Black Scars (Blood Skies, Book 2) Read online

  Even with her hands bound behind her back, Cole leapt to her feet and raced towards where Danica had fallen.

  Maddox charged at him. Cross had forgotten the Doj. The shotgun blast had torn apart the giant’s armor, and blood and white bits of stomach meat covered his chest, but the wound seemed to have done little to quell the giant’s stamina. The spirit’s melee had caught Maddox at its center: scars from steaming claws, ethereal teeth and cold fire covered the giant’s flesh and made him a steaming and bloody mess. Even then, the giant held his great blade high, and his square jaw clenched as he charged the mage who’d shot him.

  Cross ducked beneath the sword blade, only to collide with the giant’s knee as it crashed into his chest like a cinder block. Cross didn’t even know he’d fallen. His leg was already going numb. Maddox’ shadow loomed over him.

  A sharp crack sounded through the air, and a bullet from out of nowhere took off the giant’s ear. Maddox staggered back and howled in pain.

  Thanks, Dillon.

  Cross rose, stumbled, and pulled his spirit close to his chest. He couldn’t use her to levitate like a witch could, but he fell into her for a moment like a pair of welcoming arms, and he let her ethereal form take some of the weight off of his wounded leg.

  More shots rang out, this time from outside of the coliseum. Cross limped to a low stone wall and tumbled over it, almost dropping his shotgun in the process. The pain in his leg was fierce.

  Cross sat on the ground and put his back against the stone. His spirit hovered over him like a protective shield. He felt her anger and impatience, but somehow she realized that he needed her close, likely because she sensed his pain.

  Thanks, he thought bitterly. Too bad it only took my getting shot for you to stay put for a minute.

  Cross readied the shotgun. Everything went quiet.

  He carefully looked back over his shoulder to where the fighting had taken place. He saw his dead horse, torn apart by bullets and arcane energies. Lucan was nowhere to be seen. The vampire hovered all alone, untouched by the battle, bound and gagged and surrounded by the same flaming chains that provided the only light in the thick gloom. Cross actually felt sorry for the vampire for a moment, trapped there in the midst of all of the chaos. He wasn’t sure how the undead had thus far escaped the battle unscathed.

  He saw a flicker of movement near the vampire. Cross aimed his shotgun in that direction when Keegan came out of the shadows behind him, machete in hand. Cross couldn’t turn in time.

  A bullet took Keegan in the back of the head, and he stumbled and fell.

  Danica and Cole appeared from behind a nearby chunk of stone. Danica held a smoking Colt Python in her hand. She still bled from her side, and if not for Cole supporting her weight she wouldn’t have been standing at all. They both looked exhausted beyond measure.

  “Cradden,” Danica said. “He took Keth.”

  “Which way did they go?” Cross asked.

  “Through the far alcove, straight across.”

  Cross ripped a piece of cloth out of his pack and quickly tied it around his leg. The bullet had gone clean through, and he’d already lost a fair amount of blood. The wound stung, and even just shifting his weight made him wince with hurt. His spirit swam beneath his arms like ghostly crutches. She poured energy into him, melted into his blood like warm vapor. He felt her mend the torn flesh and stitch his skin back together. It would take time to properly heal, but with her stabilizing him Cross knew that he wouldn’t have to worry about further blood loss or infection.

  If only she could make the damn pain stop.

  He looked at the women. Though she looked like she’d had a brush with death, Lara Cole forced Danica Black to sit down. Cole dutifully opened Black’s armor jacket, lifted her shirt up to clean her belly, and pulled a strip of cloth from her own undershirt to help stem the bleeding. She smiled at Black. Her expression was sturdy and stern, yet tender.

  Cross was suddenly very jealous.

  “Do we still have a deal?” he asked Black. She gave him a venomous look. “Look, Dillon and I just saved your girlfriend’s life. Twice. And for the record…it hurt.”

  “What deal?” Cole demanded of Black. She had a husky voice, hard-edged, and her tone was just as poisonous as Danica’s.

  Oh, yeah, you two make a lovely couple. I bet you’re tons of fun to hang out with.

  “Yes,” Black said. “We still have a deal. And Cross…thank you.”

  Cross reloaded the Remington, returned it to its shoulder strap, and pulled out his pistol.

  “What are you doing?” Black asked him.

  “I can’t let your brother take Lucan. It’s too dangerous.”

  Black’s contemptuous look turned to something like fear.

  Good, Cross thought. That means you might finally understand how serious I am about this.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she said coldly. “Don’t hurt my brother.”

  “Screw that,” Cole said angrily. Black winced as Cole less than delicately cleaned the buckshot wound in her side.

  “What are the odds that Cradden can undo Lucan’s safeguards?” Cross asked. “Can he release Lucan’s spirit?”

  Black looked at him uneasily. Understanding seemed to dawn on her.

  “Cross,” Black said. “There’s something you should know…Cradden owes a lot of money to a man named Talos Drake.”

  “I figured he was in debt, or something…” Cross stopped as realization dawned on him. I know that name. “Wait…Drake. Is he a smuggler?”

  “Yes,” Black said with a nod.

  “And a slave trader,” he added.

  Black looked at him guiltily.

  Love makes you do crazy things, I guess. Like putting everyone else in danger to save the one you care about the most.

  Cole glared at Black. She clearly knew the name as well as Cross did.

  “You stupid bitch,” she told Danica. Black didn’t argue; she just kept her eyes down.

  Warfield had mentioned the name Talos Drake to him in the past. The man was a black marketer she claimed she’d never do business with again, not after what had happened to him.

  Because now Talos Drake is a vampire, and hardly anyone knows it, but he’s also second-in-command of the Ebon City of Krul. Shit.

  Lucan Keth was dangerously unstable and vulnerable, a warlock with the highest level of raw power that Cross had ever seen held by a human being. For all Cross knew, Lucan was somehow tied up in the same damn prophecy that had landed he and Dillon hip-deep in trouble, searching for the means to destroy an evil that no one understood.

  But Lucan’s role in the prophecy didn’t matter, not right then. The fact remained that Lucan Keth was incredibly volatile and dangerous…and he was about to be delivered right into the claws of the Ebon Cities.

  The vampires? Cross wanted to scream at Black. How could you agree to give him to the vampires?

  But he didn’t say another word – he just set off after Lucan.

  SEVEN

  FALLEN

  The tunnel beyond the alcove was pitch black and filled with broken stones. Cross limped through inky darkness. His spirit held the bullet hole in his leg shut and regenerated the damaged tissue with her spectral form; if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to move at all. She reminded him of that fact by letting him feel most of the pain.

  The passage emptied into the Reach. Stone walls and ruined buildings that resembled crumbled sand castles refracted the jade moonlight. Everything seemed to glow, as if immolated.

  The sky was vast and deep. Most of the ground was covered in smoke-colored ice. Mounds of frozen ash marked which areas were safe to walk. Steam curled off of a glassy and frozen black lake whose surface was visibly cracked.

  Cross inched forward. The night’s chill was bitterer than before. He heard something in the air, a distant dirge like birdsong.

  Gunshots rang out and echoed into the sky. They came from the far side of the structure. He saw no trace of Cradden, Luca
n or Maddox, so Cross shuffled down the hillside and carefully toed the edge of the ice-covered black lake.

  He listened.

  There was something there with him, and it was neither human nor spirit. Cross had sensed it before, that same overwhelming and ancient presence he’d felt when they’d first arrived at Shul Ganneth. Whatever it was, it was very old, and it made the air seem brittle. Cross had wondered if what he sensed was an effect of Shul Ganneth, as that would have made some sense. That place had been a temple refuge for the Maloj, after all, primal arcane natives who in their time had commanded vast and terrible powers. According to tales, their home had been as devastated as Earth had by The Black, and significant portions of their twisted arcane geography and spatial biomechanical tools had been left half-lodged between worlds. Earth had only been exposed to a fraction of what that mad race of lupine theurgists had created. Cross had only seen some of their locales and relics, but what he had seen was powerful, and defied most of what he’d learned about magic.

  But what he felt there outside wasn’t born of Shul Ganneth, he was sure of it. It was a presence. Something else was there in the ruins, something Cross hadn’t seen yet. It froze his spirit in her place, and cowed her. He felt her wither in its shadow.

  Cross traced his way along the edge of the frozen shore, which broke into salt crust beneath the toes of his boots. Cracks littered the edge of the black lake and shot out several feet into the ice, like caricatures of dark lightning.

  He saw where dust piles had been broken apart or flattened. Cross pulled his spirit close, and her slippery electric form pushed against him. He set her to the task of keeping his weight light as he moved. She took pressure off of his wounded leg, and she gave him just enough of a telekinetic lift to glide him along the ice.

  Cross felt himself fading; he was on the brink of passing out. His spirit’s anxiousness kept him conscious.

  Stay alert. There’s something out there in the dark.

  Cross knew that Dillon was en route, but he didn’t have time to wait.

  He made his way towards the crumbling cluster of broken monuments at the far side of the onyx lake. So much sediment and debris had frozen into the ice it looked like a slab of marble. Lupine faces and serpentine limbs from shattered statues lay scattered everywhere. The far bank was a barrier of frozen charcoal dust. Stone faces from shattered statues peered out through an ice cold mist that smelled of lye.

  Cross moved carefully. His eyes had trouble adjusting to the gloomy green light. Everything seemed distorted and distant, as if he moved underwater. His boots pushed through crusts of petrified basalt and frozen ash. The air tasted sick.

  Slowly he made his way off of the ice and onto the far shore, near the small set of ruins that stood outside of Shul Ganneth, the ruins that Dillon had spied on his earlier reconnoiter.

  A truck sat at the far side of the felled monuments. It was an old-fashioned M2 Army transport that had been painted black. Such artifacts were rare outside of the Southern Claw, and those that still existed were used sparingly in favor of the arcane airships, which didn’t require traditional gasoline, but instead were powered by thaumaturgic fuel. The truck growled with a low grinding sound, like a metal animal gasping for breath.

  “Damn it!”

  The voice was Cradden’s. He sat behind the wheel in the truck cab. Blood ran down one side of his face. Maddox and Lucan, both lucid and unsteady, sat in the truck bed.

  Cross didn’t hesitate. He sent his spirit forward in a rain of fiery nails. Smoke trailed the spiky projectiles as they seared through metal and glass. The air was alight with hundreds of incendiary ribbons.

  Spirits tangled. Cradden raised a shield that deflected many of the missiles so that they exploded in a rain of sparks and steel shards.

  A shadow flickered at the edge of Cross’ vision. He turned just in time to see Gregor emerge from behind a shattered stone monument. Gregor’s goggles reflected the fire of the arcane battle, and he aimed his shotgun squarely at Cross’ head.

  Machine gun fire tore through the night. Vos and Dillon ran out of the darkness behind Cross, kicking up clouds of black dust and ice silt.

  Vos gunned down Gregor with his MP5. Gregor’s body fell onto the ice lake, which cracked but didn’t break beneath his dead weight.

  Something stirred. Cross sensed it more than felt it: a waking. The air shook. Something snaked out of the folds of night shadow and gripped the core of his being. Its touch was as icy as death. His spirit felt it, too, and she pulled away as if she’d been touched by something poisonous.

  Cross ducked back behind a wall and looked at the ice. Dark steam escaped from the cracks beneath Gregor’s corpse. The air grew darker, soiled by a thick unguent like ghastly coal dust.

  It’s hiding under the ice, he realized. That presence, whatever it was, that same dismal and overwhelming entity that Cross had sensed the moment they’d drawn close to Shul Ganneth, was itself an alien there, an intruder. Its power was immense. It’s at least as powerful as Lucan, and maybe more so. And it’s waking up.

  With horror, Cross realized what it was.

  If anyone else sensed the Sleeper’s rise from the black lake, they made no sign of it. Bullets flew everywhere. Vos charged forward and sprayed the side of the truck with gunfire. Dillon, Black and Cole brought Kane and Ekko the long away around the ice, and they ducked behind the stone ruins for cover. The vampire floated behind them, still chained by fire.

  Cradden’s spirit howled at them in a tidal wave of acid and frost. Cross shifted his own spirit up and formed a whirling shield, a blade of air that cleaved Cradden’s spirit in two.

  Black’s spirit leapt forward and shattered her brother’s attack. Dark fire and steaming cold washed over them. The air exploded with noise. The backlash of arcane energy made Cross reel as force hammered into him. Black was stunned, and Cradden fell to the ground.

  Maddox, the Doj giant, crashed into them with his sword. Cross’s spirit was weak, dazed from the battle, but he drew her up with both fists. Thaumaturgy crackled in his gauntlets. She formed another shield, a sheet of invisible steel that only barely deflected the massive blade as it came at Cross’ skull.

  The world spun. Cross fell. He had only the vaguest sense that he’d been knocked off of the shore, or that he’d collapsed onto the smoking lake

  no not there the shadows are leaking out

  and next to Gregor’s body. He blinked, and he looked back towards the battle.

  Vos screamed as Maddox cut him in half. Shots fired and bones snapped.

  A fiery body flew over his head.

  Danica Black used her control over the vampire’s chains to hurl the undead at Maddox like a feral missile. The burning chains exploded as the vampire and the Doj entangled. The vampire clawed and sank its fangs into Maddox even as they both burst into flames. The Doj tried to pry it off, but the vampire’s talons sank deep into his chest. Undead and giant wrestled in a flaming mass of blood, flesh and flame, a writhing tower of limbs and burning skin. They were a flailing skin torch.

  Cross rose unsteadily to his feet.

  Cradden Black turned and ran. He only made it three steps before the front of his face exploded as a bullet crashed through the back of his head. Dillon coldly chambered a round in his MK-14 and fired another bullet into Cradden’s body before he’d even hit the ground.

  “Nooooo!” Danica stopped, and pointed her pistol at Dillon.

  Cross stood up, weakened from the pain in his leg. He stumbled onto the shore.

  The ice smoked behind him. The steam flowed faster.

  “Danica…”

  “I said I didn’t want him hurt!” she shouted.

  “Dillon, Black, both of you!” Cross shouted. “We don’t have time for this…”

  The Sleeper exploded out of the ice.

  Great chunks of steaming hot crystal flew into the sky. Cross saw molten night burst skyward like a dark geyser.

  “RUN!” he shouted.

&nb
sp; They clambered up the slope and took cover behind the felled stone monuments. Kane and Ekko ran straight away as fast as they could, still bound in chains. No one tried to stop them, and they vanished into the night.

  A howl like a steam train pierced the air. It shook Cross’ bones and froze his blood. The sound rattled the very framework of the sky.

  The shadows took form. Glimmering scales like steaming black gems shone in the light of the dismal moon. A semblance of limbs moved in a column of grey and black fog. Its eyes were white pits. Its breaths crystallized the air and turned it to gray snow.

  The vast form was without true dimension or limit. It bled from the darkness of the night, and the night, in turn, bled from it. Its smoking husk oozed shadows like dust.

  It was Dra’aalthakmar: the Sleeper. Cross and Dillon had been sent to find Woman in the Ice, the only known means of stopping the shadow beast, but neither of them had expected to face it.

  It’s already awake, Cross realized in horror. It rested here.

  Follow and you will find.

  They’d been sent to find the means to stop this ancient creature, not to stop it themselves.

  The air swirled with dark grit. The darkness in the area turned solid. Proximity to the shadow meant death.

  They couldn’t speak. Drawing breath felt like swallowing sand. The night collapsed around them.

  Cross looked around. The faces of his companions bled like watercolors. His spirit melted over his body, pulled him down as if into a tidal pool. He took hold of someone’s hand, but it was difficult to tell whose.

  The Dra’aalthakmar’s form expanded. In moments, it would engulf them.

  Ahead, near the truck, something that still held a solid form walked toward them. It was like a torch in the darkness, bright and clear, unaffected by the molten shadows.

  Lucan.

  Cross sensed the primal spirit. It was like standing at the head of a tidal wave. Most spirits whispered: Lucan’s screamed. It was a choir of desperate voices. The air was crowded with the souls of the lost.

  Cross collapsed. Dillon and Cole had already fallen; Black was only barely conscious, just like Cross.