Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (23 page)

Everything was clearer
and
brighter.  He was overwhelmed by the sight of things that
he would have missed
before.

They gave me HD vision.  Terrific.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“
My
breathing
is
strange,” he said.  “I feel like I have asthma or something.  And I told you about the…vision.  Hallucination.  Whatever.”  Jade nodded.  “Does that mean anything to you?”

Jade looked out at the desert.  Kane had the sense she knew something she wouldn’t say.

“No,” she said.  “Not yet.”

A
behemoth
city
of pale rock and sea stone
appeared
in the wasteland of
grey sand.  Rickety bridges
made
from petrified sinew connected
iron
towers
that
looked shoved into the ground like wayward spears.  Rings of blasted sandstone surrounded deep pits, and flags stitched from whale flesh flapped in the breeze. 
There were no streets, just sandy walkways that wound between rugged towers and houses thatched together with rope and metallic netting.  Drifts of sand covered the buildings like metal snow. 
The Ebonsand
Sea was
just beyond the city
, and it
reflected the radiant
light
of the melting sun. 

Large walrus-like beasts shuffled outside the city perimeter and left lines of
acidic
glue in their wake.  More of the grey-skinned humanoids rode the slug-tailed
creatures
.  Skiffs docked on rusting metal planks
next to
crashing ocean waves.  A number of ATVs and dune-buggies drove in and out of a network of tunnels beneath the city.

Cold ocean air blew in from the dark sea.  Kane tasted salt and engine oil. 

The vehicle flew
close
to the ground.  Something appeared over
a
dune just south of the city.

It was a
nother skiff
.  It
fl
ew
in
low over the dune bank,
and was
also bound for the city.  The vehicle was equipped with fewer guns and a wider deck than the
vehicle
Kane and the others rode, which meant there was more room for the dead and wounded on board. 

There were at least two dozen of the grey-skinned humanoids.  They bled green or
were missing
limbs,
and
had been flayed open or turned inside out.  Their grisly wounds were crudely bandaged with wraps of linen.  Some of the wounded thrashed about violently as they clawed at some imaginary threat. 
Others
couldn’t stop screaming,
or
bled constantly from both eyes.  Several others had decaying appendages turned to stumps of clay or ash. 

The two crafts drew
to within a hundred yards of each other
.  Kane heard dissonant whispers in the wind, a gritty chant
made by
gargling and guttural voices.  It took him a moment to realize
that
what he heard was a chorus of the wounded.  They all spoke jointly in a vagrant and sibilant tongue.  Their eyes were blank as their mouths moved without their knowledge. 

“What the hell…” Kane whispered.

“Anarchotech,” Jade said.

“Bless you,” Kane said as he looked at her.  Her face was pale and her eyes were wide. 

“And what the hell is ‘anarchotech’?” Ronan asked.

“It’s Ebon Cities experimental magic,” she explained.  “They fuse chaotic energies with captured soul power to create a new type of energy.  It’s unstable.  And it’s incredibly debilitating towards living creatures.”

“Why don’t they use it all of the time, then?” Ronan said with a grim laugh.  “And why haven’t we heard of it before?”

“They just started experimenting with it recently,” Jade explained as the
ir
skiff drew closer to the city.  “It’s still in the early stages, I think.  Most Southern Claw mages know about it, but they haven’t spread the word.”  She shrugged.  “I guess your military doesn’t want a panic on its hands.  I understand it’s dangerous for the vampires, too…it’s just a lot
more
dangerous for living creatures.”

“So what does it do?” Kane asked.

“It destabilizes you,” Jade said.  “Melds you with other
possibilities,
or something to that effect.  No one knows just how powerful it is.”  She looked back at the ship
of the
wounded.  “Hopefully we won’t find out.”

“It looks like someone already has,” Kane said.  “So it would seem these people are enemies of the vampires, too.”

“
Big deal,” Ronan said. 

The skiff
came to a
stop over a
n enormous
landing platform hedged in by
jagged towers
.  A seven-foot tall grey man with a lizard-like tail waited on the platform with a s
mall contingent of guards
armed with bolt-action rifles and
wearing
heavy cloaks to shield them from the icy wind.

“Now what?” Ronan groaned.

“Maybe they want to surrender,” Kane said.

Kane and the team were led off the
ship
and brought to stand before the large reptilian.  Their wrists were still shackled in chains, and the armed sentries kept a watchful eye. 

The massive draconian looked down at them.  Kane watched more skiffs fly by in the distance.

“Hi,” Kane said.  “Nice place you have here.  Like an amusement park, only minus the amusement.”

The draconian grunted, then turned and walked away. 

“What the hell?” Sol said, almost in a laugh.

“I get the impression we’re supposed to follow him,” Jade said.

“Maur thinks that’s a terrible idea.”

“For once, Ronan agrees with Maur,” Ronan said. 

“Jade?” Kane asked without taking his eyes off of the giant.  “Do you or your spirit have anything to add here?”

“There are no other spirits anywhere in the vicinity,” she said.  “But
this complex is shielded somehow.  I can’t see past any of the outer areas.”

Well, that’s about as unhelpful as you can get
.  He cursed under his breath and followed the giant.

The complex was even larger than it appeared from the outside.  They stepped through a pair of iron double doors and came into the guts of the refinery-city, a noisy industrial complex filled with dark metal and distant klaxons.  The entire locale looked jury-rigged, a mismatched amalgamation of rusted steel towers and crooked iron girders, tube-shaped buildings with yellowed windows and stream pipes that filled the air with hot white smoke. 

Scaly Grey Clan moved with purpose through uneven narrow streets that had been hobbled together with patchworks of asphalt, rock, and cobblestone.  The air in the city was green and tasted like some sort of cleaning agent.  The atmosphere was vitriolic and liquid, and
moving
through it felt like walking through a dissolving gel.

Kane noticed
that
the reptilians
didn’t
wear
masks
there in the city
.

Strange organic creatures somewhere between jellyfish and seagulls navigated the space between the haphazard rooftops.  Workers carted sacks of sea rock and vats of burning liquid.  Everything smelled of industry and machines.  The loud grind of gears and metal hammers sang into the sky. 

The air took on a turgid quality.  An enormous gel shield surrounded the city. 
Kane
knew it hadn’t been there before, when they’d been on the skiff
and on
the landing platform, which meant
the barrier
was only visible from within.  The Ebonsand Sea and the beach and the sky were all on the other side of a gigantic and sickly green lens.  Everything in the reptile city was suffused with green muck
, and e
very particle of air was weighed down by intangible sludge
, making it difficult to breathe.

Kane and the others were marched
through
the streets.  Reptilian humanoids parted and watched the procession.  The Grey Clan all wore faded grey overalls or simple patchwork clothing that allowed for the subtle variations in their specific body types: prehensile lizard’s tails, multiple arms, spiked ridges along the back, undulating chest cavities that rose and fell like organic accordions. 

The giant reptile-man led them with the help of an entourage of guards.  The mercenaries were marched towards what appeared to be the center of the metropolis of metal and recycled industrial parts, old ships and re-invented watercrafts.  The streets ran low between elevated platforms filled with ramshackle housing.  Thin walkways made of metal and sinew ran between the taller buildings.  Kane looked up through the green air and saw the compressed sky.

“What the hell is this place?” Ronan said, but he didn’t really speak, even though his words sounded in the air.  Kane answered, and that was when he realized they really
did
walk through liquid.  The air was a chemical substance: they moved through a gelatinous atmosphere.  Even though they’d been breathing it for several minutes
,
it wasn’t until Kane tried to
speak
that he actually felt the sticky fluid push down his throat.  He almost gagg
ed, but the words still escaped.

“Not Kansas,” he said.

Kane looked around.  It was difficult to discern one building from the next.  He saw vague outlines of old sea vessels and the shells of converted fuel tanks, the
husks
of land rovers and sheets of tin plating sco
u
red with burn marks and scratches. 

The other reptile folk watched them silently.  They seemed a silent people, a direct counter to the industrial din of the city they inhabited.

“Jade
?” Kane said, fighting his desire to gag on the floating muck.  He felt himself moving slower.  “What the hell is this place?”

It’s New Desh
, his own voice echoed back in his mind.  It was the voice of the giant
,
filtered though Kane’s brain. 
Yes.  We
are
the Grey Clan.  And you are here to help us.

“What?!” Kane said out loud, but no other answer was given. 

Enough of this shit.

He stopped walking
. 
When t
he lead reptile
realized he wasn’t following, it
turned and walked back with loud and deliberate steps
.  T
he other sentries waited stoically. 

Motion ceased all around them.  Dozens of reptilians stopped what they were doing and cast their eyes to the scene as the enormous
leader
moved towards Kane.

Move
, Kane’s own voice echoed in his head
, the voice of the Grey Man
. 
Now.

“Screw you,” he said, and he
leapt forward and kicked the Grey Man’s knee
.  Even in the heavy air the force of
the blow
was enough to crack
the bone
with a sickening squelch.  The creature growled and fell. 

“Jade!” Kane yelled.

He was glad she decided to ignore her concerns about the area being too unstable
and
finally
use her magic.  The gritty air turned thin, melted by the presence of her spirit.  Sol and Ronan struck out and knocked two of the armed guards aside.  Ronan even managed to disarm one and steal its
barbed spear
.  He swung it around and
downed
another sentry, leaving eight
immediate threats for them
to deal with.  Jade’s spirit swept four of them
aside,
while Kane kicked the leader in
its
lizard’s nose.  Sol grabbed two and knocked their heads together.

More Grey Clan descended from above.  They came down slowly, altered the air’s viscosity to make it so they almost flew.  They wore armored masks and bladed bracers and yielded double-edged swords.  Their armor was covered in razor-tipped spines. 

Kane kicked one in the face as it came down and sent it flying back through the air.  He pulled a blade away from another and used it to defend himself.  Even in that goop atmosphere he moved as fast as he ever had – if anything, he was
faster
, as the pain that had bothered his leg for the past few days seemed to vanish in that gel air.