Authors: Steven Montano
Soulrazor
SOULRAZOR
STEVEN MONTANO
Also by Steven Montano
BLOOD SKIES SERIES
Soulrazor
Crown of Ash*
The Witch’s Eye**
Storm of Skulls**
Vampire Down***
The Ending Dream***
Darker Sunset****
* Coming in 2012
** Coming in 2013
*** Coming in 2014
**** Coming in 2015
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2012 Steven Montano
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Barry Currey
Released by Darker Sunset Press
DEDICATION
To Takenya & Sam.
You make me a better person by letting me see the world through your eyes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would be nowhere without the love, aid and support of my wife Liberty, whose undying passion to help me recognize my dream literally makes my head spin.
Thanks to Jen Kirchner and Alan Edwards for their belief, support, and good sense of humor, which is more invaluable to me than they know.
Thanks to Barry for putting together such a fantastic cover on such short notice.
And thanks to all of the authors I’ve met online, who inspire me every day with their enthusiasm and their diligence. Keep it up, gang. The best is yet to come.
SOULRAZOR
Bladed ice tears hang in stasis. The air is frozen plasma. Firmaments of debris lie embedded in the atmosphere like dead flies in honey.
He stands in a clearing of crimson stone. The sky is dead and dark. The shadows of broken hills loom behind him.
He sees figures locked in unmoving strife and bullets frozen in the air, blazing scorches of metal trapped in clouds of motion. He hears the promise of explosions hidden in the cracks and crenellations of unceasing seconds.
His lungs swell. They are petrified in mid-scream. No sound can escape his lips, as he is held still in this perpetual moment.
He stands immobile beneath a sky of blood and black clouds, in the company of ice shards that fill the unmoving air like glass raindrops.
Plumes of smoke made smudged and blurry by the sphere of petrified time rise into the sky, the smoldering remains of the place that he once called home. Cold and ghostly unguent turns the air molten.
This is not the first time that he has been frozen here, and it will not be the last. He is forced to this spot, again and again, trapped in this moment, this instance, and it has dug into him and holds him, as if with claws.
If he could turn he would see the ruined city behind him, where seven combatants converge towards a blade made of dark metal. He would see where the shadow sword has smelted into the shattered blood stone of the earth, a sliver of dark meteorite driven into wounded ground. He can smell its iron aroma, the burning meat scent of fallen worlds. He can feel the sticky wind on his face, and he tastes the salt cloud of blood in the air.
He can feel and hear and see, but he cannot move. All he can do is watch, and wait.
Another chance will come to escape these temporal bonds, but it will not come soon, and that chance will not be for him. He has become a monument
–
a spectator.
–
a spectator.
His mind recalls the time before, when he stood in the chamber of necrovats and angel's bodies, a nightmare of blood ice and diseased oil.
He remembers the conflicts and the lives lost, and he sees fallen comrades stuck in dying momentum. He sees his own memories as they revolve around him, an orbit of regret.
The effluvia of dreams and the dread filigree of a world that leaks shadow crumble around the unseen walls of the tempest clearing. He sees the inevitability of the end.
Worse, he feels
her
as she moves around walls that have become intangible and passes through sluggish doorways. He hopes that the outcome will be different, that the storm will not rip everything he cares about asunder. He hopes not to lose all that he has fought so hard to protect.
her
as she moves around walls that have become intangible and passes through sluggish doorways. He hopes that the outcome will be different, that the storm will not rip everything he cares about asunder. He hopes not to lose all that he has fought so hard to protect.
But there is no way to escape, and there is no warning or sign that he can send. All he can do is think back through the revolving halls of his mind and recall the moments that led to this one, this final and dreadful place, where he stands frozen at the edge of a dying world.
PART ONE
VESSELS
ONE
SPIRE
Year 25 A.B. (After the Black)
The ship passed through a fog of ghosts.
Spectral faces leered at them from out of the dark of night, pale wisps of unstable and desolate energies, the ectoplasmic remains of the long dead that had been stitched together to form a dismal net in the sky around the Bonespire.
Grisly energies coagulated in the gritty air. Bolts of cold black lightning danced in a spider web pattern around the mile-high obelisk of dark bone. Necrotic effluvia congealed into a thick liquid substance that fell on the ship like black rain.
The Darkhawk had been stripped of its primary sails, outfitted with an arcane engine set with silencing mufflers, and broken down to only its most necessary components and weapons. Its armor was lightweight and hexed to ward off sensor leeches, echo mines and necrotic plasma: all standard defense measures that the vampires were known to deploy in the air around the Bonespire.
The bow of the ship had been re-cut to form a sort of wedge-shaped blade, which lent the vessel – which was just big enough to house the team without the benefit of a tremendous amount of elbow room, an interior crafted from pale grey sheets of riveted steel – a much more sleek and aerodynamic design. Compared to a standard Bloodhawk, this mercenary vessel wouldn’t be able to withstand as much direct damage, but it could outrun and outmaneuver almost anything, and resonant temporal field dynamics applied to the eldritch hull helped it escape notice in situations where it should have stuck out like a beacon.
Getting the ship retrofitted had cost the team almost everything they’d earned from the reconnaissance, rescue and seek-and-destroy missions they’d undertaken during their first year of operation, but they all agreed that having the Darkhawk through that second year had been well worth the investment.
No matter how nice the ship is, I still hate to friggin’ fly
, Cross thought.
, Cross thought.
He didn’t have a full-blown
fear
of flying, by any means. Cross has flown plenty of missions, and he would continue to do so as long as he needed to, especially since flight was really the only efficient means of transporting the team to their mission destinations, as they based themselves out of the relatively remote city-state of Thornn.
fear
of flying, by any means. Cross has flown plenty of missions, and he would continue to do so as long as he needed to, especially since flight was really the only efficient means of transporting the team to their mission destinations, as they based themselves out of the relatively remote city-state of Thornn.
But Cross
did
have a strong dislike of being in the air. He pined for the ability to teleport. A few years back, Southern Claw mages and scientists had explored the notion and possibility of transubstantive locationism – or, as the layman liked to say, “gateway teleportation” – but the research was abandoned when it became clear that there was no way for humans to shift vast distances the same way that some other races could, at least not if they wanted to
remain
human. Cross would’ve given anything for that to have worked.
did
have a strong dislike of being in the air. He pined for the ability to teleport. A few years back, Southern Claw mages and scientists had explored the notion and possibility of transubstantive locationism – or, as the layman liked to say, “gateway teleportation” – but the research was abandoned when it became clear that there was no way for humans to shift vast distances the same way that some other races could, at least not if they wanted to
remain
human. Cross would’ve given anything for that to have worked.
I’d be able to travel without getting banged up, nauseous and dizzy all of the time. What a novelty.
Turbulence shook the vessel as they slipped into the inner perimeter around the Bonespire. Cross grabbed onto the overhead beam and gazed out the starboard viewport. Greasy rain and chunks of ghostly matter slid down the glass like melting ebon fat, which made it even more difficult to see through the unnatural darkness that hung over and around the upper reaches of the structure as they approached.
Cross saw the field far below, where some sunlight still penetrated: there were bone cannons and catapults, war machines made of steel and blades, tattered skin flags, cold iron howitzers, and clouds of molten shadow that congealed into solid masses of eyes and teeth, pale and faceless shades with translucent razor swords and organic projectile weapons.
Dark spikes protruded from the ground in vaguely organized patterns around the obsidian battlements, and dark trenches stood next to short pillars of white flame. Vampires wreathed in spirit unguent marched in armor made from enchanted crimson steel.
“
That,” Kane said as he traced the path of a wad of dark matter that slid down the glass, “is nasty. It looks like a ghost puked on the window or something.”
That,” Kane said as he traced the path of a wad of dark matter that slid down the glass, “is nasty. It looks like a ghost puked on the window or something.”
“
Nice image,” Black said from behind them. “Thank you for that, Mike.”
Nice image,” Black said from behind them. “Thank you for that, Mike.”
Cross turned and looked at his team. Everyone was huddled together and stood practically shoulder-to-shoulder – the confines of the ship didn’t allow for them to do much else.
Danica Black and Mike Kane had been with Cross from the moment that the unnamed mercenary group had formed, in the wake of a Southern Claw victory at the icy ruins of Karamanganji. Both of them had been associated with the corrupt and terrifying prison called Black Scar, but in vastly different capacities: Danica had been a warden who’d gotten herself into personal trouble with her criminal brother, while Kane had been a prisoner of that self-same prison, not to mention an intended trade commodity that would allow Danica to get her kidnapped lover back in an under-the-table deal. In the end, both of them had wound up helping Cross resurrect an avatar’s power so that they could destroy a walking shadow the size of a mountain.
That sort of situation had become distressingly all-too-familiar to them.
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