Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (39 page)

Her spirit faded.  She heard engines approach, and
she
smelled the rot of carrion corp
ses.  Her legs had gone numb.  Her t
ears had run all over Lara’s dead face. 

“You’re all I ever wanted…” she sobbed.  “
All I ever wanted
…”

Geist pulled her away.  The
half-
Doj was
too
large and
too
strong
for her to even consider putting up a fight
. 

R
ake and Raven looked on in silence.
Their dark cloaks rippled
in the
subterranean wind
.  Scarecrows gathered up the bodies and
unceremoniously
cast them into the pits.

Danica watched Cole fall
into the dark
.  She seemed frozen there for a moment,
trapped
in black stasis.  Her body was so frail, so temporary.

And then she was gone.

Do you?

“I’m impressed, Dani,” Rake said.  “I guess
we’ll use
you
after all.”

She looked at him. 
She felt nothing. 
She
knew that she
hated him, but
at that moment
all she wanted was for
him to kill her.  Her spirit was gone, shielded off by Raven.  She had nothing left.

Not true
, she told herself. 
You still have Cross.

But that knowledge did
nothing for
her pain. 

Lara, the love of her life, was gone.

SIXTEEN

RIFT

They
enter
a wasteland of broken stone. 

The forest fades behind them in
to
a shroud of black ice mist.  Steep hills
made of
shattered shale and loose plates of granite lead
to bitter peaks
that resemble
teeth.  The sky is flat and still, and the air is bitterly cold.

He
walks with
the small army of
Grey Clan
.  The black wind
batters them
mercilessly
. 
T
heir clothing is
weighted down with shadows
. 

The
land slopes up
.  T
he
climb
through the Burned Hills
is arduous.  H
is muscles ache.  H
e uses
whatever cracks and crevices he can find
to haul himself up the rock face
. 

The stones grow tall
er.  Mov
ing through them is like navigating a path of knives.  The path is riddled with pits and flaws left by acid shower
s
. 

The
land is
sharp.  Blood sluices down his hand as he crawls through the razor peaks. 

The Burned Hills are vast
, and
they are
covered
with caustic stains and burns. 

The dark mountains fade
into the endless dusk.  There’
s nothing to the north or south, but to the west, many miles away, stands a mountain.

I know that mountain. 
I’ve seen it before.

The Black Citadel
wait
s on that distant peak.  It
holds
the entrance to the Carrion Rift, and the way home.

The
trek
across the Burned Hills is riddled with hardship.

The mist on the ground
conceal
s
dark crevices, wounds in the stone that lead
to
underground
sea
s
of void
darkness
. 

Several Grey Clan d
ie
.  They
don’t see the cracks until
it’s
too late, and they
scream
and fall
and are gone before anyone knows what happened.

The sky bleeds liquid.  It’s been so long since he’s seen rain he almost forgets what it’s like, but he
know
s it wasn’
t like this.  The substance is b
lack and viscous, like tar and honey.  It paints them dark,
makes their feet stick
to the ground.  Its touch is ice cold and stings the flesh.

They move on.

Vast worms
slither
across the landscape.  Like
the
other creatures of the Whisperlands they are more shadow than real, smelted charcoal forms that writhe
and twist across the Hills.  The
worms
are
half-
humanoid
: slimy
torsos
with
gangly arms
and sharp
talons
and
rows of razor
spines atop massive inchworm bodies
. 

The travelers try to avoid these horrors, but can’t.  More Grey Clan fall in an onslaught of blade
s
and poison-tipped tails
, chewed to bloody bits
or thrown against the rocks
and
reduced to
blood
stains on the stones
.

He kills one of the beasts on his own, and with Kyver’s aid
he
kills
another.  Shadow skin reinforced with chitnous bone plate makes the beasts difficult to destroy. 

After a time, bone-tired and covered in blue-black blood and worm remains, he and the survivors
finally reach the far side
of the Burned Hills.

There are only ten of them left
now
, where before there were over twenty. 

The
y stand
at the edge of a
poison
glade. 

Pools of briny water release bursts of vile yellow slime.  Viscous pools
churn with
slithering grease. 
S
tones
shaped
like coffins
stand on the other side of the pools,
near a small forest of dark trees at the base of the mountain.

They carefully navigate
through
the area
. 
S
mall animal-like creatures, purple and black lizards and razorback toads
,
race away as they approach. 

The smooth stones
are slabs of
frozen
crystal
fused around
humanoid
remains.  The creatures
frozen
within have claws and sha
rp fangs, and he realizes they’
re vampires
,
trapped
in
the dark
ice.

They pass through a graveyard of
frost-
en
tombed
dead.  The sick pools bubble and pop as they
walk through
the labyrinth of ice sarcophagi.

A storm churns
over
the mountain.  The peak is preposterously tall and looms over their heads.  Dull
bursts
of thunder echo out of the sky.  Pale explosions detonate within the cobalt clouds.

They’
v
e nearly
reached
the forest when the stones
fall apart
.

Icy rock
melt
s
like candles.  Thick chunks of frozen
crystal
fly through the air.
 
The
cloying cold
turns
to a sweltering heat.  Massive talons tear through the ice.  Dripping anemic bodies pull themselves free.  Slathering fangs open wide and
issue
cold howls.

He draws his blade.  There are a dozen vampires, and they descend on the group from all directions.  Flesh tears and blood flies.  His arms ache as
he
does battle.  Gore covers his face.

They are beset by waves of
un
dead. 
K
ni
f
e
-like claws
pierce
reptilian flesh
. 
Hammers smash vampire skulls
into pulp
.  C
laws
rend open torsos and tear off faces.
 

Kyver motions.  He and Vala
run for
a narrow
corridor lead
ing
into the mountain,
located
just past the small forest
.

Cross
follows.  A vampire flies at him with such speed he can’t react before it throws him to the ground.  The back of his
head
strikes rock.  Everything bleeds to a blur.  He feels the body come down on top of him. 

Talons scrape across his
knuckles
.  H
e hisses as blood pours
onto his face
.  He pushes
back
with all
of
his strength
. 

The vampire glares down at him. 
Cross
sees himself r
eflected back in its glassy
eyes.

He
kicks
and
rolls away from the naked brute.  It lashes out and rakes him across the back
.  H
e falls screaming.  Razors
burn
across his skin.

Without thinking he rises to his feet, turns and buries his blade in the vampire’s face.  Cold blood splashes
on
his arms.  He wrenches Soulrazor/Avenger free
from the gnarled bone
.

The
reptilians
are
dying all around him
.  They fight v
aliantly.  Spears skewer undead
and curved sickle blades cut through the dark-haired fiends, but the vampires are too strong, and more
of them
appear
out of
other ice
tombs
, primitive undead interred in frozen prisons to act as sentries for
the Shadow Lords
. 

V
ampire
s
fall beneath
wedge blades
.  Reptilian
throats are torn out
. 
Vampires
dart
in and out like wolves, stab
their foes
with eight-inch claws, pull away, stab again
,
a dance of blades and blood.

Something grabs him from behind, and he nearly turns and stabs Vala. 
She scowls, and
pushes him
forward
.  Kyver is a hundred yards away, just inside
the
dark doorway into the mountain.
  The corridor i
s next to
the
copse of dark trees
, a glade
at the edge of an ice-water pool. 

It looks familiar.

Heavy leaves fall
in his path
.  He sees women
assembled near the tree line. 

She’s there.  She
has
to be there.

He
goes
to
find her.  His feet splash in
ankle-deep
freezing waters
that hadn’t been there a moment before
.  Tears of joy
run down his face
.

No
,
Vala screams, but he doesn’t listen.  He can’t. 

He
only t
akes a few
steps when tentacle
s
wrap around his leg. 
Their
touch is so cold
they
burn.  The water bubbles and pulls back, no longer icy and cold but
hot
and turgid
and
filled with blood.  Foamy eyes take shape
in the murk
.