Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4) (50 page)

A large airship
hovered
just over the island,
tethered
by a mooring chain. 
Two smaller ships
flew
in a perimeter pattern around the structure
.  Both vessels were
heavily armed with repeating cannons and arcane ballistae. 

D
ark war machines
moved on the ground.  The b
lack juggernauts
had
massive iron wheels and swinging turrets, blade-rams and flame-cannons
, and they
cra
shed through the laggard waters and
flatten
ed
the
mounds of earth and
old
wooden walkways
in their path
.
 

The vehicles moved quickly
.  D
ark water
burst
skyward
as explosions struck the ground
.  The air was riddled with machinegun fire.

The Black Scar invaders were under attack.

Kane moved to the window
, stood next to the others
and looked out
at
the scene.  Ronan broke out his binoculars. 

At first Kane thought Rake and his crew had run afoul of some natural creatu
res in the area
,
or
squatters
who’d claimed
the ruins
.  B
ut he doubted the airship would have moored there if
anything in
Voth Ra’morg
hadn’t
already
been dealt with
.  At worst
,
T
he Revengers
might have had to
contend
with tundra barbarians
or
Gorgoloth
who roamed
the area in search of plunder.

Instead, t
he creatures
who
attack
ed
the Revengers were Troj – massive
red-skinned humanoids with
draconic
faces
, knotted muscles and heavy armor, thick swords and rifles as big
as
motorcycles. 
They
were no swamp vagrants, but elite mercenaries, their loyalties marked by the slashed eye and fang sigils on their dark armor.

“Ebon Cities,” Ronan said. 

“Damn it, they’re already here,” Burke said.  “Signal the attack!”

Blasts tore the swamp apart.  Mud and dirt exploded in bursts of black water
.
Troj raced through the swamp, nine-foot tall brutes
that
moved with
alarming
speed. 
T
hunderously loud
rifles
pelted
the
dark iron tanks. 
The Troj moved fearlessly
,
well aware of their own near invulnerability
, for t
heir thaumaturgically modified metabolism healed
most
wounds with ease and they were bred to know n
either
pain
nor
fear.  The fact that their barbaric minds were
artificially
infused with the latest military tactics and ordnance training made them
all the more
dangerous.

C
reatures of
equal
size
from Black Scar
met
t
he Troj in battle.  They were t
all and gan
gly undead
with
burn-black
skin pulled taut against
distorted bones
,
and
their skeletal bodies were
covered
with
thick body armor
.  The gaunt undead giants
were armed
with what
Kane guessed were
20mm cannons.
 

Shells tore the
marshy
earth
apart
as the two ground forces
advanced across the field.
T
he Troj mov
ed
towards the ruins, the undead
defended it
.

“Scarecrows,” Turner explained.  “The first gift Rake accepted from Koth to seal the alliance.”

“Shit,
there’s
more,
”
Ronan
sai
d.  He’d turned his
binoculars
north.

A
number
of vampire warships drifted over the horizon
, followed by a
Coffin
:
a long and
rectangular iron vessel that served as
a
troop transport for the Ebon Cities. 
Dark mist trailed the Wing
of airships and
paint
ed
the sky black. 

M
ist rolled ahead of
the Ebon Cities
ground forces
. 
T
hick
fumes
curled
forward in
a wave of fog
that
buried the marsh
in
blue-black smoke.  Massive silhouettes
were barely visible within
, a host of slow-moving behemoth humanoids
that
moved jerkily.  Patches of rotting green flesh appear
ed
as the figures
came to the edge of
the smoke.  Blank eyes stared ahead.  The Doj zombies dragged broken tree-trunks or planks of wood d
otted
with
steel
shards and nails.  They walked with terrifying precision,
and
stamp
ed
their way through the swamp. 

Many of the giants
held large iron spheres the size of
cauldrons
.  Small
holes
in the
spheres
leaked
blue-black flames.

“
Let’s get the fuck
out
of
here!”
Marcus
shouted.

“We can’t leave!
” Burke hissed.  “Rake is inside now with Cross
and
the God-damn
ed
spy!”

“Then get us
in
there!” Kane shouted.  “Now!”

Burke looked at Turner.  The ship veered as gunfire rapped against the hull.  One of the vampire warships had spotted them, and
several
more
moved to intercept. 

“Do it,” Burke said, and he nodded at Raal, the human-like Grey Clan
sorcerer
.  Mourne stood
close
by.  Raal nodded to the pilot, and the ship lurched sideways.

The world tilted. 
Kane’s insides twisted. 
Black
explosions and tracer fire
came
so close the
walls
rattle
d
. 
Th
e engines groaned and fired as the ship dipped
closer
to the sodden earth.

The
Grey Clan
skiffs
turned to intercept the vampire
warships
.

Kane felt voices slither through his mind.

Kill black blood will eat the world you will kill lick gobble swim in our oceans black oceans beneath blood moon sickle cut the life from world’s veins twist bleed till nothing left nothing suck you dry the blood the blood is lost

“Gah!”

Kane’s head pounded so hard he felt like he’d
caught a
brick
right between the eyes.  He fell to his knees
and
tried to fight off the voices. 

“It’s t
he vampire collective consciousness,” Turner
said.  “We need to take him out.
”

“Whoa, what?!” Kane shouted.  He looked at Turner.  “You said I was
fine
!”

Marcus
pulled a 9mm Beretta from a shoulder-holster and aimed it at Kane
’s face
, but before he’d even released the safety Ronan had a
kodachi
to his throat.

“You’ll be dead before he is,” the swordsman growled.

“He’s being drawn into the vampire collective…” Turner yelled, but Kane barely heard her.  Images flashed through his mind, painful stabbing visions that made
his eyes wince and his heart g
o cold.  An obelisk of black ice.  A grim stone bust of an ancient bearded man.  Razors
that fell
like rain.  Cold light at the end of a dark shaft.  Eyes like mirrors
,
staring out from rows of pale faces.

I’m seeing what they see
, he realized. 
I’m slipping closer to them.

“Contact!” someone shouted, and moments later the ship buckled.  Ballistics struck the hull.  Glass and steel ripped apart.  Cold
wind
sc
rap
ed through the opened aircraft and
suck
ed
Grey Clan and Revengers into the sky. 

Cold
sliced
in
to his core. 
The suction
of air
pulled Kane off
his feet.  Everything went
end
over end.  He saw Maur wrestle for the controls as the
dead
pilot fell forward in a shower of sparks.   Ronan accidentally sliced
Marcus’
s
throat
as the ship lurched violently
.  Burke grabbed Turner and shielded her
from the
glass and steel
that
blasted through the bridge. 

Kane
grabbed
Jade and held onto the bench.  The horizon flipped.  Everything
spun
.
  For a moment they hung
weightless, suspended in mid-air as the ship
fell
. 

Shit
, was all he could think, and he knew it was
a
stupid
thought
, but it was all that went through his mind as the vessel drifted out of the sky. 
Shit! Shit!
Shit!
Shit!
Shit!
Shit!

The
ground
blasted against them.  Iron and metal bent inwards.  The ship landed upside down
:
they seemed to crash into the sky.  The ceiling was the floor, and it buckled in
.
Kane twisted around and
positioned
himself
to
absorb the
brunt of the
impact
for Jade
. 

Even after they were still, h
e felt like they were upside-down, stuck to the roof of the world.

Whispers growled through his mind.  He ignored them
by
bit
ing
his own lip.  He thought of Ekko, how she’d been mostly vampiric the last few hours of her life. 

She
went
through this, this exact thing you’re
going through now.  She made it.  She
fought for you till the
very end.  You can
,
too.  You owe it to her.

“Kane…” Jade groaned.

“Get up,” he said.  “We have to get out of here.”  Kane
rose
, aware of the gaping cuts in his leg.  Blood poured
from
his skin where a piece of shrapnel
was
embedded
in his calf
, but he didn’t feel it, and
he
decided that was
for the
best. 

Metal beams
dangled from the floor overhead
, and glass
covered the ceiling beneath them
.  Sparks
rained
down from above.  The roar of cannon
fire and bomb blasts
echoed through the air
. 
The ship
was
rent and torn and
oozed
oil and fuel. 
He smelled
fire
and blood and heard groans of pain.