Cross stepped into the arena.
Just as before, death and silence waited for him. Floating silver flames and dead white snakes slithered through the air around the pale and rune-marked stone. Vampire eyes watched him from the dark stadium seats, calm and hungry. They never moved when the gladiators were present, but Cross could tell that they were anxious, and that they hungered for blood. He knew that the vampires fed on the fallen when the fighting was done, and that was why the arena floor was never cleaned between battles. That floor was immaculate when the gladiators arrived, but soon it would be covered in thick pools of blood and steaming flesh.
The bone blade that he wore on his back had been honed to a razor’s keen edge. The hilt was wrapped in black cord that had been stained and fused with oil and lacquer. The blade itself was yellowed bone taken from the fangs of some massive and primordial beast. The sword was lightweight but long, and it could cut through flesh and light steel.
Cross had used it many times. How many, he couldn’t be sure. He had been a fighter in that arena of the dead for what felt like weeks.
Cross was always the first gladiator to arrive, but never the last to fight, not anymore. He, Kane, Black, the Regost called Tower, and Gorge the Vuul were all that remained of the group that Cross had first been brought to the arena with. With the exception of the match between Tower and Cross, none of those fighters had fought against one other.
Until now.
Gorge was no match for Kane. Despite its ferocity, size and weapon — it carried a heavy flail made from bone and metal — the Vuul was nowhere near as skilled of a fighter as Kane was. The blonde gladiator’s face still looked boyish no matter how many scars he acquired or how thick and shaggy his beard became. He was too fast, too agile, and filled with too much raw fury for his opponent. Kane’s crescent axe sliced the flail’s chain, and when the gray-skinned Vuul tried to hammer Kane with its formidable fists, Kane switched to a thin scimitar made of bone, a faster and lighter weapon that was far more accurate than an axe. He hamstringed the Vuul and let it writhe and crawl along on the ground before he finished it.
Kane’s face was covered in gray blood. His eyes were vacant and haunted.
Danica Black battled a hellishly fast Lith warrior. The female Lith was light and thin and armed with a double-bladed spear adorned with human hair and chain grips. Black moved like a serpent, agile and strong. She wore dark leather armor and yielded twin swords. Her spirit whirled around her in a protective barrier of spinning blades. Dead wind circled the arena floor as the women darted in and out of the maze of bodies left from the earlier battles. Blades sparked and spun off of one another. Cross wasn’t sure if the Lith used magic, or if she was just incredibly agile. In the end it didn’t matter: Danica skewered the woman on both of her blades and held her bleeding body upright as she died.
Like Kane, something seemed dead inside of her.
They’re killing us slowly. Each of us dies a little with every life we take.
They could keep going, keep fighting, and they would. Presumably they would be freed at some point. That was the deal she had made, wasn’t it? Cross couldn’t even remember anymore.
All he knew was that if he didn’t fight and win, Dillon suffered.
They showcased the prisoners before every series of matches. Most of the prisoners were new. The cast changed as the gladiators did. Old prisoners were discarded or killed when their accompanying fighters failed, and new prisoners replaced them as new gladiators arrived. Every victim was tied to a fighter. Every gladiator had someone to win for besides themselves.
Dillon looked sick, and wracked with pain. He still gave that same knowing and brotherly nod every time Cross looked at him. In a way, it would have been better if Dillon had looked at him with hate or despair, but he didn’t.
He still believes that we have a chance. That, or he just wants me to believe it.
Cole was wasting away. Cross still had not seen Ekko, not once, and yet Kane battled like a man possessed.
He couldn’t think about it too much. It was his turn to fight.
Cross was matched with a pair of Gorgoloth armed with heavy stones bound to lengths of black chain. Their stark manes and sharp fangs made them stand out against the midnight chamber that surrounded them. Cross tried to keep them both in sight. They looped the flat stones in the air and growled, spaced themselves apart to try and flank him. His spirit laced herself tight to his skin, stuck to him as if with needles. The pain she caused kept him alert and angry. He felt her bloodlust course through his blood. His normally shaking nerves steadied, cooled like smelted iron dipped in water. He kept her close, and her cold radiated through his hands and across his chest.
The first Gorgoloth shouted out and charged, which signaled the other to attack from the flanking position. Cross released his spirit on the Gorgoloth behind him. She fell on the brute like a hail of explosive nails, while Cross met the other one head on.
Cold explosions detonated behind him. He heard screams and felt bits of fleshy matter as they rained down.
The other Gorgoloth swung its stone too wide, as it hadn’t expected Cross to step in to its attack. Cross severed the chain with a clean blow and raked the bone blade across the creature’s face. It howled in pain and grasped at its ruined eye. Cross called his spirit back from the cold and steaming remains of her victim. She swam to his blade and sheathed it in razor shadows, a humming ebon layer of dripping volcanic metal.
He cut the Gorgoloth in half with a single blow.
Cross returned to his place in the circle of gladiators. Time had lost meaning. He didn’t know how many fights he’d already won. When the match was over, after every battle had been fought, the gladiators were led back to their cold and featureless cells, stripped of their weapons along the way.
Cross saw the normally placid crowd descend upon the bodies as the gladiators left. The prisoners whose respective fighters had failed were added to the mix, dropped screaming from the hanging stone, and they crashed down hard on the ground to be consumed by a horde of aristocratic vampires turned suddenly ravenous.
Cross started to hear that noise wherever he went: smacking lips, tearing flesh, slurping blood. It turned his stomach sour.
Whenever he isn’t fighting, he is here with her, in the Reach.
The land is a ruin. Plumes of smoke dance into the sky and gather in an inverted ocean that cancels the sun.
They hunt. He is armed with his bone blade, its edge sharp and black. His hunting partner is armed with small knives that are always bloody, even when they find nothing.
What do we hunt?
You’ll know.
The area is caustic due to mounds of Gorgoloth cadavers and the hexed fuel that leaks from the wrecked airship. The air tastes of dirt and metal.
They traverse streams of black water. The air is unnaturally still. The sky beyond the dead trees is pale red and eye-numbing. Loose stones and broken logs glisten with foul moisture.
They run. He feels the shadow in the trees and in the sky. The presence is oppressive, overwhelming.
He hears Dillon scream somewhere beyond the trees. He wants to kill something, to hurt it. It is the only way he can think of to make that pain stop.
No. Part of him, something deep inside, knows that this is not right, that he shouldn’t be here. Something about this new bond he shares with this woman is wrong. But he runs with her nevertheless, taken by need. They jump over festering streams and run through dead woods. They move separately, and yet they are joined.
Bound together by blood spilled, and yet to spill.
They brought him women. At first Cross didn't want them. He hadn't asked for them, and he was distrustful of anything offered by the Ebon Cities. And it felt wrong, for some reason, like there was someone he'd betray by taking terrified slave girls who’d been snatched from their homes, and who were likely as malnourished and exhausted as he was.
But his lust built. It had been some time since he'd been with a woman, and before long the lure of having one was too much for Cross to resist. He felt he'd hate himself for it later, even if he didn't know why.
Cross wasn't sure of how many women they brought him, always after fights. Like the battles themselves, the memories quickly blurred, and faded. He remembered faces and warm tongues, tangles of red and black and blonde hair and the feel of soft breasts in his hands and on his tongue.
He lost time. He might have been fighting and whoring and sleeping for years.
At one point Tega Ramsey was in his cell again. Cross felt like he'd just woken, that he'd just walked into a conversation that had been going on for some time.
Ramsey looked at him with his usual cruel eyes, filled with amusement at another's expense.
“ Why?” Cross asked, not entirely sure what he asked. Ramsey seemed unfazed.
“ Because you've done well,” he answered. “You've become quite popular among the vampire crowd who fly in from Rath and Sethia to watch the matches. The way you channel your spirit through that blade…they call you Razor.”
Later still. It might have been the same conversation, Cross couldn't tell. He knew that Ramsey had told him things about himself, like the fact that he'd been a servant of the Ebon Cities ever since the surrender of Dirge, where he'd apparently been someone of import. He hated the job, hated sharing information with Talos Drake and Morganna, but he had little choice.
“ We do whatever we have to do to survive.” Cross didn't know he'd said it aloud until he saw Ramsey's confused expression. “How long?” he asked the Gol.
Ramsey didn't seem to want to answer. Yellow sunlight filtered through the bars in the door. Cross didn't need to see the undead sentries who waited outside to know that they were there. He smelled them.
“ Your next battle is a rematch with Tower,” Ramsey answered. He in no way hinted that Cross and the others would be released after that. Cross considered killing Ramsey, but decided it would serve no purpose. He felt sure he could destroy the sentries outside, too, but after that it would be difficult to escape. He had others beyond himself to think about.
Dillon. Dillon is in pain.
Ramsey left. The golden light faded fast. Soon it would be night full, and again he would have to fight. The thought filled him with dread, and suddenly the pain and welts and wounds he'd suffered over the course of those days or weeks came surging back to him. Somehow, even without his spirit there to aid him at any time except during the fights in the arena, his body had healed.
Cross slept. It was the easiest way to avoid thinking about the coming night.
She waits for him. Whatever they hunt is fast, and it melts into the shadows of the deep woods.
A storm rises behind them, frosted air and sharp winds. Dank blue clouds hang petrified in the chiseled sky. The shadow is there, too, looming larger than before. It pursues them.
They hunt something, or someone, and the shadow, in turn, hunts them.
His spirit is afraid, but she is also exhilarated. She is taken by the heat and lust of the hunt. Her form is wrapped around his arms and his weapons in a cloak of black steam. She circles him like a charcoal cloud and trails his movement like exhaust. He moves immolated across the dreamscape.
His cohort moves at his side. Her clothing is pale and ragged, but her dark blades are drawn. She still bleeds — she always bleeds — but the blood flows slower the faster she moves.
They cut a swath through the tress. Hoarfrost and brittle branches break away before them. White honey drips onto the path. There are signs of passage. They hunt some large and wounded animal that bleeds light. Traces of phosphorescent steam lick the dirt and stone.
Something growls in the sky. The earth rattles. He senses a presence behind them. There are more hunters. Not the shadow in the sky — these new beings are from the other world, the mountain.
No. The other world is the city. The real world.
Worlds upon worlds, all of them in his or someone else’s mind. He is lost. The sky splits, cuts open like a seam. He smells the blood of ages seep through the cracks. Everything is less stable. He feels as if they could fall off of the surface of the dream world and into the mud-colored sky.
Branches claw and snag at their clothing. They stop. She is weak, and she turns to him, takes him in her arms, and embraces him. They kiss passionately. He feels energy flow into her through her nectar-sweet tongue. He feels wounds on his neck re-open and pour blood down his arms.
This is wrong. I can’t stop her.
They hunt again. Their pursuers are close, as is the shadow in the sky. Trees uproot and float into the air. Everything is breaking, coming undone. Soon it will all collapse.
They follow blood that is light, drops of liquid sun that burn the ground. They step through puddles of oil and bone sand.
Their prey is there. He stands alone at the center of a black lake with a surface like cracked steel. Dark smoke flows endlessly from a deep wound in the frozen surface, and it forms a pillar that twists like a serpent into the sky. The lake’s glacial smell turns his lungs raw and makes his skin burn.
He looks at the man they have hunted. He is exhausted and half-alive. He slumps down to his knees at the middle of the lake. His wounds bleed light.
Lucan.
He looks at the woman he has hunted with, the one who bit him, and at last he knows her, even though her eyes are sunken and her skin has taken on the pallor of death.
Ekko.
We have to save him, she says, but her words are mist. I’m sorry. It was the only way I could show you. It’s the only way I’ve been able to survive.
The shadow behind them grows larger, a black moon that swallows the sky. Silhouettes of armed vampires appear in the distance as they cut their way through the disintegrating forest. The ground pulls apart into jagged stones. The ice cracks and the shadow falls like a monstrous wave of black water. It envelops them.
“ He’s alive,” Cross whispered.
He sat up. Tension that had coiled up in his back threatened to snap him in two. Sharp pain gripped his stomach. Dusk approached, and the light faded fast. Cross couldn’t remember when he’d fallen asleep, or how long he’d slept.
The air was cold and tasted of sweat. The shadows were long on the pale walls. He heard someone scream in the distance, and close by he heard the rattle of chains. Cross threw his legs off the side of his lumpy cot, cracked the muscles in his neck, pissed in a pot in the corner, and drank from the water skin that had been left on a hook on the wall. He stretched his body, placed himself in plank position and held until his muscles were sore and sweat flowed onto the stone. The ground was cool and soothing to the touch, so he stayed there for a time, lying like a corpse.
He worked through a physical routine that he somehow remembered even when everything else had grown hazy and disconnected. He lunged and parried with a phantom blade, leapt and kicked away from the walls, positioned his legs to do sit-ups and lunges.
Snow. Dillon. Graves.
Lucan.
Slowly the details of the dream returned to him. His fingers shook as he moved them to his neck. There was, as expected, no wound there, but he had been wounded, and though he didn’t understand how he at last knew what was happening to him, why he continued to heal even when she shouldn’t have been able to.
His spirit bristled at the realization. The air around him turned cold and bitter, the taste of her anger. Cross ignored her. She’d have the opportunity to vent her rage soon enough. He felt her frustration build and fester like a boil. It would be ugly when it erupted, but that was what he needed this time. He kept imagining a way to beat the Regost, and containing his spirit’s anger was the key.
If Lucan was still alive, that meant the Sleeper could still be stopped, and that was all that mattered. He tried not to think about Dillon or his pain, dangling from that stone, watching Cross fail, praying to see a family he had no chance of ever seeing again. He thought about Danica Black, and Kane. He would have to fight them at some point, he knew it.
Win. That’s all that matters. Win, at any cost.
By the time the bolt on the door slid back, he was ready. They would give him his weapons later, but Cross’ mind was focused and alert. He knew what he had to do.
Tega Ramsey was there with the sentries. He often came into the cell with the salt-encrusted zombie whose sole purpose was to prepare Cross for battle. It helped him don his leather and chain armor, fastened the arcane gauntlet to his hand and gave him his bone blade. Its rotting eyes were perfect mirrors that showed Cross his weather-beaten face.
He tried not to look too long. He barely recognized himself.
“ So tell me,” he said to Ramsey as the zombie slid the black gauntlet onto his hand. The Gol stood leaning against the doorway with his arms folded. “Does Kane know that you’ve Turned Ekko into a vampire?”
Cross took some satisfaction in the surprise that showed in Ramsey’s milky eyes.
“ He knows that she is being Turned,” he said carefully. “He knows that she will not be fully of The Blood unless he falls.” Ramsey turned his head. “And there is no way you could know that, Cross,” he said. The crease in his face wrap betrayed his wry smile. He understood what was happening, maybe even better than Cross himself did. “You are so very full of surprises.”
“ Yeah,” Cross said. His rage was growing. “And you are so very full of shit. I’m getting out of here, Tega. You and I will settle accounts after I do.”
The zombie handed Cross his sword.
Ramsey stood there in his tattered crimson robes, his scarred and ugly face defiant, a full two feet shorter than Cross. Cross badly wanted to put his blade through the little man’s head, but he knew it would accomplish nothing. Ramsey smirked.
“ The chances of you ever leaving this city are slim, my friend,” Ramsey said. “And the chances of you being rescued are even less, not without someone on the inside to help you be found. But you already knew that.” He paused, and his eyes narrowed. “Tell me…did you ever wonder why you were the one fighting, and not Dillon?”
Had I? Cross felt sure he had. It was a logical question. Between the two of them, Dillon was unquestionably the better physical specimen: he was tall and muscular, athletic and graceful, strong.
“ Cross,” Ramsey smiled again. “Think. Both you and Dillon are only alive because of the deal that Danica Black arranged for you. The deal was that one of you would fight, and the other would suffer as a hostage.” Ramsey stepped close. It would have been so easy for Cross to kill him then and there.
No. Dillon. Dillon needs you. You have to find Lucan. Snow. Dillon. Graves. Lucan.
“ And?” he growled.
“ It was Danica Black that chose you to do the fighting, and not Dillon. Any idea why?”
Ramsey didn’t wait for a response, but turned and marched down the long hallway. The vampires shoved Cross into the corridor. He felt he could destroy them before the spirit dampeners sent lances of fire into his brain, like they had when he’d struck down the skeleton on the arena floor.
But that meant Dillon would die. That meant Lucan would die. He had no way of knowing what the Southern Claw knew. Cross had no choice but to assume that there was no one who would act against the Sleeper but himself.
Why did Danica choose me?
He lost time. He always fell into a sort of trance when he moved towards the arena, but he couldn’t tell if it was some effect of Krul or if it was the mind-altering drugs they fed through his water and food to make him less dangerous until it was time to fight. The world faded to a blur. His steps grew distant. Everything slowed.
He thought about Snow. The memories came unbidden, but he didn't fight them. He saw her at her apartment that first night after he'd learned she was to be a member of Viper Squad. He should have felt rage and pain at her betrayal, but all of that had been left behind. They sat in her cramped apartment, surrounded by thin shelves of books, and they ate warm bread and cheese and drank red wine. They tried to make up for years spent distant from one another in a single night. In the end it had just felt awkward, like they'd only brought to light how far apart they’d grown.
“ I'm sorry, Snow.”
He wasn't sure if he spoke aloud or not. He didn't really care.
The arena doors opened ahead of him. Cross immediately noted that something was different. The air wasn’t as still as it had been on past trips to the arena. Something had come alive. He could all but taste it in the air, a sense of predatory anticipation, an animal musk.
Pale lights floated in the air and cast the world in ghastly shadows. Hundreds of vampire eyes watched as he entered the arena. For once he was not the first gladiator there, but the last. The semi-circle of other combatants watched stoically as he approached. He saw several humans, a new Vuul, and a Sorn. He saw Tower, Kane and Black. Every fighter, Cross included, wore darker armor than they normally did, pitch black leather and chain and hard plates that made the fighters almost invisible in the false indoor night. Floating silver flames and flying serpents passed like fish through a shadow sea.
The platform started to descend. Heavy chains rattled in the darkness.
A new figure in the stands caught Cross’ eye. She had never been there before, but he knew who she was: Morganna, the true leader of Krul, Talos Drake’s lover, and an assassin and enforcer for the Grim Father. She was moon-pale and severe, with a jutting jaw and thick hair held in place with a silver-capped stick made from black bone. Her dark dress and talons matched Drake’s hussar, and she wore a katana identical to his in every way. Morganna’s eyes were on Cross as he walked across the floor. He held her gaze.
His spirit knew what was coming. He felt her lustful and bloody desire to release her pent-up rage.
The stone platform from above came to a halt just as Cross reached the circle and took his place. He didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to find his friend. If he didn’t see him, maybe he could imagine that he was stuck in some terrible dream, a nightmare he might still be able to wake up from. Maybe if he didn’t see Dillon, the soul-breaking pressure of how badly he needed to win wouldn’t weigh him down.
Kane stood directly across from him. His eyes were closed, and his arms were at his side. He had no one to look for on the stone.
Cross also saw Black out of the corner of his eye. Her face was a mask, hard and unafraid. The space behind her eyes was dead and cold.
In spite of himself, Cross looked up. He found Dillon after just a few seconds, and his heart cracked. The ranger was emaciated and thin to the point of being skeletal. One eye was gone, replaced by a dark and dripping hole. His legs were swollen, covered in cuts that had caused his flesh to go gray. Dried blood encrusted his arms and wrists where they’d worn beneath the chains that held him suspended. His one eye looked dead and void, but after a moment Cross realized that Dillon stared right at him. The ranger trembled as he dangled there beneath the stone. His jaw set, Dillon slowly nodded the same confidant nod that Cross had grown used to seeing, and then he smiled.
Something inside of Cross died at that moment.
He stepped onto the arena floor unbidden. The tall skeletal form that was the master of ceremonies recoiled, and it hovered higher off the ground.
Cross’ breathing came in fast and violent bursts. He felt like he’d grown jaws. His spirit concentrated her form into a nimbus of crackling black energy that filled the air with the tang of ozone and burning matter. She covered his left arm like a gauntlet of shifting shadows.
Tower stepped onto the arena. Its great blade was honed from a single shard of obsidian steel. Its armored faceplate concealed dead and false skin. Salt-and-pepper hair had been pulled back to reveal entirely blank and useless eyes. The Regost’s boots stamped the stone as it marched. It kicked up dust and made pale clouds of bone debris.
Tower charged without a moment’s hesitation, the attack silent but for the shift of its armor. Cross’ bone blade was in his hands in time to deflect the first heavy blow and spin Tower away, but the Regost’s timing had improved, and it turned and hammered two, three more blows against Cross’ blade. He fought one-handed, held the bastard blade at an angle that made it an extension of his arm. He moved with the attacks, and even though the blows rattled his bones his feet were fluid and kept moving.
Cross counterattacked. His strikes were fast, aimed to deliver quick jabs into Tower’s husk of a body, testing his defenses rather than seeking to do damage. Tower’s armor was thicker than Cross’, made of dark plate held in place with leather straps. Soul smoke churned beneath the faceplate and out of artificial eyes as the Regost furiously blocked Cross’ blows with such strength it was a wonder the blades didn’t snap.
His spirit retained her composure. Something about their bond with Ekko calmed her. She was able to wait rather than explode in anger, which would have surely killed them both.
Cross continued to dance around his opponent, and while the Regost’s host body wouldn’t tire, the vaporous being within grew impatient. Dark and spectral steam wrapped around the flesh automaton and turned the air into haze. Steel rang against steel and sent sparks to the ground.
Unmoving faces watched the two warriors shift and dance. Cross’ heart pumped with power and anxiety. His spirit froze his arm till it was nearly ice.
He anticipated Tower’s moves. Every sword swing was a powerful strike, but he moved quicker than Cross recalled, so both the force and speed of the attacks made the Regost difficult to guard against. Regardless, Cross could dictate the direction from which Tower launched its strikes simply by changing his own stance.
He saw Dillon’s nod in his mind’s eye.
Cross grit his teeth, stepped in close, and forced Tower to set its feet and make a downward swing that would take Cross’ head and arm off at the shoulder. His spirit exploded around his skin, scalded him with bitter cold that froze into a solid barrier around his left arm.
His veins froze. His bones felt brittle and weak.
Cross’ arm was coated in dark frost, and he held it out before him like a shield. The ice armor ruptured as Tower’s sword crashed down, and both sword and ice shattered like glass. Black crystal light and fused steel exploded into crystal shards.
Pain echoed down Cross’ body in waves. Every bone in his arm broke, and he screamed in pain.
But with Tower committed and its weapon destroyed — Cross’ magic had never touched the Regost, only its sword — Cross threw himself into his opponent and pushed his bone blade into Tower’s abdomen. The Regost panicked, put all of its life force into holding its host body upright, but Cross kicked forward and threw off its weight, forced his enemy deeper onto his sword. Cross sank his blade in to its hilt.
Blinded with pain, Cross held the blade firm. Dark artificial blood pooled around his unwounded hand. His spirit held on in the air behind him, extended, exhausted. He watched the gray liquid vapor of the Regost drain away. The creature’s life force sizzled as it fell to the ground like dripping fat.
Cross collapsed onto his knees. Already he felt Ekko’s vampiric power fuse his shattered bones back together. His spirit did what she could to numb the intense pain. Tears welled in his eyes. He heard his bones crack as they mended and realigned like puzzle pieces inside of his flesh. The world spun, and then it seemed to fall away beneath him, as if he floated. He dropped his sword.
He felt the disapproving eyes of Morganna and the vampire elite. Cross looked up at them defiantly. Hatred for the vampires of Krul burned in his soul.
Cross teetered at the edge of consciousness. He arched his body backwards and looked up at the prisoner’s slab, that grisly chandelier that hung over the battlefield. Dillon had passed out. Cole, her eyes deep and sallow and her arms riddled with so many cuts that she looked like a grisly road map, gave him a faint smile.
Down on the circle, Kane watched him with grim and knowing eyes. He also smiled, ever so slightly.
Danica Black did not. Her eyes bore straight through to his soul. For a moment, Cross didn’t understand why she regarded him with such hatred, but as the tide of pain washed over him and he slipped towards unconsciousness he realized the truth.
You want Dillon to suffer, because he killed your brother. You chose me…because you thought that I would fail. All this time, even with your deal, you meant for Dillon to die.
His last thoughts, before he passed out, were of killing Danica Black.