“
Speaking of which,” Kane said. “Would someone kindly explain to me what the hell is going on?”
Cross sat down against the wall.
“
Rest first. We’ll talk later.”
It swims through clouds of corroding soul matter, drifts of spectral unguent that block its senses. Much of its existence has been spent sleeping, so its senses have long been dulled. It spent centuries lying drunk and drowning in the debris of dreams.
Its ebon bulk grows fat from the souls it absorbs. It reels from sucking the marrow from living bones. Soulless shades of the dead
–
the so-called vampire elite
–
pummel and bombard it with their technology, with their beasts and ships.
It disregards them. It stands at the nadir of their city, where it grows. Its once small frame has swelled. Merely existing on this world lends it fuel.
Life can be found everywhere here. It permeates the air and saturates the water. It multiplies and folds and breaks apart in waves. It expands and collapses and rebuilds. Its energy is chaotic and destructive, but in the midst of that chaos are living constituents, shining spheres of unfiltered life that burn like glittering stars.
Its ancient enemy still lives. That core of light, though greatly weakened, survives in the pinprick souls of the three humans. Now
it
sleeps: the jailor. Now
it
is the one imprisoned. It is trapped in the trio of flesh vessels.
But that is not what worries the Sleeper.
Because
she
is here. The avatar.
It feels her. Her presence hangs heavy, and the weight of her age makes the air sluggish. The light of her blazing heart is like a beacon. After so much time, so many eons spent sleeping in The Black, it wants to take revenge on her. Only its fear keeps it in check.
There can be no fear
, a voice tells it, an ancient and decrepit voice from the time before The Black, from a world where it was once powerful. The Sleeper knows that voice. It fears it more than it does the avatar.
Our enemy is here,
the voice says
. Destroy it. Destroy it, and you will be free.
But it
is
free. It can go anywhere, do anything. Nothing on this fused bastard world can stop it.
Wrong. It can.
She
can.
Which means that the Sleeper has failed. It had the chance to destroy the humans, but it allowed them to escape. They’d remained hidden, and when suddenly the light of their cores was revealed the shadow was too burdened by its own power, too drunk off of the energies that the world continually poured into it, to stop them.
This has happened before
–
this is how it was imprisoned. Its power builds. Its form expands. Too much life. It grew tired before The Black, fat and lethargic off of its own might. It gave her the opportunity to imprison it.
But now
she
is the one who sleeps. Now
it
can destroy
her
, and it will never fear imprisonment again.
The shadow rises. The steel towers and batholitic lights and necrotic chains of the city crumble in the corruptive cloud that leaks from the Sleeper’s ethereal skin. Dark funnels of vapor lash out and collapse metal buildings and stone barracks.
It swells with power. It howls and cuts the land apart. Earth shakes and shatters and sinks in its path. The sky crumbles. It stretches mammoth arms and closes its smoking claws.
It is the Destroyer. It is Dra’aalthakmar. All it needs to do is exist, and by so doing it brings death.
It is the bane of the living. It is the pit into which the world will fall.
All it needs to do is kill its jailor and destroy the scattered remains of her servant.
It will feed for all eternity after it destroys the humans, and the Woman in the Ice.
PART THREE
AVENGER
SIXTEEN
SAFE
The first thing they did was locate one of Tega Ramsey's safe houses – Cross wasn't surprised to learn that he had several – so that they could get food and supplies.
As it turned out, Ramsey had been afforded a surprising degree of autonomy for a vampire slave, though he attributed much of that success to his innate ability to sow confusion. The bureaucracy of the Ebon Cities was no less dense than that of the Southern Claw. All that you needed to do, he explained, was understand the system well enough to use it your own advantage, which in Ramsey’s case meant using magical artifacts that he possessed to disguise the fact that he’d sworn fealty to more than one vampire, even though a slave was only supposed to be able to pledge loyalty to one. Evidently, Ramsey had found a way to forge the sigil of allegiance inscribed on a living servant when they pledged themselves to a vampire; the sigil acted as some sort of clearance, or pass. If Ramsey was ever challenged by a vampire or their servants, he would reveal the sigil of another master, which apparently meant that he was to be left alone. This, it seemed, allowed him a great deal of flexibility in terms of moving through different vampire-controlled territories and gaining access to various embassies and outposts.
Cross didn’t completely understand how it all worked, but Ramsey was still alive, so it was safe to assume that he knew what he was doing.
Ramsey's safe house was an abandoned gas station in what had once been northern Nevada. It was a forlorn and desolate old structure in the middle of its own personal desert, a dark-soiled wasteland populated with shattered stone walls and sand-filled ravines and dark-bodied scorpions the size of cats. The air was hot and moist and tasted of lime. Grim clouds circled the station like predators.
Inside of a grimy and refuse-filled interior, the group ransacked lockers, cupboards and sealed compartments in search of supplies. More than a few rats and squatters had made their home there in the recent weeks. Thankfully, most of Tega's goods were well hidden behind locked doors and in sealed containers, so they found the essentials that they needed: food (mostly jerky, rations, and MREs), vacuum-sealed bags and steel canteens filled with fresh water, some clean clothes and armor, boots, and even some weapons, mostly small arms but also some knives, a pair of Remington 870 pump-action shotguns, and an M16A2 that was in good working order.
“
This place is filthy,” Cole complained as they sifted through the goods in search of what they needed. She looked and sounded better than she had before, though it was clear that it would be some time before she was anywhere near full strength. They’d washed with Ramsey's spare water and now hauled what was needed back to the airship. The ship, it turned out, had some sort of problem with the power routing system, which meant that the vessel couldn't fly for very long without needing to be shut down to prevent a power overload. It was the vampire equivalent of the engine overheating.
“
If I'd have known I was going to have such lovely company over, I wouldn't have given the maid the day off,” Ramsey said. He rifled through bags of mixed ammunition, and he pulled out rounds they could actually use and consolidated them into boxes.
“
This place reminds me of my old apartment,” Kane said with a laugh as he hefted a roll of blankets onto his shoulder.
“
Me, too,” Cross snickered. It felt like it had been years since he'd called the apartment in Thornn his home; it had become a storage room for stuff he never seemed to need.
“
When were you in
my
apartment?” Kane asked with a smile.
It took Cross a moment before he got the joke. He laughed.
“
Oh, you guys are a riot,” Cole snickered.
Everyone gathered supplies in the safe house except for the unconscious boy, who remained sleeping in the back of the ship, just like he’d been doing ever since they’d escaped from Krul; Black, who stood guard outside of the building with one of the shotguns; and Ekko, who was back on the ship making repairs.
Cross never would have guessed it, but not only was Ekko a qualified pilot, she was also a capable engineer. Prior to being a gladiator in Krul, she'd actually been a criminal who smuggled contraband and drugs back and forth between some less luminary Southern Claw cities, places like Kalakkaii and Glaive. Kane, on the other hand, had been a laborer, at times a dockworker, at other times a smithy or a construction strong-back. He'd even been a miner before he'd been taken hostage by a band off less-than-brilliant smuggling associates of Ekko's during an ill-fated job that wound up landing both of them in Krul.
“
Are you done yet?” Black yelled at them from outside.
“
Do we
sound
done?” Kane hollered back.
“
You
sound like an idiot,” Black responded.
“
Thanks, Dani,” Cole muttered. “That helps.”
Cross suppressed a laugh as he hauled a bag of first aid supplies out to the ship. They’d landed and parked it near the pumps, as if they'd pulled up for some Premium gas.
That's how it used to work, right? Everyone had a vehicle, a truck or something, and they could drive wherever they wanted, and when they ran out of fuel they just stopped at one of these places and bought some more for a few coins? They didn't have to position people on watch or scour for food. They didn't have to wonder what was coming over the ridge and whether or not it was going to try and eat them.
Cross could barely conceive of such a place.
Black gave him a wicked look as he ran by. The land was dead and dark in every direction, all rough gravel and soil interrupted only by the silhouettes of low and distant hills or rock formations. The sticky wind blew clouds that were the color of fresh wounds across the sky.
“
You guys need to hurry the hell up in there,” Black said. She cast her eyes out to the distance, watching, waiting for something to appear.
Cross chose not to say anything. He stepped into the vampire vessel and stacked the medical supplies with the other goods they'd already brought on board.
The child lay fast asleep beneath some wool blankets. The lad was far too thin, and unquestionably malnourished. His cheeks were shallow and his eyes were dark with fatigue. He still hadn’t spoken a word to anyone; in fact, he’d only been conscious for all of ten minutes ever since they’d rescued him.
Ekko was at the console, where she knelt down and looked into an opened panel of circuits and wiring. She had a grim and determined look on her face. Cross sensed and felt her frustration, just as he felt her struggle against her own instincts. She was Turning, slowly, and if she did so completely her mind would join the vampire collective consciousness. There would be no thoughts she'd be able to keep to herself, even if she wanted to.
Of course, if she Turns, she likely
won’t
want to. She’ll be too busy trying to eat us.
Under different circumstances, it would have made no sense to keep her alive. No matter who she was, or who she had been, once she Turned she belonged to the Ebon Cities. But this, without question, was an unusual circumstance. Something kept her from changing, at least at the moment…Cross was fairly certain the Turning should have already happened by now. Maybe, he reasoned, it was the shard of Lucan Keth's ancient and primal spirit that lay embedded in her soul. Maybe it was the bond she'd formed with Cross and his spirit, even though he’d felt that connection weaken ever since he’d lost the battle against Danica Black.
Whatever the reason, Cross felt reasonably certain they had nothing to fear from her just yet.
But what about later, if Keth's spirit leaves us? What then?
Sensing his presence, Ekko sat up and looked at him. Her coal black eyes seemed to suck the light out of the room. Her short blonde hair was now darker than her skin, which had gone the color of milk. Strangely, she smiled, and she nodded at Cross. He nodded back, and left her to her work.
What a fucked up world
, he thought.
The sky grew darker, and yet the temperature rose. Cross started to sweat beneath the old black shirt he'd found in the safe house, a dirty and old piece of fabric that looked like it had been used to clean the grease out of an old engine, and yet it was still nowhere near as filthy as the soiled rags he'd worn in Krul.
Black shot another angry look at him as he passed her by. He felt their spirits tangle in an air suddenly turned electric, sharp and bloody. Hate welled in him, and he felt his spirit feed off of it, just as she lent it fuel.
“
You
killed him, you know,” Black said.