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

  He is only one of many.

  He is older, a boy of ten, alone in the mountains. The thin shirt and clothing the Triangle has given him for this trial are as white as the snow, and the black steel katana in his hand is stained with blood. The tracks of the Gorgoloth he’s slain lead back to their encampment. He can’t leave until he’s killed them all.

  He grows older. His body is tired. For the first time in his life he considers letting go. Giving up.

  He stands at the base of the steps, the cold stone stairs in a blasted wasteland of shattered stone and twisted trees. He hears the waters of the Ebonsand crash against the shore. The shrine stands above him, a dark outline against the red-purple dusk. Columns have tumbled, and the stone is cracked. There are over a hundred steps built into the side of the hill. A hundred steps he’ll never take.

  Falling.

  Steel hard claws push through his organs. He screams, but everything is silent.

  His body crashes into mud and stones. Bones shatter. His skull is crushed. Blood explodes from his skin.

  All that’s left of him is a stain. His spattered form covers the wolf-beast in a glaze of claret and gore. He seeps into the beast, and it seeps into him. What was once Ronan bleeds through the creature’s fur and melts along its briny ebon skin. His blood and brains slither and ooze into its pores.

  He’s nothing. Just liquid now, a waterfall of his own remains.

  And yet he smells darkness ripple through the wolf’s body. He swims in veins like tunnels and passes through its black heart, falls through a veil of stars and into a maelstrom of blood.

  Something waits for him there.

  His body isn’t his own, but he won’t surrender to the beast he’s meant to become. Talons and fur and moon curve eyes, jagged bones like broken swords.

  The two souls do battle. Its hunger is great, and it wants more than he’s willing to give. They fight through a sea of exploding clouds.

  Ronan’s head goes dull with pain. He shakes himself.

  You’re stronger than this. These are the Deadlands. This is where you live.

  His hands grow blades, and he tears into the wolf-beast. Splitting pain rings through his jaw as his teeth stretch to fangs. Hurt shakes his skull.

  He howls as he cuts down the other wolf, and the sound echoes into the Deadland void.

  Not human now. He’s not sure what he is.

  He’s back in control, but he isn’t sure what that means, because he never lost control. He’s always been this monster.

  The beast walks through the marsh. Clawed feet sink in black water and grey sand. The sky is a swirl of silver clouds and ripples of shadow. He hears peels of distant thunder and the fall of rain.

  The wolf steps onto the island. His talons drag in the soil. Everything around him is frozen in black and white.

  The once warlock lies on the ground, still too weak to move.

  Some instinct tells the wolf not to hurt the warlock, but it’s difficult. He needs flesh. He hasn’t fed in so very long. As he treks up the sand his mind flashes back to the world on the other side of the void.

  Caverns of night, columns of fire. Islands of black rock shattered by a storm of scars. Doorways of moonshadow. Monuments of frozen skin.

  They held dominion there, the masters of the void. Until the revolution, none dared oppose their power. He still sees the betrayal, still tastes the fear and hears the cries as the barrier cracks. The ship breaks the walls around their realm in a mad bid to escape, and the essence of their universe leaks away.

  The wolf steps forward and looms over the once warlock. The man can barely raise his head. Claws rise to strike.

  Cross lifts Soulrazor/Avenger. The shards of the barrier, honed to razor points and turned to weapons.

  The wolf hesitates. For some reason it senses the man is meant to live, if for no other reason than because those first two blades are fused to the consciousness of the Pale Goddess.

  The beast steps back. It’s hungry. It wants to feed.

  But not yet.

  Ronan woke. Splitting pain rang through his head, and blood pounded in his ears.

  “Get up!” Danica yelled.

  Howls peeled from out of the dark. Whatever was chasing them was close.

  Ronan looked down at Cross. He wasn’t sure why but he had the sense he’d helped him, that he’d somehow found him in the Deadlands and pulled him back.

  “Cross!” he said.

  “Whatever you’re doing, hurry up!” Wara shouted. She fired into the dark.

  Ronan reached down and shook Cross, and Cross’s eyes flashed open. The bleeding had stopped. Ronan looked at his own arms and realized he wasn’t bleeding either, though he still looked like he’d been dragged through a field of glass. Strength rushed back into his body. He felt alive, vital.

  Something burned in his chest, just for a moment – a deep pain, a cold burning that made his ribs hurt, but it vanished as quickly as it had come, and he could breathe better than before.

  They shot their weapons into the darkness. The howls were louder. Whatever was there had at last decided they were a threat, and it wanted them destroyed.

  Cross was on his feet, and both and he and Ronan moved ahead of the others. Danica and the Doj woman fired at the approaching mass. Grail launched arrows that ignited the air with white fire.

  Ronan’s muscles ached, but he felt stronger than he had in days. He grabbed Cross and they struggled up the slope, navigating past the standing stones.

  Something tugged at his consciousness, some sense of dark familiarity, like a place he knew but never wanted to go back to. The black shards of rock smoked with glacial cold and the dull red runes pulsed and hummed.

  Cross saw it, too. For a moment they both hesitated, entranced. They listened to the silence. There were no gunshots in that network of stones, no howls. Nothing but the fluid moment, the breath before the scream.

  Somehow they snapped from their reverie and ran past the broken monuments, and the sound of gunfire returned.

  Cross held a sending stone in hand as they raced up the ravine. Icy water splashed onto Ronan’s face. Everything shook, a blur of gasping images. They scrambled and ran, scraped up the steep walls. The light overhead was pale blue obscured by frost-grey mist, but the vapors parted beneath the blast of turbine engines directly overhead. He heard the dull roar of a Bloodhawk.

  He turned. For some reason he didn’t want to leave. He knew it wasn’t his desire, but that of another. The need of something inside him. His blood boiled and his gums ached. Something rattled within, a tremble that made his fists clench.

  Ronan fought something, buried it deep down. Already he was forgetting what had happened.

  The Bloodhawk came into view just over the ravine. Rope ladders unrolled from the back of the open hatch and smacked onto the stone. Chainguns and auto-cannons sent hot shells raining down on the glass ice. Ronan couldn’t hear anything but those explosive bursts.

  A sea of shadows came at them from below, swirling ebon storms bound to a trio of walking wolves with massive claws and wide slathering fangs and white-yellow eyes of crippling cold moonlight. Darkness trailed them.

  Ronan climbed. He didn’t remember getting onto the ladder, but he had. He glanced down and saw Cross below him.

  They were on the ship. Everything was moving fast. Time stuttered ahead. He was near the rear cargo door, looking out. Turbine engines roared through the sky, the unmistakable scream of Deathhawks.

  The island was distant now, the size of a toy, but the cargo doors were still open, some malfunction, and that was why the air sliced through the inside of the ship, forcing the surviving soldiers of the doomed mission to hold on for their lives.

  A dozen sleek black vessels ripped through the ice-sharp air. Missiles rained down on the island, leaving thin trails of black smoke in their wake.

  The soldiers on the Bloodhawk saw the explosions before they heard them: dull white and blue bursts of light, bulbs of illumination
like drops of electric water. Thick streams of smoke rolled away as the island was consumed by hellish flames.

  The sounds of the blast followed seconds later. Staccato booms, a chain of concussive bursts echoing through the dawn sky. The sound knifed through his skull.

  The ship rocked in place. Soldiers held on as the vessel buckled from the force of the Hellbomb detonations.

  After a few moments the world went quiet again save for the roar of the Bloodhawk’s engines. The air tasted of explosive vapor and corrosive dust.

  All that was left of the island was a stain of shattered stone and burning sand. Smoke smothered the sea.

  Ronan winced in pain. Something in his jaw tightened. He heard a sound, a distant voice of cracking ice and acid fire.

  He looked around. No one else seemed to hear it, but they saw something, something down below which drew their attention. No one spoke. Everyone watched the island in horror.

  “Help,” Ronan groaned. Danica lifted him to his feet. He barely had the strength to stand.

  The ship tilted and lurched. He sensed the open space all around them. The air was freezing cold and the sky had turned gunmetal grey and filled with haze.

  He looked at the island. Three dark shapes hovered in the sky just over the sea. Lupine and humanoid, shadow and substance, they were larger than before, as big as Doj. Their claws dripped viscous black fluid that boiled the water, and their eyes cast the air in a sickening pallor. Ronan smelled the wrongness of them, the utter dark power oozing from their bodies.

  “Get us out of here,” Ankharra said into the comm. “We have to get help.”

  Ronan watched the dark figures recede as the Bloodhawk flew away. He felt something dark gnawing at his body from within.

  They were with him, somehow. And he knew that no matter how badly he wanted to, whatever was there wouldn’t let him do or say anything about it.

  He was a prisoner to the beast inside him.

  FOUR

  PROMISE

  Cross dreamed of wolves. They tore his flesh and chewed on his remains until everything inside was gone.

  And then another dream, where it wasn’t him being eaten, but someone else. Someone who’d taken his place.

  He wasn’t sure which dream frightened him more.

  He woke on the Bloodhawk. They were an hour away from the island and the Maloj.

  He’d fallen asleep as the ship made its way towards Ath. Ankharra had already informed them that the damaged vehicle wouldn’t be able to make the complete journey, and they’d have to rendezvous with Talon Company and switch vessels along the way. Crylos’ men were still battling renegade forces out of Fane, and with any luck Cross and the others would be able to see Maur, assuming he hadn’t already been taken to Meldoar to be healed.

  The ship rattled through the sky. The damaged rear cargo doors wouldn’t close, which made it necessary for the ship to move slow at a low altitude to avoid asphyxiating everyone or losing people out the back. Unfortunately, keeping those doors open made the inside of the Bloodhawk bitingly cold and loud, and Cross felt like he was sitting in the middle of a windstorm. The freezing wind cut straight through his armor and clothes, and even though he and Danica sat huddled next to one another under a heavy blanket he still felt like they were out in the middle of the Reach.

  The vessel was crowded. There were survivors from Ankharra’s section out of Talon Company, as well as those few members of the Grey Watch who’d actually made it back alive. Flint and Shiv were safe and sound and asleep just to Cross’s left; Ronan was getting stitched up by a medic on the other side of the cargo bay. Ankharra had done what she could to heal him, and said she was surprised he’d fared as well as he had.

  So was Cross. He could barely fathom how much they’d been through, how far they’d come. They’d been isolated and held captive, had battled undead angels and wandered shadowy wastelands. He’d somehow lost twenty years of his life after being transported back in time and held prisoner.

  It was all enough to drive a person mad. Much of what had happened seemed distant, a half-remembered nightmare. Part of him felt like he’d left the manor just a couple of days ago, and at other times his memories felt like scenes from someone else’s life. His head was heavy, his body as brittle as slate. He found himself shaking, and voices sometimes raced though his mind, the call of the blades. He felt overwhelmed, crushed, with such tension knotted in his back he thought he’d break beneath the pressure. When he closed his eyes he didn’t want to open them, because them would mean facing things he didn’t want to face.

  All in all, I’ve gotten pretty shafted, he told himself with a grim laugh, but it did little to lift his spirits.

  He looked around. Nothing seemed real – the ship, the fact that Dani was asleep next to him, the horrors they’d just witnessed – and he kept expecting to wake up somewhere else.

  If only it were that easy. If only I could just wake up and have everything be okay, but that’s not going to happen. You’re here. Deal with it.

  Cross looked out of the open cargo door and took a deep and shuddering breath. He pulled the blanket tight around his body.

  Danica stirred and nudged close to him. He softly touched her hair. Her metal arm pressed against his body; he couldn’t begin to fathom the pain she’d endured when the Revengers had grafted it to her, or how she’d even managed to live through the experience.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  He thought about Ash and Grissom…and Kane. He never thought anything would happen to Mike – he seemed invincible in his own way, the third member of their trio, the one they never worried about. Cross had always assumed he or Danica would go first.

  But we’re all going to go, he thought bitterly. And sooner than later. None of us deserve this. He looked at the sky and tried to imagine a better place. Memories of the world before The Black were becoming more difficult for him to recall. It was hard to remember the way things used to be.

  Why are we doing this? he asked himself. Why are we risking our lives, out there getting ourselves killed, when we should be enjoying what little time we have left?

  Once, he thought he’d known the answer to that question. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  They landed on the eastern shore of Rimefang Loch just a few minutes later. Cross had hoped for a chance to talk with Danica in private for more than the few scant minutes they’d had before she’d fallen asleep, but it would have to wait.

  They’d kissed. Part of him was excited about what that meant.

  And the rest of me is scared shitless.

  The rocky shore was wreathed in icy mist and vehicular fumes. A number of Bloodhawks and larger aerial troop transports had been parked on a stony field a few hundred yards from the water and a half-dozen Seahawks floated in the Loch, their rotating guns scanning the sea to make sure no threats approached the encampment. According to Ankharra this wasn’t the main contingent of Crylos’ Company, but it was where he and most of the forward command were located for the time being. Fane’s thrust towards Ath had taken everyone by surprise, and the invading forces had penetrated deep into the Southern Claw lowlands. Kalakkaii had reputedly been wiped out by Kothian undead and Fane had pushed north and west and completely avoided the heavily fortified city-state of Seraph, which had allowed the rebel army to make significant overland progress before the Southern Claw could mount any sort of real response.

  Why didn’t they attack the capital? Cross wondered. What’s so special about Ath that they want to strike their specifically?

  Cross, Black, Ronan, Flint and Shiv were shown to a large and surprisingly comfortable tent, where they were given fresh blankets and plates of hot stew full with chunks of carrots, potatoes and beef. Its aroma was somewhat pungent, but Cross was more famished than he’d thought, and everyone sat in silence for a few minutes on benches and cots while they greedily devoured their meals. A privacy screen and some supply cabinets occupied the tent, which led Cross to believe the place was nor
mally used as a medical bivouac.

  The air was cold and wet, but Danica used her spirit to keep everyone warm. Cross noticed the shift in her ability to control her spirit, how much of a stricter rein she was able to place on him because of her arcane limb. He also noticed how she winced whenever she channeled her magic, or sometimes even if she even moved a certain way.

  Ronan sat by himself. He seemed lost in thought. Ankharra had done everything she could to heal him, but most of his cuts still looked fresh, and though the injuries had sealed they still oozed fine lines of black puss whenever he moved. On top of that, no amount of medical attention could change the fact that he was clearly exhausted.

  Cross lifted his shirt up and inspected himself. He thought he’d died when the wolf had thrust its claws through his torso, and now there was a thick and jagged scar like a bloody valley running down his chest and abdomen.

  Damn it. It feels like every one of us has been torn apart and sewn back together. It’s a wonder we’re still standing.

  Shiv ate happily, and kept looking at Cross and Danica and smiling. Flint noticed, and told her to keep her mind on her food. “This place is cool,” she said. “Nicer than the last camp.”

  “Gee, Cross, you know how to show a lady a good time,” Ronan laughed.

  “And you are…?” Danica began, and Cross was about to say something but Flint put his bowl down, wiped his hands on his shirt and mumbled an apology.

  “We haven’t been properly introduced,” he smiled. “My name is Flint Storm. This is my daughter, Shiv.”

  “Hello,” Shiv said. “You’re Danica.”

  “Yes,” Danica smiled. She seemed genuinely nervous. “Yes I am.” She took Flint’s handshake and smiled. “It’s very nice to meet you.”‘

  “You’re last name is Storm?” Cross asked. “You didn’t tell me that. I like it.”

  “I hate it,” Shiv said. “Shiv Storm sounds stupid.”

  Danica laughed. Flint tried to suppress an embarrassed smile. “It’s an honor to meet those who fight alongside the Southern Claw, especially if they’re willing to put up with this crazy bastard,” he said with a nod towards Cross. Flint turned to Ronan. “And you’re…”