Something about his movement drove the Witch back. She pulled away from the alley, still wreathed in shadows. Danica immolated the Skaravae with bursts of dark fire. Sweat burned down Cross’s face as spirits exploded around him. Ectoplasmic gore rained down.
When he could see again the alley was quiet, and the Black Witch was gone.
“What the hell happened?” Flint shouted. He looked at Danica. “You had a clear shot at that bitch!”
“I don’t understand,” Danica said, winded and out of breath. Her spirit paint had started to bleed away. “I tried to, but…”
“Claw wouldn’t let you,” Cross said. “It was afraid you’d damage Scar.”
Flint looked at Cross like he was a crazy. Danica blinked.
Battle raged on behind them. Up ahead the column of smoke grew larger, more solid. Trickles of black energy rippled around it.
Shiv watched it with eyes wide, and Flint looked ready to fall over. Everyone was covered with grime and gore and looked exhausted. Beasts growled nearby, and blades and arrows whizzed through the air to either side of the wide alley.
“Is everyone okay?” Cross asked. “We have to hurry. Come on.”
Shiv walked up and grabbed his hand, and she stayed at his side. Her touch gave him strength.
The alley spilled out into another city block filled with bodies and debris. Sundered and Skaravae lay on the ground, hacked apart by blades and cruel mounts. One of the cats lay dying, staring at its own reflection in what was left of a shop window. A razored war-boar’s spine had been partially ripped from its greyed flesh as it bled out noisily near the middle of the road.
The air shuddered. Cross guessed the cyclone was where the Maloj was being extracted from Laros, and it continued to grow larger. A deep growl rose from the ground near the base of the twister, low and constant.
They kept moving, keeping to the shadows. The sound of fighting started to trickle off as both sides slowly ran out of combatants. The group heard more of the battle than they actually witnessed, always just out of sight, a few blocks away or around the next corner, and they came upon the aftermath of skirmishes. Cross moved with his skin tensed, ignoring the pain in his spine.
We’re close now. One way or another, it’ll be over soon.
They closed in on the column of smoke. It stood miles high, vanishing into a bed of black clouds. When he looked at the icy cylinder he saw a cold metal surface, reflective like broken glass. Black fire burned within. Cross saw lupine shapes, an unstable and massive body of claws and teeth, nightmares made flesh. The roiling soul trapped in that maelstrom was the Maloj’s pure form, a chaotic mass of night that had yet to be compressed into its bestial shell.
The inhuman growls echoed through the dying skies. The Maloj had almost been extracted from Laros. Using Scar, the Black Witch would somehow be able to use the wolf’s life energies to fuel her own magic, a reservoir of power so corrupt there was no limit to the damage she could do.
Shiv pulled her hand away. He hated to let go. She felt his resistance and looked at him, and as her eyes met Cross’s something died inside him.
She was changing. She seemed older than even a few minutes before. Her eyes were permanently taking on that milky hue, and her hair was getting darker. Her jaw was set with determination.
“I have to do this,” she said.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Stop the Witch. She has a sword like yours, but she’s learned to tap into its power, to control it. If you fight her you’ll die.”
“And what will happen to you?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, just looked at the cyclone. Cross felt Flint’s eyes on him. His skin crawled with fear, and even though he comprehended little of what was happening he understood one thing clearly: he couldn’t help Shiv with this. No one could. She had to go alone.
They carefully moved into an open clearing, in a ring of old apartment buildings that had been ruined with age. Pale bodies bled out on the ground.
Shadows shifted around them and ice pricked his flesh. Danica turned, her metal arm surrounded with white-hot flames as a Skaravae burst forth and rushed at her from behind. Cross called out and ran at it with his blade held high, but before either of them could act the Skaravae fell in a heap, its head lolling from its shoulders. They smelled rotting fruit as the corrupted spirit leaked from the corpse like water.
Ronan and a handful of Sundered stepped into sight, their body-paint running with blood and scorch marks. The swordsman looked ghastly in that pale camouflage, like a gore-stained phantom.
“Nice of you to join us,” he said.
“Where’s Creasy?” Cross asked.
“He went ahead a few minutes ago. We were trying to find you, but we got pinned down by those bastards.” He nodded at the cyclone. “He went to finish this.”
“He can’t,” Cross said. “Not on his own. He needs our help.” He hesitated and looked at Flint, then nodded at Shiv. “Her help.”
“What?” Flint said. “What are you talking about?”
Cross was about to explain, and realized he couldn’t. He understood so little of what was happening, what was really happening. He’d never been at such a loss. Here they were, trapped thousands of miles from everything they knew, embroiled in the middle of some spirit’s war in a far-off land. The thought of how much damage might have been done to the Southern Claw in their absence drove him mad.
But there was no need to explain. Shiv stepped up and hugged her father tight, and though he was caught unaware he hugged her back, and looked as though he’d never let her go. The rest of them stood close by, watching for signs of trouble. The glow of the storm bathed the area in blood light.
“I’ll be okay, Daddy,” she said. “We’ll be okay.”
He held her close, and nodded.
“You’d better be,” he said. A tear ran down his weathered face and into his scraggly beard. “You’re everything to me, girl. Everything.”
She nodded into his chest. Cross knew what strength it took to hold back her tears, but she did, she had to, for her father’s sake.
Shiv squeezed Flint again, then broke away and nodded at Cross. Whatever instinct she had took her straight past him and towards the storm at the center of the doomed city.
“I’ll go with her,” Cross said. “I don’t think there’s much I can do except watch her back.”
“We’ll secure the perimeter,” Danica nodded. She grabbed his hand. “Come back,” she said.
“I will.”
He followed Shiv to the heart of the storm. She walked in silence, her soft shoes cracking earth turned brittle as ice. Voices came at them from every direction, harsh and manic, terrified and violent.
Cross knew that the two of them were somehow being shielded by Soulrazor/Avenger, held in an intangible field which surrounded them like a bubble of hardened air. Ghastly skeletal faces pushed against the barrier and dissipated into wisps of dripping steam.
Shiv kept her head high through it all, ignoring the battery of murderous phantoms and the deep cold that felt like the inside of a tomb. Her breaths quickened as she drew spirits from the air and gathered them around her.
Cross’s skin tingled with fear. He hoped she could control them all.
The sky glittered like dark fire, its borders flickering as the cyclone picked up in intensity. The unclean scent of thaumaturgy and hex soiled the atmosphere.
The Black Witch waited near the center of the courtyard. Her dark eyes locked on the sky. Icy wind twisted her long braided hair and rippled her black cloak. The air around her thickened and warped into a blood nimbus.
Cross’s face burned from the cold. Whatever the witch was doing, she was nearly finished. Shiv didn’t move, just stood there at the edge of the buildings and watched.
Something drew the Witch’s attention away. Her eyes flickered down. She didn’t seem to have noticed Cross and Shiv.
With a growl she drew the blade – Scar, its pure black face set with
blood runes, a short sword with an edge so keen Cross could taste the razor sharpness from thirty yards out – and sliced the air open with a sickening sound like muscles ripping. Black ice bled from the cut. Cross glimpsed a figure on the other side, a human male caught unawares as the Black Witch stabbed him between the shoulders with the arcane sword.
It was Creasy. Before him, secured to a stone slab in a room just visible through the dimensional cut, was Laros, his eyes glazed, a note of horror in his screaming voice.
At the instant that the Witch struck Creasy, Shiv reached out her hands.
Later Cross would remember her darkened purity as she stood there, limed in blood light, her fingers outstretched and her eyes set, twisting those ghosts, commanding them.
The Black Witch’s legions had been subjugated and controlled with Scar, but during those scant seconds it took for her to cut a translocative hole to where she’d hidden Laros and reach her weapon through to stab Creasy in the back, Shiv was able to wrest control of the Skaravae away and turn them on their former master.
Shiv’s fingers glowed hot white, like she’d placed them in burning embers. Her mouth opened and she screamed without a sound, a silence so forceful and deafening it nearly brought Cross to his knees.
His blade protected him by encasing him in a bitter-tasting black shell that cut him off from Shiv, cut him off from everything. It was the only thing that kept him alive.
Spirits tore through the clearing like a burning storm. The air shook. Everything rumbled with a deep bass note.
They took the Black Witch off guard as she dodged a shotgun blast from the other side of the rip. The hole in the air sealed and Scar vanished, still stuck in Creasy’s body. With the sword gone her control over the Skaravae was broken, but she was still far from defenseless.
She bent the spirits around her body even as their bladed touch sliced into her skin. Fresh wounds lanced across the dark woman’s flesh. She pushed against the onslaught of wraith energies with a wedge of purple and golden flames.
Grotesque black power bulged and bled around the Witch. The air shook with tension, ready to explode.
All Cross could do was watch as Shiv urged those spirits forward, not controlling them but pushing them, a medium, one voice lost in the horde. They’d avenge themselves on this woman who’d twisted them to her own ends and send her kicking and screaming into hell.
Cross’s shield trembled and cracked. Pressure burst against the buildings and concrete broke and fell to the ground, the sound of the impact drowned out by the torrent of screaming souls. His skin burned in the scalding black wind, and he was pushed backwards across the dirt and pavement. The air turned so cold it burned.
Black fire streamed from the Witch. She pulled what energies she could from the Maloj even though the ritual hadn’t been completed, even as the beast screamed from somewhere close by. Cross sensed as the wolf was ripped from its host body, torn away and cast out, vulnerable and naked. He saw through its eyes, things he’d never wanted to see.
Dark seas like boiling water lap against the shell. Dim glass cracks. The sound of breaking, like snapping bones, echoes through the dark.
There are eyes in that endless sea, pale cuts like icy wounds, thousands of them, but all from the same face. A collective given singular form, a legion of one.
They push against the crystalline borders of their reality. Black blood fills the void. The howls of the damned reach into the sky.
Whispers cut through substance so thick it could never be air. Agony. Their pain has existed since the inception of time. Shadow vapors and cold storms.
They’re at the border, and they smell life on the other side. They want it, need it. The very scent of the untainted makes their jaws slaver with anticipation.
Shiv stood at the center of the madness. She was unafraid and unflinching, and Cross saw her change before his eyes. The air rippled with heat and blued her skin, made it glitter like she was carved of ice. Her very soul was stained dark by the tide of energies.
The Black Witch shriveled in fear. The magic she’d stolen from the Maloj wasn’t enough to keep her safe. Shiv had given the Skaravae strength, took their scattered forms and molded them into one. They were a burning wave of sharp vapors, slicing into the Witch who’d enslaved them.
Cross watched, afraid. He wanted it to end.
The ground cracked as the assault went on, an unending tide of ebon power. Sweat ran in rivulets down Shiv’s neck, and her hair stuck to her cheeks. Her eyes were solid and dark. Thin lines appeared on her flesh, spirit runes, the lives of the lost told in arcane spirals painted on her skin. She became a book of souls.
Finally the sound faded, and died. Cross’s shield fell to pieces as the air stilled. Dust drifted down, and the cyclone dissipated. The heart of the storm glowed silver before it went out like a dying star.
The Black Witch was gone. Her charred bones lay on the ground, so fragile the breeze scattered them like glass powder.
Shiv stood at the center of the four buildings, her arms held high, the blood light dimming around her body. Nothing moved.
The changes were still there – her skin had frosted to faint blue, lightly brittle like she wore snow crystals, and the dark runes painted on her arms and face twisted like rivers. Her hair was darker, almost black. When she turned Cross saw that her eyes were onyx and green, and the pupils were gone. He swore she’d grown, that she’d aged years in the space of seconds. She was nearly a woman grown.
Cross waited. He wanted to go to her, but he didn’t understand what was happening, and knew he might never understand. She was important, perhaps the most important creature who’d ever lived.
I’ll protect you, he silently promised. I swear it.
She slowly walked back to him.
She seemed at a loss. She looked around at the sky and the ruined city, which was now free of shadows, just a pale and empty place torn apart by war and the passage of years.
“I…I don’t know what happened…” she said.
Cross took her shoulders in his hands. She was so cold.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’ll be okay.”
He hated lying to her, but he didn’t know what else to say.
Danica and Ronan found Creasy and Laros.
Creasy was barely alive. He’d stolen Scar away from the Witch and used it to kill Laros in the hopes of slaying the black wolf within. He’d somehow been separated from his spirit, but once the storm vanished she’d returned to the warlock in time to heal his near mortal wounds. Without her he’d be dead, and as things stood he was far from healthy. He seemed dazed, and it would be quite a while before he was able to move at full speed. His spirit had nearly drained herself repairing his body, and a dark taint still afflicted his skin, like he’d contracted some sort of shadow sickness. There was no telling what powers Scar possessed, what dark magic it commanded.
They had four swords now. Cross wished he knew the significance of that, the purpose behind it.
Laros was dead. There was no bringing him back, and while Cross and the White Councilman had never gotten along the older warlock had been a good man, a servant of the White Mother and a protector of the Southern Claw.
He deserved more than this.
They gathered in the ruins of a nearby building, where they collected their supplies and nursed their wounds.
Flint kept Shiv close. His eyes were filled with fear, and he kept looking at her like he expected something terrible to come out.
She and Cross had spoken little since she’d emerged from her battle with the Black Witch. Flint looked to Cross for some explanation as to what was happening with his daughter, but Cross could offer him few assurances.
“She can clearly take care of herself,” he said when he pulled the older man aside. “She saved us all. Again. If not for her the Witch would have drawn that wolf bastard out and become even more powerful.”
“And that’s…supposed to make me feel better?” Flint asked.
> “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Cross said. “I have no explanation. I’m sorry, Flint…I don’t think there’s anything I can say…”
“It’s all right,” Flint said. He looked more like an old man with each passing day. “She’s alive,” he said. “And she’s my daughter. That’s enough.”
“She may be the one who can save us all,” Cross said.
“What do you mean?”
Cross looked at her. She sat with Danica and sorted the remaining MREs and water flasks. Creasy was asleep on a disintegrating couch, while Ronan stood by a broken wall and watched the street with one hand on the hilt of his katana.
They were still so far from home, with no idea of how they’d return. The best they could do was make their way deeper inland, try to find some Nezzek’duulian settlement that was uncorrupted by Eidolos and renegade witches and hope they’d come across a way to escape north across the Ebonsand Sea.
“She’s special,” Cross said. “And I think protecting her is the best thing any of us can do.”
Flint was about to say something when a monstrous call echoed through the night. A sound like tearing, or blades scraping on stone. A bestial and inhuman cry.
A wolf’s howl.
The Maloj wasn’t dead: it had been freed. It was out there. And it was coming for them.
PART THREE
PREY
TWENTY-THREE
HUNT
Danica had hunted before. When she was young, growing up in a bunker with her highly dysfunctional family, they’d tracked Ebonbacks and giant elk and other mutated creatures roaming the plains west of the Bone Hills. She’d learned to use a rifle, bow, machete and handgun, how to preserve the blood and skin, how to tan hides and craft bones into useable items.
It had taken supreme effort not to turn the rifle on her father, who visited her bed almost every night, or on her mother and brother for letting that happen.
Later, after she’d left the military and become a Revenger, she’d hunted men. Some had been guilty of the most horrible crimes imaginable, rapists and murderers and pedophiles and terrorists and thaumaturgic saboteurs. Some hadn’t. It didn’t take much to get someone sent to Black Scar prison – money was usually more than enough. And when there weren’t enough prisoners coming in via normal channels Rake had no trouble sending Danica and the other Wardens to areas that had been decimated by raids or sickness, where they rounded up any survivors and shipped them to the red diamond mines, from which few returned.
Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) Page 30