Vampire Down (Blood Skies, Book 7) Read online

  He soared back to her, slithering along the stone and up against her skin like a warming gel. Information filled her mind, facts learned like they’d already been there, details integrated into her consciousness.

  “They’re in the old watchtower on the west edge of Centertown,” she said. “The one with the munitions cellar.”

  “Which means they might be armed,” Cross said with a nod. “Terrific.”

  The tower was dead ahead, a solid and windowless structure whose apex was capped with old-fashioned parapets and a floodlight. The door at its base was solid oak laced with iron, black and brown and looking more like a drawbridge. They left Ronan and Shiv a few paces back in a closed alleyway, and Danica covered Cross as he approached with the shotgun in hand.

  Cross pushed the door open to darkness. Danica sent her spirit in as a ball of arctic blue light which illuminated the contents of the tower: recurve bows, old war horns, bedrolls, water skins, gear belts, shammies, knives, spoons and cups, linens, leather traces, cloaks, a piece of old storm glass, all of it stacked neat against the stark sandstone walls.

  Her spirit hovered there, lighting the room. She didn’t detect the other presence until it was almost too late.

  A warlock’s female spirit launched at them from out of the dark. Danica whipped her companion out into open air moments before the inside of the tower filled with liquid red energy that nearly set the place alight. Cross jumped back. Shots rang out from the turret above, a rapid barrage of rifle fire that seemed thunderous and alien in the otherwise still and frozen city. Chunks of stone ripped up from the street.

  The spirit inside was as crazed as it host, half-mad from isolation, erratic in her movements and pulsing with unstable power. Danica held, waited for the ghost to stop immolating the interior. Her heart sank as most of the equipment was scorched, but the moment the warlock’s hostile spirit withdrew Danica launched her own attack. Her spirit barreled past Cross and screamed into the shop in a blaze of white light, a pulsing resonance that would blind and possibly render anyone inside unconscious without doing them any real harm. She expanded his form as he moved, watched as his presence blossomed and spilled through the seams in the tower walls.

  The air pulsed silent, a held breath. Motes of dust and crystal froze as the spirits collided. Ice and flame sucked in, drawn as if through a funnel. Danica shouted a warning, and Cross fell to the ground. Everything slowed.

  The blast released, a blinding white explosion. Arctic flames licked against the nearby buildings. Sheets of cold fire rippled up and down the walls. Screams rang out.

  The air thinned as the fire died. Danica had to blink her vision back into focus, like she’d been too long staring at the sun. The air burned, and her throat and sinuses were raw from the ignited atmosphere. She breathed deep, straightened herself, her chest feeling hollow. Dizziness and nausea shot through her in waves. She heard cries of pain from up on high.

  Danica’s spirit peeled against her, weak and inconstant. He seemed on the verge of blinking out of existence, so she immediately locked him within her arcane limb so he could heal. It was always dangerous when opposing spirits collided, but this was worse, which led her to believe the female spirit she’d sensed wasn’t just unstable but somehow corrupted, crumbling apart because of some theurgic disease, a slowly dying spirit tied to a slowly dying man.

  Cross leapt to his feet, dousing his armor coat where it had caught alight. He quickly pushed inside with the shotgun, stamping out small flares as he went. The inside of the tower was scorched and in ruins. Judging by the expression on Cross’s face and the way he covered his arm with one hand the warlock had died, likely incinerated when the spirits fused in that deadly blast. Cross looked up the inside of the citadel and pointed towards the apex, indicating that he was heading up to investigate.

  Danica checked Shiv and Ronan while Cross was inside and was relieved to see they were both unharmed since they’d been shielded by the alley, though she did have to stamp a small blaze away from the edge of Ronan’s makeshift sled. The air crackled with the still-burning flames that had landed on the cobblestone, and even though there seemed little danger of the fire spreading the explosion had made tremendous noise. She trained the G36C on the street and kept her eyes on the red-black sky, half-expecting Razorwings or Shadowclaws to suddenly appear like they’d been lying in wait the entire time.

  Cross emerged from the smoking husk of the tower a few minutes later with a burned and dying man in his arms.

  No, Danica thought. The boy was fifteen years old, maybe.

  Whatever the boy’s skin had once been he was black now, scorched dark and rasping for breath. The charred flesh seemed to float on top of the muscle as if separated by a layer of liquid, leaking red ooze through cracks that looked less like wounds and more like fractures on some dark and crusted earth. The stench of burning was thick, even from a distance.

  “Help...” he coughed, and Danica was about to release her spirit to heal him when the boy died. Blood spurted from his mouth and sizzled as it struck his chest.

  “Shit,” Cross said. “I tried to get down here as fast as I could...”

  Danica watched the boy and felt tears budding in her eyes, which she knew was just ridiculous. When she was a Revenger she’d condemned entire communities and had the families sent to Black Scar to be slowly put to death by working in the red diamond mines. And it wasn’t as if this was some innocent – he was a scavenger, like so many others she’d run across over the years, and if they hadn’t gotten him he’d have shot them and looted their corpses for whatever scraps of food or ammunition he could find.

  That doesn’t change the fact that I just murdered a child.

  Cross waited a few moments before he took up his gun again and went and checked on Shiv and Ronan, doing as Danica had and watching the roads and sky for signs of trouble. It was possible the only reason they’d made it as far as they had was because they’d maintained a low profile in spite of their ungainly method of travel, but an arcane explosion there in the middle of Thornn would change all of that.

  Danica watched the boy, as if waiting for an explanation. Her flesh arm was shaking, but she didn’t know why. She had a suspicion it was more than this nameless wastelands scavenger that had her nerves on edge, but until that moment she couldn’t put a face to her fears, to the budding dread that had weighted in her gut like a parasite, slowly easting her away, made invisible because she’d been in a haze of near bliss, the closest she’d been to happiness for as far back as she could remember.

  It could all be gone in a heartbeat, she thought, and something inside her felt ready to break loose. And eventually it will. There’s no escaping it, no matter what you do.

  She forced herself to step away, and rejoin Cross. They had to go.

  “He said something,” Cross told her as they neared the edge of the city.

  Once she released her spirit after he’d had sufficient time to recover she found there was no more life to be found in Thornn. They poked their heads into a few shops, but there wasn’t anything left. The city had been picked clean – everything from cans of beans to spare bedrolls had been renovated from every storefront or residence they took the time to check. Only the tower had borne anything salvageable, and Danica’s spirit had inadvertently destroyed it all.

  “The boy?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  They were near the manor, the place they’d called home for nearly two years before leaving Thornn for good. The roof was caved in, the outer walls shattered. Darkness leaked from inside like water. It was difficult to tell at a distance what sort of munitions or attack had brought the structure down but it was enough for them to know there would be little point in investigating. The earth smoked in the open grounds beyond the outer stone and brick wall; everything was dark and frosted, like the devastation had been preserved in glass.

  The rest of the area seemed relatively untouched, save the old Southern Claw headquarters, the massive hosp
ital located at the top of the main hill. They could see it from halfway across the city: the broken stone towers had tumbled inwards and collapsed on the massive landing pad roof, which had sloped and fallen over the edge and into the river below along with a good third of the rest of the building. The bulwark of iron-reinforced stone appeared as cold and dead as a tomb.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Cross stopped, and set down Ronan’s sled. He drew his cowl down from around his face.

  “He said he’d seen Bloodhollow,” Cross said.

  “What?”

  “That’s what he said,” Cross with a shake of his head. “He’d seen Bloodhollow. He’d hoped to go back.”

  A shiver ran down her spine hearing Cross say the words. His eyes went skyward, and hers followed. The sun was winter pale and crisply outlined in the meat-colored sky, and when she looked away to the shifting mists she still saw its afterimage burned before her eyes. Her breath was purling white; the temperature was dropping even though it was only mid-day.

  “What do you think it means?” she asked, not sure if she wanted to know.

  “No idea,” Cross said, and he looked at her and offered a grim smile. “But it sounds like something worth investigating.”

  He took up Ronan’s sled and started moving again. If it continued to grow cold they’d have to find shelter, maybe even hide there in Thornn, though Danica wasn’t sure that was the wisest plan given how they’d just broadcasted their location. But where the hell else would they go? What was Bloodhollow, and how could they find it?

  “Ath,” she said as the notion struck her.

  “What?”

  “We were going to Ath when the Skyhawk crashed,” she said. “To meet the White Mother. I think we’re long overdue.”

  Cross breathed deep, his hard eyes on her.

  “We have no way of knowing she’s still there,” he said.

  “We have no way of knowing she’s not,” Danica replied. “It’s better than nothing, Eric. We have to find out what the hell is going on, and we aren’t getting anywhere like this.”

  He nodded.

  “You’re always right,” he said with a wry grin.

  “I’m going to remember you said that,” she smiled with grim satisfaction. “And remind you every chance I get.”

  They took shelter in The Black Hag, the tavern Cross used to frequent. The three of them – her, Cross and Kane – had spent that first night there together after he’d asked them to join him working for the Southern Claw, taking freelance missions the regular military couldn’t or wouldn’t handle. It had taken quite a bit of convincing on his part to talk Elias Pike into letting it happen, and they’d dealt with a lot of opposition in their time, especially from Laros and the White Council.

  We were family. She looked at Cross as he propped Shiv’s head up on a pillow and she made sure Ronan was secure. They put both of their charges in the office, a room with only one point of access at the end of the main room, where she and Cross would sleep so they could keep an eye on the reinforced staircase leading to the surface. It was cold as hell down there, but she and Cross sat near a small blaze her spirit started near the center of the room, and they warmed themselves while they drank wine turned sour and ate MREs. We still are.

  They both shed their armor coats and sat on a bundle of blankets, with another draped over their shoulders. The chill was hard there underground, but the crackling flames kept them warm, and they left the door to the office wide open so the heat would filter through to their companions. They also left the grate in the ceiling open wide to release enough smoke that they wouldn’t choke; it was a dead giveaway to their location, but there were only so many concessions they could make.

  “Danica,” Cross said. There was caution in his voice, bordering on fear. “Whatever happens...”

  “Don’t,” she said. He looked taken aback, but she shook her head. “Not now.” She leaned in and kissed him, and even with their lips so scarred and dry and their skin so grimy and worn he was the softest thing she’d ever felt. He breathed slow and took her in his arms, and there she stayed, never wanting to let go.

  They slept in shifts, Danica taking the first watch. The night was oddly silent and distant, and for a time she was able to forget what waited for them outside, and what wasn’t there. She checked on Ronan and Shiv and huddled near Cross and their small fire, a circle of light in the darkness. She watched him sleep.

  When it came Danica’s turn to rest she dreamed of wolves, then of Shiv, and then of Kane. She couldn’t make any sense of the dreams – they were more flashing images than sensible impressions, fleeting moments strung together by her cracked consciousness – but when she woke the warmth and happiness she’d felt the night before had all but washed away, and all she felt was terribly afraid.

  THREE

  TORN

  They followed the Nightblood River. Once they reached the junction near Stone Bridge they’d turn east for Ath. The mist rose, and they found blood on the trail their first day out of Thornn – the drops had fused to the frost-addled ground, red on grey, a ring of coppery gel like a cycle of blood stars. There was too little for it to have been a game kill and too much and too patterned for a gunshot wound, which meant only one thing: vampires had feasted in the area, and recently.

  Cross looked ahead from his crouched position. Towers of white smoke lifted from the other side of the rise; they weren’t quite close enough to determine the source, but they doubted it was anything good. The ground was brittle basalt and dark chert. They stood at the base of a system of knife-edged hills, dead forests and moraines thick with parallel ridges of blasted grey and black debris. Rimefang Loch was just visible past the ice fields west of them, silvered by the pale glow of the sickly sun.

  “What happened here?” Danica was at his back, standing watch over the sleds as dank clouds gathered to the north. Thornn’s walls loomed in the distance behind them, high and straight, its towers just slivers of shadow against the horizon. The air was stale and calm and ice cold. Cross’s throat burned from the temperature, and every breath frosted and collapsed.

  “Looks like a bleeding,” Cross said as he stood up, his legs stiff.

  “Suckheads?”

  “I think they caught something and fed out here. That’s why there’s so little blood, and it didn’t spray, it dripped.”

  “And there are signs of a struggle,” Danica said, indicating several flattened patches of peat moss and broken twigs off the side of the path. “There, there...and there. Awesome.”

  “Listen,” Cross said. Standing side by side on the headland, both Cross and Danica heard a sound that had been building all day: a crackling hiss, like lightning touching down on water. It came from the same direction as the columns of smoke in the distance, those dismal and ominous funnels of grey-white fumes.

  “Should we be going this way?” Danica asked.

  “Probably not,” Cross said, “but that means we’ll have to backtrack and head straight into the foothills instead of taking the lowland path.”

  “That’ll be tough with our cargo,” Danica said with an eye on Ronan and Shiv. “God, I wish I knew what was wrong with them.”

  “Me, too,” Cross said, but he didn’t really want to know, because he had a feeling the answer would be something they could do nothing about. “What do you want to do?” he asked her.

  “Well...people have been through here,” Danica said. She’d been showing him the signs on the trail as she and her spirit discovered them: footprints buried just under the frost-laden moss, human hair snagged on the bark of dead pines, fresh ice recently broken.

  Cross looked back behind them, at Thornn’s shadow. I saw Bloodhollow, the boy had said, like it was some sort of paradise. What was it? And why had he wished to go back?

  What are we doing? Why aren’t we just finding a place to hide and hold up? Surely they’d done enough already. If things were as bad as they suspected there wasn’t even a war left to fight. Haven’
t we earned our rest?

  But he and Danica kept moving, an unspoken understanding between them, a need to learn more. There were too many unanswered questions, and too many events had converged for them to quit now – meeting Shiv, finding the swords, everything Cross and Danica had been through and somehow managed to survive. It all meant something, it had to. He couldn’t believe Azradayne was behind it all, that she’d perfectly maneuvered all that had occurred, even with what he knew she was capable of.

  There is no rest. Not for us. We’re here for a reason, and we have to find out what it is.

  They’d both known the bliss they’d found those past few days wouldn’t last, and neither of them expected it to. They had to return to reality, even with as much as they would have liked to stay hidden from the world. Only by finding the truth would they know if they were safe, if they’d earned their rest.

  Cross took a breath and held it, trying to steady his nerves. It was getting harder to will himself out of her arms, and it felt like throwing away a gift to keep carrying on when they both knew trouble and pain were all that waited for them. Danica and Ronan and Shiv were all he had left, and their unconscious friends seemed dead already.

  Danica met his gaze. It was impossible to measure all they’d been through together, how far they’d journeyed, how much they’d shared. Together they’d learned how to deal with fear, and that the only way to live with loss was to carry on. Their arms knew what it felt like to bear each other’s weight.

  All of my dreams of the future are about you. When all of this is done and this nightmare is finally over I want to find a place without fear, a place without horrors, a place where I can go to sleep and know that when I wake there will be a better tomorrow. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, Danica...to walk in such a place, with you.

  But he couldn’t tell her that. Not yet. They had many miles to go before they could rest.