Black Scars (Blood Skies, Book 2) Read online

  The air fled from his lungs. Cross felt the bones in his broken arm shift and re-knit. The pain sent daggers of hurt through his body. He was on the edge of passing out. Cross clawed at the ground, desperate to rise.

  Black soared at him, her face bloody. Her katars smoked with dark frost. Cross grit his teeth and pulled his spirit around him so that she could cover him with armor made from glittering black crystal. Ice cleaved to his skin.

  Cross threw out a hand and took Danica Black by the throat.

  Hatred chewed through his soul. His eyes narrowed as he looked into Danica Black’s panicked face, and he saw inside of her. Her spirit clawed at him in desperation and panic, but his shield was fused by his hatred. Memories of weeks spent at Dillon’s side wouldn’t leave his mind. His friend had never wanted much, had been as unassuming a man as any Cross had ever met. He just wanted to see his sister and nephew again.

  Memories of Snow cracked through the sinews of Cross’ mind, unbidden. He felt his grip tighten. Every torment he’d felt those past two years were suddenly embodied in Danica’s pale and beautiful face. He saw Red in her eyes, and he saw Morganna, and the Sorn. He saw every evil that had ever been visited upon him, and it would have been so easy to breathe out, to release all of that anger, and with that breath his shadow-wreathed fist would crush her neck.

  Tears ran down his face. Cross hesitated. He wanted to kill her so badly he knew it couldn’t be right. Some part of him, something locked and buried deep inside, told him that it was wrong.

  He loosened his grip, just for a moment. It was enough.

  Black’s spirit pulled away from her body. It was a risky maneuver: in the split second it needed to reform itself he could have killed her.

  Danica sent her spirit spiraling down as a midnight lance that punched through the meat of Cross’ shoulder like a massive and bloody nail. Pain eclipsed his consciousness, and his vision went white.

  Even as the darkness took him, he felt Dillon’s life slip away.

  They sit at the edge of a wide river. He hears the echo of cold and dark water as it crashes against the low wall. Their feet dangle over the side.

  Wires cross the air over the river to the south, a music sheet without notes. There are rocks just below them, littered with sticks and stony debris. A feather floats by, not far away. A bridge is to the north, squat and ugly steel made serene by its surroundings. Wind-tossed waves lap against the stone and send up splashes of water that tickle their legs.

  He is there with and Snow, Graves and Dillon. They smile with him, and they sit beneath the warm sun with their feet dipped in the sun-dappled waves. Cross feels at peace.

  Cross woke to the moon. It hung low and huge in the sky, an immense isle of platinum in a midnight sea. He was in a different cell than before.

  He’d been hog-tied to iron loops bolted into the stone floor. His broken bones had mended, but pain still gripped him in a vise. There was no ceiling, just a hole overhead that was closed with thick metal beams. Clouds that were rust red and as thick as stones cut across the massive lunar face. The air was thick and meaty. The night bled like an open vein.

  His spirit clung to him, weak and restrained. Cross felt darkness at the edge of his soul. It held her away and clawed at his mind like a boat that had run aground in narrow waters.

  He’d been stripped down to his trousers. His chest was covered in scars despite his newfound regenerative properties. He couldn’t feel Ekko, but then he never had: the vampiric power was still there, and it coursed through his veins. But he knew that it would only do so much.

  “You’re awake,” Ramsey said. It wasn’t a question. “Dillon is dead.”

  Even though Cross already knew that, the words still twisted inside of him like a knife. He was grateful that Ramsey decided not to give him more details.

  “So what now?” Cross asked. His voice was hoarse, and dark. It hadn’t always sounded like that.

  “‘What now’?” Ramsey laughed. He walked into Cross’ field of vision. His face wrap was off. Ramsey leaned closer. “You idiot. What the hell were you thinking? You threw that fight on purpose, and every vampire in attendance knew it.”

  “I had my reasons,” Cross said.

  “Well, I hope they’re worth getting both you and your friend killed over.” Ramsey hesitated. “You’re being executed tomorrow night.”

  Cross might have been mistaken, but he swore he detected a hint of sadness in Ramsey’s eyes.

  “Executed?”

  “Yes. It means ‘killed’.”

  “Thanks,” Cross said with a grim laugh. “I know what it means. I guess I’m just surprised they’re not going to Turn me.”

  “They would if they could,” Ramsey said after a moment. He paused. “Cross…what are you doing here? I mean really?”

  Cross looked up at the Gol, and smiled. It would have been so nice to have someone to trust, to share that burden with.

  You had that someone. He’s dead now. And you’re about to follow him.

  “I could ask you the same question,” he replied. Ramsey smiled back.

  “Is there…anyone you’d like me to send a message to?” he asked. “Any family?”

  “You can do that?”

  Ramsey quietly fixed Cross with a piercing look.

  “You’d be surprised what I can do,” he said, and he nodded, ever so slightly, as if afraid someone would see the gesture. His eyes moved down, almost unnoticeably. Cross followed the Gol’s glassy-eyed gaze quickly, so as not to look like he stared at whatever it was he was being shown.

  For a second – maybe not even that long – Ramsey’s left hand curled and twisted. It formed a shape…a shape that Cross recognized.

  Cross’s heart skipped a beat. He wasn’t sure what was happening.

  “Black,” Cross said. “Take a message to Danica Black.” Ramsey nodded. “Tell her…I hope Cole lives. Deal or no deal, I hope Cole lives, because now I just want the shadow to find me.”

  Ramsey watched Cross intently. Their eyes were unblinking.

  “Is that it?” he asked. Cross nodded. “All right, then. Cross…it’s been a pleasure. Good luck tomorrow. But I guess luck doesn’t have anything to do with it, eh?”

  Ramsey took his leave.

  Cross couldn’t sleep. The image Ramsey had formed burned in his mind.

  It was Southern Claw hand code. One simple message, conveyed just barely long enough for Cross to even see it.

  BE READY, it said.

  FOURTEEN

  DARKNESS

  Cross woke to the sound of grim drums. They filled the night like a shattered heartbeat. Dread build in his chest. His arms lay still.

  When he was unchained and led from the cell a few minutes later, he realized he wasn’t shaking at all, at least on the outside.

  Be ready, Ramsey had said. It might have been another trick, something meant to lull him into a false sense of calm before he was executed. It might have been a beautiful lie, a gesture from a friend that ultimately had the same result, leading Cross to believe he would live, when ultimately he would die. But at that point, there was little else he could do but wait.

  Something had changed while he’d slept. Cross couldn’t say what it was, what had caused the shift that he felt, but its presence was unmistakable. The air held a gravity it had lacked before, a sense of presence. It was a familiar feeling. He’d felt it before, in a dream he could only half remember. Whatever it was, it filled him with a sense of foreboding as solid as lead.

  Something was coming. He tasted its charnel odor.

  Cross’ arms were tightly bound behind his back and secured with metal wire that sliced painfully into his wrists. Black-clad vampires in blank masks pushed him through the door and marched him down a steep set of stairs that circled the sandstone tower he’d been held in.

  The night was hot and stale and deep. The moon loomed like a swollen silver eye, so massive he felt he could have reached out and touched it. Blight Tower stood at a dizz
ying height over the City of Chains. There was no railing for the stairs, and it would have been easy for Cross to fall off the side and into the valley of steel that waited below. Krul was a labyrinthine network of iron webs and canyons of steam and shadow. The sound of grinding metal tore through the night like an animal cry. Blasts of industrial smoke trailed into the air, which reeked of body ash and burning blood. Razorwings soared through the sky, reptilian beasts with scaled wings and tails like bladed whips and serpentine mouths that exhaled clouds of poison dust.

  Deathly whispers filled Cross’ head as they led him down the stairs and onto a steel bridge that was barely two feet wide. The bridge was held in place by pale chains and bone girders, and it led over a platform that floated in the air all on its own: a massive disc of black metal, a juggernaut of dark iron that was hundreds of feet across and that hovered and turned like the head of a massive screw.

  Black obelisks stood upon the face of the bobbing platform, as did a massive and complicated contraption that stood at the nexus of a cluster of pillars. This central edifice was like some ossified steel tree constructed from mirror shards and shattered saws. Its limbs were as spindly as a spider’s legs, and its central trunk dripped dark fluids that ran into gutters filled with slime. Fluid as thick as oil leaked from the massive platform and fell like grisly rain into the smog and shadow-filled obscurity of the city below.

  The narrow plank was a dozen feet higher than the surface of the revolving platform. Cross was flown down by a spike-backed gargoyle whose black eyes reflected Cross’ exhausted and haggard face back at him. He only barely recognized what he saw. He didn’t recall being so pale, so worn, so bearded and scarred. He looked like a corpse.

  The massive rotating platform felt unsteady beneath his feet. Dozens of vampires stood in attendance. Most of them looked like prison sentries, but Cross saw Talos Drake with his dark undead lions, and a pair of vampires clad in blood red cloaks and armor and equipped with weapons made of Crujian steel – Shadowclaws, elite Ebon Cities commandos out of Rath.

  He also saw Tega Ramsey, who attended Drake. He saw Danica Black, Kane, and several of the other gladiators, all bound and on their knees, brought to bear witness to the fate of one of their own who’d chosen not to die with honor in the arena.

  A second, smaller disc floated above the platform, well above the tree of razors and the whirling bones. This smaller vehicle was only about the size of a truck, curved in a bowl shape, and lined with massive downward-pointing saws like the inverted dorsal fins of some razorine shark. A stout turbine engine at one end of the vessel pushed it through the air, and the vehicle left a stream of black and green smoke in its wake. Inside of the wide-mouthed interior of the bowl-shaped vessel were a trio of bone-launching motor guns operated by female vampires with black masks, tight green armor and tall scimitars they carried slung across their backs. A massive male vampire at least seven feet tall piloted the vessel. He was all undead muscle and thick armor, and Cross guessed he’d likely been a Doj before he’d been Turned.

  Chained to the bottom of the small vehicle were a dozen prisoners who looked as though they’d been dipped in blood and dragged through the desert. Their arms and legs were tied over their heads and to the bottom of vessel, while their bodies faced out, like they were figureheads on the underbelly of the dark ship. The vessel was designed to aerial dock, where it would float perpendicular to a loading platform; if it were actually forced to land, every prisoner would be crushed.

  Cross spied Cole among the other prisoners as the vehicle floated close to the surface of the execution platform. He could barely recognize her, since her bloody hair was pasted to her face and she’d gone bone thin.

  You bastards.

  Cross was seized by the arms and marched across the platform. Kane nodded at him as he walked by. Black looked at him with…fear? Remorse? Either way, she didn’t seem happy about his execution.

  Well, at least there’s that.

  He glanced at Ramsey again, who nodded at one of Drake’s other attendants as she whispered something to him. She was a young-looking female vampire with short blonde hair.

  Cross turned away. That vampire was Ekko.

  Something growled in the air, guttural and deep. It was distant, but the sound was strong enough that he actually felt it. No one seemed to notice but Cross.

  The drums pounded slower than before. They’d become a heartbeat for the bestial city. Cross heard chains and smoke and cries, and he smelled metal and oil and rotting flesh. He moved stiffly, exhausted beyond measure.

  They led him towards the tree. Drops of grisly matter rained down from the clockwork branches and their whirring blades. The pale moonlight cast the shadows of limp bodies held in the tree at awkward angles, crumpled and missing appendages. A dank and stale air wafted over Cross.

  Dillon’s body was on the platform at the base of the tree, so ruined that Cross only recognized it because it made no sense for any other body to have been placed there. Knowing his friend’s fate before seeing his corpse had prepared him somewhat, but Cross still felt sick.

  No one deserves to die like that. He’d been a simple man, and he hadn’t wanted for much. He’d wanted to protect his home; he’d wanted to see to it that the sister and nephew he likely felt awkward around were safe and taken care of; he’d wanted an occasional companion of his own. I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry.

  A pair of cloaked vampires stood at the base of the tree, their white robes and skin like pale torches in the claustrophobic shadows. Murderous mechanical branches moved overhead. The vampires smiled. Something deep in Cross’ soul sealed away the rage and hatred he felt at that moment, so that he could reach back in and use it later, when he’d need it the most.

  He’d have the opportunity: Cross knew that he wasn’t going to die.

  Not yet.

  They untied his hands and pushed him into a vertical metal coffin. The inside of the box was filled with wires and blades. The vampires seized his wrists and secured him to sharpened straps that dangled from the edged walls of the box. The coffin would lift him into the air, where the tree would slowly flay him into chunks of meat.

  The shadow again howled from the desert. This time, everyone heard it.

  The sound shook the city of Krul, and it echoed long after it should have faded. The temperature dipped from the chill of a desert night to almost frigid. Small shards of tiny razors fell from the killing tree and clanked noisily to the platform.

  The city froze. Vampire eyes cast themselves westward, towards the source of the dark roar. Arcane chants and silent rites had already begun deep inside the residencies and on the streets of Dirge, vampire spells meant to ward off enemies and raise the city defenses.

  They’ll do little good.

  A general alarm was raised. The sight of the vampire city-state was something to behold when the city was under attack. Vampires quietly moved in military precision to gather weapons and armor. Deep horns like something from the bottom of the sea cast dull booms into the sky. Buildings folded together as Krul’s massive chains began the lengthy process of sealing the city off from attackers. Cross heard guns in the outer walls shift and extend. The columnar metropolis squeezed tight as the buildings pulled and folded together. Winged fliers and airships took to the air. Sharp musk carried on the dead breeze, as did the whispers of incorporeal servants and homunculi messengers.

  For a moment it seemed as if Cross had been forgotten. He looked through the crowd of vampires and searched for Black and Kane. The deep night turned even blacker.

  It found us. It came for the shards of Lucan’s soul.

  Ramsey.

  Cross struggled against the straps that held him in the bladed cage. They’d not been fully secured.

  Tega Ramsey did this. He shut down the city dampeners, or manipulated them. He made it so that the Sleeper could detect us, so that it would find us.

  Cross shoved his foot against the cage door and pulled. Leather and metal scraped against hi
s hand. Blood and skin tore away as the straps snapped. He fell out of the cage and onto his back on the cold stone, where he stared up into the heights of the razor tree. Slivers of dark steel and thick drops of blood rained down around him.

  Claws punched through Cross’ shoulder and pinned him to the platform. He screamed, and threw his arms around the vampire who’d attacked him. The undead’s blank mask was all that looked back. Pain flooded through Cross’ body.

  The distant shadow howled again. Its call rattled the city and shook the massive platform, which started to tilt. Chaos spread like fire. Vampire soldiers and spectators spread everywhere. Cross expected shouts and cries and sounds of panic, but then he remembered where he was. The guards and the bureaucracy and the minor nobility of Krul were silent in spite of the dire situation.

  The world turned black. Cross’ vision and his senses dulled.

  The vampire held him down and looked around at the chaos, unsure of what it was supposed to do. Chain bridges and iron catwalks swiveled as the out-of-control execution platform drifted too close to one of Krul’s buildings. The Sleeper’s approach either distracted the platform’s pilot or it had disrupted Krul’s arcane mechanisms. Klaxons and sirens blared through the sky. Armed serpent riders and their mounts soared by in the night. Vampires on the platform raced for the edges, seeking escape or weapons.

  As the platform tilted, Cross clearly saw the Sleeper through Krul’s columns of smoke and industrial fires.

  Its size, even its form, defied comprehension. It was a roiling mountain of darkness. Seas of ghostly matter swam within its form, storms of cold lightning, molten pools of stale moonlight. Its eyes were like blazing scars, and its smoking ebon claws were the size of warships. It towered and blocked out the sky. The great lumbering mass loomed over Krul’s un-breakable cylindrical walls. The air was heavy with shadowy grit and a spectral vapor of charcoal fog.