Free Caged in Bone (The Ascension Series) by SM Reine

much…stickier. It made her stomach turn with nausea almost as strongly as the overpowering stench of sulfur.
    She didn’t like this—any of it—and neither did the wolf.
    Rylie needed out.
    She tried to backtrack, sliding her feet up the slick surface. She felt heavy and slow. The weight of her clothing seemed to have tripled.
    Her heel caught the edge of the bridge. She flung out her arms, suddenly unbalanced—and Abram caught her wrist.
    “Careful,” he said, and then he dissolved into a coughing fit.
    Rylie froze and let Abram pull her back onto safety. She held his arm in both hands, probably too tightly, as she took her first clear look at the City of Dis.
    The smoke spewed by the factories made it too hazy to make out much. The smog was tossed by wild gusts of wind that blasted red dust over Rylie’s jacket. It felt like sandpaper on her face. She was torn between shedding her winter clothes and pulling it tighter around her body, too hot for a coat yet too painful to expose skin.
    She settled for lifting her hood and squinting against the dust. The black city was spread underneath them in jagged spires and fragmented neighborhoods. The streets were warped. Looking down made her dizzy because the crystal bridge that seemed so bright and shimmering from Earth was nearly transparent here, and it looked like she was walking on nothing.
    Rylie couldn’t quite see the tower at the bottom of the bridge, but the occasional glimpses of a silhouetted obelisk were enough to make her start moving.
    “It’s so much worse than I expected,” Abram rasped as they walked.
    She couldn’t agree. The immense gravity, the brutal air, the smoke—all it needed was a few men with pointy red tails and it would be exactly what she had expected.
    The walk down the bridge felt impossibly long. The city grew underneath them with every step, giving her a better view of all the mismatched buildings, the dirt and asphalt roads, the open fields that would have looked like farms if the soil hadn’t been so crimson. The tower finally peeked out of the smoke when they were halfway down. It was made of black brick that reflected no light, a flat rectangle topped by an iron spire. The floor where the bridge connected was entirely open aside from railings as thin and bent as spider legs.
    They were almost there. They were almost off the bridge.
    Rylie picked up her pace.
    But then a pair of people stepped in their way, blocking the path at the very bottom.
    They looked to be human enough, although Rylie had begun to mistrust her eyesight in that regard. She had encountered a few too many people that had turned out to bleed ichor. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction and she couldn’t pick up the scent of their flesh, only the scent of brimstone.
    These people wore leather from head to toe: high-necked jackets with padded elbows, belts that hung heavy with shimmering gold charms, loose leather slacks, thick-soled boots. Veils covered their hair and jaws. There were red darts on the shoulders and hips of their uniforms. Both looked to be middle-aged and male. One had a beard halfway down his chest and the other was round enough that he looked like a boulder come to life.
    Human or not, they looked convincingly intimidating. Abram stepped in front of Rylie.
    “We’re here to see Elise,” he said.
    After her moment of surprise faded, common sense took over. Rylie could heal almost anything these guards could inflict. Abram couldn’t. She pushed him aside gently.
    The bearded guard gave her a skeptical look. “What’s your affiliation?”
    “Affiliation?” she asked.
    “Yeah, what’s your species and faction?”
    Rylie frowned. “What are you ?”
    That seemed to be the wrong answer. Boulder Guy drew a hand from behind his back. He was holding an oversized Taser, the kind with a trigger that looked like it probably shot electrified spikes.
    The wolf surged in her, responding to the unspoken threat.
    Were they going to have to