Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) Read online

  A small building made of stone and steel stood at the far end of the junkyard. The door opened as Danica and the others approached.

  Her spirit boiled against her skin. She sensed presences above, fast-moving figures with razored jaws and iron-capped wings. Shadows came into view.

  “Incoming!” Kane yelled.

  A trio of grey-skinned gargoyles unfurled their wings over the scrap yard. Steel harpoons and straps of dark armor reflected the dull light of the orange sun.

  Kane fired at them with an M14A, and Ronan dodged to the edge of a pile of debris and shot up at them with his MP5. The gargoyles were startlingly quick, and somehow dodged the barrage of bullets with ease. The roar of gunfire was deafening. Shell casings clattered in the dirt.

  Danica smelled hex fumes in the air. Whispers came at her with the force of an iron wind.

  The gargoyles weren’t alone.

  She narrowly avoided a blazing missile of shrapnel. Metal wreckage exploded in hex flames behind her, and heat washed over her body.

  Danica’s spirit moved around her wrists and fused into a shield of force. A second missile exploded against the barrier. Bits of smoking steel rained to the ground.

  A mercenary warlock unfolded out of the shadows. His spirit camouflaged him, made him fade in and out of sight. He seemed two-dimensional, a paper enemy. His eyes glowed like burning cinders.

  Kane brought one of the gargoyles down with a stream of gunfire. Another darted forward and clawed at Ronan. It flew back and came in again, and the swordsman deflected its attacks with his katana.

  The merchants and shoppers in the scrap-yard had fled. Panicked noise echoed everywhere.

  The warlock turned and vanished again.

  Damn it!

  Danica’s spirit coiled around her like a hungry serpent. His touch chilled her skin. She shuffled her feet in the dirt, and moved careful so as to avoid tripping on any debris. The yard felt wide open, and she realized how exposed she was. Her back tensed with anticipation of an attack.

  She heard the stone breath of the gargoyle moments too late. The warlock had masked the creature’s presence. It suddenly loomed over her with outstretched claws and massive teeth.

  The moment Danica turned around the mage shifted into focus just off her right flank. Light caught on his dark cloak, and she saw a bandolier filled with explosives and knives. His spirit coiled into an ice stake that he held like a spear.

  Danica ignored the gargoyle and launched her spirit at the warlock. Red energies exploded in a shower of razor sparks. The warlock’s cloak caught on fire, and the spirit missile he’d prepared to cast at Danica detonated in his own hands. His body exploded in a blaze of ice, flame and blood.

  A sharp crack sounded, and the gargoyle fell to the ground at Danica’s feet. She looked up and saw a handful of armed soldiers who’d emerged from the small building.

  Jade, a young and attractive woman with vaguely Asian features and incredibly long and silken dark hair, stood at the head of the party. She wore a simple blue-black cloak and riding pants, a loose white shirt and a number of rings. Her eyes sparkled with magic, and Danica immediately took note of the witch’s spirit, a hostile male force that circled her like a caged tiger. Black’s spirit bristled, and though the two tensed and tested one another, Danica held hers back and used him to make sure there weren’t any more threats approaching.

  The only other newcomer that Danica recognized, Sol, stood with his gun still smoking from when he’d shot the gargoyle. He was a mountain of a man, a half-Doj with dark skin and dark eyes, short cropped black hair and muscles like iron. He wore a tight armor vest and flak pants, and even though he smiled wide his eyes burned with malice.

  Sol and Jade were enforcers for Klos Vago, a member of the large cartel of slave traders and smugglers known as The Shard.

  “Mr. Vago sends his regards,” Jade said politely.

  “Who the hell were these guys?” Kane asked angrily as he gestured at the corpses. Gargoyle blood covered his chest.

  “Bounty hunters would be my guess,” Ronan said. He wiped his katana off on the one of the bodies.

  “Again?” Kane said.

  “Yes,” Jade answered. “Again.”

  “Which means we need to get out of Blacksand,” Danica said. “I trust that’s why Vago wants to meet with us?”

  “Actually, he sent us to give you the details of the last job he’d like you to do before he helps you get home,” Jade explained. “Listen…we should really get indoors…”

  “What do we have to do?” Kane interrupted.

  Jade hesitated, and looked at Sol. He shrugged.

  The city around them had more or less returned to normal. Minimal damage had been dealt to the scrap yard, and automaton slaves moved forward in a rush of whirs and buzz to scrape up the debris. The sky drowned in thick red clouds, and Danica smelled sea salt on the wind. People outside the scrap yard went about their business – if the battle had bothered them, they didn’t show it.

  “You two,” Jade said to Kane and Ronan, “will fetch your friend Maur and come with me and Sol. We’re going to investigate some trouble near the arcane barriers north of the city.”

  “What are we looking for?” Ronan asked quietly.

  “Vampires,” Sol said with a smile. “Ebon Cities forward patrols. We don’t want them around, and they can’t seem to take the hint. You help us out with our problem, and the boss says he’ll help you out with yours.”

  “Wait a second…” Black said. “Where am I going to be during all this?”

  “Mr. Vago fears it would be too great a risk to send you out with your teammates,” Jade explained. “Especially since the soldiers of Black Scar are here in the city looking for you.”

  Damn it.

  “Black Scar…” Kane said. “Dani…”

  “Wouldn’t it make sense to send her away from the city if she’s the one they’re looking for?” Ronan asked.

  “Mr. Vago doesn’t think so. We’re certain they’re watching anyone who leaves the city, and they’re…”

  “Probably tracking my arcane signature,” Black said bitterly. She looked at Kane and Ronan. “And if they’re doing that, there’s a good chance they’re also giving my signature out to the mercenaries they’ve hired, which explains why both these guys and those Vuul were able to find us once I got out in the open.” You shouldn’t be surprised. You knew your past would catch up with you sooner or later. “Shit.”

  Jade hesitated.

  “He has ways of masking you from their presence,” she said. “But you’ll have to remain close to him.”

  This keeps getting better and better, Black thought. Surprisingly, though, she thought Jade sounded truly encouraging, maybe even sympathetic. I’ll keep that in mind.

  “This is a crap idea, Dani,” Kane said.

  “Don’t be scared, Blondie,” Sol said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Beefsteak,” he said.

  Ronan looked at Danica.

  “It’s your call.”

  Danica looked at her friends, and then at Jade. This was worse than she’d thought.

  Why are you looking for me now? she wondered. Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone, Rake?

  She tapped her foot. They had to get home. For all they knew, Cross’s life depended on it.

  “Give us an hour,” she said. “We’ll meet you back here?”

  “Of course,” Jade nodded.

  “Dani…” Kane said as they left, but she put a reassuring hand on his arm.

  “We don’t have much of a choice, Mike. You guys go, help them out. I’ll make sure Cross is secure and try to keep us both out of sight.”

  They moved a short distance away from Vago’s men before she stopped and looked at them both.

  “We need to play this bastard’s game, at least for now,” she said. “You guys take Maur and go with them, do the job, and I’ll try to keep any more of my old friends from finding me. Right now it’s just important tha
t we get home.”

  TWO

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  Something had broken through the boundary. Something big.

  The turbines on the Rakzeri airship Wicked roared loud as they blasted away waves of cold desert sand. The sky was pale and vast, and a dank red glow pressed up from the western horizon. Kane smelled sea salt and coal dust on the icy wind. They were just a dozen miles from the Ebonsand Sea, a dark and impressive expanse of churning waters and dangerous, unnatural storms.

  Kane knelt down in the sand and faced the barrier, a series of tall arcane pillars made of limestone and granite. The line of stones stretched in either direction for as far as the eye could see. Each pillar was covered in dark runes that supposedly cast an invisible shield between them, which acted as a twenty-mile long fence between Blacksand and the wild territories to the north and west.

  A pair of the pillars had been broken, however, and up close it appeared they’d been rammed by some sort of vehicle or a large creature. Unfortunately, the salt winds off the Ebonsand coast had blown away any tracks, so all he could tell for certain was that either an armored land mammal or a small tank had smashed through the stones.

  Awesome, he thought. Is it too much to ask for things to just be easy every once in a while?

  “Well?” Jade asked. The witch stood just inside Wicked’s open bay door. The ship hovered a few yards behind Kane and less than a foot off the ground. It was appropriately named: every Rakzeri ship Kane had ever seen looked like a handful of broken knives shoved around a conch-shell. The ships were efficient and fast but, in his humble opinion, ugly as hell.

  Jade’s long dark hair caught in the wind. She was very short –five feet, if even that – and as thin as a rail. It was a wonder she didn’t lift up in the breeze and sail into the sky.

  “‘Well’ what?” Kane said. “You’re the expert. You tell me.”

  Kane had to shield his eyes from the dust kicked up by the Wicked, but there really wasn’t much to see other than the boundary, an unnamed arcane perimeter built by the mages of Blacksand to keep hostile wilderness mutations and primitive humanoids at bay.

  It occurred to Kane that they weren’t far from Crucifix Point, the site of a terrible massacre at the hands of a vampire kick murder squad several years back. Ever since the Southern Claw had pulled most of their resources out of the area to concentrate on fighting the vampires in and around Rimefang Loch, the more the southerly territories had fallen into disorder. Now they were just a lawless haven for criminals, pirates and outcasts.

  “It doesn’t look good,” Jade said. Kane hadn’t even seen her disembark from the vessel, but suddenly she stood on the ground right next to him. Ronan was behind her.

  Jade walked across the cold sand with sandaled feet. Kane’s skin went cold at the presence of her spirit.

  “Well?” Ronan asked. Only his eyes were visible beneath his shemagh.

  “Give her a second,” Kane said. “You got a hot date, or something?”

  “Blow me,” Ronan growled.

  “That’s between you and your date,” Kane nodded.

  “Grow up,” Jade groaned.

  She walked past Kane and up to the nearest obelisk, which stood some eight-feet-tall and three-feet across even after it had been broken. The obelisks were partially submerged in the sand. There was roughly fifty feet between the individual stones, and they’d been linked together with a thin iron chain that had snapped and fallen onto the ground.

  “There are traces of foreign magic here,” Jade said. “Something used it to shatter the barrier.” She concentrated a moment. “Ebon Cities magic. Chattel sorcery.”

  “Shocker,” Kane said.

  “That’s terrific,” Ronan said with a shake of his head. “What now…‘Chief’?”

  Kane tried to ignore the comment. Ronan was upset that Black had put Kane in charge while she stayed behind in Blacksand, but Kane liked it even less.

  I shouldn’t be in charge, he thought. The only reason it’s me is because Black knows Ronan is two steps shy of being a complete nutcase, but she doesn’t just want us to take orders from Vago’s flunkies. God, this sucks!

  “This is the third breach we’ve found,” Kane said, mostly to himself, and then he turned to Jade, “but this is the first time you’re been able to get a read for what might have caused the damage, right?”

  “Yes,” she nodded.

  “Then we should go through here, and check it out.”

  She gave him an annoyed look.

  “So you’re an expert on magic now?” she asked sardonically.

  “Don’t get your panties wrinkled,” Kane said. “Do you disagree?”

  “No,” Jade said after a moment. “But maybe you should let the mage make the call on things related to magic.” Her smile went cold. “Got it?”

  Kane glowered, but he clenched his teeth and bit back about fifty insulting comments that came to mind. He heard Ronan laugh behind him.

  We wouldn’t be in this mess if not for the friggin’ Revengers. He and Cross had always known it wouldn’t be easy for Danica to walk away from Black Scar, especially with as much as she seemed to know about The Revengers. But we didn’t expect them to track her down here, in the middle of Nowhere Squared. They were basically out of money and short on all of their other supplies, and they really had no easy way to escape. Working with Vago was the only way they’d managed to stay out of Black Scar’s clutches, and every day they had to hide and rely on his protection they just fell deeper into his pocket.

  Jade looked at the barrier again. Her attention was lost in the shifting sands.

  “What is it?” Kane asked.

  “I don’t know…” she said. “Something’s here…something is tied to this land.”

  Her voice was dreamy and distant, and she stared straight ahead. Kane cautiously stepped around to look at her face. Her eyes glowed. They were locked in some arcane realm, trapped in a vision of magical trace lines or spectral pulses or some other damn thing Kane only barely understood. Even with as much as he’d learned about magic in the two years he’d spent with Cross and Danica, very little of it actually made sense to him.

  “‘Something’ is…kind of vague,” he said.

  “Something old,” she said. “Something powerful.” Her eyes blinked, and when she opened them again their normal cold green color had returned. She looked dazed for a moment, and then regained her composure and looked at Kane. Whatever she saw on his face made her smile. “What, did I creep you out?”

  “What?” Kane said with a flippant smile. “Oh, no…you know. It’s all good.”

  Jade laughed.

  She was such an enigma to him. Even with as much power as she supposedly possessed, Kane thought Jade lacked that hardened edge he was used to seeing in other mercenaries.

  Well…most of the time, at least. Keep your head straight, pal. She could fry your balls off with a gesture.

  She turned back to the open desert.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  “I saw something the vampires might want,” she said. “We should go and check it out.”

  Blacksand had to date managed to stay out of the war between the Southern Claw and the Ebon Cities, in part because the criminal portcity only had a relatively small human population. Most of the inhabitants of the ramshackle and crime-ridden place were Doj, Vuul, Gol and the little-seen Draj, a race of Cruj offshoots who kept to the shadows and were generally distrusted and feared. There was no true ruling authority in Blacksand. As had been the case in Kane’s home city of Kalakkaii, the crime guilds competed for control. In Blacksand the upper hand unquestionably belonged to Klos Vago and The Shard, but Kane understood they’d recently been challenged by a new band of thrill-seeking mercenaries and robbers called the Shadow Guild.

  Yeah, I don’t see that ending well.

  Unfortunately for Vago, holding the reins of power in the city also meant that he had to deal with the city’s problems. While he maintained a fairly tr
aditional city militia that handled local troubles, the problem of the downed arcane barricade warranted sending out the heavy hitters to investigate.

  And since you own our asses at the moment, why waste your goons when you can send us instead? Seriously, we get all of the fun jobs.

  Sightings of Ebon Cities scouts in the region – which was unusual in and of itself, since Blacksand was literally hundreds of miles away from both Southern Claw and vampire territories – had forced Vago to take some initiative and find out what was going on. The last thing the Shard or any of the nomads, natives or settlers of the southern wastelands wanted was for one of the major powers to move in and start taking over the area.

  Kane thought about Danica, stuck back in the city with Vago, who both of them suspected had no intention of ever keeping up his end of the bargain. He was worried about her. She’d probably kill him if she knew that, but that didn’t change anything.

  He thought about Cross, and wondered if they’d ever be able to bring him back. He’d not woken since they’d rescued him from the ruins of Shadowmere Keep, carried him across the wastelands and hitched a ride on the Dubrakki Railway to get to Blacksand. He’d not stirred in the three weeks since they’d found him. Not once.

  Kane shuddered, and tried to calm his mind. He’d been at odds ever since Ekko had died, but his new family – there was no other way he could think of them now, not after all they’d been through together – had helped him heal his wounds. In a way, Cross’s disappearance had brought he and Danica closer. They trusted each other now, and worked well together.

  That was important, he thought. I spent two years blaming Danica for what had happened to Ekko. It was past time for me to get over that shit.

  Before, it had been Cross that had fused the team together, but Mike felt sure that even after Cross came back the three of them would be even more tightly knit than ever before. Others came and went, but it was those three, the survivors of Karamanganjii, who held the tightest bond.

  If he comes back, he thought. If.

  “There,” Jade said.