Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6)

by Montano, Steven

  “What I want has nothing to do with it,” she said. “It’s about what I need. It’s about what we need. And we need to stop going through life being hurt. There’s so much Goddamn pain.” She turned away as tears fell from her eyes. “I love you, too, Eric, but I can’t do this.”

  He grabbed hold of her and spun her around, and Danica nearly lashed out at him, nearly let her spirit defend her, but her spirit knew better, knew better than even she did, and instead it pulled Cross close, held him in a web of pulsing heat and pushed them together, thinking for her, doing what she wanted even if she was afraid to admit it.

  The next she knew their lips met, dry and cracked from days spent living in desert heat. It felt so right. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer, felt his chest push against hers, felt his sweat on her skin and his hands on her back and the desperate need in his embrace, and she knew he was right, knew her instincts were right, that no matter how badly she wanted to deny it, no matter how badly she wanted to avoid the pain that it was pointless, because life was pain, and life was loss, and life was taking chances and getting hurt.

  Because in the end taking those risks were what made it all worthwhile, and that was why she kissed him, why she ran her fingers through his thick hair and held him close.

  She stopped, looked at him, uncertain what she was doing, uncertain what to do or say next, but Cross held her and she held him back, careful not to hurt him with her monstrous arm.

  “What do we do now?” she asked. She heard the fear in her voice, the desperation, and it was genuine. For all of the horrors and fighting, all of the terror and combat and torture and fear, she’d never been as afraid as she was then, standing there with Eric in her arms. She remembered Cole, remembered Kane, and she watched each of them die in her mind’s eye again and again, and her heart wrenched and twisted in her chest like someone had shoved a knife in it.

  Cross looked at her, and kissed her again. She pulled away, then kissed him back. Their lips melted together. He held her in his arms, warm and familiar, his weathered face and hardened eyes the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. He held her gently by her chin and tilted her head up. She saw the damp sweat on his stubble, tasted it in the air. He kissed her and she heard a sound from her own throat, a soft whimper, and hated herself, hated herself for loving him, hated him for loving her, hated them both for doing this, for allowing this, for making it so they suddenly had so much more to lose than they did before, so that they had something worth living for beyond the greater good, something they each wanted, something they were both willing to kill for.

  Danica held him tight, and though she was afraid she couldn’t remember ever feeling more alive.

  TWENTY-ONE

  SCAR

  Creasy, Ronan and six of the Sundered made their way towards the column of gritty smoke at the center of the storm-shrouded city.

  Wind howled across the plains, kicking up dust and sand that clung to the insides of their mouths in spite of their face wraps. The small group moved quickly and quietly towards the edge of the City That Sleeps, their bodies bent forward against the wind. Creasy smelled hex, and the stain of unclean magic. A sense of dread was buried deep in his chest, but he did his best to fight through it.

  This is what had to be done.

  His spirit moved ahead of the group, fighting against the gusts and cleaving through the shell of malign energies. The air tasted burned. Creasy’s ears painfully popped as the pressure around them kept building.

  His thoughts drifted, and Creasy had to struggle to hold on. He knew it was an effect of walking through that twisted wind, of passing through the slimy voices of the lost – they tried to fill him and the others with regret, with doubt, with memories of pain. The spirit clay they’d caked onto their bodies helped stave off the attack, but only barely, and he still found himself wracked with grief over Wolftown and filled with doubt as to whether he was doing the right thing.

  The atmosphere was wrong. There was no other way to describe it: things shifted incorrectly, light bent and twisted at unnatural angles, the ceiling of the sky seemed to both press down and stretch too far. The shadows cleaved to one another as the squad drew close to the city gates. It was the second time Creasy had approached the necropolis, only this time it was occupied. This time they were waiting for him.

  We never know when we’ll die. That was a truth he’d learned as a young boy, one of the most important of his life. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to leave Tanya or her mother Katya alone in this world, but that wasn’t up to him. His time would come sooner or later, and Creasy had tried to live his life fully, so that whenever his death came he’d face it without regret.

  His spirit was at the center of his thoughts. She’d always protected him, always guided him, and the dream he’d had still rang clear in his mind.

  You and I won’t meet again. Not like this. I’m sorry it has to be you.

  Creasy had failed many people in his life – the people of Wolftown, his parents. No more. Any good he did now would help, any Skaravae he killed was one less for Cross and the others to deal with. He knew Ronan felt the same way, that he had little regard for his own life and wanted to leave this world doing everything he could. That was why Creasy had shared his dream with the swordsman, why they’d volunteered for an almost undoubtedly suicidal task.

  It will fall to you. To us.

  Creasy pressed forward, driving through the wind, his heart full of fear but his mind set on the task ahead.

  They came to the edge of the city, through the outer rim of the storm margin and under clearer skies. They saw the whirlpool of darkness clearly now, a spiral of groaning shadow.

  The walls seemed steeper than before, taller. Spines of red stone peppered the ground like quills. White crystal and shattered rocks littered the roads, and their silvery glow carried the faint hint of residual thaumaturgy, some effect of the ritual the Witch used to call forth the Maloj.

  They wound their way through the streets, staying close to the walls. They saw no sign of the Skaravae. The city was dry and dead.

  Darkness brushed against their eyes like an ebon mist. Ronan was in the lead, the knowledge of their destination imprinted in his mind by Creasy’s spirit. The warlock and the others followed the assassin as he silently moved into a narrow alley. The Sundered were soundless, their faces grim.

  The cyclone ahead grew and howled with the sound of a gale. It was strange how the air around them remained so brittle and still even with that raging black twister at the center of the city, writhing in place like an angry serpent. Empty windows and shadow-soaked doors seemed to gaze out like hollow eyes. The ground was slick with dank red moisture that wasn’t quite water, and wasn’t quite blood.

  “I see the shop,” Ronan said. He waited, signaled that everything was clear, and then slipped inside. Creasy followed, the six Sundered right on his tail.

  The stench inside assaulted them, much stronger than the last time Creasy had been there. The witch’s body was gone, as were most of the contents of the small tower, doubtlessly ransacked after he’d been discovered during his last visit. A quick scan with his spirit told him that several of the witch’s safeguards were still in place, and that in spite of the damage the Skaravae had done the building was still resistant to scrying. Even a powerful mage would have trouble detecting the presence of living beings within.

  It will fall to you.

  Creasy recalled the algorithms and scrawls the witch had left, which seemed to have been destroyed with most everything else in the shop. He still hoped to find something, anything that might give them some advantage over the Skaravae.

  Ronan helped him search. There was so much wreckage and debris it was an all but impossible task, and the five minutes they had wasn’t nearly enough time. Their eyes adjusted to the gloom as they sifted through the remains of smashed tables and broken furniture. Dust and clockwork mechanisms littered the floor.

  Creasy thumbed through burn
ed scrolls and more of the witch’s maddened notebooks, somehow left undiscovered beneath the refuse in the corner. Ronan found something hidden in the already ruined mattress of the witch’s bed, a roll of paper carefully bound with cord. He’d removed his mask and looked at the unrolled paper, and then stoically handed it to Creasy. His eyes were grim.

  Scar, it read. There were other words, nonsensical references. Dawn. Claw. Avenger. Soulrazor.

  “Scar?” Creasy asked.

  “Swords,” Ronan said. “Cross has two of them. Dani has one.”

  The rest of the paper was covered with simple illustrations, crude hand-rendered images of blades. They were measured out as if by schematic, and numerous notations and equations had been scribbled beneath each drawing. Lines connected the swords like they were markers on a map.

  It’s a diagram, Creasy realized. The means to make something, some greater whole. A weapon incorporating all of the blades into one.

  Creasy thought of Cross, and Danica. Was this, truly, the reason they’d been brought to Nezzek’duul? Did their abduction have something to do with the blades, rather than the Maloj?

  They moved out into the street, where the funnel of shadow cast everything in darkness. Something like lightning split the sky, painting the air red and causing the air to shimmer and bleed. Creasy sent his spirit to signal Cross and Danica, but she couldn’t move beyond the confines of the road – some effect of the storm was blocking her ability to travel. They’d have to proceed on their own and be ready to help the attack when it came.

  They moved fast through dilapidated neighborhoods. A merry-go-round creaked endlessly on its rusted bolts in a cold and empty playground. The distant peel of thunder shook the air, which had grown thick with the tang of ozone. Every house and open window felt threatening, like something inside watched the eight warriors as they made their way to the middle of the city.

  The spiral of shadow was easily visible no matter where they went. Its great height and bulk defied explanation, and within its swirling vapors Creasy saw faces, lost and moribund souls pulled apart into an ethereal soup, a wash of dead energies whose mouthless screams were the source of the fetid wind. The funnel existed between two planes, the ground and the blood sky, darkness above and below. Swirls of crystalline glass ran in a perimeter around the greater bulk of the cyclone, a barrier of shards stuck to the body of the vortex.

  Seeing that horrible thing, hearing those spirit’s screams, Creasy found himself naming God, asking for his help. It had been many years since he’d invoked the Lord’s name, too many. Some believed God had no interest in helping warlocks, or any possessed of supposedly evil powers. Creasy hoped they were wrong.

  They lowered their masks as they drew close to the heart of the City That Sleeps. The shadows seemed less dense, and the air was brighter and cleaner. When Creasy looked straight up he saw the night’s first stars through gaps in the storm.

  They’d come to a more open residential section, a place occupied by low houses and playgrounds, markets and small patches of once green grass. Everything was quiet and dead, but Creasy could imagine what it must have been like when there’d been life there, how the air would have felt vibrant and fresh. There was still no sign of the Skaravae.

  The air grew bitingly cold. Light bent around them and blurred their outlines. Creasy kept his eyes alert, expecting an attack at any moment.

  The towering coil of smoke stood just beyond a broken brick wall, in a clearing at the center of what appeared to be a ring of apartment buildings. A storm of shadows spun above, solid as a bed of stone, and just beyond the twisting funnel Creasy saw the gold-red sky. Bits of metal flew through the air like leaves.

  “I’m going to find the Witch,” Creasy said to Ronan. “We’re close.”

  Ronan nodded, and drew up his cowl as he unsheathed his sword. Creasy knew he’d offer no argument.

  Creasy steeled himself. He’d come this far. He felt a sense of shame that he hadn’t been able to kill the Black Witch when he’d had the chance, and more people had died.

  It will fall to you. To us.

  His spirit crusted against his flesh. He wanted so badly to speak to her again, to tell her all she’d meant to him, and how he’d miss her.

  About a hundred yards away from the edge of the clearing Creasy stopped, removed his pack and outer shit and donned his armor coat. He secured his machete and brandished his shotgun and waited a moment while Ronan and the others caught up with him, keeping low to the ground as they neared the old buildings whose walls were cracked and yellowed with age. Creasy tasted death on the freezing wind and smelled blood in the coming night.

  They heard explosions in the distance. The taint of magic stained the sky. Shadows roamed the atmosphere.

  Ronan was looking back, watching. They heard the roar of beasts and the buckle of explosive pressure. A storm within the storm, triggered as Cross’s team and the rest of the Sundered attacked.

  Creasy watched Ronan. When the swordsman’s eyes turned to him they were full of loss. Creasy nodded.

  “I want to thank you for coming back for me,” Creasy said. “Not once, but twice. I owe you.” Creasy handed him the roll of parchment he’d found in the soothsayer’s.

  Ronan nodded. “I hope to hunt wolf with you someday, Creasy,” he said.

  “I look forward to it.”

  The Sundered hesitated, sensing it was at this point that Creasy had to go on alone. His and Ronan’s eyes locked once more. He wanted to ask the swordsman to take a message to Tanya if he ever made it back to Southern Claw territory, to explain what had happened, but he knew he didn’t have to. They were men of few words, and they both knew when nothing needed to be said.

  Creasy turned and headed for the maelstrom.

  The wide open clearing had once been paved, had maybe even housed another building, but now it was nothing but torn earth and butchered concrete. The ground was black and the air was ice cold.

  Creasy felt the passage of years inside him. His gauntlet implement was as aged and tattered as he was, and like him it was failing. Old wounds scarred his skin like scratches on glass, and his flesh felt as if it had been pulled taut with hammered nails. His muscles ached as he stepped up to the edge of the courtyard.

  The column of towering smoke was vast and opaque. Creasy barely heard it, and even though he saw fragments of debris thrown by the wind he only felt the slightest breeze. It hurt his neck trying to see to the heights of the black funnel, which reached up like a twisting ebon worm to a ceiling of black cloud. Voices oozed from the smoking citadel, quiet and forlorn, the songs of the lost.

  The moment Creasy stepped into the courtyard his spirit silenced. She was severed from him, cut off. He sensed her at the edge of the buildings, unable to come any closer, trapped on the other side of an unbreakable window.

  It will fall to you.

  Creasy kept walking. Layers of brittle ground shifted beneath him, far less stable than he’d thought. He moved slow, testing the earth, calling on his spirit to probe the layers, but she wasn’t there, and he was suddenly petrified with fear.

  He stared at the cyclone, tried to gauge its depths, but he couldn’t see anything within the darkly frosted brume.

  What the hell am I supposed to do? he wondered. I’m nothing without her, without my magic. Just a tired old wolf hunter who thinks he can save the world.

  He thought of Roth. He thought of Kendrick and Hewer and the people of Wolftown, dead now, all dead. He thought of Tanya, thought of her dark hair and the smoothness of her skin, the tattoos on her back and that wry smile that drove him crazy. She could have had any of the men she wanted, but she’d chosen him, and he couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her, of some evil he’d failed to kill setting events in motion that could result in her death. It didn’t matter what the Black Witch planned – she wanted the Maloj, and that made her dangerous. She had to be stopped.

  I Love You, he thought to Tanya, wishing there was some way she
could hear him.

  Creasy readied his weapon. He scanned the area, wondering if he’d even be able to breach the arcane cloud without his magic. What was an old man like him supposed to do aside from offer himself up as a distraction to give Cross and the others time to get there?

  Was that all there was to it? Had his spirit led him there to die?

  The moon sat low in the sky, visible just above the line of dark buildings, a lean and silver sickle. It was too dark even in the calm of the clearing to make out what lay inside the apartment buildings, though their walls had been torn open and debris and wreckage spilled out into the open courtyard like entrails.

  The spiral of smoke swirled directly ahead, pulling and pushing at once. The drone of wind grew quieter as he drew close, even though the temperature continued to drop. His breath frosted, and his chest ached from the chill.

  Creasy kept a wary eye on the buildings as he walked towards the swirling storm. He felt his blood stiffen, and he heard the distant blasts of combat and roars of war beasts. He knew Cross and his valiant team would fight to the last. He just hoped they wouldn’t have to.

  Something troubled him: the marked tabletop and notebook from the soothsayer’s, those insane scrawls left behind by the witch. There was more there, something he’d missed, he was sure of it, and for some reason he felt like his life, like all lives might depend on figuring out what. He hadn’t had the opportunity to properly examine the writings, and what little he’d seen had appeared nonsensical. He wished he’d had more to time to study her notes, or that he’d been able to show them to Cross to see if the other warlock’s city-trained mind might have been able to make more sense of it.

  Creasy stood before the column of vapor, his heart iced with fear. It was less than thirty paces away, so tall and dark it blocked out sight of everything else. Swirling carbon fumes fused and danced, a towering presence whose constant and dizzying motion made him feel like he was about to be lifted off the ground. The smoke held a strangely reflective quality, a shimmering mirror liquid just under the surface, like the face of a shifting obsidian lake. The smell of thaumaturgy was strong, the sorcerous tang of smelted iron and burning wind.