Blood Skies (blood skies)

by Steven Montano

  As terrible as battles against the Gorgoloth and their Crujian puppet-masters had been, they were hardly the real threat that faced Thornn or the Southern Claw: that was the vampire legions of the Ebon Cities. Cross’ chest seized up at the notion of returning to the field. He had only three days of leave left, and he anticipated it was going to be cut short any day now, since the search for the outlaw woman called Red hadn’t made any progress.

  Being a Southern Claw war mage for two years hadn’t done much to quell Cross’ nerves. Even with his spirit doing her best to keep him calm and protected, Cross still hadn’t learned to sleep well. The thought of what he might face in his nightmares later that night made him shudder.

  “ Are you okay?” Snow asked. They held each other close as they walked across the field and towards the hill.

  “ Yeah,” Cross smiled. “I’m just cold.”

  “ What are you doing tonight?” Snow asked after a long pause.

  “ I’m going to The Black Hag with Sam. You want to come?” He knew that she wouldn’t. Snow was a bigger drinker and socialite than he was, by far — last he heard she was still capable of drinking almost any member of Viper Squad under the table — but for some reason she preferred to keep her brother in quiet company. That was fine with Cross, who liked to delude himself into thinking that she was still eight years old. To see her drinking, dancing and flirting with local industry workers and city guards would probably make his blood boil and force his spirit to lash out in anger.

  “ Not tonight,” she said. “But I expect you for dinner tomorrow. How many days of leave do you have left?”

  “ Three. I hope.”

  “ You can’t leave without me making you dinner at least once.”

  “ It’s a deal.”

  There was a lone building that stood elevated over a narrow stream that ran the length of the grave field. The structure was badly in need of repair, and it looked like a refugee from the older, smaller city that had stood in the area before Thornn had been built back in A.B. 9. All but one of the windows of the building had been boarded up, and various machinery parts, iron sheets, metalworking tools and broken weapons had been scattered on the petrified grass and frozen clay in the front yard. That debris surrounded another lone and dead tree. A humanoid doll that was maybe a foot tall and made from tin cans and funnels and bound together by wire and glue dangled from the branches like a piece of metallic fruit. Eyes made from buttons and a mouth made of discarded cable formed the semblance of a face, and the tiny figure dangled by a string noose tied about its neck, so that it swung suspended in the dry and freezing wind, clanging against the trunk, its infantile face frozen in that happy grimace. It looked like the Tin Man, hanged.

  The grey sky groaned with something that sounded like thunder, but wasn’t. It hadn’t rained much since The Black. Storms were unnatural and filled with hateful energies, sometimes even the screams of the dead. Growing up, Cross had wondered why more people weren’t completely mad.

  Maybe they are. Maybe we’re all insane.

  “ 'But I don’t want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

  'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat. 'We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.'

  'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice.

  'You must be,’ said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.'”

  “ Can you get me a copy of Through the Looking Glass?” he asked Snow.

  “ Wow. Random,” Snow smiled. “You want ‘Alice’, too?”

  “ Sure.”

  “ I will. But you can only have it if you come to dinner tomorrow.”

  “ Are you going to make me meet your boyfriend?” he asked with a mawkish groan. “Groff?”

  “ Geoff,” Snow said curtly. “And the answer is ‘yes’. Probably.”

  “ Can I think about it?”

  “ No.”

  “ All right, then. Just bring the books, and nobody has to get hurt.”

  They walked in silence for a time.

  “ We’re in the looking glass,” Snow said softly. “I feel like that most days. Like we’re on the wrong side of some broken mirror.”

  “ Yeah,” Cross said. He didn’t know what else to say.

  The siblings drew close to the city. Flame cannons sputtered hot white flames and emitted the smell of burning fuel as they swiveled on rusted iron mounts at the southeast barbican. Electric currents ran up and down the black iron poles that stood on either side of the steep dirt path that led from the grave fields up to the rear city gates. They passed hexed concertina wire hung with what looked like voodoo implements that rattled in the chill breeze. Masked sentries bound in heavy armored coats regarded them from behind sandbags set atop the barbican. The guards all held assault rifles and sabers and wore black grenades on bandoliers.

  Cross carefully positioned himself to Snow’s left as they advanced the last few meters of the trail, which leveled out with the ground at Thornn’s base just before reaching the city gates. There was no way to avoid seeing the frozen salt fields and the Bonespire on the far side, but Cross always did his best to shield Snow from the site, out of habit if for no other reason.

  Estuaries of salt and brine lay to the west of Thornn’s cone-shaped outer walls. It was a massive expanse of broken white and grey earth torn up by mortar blasts, trenches, dried-up riverbeds and the grind of now abandoned vehicles that still sat there, unused. Soldiers milled about in small groups, and they kept low in spite of the absence of any visible enemy, their feet stuck in the white mud and cold water. The fields were miles wide and mostly flat, broken up only by the dead vehicles and occasional bunkers, some bivouacs and half-shattered stone and iron walls. The air smelled of saline, rust and dead fish.

  Far in the distance was the nearest of the Ebon Cities’ Bonespires, a structure they’d simply dubbed The Black Spike. It was a dark ebon needle enshrouded in shadow, as if a black storm raged there day and night. The Spike darkened the sky. It was a tower made of black steel and blacker stone, a barbed protrusion that jutted from the earth like an obscene razor blade. Jagged crenellations and nail-like barbs covered the tower like a porcupine’s quills, and at its base moved organic vehicles covered in greasy shadows and clouds of black steam. Occasional bursts of lightning from within the dismal clouds cast the Spike in eerie silhouette.

  Cross stared at the structure, and wondered how many Ebon Cities vampires were stationed inside. It had been some time since battle had occurred between Thornn and the Bonespire, but everyone remained vigilant. The war raged on elsewhere, but the battle for Thornn, at least for the moment, had drawn to a stalemate.

  Because you bastards are busy waiting for Red and the Old One to finish their deal, he thought with equal parts bitterness and fear. Why waste your resources fighting when the key to killing all of us is about to be delivered right into your hands?

  “ Please tell me you won’t be going back there,” Snow said. Cross hadn’t realized they’d stopped walking.

  “ I’m not,” he said. “No, I’m not going back there.”

  “ Are you going to be sent to look for Red?”

  “ You know I can’t talk about that,” he said, but he said it more for the benefit of the sentries posted there at the gate. He’d tell her later, or maybe when they met for dinner.

  He looked at Snow for a moment, and found himself at a loss for words. There she was, nearly a woman grown, and for some reason it struck him as so odd, so strange that she should be standing there, this old now, this mature, when he still saw in his mind the lanky and long-haired little girl who would only refer to him as “My Eric”, who’d walk around the house in his shirt that fit her like a sack, who as a toddler told their mother “I don’t think so” and nothing else for almost a month, who he’d grown up being taught he had to protect, and seeing her there now, so tall, so beautiful, filled him with worry and nearly brought tears to his eyes. His spirit felt it, too, and she held him tight, drew him close and slid across his skin l
ike a warm shroud.

  “ Eric?” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “ Yeah,” he smiled. He wouldn’t tell her about the ache he got in his chest when he thought about how young they’d been, or the fact that he would go on whatever mission they sent him on in spite of how afraid he was, because he was always driven by the notion that he had to keep her safe. “Let’s get you indoors,” he said. “It’s getting cold.”

  THREE

  KNIVES

  Graves was Cross’ only real friend aside from Snow. They’d known each other for as long as either of them could remember. Samuel Graves was an experienced soldier and a Hunter for the Southern Claw. He was also an admitted social deviant who insisted on trying to get Cross into as much trouble as humanly possible.

  Before Cross could meet Graves, he had a number of errands to run. He wasn’t looking forward to any of them.

  First, he walked Snow home, where she would doubtlessly await the arrival of Geoff. As much as Cross hated thinking about his sister being involved in a relationship, he liked the idea of someone watching out for her when he wasn’t around…which, as Snow had accurately pointed out, was most of the time. That Geoff was looking out for Snow was really the only reason he and Graves had let the faceless boyfriend keep breathing, or so Graves liked to claim.

  Lengths of transparent cable filled with viscous colors stretched out over the streets. The web of cables was bound in a thick mesh that made Thornn appear stitched. The cables conveyed messages, hex currents and fluids that raced back and forth across the city.

  Red dust and gravel filled the air with a gritty haze. Thornn’s buildings were round and sinuous, made from sandstone and brick and occasionally reinforced with cold steel plates and black iron meant to ward off incorporeal threats. The city structures were tall and clustered tightly together, lending Thornn’s narrow streets the semblance of valleys running through urban canyons. There were parts of Thornn rarely touched by sunlight, but steam vents and green-fire street lamps prevented the accumulation of ice on the roads. Narrow windows reinforced by iron panels spilled a multitude of fluorescent lights onto the streets located deep in the city’s heart, where some blocks had been left intentionally flat so as to house fountains, statues, or replicas of the obelisk monument on Ghostborne Island. Children played beneath the protective canopy of spirit shields and armed nannies, and this deep in the heart of Thornn’s Centertown district Cross was always struck by the smell of bakeries and bars, a strangely delectable blend of cardamom, hazelnut, sweet liqueur and cigarillos.

  Snow lived in a small apartment across from the library, a columnar red and white stone building hedged in by leering gargoyles. The sky was bruise pink that was slowly fading to purple and onyx.

  “ Tomorrow night, then,” she said, knowing full and well that if she made it a question Cross would find some way to become unavailable. “I’ll make you something tasty.”

  “ So we’re ordering out,” Cross said with a nod. He smiled and dodged Snow’s attempt to push him down the stairs. “Am I seriously going to have to meet Geoff?”

  “ Yes.”

  “ Fine. I’ll see you then.”

  “ Be good.”

  “ I’ll try.”

  Cross went north and out of the Centertown district, and it was amazing to him how rapidly Thornn shifted from semi-respectable and trendy to utterly seedy. Lesser used streets, even narrower than elsewhere in the city, wove like veins between unnamed bars and hashish houses, brothels, unregistered doctors and soothsayers. Thornn’s normally immaculate roads were filled with refuse in the part of the city known only as The Dregs, and the normally radiant gas and thaumaturgy-powered street torches cast ghostly flickering glows that danced in feeble luminescence off the dark buildings. Scantily clad whores slithered along the brick and mortar lanes like drugged serpents, and the harsh scent of arcane hash and sex clung to everything. Cross heard shouts from behind closed wooden doors, some of them raucous and fun, others violent and angry. He saw people garbed in sacks and sleeping in the gutters. People had blistered feet and unclean faces. Money changed hands. He saw an occasional mugging, over and done with before it was even clear what had happened. There were fewer people in The Dregs than in Centertown, but they were made legion by the murky light.

  His spirit hovered close, and she clung to his skin like a sail to a ship. They were both calm — they’d been in worse places, but it was still difficult for her to sift through the clouds of emotion there in The Dregs so that she could help Cross keep clear sight of what lay ahead. Illegal dealers and unscrupulous merchants made heavy use of arcane locks and wards, which meant that the streets in The Dregs were more packed with spirits than with people, invisible to normal humans but not invisible to warlocks. Cross couldn’t see those spirits so much as feel them, just as he could never truly see his own, at least not with the physical eye. Of her he had a sense, an imprint in his mind’s eye of how he thought she appeared which in turn, he believed, crafted her actual form. If ever there was a way to lay eyes on her in actuality, he would know her on sight. She was, quite literally, a part of him.

  Cross wandered for a time, until at last he came to a narrow alley he recognized, a place marked by silver runes etched into the enameled black stone that stood at the intersection. An alley dipped at a sharp angle down to a single black door. The recess was so dark it was nearly invisible to the naked eye; only the presence of more silver runes made it possible to see the door at all. The sky overhead had grown red and dark. Cross heard carousing and drunken laughter emerge from the open doorways of nearby bars, and dim green streetlamps feebly sputtered light against the grit and shadow.

  “ You want something?” a dark man asked. His skin was black, pure black, and his bare chest and arms were covered in more of the concentric silver runes. Even more runes adorned his face, highlighting his angular cheekbones, his thick lips, and his lack of eyes.

  “ Yes,” Cross said with a nod. “She’s expecting me. This is the right hour, so she should be ready.”

  “ I know.” The man’s voice was deep and hollow, like he stood at the bottom of a deep well. “But the question is, are you ready for her?” At that he laughed, a deep and hollow boom of a laugh that vibrated the air with its staccato rhythm. He gestured for Cross to go ahead with his black hand that was laced with bright silver rings.

  God, I hate that guy.

  The door was unlocked, but it was heavy and its hinges were rusted and old, so it still took considerable effort on Cross’ part to actually force it open. His spirit clung to his skin with ethereal claws as the portal groaned open. A subtle air filled with incense and musk escaped from the other side and enveloped him. The room within was lit by golden candles, and strangely-angled mirrors seemed to float on the onyx walls. Dark chairs and black curtains lent the room a claustrophobic air. Cross let the door seal shut behind him.

  “ There you are.”

  Warfield pushed her way out from behind the curtain. Her black dress was loose and flowing, and it looked like it had been clawed at or chewed on at least twice. The sleeves hooked around her long fingers, which were tipped with stark black polish. Her boots were tall and made from black leather, and were fastened by silver buckles. Warfield’s dark red hair was cut short, allowing Cross to see her heavy earrings and the runic tattoos on her neck and what part of her chest her dress left exposed, which was quite a bit. Warfield was almost as tall as Cross was — impressive given that he was just over six feet — and she was lithe and as thin as a ghost. Her black lips pulled up in mock smile.

  “ Here I am,” he said.

  “ Did you bring it?”

  “ I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t.”

  “ Then step into my office,” she smiled, and she led him back through the curtain and into a dank and cluttered room piled high with arcane detritus, broken magical components, empty alchemy vials, used batteries, spare wires, a variety of clamps and pliers and shreds of parchment and dried wax
. Warfield’s desk was a tiny table that walked on its own accord. What appeared to be gargoyle’s claws attached to the table’s surface held an iron lockbox.

  But what really drew Cross’ attention were the knives propped against the back wall, displayed high on the stone and illuminated by cold silver light that emanated from a number of crevices in the ceiling. The knives were curved, with thin bone-white handles and utterly black blades, the metal so dark it seemed to suck that light in. Runes were visible on the faces of the blades, and the edges were honed to so fine a point Cross could see how sharp they were.

  “ Wow.”

  “ You like?” Warfield smiled.

  “ I’m not sure,” he answered. “I think I’m just intimidated.”

  “ I’m talking about the knives,” Warfield said with a wry grin.

  “ Oh,” Cross laughed. “In that case, yes.”

  As far as Cross was concerned, Warfield was so far out of his league that even fantasizing about her was a waste of time. Cross had very little skill or luck with women, and, perhaps more importantly, he found that he rarely had the time to even worry about it…which was why most of his relations only took place at the Grey Angel, or, on occasion, the Red Scarab, the only two barely reputable brothels in Thornn.

  Cross dropped a small black leather bag onto Warfield’s table, where it landed with an audible clink. His spirit recoiled as Warfield approached. Warfield’s male spirit oozed with power, doubtlessly tied in one way or another to the arcane generators Cross had detected behind the curtains. Warfield had enough energy surging through this place to detonate the entire block, which was why she kept everything so well hidden under dampeners.