Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (52 page)

“Now’s our chance!” Kane shouted.  “Run!”

Jade
’s spirit
ploughed the road.  Mud and water flew
from
their path. 
Shells
struck down
near
by
, and Kane heard shouts from the other side of the ruins.  Voth Ra’morg loomed
over them as they made their way up the hill
. 

A black clawed hand came out of nowhere and grabbed Kane by the shoulder.  He was lifted
from
the ground and hung
suspended
by
nail-like talons.  Pain flashed across
his body
.

The Scarecrow was covered in mud and filth, and its armor had
been
blasted apart.  Thin bones pushed through the oil and leather skin
.  T
he eight-foot tall brute held Kane up
and extended its claws to slash open his stomach
. 

Ronan leapt
between them
.  His katana deflected the Scarecrow’s claws, and
in a blur
he hacked the creature’s leg off at the knee.  Grey sinew tore and the Scarecrow collapsed, dropping Kane to the g
round and
knock
ing
the wind
out of him
.
Maur and Jade blast
ed
the Scarecrow
to pieces
with a barrage of
bullets
and cold fire.

Kane
cried in pain
even as Jade’s spirit tried to heal him
.  It had trouble, like his body didn’t want to heal, but after a moment
Kane’s r
ent skin stitched
itself
back together.  The searing pain faded.

“
Hell of a day,
” Ronan said.

Kane looked at each of them.

“
Let’s finish this,” he said.
 
“
We h
ave to
find
Dani.”  He reloaded
and turned towards the
city
.  “We have to
find
Cross.”

Because
Cross and Dani
and you
guys
–
Ronan, Maur…
even
you,
Jade – are the closest thing to a family I’m ever going to have.  I lost Ekko.  I don’t want to lose anyone else.  Not while I’m alive to
do
something about it.

Vampire warships sailed low in
the sky and pummeled Black Scar
tanks and Scarecrows with incendiary missiles. 
C
louds of burning steam
rolled across the ground
. 
The air was smelted and thick
. 

Only one
Grey Clan vessel
remained
.  I
t floated low in the
air
and
list
ed
to port
thanks to
a damaged turbine.  Gargoyles
clung to
the
outside
of the ship
and
tore at
the
hull with razor claws.

The Ebon Cities arm
y
advanced. 
The
Black Scars tank pummeled ranks of undead giants
,
war wights and kaithoren with hexed ballistic shot and razor bolts.  Greasy corpses exploded in bursts of flaming skin.  More Scarecrows and Revengers and Talons poured out of the tank
’
s cargo holds, a horde of dark armored bodies.

S
h
a
p
e
s floated
out of
the
blood-
black smoke: sleek and bladed warships,
vampire fliers, Razorwings
and
gargoyles, Bloodclouds and Hexbats. 
T
he last rays of dying sunlight
pierced
through
the grim barrier of clouds.

T
he
opposing
ground forces would
collide in moments
.

“Let’s go,” Kane said.  “We have people to
save
.”

TWENTY

SKULLS

The tops of crumbling buildings were just visible from outside the ruins.  Kane, Ronan, Jade and Maur slipped through a gap in one
of
Voth Ra’morg’s pulverized stone
walls
.
 

They moved down streets lined with s
hort
round
buildings.  Patches of
frozen
moss
,
black
grass
and grease ice
covered the ground.  Thick banks of mud
blocked off
most of the alleyways
.

The air in
Voth Ra’morg
was still.  The cannon blasts and blade bombs and
bursts
of acid napalm
all seemed a world away, even though the battle raged just on the other side of
the
walls.

Cold sweat laced
Kane’s
skin, and his arms and legs ached.  His dirty armor was dented and covered
with
mud, and his long hair was pasted
against
his scalp.  His gums burned with hunger.
 

It was becoming more and more difficult to keep the whispers out of his head.  They promised blood and flesh, and though t
heir voices sickened him
he knew that if he accepted, if he just turned himself over to what they wanted, the pain would end.

Too bad
, he told himself. 
Nothing has ever been easy for you.  You don’t get to start now.

He thought
about
Ekko. 

He would
n’t let Danica die.  For a time
he’d
actually
wanted
her dead
. 
I
t had been stupid to blame he
r for what had happened to Ekko, because he knew
that
even
if Black hadn’t
smuggled them out of Black Scar they both
would have eventually died in
prison
anyway
.
B
ut
knowing
that
still
hadn’t stopped him from harboring
deep
resentm
ent, and e
ven though he’d tried to keep
his
anger to himself
he knew
that
Danica
had been
all too
aware of how he
’d
felt
. 

He and Black had
come together during their search for Cross
,
and they’d
bonded in a way they never had before
.  There was no way he was going to let
her or Cross
go now.

They quietly made their way
across
the ruined city
, through d
rifts of grey smoke
that smelled
of ash and cinder. 
Wooden walkways creaked overhead, weighed down with hoarfrost and iced mold.  The buildings were dark and smooth and seemed to suck in what little light remained. 

They heard voices up ahead
, and
Kane signaled everyone to stop
. 
He nodded at Jade, and she
sent her spirit to scout.
The team
had stepped
in
to
the shadows of leaning cylindrical towers
clustered
near
the center of the city
. 
The g
aping holes
in the
towers
revealed
their
twisted rebar
innards
. 

Kane smelled axle grease and vehicular fumes.  He heard a churning engine just around the corner
of the nearby building
.  Ronan and Maur stood ready, but Jade was locked in concentration, and almost seemed to be in pain.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“My spirit is having trouble…” she said.  “It’s like he c
an’t get any further…something’
s blocking him.”

An explosive b
last ripped through the air.  Metal
flew
out of the
closest
tower
behind them
.  Noise rang through his ears, and ice dust fell across his
eyes
.

“Contact!” Ronan yelled, and he leaned around the corner and fired.

“You think?!” Kane shouted back. 

Gunfire cut the air apart.  Maur and Jade
dropped
to the ground. 

A
n
other
explosive
shell
ripped
into
the tower
behind them.

“Jade, do something!”
Kane
yelled.

“I can’t…it’s like my spirit isn’t there…God…”

“Shit,
”
Kane said, and he
fired his
M4 around the corner.

“Move
back
,
”
Maul said.

The Gol
pushed past Kane, calmly stepped up to the corner
of the building
, and tossed a grenade
at the source of
the gunfire.  Shouts
of warning rang out
, and
Kane
heard a vehicle back away. 
He poked his head out just
in time to see a Scarecrow
aim
its cannon right at him.  A dark armored Hummer and a small group of Revengers stood behind
the undead
.
 
O
ne
of them
looked familiar, and Kane realized he knew him: it was
a former inmate in the prison named Gath. 
Kane
didn’t have time to wonder why he was dressed as a Revenger.

The grenade went off,
and
the Hummer
flew
backwards.  Its
back
end
cr
ashed into
a
nearby
building. 

The explosion made the Scarecrow’s shot go wide, and instead of hitting Kane it blasted away a chunk of stone high in the tower wall. 

Several Revengers
flew through the air and landed in bloody heaps
.  O
ne was missing his legs,
and
another
had
lost
an arm. 

Gath’s chest had been blown open
.  H
is corpse smoldered. 

T
he
Scarecrow
r
a
n
straight
at them.  Kane
and Ronan shot it
in the
face
.  B
ullets
smashed
into
its grinning skull
. 
The
gaunt undead
raised its cannon and
aimed
while it
charged
, undeterred by their assault.

“
Duck
!” Jade yelled from behind them.
Her spirit came out of nowhere
and
drilled
forward
,
a
lance
of green acid
that
impaled the Scarecrow and filled the air with ghastly fumes. 
The creature
withered, and its gun
lowered
to the ground.

Kane ran up and snatched
the weapon
away.  The
rifle
was heavy and
almost 4-feet long,
but he swung it around, dropped
prone
and
balanced
it
on a loose rock
to
help him
aim
.  Revengers fired at them from a block away.  The Hummer roared to life.