Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (56 page)

The world filled with the sound of a glacier breaking. 
The pillar
shattered
as if in
slow motion.  The
flying beast
fell
through
it
one
layer at a time.  Green and white glass
shattered
around
the draconic corpse
in
a hail of
crystal shards.  Its body writhed and twisted
,
and the
brittle explosions
eviscerated its rider
. 

The Razorwing
plummeted into
solid
darkness.  Thick fumes of green smoke billowed up
around
the dead beast and pulled it
down to
oblivion
.

Rake and Ronan fell
with
the
glass
shards.  They plummeted
behind
the
Razorwing’s corpse, followed it into the void below.

The
line
around Danica’s ankle tightened and
pulled
her
body
backwards
.
Rake still held the other end of the arcane whip. 

H
er head struck the ground.  She felt blood
i
n her
hair
. 
She slid
across a field of
sharp rock and
shattered glass bones, out of the madness of the melee
and
into
the
open pit
.

She falls. 
Blackness rushes past her.  She’
s
pulled
into
a shaft of midnight.

A hole fades in th
e distance above her.  Soon it’
s gone, obscured by yellow gases and frozen steam.  She smells the age of worlds. 
H
ollow screams and carbon wails
surround her
.  She sees cracks in the jagged stone, holes to a bitter and smoke-filled landscape, a wasteland of bubbling iron pools and twisted flesh mountains, smoking blood geysers and pits of iron teeth.

She knows what she sees is
the Carrion Rift
:
a twisted zone of unfinished transformations, a
place
of becoming, of things undone and never to be. 

She sees herself
fal
l, a
pale angel made of flesh and blood and steel.  She plummets through crumbling barriers and breathing skies. 
Her body
sinks closer to the darkness, then ascends, pulled back up towards a pocket of sanity, a place still bound by reason and solid
walls
.

Something hard slammed into her back.  Danica’s breat
h shot out of her.  She twisted her body and
looked around. 

They were in the
wide stone
shaft
,
the Shadow
Lord’s
vertical
portal to t
he Whisperlands.  They’d landed in some pocket of safety,
a
space unaffected by the shifting
bonds and temporal winds.

She reach
ed out and grabbed something.  At first s
he thought it was a jutting stone, and
she
panicked when she realized it was
actually
a massive talon.
  The
surface shifted beneath her and
scraped against
the
broken
walls of the shaft
.  Greasy smoke hung overhead, and the hole emptied into a frosted void
below
.

Danica stood on the underbelly of the Razorwing.  Its leather leash line and the chains that dangled from its platform saddle
were
w
rappe
d around a protrusion in the rock
above
,
which had
snar
ed
the plummeting corpse
.  Now
the beast
hung
belly up
like
a massive
and
dead puppet
, its four feet held straight up in the air
. 
The tethered
corpse
banged
against the side of the shaft. 

T
he hardened skin o
n
the Razorwing’s
underbelly
was
slick with dark blood. 
The
dragon
was the size of a bus. 
T
he chains tense
d
,
and
bits of rocks snap
ped loose
from
the outcropping
overhead
.  Rocks bounced off the walls
and
fell
out of sight
. 

T
he reptilian body shift
ed
beneath her. 
S
he grasped one of its upturned hind claws and pulled herself
closer
to
the
middle of its long
abdomen.  Its dead tail dangled down below, and she heard it smack against the stone.

“
Danica
!” Ronan shouted.  His head poked out from the out
cropping overhead.  “Look out
!”

Something slammed against her back.  Danica flew forward
and
her face
hit the stone
wall
.  Her feet slipped, but she reached up and gripped
the rock
with her steel hand.

Rake came at her
from behind
.  His fists were covered
with
corrosive energy.  Sparks of green light licked the air.  Blood ran down his
broken nose
and into his teeth
.  H
e snarled with rage.
 

He punched at her again. 
Danica raised a shield, but
not in time
.  Rake smashed through
her spirit’s defenses
and
knocked
her back.  She slid and
nearly
fell
from the dragon’s belly. 

“God damn it, Danica, you ruined everything!” he
yelled
, and he kicked her in the stomach.  Pain doubled her over. 
The air raced out of her lungs
.  “We had a nice thing going
.  W
e were going to be on top of the food chain…”  He reached down and grabbed her hair.  She screamed as arcane flames
leapt from his hands and
burned
her flesh
.  Her spirit kept her from catching
on fire
, but
s
earing
pain
flared across her face
. 
“You’re
going to be sacrificed, bitch,” he hissed. 

He pushed his face close to hers. 
D
arkness
pulsed behind
Rake’s
eyes
.  D
ank and oily smoke
leaked from his gaze
. 

Rake’s mask started to slide. 
His skin seemed to
crumble
like plaster
. 
What lay
beneath the peeling flakes of
skin
wasn’t
bone or skull
,
but
darkness
,
the
cold
of
the void, so utterly
black
it pained her eyes to look
at him
.

U
nderneath
the
skin
, he was just a shadow
. 

Just like Jennar.
  Just like The Sleeper.

She went cold inside. 
The darkness of The Black had hidden
itself
inside Rake
. 
Maybe it had been guiding his actions all along, had used his magic and his resources and forged alliances and manipulated events to get what it wanted.

I
t had put itself in
a position to destroy the Obelisk
.

This was not
T
he Sleeper. 
The Sleeper had been
an entity of pure
cruelty and destruction,
an avatar of
chaos and madness. 
This
new
agent
of darkness
was possessed of cunning and manipulation.  It had laid
its
plans
carefully and
had
worked
in secret
, only now revealing its true nature when all else had failed
.

She
look
ed into
his
ic
y
eyes.  Charcoal s
moke
leaked from his broken skull
. 

The thing that wasn’
t
Rake forced
its
hands
around her throat. 

Her strength was gone.  She tried to
fuse
her spirit into a blade,
but
her
vision fad
ed
.
Rake, or what had once been Rake, would win.

A sh
adow fell over them, cast by
the
smok
y
light trapped in the green mist above. 

Ronan yelled
as he came down
in a controlled fall
. 
He
grabbed
Rake
as he landed
and pulled him
away from
Danica
.
Ronan fell back against the wall with a crack. 

Danica blasted
Rake
with
a
cone of black fire
that
melted off
his
skin
and knocked him from the Razorwing’s belly
.  He smoldered and burned as he
fell, a black torch dropped in
darkness. 

The chains snapped.
 
Links
flew apart like shattered ice.  The serpent
’s corpse
dropped into darkness
. 
Metal and stone
fell like rain.
 

Ronan grabbed
hold of
the
jagged
wall.  He
reached out for Danica, but it was too late. 
T
he dead beast fell, and she fell with it.  The sight of Ronan faded from view, and she

falls through liquid darkness.  Dark stone
passes
by.  There are gaps
in the
walls
.  She sees the bleeding skin of a festering land and
smells
an air corroded
with
fear.

She is weightless.  She falls without fear of landing, like she
’
s suspended in an inky pool.  She almost imagines herself sleeping on a bed of black down.

Her memory
goes back.  She remembers Cole
and Kane, and her heart sha
tters.  She can’t believe they’
re gone. 

She has the dream again, the dream of the soft room, the golden light and the feel of a lover’s skin
.  S
he dissolves into that world, a
place
of silken sheets and soft pillows, of an olive dawn and the smell of plums and berries by the bedside.  The desert is warm and inviting, and she wants to spend the rest of her life there, wiling away the hours, resting at Cole’s side.

Another dream.  This time she’s with Kane.  He’
s like a brother to her, a brother she
wants
, not the shit of a brother she wound up
with
. 
He
smiles, and in this dream he’
s forgiven her,
truly
forgiven her.

She sees Cross, and
she
wants to hold him.  She wants to
fall
in
to
his arms.
  She’
s dreamed about him before, but she hasn’t told him
about
it,
can never
tell him
about
it.  She knows he
’
ll never want her,
and
never could.  No one could, and after Lara she will never want another.