Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) (2 page)

Wara was there, the Doj mercenary who led the group called the Grey Watch, her face badly scarred.  She and the Lith called Witch helped Shiv and Flint get on their feet; it seemed everyone had collapsed the same as Cross.

“What the hell…?” he started, but Ankharra put her arm under his and helped him to stand.

“
No time for that,” she said.  “We need to go.”

The howl came again, and the sky seemed to rip.  A pillar of darkness exploded from within the broken ring of mountains.  Cold wind swept in and down, stinging to the touch and smelling of rot. 

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“
I’m not entirely sure,” Ankharra said.  “But I’ve got one Bloodhawk left and barely any men.  The Ebon Cities forces withdrew, and I think it’s time we did the same.”

Cross looked around the beach.  Corpses littered the pale sand, most of them the half-dissolved black corpses of what they’d called the Witchborn – vampires crafted by the Witch’s Eye, bastardized and magic-yielding creatures who’d become a potential threat to all life on the planet.  There were other bodies, Ebon Cities vampires in black and silver combat armor and Southern Claw soldiers out of Talon Company.

“They all dropped,” Ankharra said as he steadied himself.  He glanced up and saw Danica talking to a medic and holding her head in her hands. 

“
Who?” Cross asked.

“
The Witchborn,” Ankharra said.  “They all fell at once.”

“
That must have been when Dani destroyed the Eye,” he said with a grim nod.  “But that’s when the other trouble started.”

“
What happened to them?” Ankharra said.

“
They were sacrificed,” he said.

They looked back at the gap in the rocks, the path to the inner island, bordered by sharp stones like spear-tips. 

“Sacrificed?” Ankharra asked.

“
To open that gate,” he said.  “Something came through.”  He looked at Ankharra.  He felt lead in his chest.  “We failed.  We couldn’t stop her.”

“
Couldn’t stop Danica?” 

“
She didn’t know what she was doing,” Cross said quickly.  He looked up at the sky and watched the billowing tower of shadow.  “It was Azradayne.”

“
Ankharra!” Wara shouted from further down the beach.  “Let’s move!”

The howl came again, peeling back the air like torn skin.  Cross felt drops of gore on the wind.

He pulled away from Ankharra and raced over to Flint and Shiv.  There were less than a dozen Southern Claw soldiers left, scanning the area and watching for trouble as they quickly made their way towards a breakwater standing a few yards out from the rocky and moss-covered shore.  Aside from Grail and Witch none of the other Lith from the group they’d met outside Dirge had survived.  All of the soldiers and Doj had been burned, bloodied and bruised. 

“
Are you okay?” he asked the father and daughter. 

Flint nodded.  There were traces of blood in his ears and on his cheeks.  He held Shiv tight.  Cross looked at her, and she nodded.  She was clearly terrified, but tried her best not to show it. 

“We’re okay,” she said.

“
Good,” he said.  Every time those two were in danger he went rigid with fear.  The notion of something happening to them sent ice through his veins.  “You’d best get over to that rock, then,” he told them.  “They’re going to take us out of here.”

He turned back and moved towards Danica. 

“We need to go,” she said.  She stumbled a bit as she walked, and just like Cross she looked battered and exhausted.  Danica’s black hair looked so strange and out of place, and with her armor jacket torn he had a clear view of the metal appendage, the automaton arcane arm the Revengers had placed there.  Danica might have still been at least partially under the influence of the vampires, and the eldritch steel was doubtlessly capable of more than simply serving as a repository and focus for her spirit.  But none of that mattered.  In spite of his fatigue and fear a jolt of strength rushed through his body at the sight of her.  Her skin looked smooth and soft, radiant in the budding dawn light.  Her eyes were deep green and seemed to glow, and her hair lifted in the wind. 

I thought I’d never see you again.

She walked up to him, and he threw his arms around her.

Another howl came, closer this time, nearly at the edge of the sharp stones.  The sound clawed at the barrier and brought the touch of ice to their skin.

They started towards the shore. 

We just can’t catch a break
, he thought bitterly.

The battered Bloodhawk came into view from out of the clouds, circling the perimeter of the island.  It looked to have taken its share of hits, and smoke trailed from its aft end. 

“Does the Bloodhawk have any weapons left?” Cross asked Ankharra as they moved down the beach and approached the breakwater.  The cold sea washed over his boots.  He looked ahead and saw Shiv and Flint with Wara, who guided them towards the ship.  He felt panic rising in his throat.  The air pulsed, as if to some massive and dissonant heartbeat.

“
Yes,” Ankharra said.

“
Good.  Because as soon as we get on board I recommend you blow this entire island to hell.”

The Bloodhawk hovered just over the shore.  Turbines blasted up sea wind and kicked out wet sand, and the people waiting on the ground had to shield themselves with their arms.  Cross squinted through the grey light.

“Cross!”  Danica shouted so she could be heard over the Bloodhawk’s engines.  “We have to find Ronan!”

“
Where is he?”  He’d completely forgotten that she’d mentioned the swordsman had been there with her, and that they’d gotten separated.  The thought of Ronan being lost somewhere on the island sent ice down his spine.

“
I’m not sure,” she said.  “I lost sight of him when we crashed.”  She looked back towards the heart of the island.  “There’s a good chance he didn’t make it.” 

“
I doubt that,” Cross said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.  “That man has a habit of living through things that would kill almost anyone else.”

“
Then we can’t leave him,” she said.

“
I agree,” he said. 
We’ve lost enough friends.

The Bloodhawk dropped a pair of steel-rung ladders down to the surface of the breakwater.  The ladders flapped and dangled until one of the Doj got a hold of it. 

A pair of Southern Claw soldiers climbed up first, their M16As slung across their backs, then turned so they could help the others get into the ship.  The vessel hovered, held steady in spite of the rising wind.  There wasn’t much room on the breakwater, and someone could be seriously injured if anything happened to batter or shove the Bloodhawk off course, but it was too dangerous to land the vessel on the beach for fear of it sinking into the sand.  The Bloodhawk’s silver and grey body dripped with seawater, and its 20mm cannons rotated and stayed trained on the gap in the pass, which bubbled with shadows. 

Flint and Shiv climbed up one of the ladders; Cross watched breathlessly as they went, half-expecting something terrible to happen, but both of them made it inside safely.  Wara waited atop the breakwater and directed the boarding, her massive boots firmly planted on the mossy and jagged stone.  Her height meant she could practically climb up and into the ship without the aid of the ladder.

“Ankharra!” Cross yelled.  His face was covered with misty spray, and his skin was icy cold.  “We need to find our missing man!”

“
What?!” she shouted, somewhat incredulous.  “Who?!”

“
Ronan, from my team, he came here with Danica!”

“
Cross, maybe you haven’t noticed,” Ankharra yelled back over the sound of the blasting turbines, “but there’s a whole gang of shadowy monsters about to bust off this island, and they’re not going to wait around for us to search for your friend!”

He felt whispers in the air, sensed as Danica conducted an arcane survey of the area.  “I think I’ve got him,” she said.  Her eyes glowed hot white.  “But there’s some interference.  I can’t get a lock.”  She turned and shouted to Ankharra.  “Can we look from the air?!”

“We’re getting out of here!” Ankharra said.  “This mission has been a failure, largely because of you,” she said pointedly to Danica. 

As Cross expected, Black didn’t take kindly to that. 

“You know all about failure, don’t you, Ankharra?!” she said.

“
Do you have something to say, Revenger?!” Ankharra snapped.

There was some history between them Cross had never fully understood, though he’d gotten some hint of it in Karamanganjii, when the soldiers of Talon Company had been ordered to help Cross secure the city so he could find the Woman in the Ice.  He still didn’t know anything about their quarrel; Danica hadn’t offered up any clues, and he’d never really bothered to pry.

The two witches closed in on one another, and the air curled and burned from the force of their spirits.  He tasted hex power and ozone, like a lightning bolt had just struck.

This might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

Cross stepped right between them.  He felt Danica’s spirit sweep against him, almost singeing his hair.  Ankharra’s spirit was less gentle, and it pushed Cross a few inches across the ground with painful force before it reigned back.  Their whispers clawed at his ears and made his head throb with pain.

“
Later!” he shouted.  Oddly, Soulrazor/Avenger tensed where it was slung across his back.  He felt it shift in place on its own.  Voices echoed from within the dual-blades, pushing at the edge of his consciousness.  He couldn’t understand them, and wasn’t sure he wanted to.  “We don’t have time for this crap!”

Most of the Southern Claw crew had climbed aboard.  A pair of soldiers still stood on the shore, uneasily watching the rippling shadows at the gap of the peaks, and a couple more were atop the breakwater, waiting for the three mages to make the climb.

“Just let us do a quick fly-by,” Cross said to Ankharra.  “We should probably try to ascertain the size of whatever is in there…”

“
There’s no time,” Ankharra said.  She broke her gaze away from Danica and looked at Cross.  “I’ve called it in.  Two Hellhawks are en route.”

Hellhawks.  Southern Claw strafe bombers.  They were seldom used because their arcane payloads were incredibly destructive and often twisted the landscape in unpredictable ways.  They were capable of dropping more traditional napalm and explosive blasts, but Hellhawks were rarely deployed for that purpose.  Instead they dropped Hellbombs – cold iron missiles of raw arcane force, filled with mixes of vitriolic and magical explosives.  It was dangerous to even stand near them for more than a few minutes without the benefit of thaumaturgic shielding.

“How long?” Black demanded.

“
They’ll be here within thirty minutes,” Ankharra said.  “Hopefully that’ll be soon enough to destroy whatever is in there.”

“
Then we have time to do a fly over,” Cross said.  Ankharra rolled her eyes.  “Please,” he said, hearing the fear in his own voice, and not caring that Ankharra heard it, too.  “There isn’t much of my team left.”

“
You want to put that little girl in danger…”

“
I want to take thirty seconds to do a perimeter sweep of the island,” Cross said.  “I think we can manage that safely, since for the time being whatever it is in there seems content to stay out of sight.”  He looked at Danica.  She was barely containing her anger, but he was thankful she bit her tongue.  He turned back to Ankharra.  “Please.”

The witch looked at the ship, then at the shadows.  The darkness was like an oily mass of boiling water, but for some reason it hadn’t advanced beyond the narrow pass.

“Let’s go,” Ankharra said after what seemed at eternity, and she turned away.

“
Ankharra…” he said, but she barked at him from over her shoulder.

“
We’ll do a quick sweep for your friend,” he said.  “And that’s it.  I intend to be far away from here when those Hellhawks arrive.”

The Bloodhawk lifted into the sky.  The wind battered the ship, not the natural force of a heavy gale but more like the wind had claws, and was grabbing for them.

The inside of the vessel was cramped because so many people were aboard.  Thin seats lined the back end of the ship, right next to the lowering hangar door.  The pilots up front were on an elevated platform bound off by short iron rails, and heaps of equipment lay between the lower staging area and the cockpit.  The vessel was twice as large as the Darkhawk used to be, but unlike the team’s old vehicle it wasn’t divided into two levels but was one large room filled with the deafening groan of turbine engines and the smell of sweat and fear.  Thin viewports to port and aft allowed only intermittent view of what lay outside, and with the rising wind all they could really see was white waves and splashing water. 

Luckily Ankharra had a scrying stone, a green jewel dangling from the end of a short silver chain.  Ankharra stood near the back of the vehicle and held the chain so the jewel hung suspended over the palm of her hand.  Light dripped from the gem and ignited the air, and within it Ankharra would see the full range of her spirit’s heightened senses.  Her eyes shone like emeralds, sending hazy illumination over her dark and tattooed face, and Cross felt a cold breeze and heard the sharp whisper of a spirit’s garbled voice.