Authors: Steven Montano
Blood Skies (2 page)
Time to do the deed
, he thought. They’d almost been ready to complete the ritual when the attack had come. The scholars had to make sure that everything was ready, that most of the ritual had actually been completed, and that all that remained was the final stroke, the part of their task that had to wait until the sun came up. The vampires knew what they were up to: they’d attacked just before first light.
, he thought. They’d almost been ready to complete the ritual when the attack had come. The scholars had to make sure that everything was ready, that most of the ritual had actually been completed, and that all that remained was the final stroke, the part of their task that had to wait until the sun came up. The vampires knew what they were up to: they’d attacked just before first light.
I hope this works. I hope it was worth it
.
.
Knight tripped, and he grimaced in pain from the hard impact on his knees as he fell to the ground. He set the pistol down and slammed the door shut behind him. Seconds later he heard the outer doors of the church buckle and shatter. His pursuers hadn’t come through the windows because of the tripwires and holy oils, but that hadn’t delayed them nearly as much as he’d hoped. Knight fumbled for the gun, nearly dropped it, fell forward, and somehow managed to turn the fall into a running lurch that brought him to his feet again.
Inside the space in the center of the wooden pillars, at the bottom of a short set of stairs, was a sort of sunken pit. Knight had to step slowly, a difficult task given the fact that there was blood in his face and his head was spinning with fatigue. His feet felt like they’d been separated from his body. Knight managed to make it to the bottom of the steps, where he dodged a ring of candles that had been set around the bundle of cloth at the exact center of the room.
The perfect center
, Knight thought, recalling the priest’s words.
This is the middle of the middle. There’s something special about this place, some geo-religious significance: its fey lines, its orientation to the magnetic poles, a lot of faerie dust in the area, some damned thing. This is the only place it can be done. The only place we can save humanity.
, Knight thought, recalling the priest’s words.
This is the middle of the middle. There’s something special about this place, some geo-religious significance: its fey lines, its orientation to the magnetic poles, a lot of faerie dust in the area, some damned thing. This is the only place it can be done. The only place we can save humanity.
They were coming. Knight stumbled to the cloth bedding that had been laid down for the child. Huge black eyes stared up at him. He looked into her face, and was reminded of his daughter.
Knight’s heart froze.
I can’t do this.
Yes you can
, he told himself.
You have to. Now focus
.
, he told himself.
You have to. Now focus
.
Knight did his best to ignore the growing chaos of sounds beyond the door -- whirring blades, mechanized weapons, hybrids of blood and bone that shouted obscenities in an arcane tongue he couldn’t understand. His arms shook, and even with as much pain as he was in, what came next was far more painful.
He took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.
PART ONE
THORNS
The fields of snow and rivers of ice are reflective white and blue, like steel and bone, a mirror a thousand miles long. A ghost train screams by in the distance, and it belches a stream of dark smoke into the air. In the middle of this nowhere stands a massive mountain as black as coal. It pierces the sky and penetrates the heavens.
He sees the forest glade at the base of the mountain. He knows that she is there.
Something approaches. He senses it rather than feels it, a tremor, like electricity along his imaginary skin, a taste of unrest on his ethereal tongue. He hears dead whispers hidden in the frozen wind
.
.
He is at once both vast and miniscule, an omniscient being squeezed into a bottle. The world plays out in his vision like a painting beneath him, as if he were some tireless airborne being
.
.
His vision sweeps across the apocalypse landscape. He sees black waters and blood skies, skeleton trees in burning bogs, pale dancers on a distant vampire shore. He sees cities made from stone and iron and guarded by impossible weapons, threatened by living shadows that take the shape of wolves or ravens or emaciated men. He sees the dead who lie in waiting, ready to assault what is left of humankind from their scattered black towers of steel webs and ossified bone
.
.
All of it, he sees, but cannot touch.
Soon,
she says
. You are closer than you think.
she says
. You are closer than you think.
Closer to what?
To a part of the world that you should not be able to touch. A place that is in danger. A place you are closer to than most.
He knows her, and he trusts her. She is a part of him
.
.
He floats through aimless skies. The vapor of ages folds around him. He arrives back in his own dream, at the edge of unseen realities. He is adrift within the folds of overlapping worlds.
ONE
WAR
Year 20 A.B. (After the Black)
Cross saw blood in the sky.
It was a trick of the dusk light. Thick rays of dying crimson sunshine cut through the dark vapors that hung over the battlefield and the drifts of white smoke spewed by crawling war machines. The air was a den of rumbling motors, heavy treads and great iron wheels that crushed rock and shattered bones. Cross smelled oil and exhaust.
I hate this place
.
.
His entire body ached. Cross had slept perhaps five hours in as many days, and that sleep had been more like scattered instances of half-slumber snatched off in heaps of dirty blankets and piles of bandages that had been left discarded outside the medical bivouacs. All of his sleep had been half-filled with nightmarish images of torn bodies and children drowning in burning fuel.
Grime and filth covered his skin. Cross’ stomach ached. He was long tired of magically preserved rations and stale wine. When he ate anything beyond a slice of bread his gut twisted and his urine burned. Cross didn’t normally get sick thanks to his spirit, and that told him the problem wasn’t an infection but his own inability to adjust to a military diet there in the field.
He’d only been on the front lines of the war for two weeks.
He felt his spirit with him. She was like a slippery electric skin that hovered centimeters away from the next world, a wraith-like unguent that caressed him. He breathed her in, and while the vapor of her spectral form turned his lungs cold he felt comfortable knowing that she was there, surrounding him, a weapon and a friend. She was part of his own soul, intelligent but lost, cleaved to him and yet worlds distant. He knew her better than he knew his own sister, better than he knew himself.
Dark clouds twisted in a rot tainted wind that blew in from the east, out of the sodden wastes of Blackmarsh. Dismal fields of black mud stretched to the murky horizon, which was difficult to see beneath a sky pregnant with shadows.
Dozens of dark tents lay like the wounded across the torn landscape. Black smoke trailed in varicose lines up to a darkening sky that was the color of uncooked meat. Cross tasted salt and soot in the cold and dry air. He sat with a host of Southern Claw soldiers that he didn’t know, save for Graves, whom he’d known since boyhood. Graves fit in better than Cross did amongst the regulars of Wolf Company. Of course, Graves was a soldier, not a warlock like Cross.
Warlock. A weapon and a freak. We’re the Claw’s most valuable assets, and the closest humankind comes to matching powers with the enemy. All we have to do is burn our own souls for fuel and probably be crippled before we hit thirty.
The tent shifted in the dank wind. A host of makeshift chairs wobbled in unstable mud around a wide wooden stump they used as a game table. Cross sat with his cards clenched upside down in his hand, and he knew full and well he didn’t stand a chance.
The soldiers of Wolf Company were a sullen and dirty bunch, and they were nearly impossible to tell apart due to the black mud that was caked to their uniforms. Shotguns, assault rifles, blades and bows hung from harnesses and stood propped against iron tent poles. Dozens of packs as caked in filth as their owners sat nearby in case an alarm went up.
“
Why so grim?” Graves asked.
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.
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.
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.”
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?”
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.
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.
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?”
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.
Don’t you feel it?” he asked.
“
Love?” Graves laughed.
Love?” Graves laughed.
“
They’re both on their period,” Burke smiled.
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….”
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….”
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