Blood Skies (blood skies)

by Steven Montano

  I’m sorry.

  “ Hey! Tough guy!”

  The giant turned to face the voice. Graves came out of the shadows. The M203 belched out a grenade with a hollow thud. The shot took the Sorn in the chest and tore straight through its armor with a noisy explosion.

  The Sorn fell backwards and fired its weapon as it died. The shot slammed into Graves and snapped his body backwards.

  Cross screamed so loud his throat nearly tore.

  He left the Sorn and Cristena behind him and ran as fast as his failing legs would carry him. He nearly passed out.

  “ SAAAAAM!!!”

  The enormous bullet had blasted off most of Graves’ face. Bits of his jawbone and ruined tongue were just visible in the bloody mess. Cross put a hand on his friend’s arm and doubled over, sick.

  He didn’t move for a long time. If there were more Sorn there in Rhaine, he hoped they’d just find him and finish him off.

  Later, sometime near dawn, Cross left Graves and Cristena and went and found Stone. As he’d guessed, Stone was also dead, having been cut down by Sorn gunfire. He hadn’t left without giving them the proverbial fight. No fewer than four dead Sorn were near Stone’s body, each of them torn to ribbons by mini-gun fire, small explosions or sliced open by Stone’s black-bladed kukri. It was remarkable he’d lived long enough to do such damage. Cross could only barely recognize the body.

  Cross stood at the edge of the Rift and stared out across the long and rickety bridge. Thick grey fumes floated in the depths of the canyon, a rich and poison fog. Strange shadows hovered there like drowning birds. Dismal calls echoed from the depths. The walls of the Rift were jagged and impossibly tall.

  Across the canyon waited a dismal wasteland of cold steam and black hills. That bridge might as well have led through to another world. No reliable data of what lay on the other side of the Carrion Rift had ever been gathered.

  Some movement from behind him caught Cross’ eye. A pale spider crawled across the ground, separated, it seemed, from the destruction all around it. It scuttled off into the shadows.

  The camel found him later. It had wandered through the city, carefully avoiding the flames. Now it stood nearby, waiting. It knew they weren’t done.

  But I am, Cross thought. I’m done.

  No, she says, a voice from the edge of the glade. Will you let it end like this? Will they die in vain?

  We all do, he replies. Each and every one of us.

  And yet…

  And yet there he was.

  He would not leave this unfinished. He felt hollow inside, broken, and exhausted beyond measure, but he was alive, and their mission was now his burden alone to carry.

  He decided, right then and there, that he would carry it.

  PART FIVE

  SOULS

  TWENTY

  WITCH

  Cross and his last remaining companion crossed the bridge, and entered a dead land.

  Blue-gray fog enshrouded everything. The land on the other side of the Rift was thick black mud interrupted by occasional islands of dry earth. Deep saltwater marsh and bubbling pools of acrid slime made walking a chore, and before Cross and the camel had marched for even a few minutes they were both covered up to their knees in sludge. The air was bitterly cold and icy, and their breath hung heavy in the air.

  There were spirit voices in the fog there on the other side of the Carrion Rift, more than Cross had ever heard in any one place before, but they were surprisingly passive. They moaned like lost children, confused and frightened.

  The camel trudged on behind him, slow but stable. Cross spoke to the pack animal in a reassuring manner from time to time, his voice alien in the silence, but he was just happy to have someone to talk to.

  “ We’re doing well,” he told it. “We’re doing just fine.”

  Cross wasn’t exactly sure where they were headed. The map he’d translated put Koth’s location somewhere in the area just north of the Carrion Rift, but that was as specific as it got. They’d come to where the map had told them to go.

  Now, he felt as if he were nowhere. They seemed to have reached the end of the earth.

  Cross saw signs of lost civilization in the form of baskets set out on the ground at irregular intervals. The baskets had been filled with bones. Cross decided not to investigate them.

  They rested often. Something about that place seemed to drain his strength, and Cross sensed the same in the camel. The squad had kept most of their supplies on the pack beast, which meant that Cross now had little need to worry about rations or fresh water. He wanted desperately to start a camp fire, but for some reason he doubted that was a wise idea.

  The air was sullen and grey. Cross heard insects buzz through the air, and the occasional call of a distant bird. There was no breeze. It felt as if the world had paused, frozen.

  They continued north, or so he hoped. It was difficult to tell in that endless fog, and he’d lost his compass somewhere back in Rhaine. Cross quickly lost track of time. It was difficult to measure the hours, or even the day, when the dull grey light never changed.

  Trenches appeared in the landscape, deep enough and wide enough that Cross and the camel could fit down into them. Cross decided against using them at first. After a while, however, there were so many trenches it became challenging to navigate around them. The higher ground became a maze of ridiculously thin earthen paths.

  Cross succumbed, and he led the camel down a gentle slope. The ground down in the trenches was even muddier than the higher ground, and soon they sloshed through ankle-deep water turned red-brown from sediment and rust.

  All the while, the spirits passed around them at a distance, curious, watching. Cross kept his own spirit close, for fear she’d be drawn away by these others.

  “ I’m not going to name you,” he told the camel some time later.

  Cross’ body had grown bone weary. He was wet and cold, and the wrist of his left hand itched terribly inside the gauntlet. The air felt sick, and he felt constantly fatigued no matter how much or how little they rested. Still, he refused to stop for any extended period, sensing it was dangerous to do so in a place that already robbed them of so much of their strength. He was afraid to sleep in that undead land.

  “ I’ve never named my spirit, either. Things that I name tend not to last very long.”

  He wondered how Cristena’s spirit had endured her death. He’d heard the spirit’s pain and rage when she’d died. Cross had half expected the spirit to follow him, if it was able. For all he knew its voice was mingled with the other whispers now, just a part of the ghostly choir that drifted through the mist.

  They walked on through the mud, endlessly. He knew they had to stop eventually. They’d have to sleep.

  Where is he? Cross wondered. Where is the Old One? Where is Koth?

  Where’s Red?

  “ Here.”

  He stopped.

  They were no longer in the trenches. And it was no longer they, but he.

  Cross stood alone in the fog, ankle deep in brackish water. A tall, red-headed woman stood before him, her body wrapped in a tattered black cloak and a dark riding skirt. Her eyes were large and expressive and as blue as sapphires. Her long hair hung loose, and a long braid of strands dyed coal black dangled down one side of her face. She wore leather gauntlets set with metal studs, and her feet were bound in tall black boots covered with mud. Her beautiful face bore a perfect and happy smile, like she greeted an old friend.

  “ Bitch!” he shouted.

  Cross didn’t hesitate. He called his spirit up to form an eldritch shield, and breathed her into a lance of ice…

  Nothing happened. His spirit was gone. Again.

  Oh, no…how?…

  “ She’s fine,” Red said. She made a sweeping gesture, and the fog burned away. A flowing stream of water ran cold against Cross’ booted feet. Ice-laden leaves fell from the wet canopy of trees. The dark mountain loomed over them, an edifice of the past.

  “ I’m dead,
” Cross said aloud. Red laughed. “Or not.” He thought. “Asleep.”

  “ Unconscious,” she corrected with a smile. “But I like that you immediately assumed the worst.”

  “ Go to hell.”

  “ Drop the tough guy act,” she said patiently. “You’re not Graves, and you’re not Stone. You’re not even Cristena. She had more balls than you do.”

  “ What do you want?” he asked. Dream or not, his flesh felt frozen as he stood there in the icy stream. His gut churned. He knew how powerful Red was in real life. He had no idea what she was capable of there, wherever they were.

  “ I wanted to meet you,” she smiled. “The best way to do it seemed to be to approach you when you couldn’t do anything foolish.”

  “ So you waited until I fell asleep?”

  “ I put you to sleep. It wasn’t hard. Even if you hadn’t been completely exhausted — which you were — the Carnivore Mists would have worn you down eventually.”

  “ So what’s become of my body?”

  “ We’ll get to that,” she smiled. Cross could see how men found Red attractive: she had smooth skin and a voluptuous frame, her voice was seductive and she was surrounded by an air of authority. He, personally, found her loathsome, full of false confidence and empty charm. “You know,” she said, “I may not be able to read your thoughts, but I can sense your emotions.”

  “ Good for you,” Cross said. He did his best to focus his mind, to keep it clear and on the moment. “So, here we are in a dream. What now?”

  “ We both know you’re not up to this.”

  Cross didn’t bother hiding his emotions at that point. He called up memories of fallen Southern Claw soldiers. He thought of the wreckage and refuse, the coffins and the funeral services, the songs of sadness and pain.

  “ Do you want to know how many have died because of you, ‘Red’?”

  “ Is it so hard to call me by my real name?” she smiled. “Margrave Azazeth. You used to revere it, after all. I authored many of the Southern Claw’s laws. I led you through Thornn’s darkest hours.”

  “ And then you betrayed us,” Cross said quietly. “All of that time you were leading us, you were setting us up to fail.”

  “ You’re an idiot if you believe that,” Red said bitterly. “The Southern Claw Alliance was doomed from the start, and you know it. All of us were. Even the warlocks and the witches that everyone thought were so special, that were supposed to be humankind’s last hope in the war against the vampires, never had a chance. No one could accept the simple truth: if we keep on fighting, we’re all going to die.”

  And so she’d taken their sacred codex, the Tome of Scars, the closest thing to a human artifact that they had. It stored the assembled knowledge of all that humans had accomplished in this new and dark world — what they knew of magic, how they used thaumaturgy and science to pull life and resources from a poisoned earth that didn’t want to give them anything, how they’d cheated their own evolutionary demise and had kept civilization going long after it should have failed. It was a handbook for survival in a world turned insane.

  There were many who thought it foolish to store so much vital knowledge all in one place. As it turned out, they were right to be skeptical. It was discovered too late that creating the Tome of Scars had been Red’s idea all along. Even at the beginning, when everyone poured their faith and devotion into this woman who seemed to practically be an avatar of the distant and unseen White Mother, Red had planned to steal the Tome, which contained knowledge she could never have amassed on her own. But with the help of scholars, leaders and mages, the Tome had become a living document, a place to record how humanity had endured after The Black. It didn’t matter that there were copies of the Tome: it was the secrets held within that had been lost.

  Margrave — Red — fled with the Tome so that she could give its information to an ancient and decrepit vampire seer known only as the Old One. He, in turn, would provide those secrets to the lords of the Ebon Cities.

  “ So what do you think they’ll do with it?” Cross asked angrily. “Wipe us out?”

  “ You can’t be that naive,” Red said sadly. “The Ebon Cities want this war to end as badly as we do. They’ll use the information in the Tome to force us to stop fighting. My story is not one of genocide, Cross. This is a tale of a surrender.”

  “ Bullshit.”

  “ Fine,” she breathed. “Bullshit. Either way, the Tome is in the Old One’s hands now. You’re too late.” She stepped closer. “Give it up. The rest of your group died stupidly. You don’t have to.”

  “ Why did you do it?” he asked quietly. His words were sharp and clear in the brittle air.

  She smiled a surprisingly vulnerable smile.

  “ I’m naturally evil, I guess.”

  “ We’re in a dream,” Cross said. “There’s nothing that I can do to you here. Even if this were real, you’re much more powerful than I am.” Their eyes were locked. “What could it hurt to tell me the truth?”

  “ I was tired of all of the death,” she said at last. “This way, it ends. No more suffering. No more living in fear.”

  “ But we want to live,” Cross said. “Life in the Southern Claw sucks…but it’s life. People want to keep on living. We want to survive. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be doing this.”

  “ You haven’t seen half of what I’ve seen,” she said, her anger rising.

  “ Lady, I’ve seen plenty,” he spat back. “This decision isn’t yours to make.”

  “ I was the only one of you that the White Mother would even talk to,” she said. “Of course it was my decision. I was your leader.”

  “ You lost that title and any right to represent us the moment you stopped thinking about the Southern Claw…”

  “ I was ALWAYS thinking of the Southern Claw!” she shouted, her voice strained with desperation and defiance. “I’ll end the war. I…” She regained her composure in a heartbeat. “It doesn’t matter what you think. It’s already too late.”

  The imaginary wind picked up, a reflection of Cross’ anger. He heard the neigh of dark horses. The bloody ebon unicorns from his visions crashed through the trees.

  “ You’re afraid that I’ll stop you,” he said. “That’s the only reason you’d even bother appearing here to me now.”

  “ I’m not afraid of a pathetic warlock who can’t even muster up the skill to protect his own sister.” Red laughed.

  “ Where is she?”

  Red nodded towards the line of trees.

  Cross saw Snow just inside the canopy. She was bloody and bruised, soaked and terrified.

  His spirit was there with her.

  The cadre of black unicorns had surrounded them, and prodded the women with their jagged horns.

  “ She’s waiting for you,” Red said. “You’re almost there, Cross.”

  Cross took a deep breath.

  “ You know I have to kill you,” he said.

  She nodded, almost sadly.

  “ Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do. But to do that, you’ll have to come and get me.”

  The sky pulled apart like tissue in water. Everything faded and cracked. Patches of red light punched through the sky. The world became a breaking mirror.

  “ I’ll see you soon,” she said, and the sky melted.

  Cross’ body shattered like glass. He was ripped back into the waking world.

  TWENTY-ONE

  CLAWS

  Cross woke on his back, looking up at the sky. Ooze pressed against his sinking body, and greasy water filled his eyes like polluted tears. He lay half submerged in a grave of mud. Everything was brown and black. Night lay beyond the ambient mist, as thick as grease.

  He rose, unsteady. He was soaked to the bone. Silver light danced in the distance, a muted aurora. Mud was caked against his face. It was difficult to even stand up in the sludge.

  Cross looked around, and found he was alone. The camel had gone, or it had been taken, but if that had been the case he reasoned he
’d have been taken, too. Likely the stalwart creature had finally wandered off on its own, bored of a companion who was always unconscious.

  He listened for the whispers, waited for the silken touch of his spirit, but, as he feared, she was gone. Again.

  Cross wanted to just lie down and be done with it. Angry tears welled up in his eyes. He crouched down heel to haunch, and put his eyes and ears in his hands.

  When he opened his eyes again, sometime later, it had grown dark. He was in the middle of nowhere, awash in a sea of inky night, standing in darkness so thick that he could taste it. There was just he and the silence, trapped together in a black prison without walls.

  It was almost pitch black by the time Cross started walking. His boots splashed in the mud and marsh, and the cold air froze his clothes to his skin. He still wore his armored coat and had his weapons and alchemy on his person, but he had no food and, more distressing, no source of light. His eyes might as well have been in his pocket for all the good they did him. He could’ve been at the edge of the cliff or about to walk into a wall, and he wouldn’t have even known it.

  He walked, bolstered by the thought of seeing Snow again, almost believing it would happen.

  Time passed. He couldn’t say how much. Nothing changed. The world remained black and moist and quiet.

  Cross stopped, even if he wasn’t sure why. Something felt wrong. He had no spirit to tell him what, and he certainly hadn’t actually seen or heard anything. But he felt something, a sense of a presence in the dark…or maybe an absence.

  He took some small comfort in the weapons he still carried: Graves’ Remington 870 sawed-off shotgun, his own HK45 and Graves’ SIG Sauer, a hex grenade, and Stone’s kukri machete. But even with all of those armaments, he felt largely defenseless without his spirit.

  Something moved out in the dark. Cross heard whatever it was this time, and he smelled something charnel, like grave soil and excrement.