There was something in the trees.
Cross stepped back. His handheld telescope was banded with bone, and it was freezing to the touch. A few years of experience had done little to get him used to the feel of some of his arcane implements, most of which were all as cold as death.
“ Well?” Graves asked. They stood at the edge of the Wormwood, a grim forest of grotesquely misshapen trees and ravenous bogs. The Wormwood was populated with refugee warlocks, soul miners, clouds of black poison and lost relics of the world before The Black. The unexplained energies from The Black had twisted everything with the taint of madness and magic, and it had killed millions of people in the process. The Wormwood was just one of many mutations left behind in the wake of that apocalypse. Its thick branches and dark roots blocked out the sky, and a horde of psychotically carnivorous animals roamed its depths. Arteries of black blood ran through the roots of the trees and into the dark soil of the immense forest, and necrotic fluids lent the air the stench of rot and organic matter.
“ There’s something there, but I can’t quite make it out. Not clearly, anyways.” Cross handed Graves the telescope. Up close, Cross could clearly see the scars on Graves’ cheek and neck. He’d acquired them after the campaign in Blackmarsh, when he’d been held prisoner in the Ebon City of Krul, a place where the vampires tortured prisoners and took their time turning them to undead. It was a technique that normally assured total obedience while still retaining a converted human’s original skill set, which otherwise wasn’t possible — most vampires held no trace of their former selves.
Cross was no beauty, either: he bore a scar from a vampire attack that ran down his left cheek and onto the lower left side of his mouth and jaw, but nothing as grievous as Graves’ wounds. If not for quite a bit of luck and some inside help, Graves never would have made it out of Krul at all.
Cross’ spirit brushed against him, and he quietly breathed her cold vapors in to let her ethereal form swim into his lungs.
“ Are you okay?” Winter asked him. The older mage was a few yards behind him, where he was busy adjusting a much more elaborate thaumaturgy harness than what Cross wore. Winter’s heavy implement was strapped to his torso like a parachute. It weighed a good twenty pounds and was as bulky as a tombstone. Cross didn’t need such an excessive pack, at least not yet — his was just a battery, four inches across and weighing barely a pound, strapped to his belt and hooked to his gauntlets with nearly invisible copper wires. Unlike Winter, he also only needed his implement when he manifested magic. Winter had to wear his just to stay alive.
Just like I’ll have to, eventually.
“ I’m fine,” he said. “Jitters, is all. I’m worried about Snow.”
“ She’ll be fine,” Winter said after a moment.
“ Damn,” Graves breathed. “I see them.”
Cross and Winter both knelt down behind Graves. They looked deep into the dank innards of the forest. The bone-pale tree they hid behind was ancient and gnarled and as hard as concrete. Long dried fruit dangled from the withered branches, solid white and covered in gooey webs.
Cross took the scope back from Graves, but Winter put a hand on it.
“ No,” he said. “Save your strength for what matters. I’ll do this.”
Cross’ fingers ached as they peeled away from the icy steel. They’d grown so cold they felt scalded from the touch of the metal. Winter took what was seen in the scope and projected it into the minds of all three men. The image was not physical, not real, but light that was bent and twisted into a paradox of ethereal intellect, shifted and sent to their corneas so they could all see the same image when any one of them looked through the scope. Winter aimed the scope into the heart of the trees.
Past the twisted trees and black marsh, through green air and methane gas and slithering red snakes that clung to the trees like leeches, beyond a stump covered with shredded bones and dark red oil, there stood a trio of men. They were dark silhouettes shrouded in cloaks. Al three had weapons strapped across their backs. A cloud of dark air clung to them like a swarm of icy bees. They were small even in the scope, which meant they were a considerable distance away.
“ Sentries?” Cross asked.
“ A Creed. Shadowclaws,” Graves said with a shake of his head. “The vampire version of us. They’re looking for Red, too. And they’re ahead of us.” He spat a dark wad of corrosive chewing tobacco onto the ground. “Again, I say ‘Damn’.”
“ How do you know they’re Shadowclaws?” Cross asked.
“ Well, for starters, there are three of them,” Graves said matter-of-factly. He may have come across as a backwater hick most of the time, but Graves was an expert Hunter. “They wouldn’t send a regular unit out this far from Rath. Shadowclaw Creeds move faster, and they’re elite.”
“ But there can be more than one Creed out there, right? Working together?” Cross had expected the nod Graves gave him. “Damn it. Have you faced them before?”
“ It’s been a while.”
“ Have I?” he asked.
“ Not with Viper Squad. We fought at least one Creed in Blackmarsh.”
Cross suppressed a shudder. He never wanted to even think about Blackmarsh ever again. Sometimes, he had still had nightmares about that campaign, his baptism of fire.
“ We’d better get the others,” Winter said, and without a word he started back towards their base camp, located just outside the boundaries of the woods. Viper Squad couldn’t actually camp inside the forest. People had died from prolonged exposure to the fumes that the black blood arteries pushed up from the ground and into the Wormwood. Winter told Cross they’d be fine so long as they kept moving and didn’t stay in any one spot for too long. For some reason, that didn’t make him feel any better.
“ Where are Morg and Stone?” Cross asked. Graves held up his hand for silence. He gripped a black chunk of rune carved stone; Stone, somewhere out there in the forest, had another just like it. The piece of meteoric rock churned with arcane energy. Cross watched as shadow leaked from it, and he saw ethereal black liquid ooze out between Graves’ fingers, and ebon steam squeezed out of his closed palm. With two of the stones, anyone could send simple messages across impossible distances without actually having to utter a single word.
“ They’re on their way,” Graves said.
“ Where are they?”
“ They’re dug into a rock bed two klicks east of here, watching the paths by the river.” Graves stood up. He was only about five-and-a-half-feet tall, but it was all muscle and grit. He was a short blonde-haired man with a scraggly beard, unkempt hair and black and red fatigues laced with stakes, knives, pistols, a pair of carpenter bombs and a wide-bladed machete strapped across his back. Cross was a good six inches taller than Graves, but Graves was easily the more intimidating figure, especially since Cross was excessively thin and pale. Cross’ fatigues were light and loose — a warlock had to be able to move and to allow his skin to breathe, lest their arcane spirits would boil or freeze their flesh. Most days, Cross would have preferred being able to wear the armor.
“ Did they see anything?” Cross asked.
“ We’d have known by now if they had.”
The outer ring of the forest was an unstable saltwater marsh. Brackish water littered with floating deposits of calcium and rust turned the flow to a half-frozen sludge that streamed around thick weeds, thorny brambles and drifts of dark silt. The forest loomed behind them as they returned to camp. Ancient and gnarled trees, some a hundred feet high, twisted and bent together in an obscene dance. A semi-translucent fog surrounded the forest. Bits of dead organic matter flitted in the breeze like flies. The Wormwood stretched for miles — Cross couldn’t make out its boundaries from their vantage, and due to the height of the trees it was difficult to see the breadth of the twisted forest from there on the ground. The land around the Wormwood was nearly as lifeless as the forest itself, though not nearly so cursed. There were cold plains, empty riverbeds, frozen streams of black and green water, and steep bluffs that overlooked oceans of red and grey sand. They were right at the southern tip of the Bone March, an amply named waste filled with drifts of white dust, ancient bones of ancient beasts, great fields of discarded finger bones and skulls piled high, and other monuments to the destruction wrought by The Black. The air tasted dead and cold.
The camp was in a dry streambed just out of sight from the plain. Winter was already there, and he, Snow and Kray had disassembled the camp and now looked ready for trouble. Cross’ stomach churned. No matter how many battles he’d lived through, the thought of willingly walking into a situation where he could die still seemed idiotic to him. He’d taken part in over a dozen missions with Viper Squad, and he’d seen more than his share of action before that when he was part of Wolf Company, defending Thornn from blood wolves and Gorgoloth. He’d faced vampires and the animated shadows of their victims in Blackmarsh. He’d seen people die, and he’d been covered in his friend’s remains.
Does this ever get any easier?
Cross knew that most of his anxiety stemmed from Snow’s presence. She was the only member of the Squad with less experience than himself, and whether or not anyone liked it one of Cross’ constant duties had become taking care of her. And while Cross was fully aware of his own worries, he could only imagine what was going through her mind. He had to give her credit: if she had any fear, she didn’t show it. The teenage girl that used to be his baby sister looked like a warrior now. There were draconic tattoos on her neck and all over her arms, and she wore a thick armored coat that covered the knives she kept strapped to her wrists. She calmly adjusted her leather gauntlets. Her eyes were calm.
I still see the younger Snow. I still see you with that floppy elephant doll, reading books all day in your room. You’ll always be that young to me.
Kray and Winter, the old veterans, looked even more at ease. When Kray, who had a giant’s presence even when he stayed in the background, yielded that mini-gun Cross was sure there were fewer living beings more frightening to behold. Graves hinted that Kray might have been half-Doj, but no one in the squad dared ask.
Cross and Winter hurriedly packed the rest of the gear into their packs. Graves checked and loaded his shotgun, and after a quick check of the camp they silently trekked back up the hill and into the trees.
Cross surveyed the forest again when they’d returned to where they’d carried out their reconnaissance, and saw that the vampires were still there. They hadn’t moved.
“ They know we’re here,” Graves said quietly. “Spread out. Morg and Stone are going to meet us in the forest.”
The air turned sour as they stepped into the trees and fanned out in a broken line. They moved with near silence in spite of the marsh water and dismal forest sludge that ate up their feet. The canopy of trees was so thick it was as if they’d walked into perpetual midnight. The mud sucked at their boots and spindly tree limbs grabbed their clothing. Viscous gases and gouts of gray slime erupted out of the ankle-deep water. Cross saw the vaguest semblance of faces staring up at him from inside the water, the ancient bones of a buried age.
Cross had his HK in his non-shooting hand, while his right was clenched with arcane energy. His spirit twisted and crawled across his skin like a rippling liquid suit. The condensation was thick in the air, and it tasted like honey left too long in the sun.
They closed in on the clearing. Graves and Cross moved down the middle of their formation, Kray on the left flank and Winter on the right. Snow floated just above the ground. Her spirit held her aloft as she attuned her senses to the folds between the material world, the shadows and the creases through which arcane energies flowed. Her eyes were dead white as she floated along, seemingly unconscious, and her hands trailed behind her.
She was their tracker, and she would find what they searched for.
They went deeper. The air was thick with buzzing insects that could drain all of the blood from a human body given the time, and the taste of rot in the air was as thick as porridge. White effluvia floated in the water, and Cross glimpsed shadows all around them, moving through the trees. His arm grew numb from holding his spirit at the ready for so long, but he didn’t dare let her go. It was so hard to keep her in check, so physically draining to keep her harnessed and complacent, that he feared if he relaxed it might take too long to make her ready her again if trouble arose, and by then it would be too late.
The clearing where the vampires had stood — a dry island amidst the ankle-deep mire — was directly ahead. Twisted trees with half-white roots where the Wormwood had sucked their life and vitality away stood at odd angles on the mound, tangled together like strings. Only Graves fully stepped onto the island, while the rest of them gave it fair berth, their eyes on the trees. Cross couldn’t see more than a few feet into the thick of the Wormwood. It was as if spider webs made of black silk had been strung across the path in every direction. Light simply refused to penetrate those deeper folds of the impossibly dense and gnarled forest.
Graves stood on the mound of land with his Remington 870 sawed-off shotgun at the ready. Cross watched Graves and tried to read the air, but the arcane energies were so dense it was like trying to look straight into the sun. Buzzing insects filled the air in spite of how unseasonably cold it felt.
Cross looked up at Snow, who quietly nodded towards the trees. After a moment’s hesitation, Cross nodded, too. He sensed nothing waiting there for them, but they both knew that could have been interference from the black energies of the forest, which proved adept at confounding their magical senses.
Graves carried on, and moved deeper still into the trees.
A sharp crack cut through the air. Cross heard a sick splash, like a sack filled with something wet had been opened and spilled.
Winter fell to the ground, blood pouring from an open cavity in his skull.
Razor projectiles came at them with deadly accuracy. Cross crafted a shield of air in front of him and barely deflected bone needles intended for he and Snow. They both dropped to the ground.
Graves was down. Cross saw a nine-inch bone nail lodged in his friend’s left arm, glistening with blood. Shots rang through the trees. Cross fired into the darkness, a distraction while he held the shield and pulled in more of his spirit, focused her raw form into his fist and held her there, crackling, a dissolving ball of corrosive cold that dripped like oil between his fingers.
“ Graves?!” he called out.
“ I’m okay,” he grunted.
“ I think Winter is dead,” Cross said quietly.
He felt Snow’s vision as she scanned the trees for the vampires, as she reached out with keen senses and probed the limbs and clearings and watery pockets, the open holes in the dense thicket, searching for what wasn’t there. Vampires gave off an entirely different energy signature than a living being: they bore no souls, but they could be located through that absence, by the void silhouette they left behind them as they moved through the world. It was doubly difficult for her to find them right then, of course, thanks to the barrage of bone needles being launched at them from the darkness of the forest.
“ Down!” Cross shouted. He focused his thoughts and breathed icy vapors into his sweaty palm. He lobbed the cold grenade into the trees, guiding it as best he could through the will of his spirit. The explosion shook the ground and sent out a wave of deathly ice that even from a hundred yards away licked against them with a chill arctic wind.
The shooting stopped. Cross looked up. Dozens of bone needles stuck out of the trees like quills, and they dripped cold white fluid from the tips of their spines.
“ Damn,” Graves said. Cross moved over to him, staying low. He clamped his gauntlet around Graves’ arm and channeled raw magic into him, hoping to quickly burn out whatever poison or narcotic the needles had been coated with before anything spread through Graves’ bloodstream. Cross felt a nervous sensation along the back of his neck, like something was about to reach out and grab him from behind.
A rifle shot and a dull explosion sounded in the distance. Moments later, Cross saw a cloud of white and yellow smoke deep in the shadowy murk.
“ There they are,” Graves said. His breaths were shallow, but Cross hoped it was the sudden flux of arcane energies being poured into him, rather than his body reacting to poison.
Cross remembered getting stung by a pair of wasps one after the other when he’d been a boy, only those wasps had been tainted by the energies of the Bone March. Drogan, an old warlock shaman, had spent days trying to heal him. Cross remembered Drogan’s grim and hollow eyes and the smell of ghosts on his breath.
That was the day I learned I was a warlock.
“ Snow, are you okay?” Cross called out. He felt the touch of her mind, the will of the spirit that circled around her like a controlled whirlwind. Snow lay on her chest, her head tucked under her arms, as if waiting for something to fall on her. She still focused on scanning the area ahead. “Snow!?”
“ I’m fine,” she replied.
“ Kray?”
“ Yeah.” The big man lumbered into view. Kray hadn’t had time to pull out the mini-gun, so he instead had his sword drawn, a heavy black-bladed saber with a cord set in the hilt and white gashes carved into the blade to display Kray’s number of kills. Cross never understood that practice: he thought keeping tally of how many things you destroyed was just asking for trouble. “I thought there was something moving there in the trees, but it never got closer than fifty yards.” With Kray being such an enormous man, for some reason Cross used to assume that also meant he was stupid. Far from it, Kray probably possessed the best tactical mind in the Squad besides Morg.
“ Can you check Winter?” Cross asked him.
“ Am I going to live, or what?” Graves snapped at him. Cross felt how clammy Graves’ arm was even through the leather and cloth of his shirt. “Morg and Stone are out there alone, for God’s sake, and we need to get to them.”
“ Winter is gone,” Kray said from the trees. “Not sure what hit him. Some kind of projectile took him in the head.”
“ Crap,” Cross sighed. His stomach went sour. He’d known Winter for a good, long time. They weren’t close friends, by any means, but they’d served together for some time, and knowing somebody for that long, being around them and being used to seeing them every day, depending on them, learning from them, talking about things that others couldn’t understand, and now he was gone…
Not now, his own voice told him. You don’t have time for this.
Snow sat up.
“ I’m sorry,” she said. She’d known Winter for a long time, as well, but not as long as Cross had.
“ Kray,” Cross said, “can you get his gear?”
“ Cross?” Graves demanded. “Am I dying or not?”
“ You should be fine,” Cross said, and he unhanded Graves’ arm and drew his spirit back into an orbit about him. She circled him uneasily, like a murder of ethereal crows.
“ Then let’s go,” Graves said, and without another word he rose, reloaded the shotgun, and set off into the trees. Kray followed, hacking noxious tree limbs out of his path with his oversized blade. He dropped Winter’s belt pouch in front of Cross.
Cross felt a shudder in the air, and his spirit bristled. Winter’s spirit had moved on, no longer tied to the physical world now that its mortal tether had been removed.
Snow came and stood next to him.
“ I found Morg and Stone, and I think I found the vampires,” she said. Cross looked at her. She was only barely holding herself together. Her lip trembled, and only the thick shadows and grime on her face hid the tears in her eyes. Cross wondered if he looked as scared as she did.
“ Let’s go, then,” he said. He took the pouch, stuffed it into his coat and stood up. “They may be in trouble.”
“ Are you all right?” she asked, moving in his way as he made to go. Cross watched her for a moment.
What the hell are you doing here? he wondered. What am I doing here? He still couldn’t look at Snow without seeing a little girl. He couldn’t look at her without seeing his baby sister, and all he wanted to do was get her out of there, to get her away from that vile place as fast as they could…but no. No. This is where we are. This is where we need to be.
“ I’m fine,” he said, knowing she could see the lie on his face. You have to lie, he wanted to tell her. You have to lie to yourself, tell yourself everything is fine, tell yourself that you don’t care. If you don’t, you won’t last a day, and that’s why I have to lie to you now, even though you know I’m doing it. “Let’s go,” was all he said aloud, and they went deeper into the trees, towards the black noise that waited for them there.
I am not afraid, he told himself, hoping that if he repeated it enough he’d eventually believe it. I am not afraid.