Soulrazor Read online

  Cross turned back to the open obelisk. A chain of small explosions detonated behind him. A chorus of throaty calls sounded through the chamber.

  Shit. Gargoyles.

  The gargoyles flew in an undulating mass that curled and wound through the maze of snapping chains. Ebon wings beat the air. It was difficult to see the brutes in that network of metal and bodies, which they somehow navigated with ease.

  It was impossible to tell how many there were: they were an aerial mass, a twisting flotilla of claws and teeth and wings. Tails lashed like edged whips. Their guttural howls echoed through the room.

  Cross’ spirit burned cold against his hands as he released her. She remained tethered to his gauntleted fist by a thin strand of ice-blue vapor. Shards of acid cold exploded into the flying ranks.

  Grissom blasted the gargoyles with the AA-12. Grey bodies rained on the walls and floor. Wet debris exploded in a meat storm.

  Cross’ ears rang from the weapon blasts and the screams of aerial combatants. More avatar bodies were blown apart, and links of dark chain rained down like nails. The entire room had turned into a stinking charnel pit.

  The gargoyles scattered. It was difficult to see the fliers amidst the exploding bodies.

  Cross barely avoided being skewered by a gargoyle as it flew low and swept at him with its claws. He fell forward and fired the HK at the beast as it flew off.

  We have to get out of here. Those things will tear us apart, and we still have a horde of vampires to deal with.

  Cross fired blindly as he pulled himself to his feet. His spirit came down and deflected claws and stray bullets.

  Vampires poured through the wall and the open door, and it was only Grissom’s monstrous weapon that deterred them and kept them from overtaking the team.

  Ronan fired at the vampires with an MP5. A gargoyle swooped low, and he cut the creature out of the air with a curved blade.

  They were about to be overwhelmed. Grissom and Ronan backed along the narrow walkway and towards Cross.

  Kane and Black battled with Korva, who was still protected by the stolen magic of the Bonespire. Every bullet or blade or spirit attack directed at her was deflected at the last moment by an unseen force. The combatants dodged in and out of the avatar’s bodies, and they fired around and sometimes through the corpses.

  A gargoyle landed directly in front of Cross. It regarded him menacingly for a moment before he put a bullet in its eye.

  The arcane cylinder still hovered where the obelisk had been. Cross snatched it out of the air.

  “We’re leaving – NOW!!!!”

  Hexed smoke billowed ahead of the vampire shock troops as they pushed through the walls. They fired at Grissom and Ronan with bone rifles and needle guns. Only the avatar’s bodies and the dangling chains lent the team any cover, and even those quickly fell beneath the barrage of gunfire and gargoyles. Several of the fliers had crude swords which they used to hack through the chains. They cast avatar bodies to the ground and into the dank waters.

  Cross sent his spirit out over the hexed fluid, which smelled of fuel and dark magic. He expanded her form until she covered the pools at the far end of the room, then detonated her in a shower of sparks.

  The vats caught alight. One pit exploded into flames, and then the next. Every pool burst into a cloud of black fire and dissipating spectral faces, hollow visages that melted into pale steam as the flames rose and cut off the vampires. A half-dozen gargoyles were caught over the explosions, and they screamed as their flesh and wings caught fire and they crashed to the ground.

  The force of the chain reaction caught Cross off guard. Flames spilled from one pool to the next. Chains ignited, and dark flames raced along their lengths, found the rigid bodies and cast them in burning sheaths. Fire spread across the room like molten rain.

  Chains snapped and bodies collapsed. Heat washed over Cross’ face, and he smelled the dismal odor of a burning graveyard.

  Grissom and Ronan ran straight past him and towards the doorway.

  Kane and Black still battled Korva still battled at the center of the room. They seemed oblivious to the fact that the enormous chamber was exploding one square foot at a time. Korva grabbed a chain and spun herself around a corpse and away from Kane, only to swing back and catch him off guard with a kick to his face. Black’s spirit grabbed Kane as he fell and kept him out of the dank pool behind him.

  Black then moved at Korva, who caught Danica with a gauntleted palm strike in the face, but Black slashed forward with a short blade and tore open Korva’s side.

  Behind them, the room kept exploding. They’d be consumed by the flames in a matter of moments.

  Cross pulled his spirit back. She was weakened from starting the explosions, and had difficulty reforming.

  Bodies dangled and fell. Cross gagged on meat scent and bloody musk. Heat blasted against him and nearly knocked him down. He looked through the haze and found Korva and Black, still locked in battle. They fought with short blades and fists laced with arcane energies. Chunks of debris hailed down from the ceiling and crashed into the waters.

  Time seemed to freeze. Cross leveled the shotgun and carefully aimed at Korva. He called his spirit up, wrapped her around his body to shield himself from the smoking wreckage and exploding black blood. The air tasted like rotted fruit and vomit.

  He breathed in, and was about to fire when a shadow moved over him. Cross turned and shot the gargoyle just in time. He fell backwards as the monster’s body crashed into the black fluid, which sprayed up and onto his face.

  Dark ichor burned cold on his skin. His eyes stung and steamed. Black whispers slithered through his brain like hot razors. Somehow the fluid worked its way into his mouth and slid down his throat like a mass of greasy worms. It churned in his stomach.

  Darkness melted through him. Cross stumbled. He saw Black and Korva struggle, saw vampires push their way through the distant flames, saw Grissom hammer shots into low-flying gargoyles. He didn’t realize that he’d slipped off the platform until he fell into the pool

  Grisly black cats like shadows creep onto fields of smoking skin. They claw their way through bodies and walls of pale flesh.

  He looks out over desolate fields of white dust and black bones. Towers of roaming steel pass beneath coal-black rain.

  Bladed ice tears hang in stasis. The air is frozen plasma. Firmaments of debris lie embedded in the atmosphere like dead flies in honey.

  Cold wind bites at his face. He feels trapped, caught in the jaws of a moment that refuses to release him. There is a finality to every breath, an inevitability to every stilted and frozen movement. He feels history race away behind him as he struggles forward, an anachronism, gelled to a path he cannot turn away from.

  There is no other route. He can’t turn back. It’s possible that this was always true, and that he has not seen it until this moment, this event that he will remember forever, this turning point in his cursed life.

  As he presses deeper towards something that waits over the dread horizon and he ignores the dank and poison rain that drips like oil out of the sky, he realizes that, if he lives, he will measure the rest of his life from this point. Everything will be remembered as something that came before he fell into the black fluid, or the nightmare that came after.

  He sees a sword. It is dark metal held tight in the grip of black stone. He has never seen it before, and yet he knows it. It is the sword beyond the gate.

  And even though the sight of it terrifies him he knows that, one way or another, he will seek it out. And doing so will spell his doom.

  Cross was on his back. His body scraped against stone, and a thin line of dark fluid trailed from his boots.

  He wasn’t moving on his own accord. Something pulled him.

  It took him a moment to realize that he was being dragged backwards down the long halls. His vision was blurry, and he waited for his eyes to adjust until he realized that he needed to wipe the black fluid from his face. Everything that he saw wa
s tilted.

  Ronan was behind him (in front of him), and the mercenary fired his MP5 at a host of pursuing undead. Gunfire ricocheted off the walls.

  He’d woken in the middle of an escape.

  Cross’ head swam. He felt like he’d pass out again. Shadows danced in the distance. Shots echoed and reverberated in the halls.

  A gargoyle soared over Ronan’s head. He fired at it as it flew by, but a pair of zombies armed with sawblades drew his attention back to the mob.

  “Grissom!” Cross coughed. No one else could have been dragging him along so effortlessly. “Let go of me!”

  The Doj did, and Cross rolled and fell onto his back. He tensed his fingers, hoped his spirit was ready, and squeezed her into a spectral missile of ice and rock that impaled the gargoyle that flew past Ronan.

  “Gimme a SitRep!” he shouted.

  “Um…we’re running!” Kane yelled back.

  Cross looked up the corridor. Kane held Danica unconscious over one shoulder and had an MP5 in his free hand, while Grissom and Ronan laid down suppressing fire. Cross saw an indeterminate number of enemies on their tail, vampires and gargoyles and zombies and war wights, a mass of slimy white undead flesh and dripping claws and chainblades and snarling maws massed wall-to-wall in the corridor behind them.

  And there were more on the way.

  Howls, clanging armor and automaton sentries echoed loud through the maze of hallways. Shadows exploded at the team from every crossroads.

  “Grissom, how far is it to the Darkhawk?!” Cross shouted.

  “Dead ahead two intersections, take a right, and we’re there!” the Doj yelled back.

  The giant was about to say something more, but he had to stop and fire a series of deafening blasts from the AA-12 as more enemies came around the corner. Explosive shells tore undead bodies into meat.

  Cross didn’t have a gun, so he ran up and pulled Black’s Colt Python out of her holster with his off-hand while he drew his blade.

  The mass of undead behind them gained ground. Cross gathered his spirit and checked on Black.

  Something inside of him felt sick and rancid. Cross heard

  kill or be killed kill or be killed all die to the cats and the hounds they found you once they find you again I’ll find you fucker I’ll find you

  whispers, but he shook his head and sent them away. He couldn’t focus. The air crashed in on him. He expected the walls to explode at any second.

  The chain reaction of explosions from the room of vats continued to thunder throughout the complex. The necrotic liquid must have flowed into other areas of the Bonespire: just as some Ebon Cities outposts used interconnecting vents that allowed incorporeal undead to flow between areas, he reasoned that maybe the black fluid provided passage for liquid undead to travel through the Bonespire, creatures like water wights and undines. If that was the case, it made sense why the dark liquid would still be detonating all over the complex.

  Cross sent his spirit straight at the front line of undead. Acid nails and black smoke filled the hall. Bodies fell over one another and exploded into strands of black goo.

  “Move!” he shouted.

  They ran.

  Undead soldiers came at them from the side halls. Cross fired the Python aimlessly, more concerned with keeping his swimming mind focused. He glimpsed his hands and saw that the black fluid still clung to him. It dripped from his skin like melting metal.

  “Kane!” Black shouted suddenly as she woke. “What the…put me down!”

  “Maybe later!” he answered.

  Grissom blazed a trail ahead of them, but Cross knew that he was on his last drum of ammo. Undead fell to the sides, blasted into flayed gristle. Kane relented and set Black down, firing his MP5 behind them the entire time.

  Cross gripped his sending stone. They should have been close enough to get a clear signal.

  Maur, he thought into the stone.

  Maur is here.

  Are you ready?

  Maur suggests you hurry the hell up.

  We’re working on it.

  “Ronan, let’s go!” he shouted.

  Ronan tossed a grenade, and the blast brought stone down from the ceiling behind them.

  They came back into the same dark chamber where they’d started. The red glaze of crimson glass shone far over their heads. Unnaturally thick shadows hung like vapors.

  A horde of armored gargoyles flew chaotically near the interior apex of the tower. They tried to push through the defensive barrier Ash had raised over the Darkhawk’s hatch beyond the hole in the glass.

  “Shit!” Kane growled.

  “The gargoyles must have just found them,” Black said woozily. Blood ran down one side of her face. “Otherwise, the warships outside would have blown it away by now.”

  “If we don’t hurry, that’s still going to happen,” Grissom said.

  The undead were right on their tail. Guttural howls and whirring chain blades formed a wall of sound behind them. Thick shadows loomed from every direction.

  Ronan fired into the mass of shadows at their backs. The undead returned fire, and bone needles flew through the air and punctured the ground like nails. White steam curled up that smelled of dead fish and detergent.

  A bullet grazed Grissom’s shoulder and another whirred past Cross’ face, so close that he practically tasted it. He recoiled, held the stone, and looked up.

  Maur, he thought into the stone. Get down here. Now!

  Maur cursed at the other end, but a moment later he told Cross to be ready.

  “Everybody!” Cross shouted. “DUCK!”

  Undead closed in on them. Cross heard electric saws and chattering mad teeth and felt ghoul breath and caustic clouds of vaporous carnivore blood.

  He and Black pulled their spirits as close together as they could and formed an edged shield – a hexed barrier of translucent force that issued a wave of explosive power and sliced their attackers apart. The shield would buckle under a prolonged assault, but it was enough for what came next.

  The crimson glass exploded over their heads. Fulcrum engines poured down blasts of crippling heat as the Darkhawk’s armored hull smashed through. Massive shards fell like bloody blades down the Bonespire’s shaft. One gargoyle was skewered, and fell screaming.

  Cross watched them fall, and for some reason he thought of red angels.

  Caustic night air swarmed through the tower with such force that it nearly knocked the five mercenaries down.

  The Darkhawk fell like a stone, but it remained perfectly horizontal as it plummeted. Small turbines under the fore and aft sections controlled the spiraling vehicle as it spun. Small chainguns strafed the air and cut gargoyles to ribbons. Moments later, the vehicle hovered right over the team’s heads.

  The underbelly door opened, and Ash waited there with the rope ladder.

  “Go!” Cross shouted, still wondering when the hell he’d become a leader. “Go! Go! Go!”

  A vampire came at them from out of the darkness, its claws wound around a broadsword covered in razor-spines. A zombie the size of a horse came right behind it, and it bore massive meat hooks in place of hands and wore a mask of broken teeth. More horrors followed, each worse than the last. The hordes of the Bonespire were upon them.

  Cross fired the Python into the vampire’s face. Grissom hauled Black up the ladder. The Darkhawk sputtered and shook. Gargoyles landed on the top of the vessel and clawed at the windows. Thick bone lances struck the hull. The darkness was alive with motion.

  “Cross!” Kane shouted. “Go!”

  Ronan was on board, and he hacked a zombie’s arm off as it tried to push its way inside. The Darkhawk’s guns rotated and turned towards the horde.

  Cross ran, grabbed the ladder and frantically pulled himself up. Slavering jaws and undulating folds of undead tentacle flesh grabbed at him. He turned and fired down, then sent his spirit out in a wave of razor heat that seared and severed undead soldiers.

  Kane followed right behind him. The b
londe man made it three rungs up the ladder when a voice came out of the darkness.

  “Kane! This isn’t over!”

  Korva shouted from somewhere in the mass of undead. For just a second, Cross saw madness in Kane’s eyes. He saw a drive, a willingness to turn back, no matter what that meant for him.

  Cross was on the top rung of the ladder. Ronan reached down and took hold of his armored coat. He linked hands with him, leaned down, and grabbed Kane’s vest.

  “Maur!” he shouted. “GO!!!!”

  The Darkhawk flew straight up. Cross and Kane dangled from the ladder. The roar of the ship’s vibrating guns nearly shook the two men loose. Hexed shot scattered the undead below.

  Cross didn’t remember climbing up, but the next thing he knew both he and Kane were inside the ship.

  Maur piloted their way back through the shattered skylight, and Ronan manned the cannons. The ship lurched and turned at a preposterous speed. Cross fell against the wall.

  “Shit!” he shouted as a realization struck him. “The cylinder!”

  “I have it,” Black nodded.

  Cross looked through the window and saw vampire warships and bone dirigibles bear down on them. Heavy explosions thudded all around the craft.

  They’d have little trouble escaping once Maur got them out into open air.

  He looked at Black. She looked back at him with a shocked expression. He might as well have been on fire.

  “Cross,” she asked, “are you all right?”

  “What? Why…?”

  He held up his hand and looked at it. Black blood oil pulsated against his skin. He tasted grave rot and felt ice in of his body. His breaths turned ragged and cold.

  inside you we’re inside now we are inside find you found you find you you can’t escape never will there is no way out meteor sword through the black gate the city on fire flesh in the sky opening the rip that leads to the deeper dark

  And again he stands there, in that crater, frozen as he watches the sky tear apart. Filigrees of dancing fire fall to the earth like red teardrops. He tastes death in the air, and his ears ring with screams.