Steven Montano: Crown of Ash

At the same moment, Danica fell to the ground in a heap.

“Ja de! ” Kane shouted. “Now!”

The sound of g unfire roared through his ears. Kane saw blasts and bullets flash towards them. H e balled up his body, read y to be torn apart.

Jade’s shield threw back shrapnel. A glittering star storm of white explosions flashed less than a foot from Kane’s face.

Rake pushed past the Scarecrows. The air was alight with hex rot and electricity. Swirling black winds kicked up a n icy storm.

Danica stood up, and shouted. Her eyes glowed like an exploding star. Re ve ngers turned and fired at her.

Geist growled and charged at Danica with a h eavy steel hammer. S he lashed them with wave s of spark and steel. Broken slivers and hot embers ripped through armor and flesh. Geist and most of the Revengers were dead before they hit the ground.

Rake saw the attack coming at the last moment and turned his own spirit to deflect hers. Energies collided in a pillar of liquid flame. Rake fell back. His cloak burned and his armor smoked.

Kane and Ronan leapt forward and engage d the Scarecrows. Jade dropped the shield and was about to blast the undead when Kane remembered that Cross was tethered to one of the Scarecrow ’ s backs.

“Wait!”

Chains snapped, a nd the Talon sprang forward. The dark-skinned brute was the size of a male gorilla. Knotted black muscles str ain ed with rage, and its six fists pounded the dirt. A decorative gold and iron mask had been surgically fused to its fanged face. T he creature issued a guttural and blood-curdling howl.

The Scarecrows fire d again. Jade hammered one of them with a blast of sub-arctic air. Ebon flesh peeled away as it fell to the ground.

Duck!

The voice came just in time. Kane barely dodged one of the Talon’s incredibly long arms. Claws the size of steak knives raked against the stone. Kane jumped back.

DUCK!

It was Danica’s voice inside his head. Kane flattened himself against the floor.

A screaming cone of fire and force tore the Talon open. Its chest cavity twisted and exploded in a mass of skin and molten guts. The beast’s howls rang loud and long as it fell to the ground.

Kane looked at Danica. Her steel arm smoked, and her body was shrouded in a corona of white fire.

“How did you do that?”

You were bi t t en, her voice told him. So was I. That’s how they kept me alive when they hacked off my arm. But I’m not going to T urn.

“Neither am I,” he snarled, and he rose to his feet.

Jade and Rake did battle with arcane blades and hex missiles. Their attacks spiraled and bounced off of one another, sparked green and red explosions that smelled like a furnace.

Maur dodged around the perimeter of the battle, trying to get a c lear shot at the Scarecrow that held Cross. Ronan circled the same undead and looked for an opening, his blades ready; h is wrapped face and dark hair made him melt into the shadows.

Cross was tightly secured to the Scarecrow’s back, but he was still unconscious.

Ronan found an opening. He raced in and sliced the Scarecrow’s cannon in half.

Kane! Help!

Burke was gone. He was Krage now, a vampire with pale eyes, pale r skin and enormous claws. He held Danica by the throat and dragged her towards the obelisk.

Krage’s vampire servants poured grave dust and unholy oils in a perimeter around the obelisk. T hey were preparing s ome ritual to breach the barrier to the Whisperlands.

“Hey asshole!” Kane shouted. He aim ed the cannon at Krage.

Duck, he thought to Danica.

The recoil threw him back. Danica pulled away and scream ed as Krage ’s talons tore out of part of her good shoulder.

The shell took Krage in the chest and tore him in half. Bloody meat and bone fragment s splattered all over the obelisk.

One of the other vampires thr e w vials of blood to the ground and chant ed in some sibilant alien tongue. T he other one leapt on top of Danica. They grappled, and claws slashed into Danica ’s ribs before Kane could find a shot.

He felt Danica’s scream more than heard it. T he force of it tore through his chest and filled him with loss.

“Dani! ” he shouted. He dropped the cannon and ran.

He heard a scream behind him. Jade fell to the ground. Blood seeped from her mouth and nose, and the side of her face was burned.

A fi st of light crashed into Kane’s side. H e felt his ribs crack. Blinding pain spread up and down his body. He went to his knees and fell inches away from Jade.

“Nice try,” Rake said, but he wasn’t talking to Kane or Jade, but to the vampires. “We knew the Ebon Cities would try to beat us to the Obelisk. Too bad.” The red-headed warlock held his clenched fists together. Whips of razor light shot out and tore a vampire’s head from its shoulders. The last vampire bore her fangs and soared at Rake with a dark-bladed scimitar in hand.

Danica struggled to rise. B lood poured out of her ruined stomach. Her eyes were lifeless.

Kane stood up. His head swam, and h is ribs felt like they w ere on fire. He drew his blade and ran at Rake.

Rake pulled out a Mac-10. He gunned the vampire down with hexed bullets. Kane was less than a yard away when Rake turned and shot him in the stomach.

Sharp p ain exploded through his body. He felt the bullets shred through his organs. Something inside him broke. He fell, stood up again, and stumbled forward. Everything faded in and out. Kane’s arms failed him. He couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t find the strength to lift his weapons.

He was only dimly aware of Ronan shouting to him.

Mike, Danica’s voice said in his mind. Mike…

He thought of Ekko. He saw her face, and felt her skin. He held her in his arms, touched the smooth curve of her back, felt the soft touch of her lips on his neck. He was warm, warm in the way that only Ekko had ever made him.

Everything bled to white. It was like he’d fallen into a world of light and snow. In his mind, Ekko was there, waiting in a pale field and wearing a blood red dress, the one she’d w o r n when they’d first met, when he’d be en so simple and lost and she’ d taken him away from a dull life and given him something go od, something worth living.

S he’d given him her love. I t was the greatest thing he’ d ever know n.

She was what he saw, and why he smiled, even as Rake shot him in the face and killed him.

Do you?

She floats in pale seas, adrift in the void. There’ s n o sound and no feeling: just her and the light.

It isn’t real, and she knows it, b ut she no longer knows what is. She hangs outside of time, held in a web. Here she is still whole. They’ve not yet robbed her of her arm and replaced it with some bastard arcane creation that doubles as a prison for her spirit. Here she still exists as she once was, not a s some monster, a fusion of living and undead, flesh and steel.

Here, she ’ s not yet become their sacrifice.

Where am I?

This is not where she is. This time, these events…they ’ ve already happened. She ’ s a prisoner again. Trapped to witness her own collapse, to watch a s a life she once knew is brutally erased.

Kane died, and Danica screamed.

Rake shot him in the face, then shot him again as the body fell soundlessly to the ground. Mike’s b ody crumpled in a bloody heap.

Her vision flashed white. The vampire voices in the back of her mind silenced as her spirit howled with rage. Her vision focused. The space between she and Rake seemed to close. Her hea rt beat filled her ears. Blood poured from her side.

“Raaaaaaaake!” she screamed.

She felt nothing in the blood steel appendage, but as the soul flame leapt from her metal fingers the false arm burned the tender flesh where it had been mounted into her scapula. Heat painfully radiated across her upper body. She cried tears of hurt.