Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4)

by Steven Montano

  Danica’s legs ached, but she’d done her best to recover her strength while she’d rested. The stairway shaft was barely lit with dim red bulbs set in iron wall-brackets. She looked up and saw no end to the stairs, just more grilled landings and darkness. They’d climbed maybe five floors already.

  Screw it.

  She waited until the Scarecrow in front of her reached the next landing. Danica threw her body back against the Scarecrow behind her while she held onto the railing. The undead’s spindly legs slipped just enough for her to shove it backwards, and it lost its footing and crashed into Raven. They both fell down the steps and onto the landing below.

  She sensed her spirit. He was free from Raven’s grip, and he rushed to her like they’d been separated for years. Her skin flushed hot from his presence.

  The Scarecrow in front of her turned. It couldn’t maneuver in those tight quarters, so Danica ducked down and grabbed the side of the four-foot long 20mm cannon. The trigger sounded, and if not for her spirit shielding her the roar of the weapon would have blown her eardrums apart. The air glowed hot white. Shells pounded into the wall and the other Scarecrow. Danica tried to aim for Raven, but the Scarecrow that she struggled with reached up and grabbed her by the neck. Dead fingers that smelled of burned meat closed around her throat.

  Her spirit hardened into an icy blade, and she arched backwards and drove it into the Scarecrow’s oversized face. Teeth and bone shattered. Its grip held for a moment, then faltered.

  Danica charged past the brute and up the stairs three at a time. Part of her wanted to go back and finish off Raven, but she heard movement down below. Revengers, more Scarecrows. She ran.

  The stairs just kept going. A brighter light appeared far overhead as a door opened somewhere near the top of the stairwell. Black’s heart leapt into her throat. Voices came from above.

  She looked around. There was a small door on the landing she’d stopped on. She pushed it open, moved through and closed it behind her as quietly as she could.

  She stepped through dark clouds of cold steam. The smell of chemicals was strong. Danica crept forward along a stark metal corridor. Deep blue lights cast a path of bruise shadows. She struggled to peer through the frost-black haze.

  Dripping shards of ice clung to the steel. The air hummed with machinery. Danica tasted aged metal and salt. She heard voices in the distance, cold and alien. Thick plumes of smoke billowed out of the walls. She saw faces in the fumes, leering and distorted.

  Her spirit pulsed against her skin. He sensed something ahead, something she couldn’t make sense of.

  She inched forward. Her breaths clouded in the air. Cold steam curled around her feet as she stepped through broken pale light that pushed up through the grill beneath her. She couldn’t see anything below except shadows and smoke.

  Danica kept looking back. She expected the hatch door to fly open at any second, but it didn’t.

  Her feet found a hole. A narrow ladder led down. The passage continued on, but she made the descent almost without thinking. Her spirit clung protectively to her skin. The ladder was cold, and it was covered in something that felt like ice but was actually some congealed slime that clung to her gloves.

  She descended into a claustrophobic room filled with tilted shadows. Massive devices like boiler tanks pushed in at her from all sides. The air was oppressively hot, but dark ice had somehow formed on the walls.

  What the hell are you up to, Rake?

  She found a large cylindrical tank filled with churning green and black fluid. A second tank waited nearby, and a third, all tightly arranged. Dark soil covered the floor like someone had spilled dirt. Danica leaned down, and found bones in the soil.

  Shapes writhed in the liquid. Humans stripped of their flesh, now turned to black husks of charred and wriggling meat. They hung upside-down in the murky fluid, tethered to metal hooks and glass tubing and surrounded with cables and wires that moved like undersea life. Dark juices were pumped out of the tanks and into a humming and virulent machine the size of a refrigerator. The machine’s iron face bore a clear glass plate, a viewport to the guts of the device where a dozen or so separate containers had been filled with different colored fluids.

  The bodies sagged as if being deflated. They looked less like human corpses and more like leather sacks with each passing second. The black muscles sucked inwards, pulled tight, contorted like burning plastic. The faces crinkled in and the eyes bulged and sagged down.

  “What the hell?”

  Her spirit screamed. Something in that fluid, in those bodies, made it recoil. She tried to restrain him, and suddenly found she couldn’t.

  Because he wasn’t there.

  A Scarecrow stepped out from around one of the machines and aimed its weapon at her. A pair of war wights followed. Their peeled skulls and razor talons shone in the dull light.

  A Fade was with them, but it wasn’t Raven. It was Gath. The wiry Islander cell mate who’d kept her and Cole safe for the promise of sexual favors was there, dressed in a Revenger’s dark armor. He smiled warmly. Danica felt waves of power emanate from him, that null field that kept her spirit from doing anything.

  “You bastard,” she said. “Of course. No wonder you were able to keep me and Cole safe and well fed. I should’ve seen right through it.”

  “I still want that threesome,” Gath smiled.

  Danica backed away.

  She heard footsteps on the walkway overhead. She knew she could have dodged into the maze of machinery and floating bodies, but she didn’t know if there was another way out, and with two Fades nearby the only weapon she had was useless.

  Not yet, then.

  She held up her shackled hands, and was taken.

  The upper decks of the Ironnaught were in chaos. Revengers moved about frantically. Danica got the impression the ship was in highly dangerous territory and might have even been under attack, except that she couldn’t hear any sounds of battle.

  The halls were made from black iron. Wide corridors led to cross-halls and large chambers. Every door stood open, allowing Danica to peer into the officer’s rooms and map chambers, and she saw the navigation console and the master gunnery. Scarecrows stood at almost every intersection. She felt the distinct presence of war wraiths and murder spirits as they floated through the ventilation ducts.

  She was taken to the bridge, a stoic and humorless room cut in odd elliptical angles. There were no chairs, just standing stations at the control panels along the back wall. There was a massive viewport made from reinforced blood glass, and skylights above and below. The ship floated high above a pale wasteland dominated by glacial floes and dark hills, jagged ruins and drifts of snow. Derelict clouds seemed frozen in the dusk sky.

  Rake was on the bridge, along with Geist, Burke and Raven, all dressed in Revenger black, with iron epaulets and blood-colored badges of rank on their chests. The Fade woman was bruised and had a nasty cut down one side of her face, presumably from when she and the Scarecrow had fallen down the stairs. She walked right up to Danica, and Black braced herself to receive a blow.

  “No,” Rake said. Raven fumed. Her dark eyes narrowed with hate, and she clenched her fists several times before she finally stepped back.

  “Good girl,” Danica said. “Can you roll over, too?”

  Raven stepped back up and punched Black in the stomach. The blow was hard and fast, and Raven’s hand felt like it was nothing but bone. Pain flared through Danica’s abdomen, and she doubled over, the breath forced from her lungs. She coughed a few times before she was able to stand straight again.

  Rake walked over and slapped Raven hard in the face. Blood ran down her mouth.

  “I said ‘Stop’, you undisciplined whore,” he said quietly. “Back away.”

  Raven did as she was told. She looked at Danica and smiled.

  “You never learn, do you?” Rake said to Danica.

  “You have two Fades,” she said. “Impressive. I was wondering this whole time how you kept
my spirit restrained while I was in general population. I figured you’d just given me Narcosm.”

  “Too expensive,” Rake smiled.

  “I would think a Fade is even more expensive.”

  “Our good friends in Koth have all but perfected the process of creating Fades,” Rake said.

  “Creating?” Danica said.

  “They can’t make more than a handful every few months or so,” he said offhandedly. “So we’re not exactly ready to invade Thornn with a host of Fades. Not yet.” He smiled. “Koth has something a bit more direct in mind.”

  “I can’t believe you,” she said. “Joining forces with Koth. You’re human. Well…you used to be human…”

  “Ha, ha,” Rake smiled. “Don’t push your luck, bitch. The only reason you’re still alive is because I can still use you.”

  “So why the tour?” she said. “I never pegged you as someone who liked to stick to Super-Villain clichés.”

  “Rake…” Burke said, but Rake turned and gave him a look. Burke shook his head, and backed away.

  “I really did miss you, Dani,” Rake said quietly. The ship was in hover mode. Danica saw the remains of a ruined tower in the distance, some broken spire of black stone. Devastated ruins surrounded it, the smoldering husks of dark buildings and old walls. “You had a mean streak in you that always surprised me. On the outside you were just another pretty face, a woman trying to make it in a man’s world. You walked the walk and talked the talk…but you were different. You weren’t afraid to do the things that needed to be done.” He smiled. “Remember Sandosa? That village? Holy shit, what you did to those people…”

  “Go to hell,” she said. “I’m not like that anymore.”

  Rake smiled, and smacked her. Hard. Blood welled from her lip. Her face stung, and painful tears came to her eyes.

  “I know,” he said calmly, as if nothing had happened. “I know, Dani…and that’s what really stings. Because you used to be someone I could count on.” He backed away, and a Scarecrow took hold of both her arms in its skeletal vise-grip. It held her so tight she was afraid the bony hands would cut off her circulation. “Do you want to know what’s going on?”

  “Why would you tell me?” she spat.

  “Because it’s not a secret,” he shrugged. “Koth is going to enter the war, and it will destroy the Southern Claw. It’ll be fast, and it’ll be ugly. With the humans subjugated – oh, Black Scar will be the new capital of the human lands, did I mention that? – the Ebon Cities will understand that we’re not to be fucked with. If they can’t see that, then we go to war against them, too.”

  The Ironnaught shuddered as a gust of heavy wind blasted against the hull. Dark birds took flight in the distance. The molten sun peeked through the clouds and turned the world dirty gold.

  “What can you possibly have that would make war against the Southern Claw go so easy for you?” Black asked.

  Rake walked over to the viewport. Tension mounted in Danica’s back. The Scarecrow’s grip was so tight it was difficult to even turn her head.

  “We have Cross,” Rake smiled.

  “And? He’s kind of a pain in the ass, just so you know.”

  “True,” Rake laughed, and for just a moment Black remembered being friends with the man, remembered sitting and drinking and smoking in his chambers, talking about old jobs or battles or past loves, just two friends having a drink, laughing, pretending their lives were normal. Pretending they weren’t mass murderers. “True. But he’s also invaluable.”

  “This is about the blades,” Danica nodded. “Soulrazor, and Avenger.”

  “Actually,” Rake smiled. “No. It has nothing to do with that.”

  Black paused. The confusion must have been plain on her face, because Rake laughed again.

  “You’re smart, Dani, but you’re not that smart. Did Cross ever tell you about Koth? He’s been there, you know. On the mission that killed his sister.”

  “Yes,” Danica said. “He told me about it.”

  “Did he tell you how he walked right in…how they let him enter the necropolis? No other human has ever done that except Red, and Cross’s sister.”

  Where is he going with this?

  “So…what, did he see something there?”

  Her mind went back to the conversation she and Cross had had, the night he’d told her and Kane about his experiences in Koth. He rarely liked to speak of it. His entire squad had died on that mission to track down Margrave Azazeth, “Red”, once a leader of the Southern Claw who’d turned traitor and thief. She’d stolen secrets, important secrets, and dozens of highly trained Hunters had perished hunting her down. Many resources had been squandered trying to stop her from giving Koth…

  Oh, God. The obelisk. The artifact created when Dane Knight made the sacrifice that gave humans magic.

  Rake smiled. He saw the realization dawn on her face.

  “It’s been lost,” he said. “It’s buried somewhere in the Carrion Rift. Nasty things are down there, Danica. Stuff that even the Ebon Cities is afraid to face, dark creatures from realms of madness. Or something like that.” He slowly walked over to her. “But there are other ways in. And by using Cross, we can use those backdoors. He’s the key, whether he knows it or not.” Rake gently ran his fingers along the side of her face, and then roughly grabbed her chin. “And so are you, Dani.” His voice had dropped to nearly a whisper. “You see, we’re going to use a door in those ruins down there – Voth Ra’morg – to enter the Whisperlands. We won’t be the first ones to have done it. Someone is already there looking for the same thing we are. We’re going to find it by using Cross, and when we do…well…”

  He stepped away.

  “Well what?” Danica said, shuddering. His touch was like oil. She felt filthy from being so close to him. Once she’d found him attractive, maybe even charming, with his roguish mannerisms and wild appearance. There was a hint of lunacy in his eyes that she’d always mistaken for genius. He was a charismatic and powerful man. But he really was insane.

  “Your new pals in the Southern Claw will be in a lot of trouble,” he said. “Because Koth knows how to destroy the precious obelisk, and that means human magic will just…go away.” He turned and looked at the darkening horizon. “Raven.”

  Danica turned just in time to receive a blow to the face. The Scarecrow let Danica fall to the ground, and she landed hard on her chest. Raven stood over her and kicked her.

  “Oh, Dani, one more thing,” Rake said. “The ritual to destroy the obelisk requires a mage sacrifice. A special mage. You don’t quite fit the criteria, I’m afraid…but you will. Because we’re not done with you yet.”

  Danica’s senses blazed with pain. She saw Raven’s boot lift and descend. Everything went dark.

  Lara. Lost, and alone.

  Do you?

  I’m sorry.

  Hurt blazed across her body like wildfire. Danica woke only intermittently, long enough to realize she was in a chamber, locked deep in the iron bowels of the airship.

  Raven and Geist took turns beating her. Pain exploded through her head. Her vision was white and grey. Her mouth filled with hot blood.

  She lost time.

  Her face was bloody and raw. Whips and chains tore strips of flesh from her back. Her limbs felt heavy. Her eyes crusted over with broken skin and dried blood.

  Screams filled the air. It took some time for her realize they were hers. They echoed through the ship like the mewling of some simpering beast.

  Her eyes gummed over with mucus. Her stomach contracted in hard waves. Fists hammered against her ribs, always in the same spot. Blood and vomit blocked her nasal cavity and ran down her throat. Her back was on fire. Her skin was swollen with bruises.

  You’re not weak, she reassured herself, but she knew that she was. She’d been so desperate to compromise, to preserve what was dear to her, that she’d sacrificed everything.

  So when Geist grabbed her hair and rammed his stone-hard fist into her stomach with s
uch force she coughed up blood, she tried not to think about finding ways to block out the pain or to escape.

  She thought about all of the mistakes she’d ever made in her life. She thought about how she deserved every moment of what she was getting.

  She sees Lara again. They float through a sea of inky shadow, sailors trapped in an ebon sea. The waves are strong. Their vessel takes on water and breaks apart. They’re both engulfed by the turgid waves. Pale lightning rips down from a sky covered with stone clouds.

  She can’t hold on. They grab each other’s hands and try to stay together, but the sea is strong, and dark things under the surface grab them and pull them down.

  Down to lightless deeps where they will forever swim in the arms of nightmares.

  At some point she woke, and she wasn’t being beaten. Her face was a mess of blood, and her bones were broken, but even as she lay there they painfully re-knit themselves. The wounds on her face slowly sealed. Her internal injuries fused closed with agonizing force. She felt things realign and crack inside her.

  She was in a dimly lit room. Gath was there, along with a Scarecrow. For a moment she thought he was there to help, and that was why he’d given her back her spirit, who desperately raced to seal her crushing wounds. But as her eyes healed and she almost regained full consciousness she saw the smirk on Gath’s face.

  They’re letting my spirit heal me, she realized, so that they can hurt me again.

  It was foolish to dream of Lara, so she didn’t. Because she knew no matter how hard she cried or how badly she wanted Cole to be with her, it was never going to happen.

  She’s gone. And she’s not coming back.

  She woke looking up at the inside of a black dome.

  She was no longer on the ship, but down on the ground, in the ruined city. Frozen shadow vapors weighted the air. Her skin was wreathed in wet frost. Her breaths were ragged and heavy.

  Danica lay on her back. She’d been secured to a slab of ice-covered granite. The dome above her was made of ice and dark stone.

  Her skin was frozen. The bonds held her wrists tight. She felt her spirit, just out of reach, screaming like he was in pain. He struggled to be free. She sensed that he wanted so desperately to help her.