Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (53 page)

The 20mm cannon ripped backwards.  Kane felt the impact in his shoulder, and his eyes watered from the
sound of the
sharp crack as the shell
launched
.  The front section
of the Hummer
exploded.  Oil and water shot up from the
shattered
engine block, and the dead driver
flew forward
through the broken window
.

Ronan leapt over
Kane
and ran
at
the other Revengers, firing as he went.  Maur tossed another grenade as Jade’s spirit hammered
the
Revengers
with cold
black
nails. 
Men fell screaming.  Those
that survived were mowed down by Ronan
.

Kane hefted
up
the cannon and brought it with him.  He felt stronger than he had
in some time
,
and
full of vitality.  He could have hefted that thing around anywhere.

Careful
, he warned himself. 
That’s not natural.  You know
where that strength is coming from
.

At
th
at
moment, he didn’t care.

Smoke drifted over them as they moved across the street
and up
to the building the Revengers guarded, a pale structure that looked
like
an
industrial plant or a factory
.  They saw
an open set of damaged steel doors at the bottom of a short iron staircase.  Steel yellow barrels
leak
ed
phosphorescent ooze
. 
Kane
smelled gas.  The space
beyond
the open doorway was black and still. 

“There’s something down there…” Jade said.

“Uh, that’s sort of why we want to go in…” Kane said.

“No, you don’t understand…there’s
something
down there.  Something
powerful.”

They looked at
each
another.  Explosions hammered Voth Ra’morg’s outer walls.  They hear
d explosive bursts
of
gunfire
and Razorwing calls.  The ground shook from the
battle
outside
.

“Then that is where Maur needs to go,” the Gol said, and he stepped forward.  Ronan nodded and followed with a
W
hat the hell
,
why not?
look on his face. 

Jade hesitated.

“You don’t have to go,” Kane said as he stepped close.  “
You don’t owe us anything.”  He nodded at her.  “
Find a place to hold up.  We can take care of this.”

“No,” she said with a shake of her head.  He realized it wasn’t fear that held her back – she’d been
an enforcer for Klos Vago and t
he Shard, after all, and she’d doubtlessly done and seen things that would have given
him
nightmares – but something else. 

She’s making a choice.  She’s deciding if we’re worth putting herself in this much danger. 

After a moment, she
moved towards the stairs
. 

“You’d better be worth it,” she said.  Kane stood there, dumbfounded, before he turned and followed her inside.

Cold shadows filled t
he building
. 
Ronan
lit
a flare
,
but
even that
did little to combat the darkness
. 

Old machines l
ittered
an
underground industrial graveyard.  The light from the door behind them was muted, stifled by
the
black
interior
.

Jade couldn’t send her spirit ahead. 
Kane wasn’t surprised: he knew
T
he Revengers had their ways to combat mages. 
He
only hoped she’d be able to call on it again when it mattered
. 

The air smelled
like the underside of a car.  T
he floor was
covered in
frozen sludge pools and slicks of ice grease.  Shell casings, iron filings and shattered steel
were everywhere
. 

They found a closed trap door
in the floor
.  Ronan’s
flare
revealed
footsteps in the sticky f
ilm on the ground and
debris
that had been
pushed aside. 
A
small group had
recently passed
through
the area
.

The
y opened the
door
and found
a
n iron
ladder
that
led straight down into metal darkness. 
Kane
took the lead and
descended
the ladder two rungs at a time.  His heart hammered, and his breaths were fast.  Tension mounted in his arms. 

We hear you

God damn it, not now.

We hear you know you feel the lust the pain in your heart in your blood your soul the pain that stabbing hurt the want the desire blood your blood her blood hers hers yes hers

Kane came to ground
in a half-completed basement
.  He stepped away from the ladder and
punched the steel wall, hard. 
P
ain shot down his arm
, and b
lood ran from the broken skin on his knuckles. 
H
is eyes regained
their
focus.  After a moment the voices were unintelligible again, just faint whispers
at the edge of his thoughts
. 

Pipe junctions
issued
steam
jets
and dripped semi-petrified drops of greasy water.  Yellow bulbs
lit
the area the color of old bones. 
They
hear
d a boiler somewhere nearby
, and the air smelled like a urinal. 

They went just a few feet away from the ladder when they came across a section of
wall
that
had been ripped open
by some powerful force. 
A series of natural tunnels made of
dark shale
waited on the other side
of the hole
.  Drifts of ebon dust fell
across the
low and n
arrow
passage
. 
They saw m
urky blue light
in the distance
,
a glow
the color of icy
milk.

“What the hell?
” Ronan said.

“Maur is tired of strange shit like this.”

“You and me both, pal,” Kane echoed.

“We
must
be close,” Jade said.  “My spirit is going crazy from all of the thaumaturgic activity coming from down there.”

Kane looked down the tunnel.  He felt like they were nearing an end.  For some reason, he didn’t want to step through.  He closed his eyes for a moment, and he saw Ekko.  His heart ached.

Without a
nother
word, Kane
entered
the tunnel
.

He
felt like he’d
st
epped
into a freezer.  The stone
underfoot
cracked like brittle ice. 
He tasted salt and the tang of frozen blood. 
Everything was so still he was almost afraid to move
,
for fear
that
the tunnels would collapse at his touch.

T
hey follow
ed
the source of
the
light.
  The ice-wreathed
walls glowed
like a distant moon.  Tiny cracks in the
walls
held glittering blood crystals
like small red diamonds.

Kane’s
skin
was
raw with cold
, and
his breaths frost
ed as they left his aching throat
.  He shive
red and pulled his dirty armor
coat tight
er
around his body
.  He shook his
gun
to
dislodge
the
ice shards in the barrel.

The tunnel
emptied
into a dark
and
massive chamber that looked like it had been the sight of a
recent
bombing.  The walls were scorched and twisted.  Shadows swam
against
the stone
. 

A
ring of
torches
illuminated
a sharp pillar
made
of monstrous
dark ice skulls
.  Kane saw
the bones of
horned things, flat-headed beasts,
creatures with tusks and snouts.  He recognized
some
of the skulls
as
those of
Gorgoloth or Vuul, but many were foreign to him
,
forgotten creatures from other worlds.
 

Each
skull
had been carefully packed and sealed
in
to
place
with
some reflective organic glaze.  The smoothed exterior of the
ten-foot-
tall
structure
flickered with
dirty yellow light. 
There were no exi
ts from the room
except
for a dark
and
mist-filled pit that
somehow held
the pillar aloft
.  T
he bone edif
ice drifted at the center of that
purple and b
lack morass of shadow fumes
. 
Deep sounds issued from the pit
like rhythmic metal pounding. 

“Drop your guns!” Rake shouted.  “Or we’ll drop your girl.”

The Revengers
stood on the other side of the obelisk
,
at
the far
end
of the chamber.  Kane recognized Rake, the little
-
s
een leader of
T
he Revengers and the man in charge of Black Scar.  He was accompanied b
y a number of other Revengers
,
among them Geist, his
half-Doj
henchman;
a dark-haired wo
man
with tattoos on her face and arms
;
and
Burke, the false Burke,
supposedly a vampire named Krage, but his semblance to the Burke they’d seen just minutes before was almost exact
, save for the fact that this Burke was unscarred
. 

A
pair of Scarecrows
h
e
ld
a chain attached to
a
massive
Talon
beast
’s
neck and six arms. 
The brutish creature
scrambled against its bonds
and growled noisily.  It
desperately wanted to get at Kane and the others.

Cross was there, unconscious
and
strapped
to one of the Scarecrow
’
s backs like
he was
a baby in a
papoose
. 

And t
hey
saw
Danica
…
what had once
been
Danica.

“Black!” Ronan shouted.

“What have you done to her?!” Maur shouted.

Kane looked at her in horror
. 
T
he transformation
that had been
forced on her was stark.  Blood stained the side of her leather armor.  Her hair had gone
almost
white, and her
glazed
eyes
glowed
like sparkling ice.  Her flesh
was frosted
.  She looked
something
like the angel avatars the team had faced in the Bonespire, th
os
e undead machinations
that Korva had
used to try and capture Soulrazor, but in lieu of angel’s wings Danica had been given a
n
arcane-
mechanical
arm, an animated appendage
of
blood-colored
steel and iron. 
The
flesh
was visibly raw
where the
limb
had been
fus
ed to her
shoulder
.