Soulrazor (Blood Skies, Book 3)

by Steven Montano

  Cross almost said ‘No’. With what he planned to do, he wasn’t sure if he needed her drugged. But plans never seemed to go right around him. It was best, he’d learned, to be prepared for the worst.

  “Thanks,” he said, and he put the vials and the gauntlet into his pack. “How do I give it to her?”

  “You drink it,” Warfield said. “It won’t actually affect you, but that’s how it will get into her. Just a few sips every three or four hours. There should be enough for a couple of days.”

  Then I don’t have much time, he thought.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

  He left Warfield with a confused look on her face. He hoped she realized he was telling her goodbye for the last time.

  By morning, he’d left Thornn.

  PART TWO

  DUST

  EIGHT

  RIDERS

  Shadows fall like torpid drops of ebon rain. She walks through knee-high drifts of sand made volatile by caustic waves. The dark keep looms over the edge of the shore.

  She has struggled to reach the fortification for hours. Ebon birds soar overhead and form a black rainbow in the sky. Foamy waters crash against the stone. The air is filled with saline and rot.

  A ship drifts in the distance. She has waited for it to come out of the sea for a long time, and she’s no longer certain that it will. The world sinks into the darkening sky. The water rises around her feet.

  The keep moves further away, and the ship isn’t getting any closer. Whatever she seeks here remains just out of reach.

  Forms rise from the water behind her, bodies bloated with salt and sand. Chains cover the pale and clammy corpses. The prisoners of Black Scar who’d died under her command stare at her. Her heart races, and ice flows through her blood.

  The bodies don’t pursue her. They seek no revenge.

  They don’t need it. They already know that after having caused so much death she will inevitably fail to save one of the only lives to ever mean anything to her.

  She sinks into the sand. The harder she struggles, the faster she descends. Her screams turn to ashes. She sinks and drowns in the mud, and her lifeless eyes stare up into a sky filled with rain.

  Danica Black woke from a horrible dream. She was disoriented and weak, and for several minutes all she could do was hold her legs close to her chest and sit in bed while she shivered beneath the thin blankets. The air was still dark, as it was not yet dawn.

  She couldn’t remember the details of the dream, but she had the sense that something terrible had happened. Her body shook from head to toe, and her skin felt like it had been rubbed raw with ice.

  Something about the dream felt…unnatural. Like it hadn’t been her dream. There was no other way to describe it: she felt like she’d been looking somewhere, witnessing something she’d seen before, but maybe wasn’t supposed to see at all.

  She was used to waking up in a panic. Almost every day spent as a Revenger had started that way for her, and it hadn’t gotten any easier even after she’d “defected”. She’d spent years as a Warden, and she’d punished prisoners and given orders and casually assigned people to suffer and die every single day. She’d had God-like control over other people’s lives…and yet she’d woken up with knots in her stomach every morning, and her chest would pound with anxiety. Even when she hadn’t had nightmares, she’d woken to the screams, which had been even worse.

  She was no longer a Revenger, but she was alone. Cross was a good man, far too good to be giving the likes of her a chance, especially when she didn’t deserve one. Kane and Maur, for all of their casual gruffness, had pure hearts. Even Ronan, psychopath though he was, had a sense of honor and duty difficult to find in men of his profession. And Danica feared for Ash and Grissom, two good-hearted siblings who, for as much as they’d seen and experienced of war, had never really experienced any true loss.

  None of them knew the darkness inside of her. None of them – not even Kane, who’d seen her at work as a Revenger – knew about some of the things she’d done. And they never would. No matter how close they were to her, she would always be alone.

  But that’s not what woke you, she knew. That’s not what kicked you up out of bed. Something else is wrong.

  And after Cross’ hasty departure the previous afternoon, she had a feeling she knew what.

  As Danica had guessed, Cross was gone. She quickly decided it was turning out to be a less-than-perfect morning.

  It was 0600 hours, the scheduled time the team was supposed to set out for the excavation site near Fane. Cross was nowhere to be found.

  Black communed with the surveillance spirits and determined he’d never returned from his meeting with Rikeman, a meeting she knew he hadn’t gone to when she’d failed to find him at the hospital. When Rikeman told her he hadn’t seen Cross since he’d been discharged, she quickly ran through a list in her mind of where he possibly could have gone.

  It didn’t take her long to put Warfield’s name at the top of the list. Unfortunately, Warfield wasn’t making herself available, and Danica didn’t think they had the time to find her before they left.

  “So what’s going on?” Kane asked.

  She’d asked the entire team to assemble in the hangar bay, an underground chamber Maur had converted from an interconnected series of basements into a single large space. Muted grey light spilled from a number of thauamturgically powered panels, which looked like massive plates of cracked sea glass. The floor was concrete, and it was both remarkably clean and devoid of litter. Only a few permanent fixtures populated the chamber: the workbench, a few arcane pillars used to run hex field tests and hull shield modifications, a remote bed use to snatch naps during midnight shifts, and, of course, the Darkhawk. It stood perched on obsidian blocks, its metal hull so black it pained the eyes to look at it. The rear doors of the craft were open and the entry steps were lowered down to the floor.

  “Cross is gone,” Black said. It felt strange to address them like she was in charge. Most of the team already saw her as something of a second-in-command, save for one person.

  And that would be me. God damn it, Cross, why did you have to pull this now?

  “Yeah…what does that mean?” Kane insisted.

  “You can’t be this dense…” Ronan laughed.

  “Yes I can,” Kane smiled. “It’s a lifestyle choice.”

  “No one knows where he is,” Black interrupted. “After he and I went over basic intel about Fane yesterday, he went to see Phil Rikeman about the problems with his spirit. No one’s seen him since.”

  They answered her with silence. The team had never been without Cross before. There was a dynamic in place, an order to things, and with him gone everyone seemed to be momentarily stunned.

  “We can do this,” she said, only somewhat believing it.

  “Wait…” Grissom said with his big baritone voice. “Do what? We can’t do the mission without our damn commander!”

  “Maur agrees!” Maur shouted.

  “Thank God,” Ronan said dryly. “Maur agrees.”

  “Shut up!” Danica demanded. Surprisingly, that seemed to get everyone’s attention. “The Southern Claw contracted the team to find out what’s happening near Fane, not Cross. Besides…I have a feeling that’s where he’s headed.”

  “Huh?” Kane said.

  Everyone gave her a confused look except Ash. The older witch nodded in agreement.

  The lights flickered. They used so much thaumaturgy to fuel the ship that they occasionally caused fluctuations in their power grid, a fact that made the Thornn utilities department less than happy with them on a fairly regular basis. The air was chill and dry, so Black pulled her armored coat tight against the Colt Python she kept holstered at the back of her waistline. Knives harnessed to her wrists were charged with arcane energies. Her spirit impatiently clung to her like a layer of flames. Even his heat couldn’t completely fight off the chill in the hangar basement.

  She felt his anxiou
sness. He was difficult to keep still even on a good day, but her own emotional distress at having lost Cross had her spirit on edge, too, and Danica could already tell that she would have to expend extra energy just to keep his ass in line.

  This is why I swore off men. You’re nothing but work, I swear.

  “Something has happened to Cross,” Black said after she paced back and forth for a moment. She was surprised at how patiently the rest of the team waited for her explanation.

  She shook with anxiety, and she was irritated at herself for it. She should have been used to being in charge – she’d been a Golden Tear Warden of Black Scar, for Christ’s sake, and she’d had ten Silver Tears and dozens of prisoners under her authority at any given time during her time there – but it still felt wrong to be stepping into Cross’ shoes. In the two years since the team had been formed, he’d never once been absent from anything they’d done.

  Get a hold of yourself. Remember your training. They need someone to call the shots right now, and like it or not, you’re it.

  As if to encourage her, Black’s spirit sent an ethereal jolt up her spine. All that really served to do, of course, was piss her off, which was probably what she needed.

  “When Cross fell into that black goop in the Bonespire, something came back with him. He lost control of his spirit a couple of nights ago, and he’s been acting strange ever since. I think he’s afraid he’ll lose control and hurt someone on the team.”

  “So he left?” Grissom asked in his loud-but-quiet manner. “Without telling us?”

  “Would you have let him go, brother?” Ash asked.

  “No,” Grissom shrugged. “But I…ah, fine. Point taken.”

  “So you think he went to Fane?” Kane asked angrily. For as much as he complained about Ronan’s violent nature, Kane was the one who often had the hardest time keeping calm. “Why?”

  Black gave him a look, the look she always gave him when he needed to back off. It seemed like a lifetime ago since he’d been her prisoner, when she or her old friend Vos used to cause him pain because of some obnoxious retort he’d made. She wondered how much of their old relationship he’d forgotten, or forgiven. The two of them seemed to be on amiable enough terms most of the time, but every once in a while she saw a dangerous look in his eyes, and she wondered.

  “Think,” she said. “Remember the briefing? Whatever is happening near Fane is tied to that fluid we found in the spire. Cross probably figures he can find out what’s happening to him if he can get some answers about the liquid…which reminds me,” she said, and she turned to Ash. “Can you use a homunculus to get a message out to Ilfesa Warfield?” She hesitated a moment. “Please?”

  “You think he went to see her?” Ash asked.

  “He didn’t go to see Rikeman,” Black said. “It would make sense if he’d gone to see her. And it would be best to cover our bases.”

  “Warfield…is that the redhead whose pants Cross has been trying to get into ever since we met him?” Grissom laughed. Black didn’t care what they made out of the venomous look she gave the big man.

  “You figure she’ll know what’s going on with him?” Ronan asked.

  “I figure he figured that,” Black said. “But I still have a feeling he’s already left the city.”

  “For Fane,” Kane said, looking somewhat exasperated.

  “Yes, Mike. For Fane. Or, more accurately, for the excavation near Fane.”

  “He has to know we’re going to follow him,” Kane said.

  “And he’s right. But he also has a head start on us, and he probably figures that if he loses control of his spirit again…he wouldn’t want us to be around.”

  She swallowed nervously. There was a considerable stretch of dangerous territory between Thornn and Fane, including the Bone Hills and, worse, Wolfland. Cross would undoubtedly procure some sort of vessel – he was sure to have enough friends in the Southern Claw that he could buy a one-man ship – but there were going to be plenty of obstacles for someone traveling on his own.

  “Will he even know where to go?” Ronan asked.

  “Ohhhh, yeah,” Kane said. “He’ll be fine. Mr. Photographic Memory? He’ll do better than we will, and we have the friggin’ map.”

  Ronan laughed.

  Grissom looked at every other member of the team in turn.

  “All right, Chief,” the big man said to Black. “What do we do?”

  Black looked at Kane. He just nodded, and smiled.

  Ash looked at her. Maur looked at her. Ronan looked around, looked at her, and shrugged.

  “Well?” he asked.

  Black took a breath.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s go get him.”

  It was 0800 hours when they opened the hangar doors. The underground bay stretched into a wide tunnel that opened out of a jagged cliff-wall hanging directly over the Bloodnight River. Roughly 500 feet of smoothed-out tunnel stood between their hangar and the open cliff, but since they’d never gotten around to fixing the damage done to the doors during a “simple” (by Maur’s claims, at least) navigational error, the tunnel occasionally housed squatters, birds, and other small creatures. At that moment, the tunnel appeared to be clear for take-off.

  The team was ready to depart, but they weren’t armored up – they wouldn’t see any combat for a few days, if things went well, as it would take that long to reach the dig site – but all of their equipment was on board, the mansion was locked down, and Kane loudly reminded everyone to go to the bathroom before they left.

  Black stood outside the stout Darkhawk and gathered her thoughts. She hated being in the position she found herself in.

  I’m going to kick your ass when we catch up with you, you selfish bastard, she thought. No matter what you’ve done for me. In reality, she knew that she would do no such thing. Every member of the team drove her crazy in their own way, but Cross was the worst. I need to figure that out.

  She was just about to set foot on the ship when the chaos started outside.

  They first saw signs of a disturbance in the skies over the Bloodnight River. Flocks of birds fled the city, dark clouds moved far too fast to be natural, and the air took on the tang of rust and blood.

  Black and Kane raced upstairs. They came through the foyer – the mansion was dark because they’d drawn protective iron shields over the windows to deter intruders while they were away – and to the front doors, which Ash’s homunculi promptly unlocked and opened.

  The smell of burning sky greeted them as the doors peeled open. The air had turned orange from the fire and smoke. Staccato bursts of weapons fire and distant and muffled booms sounded through the city streets. Dark winged silhouettes coiled before the face of the bloody sun.

  Thornn was under attack.

  “What the hell?!!” Kane shouted as he hastily pulled on an armored vest he’d picked up in the hall.

  Black looked up. There was something wrong with the sun: it was distorted and twisted, hazy, like she viewed it through a greasy film. Dirty golden light ran down the edge of the sky.

  “What is that thing?” Kane asked. Black heard the others come into the foyer behind them.

  A molten spheroid, like a glimmering sliver of caustic light, hung low over the city like the eye of a giant cat. It slowly turned in place. Black wasn’t even sure if it had three dimensions, for as it rotated it looked almost like a plane, a floating disc smeared in oily light. Thin tendrils of electric slime pulsated out of the suspended edifice like a network of organic webs.

  Kane handed Black an H&K G36C, and she hefted the stout submachine gun and felt its weight. The winged creatures circled low. They bore riders.

  Bullets and arcane ballista bolts flew through the air. Smaller shapes pulled away from the floating gilt mirror. They hovered like black paper, dimensionless and insubstantial, but after a few moments they took on the form of warships. They bore down with bladed hulls and motorcannons, underbelly dorsal fins made of hardened bone and razor chains that dangl
ed in the air.

  Explosions boomed throughout Thornn. Southern Claw gargoyle sentries took flight and engaged their vampire-controlled brothers, who descended from the warships like murderous bats. Klaxons echoed through the streets. Steel shutters came over windows, and doors were thrown shut. Flamecannons from the watchtowers belched streams of liquid orange.

  “Get inside!” she shouted, and she turned to run indoors with the others when pale shapes caught her eye. They were unshadows, murderous white folds that faded invisible in the light of the morning sun. They took on clearer dimension as black clouds formed a perimeter around Thornn, a dark and whirling wall that left a central shaft of gritty sunshine which somehow fueled the vampire’s mirror-shard vessel.

  The pale forms were genderless and unclothed, mannequins of flesh. Claws extended from their featureless appendages, and though faceless they seemed to regard the team with murderous intent as they inclined their heads and made their way towards the manor.

  Black’s spirit surrounded her. His anger seared her skin, and his fury filled her heart. He shifted into a cavalcade of raw edges and hacked pale vampires to bits.

  Those that got through the spirit barrier were met by a barrage of automatic gunfire. Hexed bullets tore through vampire bodies and splashed pale blood on the ground.

  Shadows lengthened as the fliers drew close. The serpents twisted and circled low in the air, grouped together in a winged flotilla of razor tails and edged wings. Dark steam trailed them like vaporous shadows.

  The Razorwings were heavily armored with dark iron plates and bands of frosted steel. Their riders wore black and red armor, and they held tall spears and wide-bored hand cannons, double-edged sabers and lengths of barbed chain.

  Danica counted five Razorwings and four times that many riders, small Creeds bound to their ebon-fleshed mounts by razor saddles and spiked boots. They drew closer by the second. The air took on a sick quality that tasted of exploding gunpowder and vegetable rot.