Blood Skies (Book 1) Read online

  “Why so grim?” Graves asked.

  Graves’ scars were barely visible beneath the camouflage paint, the charcoal runes, the mud and the hex soot that covered his face. Most of it had been intentionally cast across the exposed skin of every soldier to prevent catching vampiric infections or arcane diseases, but all of the paint and fluid had sluiced together over the course of days, making even the fairer skinned men look black.

  “Are you serious?” Cross asked in return.

  “Wow. Is your hand that bad?” As ever, it was difficult for Cross to tell whether or not Graves was being serious. He was something of a redneck bumpkin at heart, but he had plenty of field experience, having joined the front lines almost a year before Cross had. “You might as well just fold,” Graves added after he stared at the back of Cross’ cards, as if he possessed x-ray vision.

  “You should listen to him,” Burke smiled. “In fact, you should both probably just give up now.” Burke was tall and broad in the shoulder, and he was both thin and muscular at once, with a chiseled face and crust of short dark hair. Graves had once joked that he looked like the lovechild of Superman and Frankenstein’s monster. “Full house.”

  “That’s not possible,” Cala said. It was well known that she was the only card shark in the squad. “You can’t even spell, Burke. How do you expect us to believe you were able to put together a full house?”

  “He thinks we’re playing Go Fish,” Graves laughed.

  A stiff wind blew through the camp. There were fewer than thirty of them altogether. Most of them were Southern Claw soldiers, but there were also a half-dozen mages and a lonely Doj engineer named Zender, and they were all of them cramped into the scattered tents, tents as full with equipment as they were with personnel. There were sacks of blessed soil stacked high like sandbags around each of the tents, bundles of black iron rods bundled with wire, barrels of ash, boxes of pellet, ammunition, raw moon rock and sacks of hexed salt. Little of that equipment was for the soldiers, but for use by the mages. There was work to be done in the Blackmarsh…too important, Cross thought, to be handed to a bunch of young warlocks such as he.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  His spirit pushed against him as if in answer. The breath of her floated across his skin and filled him with living smoke. His fingers tingled, and he licked his lips to taste her electric form. He unfolded his cards onto the table. Graves, Burke, Cala, Locke and Gage all nodded their appreciation when Cross conceded the game, since he was just holding them up with his indecisiveness.

  Cross knew that Gage and Cala were also on edge. A mage’s spirit was attenuated to subtle fluctuations and ebbs in the ethereal nodes of the living world. They existed in the space between the living and the dead, and it was a witch’s or warlock’s spirit that granted them a sight that pierced illusion, that could seek out known individuals over a score of miles, and that could detect hidden or unseen threats both mundane and magical. Being anchored to his spirit allowed Cross to cull bits of her shadowy essence and transform it into potent energy to create effects that humans had come to know as magic. It also meant that he was constantly exposed to the world of the dead, and that he walked with one foot perpetually in the grave.

  Cross had lived with her since adolescence. He’d first known of her existence after he’d nearly died of smallpox. Even though she’d saved his live, he was still destined to die young…he’d just been given a bit more time. No one could live long when they were tied to an arcane spirit. By their very nature spirits were emotionally volatile and dangerous, lest they’d be unable to produce the energies that they did.

  Cross sat back and looked at the dark tree line that marked the border of the Blackmarsh. It was difficult to tell how deep the Blackmarsh ran, but with any luck Wolf Company wouldn’t have to press in deeper than the outer perimeter, if and when their air support actually arrived. Unfortunately, in order to get close enough to set the hex rods and initiate the detonation sequence that would clear out the vampire garrison in the marsh, they had to figure out a way to contend with the acid drakes and the hellwyrms, and that was where the airships came in.

  Too bad they’re about three hours late. It would have been nice to have done this before dark.

  In a sane world, they would have just postponed the mission and evacuated rather than camp so close to enemy territory, but the Company had solid intelligence that a new shipment of corpses set for reanimation would be delivered to the Blackmarsh by dawn, and the garrison had to be destroyed before that happened.

  “I’m out next hand, too,” Cross said, and he stood up to walk around.

  “Cross,” Cala said. She was a short and stocky woman with a thin scar down one side of her face, and her dark hair was pulled back so tight it made her face seem more pale than it actually was. “Are you all right?”

  “Don’t you feel it?” he asked.

  “Love?” Graves laughed.

  “They’re both on their period,” Burke smiled.

  “Sorcery,” Gage interjected. The small, dark-skinned man wasn’t known for his sense of humor. “Weapons.” He turned and looked at the Blackmarsh. “They’re gett….”

  He never finished his sentence. The first blast tore the muddy ground open and ignited the stagnant sky. Fire rippled across the mud and shallow water in an explosive wave. Heat pushed against them. Cross felt a swelling chorus of screams that tore at the tent and whipped mud across the ground. Panic welled up, and his spirit enshrouded him and covered him with an ethereal glaze.

  Cross leapt back as shrapnel and explosive blades whipped towards them. Gage was lifted up into the air by the blast, and his body was shredded by a phalanx of steaming razor blades. Shadows leapt at the Company from nowhere, liquid darkness made humanoid that unfolded out of two-dimensionality. Shouts and gunfire echoed across the camp. Another chain of explosions sounded as more dark blades cut the mages apart.

  The mages are the targets, was all Cross had time to think as he fell hard onto his back, his body thrown by the concussive force from the explosions. They know why we’re here.

  He sees shadows that move in the trees beneath the mountain, female forms that dance in ghostly silhouette against a hard driving wind that screams from across the plains. He sees black smoke that streams off into the distance, the arcane pollution from a distant train. He sees equine shapes of shadow and jagged blades move around the edge of the forest, unsleeping sentries that hedge in the tired and withered looking humanoids who stand wet and alone in the prison of dark trees. The mountain is a massive knife that probes the tender skin of a melting crimson sky.

  He looks on this, and knows that he is not supposed to see it, this forbidden place, this secret. It is the shape of things past and buried, and things still yet to come.

  Cross woke to chaos. Gunfire erupted all around him. Blood and mud covered his eyes as a greasy film. His sense of direction was gone. His shaking limbs slipped in the mud as he struggled to rise. He smelled sorcery in the air, a burning cloud of caustic fumes that swept across the camp. Cross climbed up to his knees. He pulled slime and effluvia away from his eyes, and looked at the Blackmarsh.

  The Ebon Cities regulars – the vampires – were coming.

  The lead war machine was a shrieking monstrosity, a steamrolling juggernaut covered in chitin plates and bladed chains that dangled from its deck. The vehicle plowed through the bloody black earth. Massive red wolves and their masked vampire riders fell in line behind the machine. The riders held serrated swords and axes at the ready, and the wolves’ howls echoed into the darkening skies.

  The camp was in disarray. The air support still had not come, and its delay in arrival had given the Ebon Cities regulars in the Blackmarsh plenty of time to mount an offensive. Bodies lay in bloody heaps, and thick black and red smoke billowed across Cross’ field of vision as if from a blazing hearth. Soldiers and mages shouted as they desperately tried to rally. Cross’ spirit swam around him, dizzy and angry, and through her he felt the onslaught of dire energies launched at the Company, and he sensed the presence of rebuilt Crujian war machines and dismal undead weapons fueled with stolen blood. Company cannons fired from behind him, and the cold iron shells detonated with thunderous force into the dreadnaught and the wolf riders in great explosions of fur, metal and undead flesh. Adrenaline coursed through the air, so thick it almost fell like rain.

  Cross picked up his pistol. He found Graves in the crowd and made sure he was all right.

  They both joined the rank of Wolf Company soldiers. They charged ahead.

  Cross wasn’t ready to die. He was even less ready to die alone.

  TWO

  WHITE

  Year 22 A.B. (After the Black)

  There was a white apple on the tree. It was like an orb of frozen snow. A tiny spider, also as white as ice, crawled across the apple’s face. The small and withered apple tree, which bore only that single and pale fruit, sat in a shallow river bank filled with muddy water and foul runoff from the Reach. Wind blew in from the vast eastern tundra and whispered through the reeds like a sad and quiet song.

  The sky was low and oppressive, and the air was raw with cold. Cross stared out past the tree and the dense skeletal foliage that stood behind it and into the Reach, an endless and colorless plain of ice floes, snow-covered hills, arctic waters and drifts of snow deep enough to drown in. The horizon was a thin line of shadow that lay compressed beneath the dead white sky. The harsh white color of the Reach marked the end of civilization, for it was where Thornn’s sphere of influence ended, and where the deadly hostility of the wilderness began. There were no other cities of the Southern Claw Alliance this far north — the closest, Ath, was several days travel — so in many ways Thornn truly did stand alone.

  “Eric? Are you okay?”

  His sister, Snow, stood behind him near the gravestones. The cold ground was nearly blue. The cemetery was a long and thin field that stretched all of the way back to the lower defensive tiers of Thornn, a funnel of reinforced red stone walls embalmed in arcane ice and surrounded by enchanted concertina wire. The city was squat and ugly, a troglodyte atop a twisted snowbound hill. Thick plumes of dark smoke slithered like serpents into the stale sky. Cross heard the distant wail of klaxons and machinery.

  His sister wore a pale cloak. The cemetery, in contrast, was dirty and grey, and the grave markers were just low plates of steel etched with the names of the departed. Thornn’s citizens couldn’t actually be buried, as the danger of the dead coming back as vampires could not be dismissed, so they were instead cremated. Cross understood that reanimation had been a real problem about fifteen years ago, back in the early days of the war. Now the melting down of the deceased was so standard a practice no one even thought twice about it.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Come and look at this.”

  Cross’ eyes roamed up to the sentry gargoyles that hovered over Thornn like a murder of stone crows. Arcane storms invisible to the naked eye formed a quiet cyclone of protective magical energies over the city. Those energies emitted a constantly collapsing field of destructive power specially attuned to necrotic flesh.

  Cross’ spirit drifted out and away, and she floated near the edge of the grave field before she moved back close to him. There was no danger in the cemetery, so his spirit was at peace, and her calm filled him. She fell around him like warm vapor that enveloped his body. She’d been with him since he was eight, when it had been discovered he was a warlock. He could barely remember being without her.

  “What is that?” Snow asked. She was shorter than Cross by several inches. There was little mistaking their relation, as she had the same coal black hair and large green eyes as he, and they were both exceptionally pale of skin. Her hair was cut short along the sides and on the back but was long on top, and there was a single streak of white that ran down from the center of her temple. Her choker was black leather set with a black cross. “Is that an apple? God, it must be rotten to the core.”

  “I don’t think so,” Cross said. “Look at it. I think it’s fresh. It’s just…white. Maybe it was drained of its color by this place.” It was possible. Entire crops had been leeched of color near inhospitable regions. Cross had heard of whole forests in the Bone March that had been rendered bone white by the unnatural landscape, and the Wormwood was so corrupt that even vampires feared the vegetation there. There was the Reach, that vast tundra that had been sucked of its life, and the Ebonsand, with its intelligent crabs that muttered arcane curses and Vuul pirates who’d claimed control over waters infused with occult blood. The world was a diseased and broken place. Cross knew that a better one had once existed, back during his youth, but it was becoming harder and harder to remember what that place had been like.

  “It’s beautiful,” Snow said.

  “Yeah,” Cross said. “I guess it is.”

  She and Cross stood shoulder to shoulder. Their long cloaks were blown back by the baleful winter breeze. The arctic sun was rapidly setting. Behind them, past Thornn and on towards the lowlands, lay a brittle landscape filled with loose stones and shallow riverbeds, salt marshes and estuaries, cliffs of dark clay and low-rolling mists. If you took too long to pass through the plains it became difficult to remove the smell of decay and rotting vegetation from the clothing or skin. It was a few days travel from Thornn to the northeastern tip of Rimefang Loch, where armored boats sailed south to other Southern Claw cities on the coast. The outposts scattered along the western coast of the Loch formed the Thirteen, a defensive barrier against the dark stain of the Ebon Cities Bonespire fortresses.

  The chill grew worse. Cross estimated they had less than an hour left before sundown, by which point they had to be inside the city walls. His spirit drifted close, then passed between Snow and himself (she pressed tight against him, as if jealous of his flesh and blood sister) before she circled out and away, cognizant of their surroundings, always on watch for anything that might do them harm.

  “Do you think Mom is doing well?” Snow asked.

  They stared at the apple, and into the Reach. Snow didn’t like to look west, towards the Bonespire, even though it was hard to see from there in the grave field. The western plains were level with Thornn, while the graves were lower by a good hundred feet. A winding path led up the hillside and back to the eastern city gates, through the barbican and into the eastern guardhouse. It had been some time since Thornn had actually seen a Gorgoloth attack from out of the eastern Reach, but the ebon-skinned barbarians had historically wrought so much devastation that hostility from the Reach was considered inevitable, just as a similar, eventual attack from the Bonespire to the west was expected. Thornn was prepared for the next assault, regardless of which direction it came from.

  “I don’t know,” Cross said with a shake of his head. “I hope so.”

  Snow was nineteen now. Cross hated seeing her grow older, but he was glad, at least, that she’d stopped asking if he could see their mother’s ghost, if she’d be able to communicate with it like she and Cross did with their own spirits. It had been so hard to explain to her that it didn’t work that way, that what a mage and his spirit shared was a bond, a melding together of souls. Besides, a mage’s spirit was an entirely different type of creature, and while Cross’ spirit could sense the souls of the recently dead, Cross had explained to Snow that there was no communication with the deceased, no way of interacting. The soul of their dead mother, like all dead souls, was mindless: it would be like trying to talk to a wolf.

  “I miss her,” Snow said quietly. “And I miss you.”

  “I’m here now,” he said.

  “You haven’t been around very much,” Snow said. “You’re not in the city too often. On the rare occasion that you are, it would be nice to see you.” Snow put her arms around his waist. He remembered her when she was young, when he used to take her toys away and hide them, and even after their mother took his toys he still wouldn’t tell them where Snow’s were. Now she was almost grown up, and a stronger person than he was. And she was a witch, just as he was a warlock. They were both cursed with that power. They had a great deal of natural talent between them, they’d been told, maybe the most of any brother and sister that had ever served the Southern Claw.

  One mage in the family was enough, he thought. One was probably too much, actually. Why did you have to be one, too, little Sister?

  He didn’t want to delude himself. He knew that Snow would have to serve in the army someday. It was the price you paid for having the gift of magic.

  “How’ve you been?” he asked. He hugged her back, and then slowly led her back towards the city. “We didn’t get much of a chance to talk before we came down here.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, the note of sadness in her voice unmistakable.

  “How’s the job?”

  “Librarians are all the rage now,” she said with a bit of sarcasm. “All of the boys want to talk to us, and we get to play with the latest, most amazing technology.”

  “Right. So really, how is it?”

  “Boring. Much more boring than what you do.”

  “I doubt that,” he smiled. He knew that she knew better, but he always tried not to worry her. As it was, he’d made clear he wouldn’t tell her any details of being a Hunter. The life expectancy of personnel in the military wasn’t very long, and for members of vampire Hunter squads that expectancy was even less. At two years spent in the service, Cross was halfway to the average.

  I hope you’re different, he thought as he looked at Snow. I hope to God you don’t choose to do this, too.

  They paused by their mother’s gravestone. It was covered with a thin trace of frost. The hammered bronze plate on the cracked marble base read ALICE CROSS. There was no matching plate for their father, as he had died before The Black, so his name had instead been inscribed on the obelisk memorial on Ghostborne Island. Cross tried to get out and see the monument at least once a year, and while his work made that possible, he had long stretches where he didn’t make it to see Dad. Snow had never been there. Rimefang Loch was just too dangerous to navigate lightly.