Danica marched down one of the corridor s that led to t he Gauntlet. Two Revengers named Parker and Creel followed her with their rifles aimed at her back.
She knew she was about to die.
She’d never expected to be walking down this blood-stained metal hall. Fear gripped her chest. She felt like she’d swallowed something hard.
Danica’s legs were sore, and her skin was covered with grime. She hadn’t eaten properly for days, so she was listless and weak. Her muscles were stiff, her heart raced, and the scent of her own sweat and stench filled her nostrils.
I should have known it would end like this, she told herself. It’s no less than I deserve.
She tried not to think about the crimes she’d commit ted as a Revenger. It was just too much. She’s spent the past two years having nightmares about murders and executions and condemning people to die by fire or starvation. Some nights she woke up screaming.
Danica would never forgive herself. Not ever. She could never wash that much blood from he r hands.
I’m sorry, Lara. I’m sorry, Eric.
Th e hallway seemed to go on forever. She heard muffled shouts in the distance, the call s of the other prisoners who’d been assembled as a captive audience. They didn’t cheer so much out of excitement, she thought, as they did for the fact that at that moment they weren’t the ones suffering.
D oors covered with the grim visages of gargoyles peeled open ahead of her. Th e y weren’t the true entrance to the Gauntlet, not yet — there was one more hall to pass through, where she’d be given the equipment she needed for the competition.
Danica had helped test t he Gauntlet when Rake had first come up with the idea a few years back. Rather than traditional gladiator games like those held in the Ebon Cities, t he Gauntlet was a sort of elite sporting event, a survival challenge that pitted high-profile or exotic prisoners against one another for the amusement of the Wardens, the prison population, and occasionally even outside spectators, dignitaries or ambassadors or other high-paying clients who wanted to see inmates they’d had interred in the prison suffer a dramatically gruesome fate.
There was never more than one survivor from any given event, and often there were none. The contests were never the same. In the past she’d seen monsters hunt down prisoners fleeing for the exit, or air ships filled with Revenger snipers who tried to shoot the inmates as they fled across a trap-riddled floor. Rake personally redesigned the course every few weeks, and work crews were pushed to the brink of death to make the necessary modifications.
Danica didn’t worry about what she’d face. She’d resolved herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to survive. She was far more worried about Cole, and Cross. S he’d failed Lara as a lover, and she’d failed Cross as a friend.
I betrayed them both while trying to save them.
Her blood ran cold. E very breath went down hard. S he tried to comfort herself thin king about the good times she’d ha d with Cole. She remembered Cross and Kane, how those two had saved her, how she’d felt alive again with the team, a part of something, needed and wanted by others.
T h ose memories were what she ’d take with her into t he Gauntlet, and they ’ d give her strength. She knew she was going to die, but there was no way she was going down without a fight.
Danica held her head high. Her boots clacked loudly in the stone hall. The iron cuffs around her wrists seemed to grow lighter. She took deep and calming breaths.
It’s going to be okay.
She kept telling herself that. It didn’t matter that she knew it wasn’t true.
Danica walked through the open door s and into a hall of the dead.
The corridor was pale stone covered with blood stains, claw marks and sharp metal debris. Blazing white torches set in high wall sconces lit the way. T he charnel stench was thick.
Two rows of animate d corpses stood at attention on either side of the hall. They were Scarecrows, gaunt and preposterously tall. Their dead black skin was pulled taut over misshape n and elo ngated bones. They turned and regarded her with dull white eyes and grinning skelet al mouths. Revenger armor covered their emaciated bodies. Each Scarecrow was identical to the next. Their c orpse eyes watched as she was pushed into the hall.
Parker and Creel left her there. T he doors sealed shut behind her, barring the way back.
Danica walked the length of the corridor, between the rows of undead. She stepped through sticky clumps of drying blood and old bones and kept her head low. T he Scarecrows watched her pass. S he heard the creak of leather and dead flesh. Her breaths echoed against the cold stone.
Danica expected one of the heavy blade s to come crashing down on her back, or for one of those ridiculously long arms to reach out and grab her. Their height was terrifying. She felt as if she walk ed through a forest of rotting flesh.
Nothing happened. She made it to the end of the hall. She felt her spirit in the distance, a murmuring echo, a sad memory. He was still restrained. She hadn’t thought Fades were so powerful.
They must have given me Narcosm, after all.
A door made of brass and copper stood at the end of the corridor. H er hand cuffs opened on their own accord and clattered to the floor. A simple steel helmet and a pair of black gloves had been left on a short stone pedestal by the door. Bleeding vines wrapped their way up the walls. Danica smelled blood and sap.
She gathe red up the equipment. A crowd roared on the other side of the door. She could only guess that her opponents had already started to fil e in to the arena.
Danica stood at the door and waited. She was sh a k ing all over, and she felt like a piece of metal had caught in her chest. She didn’t want to see what waited for her on the other side.
It’s going to be okay.
“Screw it.”
She opened the door. Floodlights nearly blinded her. P risoners atop the walls roared with approval as Danica walked through the door. She smelled fuel and felt the burn of vehicular fumes. The roar of engines rattled the ground.
The underground arena housed a massive racetrack made of scorched earth and sharp granite. Bridges, canyons and dark pillars stood in the distance. The track sat in a giant bowl of black rock with a low wall around the rim. The staging area was elevated above the track itself, which dipped down to a shallow valley filled with smoke, flame s and jagged stone s. The behemoth cavern of Black Scar prison hung overhead, a permanent underground night.
“You like it?” Rake asked.
He, Burke and Raven stood on a large iron platform that hover ed some twenty feet above the floor. Steam and smoke billowed from its turbine engine s. A number of small land vehicles had been spread out across the staging area directly ahead of Danica.
“It’s real f ancy,” she told Rake.
“Burke thought you’d like it, s ince you were at a race when we nabbed your cute little ass.”
“Is there a point to this conversation?” Danica shouted up to him. “Aside from you getting to act like a dick?”
“We have time to kill,” Rake said off-handedly. He spoke quietly, but she heard his voice clear ly in spite of the noise. Sometimes i t was easy to forget that he was a warlock. He held such utter control over his spirit that it never so much as shifted or even made its presence known without his approval. Danica could only barely detect her now, a slithering whisper lost in the din of background noise. “I’m real ly disappointed in you, Danica,” he said. “ You’re a whore. Did y ou know that? ”
“Am I?” she laughed. “And how is that?”
“Because you had to go and sleep with the enemy,” he said coldly. “You had to put your chips in with the Southern Claw…and with that warlock.” The platform lowered till it nearly touched the ground. The exhaust blew dark dust everywhere. Danica stood firm.
The platform hovered closer. It could have knocked her down had they wanted it to. Rake stood with his arms crossed; he was just a few feet away. Danica pictured herself using her helmet as a weapon and bashing in his skull, but she knew he and Raven were just waiting for her to try something.
“You know you’re going to die, right, Dani? ” he said. “ I just want you to know that your friends are all going to die, too. I’ll see to it myself. ”
She gave him a cold look. He just smiled. T he platform r o se back into the air.
Black watched the m ascend. Hatred burned in her heart.
The other contestants in the race were among the luminaries of Black Scar prison. They’d all been there for a good stretch of time and had all served time under Danica’s watch, which was undoubtedly why Rake had selected them.
All of the racers wore matching black leather body armor. They were forced to change out there in the open, much to Black’s chagrin, and the hoot and holler of the prisoners up above was punctuated by a number of rape threats.
Danica ignored them. She had purpose now: to make Rake pay. Her earlier resignation to her fate had dissolved.
One way or another, I’m living through this.
Markos and Cassandra were siblings from the Reach who’d once been part of a roaming band of marauders that preyed on settlers and workers in the borderlands. Both of them were blonde-haired, pale and tall, and they bore matching blood scar tattoos on the right sides of their faces.
Jorgo lon Creel, aka “ Jorgo the Red ”, was a muscular serial killer who’d slaughtered fourteen people in the city-state of Ath. He’d skinned his victims and used the hides to build a ship he believed would carry him to safety when the world flooded.
Vance Creyzak was a Vuul mercenary who did jobs for the Ebon Cities scouting human settlements and military outposts. The grey-fleshed maniac had a reputation for being a vicious hand-to-hand combatant and had an unsavory taste for human females, who rarely survived his attentions.
The racers present were each given their choice of vehicle. The first person who completed the race circuit, which looped down into the valley and back again, w ould be allowed to live. They were, of course, given full reign to kill each other during the race, though no weapons were provided. Danica knew that probably wouldn’t happen until the race started.
Danica selected a bladed motor cycle, a modified Tiger 800XC, the same model she and Lara used to ride around on. Steel armor plates had been welded to the front and sides, and the wheels were reinforced with metal studs and sealed with anti-puncture coagulant. Razor spines and a thaumaturgic engine powered the sleek black and red cycle.
I must be nuts. I haven’t rid de n one of these things in years.
The twins took a dune buggy each. Jorgo requisitioned a small pickup truck with spiked ram plates and retractable chains. Creyzak took the wheel of a converted vampire war wagon that had been stripped down to its chassis, but the oversized stone and steel wheels still looked formidable enough to crush other small vehicles.
The racers made ready to begin when a sixth contestant was pushed into the underground arena by a pair of Scarecrows.
It was Cole.
“You bastard!” Danica yelled up at Rake. Rake just smiled and waved.
“Dani!” Cole shouted. Danica tried to run to her, but there was a great deal of open ground between them, much of it covered by Scarecrows armed with hand-held cannons. The grinning-skull sentries formed a wall of armored dead flesh between the women and kep t them apart. Cole had already been dressed in her dark armor before they’d brought her out. She looked so small amongst the corpses.
“Lara!” Black shouted back.
“Time to go,” Rake shouted from above, and the racers took their positions under the careful watch of Scarecrow weapons.
Cole was s hoved into an armored orange-and-white El Camino equipped with a ram-plate. She looked at Danic a. Even from a hundred yards away Danica saw the frightened tears in her eyes.
Her pulse raced. She shook with panic.
No. Get a hold of yourself.
Black got on the motorcycle. Motors flared to life all around her. Exhaust and gas fumes filled the air. The vehicles were poised at the top of a dark, steep hill. The hill dipped down t owards a gully that ran like a cut down the middle of a narrow and elevated mesa. T hat mesa, in turn, led to a nother hill covered with a forest of razor sharp stones. F rom there the track ran down to the lower level of the arena.
Rake made a motion up above, and w eapons hidden in the vehicles revealed themselves. Chain-guns and blades popped out of secret compartments. T he siblings discover ed hand-held firearms in their du ne buggies, and Jorgo lifted a m orningstar out of the seat in the pickup.
Danica searched around the motorcycle. There was nothing there — no weapons, no secret buttons or compartments.
That piece of shit!
Her skin grew hot. Cold wind raced against her and slipped through her fingers like a pulsing electric tide. She breathed it in, and her lungs turned to ice.
Her spirit was back. He was weak and dazed, like he’d just woken from a deep sleep. His vaporous presence flushed her skin. She focused her mind, and with each passing breath he grew more solid. He flowed through her with pulsing liquid force. R age burned behind her eyes and boiled in her blood.
She readied herself. The crowd up above counted down loudly.
“ THREE!.. TWO!.. ONE!..”
A booming klaxon wail ed from somewhere deep in the prison and signaled the beginning of the race. V ehicles sprang to life and roared down the hill in a burst of mechanical growl s. C louds of dust kicked up behind spinning armored tires.
The racers wasted no time getting to the violence. Creyzak’s vampire wagon launched smoking spikes sideways into Jorgo’s pickup, and Danica rain ed cold sparks down on the damaged truck with her spirit and finished the job. Jorgo’s vehicle only made it twenty feet before it exploded and buckled in a roar of blue fire. Flaming debris rolled down the hill.
Danica raced ahead. Her heart hammered painfully against her chest. Wind rushed at her. Her spirit roared after her in a trail of spectral smoke.
The bike launched over the side of the hill and sped down the slope towards the top of the mesa. The sound of the roaring engine filled her head, and she drove so fast the ground almost seemed to vanish beneath her. Her head felt suffocated in the tight helmet, even with the wide visor.
She rocketed across the dark earth and dodged sharp stones and debris. Bullets tore into the ground behind her.
Danica twisted the bike as she came to the bottom of the slope, veered sideways, and almost tipp ed into the gully. Chunks of mud and rock exploded everywhere as shots hammered down.
There was only a narrow stretch of mesa top to either side of the gully. Danica was between the cleft and the cliff edge. She could see the floor of the blasted subterranean valley several hundred feet below.
She righted the bike and followed the gully. It was about twenty feet wide and ten deep, and its interior walls were lined with barbed iron stakes. A small horde of grey-skinned zombies waited at the bottom, slathering and moaning and pushing each other ’s rotting bodies out of the way in a desperate attempt to climb out.
Markos and Cassandra ’s dune buggies r ac e d parallel to Danica on the other side of the gully. Danica look ed back and saw the El Camino locked in a tight race with the vampire war wagon.
She whipped her head forward. Up ahead, t he mesa came to an abrupt end just before the forest of sha rp stones.
Cassandra vaulted her dune buggy across the gully. The armored hulk soar ed through the air straight towards Black’s motorcycle.
Danica hit the brakes. T he dune buggy landed awkwardly and bounced down just ahead of her, barely missing the gul f. Cassandra spun her vehicle around and race d straight at Danica. The pale woman fired her M16 at the cycle. Danica twisted her vehicle sideways and us ed her spirit to shield her body from the ground. Metal sparked and rained around her. Danica barely missed the dune buggy as she dodged around it.
She glanced behind her. Cassandra spun her vehicle around. T he vampire tank chased down the El Camino. Cole did her best to keep her distance. C hain guns tore up the earth around Lara’s car.
Come on, Lara.
Danica looked ahead, and her heart jumped into her throat. She and Markos reached the end of the gully at the same time. He steered his dune buggy around the edge and straight towards her. Danica aimed for the stone forest, lowered her head and hit the gas. The cycle roared forward. Her spirit flowed around her in a fire shield.
Markos barely missed her and instead smashed into Cassandra. The dune buggies bounced away from each other.
Danica raced into the columns of bladed rock. An explosion shook the air behind her.
I hope Lara can get through all right.
The cycle was perfect for dodging through the sharp pillars of stone. The s pace was tight, and a single wrong turn would throw her against a sharp edge and end the race for her right there. The columns seemed to twist and snake as she darted back and forth across the smooth ground. She rocked with the cycle, dart ed in and out of the columns and moved deeper into folds of roiling crystal smoke.
A cloud of necrotic matter boiled overhead, and seconds later i t belched slippery oil rain all over the stone forest. Danica nearly lost control of the cycle. The bike slipped, and she had to right it several times to make sure she didn’t fly into a razor-edged pillar. She pushed her spirit ahead and used him to blast the oil out of her path. Slick dark fluid splattered the columns.
Gunshots ricocheted off the stone. Markos and Cassandra now shared a single dune buggy, and they blazed around a column and bore down on Danica. Streams of fire billowed out of their damaged vehicle, and they dragged a stream of smoke in their wa ke. Cassandra’s face was burned. S he grit her teeth a nd fired at the bike.
A bullet ripped into Danica’s arm. Pain lanced through her body, and she nearly spiraled out of control.
“Shit!”
The w heels skid, and the columns seemed to circle round her. Her spirit flew in and grabbed her, slowed the bike so she didn’t fly into the rocks. Danica bit through the pai n, took hold of the handles and straightened the cycle out. She’d lost her sense of direction.
The dune buggy came straight at her. Markos and Cassandra were laughing.
Danica turned and squeezed into a narrow gap between the oncoming buggy and a stone column. A sharp rock sliced her leg open, and she screamed.
Markos wasn’t able to right his course in time. The buggy slammed into the rock and exploded in a noisy blast of metal and flame. Bits of steel rained down.
Danica caught her breath. Adrenaline raced through her veins. Blood dripped down her limbs, and he r spirit quickly and painlessly sealed her wounds. She sensed his fatigue — she was asking a lot of him, and his spectral form was flushed with panic. He was afraid she wouldn’t make it out of this.
That makes two of us. But right now we have to save Cole.
She took stock of her position. Gunfire blasted in the distance to her left. She kicked the cycle into gear and raced on. Her left arm and leg ached like she’d been beaten, but thanks to her spirit the bleeding had stopped, and the pain wasn’t near ly as bad as it should have been.
She emerged from the forest of blade d stone and raced down a steep hill that curved around the far edge of the arena. A maze of short wooden bridges spanned pits in the dark hill side. G eysers of orange acid fire blasted out of the holes at random intervals. The track circle d down the hill for almost a mile.
The other two racers had somehow gotten in front of her. Lara’s El Camino race d just ahead of Creyzak ’s vampire war wagon. The Camino’s tail was on fire. Thin bone needles jutted out of the top of the car like porcupine quills, an d the driver’s side door looked ready to fall from its hinges. The war wagon had taken some damage from small-arms fire and collisions, but it s till moved ahead at full speed.
Damn it.
Danica sped down the hill. The cycle laun ched across the first bridge. T he hole beneath it was deep and filled with charred bones.
Clouds of d ust blew across the hillside like wraiths. The canyon wall was covered with cracks and foul waterfalls of sludge. T he bottom of the slope stood at the edge of a stony field.
Black raced down the hill. The Tiger’s motor revved and faded and shook hard against her stomach and legs. H er body ached. She shook her head and focused.
Don’t stop now.
She barreled over the next bridge and felt it rumble and shake beneath her. F ire exploded up from the hole just seconds later. H eat washed over her, and the force of the blast made the cycle sputter and tip. S he almost lost control. Her spirit shielded her from the heat, but not before she felt blisters sco u r her back beneath the leather armor. Sweat poured down her face and into her eyes.
Fi e ry rain scorched the ground. Danica twisted the bike and turn ed sharp at the nadir of the slope. She dodg e d broken steel girders that stuck out of the dirt like rusty knives.
The ground leveled out. She raced onto grease d stone covered with unnatural mist. Even with the speed and adrenaline and the heat of the fire still washing over her, Danica felt the cloying chill of the black field, the waves of utter cold that rolled at her like walls of frozen breath.
She was still behind the others. Cole was a hundred yards ahead, dodging Creyzak a n d the wagon, which rammed into the El Camino and sent it spinning. Metal flew into the air. B oth vehicles vanished into the brume.
Black rocketed through the field of dark stone. Vapors raced apart beneath the cycle’s armored wheels. Broken links of chain and sharp stones littered the ground. The air smelled like the inside of a meat locker.
She only made it a few yards before she had to twist the cycle so hard she almost spun out. The fi eld was littered with pits, nearly twenty- feet wide and spaced about fifty yards apart, so utterly dark and camouflaged by the stygian mist they were all but impossible to see from a distance.
Danica’s blood froze. She just knew that Lara had fallen into a pit.
She sped forward. Panic gripped her chest. Her spirit flew around her like a hurricane.
The world was blue haze and steaming dark smoke. The midnight ground seemed to go on forever. She heard the distant cheers of the captive crowd.
The vampire war wagon had stopped and parked next to one of the pits. Danica drove towards it and slowed down. Her spirit fused around her in a hot shield.
She brought the bike to a stop next to the wagon. Its bone armor and dangling chains were covered in road grit and scorch marks. Smoke poured out of i ts h eavy guns. I ron blades covered its hull like razor ed fur.
Black leapt off her cycle and ran over to the pit. The El Camino was there, stuck just a few feet below the mouth of the hole. Lara’s vehicle had fallen at a n angle and hung suspended: the front ram plates had wedged into the black stone about ten paces down from the lip, while the rear tires had turned sideways and were stuck in the wall on the opposite side. The vehicle creaked in place, ready to plummet.
“Lara!”
“Dani!” Cole’s voice came from inside the car.
Black’s spirit bristled, then roared. She heard the footsteps, but not in time.
Creyzak stepped up out of nowhere and smashed her face with a long exhaust pipe he’d ripped off his vehicle. Her spirit took the brunt of the blow, but the impact still knocked her backwards. Blood spurted from her mouth. Her back hit the stony ground.
Creyzak brought the pipe up over his head. His translucent Vuul skin flooded with angry blood, and h is squat grey eyes burned with rage.
Danica lashed out at him with her sp irit. Fiery razor s raked Creyzak across the chest, but he leapt back in time to avoid the full force of the blow.
She struggled to her feet. H er face was numb, and the rest of her body burned with pain.
Her spirit fused to her forearm as a jagged shard of razor light. Danica’s vision had gone blurry, but her spirit helped guide her actions.
The Vuul was silent as he swung the pipe again. Danica sliced the metal apart and sent it smoking to the ground. She leapt up and kicked Creyzak in the face. G rey-green blood spurted from his mouth as he fell onto his back.
“Dani!”
The car creaked in the hole behind her. Black sent her spirit into the pit. She felt him strain as he wrapped round the falling car and held it.
Creyzak leapt up. His supernatural metabolism fused his wounds together. She watched sickly black veins pulse and throb as he charged. Without her spirit, she was unarmed, and the grey-fleshed killer had two feet of height and at least a hundred pounds on her. She tensed, bent her knees, and readied for the impact.
Her spirit strained. She sensed Lara try to escape, felt her climb out and grab onto the pit wall, but the earth was dry and loose. The car slipped.
Creyzak jumped at Danica, and though she managed to twist out of the way at the last moment he still reached out and grabbed her arm, right where the bullet had struck. She screamed in pain.
They tumbled to the ground. The Vuul’s weight smothered her as they rolled over each other.
“Dani!” Cole yelled. “Dani, please…”
Lara screamed. B lack’s spirit grabbed Cole. The car fell and crashed into the darkness.
Creyzak was on Danica, and he punched her in the face with his rock-hard fist s. S kin split and blood flew everywhere. H er head smacked against the rock.
Danica’s spirit tore into the Vuul’s face like a knife. Creyzak fell back with a cry. Cole ran over from the edge of the pit, grabbed the Vuul from behind and threw him to the ground.
Danica could barely see. Blood ran into her eyes, and the bones in her face ached. She heard cheers and calls in the distance as the crowd roared it’s appreciation of the battle.
Her spirit pulsed dully at the edge of her thoughts. He had little power left. With no time to recover and with as much as she’d ask ed of him during the race, it was a wonder he’d been able to pull Lara to safety.
Cole kicked and clawed at Creyzak as he rose. The Vuul took Lara by the throat.
Black struggled to her feet. Her vision pulsed and faded. She channeled her spirit into a smoking blade and cast it at the back of Creyzak’s head.
It was too late. The Vuul snapped Cole’s neck with a swift twist just seconds before the arcane weapon cleaved through his skull. The bodies fell to the ground almost in tandem.
The distant roar of the crowd faded. The strength drained from Black’s body, and the breath left her lungs. She stumbled forward a few steps and fell to her knees.
She couldn’t breathe. Hot t ears flooded her eyes, and her mouth moved soundlessly. Her arms shook as she took Lara in her arms. Cole’s eyes were open and full of fear. Her pale skin was warm, and her dark hair was pasted to her forehead.
Danica couldn’t hold herself still. Something cold welled up inside her, an emptiness. A void. The wail she released didn’t even seem to come from her, but from somewhere else.
She held Cole tight, hugge d her, smother ed her, hoping, wishing, for her to be okay. She muttered something into Cole’s ear over and over again, and she wasn’t even sure what it was.
Her spirit faded. She heard engines approach, and she smelled the rot of carrion corp ses. Her legs had gone numb. Her t ears had run all over Lara’s dead face.
“You’re all I ever wanted…” she sobbed. “ All I ever wanted…”
Geist pulled her away. The half- Doj was too large and too strong for her to even consider putting up a fight.
R ake and Raven looked on in silence. Their dark cloaks rippled in the subterranean wind. Scarecrows gathered up the bodies and unceremoniously cast them into the pits.
Danica watched Cole fall into the dark. She seemed frozen there for a moment, trapped in black stasis. Her body was so frail, so temporary.
And then she was gone.
Do you?
“I’m impressed, Dani,” Rake said. “I guess we’ll use you after all.”
She looked at him. She felt nothing. She knew that she hated him, but at that moment all she wanted was for him to kill her. Her spirit was gone, shielded off by Raven. She had nothing left.
Not true, she told herself. You still have Cross.
But that knowledge did nothing for her pain.
Lara, the love of her life, was gone.