, but it
, too, had
been ruined
by
the passage of
time.