He sees a sword. It is dark metal held tight in the grip of black stone. He has never seen it before, and yet he knows it. It is the sword beyond the gate.
And even though the sight of it terrifies him he knows that, one way or another, he will seek it out. And doing so will spell his doom.
Cross was on his back. His body scraped against stone, and a thin line of dark fluid trailed from his boots.
He wasn’t moving on his own accord. Something pulled him.
It took him a moment to realize that he was being dragged backwards down the long halls. His vision was blurry, and he waited for his eyes to adjust until he realized that he needed to wipe the black fluid from his face. Everything that he saw was tilted.
Ronan was behind him (in front of him), and the mercenary fired his MP5 at a host of pursuing undead. Gunfire ricocheted off the walls.
He’d woken in the middle of an escape.
Cross’ head swam. He felt like he’d pass out again. Shadows danced in the distance. Shots echoed and reverberated in the halls.
A gargoyle soared over Ronan’s head. He fired at it as it flew by, but a pair of zombies armed with sawblades drew his attention back to the mob.
“
Grissom!” Cross coughed. No one else could have been dragging him along so effortlessly. “Let go of me!”
The Doj did, and Cross rolled and fell onto his back. He tensed his fingers, hoped his spirit was ready, and squeezed her into a spectral missile of ice and rock that impaled the gargoyle that flew past Ronan.
“
Gimme a SitRep!” he shouted.
“
Um…we’re running!” Kane yelled back.
Cross looked up the corridor. Kane held Danica unconscious over one shoulder and had an MP5 in his free hand, while Grissom and Ronan laid down suppressing fire. Cross saw an indeterminate number of enemies on their tail, vampires and gargoyles and zombies and war wights, a mass of slimy white undead flesh and dripping claws and chainblades and snarling maws massed wall-to-wall in the corridor behind them.
And there were more on the way.
Howls, clanging armor and automaton sentries echoed loud through the maze of hallways. Shadows exploded at the team from every crossroads.
“
Grissom, how far is it to the Darkhawk?!” Cross shouted.
“
Dead ahead two intersections, take a right, and we’re there!” the Doj yelled back.
The giant was about to say something more, but he had to stop and fire a series of deafening blasts from the AA-12 as more enemies came around the corner. Explosive shells tore undead bodies into meat.
Cross didn’t have a gun, so he ran up and pulled Black’s Colt Python out of her holster with his off-hand while he drew his blade.
The mass of undead behind them gained ground. Cross gathered his spirit and checked on Black.
Something inside of him felt sick and rancid. Cross heard
kill or be killed kill or be killed all die to the cats and the hounds they found you once they find you again I’ll find you fucker I’ll find you
whispers, but he shook his head and sent them away. He couldn’t focus. The air crashed in on him. He expected the walls to explode at any second.
The chain reaction of explosions from the room of vats continued to thunder throughout the complex. The necrotic liquid must have flowed into other areas of the Bonespire: just as some Ebon Cities outposts used interconnecting vents that allowed incorporeal undead to flow between areas, he reasoned that maybe the black fluid provided passage for liquid undead to travel through the Bonespire, creatures like water wights and undines. If that was the case, it made sense why the dark liquid would still be detonating all over the complex.
Cross sent his spirit straight at the front line of undead. Acid nails and black smoke filled the hall. Bodies fell over one another and exploded into strands of black goo.
“
Move!” he shouted.
They ran.
Undead soldiers came at them from the side halls. Cross fired the Python aimlessly, more concerned with keeping his swimming mind focused. He glimpsed his hands and saw that the black fluid still clung to him. It dripped from his skin like melting metal.
“
Kane!” Black shouted suddenly as she woke. “What the…put me down!”
“
Maybe later!” he answered.
Grissom blazed a trail ahead of them, but Cross knew that he was on his last drum of ammo. Undead fell to the sides, blasted into flayed gristle. Kane relented and set Black down, firing his MP5 behind them the entire time.
Cross gripped his sending stone. They should have been close enough to get a clear signal.
Maur
, he thought into the stone.
Maur is here.
Are you ready?
Maur suggests you hurry the hell up.
We’re working on it.
“
Ronan, let’s go!” he shouted.
Ronan tossed a grenade, and the blast brought stone down from the ceiling behind them.
They came back into the same dark chamber where they’d started. The red glaze of crimson glass shone far over their heads. Unnaturally thick shadows hung like vapors.
A horde of armored gargoyles flew chaotically near the interior apex of the tower. They tried to push through the defensive barrier Ash had raised over the Darkhawk’s hatch beyond the hole in the glass.
“
Shit!” Kane growled.
“
The gargoyles must have just found them,” Black said woozily. Blood ran down one side of her face. “Otherwise, the warships outside would have blown it away by now.”
“
If we don’t hurry, that’s
still
going to happen,” Grissom said.
The undead were right on their tail. Guttural howls and whirring chain blades formed a wall of sound behind them. Thick shadows loomed from every direction.
Ronan fired into the mass of shadows at their backs. The undead returned fire, and bone needles flew through the air and punctured the ground like nails. White steam curled up that smelled of dead fish and detergent.
A bullet grazed Grissom’s shoulder and another whirred past Cross’ face, so close that he practically tasted it. He recoiled, held the stone, and looked up.
Maur
, he thought into the stone.
Get down here. Now!
Maur cursed at the other end, but a moment later he told Cross to be ready.
“
Everybody!” Cross shouted. “DUCK!”
Undead closed in on them. Cross heard electric saws and chattering mad teeth and felt ghoul breath and caustic clouds of vaporous carnivore blood.
He and Black pulled their spirits as close together as they could and formed an edged shield – a hexed barrier of translucent force that issued a wave of explosive power and sliced their attackers apart. The shield would buckle under a prolonged assault, but it was enough for what came next.
The crimson glass exploded over their heads. Fulcrum engines poured down blasts of crippling heat as the Darkhawk’s armored hull smashed through. Massive shards fell like bloody blades down the Bonespire’s shaft. One gargoyle was skewered, and fell screaming.
Cross watched them fall, and for some reason he thought of red angels.
Caustic night air swarmed through the tower with such force that it nearly knocked the five mercenaries down.
The Darkhawk fell like a stone, but it remained perfectly horizontal as it plummeted. Small turbines under the fore and aft sections controlled the spiraling vehicle as it spun. Small chainguns strafed the air and cut gargoyles to ribbons. Moments later, the vehicle hovered right over the team’s heads.
The underbelly door opened, and Ash waited there with the rope ladder.
“
Go!” Cross shouted, still wondering when the hell he’d become a leader. “Go! Go! Go!”
A vampire came at them from out of the darkness, its claws wound around a broadsword covered in razor-spines. A zombie the size of a horse came right behind it, and it bore massive meat hooks in place of hands and wore a mask of broken teeth. More horrors followed, each worse than the last. The hordes of the Bonespire were upon them.
Cross fired the Python into the vampire’s face. Grissom hauled Black up the ladder. The Darkhawk sputtered and shook. Gargoyles landed on the top of the vessel and clawed at the windows. Thick bone lances struck the hull. The darkness was alive with motion.
“
Cross!” Kane shouted. “Go!”
Ronan was on board, and he hacked a zombie’s arm off as it tried to push its way inside. The Darkhawk’s guns rotated and turned towards the horde.
Cross ran, grabbed the ladder and frantically pulled himself up. Slavering jaws and undulating folds of undead tentacle flesh grabbed at him. He turned and fired down, then sent his spirit out in a wave of razor heat that seared and severed undead soldiers.
Kane followed right behind him. The blonde man made it three rungs up the ladder when a voice came out of the darkness.
“
Kane! This isn’t over!”
Korva shouted from somewhere in the mass of undead. For just a second, Cross saw madness in Kane’s eyes. He saw a drive, a willingness to turn back, no matter what that meant for him.
Cross was on the top rung of the ladder. Ronan reached down and took hold of his armored coat. He linked hands with him, leaned down, and grabbed Kane’s vest.
“
Maur!” he shouted. “GO!!!!”
The Darkhawk flew straight up. Cross and Kane dangled from the ladder. The roar of the ship’s vibrating guns nearly shook the two men loose. Hexed shot scattered the undead below.
Cross didn’t remember climbing up, but the next thing he knew both he and Kane were inside the ship.
Maur piloted their way back through the shattered skylight, and Ronan manned the cannons. The ship lurched and turned at a preposterous speed. Cross fell against the wall.
“
Shit!” he shouted as a realization struck him. “The cylinder!”
“
I have it,” Black nodded.
Cross looked through the window and saw vampire warships and bone dirigibles bear down on them. Heavy explosions thudded all around the craft.
They’d have little trouble escaping once Maur got them out into open air.
He looked at Black. She looked back at him with a shocked expression. He might as well have been on fire.
“
Cross,” she asked, “are you all right?”
“
What? Why…?”
He held up his hand and looked at it. Black blood oil pulsated against his skin. He tasted grave rot and felt ice in of his body. His breaths turned ragged and cold.
inside you we’re inside now we are inside find you found you find you you can’t escape never will there is no way out meteor sword through the black gate the city on fire flesh in the sky opening the rip that leads to the deeper dark
And again he stands there, in that crater, frozen as he watches the sky tear apart. Filigrees of dancing fire fall to the earth like red teardrops. He tastes death in the air, and his ears ring with screams.
In the distance, the city explodes.
Cross fell backwards, and blacked out.
He was back in Thornn.
The vaulted halls of the massive hospital were made from blocks of enhanced sandstone. Everything was drenched in shadow. Cold echoes reverberated down the wide halls. He heard the hum of medical equipment and the moans of the wounded.
Cross looked around the hospital chamber. There were easily thirty beds in the cold room. A chandelier covered with iron spikes and cold candles hung far overhead. Stone columns stood between the rows of canopy-covered beds. Cross smelled disinfectant and blood, body fluids and hex fumes. He tasted iodine and salt. His eyes were heavy and dull, and his stomach felt like it was filled with lead.
He tried to sit up, and he inadvertently almost pulled the IV stand into his lap. A nurse – he couldn’t remember her name, even though he’d seen her a dozen times before – came over and gently pushed him back into a laying position.
“
Just relax,” she said. She had a bit of a southerly accent, marking her as a resident of the Ebonsand Coast. “You’re all right.” Her hair was dark and held back in a bun, and she had just the slightest makings of crow’s feet around her eyes.
“
How long?” he asked. His voice was cracked and hoarse. He felt like he hadn’t had water in weeks.
“
About two days.”
“
My team?”
“
They’re fine,” Rikeman said. Cross heard the squeak of metal as Phil Rikeman, the Southern Claw’s head surgeon in Thornn, limped over to his bed. Rikeman had a chiseled frame, dark hair, and a commanding voice that made him sound like he should have been broadcasting for the radio network. Rikeman also wore a thaumaturgic leg brace that restrained a deadly necrotic disease and kept it from devouring the rest of his body. Cross had always respected the man, especially after he’d acquired a similar disease a few years back, one that had ultimately saved his own life, but not without irreparable consequences.