It killed my sister.
I
killed my sister.
“
Your team is fine,” Rikeman said. “You, however, are a mess.”
“
What happened?”
“
Well…you tell me. Kane said something about you falling into a vat of…” Rikeman consulted Cross’ chart, which dangled at the foot of the bed. “‘Nasty vampire black goo, or some shit like that’. That’s a direct quote, of course.” Rikeman laughed. “I think Kane could use some elocution lessons.”
“
Well, what happened?” Cross laughed.
“
We pumped your stomach and gave you fresh blood. We weren’t sure what we were dealing with, so we gave you the same basic treatment as we do for any vampiric infection. That was two days ago, and you seem fine now.”
“
The rest of the team is ok?”
“
Yes, Eric…they’re fine.” Rikeman smiled, and shook his head. He’d known Cross and Snow ever since they were old enough to enter the service. More than probably anyone else, he understood what Cross had lost when his sister had died. “They’re fine. I’m sure Pike will want to debrief you.”
“
Nice of you guys to put us up.”
“
We treat our mercenaries well, I suppose,” Rikeman laughed.
Cross rested after that. He had trouble staying conscious. After he ate some rye toast and a soft-boiled egg, he fell back into a deep sleep.
He dreamed that he floated on black waters through ruins of dark stone. A woman whose face he couldn’t see waited for him there. When he woke, Cross was terribly afraid.
FIVE
GHOSTS
Cross was still in the hospital two days later, in spite of his protests and despite the fact that his wounds healed quickly once his spirit recovered. He still had trouble sleeping, but he tried to keep that to himself.
He didn’t tell anyone about the dreams.
Black was also in the ward. She was being treated for the gunshot wound she’d received in her shoulder, and she stopped by and said hello on the first day after Cross woke up. She moved awkwardly with a cast on her arm, but Cross joked that she managed to make it look stylish. Danica laughed.
Even banged up and bruised, Danica’s thick red hair shone in the harsh sunlight that crept in through the arched windows in the medical wing, and her skin looked perfect.
Cross still imagined what it would be like to be with her, sometimes…to be with
anyone
, really, to have some sort of meaningful and lasting romantic relationship, and more often than not he imagined that relationship would be with Danica.
Cross knew that fantasy wasn’t healthy for a number of reasons. For starters, she was a lesbian. Second, she still nursed a broken heart from when her last lover, Lara Cole, had left her nearly two years before. Third, developing any sort of intimate relationships inside the ranks of the team was bound to end in trouble. Fourth, she sometimes reminded him of Ilfesa Warfield, a black marketer and smuggler whom he’d had an incurable and lustful crush on for almost four years, but who he was too afraid to approach because, in his mind, there was no way it would end well.
He wasn’t meant for relationships. He hadn’t even been a good brother, and he couldn’t imagine he’d be any better as a lover, or, heaven forbid, a husband.
“
How are they treating you?” she asked. Her voice was coarse, and sounded huskier than normal.
“
Decent enough, I suppose.
You
look good.”
“
Clean exit,” she said. “My spirit should have it healed up in the next day or so.”
“
I was referring to the hospital gown,” Cross smiled. “It’s fetching.”
Black smiled.
God, she’s beautiful.
“
So what happened to you, exactly?” Black asked him after a moment.
A soldier moaned a few beds away. Cross had heard him before – necrotic worms had worked into his flesh, and even though Rikeman had dug them all out after a painful surgery, the young man’s mind had been infected with nightmares that he would never escape from. When he slept, he was wracked with terrifying dreams, and when he was awake he thought that everyone he looked at was bleeding from their eyes.
“
I fell into that…sludge,” Cross said.
“
Any idea what that stuff was?”
“
I was sort of hoping that cylinder would tell us.”
“
Tell
them
,” Black corrected. “Pike and Laros and whoever else is in charge. You’re not Southern Claw any more, Eric.”
“
Right,” he nodded. He could’ve been, but he’d made a choice. They all had.
“
Nurse!” a soldier called out from a few beds away. His eyes were solid black, the result of some arcane-chemical weapon used on him on the front lines. “Nurse, please!” Rikeman and a pair of nurses appeared, though there was truthfully little they could do without removing the young man’s eyes. Ultimately, that was probably what had to happen.
The Ebon Cities war labs had gotten more creative ever since they’d decided to pull out all of the stops and launch a brutal campaign against Thornn.
“
So who was that woman in the Spire?” Cross asked Black.
“
What?” she said, clearly surprised.
“
Come on, Danica. You
know
her."
Black looked him straight in the eye. She could make her gaze go as cold as ice, and she could stare almost anyone down.
She can still stare
me
down
, Cross thought.
I might feel a bit more like a leader if she didn't have such an easy time doing that to me.
“
The staring thing tells me I'm right,” he said with a smile. “But the silent treatment usually means that you want to kill something…so hopefully I'm wrong about that one.”
Danica laughed.
“
You know me too well,” she said quietly. She didn't seem to like admitting that.
Rikeman’s staff had sedated the young man with the black eyes. Nearby, another soldier moaned that his leg hurt. No one had the heart to tell him that both of his legs were gone.
“
Is she a Revenger?” Cross asked.
“
Do you ever know when to quit?” Black said with an irritated shake of her head.
“
I have a feeling that Pike is going to ask you these questions,” Cross shrugged. “It's easier for me to be on your side if I actually know what the hell is going on.”
Their relationship, such as it was, had started on shaky grounds. Even though they'd agreed to help one another and join forces to rescue Black's then-girlfriend Cole from captivity, Danica had withheld information from Cross right from the start.
The fact that she was also responsible for the death of a good-hearted Southern Claw ranger named Jamal Dillon hadn't done much for Cross and Black’s partnership, but over the past two years he’d gradually learned to trust her, just as she, in turn, had done everything she could to make it so that she
could
be trusted.
That meant she no longer lied to him, but there were still plenty of times when she kept him out of the loop.
“
She's not a Revenger,” Black said quietly. “Not anymore.”
“
What…she went rogue?”
“
You could say that,” Black say bitterly. “She conducted secret operations without the consent of the High Wardens.”
Danica sat down on the edge of the bed next to Cross’. The soldier who slept there had been out for hours, and Cross wasn't entirely convinced that the older man hadn't lapsed into some sort of coma. Cross, for his part, shifted in his place. He was thoroughly tired of sitting, but he was still too weak to do much of anything else.
His spirit stayed close and warm against his chest. She and Danica's aggressively male spirit had never been able to much bear one another's company, but with practice both mages had gotten better at keeping the spectral tempers from flaring, and now the two spirits just tended to ignore each other altogether.
Danica and I really are like friggin’ parents sometimes
.
“
What kind of ‘secret operations’?” he asked. It must have been something either very profitable or incredibly unsavory for Korva to intentionally obscure her activities. The Wardens of Black Scar were, by their nature, a band of insidious and cutthroat mercenaries, and Cross couldn’t think of much they wouldn’t approve of, unless it was something dangerous to the rest of their organization.
“
Honestly, I'm not sure,” Danica said. “But I know that it involved taking prisoners out into the wilderness and forcing them to dig up old vampires.”
Cross nodded, thought about what she'd said, and shook his head.
“
Wait...what? Digging up old vampires?”
“
Hey, I wasn't there,” Black said.
“
No, but my sister was,” Kane said. He walked into the medical wing from out of nowhere, dressed in grey work clothes and a heavy armor coat, with a Valmet M78 in one hand a small bundle of carnations in the other.
“
Aww, Mike,” Danica said. “You shouldn't have.”
“
They're for Cross,” he said.
“
I'm more of a roses guy,” Cross said. “What was that about your sister? I didn't know you had...”
“
She's dead,” Kane said shortly. “Korva killed her at one of those dig sites.”
Black lowered her gaze.
“
Korva killed a lot of people on those digs, directly or otherwise. I lost a couple of good friends on her last dig. The one...” She looked up at Kane, but his eyes stared straight ahead, focused on some memory.
Cross knew that look all too well. He'd seen it in the mirror more times than he could count. Almost four years had passed since he'd lost his own sister, Snow. The pain wasn't as constant now as it had once been, but it was still there. Some days the pain was as fresh as the day she’d died.
“
I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I had no idea.”
Kane shrugged, and smiled weakly.
“
I'm going to get that bitch,” he said. “And that pile of dogshit Jennar, too. Man, I'm booked!” he laughed. His voice was coarse, and Cross saw him shake. “I still wake up sometimes,” he said quietly, “and reach out for Ekko, like she’s still there in bed next to me.” He smiled, painfully. His eyes burned into the floor. “Shit.”
“
If there's anything you need...” Black said.
“
Yes,” Kane said, regaining some of his composure. “Get your asses out of bed by tomorrow. Pike and Laros want to meet with us.”
“
Jesus, already?” Cross groaned.
“
Poor baby,” Black laughed.
Cross watched Kane. The big man had shrugged his moment of vulnerability off, at least on the outside.
He’s living for revenge,
Cross thought.
We have to help him. That will only keep him going for so long.
“
I’m off to get some food,” Black said. “Anyone care for some meat?”
“
That’s sort of a personal question,” Kane said with a grin.
“
Moron.”
“
You two enjoy,” Cross said. “I need to get some sleep.”
He caught Danica’s eye before she and Kane left, and he tried to signal to her to keep an eye on Kane. Black seemed to understand, and she nodded. Kane wasn’t the sort of man who accepted help, or friends, easily. If he knew they were worried about him he was likely just to seal himself off even more.
You’re not alone
, Cross wanted to tell him, and he still would later if he thought it would help.
We’ve all lost someone. We can’t forget them…but we can’t let our memories of them drag us down.
Cross closed his eyes. He saw Snow, burning on the train.
He missed Graves, and Dillon, and so many others, but it was the memory of his sister that haunted his sleep even years after she’d died.
Cross felt his breaths catch in his chest, and he started to shake.
When he opened his eyes a short time later, Black and Kane had gone.
Good. I don’t want them to see me like this.
Cross sat quietly, and cried. He choked down his tears so that no one would hear him.
He sees the keep on the edge of the ocean. White waves rock the small boat as he desperately holds on for his life. The air is dark and violent and filled with cobalt storms, and the rain falls like knives. Streaks of dark lighting scar the sky.
The keep is a crumbling ruin, a bastion of decaying mortar and rotting beams. Chunks of loose granite plummet into the water. The tower is cracked and open, and the inside of the keep is exposed to the waters.