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

  Ronan grabbed onto a door frame, reached out and took hold of Reza. He yelled at her to hold him, and realized she was unconscious. Blood ran down one side of her face. His shoulder wrenched in its socket as he twisted around and held onto her with one hand. His fingers were sore, and his grip on her harness was tenuous. One bad slip and she’d plummet into the obscurity of the corridor below. The ship wasn’t at an entirely vertical angle, but it was sloped far enough that a fall would be treacherous.

  He saw a gaping hole beneath them in the side of the ship, maybe twenty meters down. Icy wind howled and sucked at their bodies with scoured fingers. Smoke and clouds sliced through the corridor, and bodies fell through the rip and into the open sky.

  The ship fell, slowly. Fires blazed up and down the inverted passages.

  Ronan breathed deeply, and let his mind drift. He stepped onto a grey field, a place of dead soil and dark skies. Cold white air and stale earth filled with reeds and frigid pools. The rush of wind was gone, replaced by a solid calm. The black and white realm waited for him like a painting.

  He moved swiftly, blocking out the pain as he swung Reza’s body up over his shoulder and climbed. Fires raced up in swirling columns. Suction pulled from the open hole under his feet. He heard more blasts and the sound of exploding metal. The ship was being bombarded from the ground.

  Ronan ascended hand over hand. He’d originally clutched onto the far edge of the door frame, and he’d have to struggle to reach the handle on the upper side. The metal was smooth, and there wasn’t much to grip.

  More fires raged up above, near the fore end of the ship. A whirlpool of flame careened down, roiling red and white fire filled with bursts of explosive pressure. He saw faces, leering wraith visages trapped in volcanic clouds. Bodies fell past him and scraped down the metal walls, torn to shreds against the rent steel. Screams filled his ears.

  Something latched onto him. Ronan lifted up from the metal as a razored tongue pushed against his skin. His fingers struggled to hold onto the door, but he and Reza both pulled away, held aloft in a whirlwind of twisted air.

  Fire rained down and scorched the spot where they’d been. Scalding wind blasted his face. He was barely able to hold onto Reza as they fell back.

  They hung in the air, suspended in a spirit’s embrace.

  Creasy.

  The warlock stood just inside an open doorway, next to Grail and a pair of soldiers. His hands clenched the air like he held on for dear life, and Ronan saw a faint shine around him, a throbbing haze. The older man’s eyes glowed like blood stars as he tightened his grip and held Ronan and Reza in place.

  The ship shook violently. Another explosion rang out as blazing debris and bits of smoking steel flew past. Ronan and Reza were yanked through the air. Fiery husks of soldiers fell around them in a red tide. Heat seared his body.

  They pulled inside the room just as a blast of molten steel tore through the air behind them. Creasy shouted, and Grail slammed the door shut. They collapsed to the floor of a small cabin whose cots had shattered to pieces.

  Ronan shouted as his face struck the hot metal wall. The room flipped. Steam and smoke exploded from the vents. He held onto Reza and tried to shield her body as the chamber twisted end over end.

  A soldier fell onto him. Blood welled in his mouth. Something sharp cracked against his nose and pain slammed into his back.

  He saw Creasy at the center of the room, where he floated and twisted like a baby in the womb, held inside the crackling grip of his spirit. Exploding fumes wound around his body and held him like puppet’s strings. The warlock kept his hands close together and pushed the energies outwards, a bubble of gel that slithered over Ronan’s bruised and bleeding body like freezing water. An electric sensation ran up and down his limbs as he was lifted away from the burning walls.

  Ronan tried to distance himself, tried to find the way back to the Deadlands, but his body had already taken too much damage. Blood ran from his nose, and his consciousness faded. He tried to focus enough to block out the pain, but his body finally succumbed and he passed out.

  He stands outside himself, a stranger on a strange shore. Black wind rips against him.

  He tastes ozone and blood. The night sky bleeds shadows thick as rain. Distant peels of thunder tear at the atmosphere. Bolts of crimson lightning flash across the horizon.

  He looks out over a ruined necropolis. Pits of charnel flesh smoke in the greying light. The rivers are thick with industrial waste left by ruined war machines and burst fuel drums. Once proud structures – mosques and shrines and skin farms and twisted stone monuments resembling black iron swords – have been smelted and reduced to rubble. Spattered vampire remains grease the landscape.

  This happened long ago, on a far off world, and it will happen here. And he’ll be a part of it, whether he wants to or not.

  He came to with a start. Ronan stared up at a flickering light.

  He was on his back, his nostrils full with the stench of steel and blood. For a moment he thought himself trapped back in the vision, in the dream that crumbled so quickly he lost details of it by the second. He tried to hold onto them, because he knew it was somehow important, but by the time he sat up and bumped his head against the smoking wall the memory was gone.

  The room was sideways. One of the soldiers lay dead next to him, his head split open. The other struggled with his wounded ribcage where he’d fallen onto something sharp.

  Ronan felt like he’d been dropped from a cliff. His face was numb with pain, and hurt radiated through his shoulders and upper back. He propped himself up on one elbow.

  Reza was unconscious, but she seemed unhurt save for a small gash to the side of her head. He checked to see if she was breathing, and was relieved to find that she was.

  “You okay?” Creasy asked him.

  The red emergency lights made the small cabin look like the inside of a darkroom. Sparks fell from the wall. Creasy’s face was drenched with soot but his eyes shone, and his voice sounded stable and calm. He peeled off his gloves as he knelt near the door. Grail was close by, checking himself over. Neither looked seriously injured.

  “What the fuck happened?” Ronan asked.

  “We were shot down,” Creasy said. “I tried to save us, but I’m afraid I didn’t do a great job.”

  “We have to get out of here,” the other soldier said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Banks.” Banks was in his late twenties and wore the rank of Corporal. His brown hair was slick with sweat, and he had a cut down one cheek.

  “Agreed.” Ronan realized they were no longer falling, but the room was still sideways. “Any idea where we landed?” he asked.

  “None,” Creasy said.

  “Well,” Banks said, “we were between the coastline and Ath, so hopefully we’re within sight of the scouts. Help should be on the way.”

  “I don’t want to count on that,” Ronan said. It hurt to talk, hurt to move. He was ready to set foot in the Deadlands, but it would be risky, because while doing so would deaden his body from pain it was generally best reserved for when he needed to go into battle or survive somewhere on his own. He wasn’t much good to anyone else when he crossed over.

  And since when did you care?

  He struggled to his feet. The floor shifted uncertainly beneath him. Everything creaked and groaned, and they heard the distant ring of explosions, quieter than before, likely after-effects of the crash.

  “Comm is down,” Banks said. He looked at Reza. “Is she ok?”

  “Do I look like a doctor?” Ronan asked.

  Creasy focused. Ronan felt his spirit shift through the air, a cold presence that set his skin on edge. He felt the pain in his face and arms recede, and Reza stirred. After a moment she coughed and sat up.

  “Hey there,” Ronan said.

  Reza coughed again, looked around, and gave them a thumbs-up.

  “Thanks,” he nodded to Creasy.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he
said. “We may not want to open this door.” His eyes pulsed blue and white. Ronan sensed the spirit shift again, and her freezing form slithered out of the room as Creasy sent her to scout the area. “I tried this once,” the warlock said, “without much success. I’m having trouble sensing anything outside.”

  “That can’t be good,” Reza said.

  “No,” Creasy said. “It’s not.”

  “What could be causing it?” Ronan asked.

  “Many things,” Creasy said. “None of them pleasant.”

  “We can just hold tight,” Banks suggested. “I mean, we have a small supply of food, and we’re alive.”

  “Good point,” Reza agreed.

  “And for all we know the ship is surrounded by Ebon Cities shock troops,” Ronan said. “I’m not really in the mood to just sit around and wait.” He looked at Creasy. “Do you want me to open it?” he asked. Creasy looked at him for a moment, probably wondering if Ronan was out of his mind. He looked at Reza and Banks and Grail, then back at Ronan. He shrugged.

  “Your call,” Creasy said.

  Ronan thought about it for a moment. “Shit,” he said. He checked his blade, steeled himself, and with Reza and Creasy’s help forced the door open.

  SIX

  WASTELANDS

  Cross woke to the sound of screams.

  For a moment he imagined himself back in the Whisperlands, floating in shadows and watching black-skinned natives tear each other apart. Then he was at Shadowmere Keep, a twenty-year waking nightmare he’d spent as a slave to his own cruel spirit. Then he was in the cold caves in the Carrion Rift, a prisoner to ice-fleshed women, then back in Krul, days and nights melting together, one battle after the next, kill or be killed.

  Does it ever stop?

  He was on his side. Something like oil dripped down on his face, and it took him a moment to realize it was blood. A Southern Claw soldier whose name he didn’t know had been skewered by a piece of metal that had pushed through the wall of the quarters and impaled the poor bastard, leaving him hanging limp with his eyes frozen open. Lights flickered and the air was thick with smoke. Cross tasted engine oil and exhaust, and he heard cries of pain and alarm in the distance.

  The room was sideways, and he lay against the wall. His back and neck were stiff and his ears rang. The grey steel chamber smelled of something burning. Two more bodies lay in the corner, one half-in and half-out of a large rent in the steel, while the other had fallen at an awkward angle and broken her neck.

  Cross looked around in a daze. His eyes were heavy, and he felt like he’d just woken from a deep sleep. Something felt different in the air, twisted.

  More than a crash just happened.

  He found Avenger/Soulrazor still sheathed across his back, and his HK45 was in its holster. The Remington was on the wall, which had become the floor. The metal was warm to the touch and the air was heavy with smoke. Pale lights flickered on and off.

  Another scream came, closer this time.

  There’s something out there. Cross tried to send out his spirit, then remembered he didn’t have one. His heart sank. I’m never going to get used to this.

  He crossed the room and felt the wall shift beneath him. The entire ship seemed to be at an unstable vertical tilt. Creaking metal groaned. Cross moved slowly, his boots struggling to find purchase. He stepped over the woman’s body, twisted the rotary handle and let the door fall open with a deafening clang. The hallway outside was dim, lit by sparks of broken thaumaturgic wiring which rained down from above.

  He smelled death in the air. Cross thought of Shiv and Danica and Ronan and Flint, and his veins filled with ice.

  I’m not losing anyone else. He was going to get them to safety if it was the last thing he ever did. Thought of everything else he had to do, the war and the White Mother and Azradayne and the Maloj, all faded to the back of his mind. I have to get them home.

  He looked out the open door and into the tilted central shaft of the Skyhawk. The ship was massive and seemed to stretch on forever, and the height he stood at was dizzying. Everything overhead was shrouded in darkness except for a single shaft of light pushing in through a tear in the starboard hull.

  Other survivors looked out from the doorways along the tilted hall. Cross saw Shiv and Danica in a room about twenty yards over his head on the other side of the corridor, and a huge weight seemed to lift from his chest.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Are you girls alright?!”

  “We’re fine!” Black shouted. “Flint is unconscious!”

  “What the fuck happened?” a soldier said from the door just below him. “What hit us?!”

  “Did I hear screams?!” someone else shouted.

  And at that moment, they did.

  The vessel shifted. Cross guessed they must have landed against a hill or somehow come to ground aft-end down in some sort of canyon. Everything was unstable and felt ready to collapse. The walls buckled and knocked into him, and his stomach lurched as he waited for the Skyhawk to tip over.

  “Hang on!” someone shouted.

  He looked down. There was more damage to the hull below, ripped steel and leaking fluid and billowing grey-black smoke. Bodies dangled from wires and hung half-out of blasted doorways.

  Something monstrous moved in the darkness, a blur of arms and claws. Roars drowned out the screams. Cross couldn’t make out any details through the gritty walls of smoke. A flash of bloody light flared through the shadows. He glimpsed a many-armed thing of talons and teeth battling soldiers. Ronan was among them.

  Shit.

  Cross stepped up to the edge of the doorway.

  “Hang on, Eric!” Danica shouted. He was going to call up and tell to her not to come down, to stay with Shiv and Flint and keep them safe, but before he could she was already floating across the corridor and descending to his doorway. He smelled the burning hex of her spirit on the dank wind.

  Something exploded below. What had started as a small tear in the hull grew wider. Bodies flew out of the ship and into the pale yellow light outside. Blood splattered across the ground.

  He felt himself lifted and pulled away. Everything was spinning. He was weightless, plummeting through smoke-filled air, and he expected to fall against the sharp walls at any moment, so he just kept his eyes locked on the ground. His heart was in this throat as they dove, racing past damaged fuselage and wide-eyed soldiers watching from open doors. Hot wind rushed at them and tears stained his eyes.

  Danica’s spirit coiled around their bodies, and their feet safely touched down on the broken base of the engine-room. Ripped metal formed a forest of blades. Fuel was everywhere, thick jets of silver-black oil. Bodies drifted in the liquid or lay twisted in the wrecked steel.

  The wide hole in the starboard hull opened to a sunlit waste. Cross saw rounded ocher rocks at the edge of a blanched desert.

  They moved out into an air filled with gunfire. Bodies littered the ground, soldiers who’d been torn to shreds and left to cook under the platinum sun. A crumbling cliff wall of broken orange rock supported the leaning ship. The floor of the valley was sand and stone, striated layers of blood rock and drifts of dust under a dry white sky. Hills like broken fingers stood in the distance, and the shadows of ruined towers lay to the south.

  Ronan, Creasy, and a half-dozen Southern Claw soldiers were locked in battle with a gorilla-like beast some fifteen-feet high, its hairless body burn-black and layered with glowing runes, and each of its many limbs was capped with claws the size of machetes. It opened its fanged maw and bellowed a vicious scream.

  The thing was everywhere at once, an undulating windmill of flesh. Nails struck the ground and ripped up rock, and its toe-claws dug into the stone and rooted it to the spot.

  Bullets and blades tore at the creature. The soldiers fanned out. Ronan snarled as he gripped his katana and kodachi, and Creasy’s spirit burned around his hands like pyrotic gas. Cross took aim with the HK and watched as Danica’s spirit wound about her metal arm in a spiral of sh
arpened flame.

  The thing lurched, moving faster than the eye. Men flew bloodied and broken through the air. Creasy’s spirit burned into its flank, and Danica seized the opportunity and sent her own spirit crashing into its body in a rain of dark sparks.

  The beast smoldered. Its claws flailed wild. Another soldier sailed through the air as Ronan ducked and ran at the creature. Cross fired several shots into its hide, but even his hexed bullets seemed to have little effect, so he dropped the gun and ripped Soulrazor/Avenger free from its sheath and charged forward.

  Black arms spiraled about and saw-like nails came at him. Cross dodged razored limbs. The growling beast loomed large in his sight, a tower of raw black flesh. Cross hacked through skin bulging with thick red veins. Blood rained down on him, thick and cold, and roars filled his head.

  Ronan dove at the beast’s mid-section as it hunched low. Split veins and tendons spilled dark and smoking gore. Black’s and Creasy’s spirits collided at the creature’s torso, immolating it with crimson fire. A third spirit came down at it from above, bursting the bloodshot eyes. The creature bellowed in pain. Cross twisted out of the way to avoid being crushed, and two of the massive limbs crashed down to either side of him as the monster collapsed with a thunderous boom.

  Cross slowly stood and looked around. The dead brute’s great black body was covered with blisters and pores, and now that Cross could see the hulking corpse clearly he realized the beast wasn’t born of shadows but that its body had quite literally been burned, scorched black from living under the desert sun.

  He carefully stepped away, his limbs shaking. Ronan pulled himself off of the oozing black body. Several Southern Claw soldiers from inside the ship were running towards their fellows, who’d been spread across the ground in the creature’s rampage.

  Cross turned and looked out across the dry landscape. Besides the low valley ridge where the ship had landed the Skyhawk itself was the tallest thing to be seen for miles around, a tower of misplaced steel aimed at the sky, teetering unsteadily against the stone. Its shadow stretched long beneath the blazing silver sun.