He slung his rifle over his shoulder and drew his kodachi as he knelt down next to Jade. Her breaths were shallow and her skin looked jaundiced. Her lips were black, painted by some sort of forest root. Ronan cut her loose and lifted her up over his shoulder.
He heard them at the edge of the clearing: incessant voices and chattering teeth, sharp and raspy breaths and the echo of dripping ooze.
“Danica,” he said. “Trouble.”
They appeared from nowhere, a dozen floating creatures draped in shadows. Their flesh was as pale as the moon and their eyes were blank pools of ice. Darkness seeped around their bodies like waves of rippling oil. They hovered a few inches off the ground, their hands and feet hanging limp and their heads lolling to the side. The air burned with their hunger and turned rank from their dead breath.
“Shit!” Danica said. She had Laros up over her right shoulder, holding him tight with her super-humanly strong bloodsteel arm while her free hand gripped her assault rifle.
“Run,” Ronan said quietly.
“What are…”
“Run,” he repeated, but he didn’t hear his own words, because at that moment he stepped into the Deadlands.
The world bled color, shifted to black and white. His physical body was behind him, a shadow of his truer self, left in the wake of his dream-haze motion.
Rippling pulses of darkness came at him. The bodies were hosts, captives, barely living prisoners snatched from the wastelands. The crashing Skyhawk was a meal to the creatures, who were just living pulses of darkness, shadowy wraiths without corporeal form. They latched like parasites to the bodies of the living, and though their presence slowly leeched life from their hosts. They thrived on the physical sensations they gained through the possessed, the intoxicating rush of heat and cold, fear and pain. The living were their drug.
The first one came close, its shadows lashing like tendrils. He saw the beats between its motions, saw the narrow window of vulnerability in its incorporeal defenses, a shade of a moment where the physical and intangible joined and intersected between worlds. That was where he struck.
Wraith blood spattered onto his face as he swiped through the human vessels of spectral puppeteers. Blue and lustrous skin split and oozed ectoplasmic gore. Vaporous pressure pushed at him as remains exploded around his body. His muscles twisted and burned, and rasping voices clawed at his ears.
He moved through the line of corpses and severed their ties. Bodies collapsed to the ground in pools of blood and shadow. Corpse-flesh rippled and peeled away. He moved blindly though walls of writhing darkness.
It was hard to avoid the bodies on the ground. He tripped on a corpse and nearly fell to his knees, but his connection to the Deadlands drove him forward, committed to the motion even if it would result in his own death.
Dead eyes leered at him. Not human, not anymore, just flesh vessels, hollow shells of skin filled with ghost matter. Organic vehicles with wraith pilots, the vehicles of the damned.
Smoking claws tore into his skin and jagged limbs scissored against his blade. The air rang with steel. He turned, twisted, ducked and sliced. He was only dimly aware of Danica and her black blade, an anathema to those horrors. The wraiths recoiled from her in fear.
He was back on the path, with Jade on his shoulder. He didn’t remember getting there.
Brambles and thorns tore at him like jagged nails. The ground rushed by fast. He heard his own labored breaths, felt sweat and blood pour down his skin. The budding night stretched overhead, an ebon scar in the canopy.
Danica was behind him with Laros slung over her shoulder as she sliced at the ghosts. Bodily vessels fell to the ground and exploded in gory splashes.
Everything blurred to a mash of heat and motion. Brambles snapped as Ronan sliced through them, ignoring the path, taking the fastest route through the Deadlands.
Creasy and Grail were waiting when he and Danica emerged from the trees. The warlock’s spirit blanketed the forest in a tidal wave of cold blue flames. Ronan dove down, shielding Jade with his body. He heard shouts and phantom screams.
He’s adrift, floating through a void of mist and ash. He sees the wraith forms, looming shadows like tall men, stretched silhouettes with pinprick eyes and vaporous armor. They come at him, and he meets them with his blade.
There’s a darkness inside him. He hadn’t even known it was there, but it’s both his armor and his fuel. The things recoil from him, push back when they see the boiling black shadows swimming under his skin. His flesh blisters with cold. Bones turn to ice. His blade glows black like a new moon.
He steps forward and tears the ghosts apart, this time severing not just the connection to their corporeal hosts but to the aether where their phantom cores reside. Undead hearts burst beneath his assault. Apparition blood drips from his face.
They’re gone, savagely torn to pieces. Dark filth oozes from his fingers.
Claws, not fingers.
His massive jaws are awash with wraith remains. His muscles are knotted with tension. He smells living creatures nearby.
One of them rises, his eyes glaring white. Frosted energy drips from his fingers. The wolf knows what he is, knows what he must do, even if the others only see the disguise, the hot-hearted shell of what he used to be.
He lashes out. Black claws fall on white armor. Darkness melts the man’s sun-hued shield and raw cold pours through the air.
He hears screams. He hesitates – they used to be his friends.
The notion drips away like sweat. The wolf is in control now.
The blonde man releases a blast of flame. Claws of light meets claws of darkness. Something cuts to his core. The white warrior drives a blade through his blackened heart, and the darkness inside him ejects like blood squirting from a wound.
Ronan fell. Laros was on top of him. Grail was trying to pry him off, but it was Danica who stepped up and hurled the blonde mage back with her steel arm.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” she shouted. “Ronan, are you okay?!”
“I knew he…never liked me…” Ronan gasped. It was difficult to breathe. Blood trickled from his lips. He tried to rise, but he had no strength.
Laros watched him with wide and maddened eyes. He seemed out of control, unaware of what was happening. He held a bloody blade in his trembling hands – My kodachi, Ronan realized – and gore stained his forearms.
Ronan looked down and saw that he’d been stabbed in the stomach. Everything started to fade.
Even as he lost consciousness he felt the last vestige of the thing inside him melt away. Off to a find a new body to hide in.
TEN
RAIJIN
Raijin was a city of towers. Tall razor spires pointed to the crimson heavens. Each citadel was lined with spikes and capped with gold and bronze domes which reflected the blinding sunlight. Thick walls of sandstone and arcane steel blocked off the wastelands, their battlements set with bolt throwers, porcupines and iron poles sparking protective war hexes. Everything was black and brown, from the walls to the people to the clothing they wore. It was a dark splotch in the desert pale. Even the waters of the moat were briny, which Cross thought probably wasn’t good.
Still. It’s water.
The procession waited behind them. Cross, Ankharra, the survivors from the Skyhawk and the soldiers from Black Dust Station approached the city on the backs of camels and in wagons, the merciless sun beating down on them. Cross pulled back his hood and lowered his cowl as the Nezzek’duulian warlock had advised, for that would show those guarding the city he had nothing to hide.
The camel grunted beneath him. He reassuringly patted the side of its face and made soft cooing sounds.
The city gates opened before them. Dark flags rippled in the dry wind. Bows and cannons aimed down at them, and Cross tasted sorcery in the air, a wave of spirit energy that swept over them like oily rain. People moved about on the battlements, soldiers and citizens come to see these strange people, these bizarre visitors, the fir
st to Nezzek’duul in many years.
Just inside the gates, behind their protective crowd of soldiers, were the Masters of the City. And even though Jaffe had tried his best to describe them ahead of time, Cross still found himself in awe of the creatures.
The crowd parted, and the visitors rode into the city.
It had been a hard journey. Creasy’s spirit had imparted knowledge of the route to Ankharra so they wouldn’t lose their way. They gathered their supplies and set off early the next morning, around the same time the rescue team left to go track down Laros, Jade and any other survivors they could find in the dead forest to the east.
Cross watched them go with a sense of foreboding. He wasn’t sure what was happening between him and Danica, and he was worried about Ronan, was also acting stranger than usual. He readied his pack and checked his boots as he watched the four-man rescue team ride towards the dawn sun, their long shadows trailing them across the ground. He had a terrible feeling he wouldn’t see them again.
Everyone is on edge, he thought bitterly. That’s what happens when you vanish for a few months. Even though you know them, they’re not the same people you left in Thornn. How could they be? Too much has happened.
“You okay?” Flint asked.
The former Marine was behind him, readying his own pack and checking the MP5 he’d been given. He was dressed in a Southern Claw uniform now, a simple black and tan set of cammos with a light armor coat and high leather boots, a utility belt and a bandolier with ammo and grenades.
“Not really,” Cross said, and he looked back at the departing crew. “I should be going with them.”
“From the looks of it, your lady friend could use some space,” Flint said.
“Yeah,” Cross said. He finished lacing up his boots. The camp was alive with noise and motion as the soldiers and surveyors started to move out. The air was pale red, and the land was thick with shadows. Golden beams of light spilled over the slate horizon and cut through the sky like swords. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
Cross looked up at him. Balding pate and aged eyes notwithstanding, Flint looked younger than when Cross had first met him.
They readied themselves in silence. Cross saw Shiv approaching, dressed in a light brown cloak that would keep her shielded from the sun once it rose to its blinding glory.
“You know what your problem is?” Flint said in a jovial tone.
“I have too many?” Cross laughed.
“You try to understand women,” Flint smiled. “They’re not too complicated. Just remember the Golden Rule: You’re wrong. That’s it. Once you figure that out, the rest is easy.”
Flint smiled and walked over to Shiv. She seemed alive and vibrant. Her skin was dirty with desert grime and her eyes were heavy with fatigue, but even with all of that Cross hadn’t seen her so animated in days.
“What are you so happy about?” he asked as she drew close and gave Flint a hug.
“I don’t know,” she said with a big smile. “Just happy to be alive.”
Flint nodded, and smiled.
Cross’s insides froze. He remembered her lying there after the battle at the Black Gate, when they thought they’d lost her. Looking at her now, it was hard to imagine that she was capable of yielding as much power as she was. Ankharra probably knew as much as anyone about the Kindred, and even she seemed at a loss…and that lack of information worried him.
I’ll keep an eye on you, Kiddo, he thought. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you.
They had no mounts or working vehicles, so the thirty-three remaining survivors left the crash site on foot. This stretch of desert, which Ankharra thought was called the Pale Sea, was barren, and nothing had attempted to do them any harm since that first attack by the Simar. They saw signs of life, to be sure – small tan crabs moved between loose shards of stone, ebon snakes pushed in and out of the drift like they were swimming in an ocean, strange claws snapped up at insects and rodents and dragged them underground. There were no fliers aside from the bugs, and nothing large moved on the surface, which for the most part was just miles of red-brown sand riddled with short dunes, clusters of broken rock and leaning pillars of black stone. Trees to the southeast stood at the edge of what looked to be a broader region of broken hills, and a mountain range waited far to the south, past the small dot that was the railway station Creasy and the others had spied from afar.
It soon became difficult to see the horizon – the heat haze fell like a storm, blurring the edges of the land like they’d been submerged in water. The distant pillars of stone seemed to float on a wavering sweat sea.
Cross walked with Flint and Shiv. It was stark in the desert, and the sun had burned away even the barest memory of darkness. Smoke drifted in ebon patches like hordes of slow-moving bats. The land was quiet and the wind strangely becalmed, allowing the stench of scorched metals and burning rock to settle thick in the air.
The sun was so bright it was difficult to move without taking things slow. They traveled close to the stones when possible, using them for shade and taking plenty of rests. They had a decent supply of water from the downed ship, but they were careful to pass it around sparingly. Though desert survival was part of the training in the Southern Claw military most of those exercises were carried out in the Scorpion Desert, which despite being hot and unforgiving was nothing compared to this dry and brittle wasteland. The atmosphere was utterly without moisture. Cross’s sunglasses seemed to melt against his skin, and so much sweat was pasted to his face he vowed to shave the rest of the beard off the moment the opportunity presented itself.
There was little talking. They needed to conserve their energy.
Ankharra approached them at one point. Her dark clothes almost seemed to smoke in the heat. Her angular and beautiful face was slicked with sheen sweat, and the hems of her cloak were weighted with bronze chains so it wouldn’t shift in the wind.
“What can we expect when we come to this place?” Cross asked her.
There were other conversations going on, but most of them were in the distance, the only background noise aside from the stamp of feet on the dusty ground.
“If they don’t try to kill us on sight or just turn us away,” she said, “we’ll probably have to prove ourselves to them.”
“What, like some sort of macho contest, or something?” he asked. “Are we talking trial by combat?”
“No,” she said. “You’ve read too many adventure stories. We’ll need to prove something much more important.”
“Like what?”
“They’ll want to make sure we’re not evil spirits,” she said.
It wasn’t the answer he’d wanted.
Hard pain thrummed up his shins, and Cross was reminded again that he was in his late forties, not a young man of twenty-six. With his spirit he could have gone longer, had her help maintain his strength and keep him cool and energetic. The artifact blade on his back afforded him no such luxury. It healed him from time to time when it felt the need, but it had been strangely silent ever since the crash.
He wondered if he should have been concerned by its reticence, and decided he already had enough to worry about.
Two people collapsed from exhaustion, but a Company Medic, Charver, was able to help them out. There were no new casualties, at least not yet.
They kept their pace slow and even, rested on those rare occasions when they found shade – the few pillars and standing stones were spaced at great distances, and none of them were really large enough to provide shelter for more than a handful of people at a time – and drank plenty of fluids.
Wiley and the survey team fared well; Cross would have thought them more susceptible to exhaustion, but the lank and glasses-wearing engineer seemed giddy at the prospect of mapping a new land, and while Cross didn’t think there was much to be excited about on those barren plains Wiley and his people furiously scribbled notes and broke out theodolites and surveying poles and stopped to take measurements as often as Ankhar
ra would allow.
The pilgrimage took an extended rest around noon. Their water supply was holding up, but it wouldn’t last forever, and if their interactions with the people at the railway station didn’t pan out they were going to be hard-pressed to replenish their supply.
Cross’s eyes were heavy from exhaustion and heat. Given the opportunity, he could have slept for days.
Flint and Shiv looked thoroughly miserable. Flint and Cross took turns carrying Shiv on their backs for short stretches, as she was lithe and light for her age, but for the most part she insisted on walking. A young corporal named Lancer, who was tall and lean but strong, also offered to help, and she rode on the young soldier’s back for a while and bothered him with questions about his time in the service.
“This is miserable,” Flint said.
“Tell me about it,” Cross said. “But at least we’re alive.”
They came within sight of the rail station near dusk, but they wouldn’t reach it before night fell. The open plains were the only reason they could even see it, as it was still at least a dozen miles away, just a speck of curved buildings.
The group camped out in the open as the sun went down. There was a small cluster of stones they used to shield the main fire from the rising wind, but for the most part everyone was going to sleep under the naked sky. The ground was slightly harder than what they’d grown accustomed to, riddled with patches of dry vegetation and cacti.
Shooting stars fired overhead like flaming arrows. Cross looked out across the darkening wastes and saw horned skulls and broken stones. The pillars they’d seen were cracked and weathered and looked to have once been a part of some greater monolith. He and the surveyors had examined the stones to try and analyze their markings, but they were so weathered and wind-blasted it was impossible to make out even the scantest details.
Once again the air went from scorching to freezing. Lack of cloud cover meant there was nothing to trap the earth’s heat, and by the time the sun had completely bled to a red haze on the horizon the wind had turned bone-chilling and raw and the air was as brittle as glass.
Chain of Shadows (Blood Skies, Book 6) Page 12
