Steven Montano: Crown of Ash

He punched at her again. Danica raised a shield, but not in time. Rake smashed through her spirit’s defenses and knocked her back. She slid and nearly fell from the dragon’s belly.

“God damn it, Danica, you ruined everything!” he yelled, and he kicked her in the stomach. Pain doubled her over. The air raced out of her lungs. “We had a nice thing going. W e were going to be on top of the food chain…” He reached down and grabbed her hair. She screamed as arcane flames leapt from his hands and burned her flesh. Her spirit kept her from catching on fire, but s earing pain flared across her face. “You’re going to be sacrificed, bitch,” he hissed.

He pushed his face close to hers. D arkness pulsed behind Rake’s eyes. D ank and oily smoke leaked from his gaze.

Rake’s mask started to slide. His skin seemed to crumble like plaster. What lay beneath the peeling flakes of skin wasn’t bone or skull, but darkness, the cold of the void, so utterly black it pained her eyes to look at him.

U nderneath the skin, he was just a shadow.

Just like Jennar. Just like The Sleeper.

She went cold inside. The darkness of The Black had hidden itself inside Rake. Maybe it had been guiding his actions all along, had used his magic and his resources and forged alliances and manipulated events to get what it wanted.

I t had put itself in a position to destroy the Obelisk.

This was not T he Sleeper. The Sleeper had been an entity of pure cruelty and destruction, an avatar of chaos and madness. This new agent of darkness was possessed of cunning and manipulation. It had laid its plans carefully and had worked in secret, only now revealing its true nature when all else had failed.

She look ed into his ic y eyes. Charcoal s moke leaked from his broken skull.

The thing that wasn’ t Rake forced its hands around her throat.

Her strength was gone. She tried to fuse her spirit into a blade, but her vision fad ed. Rake, or what had once been Rake, would win.

A sh adow fell over them, cast by the smok y light trapped in the green mist above.

Ronan yelled as he came down in a controlled fall. He grabbed Rake as he landed and pulled him away from Danica. Ronan fell back against the wall with a crack.

Danica blasted Rake with a cone of black fire that melted off his skin and knocked him from the Razorwing’s belly. He smoldered and burned as he fell, a black torch dropped in darkness.

The chains snapped. Links flew apart like shattered ice. The serpent ’s corpse dropped into darkness. Metal and stone fell like rain.

Ronan grabbed hold of the jagged wall. He reached out for Danica, but it was too late. T he dead beast fell, and she fell with it. The sight of Ronan faded from view, and she falls through liquid darkness. Dark stone passes by. There are gaps in the walls. She sees the bleeding skin of a festering land and smells an air corroded with fear.

She is weightless. She falls without fear of landing, like she ’ s suspended in an inky pool. She almost imagines herself sleeping on a bed of black down.

Her memory goes back. She remembers Cole and Kane, and her heart sha tters. She can’t believe they’ re gone.

She has the dream again, the dream of the soft room, the golden light and the feel of a lover’s skin. S he dissolves into that world, a place of silken sheets and soft pillows, of an olive dawn and the smell of plums and berries by the bedside. The desert is warm and inviting, and she wants to spend the rest of her life there, wiling away the hours, resting at Cole’s side.

Another dream. This time she’s with Kane. He’ s like a brother to her, a brother she wants, not the shit of a brother she wound up with. He smiles, and in this dream he’ s forgiven her, truly forgiven her.

She sees Cross, and she wants to hold him. She wants to fall in to his arms. She’ s dreamed about him before, but she hasn’t told him about it, can never tell him about it. She knows he ’ ll never want her, and never could. No one could, and after Lara she will never want another.

These dreams aren’t real, she tells herself. You don’t get to do this…to h ide. There can be no happiness. N ot for you. Not after the things you’ve done.

Because she remembers the prisoners, the torturous mines with their flesh-scalding steam and razor whips, the screaming children pushed into the Gauntlet to be hunted down by Ebonbacks and mutant tigers, the hollow eyes and soulless gaze of people marched to their deaths. Human life reduced to filth and chattel, and she was one of the architects of that suffering and madness.

How much blood is on your hands? Why did you think you would ever be given a chance for happiness?

She falls, and hopes she ’ ll never stop falling. S he knows she deserves no end from the nightmare of her life.

Do you?

Steven Montano

Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4)

I wait for you. You are here by my doing, and I will take you.

Steven Montano

Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4)

She lands in a field of black stone and shattered ice. The impact is somehow less severe than she’d feared. S he feels no pain, and her body barel y even registers the impact. It’s like falling into a bed of shadow, a landscape of black clouds.

The world is so dark it ’ s hard to tell if she’ s underground or not. Stones like red stars glitter overhead. The air is filled with heated smoke, and e verything is covered in dust. She tastes soot.

S he moves different ly there, steps to a strange pulse and rhythm. Everything feels slowed.

O bsidian walls riddled with fissures and cracks stand in the distance. Wine- dark waters drip down from the distant ceiling and scald the floor. The air sweat s.

Columns of bone and salt support the endless cavern. She senses something familiar about the area. A thought nags at her, a sense that she ’ s seen it before, that she’ s meant to be t here. She smells the age of th at place.

There’ s no clear path for her to follow. She stands at the center of a cavern filled with columns and mounds of bone. Echoes and howls echo th rough the darkness.

The Razorwing’s body floats by as if it’s carried by a laggard tide. D ark blood splotches the air like drops of oil. Its tongue lolls out of its mouth, and its razor teeth are cracked.

She moves, unclear as to where she needs to go. Something drives her towards a particular corner of the cavern. Blood stones and dripping red waters glow like a dusk sun. Her feet crush salt-dust stones. Blades and gun parts litter the floor, and she sees evidence of a ruined vehicle, metal machine parts and pistons, loose gears and plates of black iron. She sees a metal wheel and twisted ventilation ducts.

They are the remains of a train. She knows where she is, and knows where she must go.

Instinct makes her hesitate. If the shadow Rake has come this way, he will still need her for the sacrifice.

But what else can I do? I can’t go back.

Cross. She knows Cross is there, and without another thought she follows the metal innards of the ravaged Necronaug ht. Dust grates through her lungs. Her steps echo in the darkness.

She runs, determined not to let another friend die.

Something hammers the air. It ’ s far off at first, like thunder. B lack dust shakes loose from the ceiling. The clang of metal rings in the distance. The dread ful sound approaches like a vast automaton of shadow and stone. What little light there is bleeds away.

The two remaining Shadow Lords — Tregoran and Marklahain — turn their masked faces to regard the approach. Cross senses their fear. Their p inprick eyes narrow beneath their featureless masks and their hands crackle with the glow of pale frost.