Now, they were always with her, even when she willed them away.
Things gathered at the edge of the dome, the cracked barrier surrounding her world, and all Shiv could do was watch. The howling wind tore at her clothing and scalded her skin. Her hands were tied behind her to a jagged wooden pole which rubbed raw against her back. Her wrists ground against the ropes, and her skin was ice cold.
Lighting shot through the darkness. The world smelled like something recently ignited.
Shiv didn’t dare call on the spirits for help. That was exactly what the Maloj wanted.
It watched her from below, its eyes locked on her. The cold and dismal presence loomed like a pit below the ice. Cracks like fine wires wound across the grey-white surface of the lake, so solid and thick it looked like marble. The wolf was there, gathering his strength, in command of the legions of Koth.
The ice was cold, but the Maloj’s fathomless heart made it colder. Shiv’s limbs were numb, her lips as brittle as ice. She stood just at the edge of the shore, her bare feet less than a foot away from the lake’s edge. Waves of freezing mist curled around her ankles.
To call the spirits would reveal the truth. The Maloj had somehow developed an immunity to the power she’d used to destroy its brethren in Nezzek’duul, just as it had grown immune to the unearthly ballistics used by the Ebon Kingdoms to destroy the second wolf back in ASC 5. Now it could use her spirits if she summoned them, force them to reveal Shiv’s secrets by forging a conduit to her soul.
It wanted Bloodhollow, and it would use Shiv to get it, not only to gain access but to prevent her from doing what she was supposed to do there. Years of destroying its enemies and trying to secure a way to breach the barrier once more were about to come to fruition: it sought to crack the dome and allow its black-hearted brethren to come pouring through the seams of the universe.
Only Shiv stood in its way, and only for as long as she could resist. She was important to what would happen there, or what had already happened there. She knew things about Bloodhollow, things she’d forgotten, or perhaps never known. It held her in its trap, and if she summoned the spirits to help her now it would gather those ghostly energies like fireflies trapped in a jar and use them to extract all of the information it needed.
Even when that was done, it wouldn’t just kill her, for then her powers would pass to another, just as the White Mother’s had been passed on to her. It would keep her here, a slave.
Ice fog coated her face. She heard the sheet cracking, saw the monster’s breath steam up through the flaws like rancid steam. Bursts in the frozen lake appeared here and there, random damages as the wolf built its strength.
I’m sorry, she thought, to no one in particular. To her father, to Cross, to Danica. To Ronan...especially to Ronan. You all believed in me, and I failed.
The Maloj came closer to the surface. Even from the other side of three feet of frozen ice she felt his unearthly coldness, sensed the dismal singularity of his dark purpose.
He was going to destroy the world, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
Mace came and watched her.
The sky above roiled with clouds ice grey and charcoal black. Sounds echoed in the distance, undead sentries on patrol and the screams of their captives as they were flayed or fed into slow-working meat grinders or blood vats. For as much as they purported to be better than the vampires, Shiv thought the undead of Koth were even more brutal and cruel than the Ebon Kingdoms.
“Give it what it wants,” Mace told her. He dressed all in white, a stark contrast to the liches and black zombies he associated with. With his thick frosted flesh and iron grey eyes he seemed almost a ghost himself. “It’s the only way.”
“It’ll kill us ALL!” Shiv yelled at him. She was her knees. Her cloak had torn and her armor jacket was gone, leaving her in a thin shirt and pants so covered in grime and frost it was a wonder they hadn’t fallen apart. She was so tired she could barely keep her eyes open, but the pain in her wrists and back and the hellish chill gripping her body kept her alert enough to see the traitor. “They are what started The Black, Mace!” she shouted, her voice hoarse. “And you want to help them, after all they’ve done?!”
Mace watched her impassively. When he spoke again his voice was calm, and cold:
“They will stop our suffering.”
Wisps of black smoke leaked from the ice. Shiv felt impossible cold wrack her body from the inside out, a barren and numbing chill which almost sent her into paroxysms of shock. Darkness seeped at the edge of her vision like ink spilled in the water. The clouds shifted in the hard wind, and the sliver of moon high above looked like a downward pointing blade.
She heard the voices, felt them racing along her flesh, the call of lost ghosts desperate to explode out of the wastelands and come to her defense. A horde of abandoned spirits, derelicts of the wastelands. She, the last Kindred, was their only true connection to the world of the living, and she’d proved in the past she was willing to sacrifice much to keep them safe. They loved and wanted to help her as much as she helped them.
Shiv fought them off. She wouldn’t allow herself to manipulate their power, wouldn’t allow them to help her. Without her to give them direction they were ineffectual, just a mass of spirit fog, incapable of giving themselves enough form and focus to manifest in the world of the living in any meaningful way, but to arcane spirits they were deadly, a band of hungry predators who would not be sated with anything shy of another ghost’s blood.
That’s it, she realized.
Shiv focused her mind. The Maloj tensed in the ice below. Rippling cracks spread out like a web across the dark surface. It was waiting for her to act, to reach out and give the spirits direction so it could force them to tell it the secrets of Bloodhollow.
But Shiv didn’t call them. Instead, she thought about Mace.
The warlock hadn’t practiced his craft for years – the physical cost was too great at his age, and he’d learned to quell his desire to wield magic, to resist the addictive qualities of touching his spirit so he could instead live a longer life. Channeling was dangerous for warlocks in the first place, but after so many years it was deadly to their spirits, as well. His still attended him, but she was like a spinster, faded and incandescent, more a shadow than a presence.
But she was still there.
I’m sorry, Shiv thought.
The mongrel spirits howled out of the wastelands, unbidden but impossible to stop. Ghastly dead winds sliced across the plains, scouring Shiv’s flesh and snapping snow and debris across her vision. They came in a roiling and invisible wave, a phantom storm that turned the air rank and grey.
The monster in the ice stirred, but didn’t move. It seemed the Maloj could only affect those ghosts if Shiv made use of their power herself, which she didn’t. Shiv ignored them even as they slithered around her body, pushing and sliding across her frozen flesh, desperately begging for her to let them heal her, to channel them into a deadly attack and destroy Mace and the Scarecrows and the beast beneath the lake. Shiv bit through her pain and howled, not willing to let them give her aid. She felt rancid cold wash through her blood.
Her, she thought, and she let knowledge of Mace’s crimes come to the surface of her consciousness, let the truth of his betrayal be known to the small horde of desperate souls who’d come to her rescue.
Mace screamed, clutching his head. His eyes bulged in their sockets.
“NO!” he shouted, but Shiv bowed her head and let her bonds scrape raw against her wrists, ignoring his pleas. She thought of Ruiz, Jahl, Ione, Rorn. She thought of Gyver and Task and all of the other White Children, maybe the world’s last hope, those desperate and forgotten freedom fighters led to their deaths by a man who’d decided he’d had enough, who’d taken it on himself to end the war no matter the cost. She even thought of Terrell, who she now realized Mace had manipulated into being killed by Shiv’s sometimes uncontrollable spirits.
You were testing me, she reali
zed. You figured if I lost control then I’d lose control now, and I’d give your wolf what he wanted.
Mace’s spirit was torn apart. Shiv smelled black blood in the wind, heard the gossamer form shredded, felt as the ghostly remains washed over her in a grisly cloud. Mace’s screams echoed into the sky as his life-link to his spirit shattered. His heart exploded and he fell, and Shiv could only hope it hadn’t been too quick.
“Go to hell,” she said to the ice, and the wolf inside it.
They tortured her next, as she knew they would. One way or another they intended for her to channel those spirits, to shape them into a quasi-magical effect, just as she had when she’d killed the other Maloj.
There’s nothing you can do, she thought, or maybe she said it. It was hard to know which.
Razor claws and bone needles. Clamps and hammers. It was impossible to recall clearly what horrors they subjected her to, but she knew they were many. At first the pain had been unbearable, but she’d maintained her focus. She knew they were counting on her to lose control, to succumb to her pain so the spirits would come to her defense, but she focused on maintaining control, kept her thoughts on anything but her own hurt.
The cuts were so sharp at first she didn’t even feel them. They kept her tied to the pole, and later they secured her to a sort of raft they pushed out on the frozen lake, maintaining her proximity to the sorcerous wolf marauder who slept underneath. She saw its breath steam the underside of the ice, felt its looming shadow fall under her, cold darkness and black motion.
You’ll never touch me again, she thought to it.
She didn’t see her handlers clearly, only that they were dark-shaped and wore black, but by their motions and the expert manner in which they worked she knew they were humans, others like Mace, converts to the deathly ranks of New Koth, men willing to sell away their humanity in exchange for staying alive. She didn’t blame them, not really. All that was left for humans now was to survive.
Ronan. I wish you were here.
White light. She sensed it at the edge of her thoughts, a blazing curtain that seemed to fall from the sky. It enveloped her even when she felt skin peeled from her fingers or blades push at her thighs. A warming presence, the dull glow was heavy and thick and pressed around her like she floated in a warm sea.
Her fingers were broken, one by one, but she didn’t even register it. The face looked down at her. She knew it wasn’t real – the White Mother was dead and gone – but still she gazed at Shiv and guided her through the darkness. Knowing she was there, Shiv felt she could endure anything.
She woke on the ice. No sled, no bonds. Her body was broken and bleeding, ice cold and numb. The sky was vast and white, a chill glaze filled with icewinter clouds. Forks of dark lightning played in the distance, and the remains of the human torturers lay nearby, their eyes gouged out, their heads caved in. They’d failed.
“You’ve failed,” Shiv said out loud, though she didn’t know if there was anyone there to hear her. It didn’t matter.
Her skin froze against the lake’s surface. She wanted to move, but even if she’d had the strength the ice was cleaved to her flesh. Her skin was darker than before, her hair longer. Suddenly it seemed she recalled little more than the lake, and the beast below it.
It stared up at her. Eyes like pits, teeth like daggers. Three feet of frozen water thick with sediment and darkness separated them, yet it seemed they lay almost face to face, that all she had to do was reach out and seize it.
Kill me, she heard in her mind. For a moment she wanted to oblige, but she knew it was a trick. It wanted her to try, so she’d use her magic.
“No,” she said. “You’ve failed.”
Feet approached. She sensed men standing over her, long cloaks and chains held at the ready.
Oh no, the voice echoed in her skull, vast and dark, the sound of the deep. Its dissonant and hollow tone carried the promise of oblivion. We’ve only just begun.
They lifted her from the ice, gently. She was surprised by how whole she felt. Her fingers were all intact, and though she was barely clothed her skin wasn’t ice cold, her heart hadn’t stopped. The blood that had crusted to her body had dried, but her wounds were all healed.
Healed. No.
A cold sound issued from beneath the lake. The world seemed to shake, a dull and rhythmic quake, a rumble that widened the hairline cracks in the ice. Shards of frozen crystal exploded up as Shiv was led away.
Her heart froze. Somehow they’d won. Maybe when she’d dreamed of the White Mother, or before, when the torture had been the worst. She’d held out for as long as she could, but in the end they’d broken her after all. As they led her away all she heard was the wolf, laughing.
I’m sorry, she thought. I’m so sorry.
Again she thought of Ronan. Even at her weakest, when she’d been in a panic about not knowing what had happened, when they’d discovered they were on their own and they learned of Cross and Danica’s deaths and she’d almost been overcome by grief, he’d never judged her, never even looked at her like she was weak. In a way she loved him for that, cold and merciless killer though he was.
The day she became leader of the White Children was the day he decided to leave. She remembered that morning clearly, standing with him at the edge of the blue plains, the sun dappling long branched trees which swayed in the chill wind. He wore his face-wrap and had his equipment and sword slung across his back, his features darkened by the early morning shadows.
“Are you all right?” he’d asked. Eric was dead, as was Danica, and her father. She was all wrong, and could never be right again.
“I can’t do this,” she’d said.
“You can. And you will.”
She nodded, hearing the intent behind his words. She wanted to embrace him, to make some sign of their parting, but she knew he wouldn’t have it.
“Will you come back?” she’d asked him. But she knew Ronan had no answer. When they stood silent for a minute and listened to the trill of distant birds she’d asked: “How do we do it?”
“We find a way,” he’d said.
Tears sparked in her eyes as Ronan turned and left. She knew she’d never see him again.
SIXTEEN
GIANTS
Year 25 A.B. (After the Black)
They followed the giants into the mountains. Danica laughed to herself – it seemed they’d walked right into a fairy tale, and that wasn’t a good thing. She used to love Grimm’s stories as a child because she appreciated the lesson they gave: life doesn’t have happy endings.
The Deep Doj crossed sharp terrain and steep slopes littered with trees and massive shards of broken rock. The giants traveled with alarming swiftness and grace through areas of darkness that would have killed Danica and her team if they’d been forced to pursue them on foot; lucky for them the Doj seemed complacent, if not pleased, with the notion of being followed by the airship, and Maur was a capable enough pilot that he could keep the modified vessel close to the ground and navigate some preposterously difficult areas which many other pilots would have been afraid to even get close to. Alvarez watched the instruments, and with Raine’s help the two of them were able to keep close tabs on the giants when Maur lost sight of them, which was often: their dark flesh was perfect camouflage against the landscape, and they were well accustomed to using its clefts and valleys and shadow-stained fields for cover. If Danica had ever wondered how the giants had kept their location a secret to the world, she had her answer now.
The sky flattened as night grew on, and the darkness pushed down against the smudged red horizon. Faint trails of starlight scattered into the atmosphere, vagrant stars sucked into the void of night. The airship was cold inside, and even with the thermocouplings and coil heaters Danica felt a sullen chill press through the walls and against her bones. The wastes they traveled were not fit for human survival. Vampires thrived in the cold – stories told of their home world, a vast and lifeless ice field, bereft of sunlight and filled with
frozen walls of grey dust and soiled snow.
Danica’s spirit wound tight around her chest, nearly suffocating her with his worry. She sensed tension in the others, even Maur, who normally kept his emotions well bottled.
They were close, they could feel it. If the stories were to be believed, then taking control of Bloodhollow could give them the means to end the war.
She thought about Shiv. It felt like she should have been there, that her fate, odd as it sounded, was somehow meant to have been tied to Bloodhollow. Danica’s heart tightened at the thought of the girl, so frightened, so overwhelmed, even with her incredible powers. Cross had met Shiv and her father Flint near the Carrion Rift and had immediately bonded with them, even took Shiv under his wing. The girl had proved how immensely powerful she was when she single-handedly sealed the gate at The Witch’s Eye and later destroyed one of the Maloj in the desert wastes of Nezzek’duul.
So much power. It came too fast. She had to grow up far too quickly.
Danica stared out at the bloody sunset and shook her head. Everyone grew up too fast. You had to, if you wanted to live.
“Hey, Chief?” Alvarez asked.
“Yeah?”
“Any idea how far these freaks are taking us?”
“Who are you calling a freak?” Delgado boomed down from the gunnery nest. It was sometimes hard to tell when the half-Doj was joking, but Danica saw the creased smile on his leathery face.
“Nobody,” Alvarez said with a laugh.
“You wanna stay focused?” Raine asked. “You’re better at using this damned nautascope than I am, so if you don’t mind...”
“Yeah, yeah,” Alvarez said.
“I’m not sure how far they’re taking us,” Danica said. “But they owe the Gol, so they’ll show us where Bloodhollow is.” She looked back out the window. “They didn’t promise anything else.”
Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) Page 20
