The cover reveal and official blurb for THE WITCH’S EYE, Book 5 of the Blood Skies series, will be posted next Monday. In the meantime, whet your appetite with another snippet from what promises to be the most epic installment yet!
In this scene, Cross finds himself in a precarious situation in a set of caves located in the walls of the Carrion Rift…
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He woke in the sky.
Cross rolled over and accidentally tipped the cage. Hard sticks thrust in and jabbed his ribs. He shivered. His skin was blue and cold. Cross was naked and covered in scars, trapped in a cage made of bone and hardened clay.
He felt weightless. Smoky mist curled beneath him like an iron sea. Dark cave mouths peppered the wall behind him. The cage hung at the end of a massive pole jutting out from the wall. Thick vines barely secured the cage to the pole.
Occasional breaks in the bone-blue smoke granted view of the cave floor a hundred feet below. Hard wind froze him down to his joints. He shivered so hard his teeth rattled.
The blonde woman stood in an elevated cave next to the pole. She used a long staff to jab at his ribs, and the sharp strike sent a wave of pain that doubled him over.
The entire cage shook violently. He heard bones creak and stress beneath his weight. Cross sensed the air beneath him. He readied himself for the fall, knowing that at any moment he’d plummet down and be smashed to a bloody pulp.
“Ok…” he said, and he put his hands up in surrender. He remembered that he was naked, but didn’t care. His skin was raw and slick with ice crystals, and he could barely speak or keep still. Every inch of his body was weak, frozen and sore. “Ok,” he said through chattering teeth. “Just tell me…what you want…”
The woman smiled. He wasn’t sure if she could even understand him.
I’m not even sure if she’s even human.
She was a good ten feet away, but it was the first time Cross had been able to get a good look at her. The woman was lithe and thin, not unattractive but alien-looking and covered in grime and strange war paint. Her shirt was a tattered mess, ripped open at the stomach and one shoulder, and the cloth she wore around her waist only barely concealed her sex. She wore tall sandals that reminded Cross of the gladiators of Krul, and her arms were muscular and layered with crude runes cast with charcoal or oil paints. She wore a dark metal band around her right arm, and her blonde and white hair was held back with bone clasps. Her nails were black, and her unnaturally pale blue skin was layered with cold sweat.
“What do you want?!” he repeated, angrier this time, and still she said nothing. She looked him up and down and then silently walked back into the cave, where she faded into the darkness and smoke. Cross thought about calling out to her again, but decided against it, so he just sat shivering in the icy wind, dangling over a field of frozen stone, naked and afraid.
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