Steven Montano: Blood Skies

The chill grew worse. Cross estimated they had less than an hour left before sundown, by which point they had to be inside the city walls. His spirit drifted close, then passed between Snow and himself (she pressed tight against him, as if jealous of his flesh and blood sister) before she circled out and away, cognizant of their surroundings, always on watch for anything that might do them harm.

“ Do you think Mom is doing well?” Snow asked.

They stared at the apple, and into the Reach. Snow didn’t like to look west, towards the Bonespire, even though it was hard to see from there in the grave field. The western plains were level with Thornn, while the graves were lower by a good hundred feet. A winding path led up the hillside and back to the eastern city gates, through the barbican and into the eastern guardhouse. It had been some time since Thornn had actually seen a Gorgoloth attack from out of the eastern Reach, but the ebon-skinned barbarians had historically wrought so much devastation that hostility from the Reach was considered inevitable, just as a similar, eventual attack from the Bonespire to the west was expected. Thornn was prepared for the next assault, regardless of which direction it came from.

“ I don’t know,” Cross said with a shake of his head. “I hope so.”

Snow was nineteen now. Cross hated seeing her grow older, but he was glad, at least, that she’d stopped asking if he could see their mother’s ghost, if she’d be able to communicate with it like she and Cross did with their own spirits. It had been so hard to explain to her that it didn’t work that way, that what a mage and his spirit shared was a bond, a melding together of souls. Besides, a mage’s spirit was an entirely different type of creature, and while Cross’ spirit could sense the souls of the recently dead, Cross had explained to Snow that there was no communication with the deceased, no way of interacting. The soul of their dead mother, like all dead souls, was mindless: it would be like trying to talk to a wolf.

“ I miss her,” Snow said quietly. “And I miss you.”

“ I’m here now,” he said.

“ You haven’t been around very much,” Snow said. “You’re not in the city too often. On the rare occasion that you are, it would be nice to see you.” Snow put her arms around his waist. He remembered her when she was young, when he used to take her toys away and hide them, and even after their mother took his toys he still wouldn’t tell them where Snow’s were. Now she was almost grown up, and a stronger person than he was. And she was a witch, just as he was a warlock. They were both cursed with that power. They had a great deal of natural talent between them, they’d been told, maybe the most of any brother and sister that had ever served the Southern Claw.

One mage in the family was enough, he thought. One was probably too much, actually. Why did you have to be one, too, little Sister?

He didn’t want to delude himself. He knew that Snow would have to serve in the army someday. It was the price you paid for having the gift of magic.

“ How’ve you been?” he asked. He hugged her back, and then slowly led her back towards the city. “We didn’t get much of a chance to talk before we came down here.”

“ I’m fine,” she said, the note of sadness in her voice unmistakable.

“ How’s the job?”

“ Librarians are all the rage now,” she said with a bit of sarcasm. “All of the boys want to talk to us, and we get to play with the latest, most amazing technology.”

“ Right. So really, how is it?”

“ Boring. Much more boring than what you do.”

“ I doubt that,” he smiled. He knew that she knew better, but he always tried not to worry her. As it was, he’d made clear he wouldn’t tell her any details of being a Hunter. The life expectancy of personnel in the military wasn’t very long, and for members of vampire Hunter squads that expectancy was even less. At two years spent in the service, Cross was halfway to the average.

I hope you’re different, he thought as he looked at Snow. I hope to God you don’t choose to do this, too.

They paused by their mother’s gravestone. It was covered with a thin trace of frost. The hammered bronze plate on the cracked marble base read ALICE CROSS. There was no matching plate for their father, as he had died before The Black, so his name had instead been inscribed on the obelisk memorial on Ghostborne Island. Cross tried to get out and see the monument at least once a year, and while his work made that possible, he had long stretches where he didn’t make it to see Dad. Snow had never been there. Rimefang Loch was just too dangerous to navigate lightly.

That’s okay. You’re safer here than anywhere else. There isn’t much out there worth seeing.

There were hundreds of gravestones. Ice and gravel crunched beneath their boots as they slowly walked through the neatly spaced rows. Some of the older stones had almost fallen apart, or else their copper and iron face plates had been covered in grime or frost or been worn away by the unnatural lightning storms that sometimes ripped out of the Reach, storms summoned by Gorgoloth shamans before the barbaric race had given up its magic to the Cruj in exchange for weapons. Cross glanced back at the glacial horizon and saw endless fields of white, icy canyons filled with swirls of windblown snow, and low clouds as thick as iron that clung to the ground as if with claws. Somewhere out there, hidden deep in the clefts of cracked ice and the valleys of dark rime, were the subterranean homes of the Gorgoloth, barbaric humanoid creatures with black skin and stark white hair who were driven by a need to destroy. They were just one of many non-human races that, so far as anyone knew, had not existed before The Black. Human memory, however, was by and large incapable of recreating the period of time before The Black. Everything had changed, but it was rare that anyone remembered how things had once been.

As terrible as battles against the Gorgoloth and their Crujian puppet-masters had been, they were hardly the real threat that faced Thornn or the Southern Claw: that was the vampire legions of the Ebon Cities. Cross’ chest seized up at the notion of returning to the field. He had only three days of leave left, and he anticipated it was going to be cut short any day now, since the search for the outlaw woman called Red hadn’t made any progress.

Being a Southern Claw war mage for two years hadn’t done much to quell Cross’ nerves. Even with his spirit doing her best to keep him calm and protected, Cross still hadn’t learned to sleep well. The thought of what he might face in his nightmares later that night made him shudder.

“ Are you okay?” Snow asked. They held each other close as they walked across the field and towards the hill.

“ Yeah,” Cross smiled. “I’m just cold.”

“ What are you doing tonight?” Snow asked after a long pause.

“ I’m going to The Black Hag with Sam. You want to come?” He knew that she wouldn’t. Snow was a bigger drinker and socialite than he was, by far — last he heard she was still capable of drinking almost any member of Viper Squad under the table — but for some reason she preferred to keep her brother in quiet company. That was fine with Cross, who liked to delude himself into thinking that she was still eight years old. To see her drinking, dancing and flirting with local industry workers and city guards would probably make his blood boil and force his spirit to lash out in anger.

“ Not tonight,” she said. “But I expect you for dinner tomorrow. How many days of leave do you have left?”

“ Three. I hope.”

“ You can’t leave without me making you dinner at least once.”

“ It’s a deal.”