Blood Skies (30 page)

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Authors: Steven Montano

BOOK: Blood Skies
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There were many who thought it foolish to store so much vital knowledge all in one place. As it turned out, they were right to be skeptical. It was discovered too late that creating the Tome of Scars had been Red’s idea all along. Even at the beginning, when everyone poured their faith and devotion into this woman who seemed to practically be an avatar of the distant and unseen White Mother, Red had planned to steal the Tome, which contained knowledge she could never have amassed on her own. But with the help of scholars, leaders and mages, the Tome had become a living document, a place to record how humanity had endured after The Black. It didn’t matter that there were copies of the Tome: it was the secrets held within that had been lost.
Margrave – Red – fled with the Tome so that she could give its information to an ancient and decrepit vampire seer known only as the Old One. He, in turn, would provide those secrets to the lords of the Ebon Cities.
“
So what do you think they’ll do with it?” Cross asked angrily. “Wipe us out?”
“
You can’t be that naive,” Red said sadly. “The Ebon Cities want this war to end as badly as we do. They’ll use the information in the Tome to force us to stop fighting. My story is not one of genocide, Cross. This is a tale of a surrender.”
“
Bullshit.”
“
Fine,” she breathed. “Bullshit. Either way, the Tome is in the Old One’s hands now. You’re too late.” She stepped closer. “Give it up. The rest of your group died stupidly. You don’t have to.”
“
Why did you do it?” he asked quietly. His words were sharp and clear in the brittle air.
She smiled a surprisingly vulnerable smile.
“
I’m naturally evil, I guess.”
“
We’re in a dream,” Cross said. “There’s nothing that I can do to you here. Even if this were real, you’re much more powerful than I am.” Their eyes were locked. “What could it hurt to tell me the truth?”
“
I was tired of all of the death,” she said at last. “This way, it ends. No more suffering. No more living in fear.”
“
But we
want
to live,” Cross said. “Life in the Southern Claw sucks…but it’s
life
. People want to keep on living. We want to survive. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
“
You haven’t seen half of what I’ve seen,” she said, her anger rising.
“
Lady, I’ve seen plenty,” he spat back. “This decision isn’t yours to make.”
“
I was the only one of you that the White Mother would even talk to,” she said. “Of
course
it was my decision. I was your leader.”
“
You lost that title and any right to represent us the moment you stopped thinking about the Southern Claw…”
“
I was ALWAYS thinking of the Southern Claw!” she shouted, her voice strained with desperation and defiance. “I’ll end the war. I…” She regained her composure in a heartbeat. “It doesn’t matter what you think. It’s already too late.”
The imaginary wind picked up, a reflection of Cross’ anger. He heard the neigh of dark horses. The bloody ebon unicorns from his visions crashed through the trees.
“
You’re afraid that I’ll stop you,” he said. “That’s the only reason you’d even bother appearing here to me now.”
“
I’m not afraid of a pathetic warlock who can’t even muster up the skill to protect his own sister.” Red laughed.
“
Where is she?”
Red nodded towards the line of trees.
Cross saw Snow just inside the canopy. She was bloody and bruised, soaked and terrified.
His spirit was there with her.
The cadre of black unicorns had surrounded them, and prodded the women with their jagged horns.
“
She’s waiting for you,” Red said. “You’re almost there, Cross.”
Cross took a deep breath.
“
You know I have to kill you,” he said.
She nodded, almost sadly.
“
Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do. But to do that, you’ll have to come and get me.”
The sky pulled apart like tissue in water. Everything faded and cracked. Patches of red light punched through the sky. The world became a breaking mirror.
“
I’ll see you soon,” she said, and the sky melted.
Cross’ body shattered like glass. He was ripped back into the waking world.

 

 

 

 

 

TWENTY-ONE
CLAWS

 

 

Cross woke on his back, looking up at the sky. Ooze pressed against his sinking body, and greasy water filled his eyes like polluted tears. He lay half submerged in a grave of mud. Everything was brown and black. Night lay beyond the ambient mist, as thick as grease.
He rose, unsteady. He was soaked to the bone. Silver light danced in the distance, a muted aurora. Mud was caked against his face. It was difficult to even stand up in the sludge.
Cross looked around, and found he was alone. The camel had gone, or it had been taken, but if that had been the case he reasoned he’d have been taken, too. Likely the stalwart creature had finally wandered off on its own, bored of a companion who was always unconscious.
He listened for the whispers, waited for the silken touch of his spirit, but, as he feared, she was gone. Again.
Cross wanted to just lie down and be done with it. Angry tears welled up in his eyes. He crouched down heel to haunch, and put his eyes and ears in his hands.
When he opened his eyes again, sometime later, it had grown dark. He was in the middle of nowhere, awash in a sea of inky night, standing in darkness so thick that he could taste it. There was just he and the silence, trapped together in a black prison without walls.
It was almost pitch black by the time Cross started walking. His boots splashed in the mud and marsh, and the cold air froze his clothes to his skin. He still wore his armored coat and had his weapons and alchemy on his person, but he had no food and, more distressing, no source of light. His eyes might as well have been in his pocket for all the good they did him. He could’ve been at the edge of the cliff or about to walk into a wall, and he wouldn’t have even known it.
He walked, bolstered by the thought of seeing Snow again, almost believing it would happen.
Time passed. He couldn’t say how much. Nothing changed. The world remained black and moist and quiet.
Cross stopped, even if he wasn’t sure why. Something felt wrong. He had no spirit to tell him what, and he certainly hadn’t actually seen or heard anything. But he felt something, a sense of a presence in the dark…or maybe an absence.
He took some small comfort in the weapons he still carried: Graves’ Remington 870 sawed-off shotgun, his own HK45 and Graves’ SIG Sauer, a hex grenade, and Stone’s kukri machete. But even with all of those armaments, he felt largely defenseless without his spirit.
Something moved out in the dark. Cross heard whatever it was this time, and he smelled something charnel, like grave soil and excrement.
He readied the HK and tried to step quietly. His feet splashed and slurped in the mud in spite of how slowly he moved. Cross cursed under his breath and stopped, waiting. Clicking sounds echoed around him, fading in and out of the shadows. He heard little voices and growls as they closed in.
To hell with this
. Cross moved forward in a half run. The mud grabbed at his feet. The noises grew louder, circled him, and surrounded him.
Cross fired into the dark. He heard a wet explosion, and the sound of whatever it was scattered. He carefully continued forward with his weapon held before him.
He stepped on the body before he saw it. It was small and grey and covered in mud. Its eyes were glazed open and it bore a hole from Cross’ bullet in its chest. The creature was the size of a human child, and it might have been mistaken for one if not for its oddly square head, its thick and sharp teeth, and its glistening black claws.
Ghouls
, Cross thought, and he started to panic. Ghouls were pack hunters. And those packs were big.
Gnashing sounds converged on him. Leering grey faces loomed at Cross from out of the darkness. Black teeth flashed darker than the surrounding night. Cross shouted as razor-sharp claws slashed his face, his chest, and his arms. He felt fingers in his hair. Blood splashed onto his cheek.
Cross lashed out and whipped bodies aside. He smashed melon-sized skulls with his pistol, and pried away hands and teeth. The ghouls came at him from all sides in a tide of hungry mouths. Cross found an open maw, shoved the pistol inside and fired. Chunks of bone and flesh splattered everywhere.
He pushed and kicked and kept firing. They held his legs, his torso and his arms, even as they beat and tore at him. They grabbed his coat and tried to pin his limbs and drag him to the ground, where they’d easily be able to finish him off. He was drowning in a tide of angry little bodies.
Cross managed to pull the machete free from the sheath on his back, and somehow he shoved and kicked his way to his feet. He chopped through child-sized bodies with ease, cut off limbs and cleaved skulls in two. His ears filled with hideous screams.
They’re not children
, his mind shouted.
Not anymore
.
His muscles were on fire. He felt like he was covered in nothing but wounds. Cross chopped and hacked in every direction. He swam in a field of meat. Claws raked his body, tore at his stomach and legs. Finally, after a savage blow that sent a wide stream of blood across his chest, Cross found an opening in the wall of ghouls. He pushed his way free and fled.
He ran through the dark without direction. He couldn’t tell if he ran away from the danger or toward it. The darkness was near absolute, deepened by the steel-hard mist. Black mud made every step uncertain. The chattering and gnashing of tiny teeth was right on him, closing around him like a cage.
Something took hold of his legs. Cross painfully tripped and landed face first into the mud. The machete flew from his hands.
Small and spindly hands tipped with wickedly sharp talons reached up from beneath the ground. They tore at him, grasped at him, and pulled him down. Needles of pain tore at his body. Cross breathed wet earth. He would drown in the mud.
The ghouls in pursuit were nearly on top of him. Cross lashed out and pried the hands off of him long enough to reach into the pocket of his armored coat. An earth-bound claw slashed at his ear and took off a chunk of skin, and pain flared down the side of his face.
The crowd of ghouls in pursuit had closed to within a few yards. They were ready to pounce. Cross threw the grenade, turned and lay prone in the mud while he shielded his head and neck.
The explosion rocked the ground. Cross saw white fire through his clenched fingers. The flash briefly illuminated the surrounding area, and he saw a muddy plain populated by dark pits and covered with over two dozen more ghouls. They screamed as the blast took them. Chunks of body and drifts of gore crashed to earth.
Cross waited for some time after the explosion. No more ghouls attacked him – he’d either killed them all or forced them back into hiding. His chest heaved, and every breath was like swallowing chunks of ice.
He recovered his discarded weapons from the ground. The SIG was broken. Cross sheathed the machete, reloaded the HK and the shotgun, and gathered himself. There was still no sign of the camel. Likely the ghouls had gotten their claws on it.
Dawn spread like a milky stain. The sky bled from black to grey, and the fog lifted enough for Cross to realize he was in a mass graveyard. Unmarked mounds were in every direction, and the holes he’d seen before were in fact half-dug graves. A few shovels and picks lay discarded in piles.
These were no ordinary graves, but ghoul graves. Living children had been cast into specially prepared necromantic soil and buried alive, and over the course of their slow and terrifying deaths they’d been gradually transformed into undead.
I’m close
, he thought.
I’m almost to Koth.
A whimpering from behind him drew Cross’ attention. Some of the ghouls had survived the worst of the grenade blast by using their fellows as shields, but that hadn't saved their limbs from being destroyed. These ghouls mewled pathetically, their limbs smothered like ground meat. They stared up at Cross, as if begging for mercy. He left them there.
The sunrise would be in the direction where the light burned brightest through the fog. Using that to gauge his direction, Cross headed north. He was caked in blood and dried mud. Scars and aching cuts covered his face, his arms and his chest, but the bleeding had stopped. Layers of filth had stemmed the flow of his wounds.
Cross walked. He ignored his aching knees. His own exhaustion pulled him along. He stumbled through mud and mist, almost devoid of thought.
He looked at the grave mounds and wondered how many of them still contained children’s corpses, and what suffering and fear they’d experienced at the hands of black-fanged vampires and their maggot-addled wight servants.

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