Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (16 page)

Revengers
came at her from the
opposite
side, and she saw the shadow
s
of Killravens
from above
.
  Her spirit whipped around her
like
a molten tide.  She kept him
close
and wound him around one of her katars
while
she drew her Colt Python
.  Danica
looked into the haze of dirt an
d
vehicular fumes. 

There was an exit on the far side
of the track
, almost directly opposite
from
where she stood. 

Bullets
hit
the ground.  A ricochet caught a spectator in the eye, and he fell screaming.  Panic surged through the crowd like wildfire.  People leapt from their seats and pointed at the Revengers and fell back as more Blood Dogs
came at her
.

Danica leapt over the fence and onto the track.  Her lungs swelled with black
vapors
as she ran
as fast as she could
across the mud and dirt
.  An armored truck narrowly missed her
as
she sped
across
its path
, and s
he heard it twist and fishtail behind her.  Something
buried itself
in the ground
to her right
,
an
electrified lance connected to a
razor cable
. 

She dodged m
etal monstrosities
and wove
through
bursts of smoke. 
The
air explode
d
all around her
, and any second
Danica
expected
an
armored wheel or
a
blast of arcane power
to strike her down
.  Her spirit forced her to keep moving,
propelled her
around spinning
blade
towers and
beneath
whirling flame
whips
.

A truck with a
spiked
grill burst through
the
grey smoke
.  Danica’s heart
jumped
.  She
pushed
her fists together
and dug
her feet into the earth. 
H
er spirit
turned
in
to a jagged lance of frost and
flew
into the vehicle.  The truck
snapped
and folded inward
like it had struck an unbreakable iron pole. 
M
etal and
rubber
wrapped around
her
body
. 
She
found herself
unharmed at the center of
a steel cocoon. 

S
he
used
her spirit
to blast her way
free.  D
ebris and smoking stone
rained down
.  Most of the other racing vehicles
were
gone, and p
eople
rush
ed for
the exits.  Revengers
shot
down
spectators in an effort to get to Danica.

She
ran.  Her spirit threw a Killraven aside
as he swooped in low
.  His thaumaturgic pack snapped, and dark smoke trailed his body as he flailed out of control and
flew
into a steel wall. 

A bola snapped around her feet. 
Danica
fell hard onto her face. 

Her spirit whipped back and
knocked
two Killravens
aside
while Danica
cut
through the cord with a katar.  Blood seeped out of open cuts where the razor bola had torn through
her cargo pants
,
and she felt poison spread painfully through her veins.

She ran
up
to a downed Killraven
.  He
tried to rise
, but
Danica kicked him hard enough to send blood
all over the
inside of his helmet, ripped
away
his MP5
and fired
back at
t
he Revengers
. 

Blood
Dogs and their h
andlers
pushed through the bloodied crowd.  The air was heavy with exhaust and gasoline.

Danica
’s stomach clenched as her spirit
purged the poison from her blood
.  She
ran
for
the exit. 
E
very muscle ached like
they’d been
hit
with ham
mers.  Her heart pounded so hard
her chest felt ready to split.

An explosion tore into the
stadium
overhead
. 
Drifts
of stone dust fell over her eyes and face.  The gun
was empty
, so
Danica
dropped it and held her spirit tight i
n her hands, where he
burn
ed
like explosive gel. 
T
he air
was
filled with
a
choking
cloud of metal and stone debris.

An enormous
clawed
arm came out of nowhere and knocked
Danica
back.  Stone slammed against her skull.  Her head swam
, and h
er spirit
reeled
.  H
e’d
shielded her from what should have been a killing blow.

A massive simian beast
stepped over her
.  Eight-feet tall and as a wi
de as a truck, the
black
-skinned
and
gorilla-like creature had
six powerful arms and
fierce
canine jaws.  A gold battle mask covered its face.  Claws the color
of milk had been sharpened to
razor
points
, and the creature’s hind feet ended in reptile-like talons that gripped the earth
and kept
its
top-heavy bulk stable. 

It was a
Talon,
one of a number of
mutated gorilla
s
bred and controlled by the Revengers to act as enforcers and pack mules
.  It s
tepped forward
.  Its
growl chilled her blood. 

Danica
leapt to her feet and
lashed
at the beast
with her spirit. 
An
acid whip sliced the creature’s mask
apart
and cut
open
one of its eyes
.  T
he brute
howl
ed
in
pain.  Even injured, it came at her. 

Black
could barely see.  She desperately
fused
her spirit into a coil of
frost and
wound it
around
the
Talon’s
enormous limbs. 
It
tried to
break
free
, and
Danica
strained at the pressure
it
placed on her spirit.  Her vision faded in and out.  Blood ran down her face and into her eyes.

S
omething struck her
from behind
, and e
verything went dark.

SIX

BODIES

Do you?

Danica woke in the dark.  She
was
sure she’d heard a voice, but it faded in the shadows of her dreams. 
I
mages
floated through her mind as she came to:
blood-soaked
horses and iron juggernauts, columns of dark ice and
vampire
faces
behind bladed masks
. 
She woke frightened.

Her wrists were bound behind her back, and she se
nsed her spirit
,
adrift
and unable to reach her
.  Something
held him at bay
.

Sweat rolled down her sk
in.  She tasted oil and exhaust.  Her face pushed against a
warm metal floor.

“Hello?” she said. 
Her voice echoed into the darkness. 
She wasn’t blindfolded, but she might as well have been.  The
black
air was thick with heat.  She heard machinery rattle in the
distance
, but the echoing dark made it all but impossible to pinpoint its exact direction
.  Her knees ached,
and
she felt dried blood on
her shins
where the razor bola had grappled her.  She struggled
to her feet
and bumped
her head against
something metal.

“Shit!”

S
he tried to summon her spirit
again
,
but
he couldn’t answer. 

What
have
y
ou
done to him, you assholes?

Her first suspicion was
that they’d given her
N
arcosm
,
an illegal narcotic that sedated a mage’s spirit. 
Narcosm
was difficult to come by and dangerous to use, since forcing a witch
or warlock to drink too much
could potentially
send
their spirit into a slumber
so deep they’d never come out
of it
.
  She’d been forced to use some on Cross to quell his murderous spirit, and while there had really bee
n no other way to save his life
she still regretted it.

That
might even be the reason
why
he can’t wake up.

Aside from Ilfesa Warfield – a black marketer who had doubtlessly provided Cross with
the dose they’d found in
his
possession
, a matter Danica intended to take up with the witch if
they
ever
made it back
to
Thornn
– the only people
that
Black
knew
of
who
ma
d
e
regular
use of Narcosm were
T
he Revengers.

“You might as well come and talk to me,” she said loudly.  “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

No answer.  She hadn’t really expected any.

It was possible she was on a
n
airship, but
in spite of the rumbling
floor
and
shaking walls she didn’t think
so
. 
T
he
heat and utter darkness
made her wonder if she ha
d
n’t
been shoved into a boiler room or
a
storage
container. 

F
or all
I know I’m
in a giant lunchbox
that’s been thrown to
the bottom of the ocean
and covered up with concrete
.   

S
he’d be alon
e for a while…
perhaps even a
long
while.  Keeping her in the dark and surround
ing her
with noise so
she couldn’t pinpoint her
own location
was all
part of the process
of breaking important captives
.  Had she been a common chattel slave she would have been crammed into a box with forty other prisoners and shipped straight to the prison, where she
would
toil and die in the red diamond mines. 

Oh, no, that would be too simple for a “traitor”, wouldn’t it? 

They had her.  And that meant sooner or later she’d have to face Rake.
 

Black had no desire to confront the Head Warden of Black Scar.  Even for the brief span of time
when
she’d completely bought in to T
he Revenger’s mercenary lifestyle without question, Rake had always struck her as
a highly
dangerous
man
.  He wasn’t
as
excessively violent
as
some
of
the other enforcers
like
Mauser
or
Crane
, but in his own way he was more frightening
.  Rake was cold
and calculating
,
possessed of
a quiet
and confident
sense of
authority
.  Between him
and his right-hand man, Geist, hundreds of prisoners had been tortured to death in Black Scar, and many more had been
killed
. 

She had no doubt he’d taken her defecti
on
personally. 
There was
a cold reception
waiting
for her, if indeed the
y
plan
ned
to return her to
Black Scar
.

They weren’t
in Blacksand just
looking for
me
, she told herself. 
They had to have been in the area
on other business,
searching for new
prisoners
or making
a
prisoner drop
.
 
But
they
did
go
through an awful lot of trouble to bring me in once they realized I was here. 

Something didn’t add up.

H
er eyes
gradually
adjusted to the darkness.  There was
actually a
subtle trace of light, so faint and dim it was all but impossible to
tell where it came from
.  She could see her hands, but only barely.  

Danica saw the outline of a
bulky metallic structure
close by
, so she cautiously walked over to it
, moving
her feet carefully
as she tread through
the dark for fear of tripping o
ver
something. 
T
he anticipation
of running into
anything
in
her
near-blind state
put
her nerves on edge.

The object was
cold
and still
,
and
Danica guessed it was
an
old boiler or
a
generator.  She put her back
up against it
and slowly edged along its
face
.

Danica
found
a short piece of broken metal
sticking
out of the equipment.  She set
her bonds
against the
edge
and quietly
sawed
up and down
to cut herself free
.

Danica
couldn’t begin to count how many
people
had died by her hand or
on account of
her
orders
in Black Scar
. 
It was a
corrupt and utterly deadly place, a repository for the lost.  Prisoners of all races, ages and creeds suffered i
n inadequate living conditions,
where they were kept
malnourished and
exhaust
ed
.  They were f
orced
in
to
the
deep mines
where they
search
ed
for the elusive red diam
onds;
marched
through underground fields
of decaying matter to
meet slave buyers from
the renegade
necropolis
of Koth;
put to the test in gladiator games
or races.
  Whenever the prison ran out of room, surplus inmates were slaughtered
. 

She saw the faces of the dead
when she closed her eyes
. 
Their
voices
haunted her dreams. 
Danica had spent over two years trying to empty her soul of guilt, but there was no escaping the past.

There never is.  You just learn to live with it.

Time passed.  She had no idea how long it was, but she guessed
a few minutes
went by
before she’d managed to snap
the rope
binding her
raw and bloody
wrists.  H
er entire body was sore
, and h
er spirit remained just out of reach. 

She stumbled through the dark.  There was absolutely no way to see in the sweaty
shadows
, and she couldn’t locate
the
walls.  Once
she left the piece of machinery
behind
she might as well have been wandering through a
black desert
. 

Danica walked slowly.  She couldn’t even hear her own footsteps. 
T
here was
a nasty cut
on the left side of her face
from
her battle with
the Talon
, and it stung when she so much as put a finger to it
.  Her shoulders
and arms
ached, and her head
felt
light from lack of food or water. 

She walked
. 
Someone
would
eventually come and
make sure she hadn’t tried
to escape
. 

Unless I’ve been left for dead
somewhere
…
now
there’s
a refreshing thought.

With no sight of her
surroundings
, Danica
continued to
walk
cautiously,
and held
her hands out in front of her.  She
was all but
defenseless without her spirit, and
the fact
that
she couldn’t reach him was driving her crazy
. 

She passed through metal noise
, half-
expect
ing
to crash into an obstacle or fall into a hole. 
Danica
chided herself for moving
so slow
and
tried
to increase her pace, but she
still
flinched
with every step.

Just get down and crawl, you dumb shit.

Danica dropped down and
leopard-
crawled a
cross
the floor.  The ground was slick with what smelled like oil, and she struggled to make good time, but she no longer worried about crashing into
anything
.

She
went
what felt like a considerable distance
.  Her elbows and knees
grew
sore.

Remember Krul.  Nothing was as horrible as that place.  Just keep it together.
  If you made it through that, you can make it through anything.

S
tench
filled her nostrils
,
a
different
smell
than
the industrial bile and smoke haze she’d
encountered
thus
far
. 
This new
miasma
clung to
the back of her throat, and
after a moment
she identified it as
rot
and body waste.  The smell was
so
strong
she nearly gagged on it
.  Danica steeled herself, clenched her fists, and
kept crawling
.