Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (10 page)

Kane and Ronan kept low
and used
the
dunes for
cover.  They saw the silhouettes
of the fliers
in
the grit
-filled
sky
and
heard the metal roar of massive wheels, but the sand mist concealed
them
, and soon they moved a safe distance away from
the crash
.

The dunes were
steep and difficult
to
cross
.
Kane
and
Ronan
ran
up and down
sand
drifts
, muscles aching and out of breath,
until they found themselves in a
shallow stone
valley
made
of blasted stone
,
either an
ancient riverbed or
a
fault line
that cut straight down into the sand like a crack
. 

They only had to wait a few minutes before the others
caught up with them
.  Miraculously, they hadn’t been followed. 

Whirling patterns of blue
-and-
white
rock
poked through
the sand
.  Deep shadows flowed like water
through
the
breaks
in
the
milky
stone.  The ground
in the
small valley
was hard and cold, and they actually discovered traces of
black
ice. 

They hid
there
in the crevice,
concealed
in
side
fissures
in
the
rock.  They heard the growl of some great aerial beast – not a Razorwing,
and
no
thing
that
any of them recognized,
but
they decided
they’
d rather not find out what
it was
– and huddled together as
icy
wind scraped
past
them. 

After a
while
, everything
was
quiet.  Jade’s storm faded to a drift of angry wind.  Kane
saw
how pale and out of breath she was. 
No doubt she was fatigued from using her magic so much. 

They waited
another hour
before
they
finally emerged
. 
The afternoon had drawn long
, and t
he liquid
sun
hung
frozen
in the silver sky
.  Kane felt the chill of the ocean
wind
as surely as if they
stood at
the
shore
,
but
he guessed they were
still
a few miles out
…and that was when he realized he
didn’t
actually
have a clue
where
they were.

“Do you know
our location
, Jade?” he asked.  “I completely lost my bearings when we
ran away from
the crash.”

“With no supplies,”
Sol
nodded glumly.

“Shit,” Ronan said.

“Damn it,” Kane echoed.

“Maur is not pleased.”

“I’m with Maur,” Ronan said.  “Do we even know
where
the ship is now?  We’ve been running around the dunes for
a couple of
hour
s
.”

“Jade?” Kane asked quietly.  She looked exhausted, and more than a bit panicked.  “Can you get us back to the ship?”

“
I think so,” she said hesitantly.  “
But
whatever
we saw in
those ruins back there is making it hard for my spirit to search the area.”

“Your
storm
work
ed
,” Ronan said sternly.

“
Using my spirit for violence and using it to search an area are two entirely different things
,” Jade said.
  “Whatever that phenomenon was
,
it’s been well hidden, and whatever
magic
was used to conceal it
i
s ma
king
this entire
region
unstable
.”

They
walked
beneath
the
pale and open sky.  Kane heard howls in the
distance
.  The wind was cold and sharp. 
His
body was sore, and
his knee ached like someone had jabbed a
needle
into it
.  Still, the fact that ever
y
step
didn’t
make
him double over in agony was a good
sign
. 
He’d bandaged his
arm
– he didn’t remember
removing
the sliver of steel, but it was long gone – and Jade’s spirit
had
staunched the bleeding
.  Even then,
it still throbbed and burned like
crazy
.

They came to the top of
a
steep
rise
and
found
a
good
vantage of the
desert
.  Thick drifts of cobalt dust shifted
in the distance
like
corroding
walls
.  Storm clouds brewed far
to
the east
.  T
here were few discernible landmarks they could use to get their bearings: just the ubiquitous sand, rising and falling with no pattern or rhyme, cold and glassy, striated in bands of
black
and
white
. 
There was no sign of the ship, and it
wa
s
impossible to even pick up the
smoke trail
with so much dust and sand in the air
. 

“Maur wants to know what the hell that was – that vision!”
the Gol said.

“Yeah, that would be nice to know…” Ronan
echoed
.

“Can we worry about that shit later?” Kane said angrily.  “We need to figure out where in the hell we are.  We can worry about what we did or didn’t see after we make sure we’re not going to freeze to death out here.” 

Kane saw everyone’s faces change at that, and he was glad for it.  They had absolutely zero supplies from the
airship with them
, and if
the sun went down
they’d be in for a difficult
and
potentially lethal night
…and
that
was just from the cold.  He hadn’t
even
considered the
predators or vampires. 

“Got a
ny
clue as to how we do that?” Ronan asked.

“Well…I have a compass
in my knife
,” Kane
said
.  “
Let’s
give that a try
.
”

What they also had were the map coordinates to Blacksand, and even though they m
ust have been several hours out
it was
still
better than nothing
, since
it seemed unlikely they’d
be able to retrace their steps back to the crash site. 

They marched.  The going was difficult, and every time they started to make some headway they found themselves in a dust
storm
or
standing in
an area
of
dangerously soft
sand
.  The wind hounded them every step of the way
and sliced
through their clothes. 

Kane’s skin
turned
raw
from the
cold.  Sand
invaded
his boots and made his feet feel like lead.  He, Ronan and
Sol
all took turns carrying Maur
:
it wasn’t that the Gol was feeling weak, but with the difficult terrain and the
ir
desire to make haste
he
needed
help
keep
ing
up with the group.  Jade kept everyone as warm as she could with her spirit –
it was the only reason they
hadn’t come down with
hypothermia – but doing so kept her
constantly
fatigued, and if she
kept
it
up
too long she’d
end
up wearing herself out.

Distant animal howls echoed through th
e hollow sky, which turned vein-
blue as the sun
slowly
sank
towards the shifting horizon.

“Was that a
portal
?”
Sol
asked. 
A great deal of
time had passed in near silence.  Their feet lifted and fell
with
a monotonous rhythm.  Kane and Ronan led the group with Jade close behind them;
Sol
had Maur on his shoulders, and
they
brought up the rear.  The sky was dark and thin.  They saw by the light of dusk, and that light
was fading
fast.

Kane’s
mind had wandered.  He couldn’t even remember what he’d been thinking about. 

“No,” Ronan said flatly.  “We were…hallucinating, or something.”

The vision.  They’re talking about the vision, that shit we saw before we were attacked.

“
Maur thinks it was
a portal
,” Maur said. 

“
I’m inclined to agree
,” Jade said over the hiss of the rising wind.  “
And I think it’s what the vampires are out here looking for
.”

“
Yeah, you said that
earlier
,” Kane said.  “The question is whether you knew that
before
we came out here.”

“Say what?”
Sol
said.

“Oh come on,” Ka
ne said.  They kept walking.  “Are y
ou trying to tell me you
didn’t
know about the Gates to Hell back there?”

“No,” Jade said.  “Not that we have to explain anything to
you
,
but no:
we didn’t
know about it.  All w
e knew
was that the
vampires were at our borders.  You were supposed to help us stop them.”

“And you still are,”
Sol
said.

“This
sucks
,” Ronan groaned.

“What, fulfilling your end of the bargain?” Jade snapped.

“Being stuck out in the desert, hunted by vampires, completely lost, knowing there’s a portal to hell nearby, trapped with people
I’d just
as soon cut open as help survive.” 
Ronan
made a
p
oint to smile.  “Like I said…t
his sucks.”

No one really had an answer to that.

They walked.  Kane thought he spied
lights in the distance,
but
the
windblown
waves of black dust
made it difficult to tell
. 
He saw
the shadow
s
of giant fliers
, but they moved askance,
like
black paper birds
in the dying light. 

Wait…

He looked closer.  The shapes grew
larger
. 
L
ights cut through the quiet sandstorm, halcyon strobes and hooded flood
light
s
attached to steel machines, low-flying
vessels
with curved sails and jagged hulls.