Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) Read online

  His spirit was strong and aggressive, and once again she circled around the intruders and slithered across Cross’s skin like a sheen of burning oil. Whispers sliced through the air, and dust twisted into a false storm that cast grit into their eyes. Many of the workers still watched what was happening over their shoulders as they worked, and a few more soldiers had assembled from the perimeter of the camp.

  “Can you understand me?” the warlock said.

  “Yes,” Cross said.

  “Could you please stop?!” Wiley shouted. “Jesus!”

  “Wiley, shut up!” Cross barked. “Please,” he said to the mage. “We need help. We’re not enemies, and we don’t want any trouble.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have come here,” the warlock said.

  “Yeah, this is going well…” Reza said.

  Cross gathered himself. The warlock’s spirit backed away, but he sensed her nearby, poised to strike.

  Strangely, Soulrazor/Avenger thrummed in the sheath on his back. It had been so long since the blade had actively tried to communicate with him he’d wondered if something about Nezzek’duul had interfered with its arcane properties. The remnants of two different powerful artifacts, the black and white fused weapon now pulsed against him like it wanted to be released.

  Great.

  “Look,” he said. “We’re from the Southern Claw. Our airship was shot down, and somehow we landed here. We don’t know how. But we’ve got survivors, and people wounded. We need to get to a city. If there’s any way…”

  “You’re from the Southern Claw?” the warlock said. “The continent to the north, across the Black Sea?”

  “We call that sea the Ebonsand,” Cross said, “but yes.”

  The warlock gawked. He looked at Cross like he’d said they’d just flown down from the moon. “That’s not possible,” the mage said. The wind started to pick up, chill and smelling of gristle and meat. The warlock made it so his spirit didn’t translate his words while he spoke to the man with the gold insignia, the captain. The three soldiers started shouting. “I suggest you get on your knees,” the warlock said.

  “Why?” Cross asked.

  “Because if you don’t, they’ll shoot you,” the warlock answered. He was solemn and calm.

  “Listen, this is ridiculous…” Cross started. One of the soldiers looked ready to strike him with the butt of his rifle, and Cross felt his hand tense and prepare to draw his blade. Anger burned at the edge of his mind, white-hot fury ready to erupt. It took everything he had to keep it contained, to not rip the weapon free and hack those men down, because he knew he could, and they’d barely touch him.

  It was amazing how much of a killer the sword could make him.

  Cross pulled his hand down, and sank to his knees.

  “Listen…” he began, but he was cut short by a nearby cry of terror.

  Panicked workers started running for the barracks at the edge of the compound. Something was approaching from the east. Wind scraped through the camp, even colder than before. At first Cross had thought that gale was an effect of the warlock’s angry spirit, but when he looked in the direction the workers were pointing he saw a dark storm of swirling ebon vapor. The funnel was easily a mile high and filled with icy shards that came crashing to the ground with the sound of breaking glass.

  The warlock’s eyes went wide. He barked orders to the others, who followed the thaumaturge’s instructions without question and fell back. Beneath the din of the coming storm Cross heard metal hatches being thrown wide and weapons being loaded. The cyclone dissipated, far too quickly to be natural, and the streams of grey and blue dust settled into a solid wall of haze like a smudge-stain against the red-black sky.

  Figures moved in the smoke, massive humanoids, misshapen behemoths. Grey skin appeared through the drift, mountains of rotting flesh. Putrid wounds leaked green fluid. Open tears in those massive bodies revealed torn sinew and molded innards. Bulging dead muscles oozed black puss and maggots the size of rats.

  They were giant zombies. Larger even than Doj, thirty-foot tall shambling corpses. There were three of them, using fallen stone columns and logs as clubs. Their advance was as loud as the fall of trees and in moments they cast great diseased shadows over the railway camp. The earth where they stepped was left ruined, black and smoking.

  The workers scattered for the trains and barracks as the black-clad soldiers rolled out a Gatling gun and a pair of ballistae loaded with wide-toothed saw blades. The warlock ordered two soldiers to remain behind and hold the prisoners at gunpoint, but those two looked terrified, since there was only a small shack and the wind turbine between them and the corpse titans, while the rest of the soldiers pulled back to the open space between the railway office and the end of the locomotive. Not that it mattered – the giants could cover the distance from one end of the camp to the other in a matter of strides. The dust storm swirled in place behind them, a wall of dead fog.

  The Gatling gun fired. Bullets purged from the rotating barrels to the chime of thunderous explosions. Rounds tore into the giants, ripping through dead flesh and raining greasy blood to the ground, but the effort did little to halt the undead’s advance.

  The first giant bolted forward with surprising speed, sweeping a broken pillar sideways and smashing bodies into the air. Chunks of rock and broken bodies flew high.

  Cross, Reza and Wiley dropped to the ground as debris struck one of the soldiers watching them and knocked him to the ground in a spray of blood. Reza crawled forward and grabbed the man’s rifle as another zombie stamped a man to death beneath its great rotting foot.

  The soldiers used a flame-thrower to set one of the beasts alight. It stumbled back, unable to attack due to smoke and flames blocking its vision. The air stank with burning putrid meat, like the inside of a slaughterhouse. One of the ballistae fired a spinning blade that severed through the dead tissue of a giant arm; meat gristle and worms spilled as the putrid limb splattered across the ground.

  Reza fired at the zombies with the old rifle, aiming for the heads, while Wiley cowered against the side of the shed. The wind pelted dust at them, and they were surrounded by the sounds of animal growls and screams.

  Icy wind slashed against Cross’s face as he pulled his blade free. It burned cold in his hands. He moved instinctively, straight into the fray. Legs like tree-trunks blocked sight of the wall of fog. Pyrotic gases shot overhead and immolated another of the zombie giants. Cross ran through a rain of fire and dripping flesh. Soulrazor/Avenger moved with him, moved for him. The hand-and-a-half blade hewed through skin and took off a giant’s leg just below the knee, and he rolled away as the beast toppled forward, its innards splashing like paste as it hit the dirt. The soldiers turned the Gatling gun and pounded the massive skull with a storm of bullets until the bone broke apart like an overripe fruit.

  The flaming zombie ran forward and smashed the machine-gun. Chains and gears flew apart beneath a barrage of hammer-like fists. Men screamed as they were torn away and flung through the air or twisted and smashed to the ground in a cacophony of snapping bones and bursting skulls. Bodies went up in flames. Another saw blade sliced into the giant’s body, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the brute from ripping the ballista to pieces. With another sweep of its soiled fists it would kill the warlock and several more soldiers.

  Cross threw his blade end over end. He knew as it left his hand that his aim was true. The harlequin blade sank into the back of the flaming zombie’s skull with a sickening crunch and brought it down face-forward.

  “Cross, watch out!” Reza shouted.

  The maimed zombie reached down for him with its remaining arm. Bullets peppered its decaying hide and burst what was left of one of its eyes. Its black nails clawed the ground. Cross threw himself back and landed hard, knocking the wind from his lungs. The giant’s cracked teeth filled with ooze as the beast stumbled forward.

  He smelled the ozone of hex. The warlock’s veins turned black and shadow sparks flew from his fi
ngertips. Cross felt the man’s spirit tense and stretch to her limits as she shaped to a midnight lance that rose from the earth and drove straight into the zombie’s chest, crushing through bone as it impaled the giant. After a moment of twitching it stirred no more.

  Reza helped Cross up. Ten soldiers had died, immolated or crushed or broken when they were flung against the nearby buildings. The storm shrank away into motes of dust, and heat and sunlight returned, as if the dark tempest had never existed in the first place.

  Cross heard cold laughter in the wind.

  They reached the city a day later. The warlock, Jaffe, claimed he owed Cross a debt, though Cross wasn’t sure why, since they’d wound up saving each others lives. So far as he was concerned that should have made them even, but Jaffe insisted the debt was very serious, and that he’d repay it. In the meantime he and the men of Black Dust Station were willing to lead Cross and the rest of the survivors to the city of Raijin, Jewel of the Wastelands. The warlock warned that their reception there wouldn’t necessarily be a warm one.

  I’m getting used to that, Cross thought.

  Raijin was as black as a night sky, a shadow on the desert floor. The earth was paler there, a blasted desert bordered by low red hills covered with spines and dry brush. The walls were thick with spikes, giving the outer shell the semblance of a wall of iron thorns.

  Cross and Ankharra rode into the city. He’d been relieved to return to the group and find Shiv and Flint unharmed, and he’d felt foolish for assuming Ankharra was up to some foul play. He hadn’t realized how paranoid he’d become about keeping his friends safe. If Ankharra had picked up on his paranoia, or had in any way taken offense to it, she made no indication. She’d seemed genuinely relieved when Cross, Reza and Wiley had returned with Jaffe and his troops. Jaffe seemed somewhat taken aback by Ankharra and kept his distance, but that was likely due in part to their opposing spirits, who Cross felt harass one another in the background, sparking the air and making it smell of fire smoke and brimstone.

  The wide road to Raijin was paved with poles and stakes that formed a sort of wall to keep travelers off fields filled with berries and fig trees. Dark-clad peasants hauled casks of wine and boxes of dried fruits on camel-drawn carts. The air was full with song.

  As the camels lumbered up to the city gates Cross was assailed by the scent of animals and flowers, cooked lamb and roasted hummus, alcohol and tobacco. Every structure was dark iron or black brick, tightly packed and narrow, the ebon hue stark against the dusty streets. The bladed towers seemed to lean at odd angles, looming overhead like they were ready to topple.

  Jaffe led them. His soldiers trailed behind with the rest of the group, most of who traveled in the backs of wagons or on what few camels were available. The train at Black Dust Station had been broken for months, and they’d been unable to resurrect the steel beast, but Jaffe promised they’d use one of the working trains there in the city to grant the visitors from across the sea the wondrous experience of riding on the Nezzek’duulian railways.

  Cross felt a cold and nagging dread. The Masters of the City stood at the first major crossroads, just before a ziggurat of rune-carved granite. The rulers of Raijin were both horrifying and breathtaking. Their angelic wings had been broken beyond repair and were held together by makeshift splints of arcane iron and bone. Pale skin was scarred and in some cases flayed, the result of a score of tortures visited upon them by emissaries of the Ebon Cities who’d come to conquer their lands over two decades earlier. Their faces were bound in steel masks which held their forms stable and prevented their souls from spilling out. The steel covered their mouths and noses but left their eyes and faces exposed, and the skin there was cold and dark, blasted by fire and claw.

  Jaffe had explained their sad story to Cross, though it was hard to say how much of the tale was real and how much was conjecture or even outright falsehood born of idolatry. They were unquestionably powerful, and might have even been related to the avatars of the White Mother in some oblique fashion. Cross intended to find out.

  The Masters hovered just above the ground, wounded angel-like beings incapable of moving on their own. A host of gendarmes was with them, tall men dressed in black and red steel armor and armed with hexed double-bladed swords with leather central pommels. They wore masks like the Masters – half-plate cowls with sharp jaws and grills to allow breathing – and their thick crimson capes fluttered in the hot desert wind. The gendarmes maintained distance around the Masters, who seemed uncomfortable in the presence of the sun.

  “My Masters,” Jaffe spoke, allowing his spirit to translate the words for their guest’s benefit, “may I present Eric Cross and Ankharra, leader of this band from across the Black Sea.”

  “We have seen none from across the sea in many years,” one of the Masters said, but it was impossible for Cross to tell which one. “Tell us how you came to be here.”

  Cross looked at Ankharra. He wasn’t about to speak for the group.

  Hundreds of Raijin’s citizens stood amassed in crowds to either side of the open square or looked down from the rooftops. It seemed their arrival was something of a spectacle, though none of the people dared approach, regarding the Southern Claw visitors like wild zoo creatures.

  “We were brought here,” Ankharra said, also speaking through her spirit to translate. “We don’t know by whom, or for what purpose. I’m sorry if our arrival has caused any…unrest,” she said uncertainly. “We’re just trying to get home.”

  “And we will help you get there,” another Master spoke. The voice sounded slightly different, but once again Cross couldn’t determine of them spoke, and it occurred to him then how androgynous they were, that while one looked almost female it was difficult to tell due to all of the armor plating and iron-capped leather they wore. Their wings remained stationary even as they hovered, and the slightest motion seemed to cause them terrible pain.

  Something about them, and that place, seemed familiar.

  “You shall be our guests in Raijin,” another Master said. “We ask that you behave as such.”

  I know that voice, Cross thought, but the recognition was vague, like something out of a dream. The notion nagged at him, but he couldn’t for the life of him determine why he felt he’d met these creatures before.

  Ankharra nodded from atop the camel. The Masters floated backwards, their ironclad arms folded across their chests. The masked gendarmes moved protectively with the angels as they floated over the steps, back towards the doors to the black temple.

  “My men will show you to a place where you can rest,” Jaffe said.

  Cross nodded his thanks. He and Ankharra exchanged looks, and he had a feeling she was thinking the same thing he was.

  Did things just get better, or worse?

  ELEVEN

  STATION

  The trek back across the desert took longer than expected. Having one man unconscious and another held prisoner didn’t help.

  After that shit in the forest, we’re lucky to be here at all, Danica thought.

  Creasy, Grail and Jade stood watch while Danica secured Laros’ hands behind a gnarled tree at the edge of the railway station, an oasis of modern industrialization in the middle of the desert. The sky was flat and smelled of pitch, and the sun was setting fast. Cold wind came at their backs and whipped up clouds of dust.

  By their spirit’s estimations they were about a day behind the main group, heading south past the now abandoned railway station, where some sort of calamity had taken place. Massive corpses smoked on the ground, and recently dug graves numbered nearly a dozen slain.

  The air grew colder by the minute. Laros’ dirty blonde hair hung down over his face, and his once exquisite robes were stained with blood and iron-grey dust. His eyes were locked on something that wasn’t there, the same place his mind had gone. He’d barely uttered a word since they’d recovered him and Jade from the haunted forest, hadn’t even put up much resistance when they’d restrained him after he’d tried to
kill Ronan.

  “Uncomfortable?” she asked him.

  She pulled his hands tight. If they’d had some proper restraints, like the locking arcane gauntlets the Revengers used in Black Scar, she could have assured he wouldn’t be able to call on his spirit, but as things stood she and Creasy just had to keep a constant eye on him, and with a warlock of Laros’ skill that was a dangerous proposition. Mages of the White Council were particularly adept at utilizing their spirits in very subtle fashion – chances were Laros could have been conjuring a blade of force right over Danica’s head and she wouldn’t even realize it till it was too late.

  Jade, for her part, was doing better, but she was still severely shaken by whatever had happened to them. She’d told them that after the crash all of the survivors from the forward section had been ripped into the sky by some sort of black whirlwind. Jade had fallen unconscious, but she remembered hearing men scream as they were torn apart by teeth in the storm.

  “When I came to,” she’d said, “we were in the forest, in that clearing. They already had us staked down.”

  “Who did?” Danica asked.

  “Those bodies. They were alive, but they weren’t. There was something dead inside them. They didn’t talk to us, didn’t communicate with us at all. All they wanted to do was cause pain, so they tortured the soldiers one at a time. They….burned them…tore them…” She couldn’t go on, and neither Danica nor Creasy was about to ask her to.

  Her description of the storm matched the bizarre weather formations they’d seen over the dead woods, and then again over the rail station just before they’d arrived, but thankfully that storm had cleared. Traces of dark cloud still hung in the air, spiraling like ink in water. Small and slow-moving whirlwinds took shape and spun a few miles away, utterly silent and dark, appearing just for a moment before they vanished again.

  This place sucks.

  Jade was close by, rubbing her arms for warmth and staring at Laros. Her long dark hair was heavy with sweat and grime, and in the darkening light her green eyes seemed to glow. Her loose pants and shirt had once been green but were now stained black and brown with desert grit, and she looked exhausted beyond all measure.