by Amy Braun
The Vesper considered me, plunging his violating fingers into my brain and searching for a lie. I balled my fists and whimpered at the pain, but I held my ground. There were no other plans. No ulterior motives. No hope to kindle me.
The digits were removed from my head, and I almost collapsed with relief. I suppose I needed to get used to the feeling.
“We are in agreement. Know that it will change drastically if you attempt to trifle with me.”
I nodded limply, going still when the thing that used to be Riley marched forward with my sister. It was eerie, watching the human-puppet glide forward, his crystal blue eyes staring into mine without seeing. I shivered, and watched the Vesper turn to Abby.
My sister whimpered and sobbed, afraid to move because of the knife, but wanting to be as far as she could get from the monster’s touch. He extended a hand to her, placing his skeletal claws over her face. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but Abby cries became louder. I started running toward her, and was jerked to a stop by Davin.
His crimson eyes riveted to me and his hand squeezed my arm brutally tight, a single warning rooting me to place. I swallowed the lump in my throat, and looked at my sister.
The Vesper pulled his hand away, and revealed my sister’s face.
Life flushed into it. Her curls seemed lighter. There was no trace of red in her eyes. She was Abigail again.
When she pulled away from the Riley-puppet again, he let her go. She rushed to me, and wrapped her arms around my waist. I put one
arm around her back, but Davin kept his grip on the second one.
“Don’t do it, Claire,” Abby sobbed. She pulled her face away from my stomach. Tears streaked her flushed cheeks. My heart tore in half to see her so human again, knowing this would be the last time I saw her at all.
“You said you wouldn’t go! You promised!”
My eyes blurred. “I know. I’m sorry, but if I don’t do this, you’ll get hurt.” My voice trembled. “I can’t live with that if you do.”
“It’s not your fault! Don’t go with him! Don’t go! I won’t ever see you again!”
I closed my eyes and stroked her hair. The pain in my body was nothing compared to the shredding feeling in my chest.
“Stay with Sawyer and the others. They’ll take care of you.” I opened my eyes, tears stinging them. “You’ll grow into my coat one day. I know you’ve always wanted it.”
Abby looked at me with confused, tear-filled eyes.
“All right,” growled Davin, yanking me from her. “Enough with the goodbyes. Some of us are hungry.”
“Claire! Claire!”
Sawyer’s voice boomed over my sister’s. “No!”
I turned, seeing him on his feet and running for me. Then he winced and crumpled from pain, clutching his head again. I looked pleadingly at the Vesper, whose terrible, bloody gaze was fixed on the young captain.
“Stop, please!”
He didn’t blink, but Sawyer’s agonized cries stopped. The Vesper turned and walked back into the darkness. The Riley-puppet followed diligently. Davin continued dragging me down the hall and I looked over my shoulder.
My friends were holding each other. Gemma was holding my sister, tears streaming down her face as the little girl wailed into her chest. Nash had his hands on Sawyer’s shoulders, his expression filled with grief.
And Sawyer… Sawyer, who I finally realized I loved, had the look of a man whose world had disintegrated. He stared at me, lost and broken, blinking like he couldn’t believe this was happening. I mouthed that I was sorry to him. I hoped he would forgive me.
Sawyer struggled under Nash’s hold, desperation pouring over his words.
“Don’t give in, Claire!” he shouted. “I’ll save you! I swear I’ll save you!”
Davin laughed. “Keep telling yourself that, brother. We both know what will happen. You’ll try once, realize you can’t do it, then run and hide like the coward you are. But don’t worry. Once I make sure your sweet little blonde is cozy, I’ll come back and kill you.” He sneered with sickening anticipation. “We’ve been putting our final battle off for far too long.”
If Sawyer heard his brother’s threat, he didn’t acknowledge it. He kept his eyes on me, and mouthed one last time:
I’ll save you.
The last piece of my heart shattered, and I had to look away before they saw my own tears. Before they saw the true depth of my fear.
I gave up everything for them, worked so hard to save the people who lost so much, and I was going with the enemy to create a weapon that would destroy them all.
I knew then that my parents’ failure was nothing compared to my own.
Epilogue
The Breach was darker than I could have imagined. A huge, gaping slash in the sky stared back at me from the main window of the airship the Vesper used to cross the Breach, a twin to the Behemoth. All around it, the sky was as grey as a corpse.
“Horrible, isn’t it?”
The Vesper’s voice was close to my ear. He smelled like blood, and this close to him, I could feel the chill of his dead body.
“Your people did this. They ruined the sky. We were living in peace. But they wanted what they could not have, and threatened forces stronger than them.”
His icy hands curled on my shoulders. His long claws pinched through my shirt and into my skin.
“But you will change that, Claire. You will darken the sky for me. You will be the savior of my kind.”
I tried to concentrate on the pain instead of the fear slipping into my soul.
You need to survive, Claire. You can save us. Not just your sister, but everyone.
My mother’s words didn’t give me the hope they once had. They sounded hollow now that I was going into the mouth of the beast. I had survived, I had saved my friends. But I couldn’t save everyone.
Don’t give up now, Firecracker.
Sawyer’s words did what my mother’s no longer could. They brought out the new hope in me. The one I was hiding from the Vesper. It was small, fleeting, but it was there.
And it was growing.
I didn’t think the marauders would give up on me. Abby would take my coat. She would find my mother’s journal in it. There would be clues in there, something the others could use to fight the Hellions, or at least save the rest of Westraven.
As for me, I intended to keep my word to the Vesper. Since Davin had likely given the Vesper the plans he’d stolen from me at my family home, I would be able to build the Vesper the machine he wanted.
But it would be his biggest, and final mistake.
He was right. I understood that machine. I knew how to work it.
I knew that I could use it against him.
It would take time, and a Volt stronger than anything I’d ever made. A Volt like the one I was planning would probably kill me once I activated it. There would be no way I could escape the blast radius in time.
But I was all right with that. I could die knowing that while the sky would remain a sickly grey, the Hellions shadow would never blacken it again.
I looked at the Breach, felt it close around me, and took a deep breath as we passed into the darkness.
THE END
OBSIDIAN SKY
A Dark Sky Novel
Amy Braun
Obsidian Sky, a Dark Sky novel by Amy Braun
© 2017 by Amy Braun. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the author.
Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-77340-003-7Print ISBN: 978-1-77340-002-0
Prologue
Claire
Darkness. I woke up to it, I fell asleep to it. It was everything I saw, everything I touched, everything
I dreamed.
And now I was creating it.
“Beautiful.”
I cringed at the rasping voice behind me. I looked at the onyx metal floor at my feet, as if I could ignore the monsters at my back and the desolate landscape in front of me. But I couldn’t escape the iciness of his voice skidding across my skin, or the bitter fear that surged into my heart whenever I heard it.
“Soon,” the creature whispered, “it will all be like this. An everlasting darkness that will empower all who are willing to embrace it, and drown those who are not.”
I closed my eyes and tried to remember what it was like to be warm. All I had were fading memories of summers in Westraven after The Storm, the heat dampened by the haze of smoke and cloud the Hellions had brought in their attack. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the sun, let alone a blue sky. Was it still blue? Or had the Hellions arrival permanently tainted it?
There was nothing to be done about the coldness of my limbs, so I tried to ease the chill in my heart with other memories. Re-building a ship that I once feared, bringing it to life and turning it into a home. A strong man with a gentle smile and a girl with a smart mouth and a fondness for anything that glittered. A little girl with curly blonde hair and wide green eyes waiting for me to tell her everything would be all right. A man with a mischievous grin and eyes like gold fires. The way those fires burned whenever he looked at me. The taste of his lips on mine. The whisper in his voice when he said that he loved me.
The conviction when he made his last promise to me.
I’ll save you.
“Open your eyes, Claire.”
I squeezed them shut, filling my head with memories that broke my heart. Nash. Gemma. Abby. Sawyer. Focus on them. They’re alive. They have to be. There haven’t been any raiding missions in a month. They’re alive.
I’ll save you.
“Claire. Look.”
Gentle smiles, smart mouths, blonde curls, tawny eyes–
A clawed hand tipped with short claws scooped under my chin and roughly jerked my head up. I gritted my teeth and held back the growl. I wanted to fight him, cause him some kind of pain, but I wasn’t strong enough. And he would only take pleasure in beating me.
“Do as he says, darling,” hissed Davin Kendric, “or I’ll slice your eyelids off and force you to see.”
I shivered, knowing that he wasn’t bluffing. There was no torture that Davin wouldn’t happily inflict, and he was always looking for ways to experiment.
Holding my breath and staying still so Davin’s claws wouldn’t rip open my skin, I eased my eyes open, and looked into the expanse of the Breach.
Nearly twenty miles wide and ten miles high, the slice between two dimensions rippled and shuddered. The black edges of Hellnore prodded the thin grey light of Aon’s skies, making it cower. Bolts of dark indigo lightning danced along the yawning tunnel that protected the dark world from the light.
The longer I looked at it, the more I saw darkness seeping out of Hellnore, through the tunnel, and into Aon’s skies. I had to squint, but I could see the darkness twisting once it reached the outside, becoming another black cloud that plagued my home world.
That dim light was becoming smaller and darker every day.
“You have done wondrously, Claire,” the Vesper commended.
Davin let me go and stepped back, a smug smile still playing on his lips. Bony fingers creaked as they curled over my shoulders. Each one was an icy rope tightening on my arms. Reminding me that I was their prisoner until they decided they were finished with me.
“Once all of Aon’s clouds are filled with blackness, it will be time for us to leave. It will be our turn to devour your world. A fitting end to the one that nearly destroyed mine.”
I couldn’t control my shaking. Not even when I clenched my hands into fists. I repeated my mantra– Gentle smiles, smart mouths, blonde curls, tawny eyes– but I didn’t think I would make it out of here alive.
And I was becoming comfortable with that idea.
Because I had a plan to take all these monsters to the grave with me.
Chapter 1
Sawyer
The storm came out of nowhere. They always did.
I gritted my teeth and held up the crate lid, protecting my face from the fresh torrent of hail that came on the wind. The shards of ice pummeled the battered wood, then vanished completely when the wind changed. I tossed down my makeshift shield, grabbed the spokes of the helm, and fought the wind.
“Hard to port!” I bellowed. My throat was already burning from constantly shouting orders, and more yelling wasn’t helping.
Good thing it’s raining, I thought grimly.
I watched Nash sprint across the deck below, racing for the trap door to repeat my command to Gemma. We were in the air when the storm hit, and Nash refused to follow any order until Gemma was safely tucked away in the engine room, using the airship’s automated controls to alter our course instead of changing sails by dangling hundreds of feet in the air on a piece of rope.
I didn’t argue with him. I knew what it was like, to be so in love with someone that you couldn’t think about anything but protecting them.
But you didn’t. You let her go. You weren’t strong enough to defend her. You weren’t strong enough to save her.
Shoving the truth back down, I wrenched the wheel to the left. The Dauntless Wanderer pitched, pushed by the savage wind. I twisted the helm around and around, my biceps burning as the Dauntless struggled to obey me. I could feel the wooden slats of the quarterdeck vibrating under my feet as the generator struggled to turn the sails. I watched the masts twist and grind in their riveted sockets on the deck. If I pushed them too hard against the wind, they would bend and we would lose control. The top of the main mast was already swaying ominously in the punishing wind.
I mastered the ship. Not the weather.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Nash race up the deck steps and came to a halt next to me. All my focus was on the ink black clouds ahead. I was searching for darker ones.
“Sawyer, we have to go back,” Nash shouted in my ear.
“Not yet,” I yelled back. “We can hold another five minutes.”
As if hearing me, the wind shifted again. I grabbed the crate lid. Nash ducked down and covered his head with his hands. Chunky blocks of hail beat down on us, but I shielded Nash and myself from the worst of it.
As soon as the hail switched to rain, I dropped the crate lid. Nash rose to his feet and swung in front of me. He grabbed some empty spokes on the helm and kept me from turning the wheel.
“Sawyer, we can’t stay out here.”
I looked at my friend, the first person I recruited to my crew. He’d been with me for nearly four years. I trusted him more than anyone else in the world. He would never lead me astray, never abandon me, never tell me something I didn’t need to hear.
Right now, I wanted to punch his lights out.
“Let go,” I warned.
I tried to jerk the wheel out of his grasp, but even when my arms weren’t sore from maneuvering an airship in a rain-wind-hail storm, Nash was stronger than me. His muscles were almost twice the size of mine. I knew how to fight with a blade. Nash earned his reputation with his fists. The dog-faced tattoo from his old marauder life– when he was forced to fight for survival against fiendish killers– snarled up at me from the dark skin of his arm. Cuts from sharp hail lined his cheeks and arms. He was bruised, exhausted, and worried. But he wouldn’t back down.