Those shadows above wanted what he could never have himself, not again – life. They wanted to consume all that was good.
Kane took the final step into the chamber, and immediately felt as if he walked through an ocean of blood. All things were in flux. The temple itself was ill-defined, the bonds of reality breaking apart as Warfield somehow slowly broke down the last vestige of stability which held the Breach together even as she laughed and watched Cross and Danica dying.
The floor rippled. Shadows bent in like slithering dancers. Bare rock bled. This was where the world ended and The Black began, and as Kane slowly moved up behind Warfield he heard voices from the sky, deep and growling bass notes, terrible rumblings which seemed to cleave the air in two. If Kane’s heart had still beat he knew it would have ached with fear.
He watched the swords, watched Lucan and Shiv. He heard their words, spoken at once, not one voice but two in unison, their missive somehow twisting their way to the rotting core of his revenant mind.
Stop her, it said. Use the blades, and seal the Breach.
Time echoed the words around him like a physical presence. A crack opened in the floor, and the smell of other worlds spilled through. The shadows and patches of icy darkness started to converge on Warfield, not Warfield, a white shadow in human skin. He swore he saw the gossamer specter of a pale spider hanging over her.
How? he wondered.
She’s in control now, they said. Azradayne. She’s channeling our power and the magic of the blades through herself.
A violent burst shook the chamber. Chunks of ceiling ripped away, falling not down but up, as if torn. The burning remains of Bloodhollow came into view, red stone alight, pluming smoke through the shifting sky. The vortex was growing, drawing reality in like bleeding watercolors. Something integral to the nature of time was being snapped.
Kane gazed into the rift. Nightmares from the gulf, things of claws and teeth, seething masses of undulating midnight skin, whirling fangs and dripping veins, vessels of frost and bone, and at their forefront that black ship, sailing across the sky of another world and blocking out its sun, poisoning the earth in its diseased shadow. The creatures on the deck were wolfen, massive and bristling with razor fur and dark power. Their bodies were carved from the absence of all things, the substance of souls ground to an edge. They felt Kane’s attention on them, and their moon-white eyes met his gaze. Lips curled back in snarls, and they smiled.
We come for you.
In that instant Kane launched himself at Azradayne and sliced through her body. Had he still been connected to the vampire collective it would have been a killing blow, but his timing was off, his schematics were garbled, his vision hazed. She shed the human skin as the blade ripped through her shoulder and splashed cold white blood upon the floor. She was the spider, a mass of pale flesh and bulbous eyes, razored spines to her many arms, her bone carapace and fangs dripping venomous blood. She was the size of a horse, floating of her own accord, her webs strung between realities, vorpal strands of blood and crystal.
Kane crouched low and held his bone blade ready. He listened, his audio sensors still functioning in spite of his being severed from the vampire core, and found her heart, a soft and dissonant beat like waves of frozen water meeting the shore. He smelled the shadowblood pumping through her body, watched as she positioned herself in the air, front legs clacking and scissoring against one another, the blade edges as large as swords.
“Come and get me, bitch,” he growled.
Azradayne hovered, and Kane lunged forward, sliced into the flesh of her belly, felt the blade hiss. A deep roar sounded. Kane didn’t see the blow that knocked him back. He lost time.
The shadow of the Maloj war vessel loomed closer. The Breach bubbled, threatened to give.
He reached for his sword, and found nothing. As he scrambled across the floor the spider’s bladed forelegs dug into the stone where he’d been just moments before. He sprung his forearm blades, serrated scimitars laced with icy energy and subtly humming with potential. Kane looked into the spider’s eyes, dozens of black orbs of hate and yearning, the space between them filled with darkly pulsing veins.
He hesitated. He wanted very much to live, even though that was never going to happen.
The spider lurched at him, and though Kane drove his blade straight up it anticipated the move and snapped the weapon off at the base. His arm wrenched back, and he rolled out of the way just as two more legs crossed and nearly sawed him in two. Darkly blue fluid, the necrotic fuel that gave him power, sprayed behind him.
He scrambled, searching for another weapon, and found an assault rifle on the ground and pulled it away from Ronan’s still hand. He remembered being afraid of the swordsman, not getting along with him, and yet remembered his loyalty and courage. He would avenge him. He’d avenge them all.
For some reason sight of the assault rifle angered the spider and it sprang forward. Kane fell back, firing, and the shots burst open several of its eyes. Bullets fell off its armor chitin as the weapon ran dry, but Kane found one of Ronan’s blades and flung it forward, sinking it directly into the white beast’s sphincter-like maw, hacking off one of its mandibles and causing white-blue blood to geyser forth.
Azradayne howled in rage. Kane glimpsed a weapon – Cross’s swords, Soulrazor/Avenger. The shadows of the Maloj were close, their dark chains and dripping power burning at the barrier, but no matter how much they pushed they couldn’t open the Breach, not yet, not without the spider’s aid.
Kane hesitated, then darted forward, but Azradayne was waiting for him. Blade legs sliced into his face and shattered his jaw. Dark fuel filled his mouth. He dropped the swords. The terrible cold odor of the void washed over him, the taste of death. His head snapped back as the blades pierced him, bore through his heart engine and sparked it still. His body was failing. The spider struck again, and icy and bladed limbs tore into his shoulder. It held him ready in its claws, poised to tear him apart.
Cross rose behind it, the artifact blade in his hands. Without a word he stepped into the blow and drove the double-blade through the spider’s back. Black blood exploded from her heart and sprayed across the floor. Shiv stood behind Cross, her flesh scorched and burned but her hands clenched at her sides. Cold wind scaled through the chamber, a thousand tortured souls converging.
Kane smiled, and Azradayne screamed.
Beyond the Breach, up in the void of a dark and shattered world, creatures of darkness howled in fury. A rushing noise filled the chamber. Lucan struggled to sit up, his eyes glowing with pale light. The blades – Soulrazor/Avenger, more Kane didn’t know on the floor near where Danica had fallen – pulsed with fiery cold shadows.
The Breach collapsed into nothingness. Only a faint echo of an image remained of that dead darkness, of the burning poison sun, of the black ship so desperate to pierce through and begin the invasion.
The spider fell in on itself, melted like grisly white snow. Shadowblood soaked through. Kane stood still, unsteady.
“We can be more,” Cross said, and Kane knew he was right.
Kane turned away without a word. Everything was collapsing outside, he sensed it. Closing the Breach was sealing things back, changing them, though he doubted anyone knew what changes would come. He sensed vampires dying everywhere, not just in Bloodhollow but further out, severed off from some vital force they relied on. He felt everything shift. He wasn’t sure how, but he seemed somehow attuned to the rapidly expanding pulse of energies that swept across the face of the world, and his failing vampire sensors picked up a massive surge, some unidentified and highly pressurized blast of power which shimmered across the landscape.
“Kane...” Cross said. He wheezed. Blood was pooling down his mouth. Kane didn’t think he had long.
“Thank you,” Kane said, without turning back. “For all you did for us.”
Kane left them. Whatever was coming, he wanted to face it head on, and he wanted to find the girl, Muse. He was responsible for
her being there – the least he could do was make sure she was all right.
Topside, the sun was shining. He imagined Ekko there with him.
EPILOGUE
heaven
The sun is shining. He lays his head back. It’s been so long since he’s known peace.
The lake glitters in the golden light. Thick trees surround the cabin, this hidden redoubt he stumbled upon quite by chance. It was bare when he located it, but over the course of the past few weeks he’s filled it with equipment: weapons and ammunition, food and blankets, fuel and books. He sits on the hammock he’s made – it’s shoddy work, and it threatens to fall apart every time he uses it, bending down the trees and creaking and stretching so far he fears it’s going to launch him into the atmosphere – and reads, drinks bad wine, watches the camels they found on the way. He won’t name them, which drives her crazy.
She’s so beautiful. Every time he sees her he falls in love with her all over again. Her skin is radiant, her eyes as green as a sea. She isn’t whole, but then neither is he. How could they be?
Not all of them made it. They lost Ronan, Maur, Lucan. There were tears, as there always were. They’ve lost so many, and so much. It’s hard to fathom, sometimes, how they manage to live with loss, but he knows the answer, and always has: they just carry on.
He sits by the waters, and remembers. Remembers his sister, so young, so full of life and joy, walking with that crumbling doll, calling him “My Eric”, making up names for the stray cats on the road. He remembers Kane and his obnoxious laugh, Ronan’s stoicism and strange sense of honor. Dillon’s love for his family and hatred of his sister’s cooking. Graves, his oldest friend, so full of himself even he couldn’t stand it. Ash. Grissom. Creasy. Ankharra and Crylos. Reza, Wiley. Flint – a better man he’d never known.
They see Shiv from time to time. Ronan’s loss has been hard on her, much harder than Cross would have imagined, but then he’d not witnessed the years they’d spent together in their strange future, the bond they’d forged. He’d never seen her grieve over her father, but he imagined it was much like she mourned her dark champion.
The world is changing. He watches clouds flutter across the sky, knowing they’re just clouds, and that they’ll bring rain. The sun shines now, much more than it used to, but that doesn’t mean the world is safe. He keeps his shotgun close by, and an old machete he found abandoned in a truck, newly sharpened.
The swords are gone, and he’s glad for it. They served their purpose. He’s done with fighting. He’s walked miles enough.
The vampires, too, are gone, dead within hours of the Breach being sealed. Their corpses were burned, giving rise to massive plumes of grey-black smoke, the last time the undead would soil the landscape. The shattered remnants of their fortresses were torn down, and the husks of their vehicles litter the earth like fossils.
They’d located Kane’s remains. Without the necrotic energies of the Ebon Kingdoms he couldn’t survive, just like the legions of New Koth. It was hard, losing him again. He’d saved them. Someone had buried him, laid him in the dirt, marked the grave with a crude cross and hand-written his name, a woman’s script, Cross thought, but it was hard to know.
KANE, it read. A LOST SOUL, FOUND AGAIN.
So much pain.
She came to him, her long hair dripping wet from swimming in the lake, her belly full with child. Danica is radiant. Her bloodsteel arm shines in the light. Magic persists, as do many of the other threats they’ve come to know in the world After the Black: the Bloodwolves and Sorn, the Vuul and Dracaj, and of course the worst monsters of them all, the human ones.
They have to be in New Thornn in a month, but luckily Danica isn’t due to give birth for another three. Shiv is the new leader of the Southern Claw, the heir apparent to the White Mother, and she’s overseen the rebuilding of Thornn, Ath and Seraph with the help of the Gol and the Lith. There are few people left, and she’s welcomed humanity’s every friend with open arms. The military is being rebuilt, not as much of a presence now that the war is over, even though tensions with the East Claw Coalition remain high. Wulf has backed off from his visions of a dystopian world order, but everyone knows he’s still going to cause trouble; thankfully, without the support of the Raza and New Koth his power has dwindled, and with the aid of the peaceful non-human races the Southern Claw actually has a chance to hold its own against the violent mercenary forces.
The sun beats down. Trees sway, and leaves crinkle in the breeze. Cross smells the grass and tastes the frost off the mountains. He smiles and holds Danica close. He’s happy, so happy. He’s just afraid it will all end.
Because it will. Nothing lasts forever, and they both know it, and that’s why they have to seize this life, seize these moments. Why they have to live while there’s still time. All of the sacrifices made and lives lost won’t mean a thing if those most precious things they died for aren’t tasted each and every day.
Cross holds her close. He never wants to let go.
Sometimes he sees the ghosts of those he’s lost. He’ll always bear the burden of those lives – it’s something he’ll never leave behind, and shouldn’t. They mean too much to him. For every person he lost he knows he saved another, but that doesn’t lessen the burden.
We can be more. He doesn’t even remember where he first heard those words, but they’ve become his mantra, his drive. Once he was a scared boy, a freak, an outcast. He was a soldier, a brother. He was the one who lost those he loved, again and again, the one who was forced to carry on alone.
Never again. We can be more. He says it to her as the sun starts to set, as the night birds sing and the two of them move indoors to the heat of the cabin. They’ll eat stew, read together, laugh together. Live. They know that Danica’s spirit and the traps he’s laid will alert them to coming dangers. The world is far from safe, but it’s a better place than it was. It’s hard to know everything that’s different – just like The Black, there are subtle signs, vague memories and notions of how things used to be. Cross commits everything he remembers down to paper as a way of chronicling what has come to pass.
Sometimes that terrifies him, that realization that things have changed and he might not understand what. This life that just months ago had seemed so impossible, this foolish fantasy of a blissful existence off in some secluded place with the woman who’s changed him, who loves him, who he’s gone to hell and back for and who has borne his weight more times than he can count...it seems too perfect, sometimes.
He lays there in the cabin on a large bed they built together. They float in an ocean of dark blankets, with the smell of cedar and tallow candles and the sound of the wind gently pushing against the house. Danica is warm in his arms, her soft face nuzzled against his neck.
He stares up at the ceiling, half expecting to see a white spider, for something to come crashing through the door, but he knows somehow it won’t, that they’re safe, at least for now.
As he lays there in the bliss of everything he’d ever hoped to have once the war was over, Eric Cross can’t help but wonder if it’s real.
Am I here now? Is this really happening?
Is this place real?
But after the fear subsides, after his breathing slows, after he realizes he’s finally in a place where he doesn’t know terror, then he realizes the truth, and it glows inside him like a star.
That place, that life, is real to them. And that’s enough.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As you may or may not have guessed, this is the final book of the Blood Skies saga, at least for a while. I honestly didn’t mean to blindside anyone like that, but sometimes you have to listen to your muse, and in this case I think she’s got it right.
Blood Skies was originally envisioned as a 6 book series, but as I was writing (and struggling with) Chain of Shadows I realized I had more story to tell, so I plotted out the rest of the series and arrived at a 9 book cycle. Then, as I was writing Vampire Down, I found myself jumping ahead in my pl
otting machine. I tried to reel it in, and came to realize that 3 more books would be stretching things thin. Way thin. So, while it was too late to go back to just 6 books, I made a conscious effort to tie things up with Book 7.
Did I succeed? Probably not as much as I would have liked. I did my best to tie up the loose ends and provide some sort of explanation as to what the heck was happening with the dozens of strange plot elements I’d dropped over the course of the books. Likely the continuity police will have me incarcerated for a few infractions, and fans might be non-too pleased with the rapid manner in which things came to an end, but that’s how it goes sometimes. No one saw Kane’s death coming; I doubt you saw the end of the series coming, either.
Now, this is not meant to say that I’ll never write in the Blood Skies universe again. The Ending Dream and Darker Sunset are still plot ideas I’d like to pursue, but I’ll need some time to circle back to them, re-envision them, and write them so they either form a shorter story arc or each stand on their own. The current story-line, such as it was, needed to end, and those pesky vampires and Azradayne had to go.
I will admit I feel like a bit of a wimp not being able to kill off Cross. I’d planned for he and Danica to both die, but those first three chapters broke my ugly little heart, and I just couldn’t stand the notion of not having them wind up somewhere happy. Assuming, of course, that’s what actually happened...
I’d like to thank you, the reader, for your support of this series. It’s been a heck of a ride roughly 4 years in the making, and these novels have really given me the basis to build myself as an author, entrepreneur and storyteller. And I have plenty left. Cross and the world After the Black may be done (at least for the moment), but The Skullborn Trilogy has yet to be completed, as do the remaining 2 trilogies set on the world of Malzaria (lucky for us, 6 of the remaining 7 novels in my epic fantasy series are already written, so unless I drop the ball with the last book in the third trilogy no one needs to worry about that one stopping short).
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