Their bodies tore apart almost silently. All that Cross heard was a series of soft thuds, like underwater explosions. The Gorgoloth’s ashen skin became clouds of white dust. Each of them froze for a moment, petrified, before they were blown apart.
A few seconds later, time caught up with them, and the sound of the explosions rang through the forest. The crack of electric fire roared out in every direction. Cold air blasted against Cross’ skin. He crouched into a ball and held his spirit tight to his soul, fearful she would somehow be torn away.
No. I’m not losing another.
He screamed as a storm of undead energy swept over him. Cross breathed in frozen fumes.
He sees a city of ice. He stands beneath it, in ancient rock chambers. The walls are dark stone, a glacial labyrinth filled with poison fumes that crystallize into bitter fog. Black stalactites dangle from the ceiling like predators.
This place is old. His life energy evaporates like steam.
Tunnels lead away from the chamber. They snake their way into hidden corners and ancient tombs. They wind their way down to a central hub, a frozen core. The air is so cold there it burns.
He sees a woman in the ice, frozen, a pale silhouette embedded in ebon glass. He has seen her before, and before this is all over he will see her again.
Cross barely rose his shield in time. He felt his spirit cry out as raw undead matter collided against her. Tendrils of dark magic flayed them both.
Lucan’s screams sounded through the air, a rising crescendo of pain. It might have been a thousand voices.
Cross held on. Cold wracked his body as he bowed into blasting waves of dark power, like standing in a flash flood of burning oil.
Those few moments felt like an eternity. Finally, the blast stopped.
Cross released his spirit the moment that Lucan’s lightning faded. She collapsed into a scattering cloud. He had to give her a chance to heal. His own body shook with pain. He was soaked with cold sweat and the frozen drool of ghosts.
One more second spent being pummeled by those energies and he’d have lost his spirit for good, he was sure of it. She wracked his side with a sharp snap of pain. She was angry, and she wanted him to know it.
Lucan fell to his knees. His head lowered and his eyes closed. He looked barely alive, let alone conscious. His skin was damp with sweat, and he breathed rapidly, almost hyperventilating.
Black had somehow shielded Kane and Ekko. While visibly shaken, they appeared relatively unharmed, and they gripped each other tightly, like they were lost at sea. Cross saw Dillon and Vos out of the corner of his eye, alive and well and on their way to join them.
The Gorgoloth, all hundred or more of them, were dead and gone. Where they’d stood was a field of smoking black meat and ash. Grisly steam melted snow from the trees. The scene smelled like a burning slaughterhouse.
Kane laughed.
“ Lucan…that was COOL!”
Black bound Lucan’s wrists behind his back.
Cross seized the opportunity. He reloaded, walked up to Black, and pressed the barrel of his HK against her temple.
“ What,” he said. “The hell. Was that?”
“ Hey!”
Vos trained his gun on Cross, but only for a moment. Dillon forced Vos’ MP5 to the ground and wrapped his arm around the other man’s throat. Before Vos could adjust, Dillon had a knife-point to his face.
“ Uh-uh,” Dillon said calmly. “You clearly don’t know who you’re screwing with.”
“ Neither do you,” Black barked.
“ Tell me what’s going on,” Cross said to her. “I know that you’re not here on Revenger business. There is no way that a warlock as powerful as Lucan and a troupe of vampires would be shipped anywhere without a full contingent of Black Scar guards. There were bodies from the wreck, but not that many bodies…and that means you only had a small team with you. That’s not like the Revengers.” Her expression was furious. Cross nodded. “You’re doing something off the record,” he said. “Tell me I’m right.”
“ You’re right,” Lucan said. His voice took both Cross and Black by surprise. “I am far too dangerous to be out here in the wilderness.”
“ Yeaaaah!” Kane shouted.
“ Shut up, Kane!” Black snapped.
“ I want answers,” Cross insisted. “Now…please.” He lowered the gun. “No more games. It isn’t coincidence that we found you out here.”
“ What does that mean?” she asked.
“ The Lith guided us here,” Cross said. “We were meant to find you.”
“ Why?”
“ I think it’s because you can help us. With our mission. And maybe…maybe we can help you, too.”
Black laughed quietly.
“ So you think our meeting is…what, destiny?” she asked with a dour grin. “You believe in that shit? In prophecy?”
Cross hesitated.
“ Yes. I do.”
Black’s smile vanished. Her piercing eyes locked with his. Her gaze was firm and commanding, but it betrayed traces of fear, and sadness. She considered him.
Cross could tell that she was usually made of stone, that she redefined the notion of No Nonsense. She likely garnered equal amounts of resentment and respect from those who knew her. On any other day, he was sure she’d have just told him to go to hell.
But not today.
“ All right,” she said at last. Her voice was quiet and controlled. “All right.” She swallowed. “Maybe you were meant to find us, Cross, because the truth is…I do need your help.”
FOUR
They camped as far from the scene of the battle as possible, since the entire area reeked of burning flesh and smelted metal, and the ground looked like scorched meat pie and had the consistency of hot tar. Even the carrion birds dared not come close.
The camp was east of the dead forest, near some fallen dark stones that had probably once been part of a shrine or a remote monastery. The ground was cold and hard, the air the same, while the sky was vast and dark. Whenever he camped out under the open sky, Cross got the sensation that he was floating in a black sea. It wasn’t a feeling he particularly enjoyed.
Kane and Ekko were allowed use of their hands so that they could eat. Vos passed out MREs — Cross got Cheddar Mac, not that any of the flavors could really be distinguished from one another — and they collected cool water from a small stream that ran into an ice field.
Cross’ spirit hovered at the edge of the white wastes. He felt Black’s spirit circle the camp like a hungry dog.
Of Lucan’s spirit, there was no trace.
Cross had never heard of such a thing. No spirit as powerful as that could go undetected.
And yet no one had ever lost their spirit and gained a new one, until I did. Nothing is impossible, especially when we don’t fully understand the rules of the game.
The vampire had a hood over its head. It stood rigid as a board and hovered inches above the ground, held aloft by the same invisible force that generated the flaming cage that constrained it. The vampire made no sound.
Lucan, Kane and Ekko all sat nearby while they ate. Kane and Ekko shared a blanket to hold off the night’s chill. Lucan sat alone, absent-mindedly eating while he stared off into the eastern wastes. Vos and Dillon stood guard, suspiciously watching each other as much as they did the prisoners and the plains for any sign of trouble.
“ Lucan is special,” Black began. She and Cross sat a few meters away from the prisoners, on opposite ends of a low cook fire just beyond a jumble of stones that might have once been a wall. Coffee boiled inside of an old black pot that dangled over the campfire. “His spirit isn’t like yours and mine. It’s…older. Larger. More primal, I suppose.”
“ He looks like he’s in his forties,” Cross noted. Cross was twenty-seven. He would be lucky if he lived to see thirty-two or thirty-three. Short life expectancy was a fact of life with warlocks and witches, who spent most of their lives tied to their arcane spirits, bonded with spectral undead forces that literally fused with their souls. When you held hands with the dead, eventually they pulled you down into the grave. “How has he survived this long?”