Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (46 page)

Screams filled the air.  It took some time for her realize they were hers.  They echoed through the ship like the mewling of some simpering beast.

Her eyes gummed over with mucus.  Her stomach contracted in hard waves.  Fists hammered against her ribs, always in the same spot.  Blood and vomit blocked her nasal cavity and ran down her throat.  Her back was on fire.  Her skin was swollen with bruises.

You’re not weak
, she reassured herself, but she
knew
that
she was.  She’d been so desperate to compromise, to preserve what was dear to her, that she
’d
sacrificed everything.

So
when
Geist grabbed her hair and
rammed
his
stone-hard
fist
into
her stomach with such force she coughed up blood, she tried not to think about
finding
ways to block out the pain or
to
escape. 

She thought
about
all
of
the mistakes she’d
ever
made in her life.  She thought
about
how she deserved every moment of what she was getting.

She
see
s
Lara
again.  They float through a sea of inky shadow, sailors trapped in an ebon sea.  The waves are strong.  Their vessel takes on water and breaks
apart
. 
T
hey
’
re both engulfed
by
the turgid
waves
. 
P
ale lightning
rips
down
from
a
sky
covered
with
stone clouds. 

She can’t hold on.  They
grab each other’s
hands and try to
stay together
, but the
sea is
strong, and dark things
under
the
surface
grab them
and pull them down. 

Down to
lightless deeps
where they will forever swim in the arms of nightmares.

At som
e point she woke, and she wasn’
t being beaten.  Her face was a mess of blood, and her bones were broken, but even as she lay there they painfully re-knit themselves
.  T
he wounds
on her face slowly sealed.  Her i
nternal injuries
fused
closed
with agonizing force.
  She felt things realign and crack inside her.
 

She was in a dimly lit room.  Gath was there, along with a Scarecrow.  For a moment she thought he was
there to help, and that was why he’d given her back her spirit, who desperately
raced to seal
her crushing wounds.  But as her eyes healed and she almost regained full consciousness she saw the smirk on
Gath’s
face.

They’re letting my spirit heal me
, she realized,
so that they can hurt me again.

It was foolish to dream of Lara
, so she didn’t
.  Because she knew no matter how hard she cried or how badly she wanted Cole
to be with her
, it was never going to happen. 

She’s gone.  And she’s not coming back.

She woke looking
up at
the inside of a
black
dome.

She was no longer on the ship
, but
down on the ground, in the
ruined
city. 
F
rozen shadow vapors
weigh
t
ed the air
.  Her skin was wreathed in wet frost.  Her breaths
were
ragged and heavy.

Danica lay on her back.  She’
d been secured to a slab of ice-
covered granite.  The dome above her was made of
ice and dark stone
. 

Her skin was frozen.  The bonds held her wrists tight.  She felt her spirit, just out of reach, screaming
like he was
in pai
n
. 
He struggled to be free.  She sensed that he wanted so desperately to help her.

She looked around, desperate.  She saw Rake and Raven
and Geist
and
two
more
me
n she didn’t know.  It took her some moments to
realize they
weren’t
men at all, but undead. 

The first was a lich. 
Most of t
he skin had fallen from his bones,
and
his skeletal visage bore burning black eyes. 
His
l
ong claws gripped some sort of medallion, an ancient trinket that looked familiar.

“Mor
ning, Dani,” Rake said
.  “Are y
ou ready?”

“What the hell is going on?” she asked. 
Her heart hammered with fear. 
She couldn’t move, couldn’t call her spirit.  Her mind raced
to find a
way out, but there wasn’t
any
.  She felt tears on her face.  “Rake…please…”

“Sorry, Dani,” he smiled, and he nodded
to the
second
undead
creature
. 
The vampire.

It
s
dark hood fell back to reveal a pale face with a wide mouth.  His unnaturally dark eyes were voids in his skull
.  S
harp fangs dripp
ed
dark venom.  He was lean and muscular and
bore a vicious and toothy smile
. 
His nearness
chilled her heart.

Geist stepped
up
onto the slab
and stood over her
. 
The Revenger
held a wide-bladed axe.  The tip was so sharp Danica could almost
taste
its razor edge.  A distorted view of her face reflected back at her
in the
metal
.

I won’t scream
, she told herself, her last defiant act. 
I won’t give you the satisfaction, you bastard.

“What are
you
going to do?” she asked grimly.

“Prepare you,” Rake said.  She was surprised he
’d
graced her with an answer. 
“
Like I
told you before
, we need a sacrifice to des
troy the obelisk and end humanity’s
reign of magic.  A few years ago, the leaders of Koth planned to use Cross,
because
he fit the conditions
perfectly
.  He’d lost his spirit, and then regained it.  But Cross no longer
has
a spirit.  So now we need someone else.” 
H
e nodded
for
Geist
to proceed
.

Black knew he hadn’t really answered her question.  He in no way had explained what they were about to do to her, how
they would make
her useful to them.  She didn’t bother pointing
out that without magic he and
T
he Revengers would be just as much at the mercy of
Koth
and the Ebon Cities as the Southern Claw, but she had no doubts he’d already thought of that, that he’d already planned ahead.  Rake always planned ahead.

She looked up
at
Geist’s twisted and ugly face.  The axe was massive, and
his expressionless gaze
was chilling. 

The vampire moved closer.  It smiled.  Its pale and twisted face was hideous to behold.  T
he forehead was long and smooth
and the jaw was pugnacious and wide to accommodate the rows of razor teeth.

Geist raised the axe.  When
she looked up again, she wasn’
t afraid.  Her last thoughts weren’t of Cole, but of Cross.

I’m sorry, Eric.  I’m so sorry.

The blade fla
shed down quick. 
The
pain
was
so intense
she
black
ed
out
the instant
her blood splash
ed
onto the vampire’s face.

Darkness.

She swims in
a
black
sea.  It’
s calm now, rigid.  Lonely. 

There
’s no one there with her.  She’
s adrift on ebon waves in the middle of a vast nowhere, a world made of water.

S
he’d loved to swim
as a child
.  She would get
in
and
out of
the water
as often as she could. 
She did it to escape. 
She couldn’t bear her family.  She was nothing but meat to them, and they were just trash to her.  Her mother did nothing to help.  Her father was a demon.  Her brother was the same,
only
younger.

So she swam, just as she swims
now
.  She drifts alone.  It disturb
s her
that there are no voices.  There
’
s no one there to tell her
that
she
’
s safe. 

It doesn’t matter. 
She knows she
won’t
be there long.

She woke in darkness.

She sees
razor claws and blood, teeth filled with meat.

She sees dead cities on a frozen shore next to a black and oily sea.  Blood vapors fill the sky. 
There are b
lack ships in the bay
with
engines that grind bones and scour the air with pale flames.

Rows of still-standing dead bodies line up at the edge of the icy sea.  The anemic corpses step one-by-one into the waters, where the howling waves consume them.

That world is dying.  It has always been dead, but now
it
falls apart.  There’
s little left. 

She sees the war labs and the factories.  Sees the council halls and hears the endless arguing, the grinding alien tongue that for some reason makes sense to her now.  She stands there, a
cold body, naked but unafraid. 

She is judged by
a pale council.  They regard her, inspect her.  Cold tongues and clammy hands run over her skin.  She stands stalwart, uncaring.

What
more
can they do to me?

She
’
s fed.  Thick and vi
s
cous fluid pours down her throat.  She takes it.  Her instinct is to cough it up, to gag on it, but she knows it sustains her, and she wants to be sustained. 

She isn’t done yet. 

The scars on her neck
won’t
heal.  They
’
re ugly and jagged and
they
ooze thick and congealed
blood
that runs down her
skin
.  The arcane tattoos
on
her right arm faintly glow, resistant to this dread change in her physiognomy, but
after a
while
they fade. 

They bring her
b
lack blood in bone goblets.  She drinks
it.  She can’
t
get
her fill.

She woke
in darkness. 

She was thirsty.  Her breath
caught in her chest. 

Bone needles probed her.  She
saw
nothing but pale light.

She felt no pain, and yet knew she wasn’t whole.  Something cold pressed against her shoulder, metal and frigid. 

Then
the
pain came, and she screamed.

Ravenous claws flesh blood drink blood falling in waves collapsing fields of flesh raw explosions this world ends your world erase us not them find you found you find him we will always find you find him this world erase