Soulrazor (Blood Skies, Book 3)

by Steven Montano

  The elevator ground to a halt at the top floor, a network of dark hallways and closed wooden doors. Everything was painted black and white, and another armed bouncer waited at the entry hall, a massive black man with a bowler hat and a mismatched steel and olive suit covered in oil and blast stains. The man was armed with an AK-47 and had a punch-knife the size of a boomerang, which he displayed in a holster in his open suit jacket.

  “Evening, Mr. Cross,” the man said. “Miss Warfield is expecting you.”

  Cross shot Payne a smirk, and then started down the hall.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Straight ahead. Room 402.”

  The halls of the upper floor were silent, save for the sound of wood as it creaked beneath his feet. The doors had been cut at odd angles, and each of them seemed to lean in and loom at him like back-alley drunks.

  Cross felt dizzy. Sharp whispers cut through his mind. He’d managed to stave them off for nearly a day, but they were back.

  They were the voices from the liquid – the whispers of a dead goddess.

  With every step he took he felt control over his spirit slip. It was a wonder she hadn’t done some incredible violence to Payne.

  She tore at his skin with ethereal nails. The world dissolved. Everything pulled away from him like smoke. He stumbled through a plane of shadow, floated as if a void hung beneath his feet.

  His mind squeezed through dark edges and compressed into corners obscured by liquid midnight. His breaths escaped as wisps of frosted steam.

  Cross.

  Hands took hold of him, pushed him and grabbed him. They were ungentle, but familiar.

  Cross.

  He fell back into the liquid. His eyes bled midnight.

  He sees the keep. The sea is ice-cold oil that burns the anemic shore. Low tangles of iron lightning shoot out over the reflective ebon waters. Eyeless women roam the shore, and they move slow and rhythmically, as if controlled by strings. Their bare feet bleed into the water.

  The dark keep is in ruins. Its limestone bricks crumble and slide to the black sea like slow-melting ice. His ship sails slowly, inevitable and unstoppable, drawn to the shadow-hewn woman who waits for him. Her face and features are obscured by the dark mist, and her eyes are molten silver, like dying moons.

  Behind him in the distance is a dark forest, a mass of trees huddled together as if afraid of the bone-white lands surrounding them. There is a gate at the center of a dark copse. He has seen it before, and he is afraid of what waits on the other side.

  Cross woke in someone else’s bed. Red and black silk pushed against his naked body, but he was chilled to the bone. He wore no gauntlet, and had no weapon. His throat was raw, and he felt, for a moment, like he drifted at the center of a cold and desolate sea.

  The keep. The woman.

  He slowly sat up, and his surroundings came into focus.

  Under normal circumstances, Cross would have been thrilled to wake up in Ilfesa Warfield’s bedroom. He’d lusted after her for years, after all, and as she came into sight, something inside of him melted. She was all curves and long legs, luxuriously long red hair and pale, smooth skin.

  As usual, she wasn’t wearing much – a loose black cloak fit over a low-cut dress that left most of her thighs exposed, tall black boots that laced up the sides, fingerless gloves connected to the robe so that she looked like some sort of Gothic fairy.

  Warfield’s eyes shone subtly in the half-light of the chamber, which was sparsely populated with short stone plinths, a massive bureau, and a circular surrounded by a thin black veil. Cross half expected it to start turning around in a circle, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d feel if that happened.

  His spirit flailed away from him. The sensation burned his mind and scalded his skin, and for a moment Cross struggled to breathe while he reined her in. Tension shot up and down his arms, and his bare stomach clenched as he fought to hold on. Preposterously, he feared she might actually slip away.

  “Let her go, Eric,” Warfield said. He sensed her male spirit, primal power and seething ego-driven energy. It was breathless, eager and predatory, and its presence blossomed and filled the entire chamber like a held breath. “Let her go.”

  “Are you nuts?” he barked.

  “Do it, or you’ll die.”

  He couldn’t decide if she was threatening him or not. He had little reason to trust Warfield, and never had, which was one of the reasons he’d never seriously pursued her romantically even though everyone he’d ever met knew how badly he wanted her. She was pure mercenary, a criminal witch who peddled black market information, weapons, drugs and prostitutes…rumor held that she was even a prostitute herself, albeit one so expensive that very few people ever sampled those particular wares.

  She’d given him good information in the past, and since Phil Rikeman hadn’t been able to produce anything conclusive from his tests, Cross felt she was his best bet at finding out what the hell was happening to him. That was why he’d asked her for the meeting.

  But that doesn’t mean I can trust her, he told himself. I could just be another gambit for her, an easy way to get her claws into someone with access to Southern Claw information.

  “Cross…” Warfield warned.

  He let his spirit go. It was like losing his heartbeat. He felt his body sag, and his strength left him. Everything slowed: his pulse, his breathing, his reflexes. His eyes grew heavy. He remembered that he was naked, realized he should have been embarrassed to be standing in front of Warfield like that, but everything faded. Again.

  Cross’ mind swam through uncertain waters. He drifted away.

  “No,” Warfield said. She stepped up, placed her hand on his chest, and whispered into his ear. Her breath was hot on his neck, and her bare fingers burned his skin. He melted into her. “Calm down, lover,” she laughed. Her voice was dark and husky. He’d never realized she had so many tattoos: serpents and angels and bats and spiders and wings and eyes, a pattern like a hieroglyph agenda played out on her stomach and arms and neck. “Calm down,” she said again. “Breathe.”

  He did, and she breathed into him. He saw the vapors. She used magic to exhale something into his lungs, and he was helpless to stop her.

  He didn’t want to stop her.

  After he breathed the vapors in, his head cleared almost instantly. He saw the dark sheets, felt the silk, and sensed himself kneeling, naked, in front of her while she stood over him.

  “Um…hi,” he said.

  “Welcome back,” she smiled. She put two fingers up to his forehead and closed her eyes.

  He badly wanted to reach up and grab her exposed midriff – he’d never have guessed she was so skinny, even with the slinky outfits that she always wore – but he had the feeling it would be wrong of him to do so, especially when he realized how aroused he was.

  “Um…shit…this is a bit awkward…”

  “It’s okay, I expected it,” she smiled, her eyes still closed. “You seem to be okay, at least for the moment. Good.” She opened her eyes. “Your clothes are on the chest over there. You may want to get dressed.”

  Those are probably the saddest words I’ve ever heard.

  “Why was I naked in the first place?” he asked, pulling the sheets around his body.

  “I was curious…” Warfield smiled. Cross didn’t like the sound of that, and it must have shown on his face. “I’m kidding, Eric. I had to get you cleansed…which, of course, meant getting you clean.”

  “Wait…you bathed me?”

  “Yeah,” Warfield nodded. She crossed the room and stood at one of the short pillars, which glowed beneath her outstretched hand.

  “And I missed it?”

  “You were sort of in a state of delirium,” she laughed.

  Crap! Cross shook his head and got his thoughts together. Stay focused on the task at hand, you idiot.

  “So what the hell is happening to me?” he asked.

  The stone floor felt freezing against his bare feet. He shiv
ered while he hunted for his clothes, which he was relieved to discover had also been washed. His weapons had also been neatly arranged on a short table.

  He only tangentially sensed his spirit. She circled the room like a marauding shark. He didn’t like the notion of being in Warfield’s abode defenseless.

  “Your spirit is sick,” Warfield answered. She looked straight at him, and she didn’t seem to care in the least that he was hastily trying to put on his pants. “Whatever you found in the Bonespire soiled her, and she’s having a difficult time recovering.”

  “Sick?” Cross said. “What does that mean? Spirits can’t get sick. They can’t be harmed, not unless it happens through their bonded mage.”

  “Well, yes,” Warfield said. She walked away from the stone and moved towards her bureau. “That’s what we’ve always believed…but you know as well as I, Cross, that what we really know about arcane spirits doesn’t amount to much.”

  There was no argument against that. Humankind had only scratched the surface of understanding how and why magic really worked.

  Cross knew more than most. He knew who had brought magic into the world, and how. But that didn’t mean he had any clearer understanding of the intricacies of the relationship between humans and arcane spirits.

  He still had no idea why his original spirit, the one he’d been born with, had been forced to sacrifice herself in order to save his life, and he guessed he never would. He didn’t understand how Warfield’s necroblades – keen kukri designed to sever the bond between a mage and their spirit – functioned, or what happened to a spirit when that occurred. No one really understood what happened to a spirit when their bonded mage died, either: some thought they ceased to exist, some thought they were somehow freed from their obelisk prison, and some thought they were “recycled”, put back into a sort of general spiritual population to bond with new mages when they were born.

  “The fluid...” Cross started. “Any idea what its purpose is?”

  Warfield opened the bureau. Cross saw an arrangement of knives, whips, armor and arcane implements. He saw helmets shaped like insects and spiked harnesses, coils of bio-thaumaturgic wiring and stacks of dusty and leather-bound books. Dark mirrors that offered no reflection occupied the tall doors of the bureau, and spectral smoke emanated from vents in the floor.

  She turned and looked at him. She held a small book and a thin gauntlet made of dark steel.

  “Why aren’t you having this conversation with Laros?” she asked. “Isn’t he the resident Southern Claw expert on magic?”

  “I’m not Southern Claw,” he said. It actually hurt to say that. He’d hoped that as time went on he’d get used to it.

  “And I’m not a criminal,” Warfield smiled. “You chose to be something other than a soldier…are you actually surprised they’re keeping you out of the loop?”

  “No,” Cross said. He pulled on his dark tee-shirt. “Not at all. But that doesn’t change the fact that I need to know what’s going on.”

  “What do you think?” she asked him.

  “If I knew that…I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Really?” Warfield smiled. “You can think of no other reason why you’d be here, aside from this?” Her lips were painted black, stark against her pale skin.

  Cross watched her longingly.

  Why not? he wondered. You may never have another chance to be with her. He couldn’t think of a good reason not to, except that it still felt wrong.

  “Can you help me or not?” he asked.

  Warfield licked her lips, and smiled.

  “I don’t get you, Eric.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “The black blood is an undead animation coagulant,” she said as she stepped away. “It’s the same variety of fluid that the Ebon Cities uses in its Zero Engines.”

  The Zero Engines were arcane machines that turned corpses into soldiers for the Ebon Cities. They were powered by a mixture of trapped soul energy and recycled organic tissue. No human knew exactly how they worked. Some of the devices had been captured and studied, but very little had actually been learned about them.

  “This isn’t the same,” he said. Cross was dizzy and nauseous, so he quietly sat back down on the bed. “I’ve seen the fuel they use for the Engines, and this is different.”

  “You have a talent for stating the obvious, Cross,” Warfield laughed. “Yes, it’s different. It’s a concentrated formula. I haven’t had a chance to fully break it down yet, but it looks like in addition to the animation properties this stuff also acts as a sort of arcane conduit.”

  Cross nodded, and then shook his head.

  “Wait…what?”

  “It doesn’t just reanimate. It gives whatever it reanimates arcane abilities. It doesn’t give them true magic, but it’s the same type of energy used in the Bonespires. Dead souls, trapped spirits, raw spirit matter…that sort of thing.” Warfield shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it.”

  A chill ran up his spine. He felt the whispers. They circled like predators at the edge of his brain.

  “Those bodies,” he said. “Those avatars…”

  “I’m not so sure that’s what they are,” Warfield said.

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “But if they were all identical, it has to be for a purpose. Maybe they’re some sort of genetically crafted bodies capable of withstanding the energies in that blood. I mean…it’s possible that a normal, run-of-the-mill corpse wouldn’t be able to handle that stuff. They’d probably just explode.” Her eyes went wide, and she smiled. She obviously found it all impressive.

  Cross put his face in his hands, and tried to get everything through his mind.

  “So they’re creating some sort of…army. Special bodies made to handle this necro-arcane cocktail of theirs. Is that right?”

  He looked up, and she nodded.

  “So far, so good,” she said.

  “So I ask again…what the hell is happening to me?”

  Warfield looked him square in the eye.

  She’s considering how much she should tell me, he realized. God damn it, that can’t be good, especially with her.

  “Your spirit is changing.”

  Cross blinked, nodded, and took a breath.

  “Can you elaborate, please?”

  “That fluid is making her more powerful. It’s also making her less stable. And there’s a good chance that it’s going to render her more hostile…more aggressive.” Warfield walked up to him. The platinum and iron gauntlet glinted with an unnatural shine. “Cross…I think she’s turning into something evil.”

  Cross felt a shudder run up his chest, like he’d swallowed something cold. He tensed his fingers.

  Turning evil? he wondered. Or was she evil all along, and now that this has happened she’s just reverting back to the way she used to be?

  He wasn’t sure why that last thought had occurred to him, but it chilled his blood.

  “Those whispers I heard…”

  “That’s her,” Warfield said. “I think. Cross, there’s no way to know any of this for certain…”

  “The Ebon Cities knows,” he said. “They created these women for a reason. I have to find out what that reason is.” He lowered his head, and tried to keep himself from shaking. “Where is she now? My spirit?”

  “I…calmed her.”

  “How?”

  “With a special drug called Narcosm,” Warfield said. “It renders her lethargic. She shouldn’t be able to do much while she’s sedated.”

  Cross tested, and he found the truth behind Warfield’s words. His spirit was barely there, an echo. He sensed her at the edge of his soul, but she was more of an afterthought than a presence. Even reduced to a shade, he felt something wrong with her…something sick. She’d become a wraith, weighed down with disease.

  “How long?” he asked. Warfield just shook her head to indicate that she didn’t know. “Could I even channel her right now?”

&nbs
p; “This will help,” she said, and she handed him the strange gauntlet apparatus. “This will help you shape her.” She stepped back. “It won’t be easy. And there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to do anything with her, not when she’s drugged.”

  The gauntlet was cold and heavy in his hand, and it sparked with cold electric light when he held it up for inspection. Deep black runes had been cast into the steel, arcane sigils of curved blades and clusters of jagged points. Miniature reproductions of the same rune had been cast into the tip of each finger.

  He remembered losing his spirit – his old spirit – some years ago. He’d lost his sister Snow at that same instant, and even then he’d been unable to determine which loss had left a deeper scar inside of him.

  He and his new spirit had never gotten used to one another. It was as if they were still strangers. But that didn’t make her current state any easier for him to accept.

  “And if she’s not drugged?” he asked.

  “Then you very likely will not be able to control her at all. And if that happens…” Warfield took a step back. “Well, just remind me to be somewhere else if it does.”

  Cross nodded. He thought about Danica and Mike, Ronan and Maur, the siblings Ash and Grissom. He knew each of them much better than he’d ever intended to. Cross had trouble imagining his life without them.

  He closed his eyes, and he saw flames. He saw burning bodies and crumbling skies, and his fear was cold and absolute.

  “What do I…what do I owe you?” he asked as he stood up. He’d finished getting dressed. He didn’t even remember doing that.

  Warfield watched him carefully. She smiled, but Cross had learned to be wary of her smiles. It was easy to get lost in her deep green eyes. Once, he’d wanted nothing more than to put his lips to hers. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  There are more important things to worry about.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I’m pretty sure that I owe you one by now.” She looked at the vials of Narcosm in her hand. “Do you want these?”