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?”
“ His spirit has been controlled and repressed for most of his life,” Black said. “Lucan Keth was born in the wild, bought from his parents by slavers, and raised to be used as a weapon. He has never known control of his spirit, because no one who ever controlled him has wanted him to. Without thaumaturgic constraints, his spirit would run wild. It would go on a destructive rampage.”
“ Are there any others like him?”
“ If there are, I’ve never heard of them. I doubt they’d survive past puberty without strict supervision by an experienced mage.”
“ How did Lucan’s spirit know to target the Gorgoloth, and not us?” Even though Cross and his spirit had been forced to protect themselves from Lucan’s power, it had become clear that the only reason they’d survived at all was because Lucan wasn’t trying to harm them. Cross didn’t want to believe there was anyone with that much power, especially not someone who had so little control. He remembered the feel of Lucan’s spirit when it had blazed over him, and he went cold from the memory. Cross had been to the necropolis of Koth and had stood in the presence of the Old One: the touch of Lucan’s spirit was colder by far.
“ We’ve had Lucan at Black Scar long enough that we’ve learned how to focus his spirit’s rage based on how we measure its release from the thaumaturgic bonds. It’s a combination of timing and degree.” Black poured them each a cup of coffee. The steam felt soothing in the brittle air. “No one really controls Lucan’s spirit. The best we can do is manipulate it.”
Cross chewed on that.
I’ve never seen such pure destructive force contained in a human being.
“ Where are you taking him?” he asked. “And, more importantly, why are you taking him there?”
Black bit her lip, and looked away. Cross got the feeling that she wasn’t used to being in a situation she had no control over.
“ They have my lover,” she said at last. “And if I don’t give them Lucan, Cole is dead.”
“ Who is ‘they’?”
“ A gang of mercenaries and thieves led by my brother, Cradden Black.”
“ Wait a second,” Cross said. “Your brother kidnapped your boyfriend…”
“ Girlfriend.”
“ I’m sorry?”
“ Girlfriend, you misogynist prick. Lara Cole is my girlfriend.”
“ OK,” Cross said. “Your brother kidnapped your girlfriend, and the only way for you to get her back is to give him Lucan…the most powerful warlock I’ve ever encountered, and I’d bet I’m not the only person who would say that. Do I have all of that right so far?”
“ That about sums it up,” Black said sardonically.
“ You’re willing to go through all of this, for her?” he asked. Black nodded. “She must be pretty special.”
“ She’s worth dying for,” Black said matter-of-factly.
Cross nodded. Of all of the things he’d ever known a Revenger to do, stealing a prisoner out of Black Scar to free a loved one hardly ranked among the worst. Still, Black clearly wasn’t too concerned with the ramifications of releasing Lucan’s spirit into potentially deadly hands.
“ What does Cradden want with Keth?” he asked.
“ No,” she said, avoiding the question. “Your turn. I know you’re offering to help…and I also know that you aren’t doing it out of the kindness of your heart. What do you want from me.”
“ You know what,” he said. “The Woman in the Ice.”
Black watched him like he was something poisonous.
“ I don’t know…”
“ No,” Cross interrupted, sternly. “You know something.”
You have to.
Follow and you will find.
“ Why do you need to find her?” Black asked him.
“ Why do you follow up every question I ask with another question?”
Black laughed.
“ The art of negotiation, my friend.”
“ We’re on a mission,” Cross said after a moment. “For Mother.”
He could tell that his answer caught her off guard.
“ As in…the White Mother?”
“ No, your mother,” Cross said. “Yes, the White Mother.”
“ And what does the White Mother want with the Woman in the Ice?”
“ You know I can’t tell you that,” Cross said after a pause. He considered telling her, but he still wasn’t quite sure if Danica Black was the sort of person who would care or not.
Because something so evil you can’t even imagine it is going to slaughter thousands of people, and we have to stop it. Not that I have the faintest idea how finding the Woman in the Ice is supposed to help.
“ I don’t know where the Woman is,” Black said. “But I’ve heard of her.”
“ Yes,” Cross said with a nod. “And not many have.”
“ Cole could find her.” Every time Black said her lover’s name, Cross heard her voice crack a little. “Lara hires herself out as a gun and a guide for treasure hunters and archaeologists. The last time that I spoke to her was just before my brother took her, and she said she was leading an expedition that was looking for the Woman in the Ice. And that they were getting close.”
The fact that someone else was looking for the Woman presented problems all its own. Cross decided to file that particular problem away in his head until he dealt with the other eighty-six already on his list.
“ Did she say where they were going?”
“ No,” Black said. “Just that she was somewhere here in the Reach.”
Cross nodded.
Damn it. I hate prophecies. Layers and layers of them now, stacking up, burying us deep. It had been a prophecy that had led to the mission in the first place. Another had led him from the Lith camp to the Dreadnaught. And now this.
“ Well?” Black asked.
“ I’m thinking.”
“ Does it usually take this long?”
“ Yes. Shut up, please.”
The air turned dark. Ebon claws of shadow crept over the horizon, and pale fog thickened close to the ground. There were strange calls in the distance — carrion birds, wolves, inhuman echoes that seemed to crawl into the width of the sky. The wind died down, but that didn’t help with the incessant chill. Not far away, Kane and Ekko talked quietly, while Dillon and Vos struck up a conversation. Lucan stared out into the night, his eyes glazed.
“ Cross…”
“ What does your brother want with Lucan?” he interrupted.
“ I told you, I don’t know.”
“ That’s not what you said. You didn’t say anything. You just dodged the question,” Cross said.
“ You’re a pushy bastard, you know that?” she snapped. Danica Black had her limits, too, it seemed. The fact that she had something of a temper wouldn’t make much of a difference in Black Scar, he supposed; if a prisoner was lucky there they’d get beaten to within an inch of their life.
“ Is Cradden a Revenger?” he asked.
“ No,” Black said dismissively. “Not all of Ma and Pa Black’s children turned out well.”
Great, Cross thought.
Silence again fell between them, longer than the last time.
“ I’ll make sure,” Black finally said, after the lack of conversation had almost lulled Cross to sleep, “that Lara helps you find what you’re looking for. All you have to do is help me deliver Lucan to my brother.” She shrugged, and smiled darkly. “Without a ship, I can’t exactly do this with just Vos to help me. And Cradden has men. Lots of men. If I waltz in there with just two guns he’ll screw us.”
“ Why not use Lucan?” Cross asked, afraid to hear the answer. “You obviously have no qualms about doing that.”
“ Screw you,” Black said quietly. “Cradden’s my brother. I’m not sure I’d be able to protect both he and Cole if I turned Lucan lose like that.”
Cross thought about that for a minute. He let Black wait while he pondered his options.
“ We’ll help you, and you’ll get Cole to help us. But there’s a caveat,” he said. “I can’t let you give Lucan to your brother. Especially if you’re not going to tell me what Cradden has in store for him.”
Black smiled, almost sadly.
“ Is that right?”
“ Yes,” he said. “It’s too dangerous to give him up.”
“ Then go to hell,” Black said, and she stood up.
“ Can I finish?” Cross said, as calmly as he could manage. Cross considered his own people skills less than stellar, especially when he had to deal with women. Women who looked like Danica were particularly tough for him to handle. “I’ll help you get Cole back, if you’ll convince her to help us.” He stood up, and looked Black in the eye. “But I can’t let you give Lucan to anyone but me. He’s too dangerous. He has to go back to Thornn.”
Black watched him carefully. She reminded him of an angry cat. Her nostrils flared with barely contained anger. A sudden cold breeze caught her dark red hair and pulled it across her face. Cross couldn’t have pulled his eyes from her even if he’d wanted to.
Stare away, stud. She has a girlfriend. Even if she wasn’t a lesbian, you’d be about as interesting to her as a pile of corkwood.
“ I don’t want Cradden hurt,” she said at last.
“ I don’t want him hurt, either,” Cross said. “But I also can’t let him have Lucan. And I need to find the Woman in the Ice. A lot of lives may depend it.”
She shrugged.
“ Saving lives doesn’t mean much to me,” she said matter-of-factly. “You have to protect what’s yours. That’s all that matters.”
Black left Cross alone, and walked back over to the rest of the group.
Cross ran his hands over his face. He felt like he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were raw and tired, and his skin was so dry he could’ve used his face to take the edge off of a piece of wood.
Why the hell can’t anything ever be easy?
After he meditated on his conversation with Black for a few minutes, Cross went and found Dillon. His hands itched beneath his leather gauntlets, but with how quickly his new spirit rose to anger he found that he needed to wear them almost constantly.
The Reach was cold, pale and vast. The dead forest where they’d battled the Gorgoloth was only half a mile away, but it looked much further.
Night fell. The sky was deep and bloody purple, like a discolored bruise. Ice-hard snow padded the ground.
The main campfire had been dug deep and entrenched in a low ring of packed snow to protect it from the wind. Its flames cast the figures around it in ghostly shadow.
Dillon had already ventured back across the bridge after the battle. He’d fetched both of their mounts and the camel. Cross had no idea how Dillon had coaxed them across the log, and he decided it was better if he didn’t.
Cross and Dillon sat together, away from the others, and spoke quietly. Kane and Ekko were both fast asleep, wrapped in each other’s arms beneath a thick wool blanket. Lucan kneeled, as if in prayer, also wrapped in a blanket and also, as far as Cross and Dillon could tell, unconscious. Black read a small book at her seat on the opposite side of the big fire, while Vos was just out of sight behind her, walking the perimeter.
The two men ate warm beans heated in tin cans. Cross thought they tasted like asphalt. The ground was hard beneath them, and it was so cold it more or less nullified the blankets they hid under.
Cross brought Dillon up to speed regarding his conversation with Danica Black. He left out what Black had said to him there at the end about saving lives not meaning much to her. He still wasn’t exactly sure what to make of that.
“ Shit,” Dillon said when Cross finished. “Man…this is turning out to be a real pain in the ass, Cross.”
“ Sorry,” Cross said. “What did you expect when they handed you the job of babysitting me?”
“ Trouble,” Dillon laughed. “Not like this, though.” He paused, and cast a furtive glance at Black. “You, uh…you buy her story?”
Cross took a sip of cowboy coffee. It tasted like they’d made it with dirt instead of coffee grounds.
“ I think so,” he said after a moment. “But we need to be careful.”
“ You think she’s setting us up?”
“ No,” Cross said. He stretched his arms out. He could have used a healing salve, but he wanted to hold on to what small supply they had in case they needed it later. Black and Vos had salvaged everything they possibly could from the Dreadnaught’s wreckage, but even with what they’d recovered there was still barely enough supplies for the five people from the ship. Cross and Dillon had enough of their own supplies, but there was very little they could spare. “No,” Cross said again. “I truly believe she wants her girlfriend back.”
“ I dig the fact that she has a girlfriend,” Dillon said with a wry smile.
I don’t, Cross thought.
“ Just because she wants to get her girl back,” Dillon continued, “doesn’t mean she won’t turn on us when the deal is done. You know, so she doesn’t have to keep up her end of the bargain.”
“ Yeah…in the end, she may not want to give up Lucan,” Cross said. His beans were gone, but his stomach still growled with hunger. “So like I said…we’ll be careful.”
Dillon threw the rest of his coffee into the fire, and pulled a licorice root out of his pocket, which he chewed on thoughtfully.
“ You got any family, Cross?” he asked. They’d been on the mission for weeks, but Cross realized he knew little about the ranger.
“ No,” he said with some hesitation.
He sees Snow, burning on the train.
“ You have a sister, right?” Cross asked him. “And a nephew?”
“ Yeah,” Dillon said. “Jeraline’s husband died a few years back. She’s been taking care of Dwayne on her own. He’s a good kid. Cute. Loud, though.” Dillon laughed. “I don’t see them too much,” he said. “But I would like to see them again.” He looked at Cross. “I’ll follow your lead. Just try not to get us killed, all right?”
Cross nodded.
“ Fair enough,” he said. “Shall we?”
They rose and went to speak with Black. There were some things that needed to be sorted out.
They took their seats by the fire and accepted more coffee, this time from a fresh kettle that Black had just made. It tasted slightly less gritty than what Cross and Dillon had been drinking.
Black sat bundled up in a blanket. Her face looked ashen in the firelight. Vos came over and stood with his weapon folded in his arms.
“ We’ll help you get Cole back,” Cross continued. “In return, you convince her to help us find what we’re looking for. In either case, when this is all over, Lucan Keth comes with us.”
“ Back to Thornn,” Vos said with an angry smile on his face.
“ Yes,” Cross answered. “Back to Thornn.”
“ Do you want us to bend over, too?” Vos asked.
Dillon blew Vos a mocking kiss.
“ I don’t like being bullied, Cross,” Black said. “But you have to protect what’s yours. Vos and I can’t do this on our own. If you help us get Cole out of there alive, and you help us get to safety…sure, I’ll let you have Lucan. And I’ll ask Cole to tell you what you want to know.”
“ So we have a deal?” Cross asked.
“ We have a deal,” Black said.
Vos bristled, but he didn’t say anything.
“ Where’s the exchange supposed to take place?” Dillon asked.
“ At some ruins to the east,” she said. “They should be about a day’s march, I think. If we still had the airship, we’d have been there by now.”
“ Wait,” Cross said. “When were you supposed to be there?”
“ Today,” Vos said. His words were cold.
Cross looked at Black, and she met his gaze. Her expression was controlled, but he noted the worry.
“ She’s fine,” Cross said.
“ Yeah,” Dillon said, sounding less convinced.
“ Of course she’s fine,” Black said firmly. “I don’t need you to tell me that. If Cradden went through this much trouble to get Lucan from me, he wouldn’t kill his hostage and wreck his chances. Besides, he knows damn well he’ll never get anything out of me if he hurts her. But…” She paused. That worry returned to her face. It was subtle, almost too subtle to notice, but her eyes creased ever so slightly, and the inflection of her voice cracked, just a hair. “If he thinks we’re cheating him, or if he thinks we’re not going to deliver…then there’s no telling what he’ll do. He can be a real spiteful bastard when he’s cornered. But he’s not stupid.”
“ He also has a good crew with him,” Vos said. “A half-dozen mercs, at least.”
“ Well, that’s great,” Dillon said quietly. “Do you have a layout for the ruins?”
Black produced a map. The ruins in question were those of a city, depicted in carefully cast lines of charcoal and ink on a faded piece of yellowed parchment. If the map was accurate, there were plenty of buildings in the ruins, at least ten square city blocks worth.
“ All right,” Black said. “So what’s the plan?”
“ Wait,” Cross said. “There’s one more thing.” The air stiffened as a cold and dead wind came at them. Cross rocked in place to try and stay warm. The sky was clear and vast. “What made the ship crash?”
Vos looked at Black, as if for permission to answer. Black swallowed, and she took a deep and shuddering breath.
“ We’re not sure,” she said. “Something…dark.”
“ Dark skinned?” Dillon asked.
“ Maybe,” Black said. “It wasn’t human. Royce…the pilot…whatever it was, it tore Royce and the entire cockpit in half. But right before it happened, he said he saw something, and whatever it was sent him into a panic.”
“ Well…what was it?” Dillon asked when Black looked away. “What is it the man said?”
“ He said it was a shadow,” Vos answered. “A ghost. A cold, dark ghost.”
He looked terrified.
“ Ebon Cities?” Cross asked after an uncomfortable silence.
“ I don’t know,” Vos answered. “I don’t think so.”
“ No,” Black said with certainty. Her eyes were lost out in the dark. The tiny campsite was a speck of light in the dark sea of the plains. “This was something…old. You could feel it through the walls of the ship. You could feel its presence, so cold and vast and…dead. Like a heartbeat that came from the bottom of a pit.” She looked back at them. “That’s the best I can describe it. It was like a hole. Like a void.”
Black’s eyes stared back into the memory, stuck inside the vision of whatever they’d seen when the ship crashed, and of what Black’s spirit had felt.
Vos watched Black as she sat there, quiet. Cross saw that the male Revenger looked at his superior officer with concern.
“ Whatever it is,” Vos said, “it tore the control room right out of the damned ship. We were mid-air when it happened. The whole crate just spiraled right out of the sky.” He spat on the ground, and rubbed it into the hard dirt with his boot. “We lost five men. Five.”
Again, there was silence.
Cross thought that he recognized what Black was talking about. It had been described as a dream, a nightmare of an absence, a dark void. An evil older than the new world, and it roamed free. It was a hunter, which meant that it might have been the same entity that he and Dillon had been sent to stop.
No, not to stop. To find out how to stop. No one can take that thing on alone.
It was out there. Waiting.
I hope I’m wrong, he thought. I hope that’s not what it is. Either way, we’re in it deep now.
After a while, they went over Black’s intelligence about the ruins where her lover was being held, and laid their plans.