Cross stopped.
Ramsey had given him an arcane gauntlet, one of several he'd stashed away there. Cross smelled its circuits, and he felt the portable battery buzz where it was strapped to his upper arm beneath his shirt. His spirit swirled around him like a ghostly snake. He also had an HK45 at his side, but that wasn't what he'd use if anything happened.
He slowly turned around. Black's face was set with anger.
“
You
picked
me
to fight,” Cross said coldly. “You wanted him dead for shooting down your waste of a brother.”
Black smiled incredulously.
“
Is that what you think?” she snapped. “You think it's really as simple as all that?”
“
You want to tell me different?”
“
You want to do me a favor or go stick your head in the engine when we take off?” she said. “Screw you, Cross. You had me in that fight. You could've taken me…but you didn't.”
Cross bit back his anger.
“
Understand something,” he said quietly. “I needed you and Cole alive so that you could fulfill your end of the bargain and show me where to find the Woman in the Ice. And that's it. There's a lot more at stake here than you or me getting revenge.” He saw Dillon, saw him hanging there, but he pushed the memory away. “I weighed his life against thousands. It’s as simple as that. There was never really a choice.” He took a breath. It felt cold, and it slid down his chest like a piece of ice. “Faced with the same decision, he'd have done the same thing in my place.”
Cross turned away. He only then was aware of the tears in his eyes.
“
Is that what you're going to tell yourself?” Black asked him. Her words were suddenly quiet, barely audible over the rising musk wind. “Is that thought going to help you sleep at night?”
“
Nothing is going to help me sleep at night,” he said quietly. “Not ever.” He turned back around. “What helps
you
sleep at night, Black? What drowns out the screams of all of those inmates that you used to watch die every day?”
Black looked past him, into the darkness of the cold stone hills. It would be full dark soon, and they still had a long way to go.
“
I got her out,” she said. There was an unmistakably bitter note to her voice. “I saved her. I saved Cole.” She looked at Cross. Her smile was bleak as a warm blast of wind lifted her blood red hair. “And for the record…she would
not
have done the same for me.”
She turned away. Cross watched her for a moment, and then he went back into the station.
“
So, what, you just concentrate and…it changes?” Kane asked.
“
Let me show you,” Ramsey said.
Ramsey, Kane and Cross carried the last of the needed supplies out of the safe house and towards the airship. All in all, they had several days’ worth of food and water, enough weapons to tackle a small army, and enough fuel to get the airship to the Reach and back, provided Ekko had made any headway with the power issue.
Kane had a box of water bottles hoisted on his shoulders, but he set them down long enough to watch Tega pull back the sleeve of his red cloak and show a pale and fleshy arm with a dark rune inscribed on the skin. The rune bore the likeness of a bladed letter “C”.
“
That’s the sign of House Rane…Drake’s house.” Ramsey stared at it, muttered a couple of obscure and unintelligible words, and touched it. The sigil ran like ink down his arm, and then quickly reformed into a twisted serpent that gripped a sword. “House Karn.” Again. This time the mark expanded, then shrank into the shape of a skull with horns at its jaw. “House Mora.”
“
That,” Kane nodded, “is SWEET!”
Cross laughed. It felt good to be out of Krul. Good to be out in open air, not in the confines of the dark, not ankle deep in murk and muck, not confused if what he saw was really happening, or if days had passed since the last time he’d known what was going on. The feel of the air on his face, the roll of the breeze through his hands, the feeling of turning around and being able to see for miles in every direction…
You need to get it together
, he told himself.
You still have a job to do. And time is short.
They’d only spent a couple of hours gathering supplies and making repairs. It was time to get going.
Cross was about to say as much when Black called up the alarm.
“
Incoming!”
Everyone stopped, petrified. Their reverie snapped. Dark riders appeared in the distance, a cluster of forms that spread out like a bloody ink stain across the dark ground to the west. The rider’s massive mounts tore the ground open with mandibles and claws. Enormous bodies writhed and burrowed through the dark soil. They were half-a-mile away, and closing fast.
“
Vath!” Black shouted.
Ravenous zombies, intelligent enough that they banded into flocks and hunted together, rode out of the dark hills. This far west, the Vath acted as servants of the vampires, who used them to patrol the lowlands between the Ebon Cities and root out intruders.
Dull thuds sounded in the murky air as the Vath launched organic projectiles. There had to be twenty or more Vath, plus their mounts, and they’d be at the safe house inside of a couple of minutes. Even at their current distance Cross heard their gargling voices and lunatic, bloodthirsty calls. The air darkened around them as they rode, stained by the shadows that leaked from their corrupted souls.
Cross, Kane and Ramsey hauled the last of the gear into the open rear door of the airship as fast as they could. His heart was already pounding, and soon Cross’ limbs ached from running while weighed down with bags of ammunition and dried goods. The air seemed to suck the wind out of his lungs as he ran.
Black covered them from the rear, while Cross ran inside. Ramsey yelled for Ekko to start the engines. She furiously locked down the fuselage and activated the complicated network of runes that started the launch sequence. The turbines slowly lurched to life with a sound like hammers on metal.
Cross dropped the bags, snatched up the M16A2 and the vampire triple-barrel from the wall, and ran back out. He didn’t see Cole or the boy.
That can’t be good
.
The airship stood on flat ground right outside of the gas station, next to a long strip of open land that gave them plenty of room to take off.
Black fired the Remington at the approaching crowd of creatures, but she was too far away to do any real damage. The Vath drew to within a quarter of a mile, near enough that Cross could make out details he’d have preferred not to.
The Vath were taller than humans. They were eyeless and ebon-colored creatures with oversized mouths filled with knife-like teeth. Their bony carapaces leaked black dust and soot that poisoned the air around them, and glowing runes covered their emaciated bodies like tattoos. Spindly fingers worked bladed weapons wrought of bone and iron. They rode enormous scarab beetles and giant wriggling black worms the size of warhorses, which they anchored themselves to with razor-wire reins and bone spurs. Their collective call sounded like the dying breath of some enormous creature, a lunatic dirge filled with warbles and gasps. Cross smelled their foul auras even from a quarter mile away – charcoal fumes and burnt skin, dry rot and animal stink.
The two lead Vathian riders held their bone staffs high. Churning dark matter formed between the rods like a banner of black dust.
Cross’ spirit folded around him and jarred his skin with raw cold. Black’s spirit waited in the air as well, ready, smoldering, powerful. The ground smoked at their touch.
Kane and Cole were right behind them with weapons drawn. Cross heard the airship shudder and lurch to life. Exhaust kicked dark dust into the air, which turned molten and hazy with heat. Arcane energies sputtered as the ship lifted a few inches off of the ground.
“
Go!” Black shouted.
Kane and Cole stepped up and slowly backed into the ship, their eyes on the approaching riders. Cross waited. The black haze of the Vath coalesced, built, doubled and redoubled its size. They were working magic, but some primal elemental force that didn’t require spirits, pure shadow energies.
Dark missiles raced towards the ship: dripping shadow projectiles, meteors of melting oil. Cross’ spirit burned his fingers as he sent her forward in a wave of corrosive daggers. The bolts of magic were blasted into liquid shards that smoked the ground where they fell.
Black released her spirit into a folding wave of sharp stones, a strip of razor rocks that twisted and turned like a flock of birds before they spun through the air in the shape of a murderous propeller. The energies hacked dark bodies apart, and they fell forward into piles of broken shell and oozing worm flesh. The earth steamed.
Inside of the airship behind them, someone screamed. Cross raced inside.
The air burned dark behind him. Looming shadows formed faces and stretched across the sky. Danica sliced through them with whips of red fire. The air was gritty, and tasted of brimstone.
Inside, Ramsey flew against the wall with a thud. It was the boy who’d thrown him.
By the time Cross reached the melee, Kane had grappled the child with one hand and held a machete in the other. The boy clawed and spat at him, growled from a mouth of shadows and desperately reached for Kane’s face with a prehensile tongue covered in barbed and dripping quills.
Cole was face-down on the floor. Ekko desperately tried to lower the floating ship so that she could help, since her gun lay just out of reach.
“
No, fly!” Cross shouted. He hefted the triple-barrel shotgun, and hesitated. There was no way he’d only hit the child if he fired, so he dropped the weapon and raced at them with his spirit wrapped around his hands.
The boy kicked Kane in the groin, doubled him over, put long fingers into the big man’s hair and rammed his head against the floor. He turned Kane over, hissed, and pressed his talons against the man’s eyes.
Cross grabbed the boy by the back of the head and immolated him. Black fire coursed out of his hands and set the child’s hair alight. He screamed, not a monstrous cry, but that of a little boy in pain. Burning flesh and blood gagged Cross. His eyes bled from the force of the magic he released. Something pushed him back. The world spun.
The boy stood over him, howling and on fire. It cursed him in some ancient and alien tongue. It looked at him with burning eyes as black as pits, and even through the dark flames Cross saw the shadow, the heart of the void that had nearly consumed him twice. Something inside of Cross turned like a blade. He felt it, surrendered to it. He let it escape.
White light shot out of his hand and consumed the shadow child, the false human husk. The Sleeper’s agent. Time slowed as the white flames tore the shadow apart, inch by inch. Even its scream moved slow, sluggish, like a dream.
He lost time.
It sees him. He feels himself shrink at the foot of the mountain. Cold flames roar around him. The flesh slides from his bones. He screams as he is eclipsed in a cloak of black fire.
“
Cross!”
The ship lurched into the air. Black was at the cargo door, which still hung open. She and Kane fired at something just outside of the vessel. The sky was black and thick. Gunfire and engine noise roared through his head.
“
Are you okay?”
Cole leaned over him. He touched her face to be sure that she was real. His head felt like it had been filled with lead. He glanced around.
Ramsey sat against the wall and nursed a bruised forehead. Ekko piloted. Black and Kane fired rifles at what he could only assume were the Vath, even as the ship ascended. The rear doors slowly sealed shut. The rush of hot wind faded, and they were left in a still and sticky air.
Cross tried to sit up. His back was as stiff as a plank, and he was still disoriented and dizzy.
There was nothing left of the boy but ash.
“
What the hell?!” Kane said as he pointed at the smoldering pile. “WHAT the hell?!!”
The airship moved deeper into the sky. Cross felt its ascent. The metal shuttered. He pictured them over the barren landscape, headed east.
“
Where are we going?” he asked Cole.
She looked at him for a moment, ascertaining if he was injured, or at least in his right mind.
“
The Reach,” she said. “Near Karamanganji. The Bone Towers.”
“
We have to move fast,” Cross said. His head was pounding. “It’s testing us. That was a sliver of the Sleeper, just a fraction. It possessed the boy to see how dangerous we were.” He looked up at the rest of them. The gravity in the room was almost crushing. “It won’t delay any longer. We have to get to the Woman in the Ice, before it’s too late.”
SEVENTEEN
CONNECTIONS
“
Cross,” Kane said. “You said you’d tell us what the hell is going on.”