Danica and her spirit felt more tension in the air than excitement. The spectators expected someone to die, and based on what Black saw that was exactly what they were going to get.
The racers were all highly stylize d showmen with bizarre costumes, bull horn helmets and purple and black face-paint, fetishist leather zipper masks or flamboyant gladiator steel. One racer was dressed up like a psychotic clown with fangs, and he had blood on his button nose and his oversized lips; another was dressed like a dystopian vampire opera singer, complete with a top-hat and a cane carved out of bone. Their cars were grungy and dark, covered in blood and oil and armed to the teeth with blades and melee weapons (no projectiles were allowed, as the risk of injuring the crowd was too great). M any of the vehicles bore logos and stylized designs like leering faces or skull-and- crossbones or scantily clad women with bat’s wings.
An announcer came over the crackling intercom and announced each racer and his vehicle. Barely dressed showgirls smiled and waved at the crowd as they marched across the arena floor with excessive banners.
Danica found the entire scene preposterous. It reminded her of the death races they’d held at Black Scar, only this event was jovial, and someone might actually survive.
A blaring horn s ounded, and the race began.
A dune-buggy equipped with blade d ram plate s quickly took the lead as it knocked a retrofitted Trans Am into the wall. A thick red truck so loaded down with armor it was a wonder it could even move bullied its way into the middle of the pack, followed closely by an El Camino with saw blades in its grill.
While she watched the race from their dizzying perch, Danica noticed that others were watching her, merchants and black marketers, mercenaries and drug dealers, all associates of Vago’s who were clearly impressed by the “date” he ’d brought to the races.
I’m surprised he didn’t ask me to wear a cocktail dress, she thought bitterly.
Crashes sounded up from the arena and shook the narrow stadium. The crowd roared as the El Camino skid, fishtailed and spun into a massive spike in the wall. The vehicle ripped apart in a shower of steel and blood.
Danica looked up. Something was wrong. She wasn’t sure what, but she sensed something, some presence at the periphery of her vision.
The crowd roared. Another crash sounded down below. Three of the nine cars had already wrecked.
She smelled acid in the wind. Danica felt off- balance as the chaos of motion and sound twisted around her. Normally she ’d have used her spirit to fight off th e feeling, but she didn’t dare, not with how exposed they were.
God damn it, Vago, it’s like you want me to get caught.
That thought didn’t settle well with her. She was already suspicious of their so-ca lled “host”, and s he wouldn’t have put it past him to arrange her capture, so long as he saw a profit in the deal.
Her spirit burn ed against her skin. H e ’d detected something, some danger, and he wasn’t about to sit idly by while it got closer.
Danica hadn’t actually seen anything except for a shimmer in the air, a faint disturbance, like a shadow had pass ed in front of the sun. W hatever it was, it was gone now, lost in the cacophony of shouts and coins. People held their drinks high as another vehicle was demolished in a blast of red fire and black smoke.
Her spirit wrapped around her. If there were any Revengers nearby they’d detect her in seconds, but at that moment she didn’t care.
S omething had already found her.
M etal rip ped open the air. S omething oozed through the wound in the atmosphere and seeped through like sick honey.
Danica sent h er spirit into the crowd to find out what the intruder was. I t s presence filled her with dread. She felt like she’d stepped through a cold waterfall.
S he drew a katar and wrapped it with vitriolic energy. Danica felt eyes on her. Vago shout ed at her to sit down. H is bodyguards step ped close, but she shot them a look that made them back off.
Her spirit’s vision broke things down to their baser elements. Danica looked through a lens of blood and saw through people’s skin and bones and sensed their life energy. She noted the hexed security measures in the arena, measures that hadn’t been enough to keep this creature out.
It came into view: the murderwraith. To everyone else’s eyes it was a tall human male, slightly heavyset with thick fingers and a balding pate. He wore workman’s clothes and was armed with nothing more than a racing sheet and a mug of green beer.
But through the eyes of her spirit Danica saw the alien presence for what it truly was: walking ooze, a monstrous pile of human-shaped slime and gelatin that stood some ten feet tall.
Eyes like bleeding winter narrowed as the slimy brute flew at her. The smoking wraith expanded, stre tched and fused with the clouds before it condensed into a solid fog giant. H ooked blades took shape at the ends of its cumulus appendages.
Danica felt ice vapors curl away from her skin. The rotting wind carried the taste of s pectral drool. Claws like scissors unfolded from the murderwraith’s form.
Her spirit shifted to a column of dark fire. Heat flushed her arms. Her vision narrowed and focused as r age burned in side her.
The murderwraith howled. Knife claws shot towards Danica’s heart and came so close her skin went blue from its icy aura. Steaming t eeth evaporated as the carnivorous ghost exhaled clouds of white frost.
The wraith’s leering inhuman face collapsed as she blasted through it with a spiral of ebon flame. I ts phantom body r etreated in a blast of dead fog.
People screamed and ducked and moved out of the way. Danica was thankful no one had been injured by the blast — it had shot straight through the creature and off into empty air.
“What the hell are you doing?” Vago shouted. His bodyguards stood nearby.
They can’t see it, she realized. They haven’t detect ed it at all. An undead that powerful shouldn’t have been invisible.
“I was being attacked…” she started to say, but a wailing klaxon drowned out her voice.
A Killraven squad flew into view from around a nearby building.
God damn it! That thing was just a scout, calling me out, forcing me to defend myself so they could lock onto my arcane signature.
“You ’re on your own then, you stupid bitch!” Vago shout ed. His bodyguards pulled him back, and they vanished into the crowd.
Shit.
Danica pulled her spirit in and pushed her way down the aisles as the Killravens drew close. Vago was already gone. She was alone.
The Killravens moved fast. S he saw their grey-blue armor and bladed wings draw within 100 yards. Smoke poured from exhaust panels in the bottom s of the armor packs, and their bladed gauntlets crackled with arcane power. A small cluster of scout homunculi accompanied the eight-man crew and fill ed the air like a swarm of enormous bats. The Killravens spread out and dodged through the steel cables and wire mesh that linked Blacksand’s taller structures together.
“Bitch!”
Someone in the crowd shot at Danica with a. 357 Magnum. People shouted and scrambled out of the way. Danica knocked the gunner a side with a sweep of ic y wind.
Another spectator armed with a knife came at her, and Danica ducked beneath his blow and struck him backhanded, then kicked him in the solar plexus and sent him t o the ground.
Her spirit flushed against her skin and shielded her like armor. He’d been cooped up for too long, held inactive and hidden away, and now his anger flooded to the surface like a tidal wave. I t would be all but impossible to hold him back.