Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo

by Lindsay Cummings

  “I can’t,” Karr said. “I can’t choose.”

  “No,” the girl shook her head, her hair shimmering as it danced. “No, I did not think you would be able to decide.” She smiled sadly at him, one last time.

  Then she exploded into stars.

  They radiated from her eyes, her mouth, her fingertips, swarming around her, in and out and through, until Karr could no longer see her or anything else at all.

  Pain, everywhere.

  He was burning with her. They were made of fire and flame, and nothing could put them out. Before they turned to ashes, the ice melted, and an ocean yawned wide beneath his feet.

  He sank into the sea as a gentle whisper calmed his soul.

  Not yet, my heart.

  Not yet.

  Chapter 18

  Sonara

  Alive.

  The Wanderer is alive.

  Sonara stomped through the tunnels, following the flickering torchlight as Thali walked ahead to guide them back towards their hidden cave.

  “I felt the blade go in,” Sonara said, more to herself than anyone else. “I saw him die, right there in front of me.”

  If Jaxon were here, he would have agreed, for he’d seen the entire thing happen. He’d given her his scarf, so she could wipe the Wanderer’s hot blood from her hands. And it had stained her blade. Lazaris hung at her side, cleaned of the evidence by now, but Sonara was no fool.

  She knew what it felt like to end a man, to feel the blade sink deep enough to stab through the heart. The Wanderer died, right there in front of everyone at the Gathering, and it was her uncontrollable curse that had caused it.

  “Well, he’s obviously not dead,” Markam said. His voice echoed off the damp, roughly carved tunnel walls. “But that hardly matters now. Our focus is not on him. It’s on finding a weakness in their boundaries and exploiting it.”

  He was right, perhaps. But that didn’t ease the tension Sonara felt building in her shoulders. Something was amiss; a feeling she couldn’t shake, that had her wrapping her arms around herself as they walked, wishing for the warmth of Duran.

  The sooner they solved this problem, the better. Then she’d ride free with Jaxon, away from here. Perhaps she’d try her luck pillaging in the west again, where the endless sands turned to dry, brittle ground and flat-topped mesas. She didn’t particularly enjoy the massive, skeletal spiders that walked the Earth there, but it would be best to be far from the Garden of the Goddess for a while.

  “The Great Mother is at work in all of this,” Thali said from up ahead. “She meddles, Devil. And it is clear she has chosen you to meddle with the most, if the Wanderer that called to your magic has risen from the dead again.” She looked back over her shoulder, the teeth of her Canis mask flashing in the torchlight. “Much like the Children of Shadow. The Great Mother must not be done with him, yet.”

  “Then you believe me,” Sonara said.

  Thali’s Canis mask bobbed as she nodded. “I believe that you are the catalyst in what is to be a great quest, perhaps to uncover a message that will turn the tide of this world.”

  Markam chuckled from the shadows. “Ooh, a quest. Will there be a prince waiting for Sonara at the end of it all?”

  “You should not mock her, Markam,” Azariah said softly. “Thali knows more than most do about the strange happenings on Dohrsar. If Thali believes the Wanderer was dead and has risen again, then I believe it, too.”

  “Your time with him is not over, Devil,” Thali said. “I believe soon, you will face each other again.”

  Sonara said nothing, for the cleric had spoken plenty of nonsense in their time together, and she feared that if she spoke her thoughts, she wouldn’t be able to hold them in for the rest of the night. She wanted silence. Time to think, and plan, so they could move from talking to action, and set the prisoners free.

  The tunnels stretched on and on for miles, a network pattern in all directions. Old wagon tracks were gouged in the first few miles of tunnels, sprouting left and right where powerful steeds had once been harnessed and used for hauling gold back and forth. Some of the tracks ended in caverns deep enough to house cities, while others ended in caves where night beasts waited to snatch up careless prey.

  The Bloodhorns were not a sanctuary for the lost. They were a living and breathing grave, their purple-and-red color an omen for any who entered.

  If Jaxon were here, how many bones would he be able to call upon? How many dead would whisper to his curse, begging to find life again?

  Sonara’s magic hissed, coming awake again. From within its cage, she could just barely sense the reek of death, an aura she felt quite often in her travels. “So what are we to do?” she asked, ignoring the painful pulse in her temples. “How are we to strike against them?”

  “We’ll watch them around the clock, in shifts,” Markam said. “We’ll learn their patterns, try to decipher their plans. Then we’ll come up with a way to attack.”

  Sonara stepped over an unfinished track, the wooden cart abandoned, the side railing of it splintered and broken through, as if a massive beast had taken a bite out of it.

  Release me, Sonara’s curse whispered. Let me dance in the dark.

  She hated the feeling of it.

  The pressure it put on her skull, the fire it brought to her senses.

  But she refused to open that cage again, to let it take control over her the way it had so many times lately.

  The torchlight flickered as Thali took a left at a fork in the tunnel, heading back towards their cave. Here, the rounded walls pressed in tighter, the ground unstable. Sonara ducked her head, avoiding a jagged bit of rock protruding from the wall.

  Sonara’s boot crunched on something hard.

  A human skull, eye sockets dark as pits, stared up at her. Hollow and void of life. She hadn’t seen that before, on the way out of the tunnels.

  “Thali,” she said. “I think you took a wrong turn.”

  “There are no wrong turns,” the cleric responded, “only detours, and I believe this one is a shortcut.”

  Sonara stepped past a ribcage that was now a jungle for glow worms to inch their bodies through. They carried on, as more bones grew in piles. Evidence that perhaps soon, they would face a beast lurking in the darkness.

  “Thali.”

  Sonara’s curse hissed and gripped the bars of its cage. She found herself stopping, tilting her chin to sniff the air as if she could sense what was wrong on her own.

  The smell had shifted. The air had changed, warmer somehow, as if there were a daytime breeze blowing at the back of her neck.

  “The smell,” Azariah said from the back of the group. “It’s awful.”

  That warm breeze tickled Sonara’s skin like a sigh.

  Release me, release me, her curse hissed.

  It pounded against the cage, setting Sonara’s teeth to clenching as her temples pulsed and she tried to keep it in.

  “Oh, for the love of…” Sonara turned to see Markam’s shadowy outline as he lifted a foot, a thick substance clinging to the bottom of his boot. “Damn the goddesses for all time. These are real leather.”

  Sonara glanced to the right as something in the darkness shifted.

  “Thali, we need to turn around.”

  The cleric continued to murmur about something as she lifted her torch and held it to the rounded wall, where it looked like something dark had been smeared across it, staining the rock.

  “Blood,” Sonara whispered.

  Her curse hissed again in its cage, and suddenly the pressure of holding it back was too much to bear. The cage clanged inside as her curse shook the bars with its shadow claws, trying to tell her something. But goddesses, she was so tired, and…

  The cage door blasted open.

  Her curse soared out like a fowl taking flight, sensing the ripe earth, the natural scents that she knew the rest of the group could smell, but beneath it all…

  Hunger.

  A sharp aura that had Sonara spinning aroun
d, searching for the source of it. Again, she felt that warm, sighing wind, a pattern that felt like a breath being released, after having been held for too long…

  Something hot and steaming dripped onto her shoulder, just as Azariah screamed from the back of the group.

  Sonara’s curse pointed upwards, sensing dust and rotting flesh. Poison, oozing from pincers that were reaching, reaching…

  Sonara glanced up just in time to see the massive, dripping jaws of a Hadru open wide.

  Out of the darkness, it came, a carrier of death.

  Lazaris sang as Sonara drew the blade. She stopped the Hadru’s pincers a moment before they snapped off her head.

  The Hadru was enormous, a hideous crimson beast that was covered in scraggly patches of hair, with eight disjointed legs extending from a bulbous abdomen that ended in a long, coiled tail. A poisonous barb was at the end of that tail, able to be lashed like a whip and render its victim motionless in a single strike. A second strike would stop their heart.

  The beast hissed and scuttled down the rounded wall, turning on Azariah next.

  The Princess did not even utter a scream as it approached her, tail uncoiling slowly. She shook from head to toe, her pupilless eyes wide in shock, as if fear had overcome her fully.

  “Run!” Sonara yelled.

  The tail struck.

  Markam tackled the princess aside a breath before the barbed tail reached her. The rock exploded from the impact instead, left with an oozing drip of acid that reeked of rot, of sulfur and death.

  Sonara swung. Lazaris bounded off of the Hadru’s armored side. The beast whirled back around, a blur of red and brown so perfectly camouflaged they would not have seen it without Sonara’s warning curse. Its tail uncoiled again and struck out, narrowly missing Sonara as she ducked and dove to the side.

  Lazaris scraped against the ground as Markam helped her stand. “The belly is its weakest spot. I’ll go for the legs.”

  She nodded, and they parted. Markam clapped his hands loudly to draw the beast to him before he used his curse and disappeared. Sonara heard his footsteps running down the tunnel, towards where Thali stood motionless behind her torch, unnoticed by the beast. Perhaps it was the Canis mask, or the reek of bones she carried.

  But the cleric did not know how to fight. “Stay back,” Sonara commanded her.

  The cleric nodded silently, backing further away with the torch.

  Sonara turned, assessing the situation. The Hadru was focused on Markam, who appeared and disappeared, using his dagger to strike at the disjointed, sinewy bits of flesh that connected each leg to the abdomen.

  Azariah was on its other side, back pressed against the rocks, hands pressed to her mouth as if she could hold her terror in.

  “Strike it down!” Sonara ordered her. Then she lunged out with Lazaris, aiming between the beast’s back legs to swing at its fleshy underbelly. She managed a single slice, earning a screech from the Hadru, but it was not deep enough. She’d have to get closer.

  “Use your power, Azariah! Now!”

  One strike from the girl’s lightning would have the beast down.

  So why didn’t she move?

  Sonara danced, avoiding the Hadru’s pincers, catching glimpses of Azariah every so often. She had lifted her hands, holding them before her as her entire body shook.

  A spark formed, between her palms.

  A tendril of lightning formed, but it died out, as soon as Sonara saw it.

  “DO SOMETHING!” Markam screamed.

  The Princess stared at her hands, her eyes wide. “I… I can’t!”

  The Hadru turned again, tail rising back in a striking position. Poison dripped from the sharpened tip as it struck another near-death blow.

  Sonara’s body moved on instinct. Her muscles remembered the steps Soahm had once taught her, sweat in their eyes, hot air rushing from their lungs as they’d rehearsed move after move, step after step, so that she could defend herself. So that she would become a young woman that did not have to fear those who wished to prey on the weak at night.

  Markam appeared suddenly again behind the beast, dagger in his hand as he finally dismembered one of its legs. Acidic blood sprayed, eating at Sonara’s duster and burning her flesh beneath.

  A rabid hunger, zooming towards the left side of a victim’s neck.

  Sonara’s curse warned her just in time. She turned and swung Lazaris in a death arc. Blood sprayed, so dark in the shadows that for a moment it almost looked black as one of the beast’s pincers sliced clean off. It hissed and roared, tail jabbing the air.

  “AZARIAH!”

  “I’m sorry!” the princess whimpered, her voice so soft it was almost lost beneath the roar of the Hadru. “I can’t do it.”

  Sonara’s curse beat against its cage.

  Release me, release me, let me have at it, let me win.

  The pain in her head exploded with each slam of her curse’s shadow fists. She couldn’t fight two things at once. She slammed her eyes shut, willing the damned curse away. Not now, not now.

  “Sonara!”

  She opened her eyes just as Markam slammed into her, both of them going down. Lazaris flew from her hand as a chunk of the rock exploded. Markam let out a guttural cry as a large piece of the rubble knocked him in the temple.

  Blood dripped from his head. His body was suddenly a dead weight upon hers. She fought beneath him, trying to wriggle her way towards Lazaris, but the blasted weapon was out of her reach. Too far, too damned far as she stretched.

  A click sounded out over them both.

  The hair on the back of Sonara’s neck rose as she looked past Markam’s motionless body. The Hadru loomed in the shadows, rising up on its remaining legs.

  Over its head, its tail snaked skyward, aiming like an arrow on a bow.

  Sonara shook Markam. But his head lolled to the side. She heaved, trying to shove his body from hers, but he was too damned heavy.

  Release me release me release me.

  The Hadru was two steps away.

  Release me or die, Sonara’s curse hissed.

  Out of options, she opened the cage.

  Out her curse soared, searching for the Hadru’s aura. It found it at once, its pain, its fury reverberating from the barbed tail as it readied for a death strike. Slick as oil, a desperate hunger that swelled and turned foul, a poison that dripped and oozed, a tail that needed to drive deep and kill.

  This was not how the Devil of the Deadlands would go out—stuck beneath Markam of Wildeweb, in a stinking, forgotten cave.

  Sonara cried out, lifting her hands before her on instinct as the beast struck.

  It felt like the world slowed; like everything paused in the space between a single breath.

  Sonara pushed, as if she could physically shove her curse forward and direct its path. The Hadru’s rage… so dark, so desperately starving for blood…

  Devour its rage, Sonara’s curse whispered. Take it for yourself and shape it.

  She screamed as she pushed her curse towards the Hadru, where it wrapped around the hideous beast like a leash of its own, devouring its aura. Then she clenched her fists and yanked backwards, pulling her curse’s tether and the Hadru’s aura with it.

  As if she not only sensed it—but removed it from the beast’s very soul.

  Sonara’s entire body shook as she hauled the aura into herself. She was suddenly desperate to escape from Markam’s weight so she could seek a meal to become hers. It wasn’t just hunger, it was rage, deep and demanding. As if the Hadru’s aura was overtaking her own emotions, overtaking her own need to survive.

  Sonara screamed as she fought against that rage, imagining other things; Duran and Jaxon and Soahm, and the future they could all have if she survived. If she fought off the Hadru and the Wanderers and found freedom.

  Peace.

  Peace like the suns setting over the sea. Peace like the wind dancing through her fingertips as she held out her arms and rode Duran as fast as the wind.


  The furious aura melted away on her tongue, fizzled out like a candle, and Sonara swore she saw the Hadru’s tail lower… swore she saw it back down from the fight as she sent that peace back towards it. But she hadn’t the chance to know for sure, because out of the black, Thali finally appeared.

  The cleric set the torch aside as she scooped up Lazaris and, with a sudden finality, shoved the blade deep into the beast’s belly.

  It let out a rattling sigh.

  Then darkness came, as exhaustion pulled Sonara abruptly into sleep.

  Chapter 19

  Karr

  It started as a simple tingling in his fingertips, gaining strength as it spread through him. It warmed, like the first kiss of daylight.

  Then, without warning, it turned hot. Blazing hot.

  Karr Kingston screamed, his entire body seizing as if he’d touched a live wire.

  He opened his eyes to bright sunlight.

  He blinked once, twice. His vision flickered out, then back again, fuzzy at first until he was seeing clearly. Not sunlight, then, but a lightbulb hanging above him. Bright as the heavens—and annoying as hell.

  His head pulsed, beat, beat, beat, and Karr had the strangest sensation that he’d drunk far too much again. The memories were gone, only a thick haze was in their place. Definitely alcohol, Comet Whiskey, if the past was any indication of the destruction he often caused under the stupor of the hellish drink.

  Karr lifted a hand to his eyes and groaned. “Can someone shut that damned thing off?”

  A crash sounded from his left. A chair, toppling over as Cade leapt from it, his footsteps far too loud as he rushed over to Karr’s bedside.

  “I thought… Oh, God, Karr, we all thought you were…” He fumbled to form words as Karr’s muddy mind tried its best to keep up.

  Tears ran down Cade’s pale face, and Karr thought, for a moment, that perhaps his older brother had gone insane. Until he blinked a final time and took in the white room in which he lay. The medical bay of the Starfall.