Steven Montano

Crown of Ash

He looks out from the void.

He is nothing. A ghost presence. A phantom.

Trapped in a land of whispering voices.

He ha s been t here for so very long.

The world is saturated in darkness. It slither s down the trees like rain.

Years have passed since he first arrived in that dismal place. His face is leathery and r ough, and he wears a thick beard. His hair is long and unkempt. His skin has gone dark, saturated by the soot atmosphere. His lips are dry and his eyes sting from the dark grit that constantly lashes the landscape.

Everything is black and cold. The land, the trees, even the other inhabitants of that cloying realm are suffused with shadow. It drips from every pore.

The sky is a frozen sl ate of perpetual dusk. L ight shines from just over the horizon and drenches everything in an eye-numbing glaze. The freezing wind smells of rot.

He ’ s come to know this land of torn red mud and black ooze. There are few cities, all of them in ruin s. He travels past briny pools of black water and dark trees with branches weighed down by deathly pale fruit. He avoids reptiles that breath e caustic slime and carnivorous plants that fan and pulsate like living organs. H e circumvents blood swamps and fields of mo ldered bones.

He isn’ t the only human in th at dominion of shade. He spies natives in the distance, primitive and murderous people who roam the land in small bands. They ride on the backs of shaggy mammoth beasts with scorpion tails.

He sees phasing fliers, unstable bats the size of whales. They soar low through the undine fog and howl at the ground as they search for prey. T heir riders are horned humanoids with staffs of dark fire and cloaks of mirrored scale s.

He is a stranger there, a refugee. He walks and walks and dreams of escape, but he has been there for so long he’ s almost given up hope. The shadow world ha s him, and it will never let hi m go. He tries to remember the world he once belonged to. It was a scarred world, damaged beyond measure, but it was his home. He’d protected it from danger more times than he could remember. N ever before had he appreciated it as much as he does now.

The worst times for him are when he looks into the water. He hugs himself tight in his cloak to shield his body against the freezing wind a s he stands over clear pools of ice and salt. There are only a few of those pools, derelict bodies of steaming cold liquid so utterly pale they are like liquid suns on the face of the ebon landscape. They stare like white eyes up to the darkness of the sky.

When he stands near them he see s into the world he used to call home. The visions are always random fla shes that last just a few moments, but he finds himself staring into them more and more as the years go by.

After a time, he seeks the pools out. H e evades shadowy pack beasts with knife-teeth and lumbering humanoid walkers with limbs like bladed poles. He braves those creatures in exchange for glimpsing snapshots of a place from his past.

H e sees his sister’s grave. He sees faces of people he once knew and cared for, just as they’d been before his actions brought about their deaths. The fact that he can’t remember their names means little.

He drink s filthy fluid from the ground, something like blood and brine. He lives off of fibrous plants and small game, shadow-drenched creatures with cold eyes and black blood. He doesn’t actually need food in that world of darkness, but the memory of eating is with him, and he nourishes it.

He is alone. His spirit is long gone, exiled to some other realm, if indeed she even still exists. Sometimes h e talks to himself as he wanders th e wastelands.

The pools seem to follow him, or else they anticipate hi s movement. He wonders if they need him as much as he needs them.

Every time they appear they grant him longer and longer visions. He looks through to the adjacent reality. The realm he is trapped in just a reflection. The Black once melded and conjoined the damaged remains of disparate worlds, but not all of those joining s were complete.

He is stuck in a drift zone filled with the detritus of places left shattered by The Black. It is a home of the forgotten.

He watches, and sometimes he sees friends he used to k now. He recognizes their faces. He knows they risked and lost much to try and help him, but it was all for nothing. He isn’ t there with them. He is n’t anywhere.

He sees his friends, and he knows they’ re in danger. It’ s difficult to make sense of it all because he can ’ t determine the order of events. He sees a n old lover in peril; a forward vampire patrol; a cadre of cruel mages; a city surrounded by black stakes; a broken boundary; a n obelisk of glass skulls.

Fear grips his heart, but there’ s nothing he can do except wander the black wastelands, exiled and lost.

ONE

Blacksand

Year 25 A.B. (After the Black)

She dreamed of silk sheets and soft pillows, golden sunlight and ochre clouds. She dreamed of a warm woman in her bed, and birdsong outside the window. She dreamed of sandstone pillars and the smells of cinnamon and hyacinth.

But when Danica Black woke, she found none of those things. She was still in the dirty sheets in a hotel in Blacksand, where she star ed through gritty yellow air filled with blood flies and dust. Everything was moist and damp and tasted like the inside of an engine.

Danica stared up from a bed in a small concrete room. Gashes and graffiti littered the walls. Greasy drops of water seeped out of cracks in the faded stone and pooled on a floor covered in rags and discarded clothing. Danica’s gear was on a small table near the door, all except for her guns and knives, which were secure in their harnesses on the metal headboard of the bed, just beneath the small window.

Mystic chants and the groan of industrial machines sounded outside. The smell of fish and fuel and roasting meat wafted through the windows.

Danica groaned. Four black guavas was at least three too many, but once she and Kane got going it was sometimes difficult for them to stop. Pain flared behind her eyes, so deep it was like someone had driven needles there. Her back and neck were sore and stiff. S he rose and stretched, and h er muscles popped and realigned.

Her spirit hovered over her like a burning sheet. She felt his angst at having been cooped up with her for so long. They’d been in Blacksand for roughly three weeks, and they rarely got out in the open. She called him down and let him swim through her fingers like warm oil. He phased through her body like a wave of heat and evaporated the alcohol from her system. She held him in check — if he did his work too quickly she’d end up vomiting all over the place, and one of the fringe benefits of being a mage was that she could drink as much as she wanted without having to go through all of th at.

Danica pulled on her tank-top and loose black pants and fastened on her combat boots. While there was little need to wander around their temporary hideout in full body armor, she’d have been remiss if she didn’t keep a firearm and a bla de handy. F or all intents and purposes they were in hostile territory.

Blacksand was a criminal port-city located near the southern edge of the continent, several hundred miles outside of Southern Claw territory. While the criminal controlled town wasn’ t considered an enemy of the Southern Claw, the general state of lawlessness and prolific illegal activ ity kept everyone on their toes, especially since some one had been a sking questions about the team — and specifically about Danica — for the past several days.

Someone hunted them, and they had no one to fall back on for assistance except for each other and their “ host ”, a local crime lord named Klos Vago. And Vago’s help came at a price.

The team had rented the entire top floor of an extremely run-down hotel called The Fire Goddess, located near the center of the city. The walls were grooved metal stained with rust and soot, and the entire structure appeared to ha ve been built from the rem ai ns of a crashed airship. F lickering beams of grungy light cut through circular fans in the ceiling. Danica heard the groan of aircraft and dirigibles and the roaring engines of gas-powered sea vessels as they pull ed into port. A glaze of sweat covered everyone and everything in Blacksand, and pollut ion hung as thick as oil in the stifling heat.

Danica pulle d open the door to her quarters and stepped into the hall.

“Morning,” Ronan said quietly. The swordsman was lean and tall, dressed all in black, with metal-studded boots and fingerless gloves. One hand gripped a throwing dagger, while the other held an MP5 A5. His short and spiky hair was dark and looked like it had never been properly groomed. H is once-good looks had been permanent ly marred when he’d leapt into a blade storm to pull Cross to safety. Most of Ronan’s cuts had largely healed, but he still wore several messy bandages, and most of the time he wore a black shemagh to conceal his face.

“Morning,” Danica said.

“I’m kidding. It’s noon.”

“Whatever.”

One of the other doors in the hall opened. Maur wande red out; he fidget ed with something in his small hands. The diminutive and pale-faced Gol wore red fatigues. He’d left his cloak in his room, and his bald grey pate was basked with sweat.

“Maur says it’ s far too hot in this building,” he said. None of them knew why he always referred to himself in the third person, but he’d been do ing it for as long as any of them had ever known him. It had made the team’s first interview with the pilot-mechanic somewhat confusing, and during most of the conversation Kane had been convinced Maur was talking about someone else.

“It’s like that everywhere in Blacksand,” Ronan said snidely.

“Then Maur thinks we should leave.”

“We’re working on it,” Danica said.

Unfortunately, they were in something of a bind. They had to try and purchase passage to get back home, but that wasn’t going to be easy with no money and with someone actively hunting them. The identity of their stalkers had yet to be revealed, but from what they’d learned whoever it was had sold iers stationed outside the city, as well as plenty of money and influence. According to Vago, every cutthroat bounty hunter in Blacksand had their eyes out for them.

And there are a lot of bounty hunters in Blacksand, Danica thought. Like… half the population. I wish we hadn’t blown the rest of our cash paying two week’s rent on this dump. Of course, they’d had little choice after a near-fatal run-in with a squad of Vuul headhunters. That fight was what had first tipped them off to the fact that someone in Blacksand was actively hunting them down. They weren’t able to afford passage away from the city, but they ’d had enough money to go into hiding, at least for a short time. And now we’re trapped.

Danica nodded towards the door behind Ronan.

“How is he?” she asked.

“Same as ever,” Ronan said quietly.

“Morning!” Kane said as h e came out of his room. He wore no shirt, and his pants were partially undone. His long blonde hair fell just past his shoulders. Dozens of tattoos and scars covered his chiseled chest and washboard stomach.

If I was straight, I would probably jump you, Danica thought with a quiet laugh.

“ Not morning. Lunch time,” Ronan said.

Kane threw up his hands in mock despair.

“Get dressed,” Danica told him. “We have to meet with Vago.”

“What does Ugly the Hutt want?” Kane yawned. He pulled on a dirty grey shirt as he walked across the hall. “Is he finally going to help us?”

“That’s what he said when I spoke to him,” Danica said, and she didn’t bother hiding the skepticism in her voice. Vago had dangled them around like worms on a hook for over a week. They’d already performed a handful of odd jobs for him, but t hey needed him to agree to terms of how much service they’d provide in exchange for passage north, and they needed him to do it before their mysterious pursuers caught up with them. “ Maybe he can also tell us who’s looking for me.”

“Us,” Ronan said. “You mean ‘us’.”

Black hesitated. “Yeah,” she said. “Us.” She looked at the door. “I’m going to go say hello.”

The door opened to a stark concrete room. They’d chosen it because the small window was reinforced with an iron grille and it faced south, so very little sunlight came into the room… although none of them was sure why that mattered. Direct sunlight was unlikely to stir the occupant of the chamber. The bed was neat, nearly made, even though a man lay on top of it.

Eric Cross was twenty years older than when he’d left the team behind to go and find out what had happen ed to him after he’d fallen in to a vat of necrotic fluid in the Bonespire near Thornn. He’d never come back. They’d pursued him halfway across the continent before they’d caught up with him. Even after they’d found him, his nightmare had been far from over.

H is once boyish face was lined with age and fatigue. E ven after they’d changed him out of his soiled clothing and trimmed up his dark and scraggly beard he was still just a haggard reflection of who and what he’d once been. He was tall and thin, and skin once pale had gone darker, almost leathery.

Danica quietly stepped up next to his bed. He hadn’t woken since they’d rescued him. They’d lost two of their team getting him back, and they had very few answers as to what had happened, or why he was still asleep. They didn’t know how to help him.

But if we can ever actually get you back to Thornn, maybe we can find out, Danica thought. God damn this place.

She ran a finger along Cross’ weather-beaten cheek. He looked so strange with a beard. She hated seeing him like that, so helpless. So alone.

When I first met you, I thought I was going to have to kill you, she thought. Now I owe you everything.

“Come back, Eric,” she said softly. She knew he couldn’t hear her.

After a time she left him there, and she closed the door behind her.

Gouts of steam erupted into the air. Human traffic packed lanes filled with caged animals, livestock, tables of linens and knives, fruit stands, watch vendors, fortune-tellers and soothsayers. People were dressed in a motley assortment of loose clothing, tunics or capes, sandaled feet or combat boots, exotic and colorful cloaks that looked like peacock’s feathers or somber grey and green work fatigues. Small dirigibles loaded with goods soared overhead. Rickety wagons barreled down the street. Mutated horses and homunculi servants brayed and keened in the background. The team passed through drifts of tobacco and alcohol, fruit vapors and burning meat. Danica smelled linseed oil and beeswax, smelted copper and roasted corn.

Her spirit kept to the background and quietly skirted the periph ery of her thoughts while they passed through the bustling city-state. Kane and Ronan kept their eyes alert. They were all exhausted and on edge, but everyone was ready. They were in dangerous territory, and she knew she could count on them.

Blacksand was a port-city. It was a crossroads — a means to getting elsewhere. Travelers of all sorts stalked the corridors of Blacksand looking for buyers or wares: Rakzeri merchants, Vuul pirates, nomads from the distant islands of Nezek’duul with their filed teeth and frost-white eyes. Waters lapped against dark pylons in a bay filled with iron and steel ships weigh t ed down with weapons and slaves. The s andy streets were awash with liquor and blood.

Danica, Kane and Ronan moved through the streets with determination. They’d left Maur back at the hotel with Cross and a lot of guns. The one thing they hadn’t left there was Cross’ s wea pon, the mysterious fused blade Soulrazor / Avenger, a rcane swords forged from opposing energies. They knew little about the blade save for the fact that the separate pieces had been forged from the power of two opposing deity-like forces, and that it had somehow allowed Cross to survive long after he should have been dead. Danica carried the hybrid blade concealed beneath her armor coat.

They came to an open market, a junk station filled with piles of refu se: old engines, batteries, scrap metal, hoses and tubing, mounds of ball bearings and rubber tires. All of those goods had been pushed into monstrous mounds next to wide wooden tables, where scruffy and grease-stained men with goggles and workman’s aprons h aggled with mechanics and metal- yard workers. Some of the negotiations were closer to screaming matches.

A small building made of stone and steel stood at the far end of the junkyard. T he door opened as Danica and the others approached.

Her spirit boiled against her skin. She sensed presences above, fast-moving figures with razored jaws and iron-capped wings. Shadows came into view.

“Incoming!” Kane yelled.

A trio of grey-skinned gargoyles unfurled their wings over the scrap yard. S teel harpoons and straps of dark armor reflected the dull light of the orange sun.

Kane fired at them with an M14A, and Ronan dodged to the edge of a pile of debris and shot up at them with his MP5. The g argoyles were startlingly quick, and somehow dodged the barrage of bullets with ease. The roar of gunfire was deafening. Shell casings clattered in the dirt.

Danica smelled hex fumes in the air. Whispers came at her with the force of an iron wind.

The gargoyles weren’t alone.

She narrowly avoided a blazing missile of shrapnel. Metal wreckage exploded in hex flames behind her, and heat washed over her body.

Danica’s spirit moved around her wrists and fused into a shield of force. A second missile exploded against the barrier. B i ts of smoking steel rained to the ground.

A mercenary warlock unfolded out of the shadows. His spirit camouflaged him, made him fade in and out of sight. He seemed two-dimensional, a paper enemy. His eyes glowed like burning cinders.

Kane brought one of the gargoyles down with a stream of gunfire. Another darted forward and clawed at Ronan. It flew back and came in again, a nd the swordsman deflected its attacks with his katana.

The merchants and shoppers in the scrap-yard had fled. Panicked n oise echoed everywhere.

The warlock turned and vanished again.

Damn it!

Danica’s spirit coiled around her like a hungry serpent. His touch chilled her skin. She shuffled her feet in the dirt, and moved careful so as to avoid tripping on any debris. The yard felt wide open, and she realized how exposed she was. Her back tensed with anticipation of an attack.

She heard the stone breath of the gargoyle moments too late. The warlock had masked the creature’s presence. It suddenly loomed over her with outstretched claws and massive teeth.

The moment Danica turned around the mage shifted into focus just off her right flank. Light caught on his dark cloak, and she saw a bandolier filled with explosives and knives. His spirit coiled into a n ice stake that he held like a spear.

Danica ignored the gargoyle and launched her spirit at the warlock. Red energies exploded in a shower of razor sparks. The warlock’s cloak caught on fire, and the spirit missile he’d prepared to cast at Danica detonated in his own hands. His body exploded in a blaze of ice, flame and blood.

A sharp crack sounded, and t he gargoyle fell to the ground at Danica’s feet. She looked up and saw a handful of armed soldiers who ’ d emerged from the small building.

Jade, a young and attractive woman with vaguely Asian features and incredibly long and silken dark hair, stood at the head of the party. She wore a simple blue-black cloak and riding pants, a loose white shirt and a number of rings. Her eyes sparkled with magic, and Danica immediately took note of the witch’s spirit, a hostile male force that circled her like a caged tiger. Black’s spirit bristled, and though the two tensed and tested one another, Danica held hers back and used him to make sure there weren’t any more threats approaching.

The on ly other newcomer that Danica recognize d, Sol, stood with his gun still smok ing from whe n he’d shot the gargoyle. He was a mountain of a man, a half-Doj with dark skin and dark eyes, short cropped black hair and muscles like iron. He wore a tight armor vest and flak pants, and even though he smile d wide his eyes burned with malice.

Sol and Jade were enforcers for Klos Vago, a member of the large cartel of slave traders and smugglers known as T he Shard.

“Mr. Vago sends his regards,” Jade said politely.

“Who the hell were these guys?” Kane asked angrily as he gestured at the corpses. Gargoyle blood covered his chest.

“Bounty hunters would be my guess,” Ronan said. He wiped his katana off on the one of the bodies.

“Again?” Kane said.

“Yes,” Jade answered. “Again.”

“Which means we need to get out of Blacksand,” Danica said. “I trust that’s why Vago want s to meet with us?”

“ A ctually, he sent us to give you the details of the last job he’d like you to do before he helps you get home,” Jade explained. “L isten… we should really get indoors…”

“What do we have to do?” Kane interrupted.

Jade hesitated, and looked at Sol. He shrugged.

The city around them had more or less returned to normal. Minimal damage had been dealt to the scrap yard, and automaton slaves moved forward in a rush of whirs and buzz to scrape up the debris. The sky drowned in thick red clouds, and Danica smelled sea salt on the wind. People outside the scrap yard went about their business — if the battle had bothered them, they didn’t show it.

“You two,” Jade said to Kane and Ronan, “will fetch your friend Maur and come with me and Sol. We’re going to investigate some trouble near the arcane barriers north of the city.”

“What are we looking for?” Ronan asked quietly.

“Vampires,” Sol said with a smile. “Ebon Cities forward patrols. We don’t want them around, and they can’t seem to take the hint. You help us out with our problem, and the boss says he’ll help you out with yours.”

“Wait a second…” Black said. “Where am I going to be during all this?”

“Mr. Vago fears it would be too great a risk to send you out with your teammates,” Jade explained. “ Especially since the soldiers of Black Scar are here in the city looking for you.”

Damn it.

“Black Scar…” Kane said. “Dani…”

“Wouldn’t it make sense to send her away from the city if she’s the one they’re looking for?” Ronan asked.

“Mr. Vago doesn’t think so. We’re certain they’re watching anyone who leaves the city, and they’re…”

“ Probably t racking my arcane signature,” Black said bitterly. She looked at Kane and Ronan. “ And if they’re doing that, there’s a good chance they’re also giving my signature out to the mercenaries they’ve hired, which explains why both these guys and those Vuul were able to find us once I got out in the open.” You shouldn’t be surprised. You knew your past would catch up with you sooner or later. “ Shit.”

Jade hesitated.

“He has ways of masking you from their presence,” she said. “But you’ll have to remain close to him.”

This keeps getting better and better, Black thought. Surprisingly, though, she thought Jade sounded truly encouraging, maybe even sympathetic. I’ll keep that in mind.

“This is a crap idea, Dani,” Kane said.

“Don’t be scared, Blondie,” Sol said.

“I wasn’t talking to you, Beefsteak,” he said.

Ronan looked at Danica.

“It’s your call.”

Danica looked at her friends, and then at Jade. This was worse than she ’d thought.

Why are you looking for me now? she wondered. Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone, Rake?

She tapped her foot. They had to get home. For all they knew, Cross’ s life depended on it.

“Give us an hour,” she said. “We’ll meet you back here?”

“Of course,” Jade nodded.

“Dani…” Kane said as they left, but she put a reassuring hand on his arm.

“ We don’t have much of a choice, Mike. You guys go, help them out. I’ll make sure Cross is secure and try to keep us both out of sight.”

They moved a short distance away from Vago’s men before she stopped and looked at them both.

“We need to play this bastard’s game, at least for now,” she said. “You guys take Maur and go with them, do the job, and I’ll try to keep any more of my old friends from finding me. Right now it’s just important that we get home.”

TWO

Rubicon

Something had broken through the boundary. Something big.

The turbines on the Rakzeri airship Wicked roared loud as they blasted away waves of cold desert sand. The sky was pale and vast, and a dank red glow pressed up from the western horizon. Kane smelled sea salt and coal dust on the icy wind. They were just a dozen miles from the Ebonsand Sea, a dark and impressive expanse o f churning waters and dangerous, unnatural storms.

Kane knelt down in the sand and fac ed the barrier, a series of tall arcane pillars made of limestone and granite. The line of stones stretched in either direction for as far as the eye could see. Each pillar was covered in dark runes that supposedly cast an invisible shield between them, which acted as a twenty-mile long fence between Blacksand and the wild territories to the north and west.

A pair of the pillars had been broken, however, and up close it appeared they’d been rammed by some sort of vehicle or a large creature. Unfortunately, the salt winds off the Ebonsand coast had blown away any tracks, so all he could tell for certain was that either an armored land mammal or a small tank had smashed through the stones.

Awesome, he thought. Is it too much to ask for things to just be easy every once in a while?

“Well?” Jade asked. The witch stood just inside Wicked’s open bay door. T he ship hovered a few yards behind Kane and less than a foot off the ground. It was appropriately named: every Rakzeri ship Kane had ever seen looked like a handful of broken knives shoved around a conch-shell. The ships were efficient and fast but, in his humble opinion, ugly as hell.

Jade’s long dark hair caught in the wind. She was very short — five feet, if even that — and as thin as a rail. I t was a wonder she didn’t lift up in the breeze and sail into the sky.

“ ‘Well’ what? ” Kane said. “ You’re the expert. Y ou tell me.”

Kane had to shield his eyes from the dust kicked up by the Wicked, but there really wasn’t much to see other than the boundary, an unnamed arcane perimeter built by the mages of Blacksand to keep hostile wilderness mutations and primitive humanoids at bay.

It occurred to Kane that they weren’t far from Crucifix Point, the site of a terrible massacre at the hands of a vampire kick murder squad several years back. Ever since the Southern Claw had pulled most of their resources out of the area to concentrate on fighting the vampires in and around Rimefang Loch, the more the southerly territories had fall en into disorder. Now they were just a lawless haven for criminals, pirates and outcasts.

“It doesn’t look good,” Jade said. Kane hadn’t even seen her disembark from the vessel, but suddenly she stood on the ground right next to him. Ronan was behind her.

Jade walked across the cold sand with sandaled feet. Kane’s skin went cold at the presence of her spirit.

“Well?” Ronan asked. Only his eyes were visible beneath his shemagh.

“Give her a second,” Kane said. “You got a hot date, or something?”

“Blow me,” Ronan growled.

“That’s between you and your date,” Kane nodded.

“ Grow up, ” Jade groaned.

She walked past Kane and up to the nearest obelisk, which stood some eight-feet-tall and three-feet across even after it had been broken. The obelisks were partially submerged in the sand. There was roughly fifty feet between the individual stones, and they’d been linked together with a thin iron chain that had snapped and fallen on to the ground.

“There are trace s of foreign magic here, ” Jade said. “ Something used it to shatter the barrier.” She concentrated a moment. “ Ebon Cities magic. Chattel sorcery. ”

“ Shocker, ” Kane said.

“That’s terrific,” Ronan said with a shake of his head. “What now…‘Chief’?”

Kane tried to ignore the comment. Ronan was upset that Black had put Kane in charge while she stayed behind in Blacksand, but Kane liked it even less.

I shouldn’t be in charge, he thought. The only reason it’s me is because Black knows Ronan is two steps shy of being a complete nutcase, but she does n’t just want us to take orders from Vago’s flunkies. God, this sucks!

“This is the third breach we’ve found,” Kane said, mostly to himself, and then he turned to Jade, “but this is the first time you’re been able to get a read for what might have caused the damage, right?”

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Then we should go through here, and check it out.”

She gave him an annoyed look.

“So you’re an expert on magic now?” she asked sardonically.

“Don’t get your panties wrinkled,” Kane said. “Do you disagree?”

“No,” Jade said after a moment. “But maybe you should let the mage ma k e the call on things related to magic.” Her smile went cold. “ Got it?”

Kane glowered, but he clenched his teeth and bit back about fifty insulting comments that came to mind. He heard Ronan laugh behind him.

We wouldn’t be in this mess if not for the f riggin’ Revengers. He and Cross had always kno w n it wouldn’t be easy for Danica to walk away from Black Scar, especially with as much a s she seemed to know about T he Revengers. But we didn’t expect them to track her down here, in the middle of N owhere S quared. They were basically out of money and short on all of their other supplies, and they really had no easy way to escape. Working with Vago was the only way they’d managed to stay out of Black Scar’s clutches, and every day they had to hide and rely on his protection they just fell deeper into his pocket.

Jade looked at the barrier again. Her attention was lost in the shifting sands.

“What is it?” Kane asked.

“I don’t know…” she said. “Something’s here…s omething is tied to this land.”

Her voice was dreamy and distant, and she stared straight ahead. Kane cautiously stepped around to look at her face. Her eyes glowed. They were locked in some arcane realm, trapped in a vision of magical trace lines or spectral pulses or some other damn thing Kane only barely understood. Even with as much as he’d learned about magic in the two years he’d spent with Cross and Danica, very little of it actually made sense to him.

“ ‘Something’ is…kind of vague, ” he said.

“Something old,” she said. “ S omething powerful.” Her eyes blinked, and when she opened them again their normal cold green color had returned. She looked dazed for a moment, and then regained her composure and looked at Kane. Whatever she saw on his face made her smile. “ What, did I creep you out? ”

“What?” Kane said with a flippant smile. “Oh, no…you know. It’s all good.”

Jade laughed.

She was such an enigma to him. Even with as much power as she supposedly possessed, Kane though t Jade lacked that harde ned edge he was used to seeing i n other mercenaries.

Well…most of the time, at least. Keep your head straight, pal. She could fry your balls off with a gesture.

She turned back to the open desert.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“I saw something the vampires might want,” she said. “We should go and check it out.”

Blacksand had to date managed to stay out of the war between the So uthern Claw and the Ebon Cities, in part because the criminal portcity only had a relatively small human population. Most of the inhabitants of the ramshackle and crime-ridden place were Doj, Vuul, Gol and the little-seen Draj, a race of Cruj offshoots who kept to the shadows and were generally distrusted and feared. There was no true ruling authority in Blacksand. As had been the case in Kane’s home city of Kalakkaii, the crime guilds competed for control. I n Black sand the upper hand unquestionably belonged to Klos Vago and T he Shard, but Kane understood they’d recently been challenged by a new band of thrill- seeking mercenaries and robbers called t he Shadow Guild.

Yeah, I do n’t see that ending well.

Unfortunately for Vago, holding the reins of power in the city also meant that he had to deal with the city’s problems. W hile he maintained a fairly traditional city militia that handle d local troubles, the problem of the downed arcane barricade warranted sending out the heavy hitters to investigate.

And since you own our asses at the mom ent, why waste your goons when you can send us instead? Seriously, we get all of the fun jobs.

Sightings of Ebo n Cities scouts in the region — which was unusual in and of itself, since Blacksand was literally hundreds of miles away from both Southern Claw and vampire territories — had forced Vago to take some initiative and find out what was going on. The last thing the Shard or any of the nomads, natives or settlers of the southern wastelands wanted was for one of the major powers to move in and start taking over the area.

Kane thought about Danica, stuck back in the city with Vago, who both of them suspected had no intention of ever keeping up his end of the bargain. He was worried about her. She’d probably kill him if she knew that, but that didn’t change anything.

He thought about Cross, and wondered if they’d ever be able to bring him back. He’d not woken since they’d rescued him from the ruins of Shadowmere Keep, ca rried him across the wastelands and hitched a ride on the Dubrakki Railway to get to Blacksand. He ’d not stirred in the three weeks since they’d found him. Not once.

Kane shuddered, and tried to calm his mind. He’d been at odds ever since Ekko had died, but his new family — there was no other way he could think of them now, not after all they’d been through together — had helped him heal his wounds. In a way, Cross’ s disappearance had brought he and Danica closer. They trusted each other now, and worked well together.

That was important, he thought. I spent two years blaming Danica for what had happened to Ekko. It was past time for me to get over that shit.

Before, it had been Cross that had fused the team together, but Mike felt sure that even after Cross came back the three of them would be even more tightly knit than ever before. Others came and went, but it was those three, the survivors of Karamanganji i, who held the tightest bond.

If he comes back, he thought. If.

“There,” Jade said.

The Rakzeri vessel tilted back and forth as freezing ocean wind batter ed the underbelly of the ship. Everyone held onto support bars or the backs of the seats. Weapons and armor lined both walls of the vessel, and various gauges, valves and scopes littered the ceiling like plumbing pipes. The unstable floor made Kane’s stomach turn, but he held on with muscular arms lined with tattoos — eyes, blades, suns, pyramids, crescent moons — and tried to balance the weight of the blades and the HK45s on his shoulder harness.

“Fly much, Maur?” he laughed. “I’m about to lose my lunch if you keep up your Red Baron shtick…”

“Maur will ignore that comment,” the Gol replied. “ That is lucky for you, because if he hadn’t you would get out and walk.”

“That m ight be safer,” Ronan laughed.

“You girls are funny,” Sol smiled. “Now shut up and keep your minds on business.”

“Maur should warn,” he shouted back, “that he can easily open the bay doors and dump all of you out.”

Kane walked up next to the cockpit, a small metal recess surrounded by tubes filled with hydraulic fluids and heating pumps that kept the vessel’s interior atmosphere bearable even in adverse weather conditions. The pilot’s seat was pressed tight against the forward plating, and there were so many panels, monitors and dials it was actually difficult to look through the forward window and see what was in front of them. Jade stood directly behind Maur, and as Kane came close she pointed again.

“Look,” she said, and her voice was frightened.

The terrain ahead looked like any beach along that stretch of the coast. Metallic white fog rolled along the bleach white sands and half-buried rock formations.

But about a klick ahead of them was a wide expanse of dark ground surrounded by a crumbling circle of black pillars. A n unmistakable air of power gripped the area, a faint and shimmering black ice glow.

“There’s something in there,” Jade said. “Something that’s hidden from plain sight.”

“Can you…you know…scout it?” Kane asked. “With your spirit?”

“I’m sort of hesitant to do that,” she said quietly. “Something isn’t right here. ” She took a breath and nodded. “But you’re right…that’s what needs to be done.”

T he air twist ed and stiffen ed as her spirit shifted away from her body and exited the craft. Jade’s feet lift ed off the ship’s floor. White light shone from her eyes. Kane heard cold whispers, a winter’s breath.

Up ahead, t he space within the pillars shifted. Pale sands burned to black and twisted in to the sky in a tangle of ink-dark coils. Pulsating pockets of light appeared in the darkness, a shine of frozen stars.

“Whoa, ” he said.

The darkness rose. T endrils of shadow joined together in a wide arc. A shifting archway of dust rose up, and in just a matter of seconds it stood a hundred feet high. T he space within the arch was like a cold dark mirror filled with choking vapors.

Kane looked through the massive lens and saw more of the desert and the sky, but everyt h ing was saturated in an air turned charcoal: the sand was black, the sky was an onyx slate, and the birds were twisted, like scars. Soiled wind howled from within the arch and blast ed shards of razored darkness onto the pale sand.

Kane’s eyes were lost in th at vision. He knew he stared into another world.

Moments after the gateway appeared it exploded, and fell back to the desert floor. Only a wide circle of charred ash remained.

“Jesus…” Kane breathed. “PLEASE tell me I wasn’t the only one who saw that!”

“What the hell?” Ronan breathed. Sol looked like he’d seen a ghost, and Maur was visibly shaken.

“Jade?” he asked.

Jade shook all over. She held herself as st ill as she could. Kane took her shoulder in his hand, and he almost jumped at how cold she was.

“Jade?” he repeated. “ Y ou okay?”

“I’m sorry,” she breathed. She s ounded exhausted and terrified. Kane tried to steady her. “I’m not sure how that happened…”

“How what happened?” Kane asked.

“I was just scouting the area, but I…I triggered something…I accidentally found the way to open some p ortal…”

“Ok…it’s okay,” Kane said. F or a moment he forgot the fact that she techn ically wasn’t on his side. “I t’s okay. We know it’s bad, and that’s enough to get us started.” He looked at the rest of them. “Maybe we should…”

A deafening explosion rang through out the cabin. Flam es blasted across the window. T he ship nearly flipped over in mid-air. Maur cursed, and Kane wasn’t able to grab hold before the ship violently lurched sideways and threw him against the wall.

Alarms blared through the airship. Freezing wind blasted through a rent in the hull. Noise and violent motion eclipsed Kane’s senses.

He managed a glance at the nautoscope, and he saw war machines approach across the sand. He wasn’t sure how they ’d managed to get so close without being noticed.

Jade went to the torn hull, and her spirit tried to weave it back together. S team erupted from the ship ’ s pipe-work as the auto-flush system purge d the flames from the aircraft’s interior. Sol grabbed his weapons and Ronan climbed into the gunner’s seat, a swivel-mounted chair near the aft end that controlled the top-mounted 20mm cannons.

Bladed missiles raced by them outside. Kane readied his M 14A, moved behind Maur, and looked through the viewport. A pair of vampire tanks with oversized stone wheels and steel-plated hulls raced towards them, bladed sharks that dragged chains across the ground. The vehicles bore rotating iron guns and bone harpoons. Dark sails atop the sleek vessels propelled them along using the desert wind, and churning pillars of smoke billowed from their exhaust ports.

More missiles launched, screaming black shards of serrated cold metal that left trails of spectral steam in their wake. Kane saw ghastly faces race ahead of the weapons as they drew close.

“Maur, I hope you know what the hell you’re doing!”

Wicked ’s cannons roared. Kane covered his ears — the grind of the motorguns was deafening. The ship rocked with explosive blasts. Shells tore one tank apart as Maur twisted Wicked and dodged the first missile.

But the second missile struck home. The blast tore open the starboard hull and threw the ship sideways. The roar of exploding steel enveloped them. A wave of h o t wind threw Kane hard against the port wall. Glass shattered and flew through the cockpit like rain.

Kane felt nothingness below and around him as Wicked careened out of control. The cannons kept roaring.

Jade fell against the shattered starboard hull and nearly slid out of the ship and into open air. Kane threw himself forward and slid across broken glass, grimacing as he reached out and snagged her hand. Sol grabbed his legs and kept them both from falling out. They all three held on to the floor plating as Maur did his best to wrestle the ship back under control.

“Hang on!” Kane shouted. H e held tight onto Jade’s arms for those final few seconds before the airship crashed to the ground in a blaze of metal and fire.

THREE

Whisperlands

He is fugitive to a shadow world.

Nothing is constant. The sky bleeds red to dark to pale and back again. Clo uds like teeth grin down at him.

Day and night are indistinguishable. The sky is the same stain, the land the same matte darkness. Jagged hills and half-ruined structures protrude from the ground like scabs. T he world looks dipped in tar.

He roams like a carrion bird, p icking up discarded items, but little of what he finds is useful. He has n o need for food or water in that place. He is a living ghost.

The dank red sun is the only constant. The air reeks of caustic gases and decay. Iron clouds scar the sky. The dull light has pained his eyes for years.

Trees bend and twist into one another like drunken serpents. Great valleys rest in the middle of dry riverbeds. Dark water flows uphill, turgid and thick, like muddy oil. Massive skeletons litter the land, great tusked horns and shattered simian skulls, the remains of beasts from some lost age.

He’ s covered in black and red dust, a thin layer of soot that won’t come off his skin no matter how hard he tries. Every puddle and flow of water is tainted, filled with iron sediment and crumbling stone.

The world is covered in a film of grease and soot. Shadows cling to his flesh and the trees and the air he breathes. Flakes of it clog in his throat and nostrils.

He walks. Sometimes his curiosity is piqued by the landscape or its inhabitants, but he rarely stays in one place for very long.

He avoids contact with others. The creatures of the shadow world are dangerous.

He has covered hundreds of miles in his exile, and yet he has gotten nowhere. If there are boundaries to that dank reality he has yet to find them. Black deserts crumble into dead forests that give way to dry lakes. He hears the roar of a distant ocean, but he can never find it.

Every now and again he comes back to the crater, and to Shadowmere K eep. He always finds them in different areas than the last time.

He no longer knows his name. He forgot it long ago.

F or a time he thought the wastelands were just a prison of his mind. He feared he was still trapped with the woman from the keep (he can’t remember who she was, only that she’d betrayed him, and that she’d caused him pain). But the longer he roams the melting fields of rot and trudges his way across the broken earth the more he realizes he isn’ t the only prisoner t here.

Most of the other creatures are just mockeries of natural life. He sees bulls made of iron and birds that bleed acid, g iant reptiles wreathed in shadow vapor and lumbering hulks with oversized arms that drag their knuckles across the onyx soil. None of these creatures have discernible features: they are carved from shadow, ebon-skinned and pale- eyed form s that bleed off in to the darkness.

T here are humans, or at least things that are similar to humans. They travel in groups. They acknowledge each other, he and these natives, by keeping their distance. He has not deigned to approach them, and for their part they have left him alone. They seem to survive by staying together and keeping on the move. They hunt, out of some memory or instinct rather than a n actual need for sustenance.

Or maybe they do it out of cruelty, he thinks. This is a cruel land.

Sometimes he follows the natives from afar. Their groups vary from a few dozen to a thousand, mass migrations that ride shadow horses towards the blood horizon. He isn’t sure why he follows them — there is no esc ape from that place. If there was, those people wouldn’t be there. H e realizes this and breaks away, sets off in a different direction, or so he thinks. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell.

He moves a cross plains of dusk, t hrough petrified black forests and up shattered hills. The taste of metal sticks to the inside of his mouth. He breathes air that smells of coal and brimstone. He is so covered in dirt he can no longer recall the feel of his own skin.

He crosses bone bridges and walks through hollow and abandoned cities. He sees the skeletons of sailing ships. T oppled statue s of strange human-reptile hybrids litter the landscape.

Black clouds converge like stains. Trees, bone thin and sharp, prod the sky like knives.

He walks through fields of blood and oil. Dark nectar drips from skeletal branches. The spines of heavy brambles twist like daggers from the ground.

He walks until his legs are numb and his throat is raw. Shadows seep down to his pores. He drifts like a lost leaf, carried by a wind that smells of age and death.

S ometimes he feels the need to hunt.

He hides in deep forests filled with soot-drenched leaves, where black ash falls like charcoal rain. He skewers mangy shadow hounds and forest cats, skins them and cooks them, but he rarely eats their soiled flesh.

Sometimes instead of hunting, he is hunted.

Great beasts with canine skulls, pugnacious jaws and moon-slit eyes prowl th e black lands. There are Blood s h adows: avian and tentacled masses with bea ks and teeth and flailing limbs that rip open the landscape in their ravenous hunger. Snakes melt out of trees like burned trails of cinder. Pools of briny water camouflage the open maws of subterranean marauders.

H e i s forced to do battle with bizarre beasts, multi-limbed and black-bodied brutes like monstrous gorillas, lamprey-mouthed foxes, drooling two-dimensional humanoids with prehensile tongues.

H e proves more than capable of defend ing himself. He draws strength from the black-and-white blade in his possession. It make s his body stable and keeps him from being fully assimilated into the landscape.

H e tries to avoid contact with others, but sometimes it’ s inevitable. He stumbles upon people lost in the wastelands, people like himself. They are abandoned and adrift, afraid of the arcane natives, marooned from another time or reality. The se people are almost always mad. One refugee accuse s him of being a frog disguised as a man so he can lull people to their deaths. Another ru n s away from him so fast he kills himself tumbling down a dark gorge.

Once he comes across twins, blonde women not yet fully saturated by the taint of shadows. They take turns drinking from a vial of briny fluid that they found at the base of a dying tree, and they wager on which one of them will be the first to perish from the obviously poison substance. They wail and beg for him to jo in him, and their calls still ring in his ears long after he leaves them to their mad suicide.

The Whisperlands. That is the name of th e ebon- wracked lands, that bleak domain of shadow mud and endless dusk. He isn’t sure how he knows its name, but he does. Someone gave this grim reality that title long ago.

The Whisperlands. He has been there for so very long.

A cadre of warlocks rule s the Whisperlands. They, in turn, owe their allegiance to a powerful witch. They are just like him in that t hey have n’ t been fully corrupted by the soul-saturating substance of the realm, that black ash that drifts like debris from some perpetual explosion.

He ’ s never seen th e mages in person, but he sees evidence of their existence everywhere: t races of hex power left in the air, b lack fields blasted white, a reas of dark rock or red tide chiseled or cut with vorpal proficiency, t ainted soil, s moking ripples in the lands cape, c old iron shards and crystal and other effluvia of the arcane.

But the most telling sign of the mage’s existence are the whispers. He hears th ose voices in the wind, faint echo es like a distant memory. Sometimes they raise the hackles on the back of his soiled neck. I t’s difficult to tell how close they are. T hey scour the earth and poison the atmosphere with the force of their presence. They are legion, a horde of derelict ghosts fused together in a mongrel presence.

The warlocks hold a small army of these spirits at their command, mindless apparitions held captive, forced to shape and bend against their will. They are u nliving slaves tethered by ectoplasmic chains and cold iron bonds. He hears the pain behind their voices. The whispers sound together in an anthem of surrender, a dirge of loss. They sing to warn the black world of their fate.

He comes to understand the Whisperland ’ s geography, and by so doing he learns which areas are controlled by the mage warlords. The shadow world is not as random and as chaotic as he'd originally thought. There are patterns to the rippling dar k landscape. He learns where t he jagged hills melt into dark waters and where they turn back to solid gr ound again. He learns to anticipate the spread pattern of erratic fissures created by sporadic earthquakes.

The s ky is blood slate, petrified cloud and frozen dust. Everything appears burned or bleeding. The Whisperlands are so deeply and utterly black that treading the ground is like walking across a night sky.

He feels, sometimes, like the Whisperlands are sealed in a glass case, and that he is part of the gritty diorama held within.

H e stumbles across a black field littered with pale rocks and comes across something he doesn ’ t exp ect: a child, ungainly and hideous, with an enlarge d h ead and skin that is slowly being eaten away by va ricose veins of shadow. The child points at a distant mountain.

He can't be sure if either the child or the mountain is real.

That mountain, he suspects, belongs to the mages. He has n’t made any physical maps, but he doesn’t need to. He has committed the geography of the black lands to m emory, and he knows there is a region on the other side of the mountain that is empty on his mental diagram of the Whisperlands. That blank spot is a place he has not yet explore d.

That, he deduces, it is the mage’s home.

He’ s tempted to go to it, but he can’ t explain or understand why. They have n’t done any thing to him. He doubts they ’ re in any way responsible for his being trapped there. Likely they are trapped, as well, and th ey have chosen to band together rather than remain isolated.

He avoids the region. The mountain reminds him of something from his old life. Whatever it is, it’s painful, and he’ s glad the memory never really forms.

He walks on.

Time passes. He drifts through the ruins of cities. Some of them contain shadow people, while some are populated only by refuse. T he whispers are always there, a mournful sound like a forlorn wind. His boots crush stones into black dust. He smells burn ing fumes and c old smoke. His body grows weary, but it ’ s only a memory of fatigue.

With every step he becomes more of a shade. His skin has lost much of its natural color. His mind isn’t as focused as it once was: like the landscape, it become s darker and less distinct.

He travels through an ink stain. S ilhouettes follow him, the arcane tribals. Or maybe he follow s them.

The child.

It ’ s there, watching him. This time it isn’ t alone. A second child, a girl, is there with the boy. H er head is just as freakishly large, her eyes are bulging orbs. Filigrees of wet dust fall from their bodies. Their eyes and hands are barely traceable outlines of grey, vague underwater impressions. The bitter wind pulls away bits of t heir flesh and clothes.

Is that what I look like? Am I only a shade now?

He ’ s almost afraid to hold up his hand, but he does. It’ s hard for him to find it, to focus in the dust tempest. He watches bits fall away, pulled like sand into the funnel of sky.

The wind intensifies. His body is discorporating. He feels himself drift apart, but the sensation is surreal. H e feels so very, very old.

The shadow children motion. They want him to follow. H e does.

They walk to the remains of a city. Buildings lean in towards one another as if huddled against the cold. A low black wall surrounds thin black structures that have toppled like fallen matchsticks.

Dust flies across their path, and for a moment he worries the children have come apart and drift ed into the sky, but then he sees them again in the black windstorm. They move deliberately so as to keep him in sight. He follows them at a distance, his fingers near his blade.

He wonders if they ’ re associated with the mages, or if they are the mages.

The mages. I was trying to remember something about the mages.

They lead him through the remains of the crumbling city. Most of the buildings have collapsed. The earth underfoot is old clay. Wreckage lies everywhere, and he sees the lonely skeletons of the city’s long-lost inhabitants.

Up above, the clouds roil like a dark sea.

T he children enter one of the few standing structures. They pass through a crooked archway beneath what might have once been the leering face of a demonic lion, but now the stone is too dark for him to tell.

He hesitates. He feels fear like a lead weight.

The mages. I can’t remember. There’s something about them that I need to remember…something important.

Without another thought, he follows.

Steven Montano

Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4)

The inside of the tower was cold and dry. Cross knew who he was t he moment he set foot inside, even if he couldn’t remember much of anything else. The soot immediately started to flake off his skin. He felt his senses return, like he’d been stuck in a mental haze. His body shook from the cold, and he was able to move quickly again, unhindered by t he debris of the Whisperlands.

Cross had entered other structures in that strange world before, but this sense of clarity, this cleansing, had never before occurred. He’d never found himself shielded from the roar of the black w ind and the touch of the tainted world.

The inside of the tower looked like an abandoned outpost. Tattered grey flags dangled in air that reeked of age and tasted like soot. The floor was littered with drifts of cold ash and the charred remains of broken furniture.

Aside from the open doorway, which led to air so suffused with darkness it was like black gelatin, the only other way out of the stark room was a ricke ty wooden staircase leading up. He took it.

Each step rattled and creaked beneath his weight. M otes of dust floated down from the ceiling. The only light came from ambient worms clinging to the walls. For all Cross could tell they were long dead, but their bodies still shone with a phosphorescent shine that turned everything a shade of sick green.

He passed alcoves filled with the bones of unknown animals. Small slits in the outer walls grant ed vi ew of the black landscape.

His muscles tensed as he ascended the final few steps.

The upper floor of the tower was a single large room. The ceiling was drastically too high for the circumference of the chamber. The lightning worms were absent there, so only the barest details were visible in the light that spill ed in from the doorway behind him: shattered porcelain dolls, piles of shredded clothing, smoking ice strewn like shattered glass. The room was quiet, and all he heard was the tell-tale call of the stygian wind s.

The children waited for him. A boy and a girl, both dressed in rags. They weren ’ t as large as they’d been outside, where the ir appearance had been almost troglodytic, preposterous skulls on ridiculously small bodies. There in the tower they were much smaller, and while their flesh held an unnatural pallor they at least were the size of normal children, only with slightly enlarged eyes. T hey stood stone- still and stared at Cross as he stepped into the chamber.

They weren’ t alone.

A monstrous presence waited behind them, something t all and massive but entirely encased in pillars of roving darkness. He squinted to try and get a better look at the creature, but whatever it wa s it remained just out of sight.

“Hello,” the boy said. His voice was flat and emotionless. He moved robotically.

“Um…hello,” Cross said quietly. He took another step into the room, but he refused to wade too far in. The light behind him couldn’t penetrate the gloom. He heard something wet in the shadows, something sli thering. It coiled and tensed, and he smelled the musk of organic waste, vaguely sexual but putrid. “What is this place?”

“Shelter from the storm,” the girl said. H er voice was equally dead and distant. Neither of them moved an inch. Cross didn’t think they even breathed.

“Why am I here?” he asked.

“Only you can know that,” the boy said.

“We are not concerned with why you are here,” the girl said.

Cross stepped sideways, careful to walk slow and quiet.

“What are you concerned with?” he asked.

“How to leave,” they both said in tandem, their voices so effortlessly cued to the same frequency it sent shivers up his spine.

“Leave…this tower?”

“The Whisperlands,” they said, and then the boy continued to talk on his own. “I am a prisoner here, just like you. I have been here for a very long time.”

“What are you?” he asked. His fingers slid towards Soulrazor/ Avenger ’s grip. It had been some time since he’d remember the black-and-white sword’s name s. “Why are you talking to me through these…” He looked at the girl. It was difficult to see just how lifeless she was in the dark. “ Through these things… they sure as hell aren’t children. ”

“Your mind could not bear the sight of me,” she said.

“That’s a little judgmental, isn’t it?” he said with a nervous laugh.

I have no magic, he realized. He’ d wandered across the Whisperlands for what felt like decades, but in the mental mire caused by the black windscape the memory of his loss either hadn’t occurred to him, or else it simply hadn’t mattered. The blades might not have any of their arcane properties here, and I don’t have any other weapons. If the s e things want to kill me, I’m done.

“It is not a matter of judgmen t, or inclination,” the boy said.

“It is matter of what you can fathom,” the girl add ed. “And you cannot fathom me.”

“You’d be surprised,” Cross said grimly. “So what do you want from me?”

“You wish to escape,” the boy said. “That is plain.”

“I wish to help you,” the girl add ed. “But I cannot leave this place.”

“Of course,” Cross said with a nod.

“Do not doubt me,” the boy s aid. The voice was less human than before. It scratche d like steel and glass. The child ren ’s eyes we re black. Shadow veins bulged from their faces and ma de their false flesh paler. Their feet lift ed slightly off the ground.

T endrils attach ed them to the darkness at the back of the room. Flesh lines hooked into their backs, greasy appendages dripping slime in the rigid air. He couldn’t tell if the bodies were those of actual children or if they were just extensions, constructs. Flesh puppets.

“How can I not doubt you?” Cross asked quietly. He took a step back towards to the stairs. “You won’t show me what you are.”

There was n o answer. He felt the air breath e and tense.

And then it showed him.

Darkness peeled back. Tendrils of shadow ripped away like frightened snakes. The children’s eyes vanished into puddles of slime, a nd the bodies flattened like empty sacks a nd fell to the floor with sickening slumps.

The creature was made of soiled skin and shadow orifices. Its mountainous husk was the height of the room, a pulsating membrane of fish-like flesh and tinted veins. It had no visible limbs or appendages save the tentacle strands, which melted so seamlessly into its bulk they almost looked like shadows th emselves. The entire body had the semblance of a dark tree trunk, a living pillar of glistening black skin fused to the floor.

Cross’ s head throbbed as he look ed at the creature, not so much from the grotesquerie of its appearance as from the sheer force of its psychic presence.

Eidolos. Cross had heard of the dread race before, but only in rumor. They were one of the few creatures described in the Tome o f Scars he’ d never encountered firsthand. Once-allies (or slaves, or masters, depending on which story one believed) of the subterranean giants called the Cruj, the Eidolos were a bizarre earthen-organic race of rocks that had assumed flesh form and bonded with the arcane energies of the earth. The younger versions took on the form of humanoids, but the older they got, the more they evolved, and the less human they appeared. Possessed of vastly superior and alien intelligence s, the Eidolos were known for their incredible cruelty and dominant psychic powers, which, if the reports were correct, could literally crush a human’s mind if they spent too long in the creature’s proximity. Warlocks and witches were supposedly afforded some measure of resistance due to their arcane spirits. Which means I m ight be screwed.

His mind felt weighted down. H is limbs grew heavy. He wanted to sleep so he could erase the intense pain in his skull. His muscles ached and seemed to melt into the floor.

No. I’m stronger than this.

He didn’t remember drawing Avenger/Soulrazor, but it shook in his hand. Its stark power lifted him to his feet. It was a hybrid sword, a fus ion of black and white shards of once larger weapons born of opposing powers, the extractions or physical manifestations of the White Mother and The Black. Every time Cross had though t the weapon’s power spent, it reminded him that it was never wise to doubt the might of divine forces.

Unlight shone from the blade. Throbbing pulses of white and echoes of black shadow pulled away from the meteor steel. The tower shook.

The shadows warped, twisted and raced back to the far corners of the room. The darkness moved with such force Cross was nearly thrown back, but the subtle shield issued by the pulsing blade kept him safe.

You wanted me to show you my form, the Eidolos’ mountain of voices called. The words were less shaped than before, more erratic, l ike it had to learn how to form speech all over again.

The room returned to the same pit of darkness it had been when he’d entered. The child puppets remained on the floor, no longer needed. Cross could only barely make out the vaguest outline of the Eidolos’ s behemoth presence.

“Yes,” he said, not wishing to come to blows with the creature, even though his blade did seem to afford him a measure of protection. Even with the artifact held firmly in hand, his head still throbbed with pain. “Yes I did. Of course, y ou could have just told me what you were…”

And y ou could have accepted my word. I am a prisoner here, the same as you. But we can escape…provided you lend me your aid.

“You mean lend you my body,” Cross said. “ Because you can’t leave this tower.”

Yes.

“The mages,” he said. “Tell me about them.”

What would you have me tell?

“Are they in control here?”

Yes and no. The Shadow Lords are the most powerful beings in the Whisperlands, at least at the moment. But they are no more in control of this place than you or I.

“Are they the key to escaping?” Cross asked. He edged back towards the doorway and the light. He still felt like he hung at the edge of consciousness. Only the chill touch of the arcane blade kept him focused and awake.

They are. They have a way out.

“Who are they?” he asked.

Warlocks, led by a witch. They subjugate the denizens of this realm and craft them into armies. They take what they want.

“What is this place?” Cross asked. “ The Whisperlands…w hat is it, really?”

There is no knowing that, the Eidolos replies. You might call it hell. It is a place between worlds. Nothing is meant to exist here. It is refuse from The Black. We are shadow s. It is all we can ever be. But some of us remember what we were before… where we were before. We can escape our bonds, you and I. We can be more.

Cross ’s hands were numb with cold. He had no reason to trust this thing, this monstrous telepath. The Eidolos’ motives, their sense of reason, the very makeup of their utterly alien minds were well beyond his understanding.

But it still wanted to survive. That wa s a basic enough drive that almost any creature possess ed…which meant, Cross realized, that it was probably on the level.

He hoped his weapon shielded his mind from its powers. He didn’t like the notion of not even being able to mull things over without his thoughts being scanned.

The Eidolos waited patiently. The tower rattled from the force of the ebon wind. Cross wondered about the Shadow Lords, about how long they’d been stranded there…or how long the Eidolos had been stranded there. No one knew much of anything about the Whisperlands, but he’d learned that time passed differently there, that a year on earth might have been ten in that shadow oubliette.

He wondered how long he’d been there.

And then something else occurred to him.

The mages ha d a way out, the Eidolos said. That meant that maybe, just maybe, they c ould leave whenever they want ed to…and yet they we re still t here.

What are they doing here?

He ’ d always assumed the m ages were like he was: unwilling refugees stranded in the Whisperlands. He’d guessed that maybe they’d banded together to make the most of their new home, a place they quickly found they could subjugate and control. But years, maybe decades of madness had changed their minds, and now they longed for an escape. It all made sense.

And yet now he wondered if he was wrong.

W hat if they aren’t trapped here? What if they came here intentionally? What if they want something the Whisperlands ha s?

If the Eidolos read his thoughts, it paid them no mind, nor did it make answer to his query. It just waited, and the tower pulsed to the beat of the creature’s hollow heart.

“All right,” he said to the flesh pillar. “I’ll help you, because by doing so I’ll be helping myself.”

That is all that is asked, it responded in his mind.

He took a breath.

“What do I have to do?”

FOUR

Battlefield

The sky folded in on itself. Kane saw smoke, and smelled fire. There was blood in his eyes.

He was alive.

The crash.

Shit.

He sat up and grimaced. Grinding hurt rang through his knee. A steel plate had fallen on top of his right leg. He choked on the stench of burning fuel.

We always crash. I’m sick of this crap.

Kane slowly pulled himself out from under the metal. He was relieved to see that his wounds were superficial, and he imagined he had Jade to thank for that, since she’d likely shielded them with her magic — there was really no other way any of them could have survived the impact.

That’s s omething else for Vago to hold over us. Damn it.

He looked around. Fire rapidly spread through the inside of the ship. Kane winced as he pulled himself to his feet — the damage to his knee was worse than he’d thought.

The starboard wall and much of the roof were bent in and twisted. Crackling thaumaturgic wires burned grey-black smoke. T hick fluids sprayed from the torn wall s. Chunks of metal dangled from what was left of the ceiling, and sharp debris protruded from the floor where the ship had landed on something buried in the sand.

Kane grabbed Jade’s hand and pulled her up. B lood covered one side of her face, and she coughed violently in the thick smoke.

He looked around for the others.

That second tank is still out there, u nless Ronan got extremely lucky with that last barrage. And one thing we haven’t been lately is lucky.

Sol pulled himself out from under some collapsed roofing. He was bruised and covered in cuts and engine oil, and a piece of metal the size of a boomerang stuck out of his left arm. Kane winced when Sol nonchalantly pull the shrapnel out, shook away the blood, and pick ed up his M78. The big man lumbered to his feet and looked through the holes in the hull.

“ Sol!” Kane shouted. The ringing in his ears was intense, and his own words seemed to echo from miles away. “Help your girl!”

He found his MP 1 4 A and turned off the safety.

“The other tank is still out there, guys!” Kane shouted. “ Let’s get the hell out of here!”

He made his way to the cockp it. The fuselage had pushed up from the ground.

Maur was alive but badly bruised. B lood ran in to the Gol’s eyes where his forehead had smacked hard against the dash. Still, he was conscious enough to complain as Kane tried to pull him loose from the heavy straps that kept him bound to the pilot’s seat.

Pain flooded through Kane’s body. He felt a numbing sensation at the edge of his mind, a field of darkness that threatened to block out his vision. He fought it, shook himself, turned and followed Maur’s frightened gaze as he looked out the cracked viewport.

The second tank left trails of black smoke in its wake as necrotic engines propelled it straight towards them. Thick blasts of sand flowed around the vehicle in a dust tide. The tank grew larger by the second. It was so close it shook the airship’s ruined walls.

Kane looked in the sky above the tank and saw d ark shapes in the dust. T he tank had air support.

Terrific.

“ F liers!” he shouted. He ripped his boot knife free and sliced open Maur ’s harness. T he Gol jumped down, ripped a mini-Uzi away from a holster in the paneling, and raced towards the port-side hatch. “You’re welcome!” Kane shouted after him.

T he top-mounted 20mm cannons suddenly hammered to life, and the sound pounded at Kane’s skull. Ronan was still in the gunner’s se at.

Sol pulled Jade and Maur behind him as he kicked open the port hatch. They’d landed at a steep angle on top of a tall sand dune. Sol leap t out and roll ed down the slope. Jade and Maur followed, and Kane moved next to the open door.

“ Are y ou coming?!” he shouted, but Ronan couldn’ t hear him over the guns. “Hey dumbass!” Kane screamed as loud as he could. “LET’S GO!”

Ronan leapt down from t he gunner’s seat, grabbed his MP5A5, and followed.

Kane fell onto the sand and rolled down the dune. He felt his knee buckle again, and he tasted cold sand.

They were in the middle of a pale wasteland. T he Rakzeri ship had crash-landed onto a sharp stone half-buried under the sand.

It’s just our shit luck we’d hit the one random rock in the whole friggin’ desert, Kane thought bitterly. It’s like a collective skill.

The ruined barrier was less than a klick behind them to the east, and the frozen desert sloped sharply downwards to the west, towards a cluster of fallen trees and dry riverbeds.

The shrill call o f a tank shot cut the air apart like a banshee’s wail.

“ M ove! ” Kane screamed. They ran and fell down the dunes.

The shell exploded in a blast of sand, fire and sm oke. Dust roared across Kane’s vision and stung his eyes. Shrapnel hailed down. P ain lanced through his arm and b lood flew onto his face.

Everything went silent. All Kane heard was the beating of his own hammering heart. His hands found one of his blades there on the ground, and that was when he realized a ten-inch needle of steel had bore straight through his forearm. Surprisingly, h e felt no pain.

That’s probably a bad thing.

Sol was yelling at him. H e couldn’t hear a word th e big man said.

Everyone lay scattered on the ground, alive but dazed, contorted in awkward positions where they’d landed at the bottom of the dune. Smoke drifted over the m.

The flaming wreckage of the Rakzeri ship slid down the sand and straight towards them. It would crush them all in moments.

Sound crashed back into his ears like a tidal wave.

“ Kane, mo ve your ass!” Sol shouted. The criminal hel d Jade ’s arm in one hand and had Maur over his shoulder.

Ronan ran at Kane and tackled him, knocking the wind from his lungs. T hey both roll ed out of the path of the flaming wreckage. He saw an inverted image of the burning ship as it slid and tumbl ed down the dune. Black fire plumed into the air. Drifts of ash came down like snowflakes.

The f liers approached, and t he tank drew within a few hundred yards. C hains dangled from the cannons and tore the sand. S hadowy Razorwings soared in low and nearly touched the ground with their oily black bodies. Kane saw dark armored vampire riders with bladed hand-cannons and serrated swords.

Jade’s spirit was the first to strike. Undulating saws of purple light cut a swath across the sand. The Razorwings avoided the attack with ease, but she bought the team enough time to split and run in different directions.

Her arcane blades kicked up a dust storm that twisted violently into the air. The storm expanded until it enveloped the entire crash site. Kane couldn’t see more than a few yards out, but he knew that meant he couldn’t be seen, either. The sand somehow stayed out of his eyes and throat, which meant Jade shielded them from the storm’s effects.

Kane and Ronan lost sight of the others, but he knew Jade would be able to find them — he felt her telepathic presence at the edge of his mind.

The sound of the tank fa ded as it struggled through the desert storm, and the fliers’ reptilian cries echoed in the distance as they desperately search ed for the ir prey.

Kane and Ronan kept low and used the dunes for cover. They saw the silhouettes of the fliers in the grit — filled sky and heard the metal roar of massive wheels, but the sand mist concealed them, and soon they moved a safe distance away from the crash.

The dunes were steep and difficult to cross. Kane and Ronan ran up and down sand drifts, muscles aching and out of breath, until they found themselves in a shallow stone valley made of blasted stone, either an ancient riverbed or a fault line that cut straight down into the sand like a crack.

They only had to wait a few minutes before the others caught up with them. Miraculously, they hadn’t been followed.

Whirling patterns of blue — and- white rock poked through the sand. Deep shadows flowed like water through the breaks in the milky stone. The ground in the small valley was hard and cold, and they actually discovered traces of black ice.

They hid there in the crevice, concealed in side fissures in the rock. They heard the growl of some great aerial beast — not a Razorwing, and no thing that any of them recognized, but they decided they’ d rather not find out what it was — and huddled together as icy wind scraped past them.

After a while, everything was quiet. Jade’s storm faded to a drift of angry wind. Kane saw how pale and out of breath she was. No doubt she was fatigued from using her magic so much.

They waited another hour before they finally emerged. The afternoon had drawn long, and t he liquid sun hung frozen in the silver sky. Kane felt the chill of the ocean wind as surely as if they stood at the shore, but he guessed they were still a few miles out…and that was when he realized he didn’t actually have a clue where they were.

“Do you know our location, Jade?” he asked. “I completely lost my bearings when we ran away from the crash.”

“With no supplies,” Sol nodded glumly.

“Shit,” Ronan said.

“Damn it,” Kane echoed.

“Maur is not pleased.”

“I’m with Maur,” Ronan said. “Do we even know where the ship is now? We’ve been running around the dunes for a couple of hour s.”

“Jade?” Kane asked quietly. She looked exhausted, and more than a bit panicked. “Can you get us back to the ship?”

“ I think so,” she said hesitantly. “ But whatever we saw in those ruins back there is making it hard for my spirit to search the area.”

“Your storm work ed,” Ronan said sternly.

“ Using my spirit for violence and using it to search an area are two entirely different things,” Jade said. “Whatever that phenomenon was, it’s been well hidden, and whatever magic was used to conceal it i s ma king this entire region unstable.”

They walked beneath the pale and open sky. Kane heard howls in the distance. The wind was cold and sharp. His body was sore, and his knee ached like someone had jabbed a needle into it. Still, the fact that ever y step didn’t make him double over in agony was a good sign. He’d bandaged his arm — he didn’t remember removing the sliver of steel, but it was long gone — and Jade’s spirit had staunched the bleeding. Even then, it still throbbed and burned like crazy.

They came to the top of a steep rise and found a good vantage of the desert. Thick drifts of cobalt dust shifted in the distance like corroding walls. Storm clouds brewed far to the east. T here were few discernible landmarks they could use to get their bearings: just the ubiquitous sand, rising and falling with no pattern or rhyme, cold and glassy, striated in bands of black and white. There was no sign of the ship, and it wa s impossible to even pick up the smoke trail with so much dust and sand in the air.

“Maur wants to know what the hell that was — that vision!” the Gol said.

“Yeah, that would be nice to know…” Ronan echoed.

“Can we worry about that shit later?” Kane said angrily. “We need to figure out where in the hell we are. We can worry about what we did or didn’t see after we make sure we’re not going to freeze to death out here.”

Kane saw everyone’s faces change at that, and he was glad for it. They had absolutely zero supplies from the airship with them, and if the sun went down they’d be in for a difficult and potentially lethal night…and that was just from the cold. He hadn’t even considered the predators or vampires.

“Got a ny clue as to how we do that?” Ronan asked.

“Well…I have a compass in my knife,” Kane said. “ Let’s give that a try. ”

What they also had were the map coordinates to Blacksand, and even though they m ust have been several hours out it was still better than nothing, since it seemed unlikely they’d be able to retrace their steps back to the crash site.

They marched. The going was difficult, and every time they started to make some headway they found themselves in a dust storm or standing in an area of dangerously soft sand. The wind hounded them every step of the way and sliced through their clothes.

Kane’s skin turned raw from the cold. Sand invaded his boots and made his feet feel like lead. He, Ronan and Sol all took turns carrying Maur: it wasn’t that the Gol was feeling weak, but with the difficult terrain and the ir desire to make haste he needed help keep ing up with the group. Jade kept everyone as warm as she could with her spirit — it was the only reason they hadn’t come down with hypothermia — but doing so kept her constantly fatigued, and if she kept it up too long she’d end up wearing herself out.

Distant animal howls echoed through th e hollow sky, which turned vein- blue as the sun slowly sank towards the shifting horizon.

“Was that a portal?” Sol asked. A great deal of time had passed in near silence. Their feet lifted and fell with a monotonous rhythm. Kane and Ronan led the group with Jade close behind them; Sol had Maur on his shoulders, and they brought up the rear. The sky was dark and thin. They saw by the light of dusk, and that light was fading fast.

Kane’s mind had wandered. He couldn’t even remember what he’d been thinking about.

“No,” Ronan said flatly. “We were…hallucinating, or something.”

The vision. They’re talking about the vision, that shit we saw before we were attacked.

“ Maur thinks it was a portal,” Maur said.

“ I’m inclined to agree,” Jade said over the hiss of the rising wind. “ And I think it’s what the vampires are out here looking for.”

“ Yeah, you said that earlier,” Kane said. “The question is whether you knew that before we came out here.”

“Say what?” Sol said.

“Oh come on,” Ka ne said. They kept walking. “Are y ou trying to tell me you didn’t know about the Gates to Hell back there?”

“No,” Jade said. “Not that we have to explain anything to you, but no: we didn’t know about it. All w e knew was that the vampires were at our borders. You were supposed to help us stop them.”

“And you still are,” Sol said.

“This sucks,” Ronan groaned.

“What, fulfilling your end of the bargain?” Jade snapped.

“Being stuck out in the desert, hunted by vampires, completely lost, knowing there’s a portal to hell nearby, trapped with people I’d just as soon cut open as help survive.” Ronan made a p oint to smile. “Like I said…t his sucks.”

No one really had an answer to that.

They walked. Kane thought he spied lights in the distance, but the windblown waves of black dust made it difficult to tell. He saw the shadow s of giant fliers, but they moved askance, like black paper birds in the dying light.

Wait…

He looked closer. The shapes grew larger. L ights cut through the quiet sandstorm, halcyon strobes and hooded flood light s attached to steel machines, low-flying vessels with curved sails and jagged hulls.

“Do you see that?” Jade asked.

Kane stared.

“Yeah. I do.”

The ships — there were three of them — had clearly seen the m, as well. The vessels had been headed south, but suddenly they veered east on an intercept course. T here would be no avoiding the ships, not with how fast they moved, so Kane readied his weapon and signaled for everyone to move.

As the skiffs drew within a few hundred yards, Kane saw that they were shaped like bladed planks. They had low-dragging rudders that nearly scraped the ground. L arge chainguns and recoilless rifles were mounted on the forward hulls. A handful of human-sized silhouettes stood on the decks of each vessel.

“Those aren’t vampire ships,” Ronan said, and Sol nodded in agreement.

They took cover behind a sharply curved dune and watch ed as the vessels approach ed.

Not like this dune will give us much cover against those chain guns, Kane thought. If they decide to start shooting, we’re screwed, no matter where we’re standing.

The ships accelerated and spread out. Their turbine engines were quiet. S torms of dust trailed in their wake.

The vessels were about 300 yards away when a blast tore through the air. T he lead ship exploded.

Hot wind flashed over Kane, and he had to shiel d his eyes against the light of the flames. Smoking metal and chunks of steel fell to the ground.

The vampire tank roared over the dunes to the north. The two Razorwings accompanied it, slavering razor jaws and armored wings blocking out the sky. They flew in fast and low and mov ed with the grace of swimmers.

“Ronan, right flank!” Kane shouted. “I’ll take left! Sol, straight up the middle!”

“That’s what she said!” Sol laughed, and Kane actually had to restrain himself from turning and shooting the man.

The skiffs turned, caught unawares. Kane was close enough now to see that the crewmen weren’t of any race he recognized — they were humanoid in size and shape, but the ir gre asy grey skin was covered in scales. They wore haphazard scraps of armor, aviation hats and steel shoulder plates, and they were equipped with crude and archaic weapons. Every one of them wore a gasmask.

The chainguns roared with pulsing steel noise as they opened up on the tank.

The Razorwings came in fast. T he chainguns couldn’t track them. The first one swooped in low over a skiff and snatched two crewmen off the deck, leaving a spray of blood and screams in it s wake as it flew past. The creatures still on deck fired at the flying reptile with small arms, but the rounds ricocheted off its scaly hide. The second Razorwing dove beneath the other skiff and swiped at the lower rudders, which crack ed and fell to the ground.

Sol hammered the nearest Razorwing with his M78. The steady stream of bullets echoed like a quiet storm. Jade and Maur retreated back behind the dunes, while Kane, Ronan and Sol moved within a hundred yards of the nearest skiff.

The air was thick with exhaust and the smell of fuel. The vampire tank released another shot, which flew past the skiffs and tore into the desert. Sand exploded like a dry geyser. Kane and the others charged through clouds of dust.

The Razorwing turned towards them. Kane fired at the beast as it charged at Sol. The trio of vampires on the Razorwing’s back fired hand-cannons and a needle rifle, but the speed of their mount threw off their aim. The beast flew in a straight line towards Sol so it could swallow him up in its sizeable jaws.

Kane ducked as the beast flew past him, and he barely d odged the metal-plated wing. He fired a s he rolled and managed to hit one of the vampires, who tumbled off the deck. A mooring wire was wrapped around the vampire’s leg, and he was dragged across the sand behind the Razorwing.

The bladed tail swooped at Kane, and he barely jumped clear of the scythed limb. He threw himself forward and flung a grenade with all his strength before he landed face first in the sand.

The grenade exploded in the air next to the flying lizard. Blood sprayed from a gaping hole in its flesh. S hattered ribs jutted out be neath its damaged wing. The beast fell to the ground with a thunderous crash. Sol and Ronan take position and he ld their ground while they hammer ed the dying reptile with gun fire.

The damaged skiff went down behind them. Metal cracked and flew away as the s ails snapped. The remaining crewmen had secured themselves to the deck with rope s and chain s. S econds after the skiff noisily touched down, the vampire tank destroyed it with another roaring blast. Steel and smoke ripped away as the vehicle exploded.

Kane stumbled backwards. Hot wind scoured his face. A shockwave hit him with the force of a hammer and knocked him to the ground.

M ore explosions. Kane rubbed grit and sweat from his eyes. Ronan and Sol were on top of the dead Razorwing, where they battled its vampire riders in a blur of blades, claws and gunfire.

Kane saw t he second skiff t a k e aim at the advancing tank with its recoilless rifle. Heavy clouds of dust and shadow trailed the vampire vehicle.

“Jade!” he shouted. He looked back and saw her and Maur peek over the dune. “Get that tank’s attention!”

Jade’s spirit spun forward in a lance of ice-blue fire. Frost vapor s scorched the ground white. The spirit tore through the sand and caused an eruption of frozen dust.

“Now get down!” he shou ted. Kane ran towards the tank and bank ed right, firing his M 1 4 as he ran. T he turret turned his way.

“C over!” he shouted. H e dove down as the t ank fired. The blast cracked open the sky. Grisly charcoal smoke poured out of the bladed turret.

The shell landed somewhere behind him. A cyclonic storm of debris pelted his body with splinters of shattered stone and sand. Kane folded himsel f and shield ed his head and neck.

Kane was dizzy as he stood up. He felt almost drunk. H e saw the dark shadow of the tank through the unnatural fog. Black steam curled into the air, and even with his ears ringing Kane still heard ghastly incorporeal defenses circle round the tank, a choir of banshees fused into a shield. They only discorporated when the weapons fired, and Kane hope d the skiff would get a shot off before the shield fully reformed.

The shrill blast of the recoilless rifle howled through the air and squeeze d through th e undead shielding just in time. Kane heard armor crack. The tank tumbled out of the smog of undead vapor. S teel and bone s and chain s scattered across the pale sand. The roar of the crash was deafening.

The tank ro ll ed to a stop. One wheel was gone, two more had shattered, and the gun turret had snapped off. Kane heard combat behind him and felt the air turn cold from Jade’s spirit, but when he looked back over his shoulder all he saw were drifts o f dark smoke.

H e hesitated, and moved towards the crashed tank. His body was wracked with fatigue, and the sharp pain in his knee gave him pause.

Cowboy up, dude.

The tank was still. A chunk of loose steel fell from the mangled turret. Kane’s feet kicked up sand as he jogged down the dune. H e slowed as he drew close the vehicle, and kept his M14 aimed at the wide-bodied tank hatch and the rear doors.

He’d never been th at close to a vampire assault tank before. The outer hull was black steel and bone plate. Blood dripped from the rivets, and the chains that dangled from the sides were covered in tiny spikes that ooz ed dark fluid. A small anti-personnel gun — probably a nail launcher — was pointed right at him. He hadn’t even noticed until he was practically right on top of the tank.

His heart froze, but when he was still alive a few seconds later he realized he was probably safe.

I f any Suckheads we re still in there they would have fired that thing at me by now.

The tank oozed mechanical fluid. A gaping hole in the hull billowed dark fumes.

The skiff flew up behind him and came to a sudden stop less than a hundred yards away. Scorch marks marred the face of the desert-tan vessel. S moke churned from the lower exhaust ports near the tilting turbine engines, which kicked up the sand into a small dust storm. The curled sails had folded back like a dark fan, and the chainguns mounted on the forecastle still spewed smoke. The recoilless rifle was covered with paintings of skulls.

The grey-skinned reptilian crewmen regarded him with haunting yellow eyes just visible over the gasmasks that cover ed the lower halves of their faces. T hey aimed one of the chainguns at him.

“What the hell?! ” Kane shouted. “I just did you a favor, you morons!”

They made no response. It occurred to him they probably didn’t speak any human tongue, and that he, as his dad used to say, was now well up Shit Creek without a paddle.

There were five crewmen visible, and three of them aim ed weapons at him. One of the riflemen spoke, but whatever came out of his mouth didn’t sound anything at all like language, more like a series of metallic grunts.

Kane put his hands up, but he didn’t drop his weapon. That s eemed to appease them. At the very least, they didn’t shoot him.

“I have no idea who you are, and I can’t understand what the hell you’re saying,” Kane said with a smile. “ For all I know you’re telling me how sexy I am. ”

Something exploded inside the tank. The reptile skiff’s guns swiveled back towards the smoking vehicle as the exit hatch flew open.

A vampire emerged from the wreckage. It was clothed in pale red armor, wore a jagged metal facemask and dark goggles, and held a bone-rifle. Kane dove forward and barely dodged a barrage of needles. The skiff riders hammered the vampire with the chaingun and their rifles, but the undead still managed to fire back at them even as it was torn apart. A barrage of eight-inch bone shards rammed into the skiff. One took a grey-skinned rifleman in the throat and threw him backwards.

Something else emerged from the crash, a bulky and armored shape, four-legged and black. Its horns glistened with some sort of oily and undoubtedly poisonous substance. Barbed chains wrapped around the horns and linked into the beast’s iron jaw plating. Undead nostrils steamed dark fumes as it plowed its way out of the side of the vessel.

“You have got to be kidding me…” Kane said.

The undead Ebonback stamped its feet. It was five- feet at the shoulder s, a tank on legs. Its dank eyes were rotted and mostly gone, and its flesh was riddled with heavy scars. Viscous red and black fluid seeped out from under sheets of iron that had been fused and hammered into place on its bulky corpse. A dark saddle had been riveted to its back. The creature exhaled, and a thick cloud of frozen onyx fumes billowed down around its cloven steel feet.

The beast stamped again, and charged at Kane. He fired his M14, but the bullets bounced harmlessly off the beast’s metal hide.

Kane turned and ran towards the skiff. Sweat poured down his face, and his heart hammered. He expected to feel the horn s punch through his back at any second. F ear raced down his spine.

The creature was right on him. Kane threw himself forward and rolled under the advancing skiff. Sand and stone cut into his arms. The Ebonback collided with the ship and knocked it backwards with a loud clang. Blood and necrotic fluid gushed out from between its armor plates.

The skiff floated back and listed to one side. The beast stumbled, its momentum broken, but he knew it would recover in just a few seconds.

The M14 was empty, so he dropped it and pulled out a grenade as the Ebonback lowered its head and readied to charge at him again. Cold air filled Kane’s lungs as he breathed in, waiting for his end.

The horn dipped, and the beast charged. Its thunderous approach shook the ground. Kane reached behind his back for his combat sword, a short blade with a razor point.

He saw movement over the ridge. H e didn’t want the others to see him die.

The beast scooped its head low as it drew close. Kane darted to the side and rammed the point of his blade into the creature’s eye. Black blood gushed out and sprayed onto his bare arms. He s mell ed grave rot and turpentine.

Kane fell backwards as the creature raced past him. He threw the live grenade in the Ebonback’s path as he rolled down the dune and folded himself into a ball.

The grenade went off. Chunks of black steel and meat pummeled the ground.

“Kane!” Ronan shouted from over the dune, but it was too late.

Something struck him from behind, some sort of webbing that latched onto hi m and sent volts of electricity through his body. Kane cried out, convuls ed, and blacked out.

Kane woke on his back, staring up at the sky. H e felt nauseous, his stomach was clenched, and his hands were asleep because they’d been bound tightly behind his back. There was blood on his face, and his legs were twisted uncomfortably on the metal floor.

He was moving. The world shifted. He turned his eyes from the ic y sun and saw brown stones and low drifts of black sand.

W e ’ re close to the coast.

Jade was there with him, a s were Maur and Sol. A ll of them had been bound with lengths of chain secured to iron loops on the deck of the skiff. T here was no sign of Ronan.

Kane tried to speak, but his mouth was dry. His shoulders ached, and he tasted sand on his tongue.

The skiff moved at a fair pace, especially considering the damage it had suffered during the battle. Smoke churned from its aft end, but the engine sounded like it r an smoothly.

Well that’s a relief, he thought. At least we won’t crash, so we’ll live long enough to find out what these freaks plan to do to us.

“You guys…” He coughed. The scent of vomit filled his nostrils. “You guys ok?”

“They have Ronan,” Jade said.

The skiff bobbed up and down as it hugged a terrain covered in cold dunes and low rocky hills. The ground was deep red, like blood had dried on the sand. Kane smelled salt and rot. He tried to sit up, and failed. Dark clouds waited for them over the sea to the west. The atmosphere was cold and damp, and his skin was freezing. He remained on his side — at least if he stayed like that his hands weren’t crushed beneath his own weight.

“Interrogation?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Sol asked. “But they don’t seem to understand us anymore than we understand them, so I’m not sure what the hell they’d be asking him.”

“Any clue as to who they are?” Kane asked.

The recoilless rifle had been covered and sec ured with a tarp, but the chain guns were manned and pointed out into the wastes. A pilot stood at the helm, which was just a simple shaft of metal covered with levers and cranks. None of the crew paid any attention to the prisoners.

“They could be Grey Clan,” Jade said quietly. “No one knows what ever happened to them.”

The reptilian crewmen were spread out across the uneven deck. Their scaly reptilian flesh was ic y grey and oozed secretion s like dirty oil. They wore g as mask s wrapped around pugnacious lizard-like jaw s, and their eyes were solid yellow. S caly fingers ended in sharp claws, and their bod ies w ere wrapped in mismatch ed leather and metal armor. They carried o ld-fashioned Colt revolver s, razorwire-bound batons th at sparked with electricity, short serrated knives and bandoliers stuffed with grenades.

“Grey Clan… well… maybe… ” Kane said.

A hatch opened that led below deck; it was so carefully concealed Kane hadn’t even noticed it before it swung outwards. A nother tall grey-skinned humanoid emerged wearing a dark and tattered cape that rippled in the wind. Its eyes lock ed on Kane.

“Nice cape, Emperor Ming,” Kane spat.

The creature growled something that might have been an insult. It lifted Kane up by the arm as another crewman undid his chains. Kane considered resisting, but he knew that w ould be dangerous until he knew where Ronan was.

I’ve managed to screw things up so far, he thought. I n eed to make sure I do n’t get any one killed.

Stumbling and dizzy, Kane tried his best not to trip and fall as they led him below deck.

FIVE

Hunted

Blacksand was a city in transition, a place h obbled together by refugees, outcasts, deserters and nomads. Its architecture was a mishmash of scrap and converted caravan vessels, broken-down airships and jury-rigged freighters. Plates of steel and stone had been fused together by mercenary warlocks to provide the semblance of outer walls. Loose agreements between var ious gangs, merchant bands and T he Shard helped maintain a semblance of order, but since the city catered to so many travelers and bizarre tribes like the Mektesh and the Dorai’mara’kaar, as well as sea brigan ds from the distant Nezek’duul I slands across the Ebonsand Sea, Blacksand treaded the fine line between being cosmopolitan and just being completely disorganized.

Danica had a good view of both the pier and the dark waters through the dingy window. I ron tugboats churned through the polluted bay, and massi ve crates of boxed goods swung in webbed cargo nets. The dipping sun shone rust red on the glassy waves. T he spiked city walls loomed to the north, and corbelled towers statio ned all along the docks rotated in place as their motorguns scanned the waters for signs of trouble.

She and Klos Vago sat at a corner table in The Blood Rose, which was a cross between a brothel, a t avern and a gambling den. Purple smoke made her eyes sting, and t he air was heady with fish oil and musk, overcooked po tatoes and watered down alcohol.

The Blood Rose was essentially a dual-level bar with small private tables in the upper seating area and dozens of crude wooden tables on the lower level. Everything was crafted from red and black wood, and the place was brightly illuminated by open windows and grill-covered skylights. P ortions of greasy seafood were served in trays lined with brown paper. The atmosphere was muggy and tasted of overcooked fish and tobacco.

Danica saw merchants and drifters, mercenaries and killers, laborers, ex-slaves and runaways. It was a place filled with the dregs of the borderlands, people who didn’t fit in — or else who didn’t want to fit in — with the Southern Claw’s laws and plans. Looking at the displaced clientele reminded her of how far she and the team still had to travel.

It feels like it’s been years since we’ve been home, she thought. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact that s he thought of the team’s mansion in Thornn as “home”.

She looked ac ross the table at Vago. He wasn’ t a remotely attractive human being in any sense of the word. His scarred face was held together with jagged stitches, and his mismatched eyes sparkled with thaumaturgic augmentations. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and so incredibly thick in his chest and arms that the lower half of his body looked puny by comparison. His thin black hair was pasted back against his scalp, and he had a preposterously pugnacious jaw. He wore dark leather armor, tall black boots laced up with metal straps, and a. 44 magnum in a shoulder-holster.

“You know that I hate you, right?” Danica asked.

“ Yes. I know,” he answered. He always smiled, and that just made him more hideous. His teeth were rotted from alcohol and tobacco, and he ground them when he spoke. His voice was thick, like he had a throat full of glass. “And that’s too bad, Danica. I find you intoxicating.” He took a drink and puffed on a massive cigar that smelled like a burning boat.

“Awesome,” she said, and she took a drink of her black bomber. Danica also dressed in dark leather armor. S he wore a pair of katar s under her long armored coat and a Colt Python in a shoulder holster. It took a lot of willpower on her part not to use either of them on Vago, especially since his unnaturally beady eyes didn’t seem capable of pulling away from her chest.

The fish at The Blood Rose was supposedly the freshest in the city, and they offered their watered down drinks at a cheaper rate than almost anywhere else in Blacksand.

Danica wouldn’t touch the fish. Being in Vago’s presence had effectively quelled any notion of hunger.

“Have I mentioned that I’m a lesbian?” she said bluntly.

“Once or twice. ” H e managed to both growl and smile at once. “Did it occur to you that might be why I find you so interesting?”

Danica thought about that. She lit a cigarillo — the decision she’d made a couple of years back to quit smoking had been almost entirely forgotten in light of recent events — and took another drink. The bomber tasted meaty in her throat, like she’d taken a fresh drink of blood from a kill.

Weird. I haven’t thought about that in a long time. The last time she’d been hunting had been with Cradden, back when they were both kids in what used to be North Carolina. It was one of the few things she and her brother had been able to do and actually enjoy one another’s company, even if it had only been because they had to watch each other’s backs with Dad around.

“If you mean to imply that you intend for to hook me up with one of your bimbette s, you can friggin’ forget it.”

“Danica,” Vago smiled. His accent wa s heavy, something European. “Do you know why I have taken you and your friends under my wing?”

“‘Under your wing?’” Danica laughed. “Are you kidding me? You have us doing free work for you. ”

“In exchange for my help.”

“We were supposed to be gone already,” she said. “If you would’ve helped us out quickly like you promised, my friends and I wouldn’t be hip-deep in shit right now.”

“You should count yourself lucky,” Vago said slowly. “Your Revenger friends want you. Badly. And I’m the only thing standing in their way.”

He was right, but she’d never admit it. From what little information she’d been able to get out of him, T he Revengers had come to the area near Blacksand for some other purpose, but something or some one had tipped them off about Danica’s presence. Now that they knew she was there they stuck to the area like glue. Danica had never heard of the wardens operating this far south before, but she supposed they’d been bound to run out of easy places to find inmates sooner or later, and the borderlands were a perfect place for harvesting new workers for the mines.

“ After my team gets back, we’re leaving,” Black said. She took another drink, knowing what came next.

“Yes,” he smiled. “ Of course.” He didn’t even bother trying to sound sincere.

Danica didn’t think he actually wanted to sleep with her, or for her to sleep with anyone else. He didn’t really want anything except for her to understand that he could do whatever he wanted, and that she and her friends had no room to negotiate.

I’ve met plenty of men like you. It ’ s all about the power play.

Using Vago’s equipment, Danica had confirmed the large number of Killraven and Black Dog units patrolling Blacksand’s perimeter. Vago’s witches had cast incredibly powerful nullifying enchantments that kept Danica from being detected, but the magic had been specifically crafted only to function while she was in Vago’s proximity. Until Black and the others finished their period of indentured service, they were stuck. T here was no way the y could take on so many Revengers.

“I should be with my team,” she said as she pushed her food away. She’d never been a fan of fish, especially fish that smelled like it had been overcooked and soaked in an extra lair of grease.

“ Danica,” Vago smiled. “ D id it ever occur to you why they might be looking for you?”

“I know exactly why they’re looking for me,” she said.

The Revenger’s perpetual quest for money and power pushed them to do horrible things. It was alarming how quickly even new recruits lost their grip on humanity, and how easy it became for them to disregard the lives they took. She only had to close her eyes for a moment to clearly see Black Scar in her memory: halls of reeking steel and b urning cages, deep pits filled with slick red mud, a choking haze of diamond dust, and the screams of the dying in the steam-blasted halls. The wardens had dug through black rock to a world below, a place filled with raw minerals and gems that kept them comfortable and isolated, rich beyond measure but segregated from the rest of humankind.

She wanted s o badly to leave that place behind, but she knew a part of her would always be trapped there.

Contrary to what she said, Danica wasn’t entirely sure why T he Revengers were trying to find her. She had trouble believing Rake would go through so much trouble over a deserter.

She looked behind Vago and saw his bodyguards, a pair of thick-necked and well-muscled men with long knives and auto-pistols. Danica was surprised he didn’t object to her carrying weapons in his presence, but then she remembered she wasn’t technically his prisoner.

It just seems like it.

“There ’ s an event today,” Vago said as he cracked open a shellfish and slurped out its pasty white innards with his considerable tongue. Danica tried not to look, but the sound he made while he ate was thoroughly nauseating. “I would like you to accompany me.”

“Gosh, could I?” she said flatly. She finished her black bomber, and their waitress brought her another. Danica drank it without hesitation. Her spirit hugged tight against her skin, and she felt him burn with disapproval — she’d already had several of the stout licorice-flavored drinks, and every time she imbibed another he had to clear the alcohol from her blood with a jolt of arcane energy. H e was gentl e enough with Black to cleanse her system without making her vomit, but h is treat ment became slightly less friendly with each subsequent drink.

She’d had to keep him reigned in, and that made them both uncomfortable. The Revengers undoubtedly ha d hunter witches keyed in to hi s particular arcane signature, and even with Vago’s so-called protection, using him for even the simple act of burning the liquor out of her body was living danger ously.

Gargoyles soared overhead, hired muscle used by Vago to keep the peace in Blacksand. From what Danica had seen on the streets and in the docks, they weren’t terribly good at their job.

Someone started the arcane jukebox in the corner. A heavy guitar riff blasted over unintelligible vocals.

“Are n’t you going to ask what sort of event we’re going to?” Vago asked with a smile.

“No,” Black said. “I don’t have much of a choice but to go. It doesn’t mean I have to care. ” She leaned in closer to him. “We’ve been here for almost three weeks, Vago. And while I appreciate your helping us, we are paying you back by assisting your lackeys with every shitty job you throw our way. Now you want to use me as arm candy to go to some gambling den or to make a public appearance at a pit-fight. But know this: my team and I are leaving. And we’re going to do it s oon.” She sat back and took another drink. “And if you try to stop us, you’re going to pay.”

He smiled. His face stretched. T haumaturgic grafts had been laced into his flesh to protect his body from long-term exposure to caustic coastal winds and to shield his mind from psychic intrusion. He looked like an intelligent zombie.

“You are a remarkable creature,” he smiled.

“Yeah. I get that a lot. So…” She lit another cigarillo. God, I do n’t need to get hooked on these again. “Since clearly you’re just dying to tell me…w hat’s the event?”

“A race.”

“Oh, goody,” she said. “Chickens?”

“ Automobiles,” he smiled.

“Oh. G oody.”

Blacksand’s racing arena was a tall and columnar structure made of red steel and dark stone. T he stadium seats were arranged at such a steep angle Danica felt sure she’d tumble out of the stands and back down to the central racing pit if she didn’t step careful ly. Spectators packed the complex. They were ruddy-face d and sweaty-palmed drifters, merchants and runaway soldiers. People desperately clutched cash and coins in their dirt-caked hands, and t heir faces were dank with sweat and industrial oil.

F ueling pits billowed thick plumes of gritty steam. Exhaust and heat turned the air hazy and thick. The arena hummed and vibrated.

Danica, Vago and his bodyguards were seated on the uppermost balcony of the stadium seats, a semi-private box that hung precariously out into open air. Danica felt the sting of salt wind and saw churning clouds in the distance.

The height at which they sat was truly dizzying. H ard winds came in from the sea and shook the structure. The seats were made of hard metal and covered with loose red blankets and imitation wool that smelled like goats. Black didn’t want to use her spirit to shield her self from the cold, so she pulled her armored coat tight and did her best to ignore it.

“I don’t like being this exposed,” she said to Vago. The box was separated from the nearest seats b y metal rails, but she and Vago were plainly visible to everyone around them. “I thought the idea of hiding was to keep a low profile.”

“My dear Danica,” Vago smiled. “You must trust me. I’ve hidden people before. The best place to hide is in plain sight.”

“ It’s also the best place to go if you want to get shot in the face,” she said.

Their seats were located a good 300 feet over the race track. Black was able to make out a surprising number of details from their vantage, like the fact that human skulls bordered the road and that the names of prominent dead racers had been carved or slashed into the concrete.

The growl of revving engines shook the arena. Massive vehicles crafted from black steel and magically hardened bone drove up to the starting line. Tail pipes spat spectral-laced smoke. The vehicles sported a rmor plate, gigantic ram blades and massive chain-wrapped wheels. Drivers buried beneath thick leather and iron helmets looked up and salute d the crowd, which had worked itself to frenzy. Money exchanged hands as bets were placed. People rushed to their seats.

Danica and her spirit felt more tension in the air than excitement. The spectators expected someone to die, and based on what Black saw that was exactly what they were going to get.

The racers were all highly stylize d showmen with bizarre costumes, bull horn helmets and purple and black face-paint, fetishist leather zipper masks or flamboyant gladiator steel. One racer was dressed up like a psychotic clown with fangs, and he had blood on his button nose and his oversized lips; another was dressed like a dystopian vampire opera singer, complete with a top-hat and a cane carved out of bone. Their cars were grungy and dark, covered in blood and oil and armed to the teeth with blades and melee weapons (no projectiles were allowed, as the risk of injuring the crowd was too great). M any of the vehicles bore logos and stylized designs like leering faces or skull-and- crossbones or scantily clad women with bat’s wings.

An announcer came over the crackling intercom and announced each racer and his vehicle. Barely dressed showgirls smiled and waved at the crowd as they marched across the arena floor with excessive banners.

Danica found the entire scene preposterous. It reminded her of the death races they’d held at Black Scar, only this event was jovial, and someone might actually survive.

A blaring horn s ounded, and the race began.

A dune-buggy equipped with blade d ram plate s quickly took the lead as it knocked a retrofitted Trans Am into the wall. A thick red truck so loaded down with armor it was a wonder it could even move bullied its way into the middle of the pack, followed closely by an El Camino with saw blades in its grill.

While she watched the race from their dizzying perch, Danica noticed that others were watching her, merchants and black marketers, mercenaries and drug dealers, all associates of Vago’s who were clearly impressed by the “date” he ’d brought to the races.

I’m surprised he didn’t ask me to wear a cocktail dress, she thought bitterly.

Crashes sounded up from the arena and shook the narrow stadium. The crowd roared as the El Camino skid, fishtailed and spun into a massive spike in the wall. The vehicle ripped apart in a shower of steel and blood.

Danica looked up. Something was wrong. She wasn’t sure what, but she sensed something, some presence at the periphery of her vision.

The crowd roared. Another crash sounded down below. Three of the nine cars had already wrecked.

She smelled acid in the wind. Danica felt off- balance as the chaos of motion and sound twisted around her. Normally she ’d have used her spirit to fight off th e feeling, but she didn’t dare, not with how exposed they were.

God damn it, Vago, it’s like you want me to get caught.

That thought didn’t settle well with her. She was already suspicious of their so-ca lled “host”, and s he wouldn’t have put it past him to arrange her capture, so long as he saw a profit in the deal.

Her spirit burn ed against her skin. H e ’d detected something, some danger, and he wasn’t about to sit idly by while it got closer.

Danica hadn’t actually seen anything except for a shimmer in the air, a faint disturbance, like a shadow had pass ed in front of the sun. W hatever it was, it was gone now, lost in the cacophony of shouts and coins. People held their drinks high as another vehicle was demolished in a blast of red fire and black smoke.

Her spirit wrapped around her. If there were any Revengers nearby they’d detect her in seconds, but at that moment she didn’t care.

S omething had already found her.

M etal rip ped open the air. S omething oozed through the wound in the atmosphere and seeped through like sick honey.

Danica sent h er spirit into the crowd to find out what the intruder was. I t s presence filled her with dread. She felt like she’d stepped through a cold waterfall.

S he drew a katar and wrapped it with vitriolic energy. Danica felt eyes on her. Vago shout ed at her to sit down. H is bodyguards step ped close, but she shot them a look that made them back off.

Her spirit’s vision broke things down to their baser elements. Danica looked through a lens of blood and saw through people’s skin and bones and sensed their life energy. She noted the hexed security measures in the arena, measures that hadn’t been enough to keep this creature out.

It came into view: the murderwraith. To everyone else’s eyes it was a tall human male, slightly heavyset with thick fingers and a balding pate. He wore workman’s clothes and was armed with nothing more than a racing sheet and a mug of green beer.

But through the eyes of her spirit Danica saw the alien presence for what it truly was: walking ooze, a monstrous pile of human-shaped slime and gelatin that stood some ten feet tall.

Eyes like bleeding winter narrowed as the slimy brute flew at her. The smoking wraith expanded, stre tched and fused with the clouds before it condensed into a solid fog giant. H ooked blades took shape at the ends of its cumulus appendages.

Danica felt ice vapors curl away from her skin. The rotting wind carried the taste of s pectral drool. Claws like scissors unfolded from the murderwraith’s form.

Her spirit shifted to a column of dark fire. Heat flushed her arms. Her vision narrowed and focused as r age burned in side her.

The murderwraith howled. Knife claws shot towards Danica’s heart and came so close her skin went blue from its icy aura. Steaming t eeth evaporated as the carnivorous ghost exhaled clouds of white frost.

The wraith’s leering inhuman face collapsed as she blasted through it with a spiral of ebon flame. I ts phantom body r etreated in a blast of dead fog.

People screamed and ducked and moved out of the way. Danica was thankful no one had been injured by the blast — it had shot straight through the creature and off into empty air.

“What the hell are you doing?” Vago shouted. His bodyguards stood nearby.

They can’t see it, she realized. They haven’t detect ed it at all. An undead that powerful shouldn’t have been invisible.

“I was being attacked…” she started to say, but a wailing klaxon drowned out her voice.

A Killraven squad flew into view from around a nearby building.

God damn it! That thing was just a scout, calling me out, forcing me to defend myself so they could lock onto my arcane signature.

“You ’re on your own then, you stupid bitch!” Vago shout ed. His bodyguards pulled him back, and they vanished into the crowd.

Shit.

Danica pulled her spirit in and pushed her way down the aisles as the Killravens drew close. Vago was already gone. She was alone.

The Killravens moved fast. S he saw their grey-blue armor and bladed wings draw within 100 yards. Smoke poured from exhaust panels in the bottom s of the armor packs, and their bladed gauntlets crackled with arcane power. A small cluster of scout homunculi accompanied the eight-man crew and fill ed the air like a swarm of enormous bats. The Killravens spread out and dodged through the steel cables and wire mesh that linked Blacksand’s taller structures together.

“Bitch!”

Someone in the crowd shot at Danica with a. 357 Magnum. People shouted and scrambled out of the way. Danica knocked the gunner a side with a sweep of ic y wind.

Another spectator armed with a knife came at her, and Danica ducked beneath his blow and struck him backhanded, then kicked him in the solar plexus and sent him t o the ground.

Her spirit flushed against her skin and shielded her like armor. He’d been cooped up for too long, held inactive and hidden away, and now his anger flooded to the surface like a tidal wave. I t would be all but impossible to hold him back.

The stadium exploded into madness. People ran for safety, but since most of the crowd was armed random gunshots rang out as people attacked what ever they thought the threat was. Luckily, only a few of those shots were directed at Danica. Her spirit deflected stray bullets and fists as she pushed her way towards the edge of the upper seating platform. S he leapt over the side.

Wind rushed up at her. H er spirit push ed up and against her with ethereal force so that she fell in slow motion. H er stomach turn ed inside out. A drenaline and fear raced through her body as she plummeted through exhaust and explosive fumes.

Even s hielded, jolts of pain shot up Danica’s legs as she landed down on the mid-section seating area. She rolled forward into an open aisle. Her heart pounded. The air smelled like fear.

Danica ran down the aisle towards the exits. Many of the people in th e section she’d landed in were still in their seats in spite of the cacophony up above.

T he fighting hadn’t actually halted the race, but there were only a handful of vehicles left on the track. A monstrous truck armed with jagged horns ploughed through a dark van as they turned a corner, and t he crash rattled the stadium.

A Black Dog patrol waited next to the near est exit. Danica saw t hree Revengers and a trio of Blood Dogs, smaller versions of Blood Wolves that were specially bred at Black Scar to hunt down escaped prisoners. Their ebon skin and slathering jaws snapped at her as she came close.

Spectators looked out from the nearby aisles, confused. T he black-masked Revengers leveled their weapons and ordered her to halt.

Danica sent her spirit forward as a rush of cold wind and knock ed t he Revengers back. T wo of the Blood Dogs pushed past her spirit and came at her with snapping jaws. Their collars crackled with hex energies.

Black pulled out her katars, went to her knees and sliced into both hounds at once. H ot blood splashed on her cheeks and face as t heir bodies slid past her.

The third dog charged, and before she could move its teeth ripped into her leg. She swiped and kicked the beast.

Gunshots rang out. Revengers armed with MP5As and auto-shotguns ran into the seating section behind her. She saw a warlock among their ranks, and she wasted a moment wondering if she knew him before she turned on her heels and ran.

B ullets struck the ground behind her. T he Revengers chased Danica right to th e edge of the rac e track, a massive circle of grey and black concrete littered with dirt. S teel walls lined with blades and flaming obstacles wrapped around a network of shifting metal platforms and collapsing barricades of electric chain.

Revengers came at her from the opposite side, and she saw the shadow s of Killravens from above. Her spirit whipped around her like a molten tide. She kept him close and wound him around one of her katars while she drew her Colt Python. Danica looked into the haze of dirt an d vehicular fumes.

There was an exit on the far side of the track, almost directly opposite from where she stood.

Bullets hit the ground. A ricochet caught a spectator in the eye, and he fell screaming. Panic surged through the crowd like wildfire. People leapt from their seats and pointed at the Revengers and fell back as more Blood Dogs came at her.

Danica leapt over the fence and onto the track. Her lungs swelled with black vapors as she ran as fast as she could across the mud and dirt. An armored truck narrowly missed her as she sped across its path, and s he heard it twist and fishtail behind her. Something buried itself in the ground to her right, an electrified lance connected to a razor cable.

She dodged m etal monstrosities and wove through bursts of smoke. The air explode d all around her, and any second Danica expected an armored wheel or a blast of arcane power to strike her down. Her spirit forced her to keep moving, propelled her around spinning blade towers and beneath whirling flame whips.

A truck with a spiked grill burst through the grey smoke. Danica’s heart jumped. She pushed her fists together and dug her feet into the earth. H er spirit turned in to a jagged lance of frost and flew into the vehicle. The truck snapped and folded inward like it had struck an unbreakable iron pole. M etal and rubber wrapped around her body. She found herself unharmed at the center of a steel cocoon.

S he used her spirit to blast her way free. D ebris and smoking stone rained down. Most of the other racing vehicles were gone, and p eople rush ed for the exits. Revengers shot down spectators in an effort to get to Danica.

She ran. Her spirit threw a Killraven aside as he swooped in low. His thaumaturgic pack snapped, and dark smoke trailed his body as he flailed out of control and flew into a steel wall.

A bola snapped around her feet. Danica fell hard onto her face.

Her spirit whipped back and knocked two Killravens aside while Danica cut through the cord with a katar. Blood seeped out of open cuts where the razor bola had torn through her cargo pants, and she felt poison spread painfully through her veins.

She ran up to a downed Killraven. He tried to rise, but Danica kicked him hard enough to send blood all over the inside of his helmet, ripped away his MP5 and fired back at t he Revengers.

Blood Dogs and their h andlers pushed through the bloodied crowd. The air was heavy with exhaust and gasoline.

Danica ’s stomach clenched as her spirit purged the poison from her blood. She ran for the exit. E very muscle ached like they’d been hit with ham mers. Her heart pounded so hard her chest felt ready to split.

An explosion tore into the stadium overhead. Drifts of stone dust fell over her eyes and face. The gun was empty, so Danica dropped it and held her spirit tight i n her hands, where he burn ed like explosive gel. T he air was filled with a choking cloud of metal and stone debris.

An enormous clawed arm came out of nowhere and knocked Danica back. Stone slammed against her skull. Her head swam, and h er spirit reeled. H e’d shielded her from what should have been a killing blow.

A massive simian beast stepped over her. Eight-feet tall and as a wi de as a truck, the black — skinned and gorilla-like creature had six powerful arms and fierce canine jaws. A gold battle mask covered its face. Claws the color of milk had been sharpened to razor points, and the creature’s hind feet ended in reptile-like talons that gripped the earth and kept its top-heavy bulk stable.

It was a Talon, one of a number of mutated gorilla s bred and controlled by the Revengers to act as enforcers and pack mules. It s tepped forward. Its growl chilled her blood.

Danica leapt to her feet and lashed at the beast with her spirit. An acid whip sliced the creature’s mask apart and cut open one of its eyes. T he brute howl ed in pain. Even injured, it came at her.

Black could barely see. She desperately fused her spirit into a coil of frost and wound it around the Talon’s enormous limbs. It tried to break free, and Danica strained at the pressure it placed on her spirit. Her vision faded in and out. Blood ran down her face and into her eyes.

Something struck her from behind, and e verything went dark.

SIX

Bodies

Do you?

Danica woke in the dark. She was sure she’d heard a voice, but it faded in the shadows of her dreams. I mages floated through her mind as she came to: blood-soaked horses and iron juggernauts, columns of dark ice and vampire faces behind bladed masks. She woke frightened.

Her wrists were bound behind her back, and she se nsed her spirit, adrift and unable to reach her. Something held him at bay.

Sweat rolled down her sk in. She tasted oil and exhaust. Her face pushed against a warm metal floor.

“Hello?” she said. Her voice echoed into the darkness. She wasn’t blindfolded, but she might as well have been. The black air was thick with heat. She heard machinery rattle in the distance, but the echoing dark made it all but impossible to pinpoint its exact direction. Her knees ached, and she felt dried blood on her shins where the razor bola had grappled her. She struggled to her feet and bumped her head against something metal.

“Shit!”

She tried to summon her spirit again, but he couldn’t answer.

What have y ou done to him, you assholes?

Her first suspicion was that they’d given her N arcosm, an illegal narcotic that sedated a mage’s spirit. Narcosm was difficult to come by and dangerous to use, since forcing a witch or warlock to drink too much could potentially send their spirit into a slumber so deep they’d never come out of it. She’d been forced to use some on Cross to quell his murderous spirit, and while there had really bee n no other way to save his life she still regretted it.

That might even be the reason why he can’t wake up.

Aside from Ilfesa Warfield — a black marketer who had doubtlessly provided Cross with the dose they’d found in his possession, a matter Danica intended to take up with the witch if they ever made it back to Thornn — the only people that Black knew of who ma d e regular use of Narcosm were T he Revengers.

“You might as well come and talk to me,” she said loudly. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

No answer. She hadn’t really expected any.

It was possible she was on a n airship, but in spite of the rumbling floor and shaking walls she didn’t think so. T he heat and utter darkness made her wonder if she ha d n’t been shoved into a boiler room or a storage container.

For all I know I’m in a giant lunchbox that’s been thrown to the bottom of the ocean and covered up with concrete.

She’d be alon e for a while… perhaps even a long while. Keeping her in the dark and surround ing her with noise so she couldn’t pinpoint her own location was all part of the process of breaking important captives. Had she been a common chattel slave she would have been crammed into a box with forty other prisoners and shipped straight to the prison, where she would toil and die in the red diamond mines.

Oh, no, that would be too simple for a “traitor”, wouldn’t it?

They had her. And that meant sooner or later she’d have to face Rake.

Black had no desire to confront the Head Warden of Black Scar. Even for the brief span of time when she’d completely bought in to T he Revenger’s mercenary lifestyle without question, Rake had always struck her as a highly dangerous man. He wasn’t as excessively violent as some of the other enforcers like Mauser or Crane, but in his own way he was more frightening. Rake was cold and calculating, possessed of a quiet and confident sense of authority. Between him and his right-hand man, Geist, hundreds of prisoners had been tortured to death in Black Scar, and many more had been killed.

She had no doubt he’d taken her defecti on personally. There was a cold reception waiting for her, if indeed the y plan ned to return her to Black Scar.

They weren’t in Blacksand just looking for me, she told herself. They had to have been in the area on other business, searching for new prisoners or making a prisoner drop. But they did go through an awful lot of trouble to bring me in once they realized I was here.

Something didn’t add up.

Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. There was actually a subtle trace of light, so faint and dim it was all but impossible to tell where it came from. She could see her hands, but only barely.

Danica saw the outline of a bulky metallic structure close by, so she cautiously walked over to it, moving her feet carefully as she tread through the dark for fear of tripping o ver something. T he anticipation of running into anything in her near-blind state put her nerves on edge.

The object was cold and still, and Danica guessed it was an old boiler or a generator. She put her back up against it and slowly edged along its face.

Danica found a short piece of broken metal sticking out of the equipment. She set her bonds against the edge and quietly sawed up and down to cut herself free.

Danica couldn’t begin to count how many people had died by her hand or on account of her orders in Black Scar. It was a corrupt and utterly deadly place, a repository for the lost. Prisoners of all races, ages and creeds suffered i n inadequate living conditions, where they were kept malnourished and exhaust ed. They were f orced in to the deep mines where they search ed for the elusive red diam onds; marched through underground fields of decaying matter to meet slave buyers from the renegade necropolis of Koth; put to the test in gladiator games or races. Whenever the prison ran out of room, surplus inmates were slaughtered.

She saw the faces of the dead when she closed her eyes. Their voices haunted her dreams. Danica had spent over two years trying to empty her soul of guilt, but there was no escaping the past.

There never is. You just learn to live with it.

Time passed. She had no idea how long it was, but she guessed a few minutes went by before she’d managed to snap the rope binding her raw and bloody wrists. H er entire body was sore, and h er spirit remained just out of reach.

She stumbled through the dark. There was absolutely no way to see in the sweaty shadows, and she couldn’t locate the walls. Once she left the piece of machinery behind she might as well have been wandering through a black desert.

Danica walked slowly. She couldn’t even hear her own footsteps. T here was a nasty cut on the left side of her face from her battle with the Talon, and it stung when she so much as put a finger to it. Her shoulders and arms ached, and her head felt light from lack of food or water.

She walked. Someone would eventually come and make sure she hadn’t tried to escape.

Unless I’ve been left for dead somewhere… now there’s a refreshing thought.

With no sight of her surroundings, Danica continued to walk cautiously, and held her hands out in front of her. She was all but defenseless without her spirit, and the fact that she couldn’t reach him was driving her crazy.

She passed through metal noise, half- expect ing to crash into an obstacle or fall into a hole. Danica chided herself for moving so slow and tried to increase her pace, but she still flinched with every step.

Just get down and crawl, you dumb shit.

Danica dropped down and leopard- crawled a cross the floor. The ground was slick with what smelled like oil, and she struggled to make good time, but she no longer worried about crashing into anything.

She went what felt like a considerable distance. Her elbows and knees grew sore.

Remember Krul. Nothing was as horrible as that place. Just keep it together. If you made it through that, you can make it through anything.

Stench filled her nostrils, a different smell than the industrial bile and smoke haze she’d encountered thus far. This new miasma clung to the back of her throat, and after a moment she identified it as rot and body waste. The smell was so strong she nearly gagged on it. Danica steeled herself, clenched her fists, and kept crawling.

Oil became something more viscous, gummy and thick. Danica knew she was in the presence of dead bodies. She pictured the corpses in her head, festering and piled on top of one another. She smelled innards and dried blood, oozing wounds that had gelled over. Blood and urine and brains and opened stomachs had spilled on to the floor.

She froze, and held herself still. Something stirred in the dark.

Awesome.

Danica froze. The scrape of m etal tore through the air, and a sudden blast of light sliced out of the darkness to her left. She was blinded for a moment until her eyes could adjust.

Silhouettes moved in the grainy white haze. A rmored men marched towards her. She heard the whir of machinery gears and the sizzle of industrial juices as they struck the ground.

Gaunt armored bodies like black iron skeletons approached. They were g rinning a nimated corpse s with glowing diamond eyes, heavy 20mm rifles and gangly claws. Each metal — clad corpse stood at least seven feet tall and walked on cloven feet. Cold steam peeled away from their armor ed hides.

“Well y ou’re new…” she said, and one of the iron sentries reached down and forcefully hauled her to her feet. “Let go…”

Danica saw a mound of corpses. She’ d crawled to within just a few feet of a putrid pile of mangled bodies. The room was some sort of massive container, a metal repository for the dead. The bodies had been cut and mutilated by hammer and blade. She saw crushed skulls and open chest cavities and discarded limbs. Pools of congealed blood and intestinal juices covered the floor.

Black closed her eyes and willed the image away. She’d been near mass graves before. She’d never wanted to be there again.

The skeleton sentries pushed her out of the container and into the light. Dank wind stung her face. She heard crashing waves and the roar of enormous beasts.

They were still in Blacksand, or at least close to it. The Revenger ’ s camp was larger than she’d thought it would be. Three warships formed a loose perimeter around a Sherman tank and a pair of war wagons. A group of black-skinned Ebonbacks grazed in the sandy slopes to the east.

They were half- a- mile outside the crude city gates, at the edge of an expanse of pale sand s dunes and granite hills littered with towers of salt. Palm trees swayed in the bitter ocean breeze. The sun hid behind a thin veil of crystal clouds, and the air was startlingly cold. Dirigibles and gargoyles filled the sky over Blacksand.

They could take the city over if they wanted to. She imagined t hey had some need to leave the criminal port alone, if even because it would have been an inefficient use of resources to take it. The Revengers were nothing if not frugal with their hard-earned cash.

The rusted iron disposal bin they’d stuck Danica in was at the edge of t he Revenger camp. She couldn’t imagine where all of the bodies had come from.

“Prisoners,” a voice said from behind her. The voice was heavy with a British accent. “Your friend, Klos Vago, had a large number of slaves he’d proved incapable of selling, so he handed them over to us.”

The man was tall and lean and had thick brown hair. Easily six-foot-three, the imposing Warden wore dark armor that tightly hugged his muscular frame, and he appeared unarmed, which Danica knew, of course, wasn’t the case.

“Burke,” she said. “I’m surprised they let you out of your hole.” She looked back at the bodies. “So why kill them? No room in the mines these days?”

“They served their purpose,” Burke smiled. “How’ve you been, Dani?”

“Better.”

“I can see that. Nasty blow to the head you took there…”

“Cut the shit. What do you want with me?”

Burke just smiled.

“Come on, Dani. What do you think?”

Burke nodded at the skeletons, and they lifted her up off the ground. Her arms felt like they’d crack within their iron grip, and h er shoulders felt ready to come out of the ir sockets.

“Ouch! Damn it, Burke!”

“Shut up, Dani. All right? There’s a good girl.”

They led her down the slope and into the center of camp. Men wandered about, shaving themselves or eating from tin cans, cleaning weapons or throwing knives at crude targets. Boxes of ammunition and equipment were kept under careful watch inside of white tents. A dozen men lined up at a long table covered with bowls and a cauldron of steaming soup.

They all looked at her as she was marched by. Some seemed to recognize her, others didn’t. They all regarded her with the same cold contempt.

The skeletons took her straight to one of the war wagons, u gly and brutish devices made of black steel and arcane iron. T urbine engines on t he backs of the vehicles c ould propel them rapidly across the ground, and anti-personnel mines, motorguns and flak cannons lent them considerable firepower.

A dark-skinned woman waited near one of the wagons. She had braided hair and form-fitting black and purple armor, a pair of katanas strapped across her back, and runic tattoos that covered her cheeks, neck and bone-thin arms. T he woman smiled as the golems brought Danica close to her.

“Danica Black,” Burke said with a smile. “This is Raven Darkmoon. Your replacement in our ranks.”

“Charmed,” Danica smiled.

“Likewise,” Raven said. Her smile was broad and skeletal, and her voice was deep and smooth.

“Right,” Burke said. “Listen, Dani, I’d rather not beat around the proverbial bush, so tell us…where is your friend Cross?”

Danica looked at him. An Ebonback roared in the distance.

“ Eat shit, ” Danica replied.

Raven nonchalantly drew a blade and sliced Danica’s fore arm open. The s harp pain made her cry out. Blood poured from the wound. She winced and tried to twist away, but the golems held her tight. Her feet barely touched the ground.

“Bitch!” she shouted.

Raven just smiled.

“That was a love touch,” Raven said seductively. “I know a lot of games we can play…”

“I’ll bet you do,” Black said. “What do you want with Cross?” she said to Burke.

“That’s not your concern,” Burke said. “What is your concern is what will happ en if you don’t cooperate.”

Raven smiled, and then whistled. Two Revengers in dark armor brought a gagged and struggling prisoner around the corner of the nearest wagon.

Black’s heart jumped into her throat. She couldn’t believe it. It had been over two years since she’d seen her.

“La ra!”

Cole looked at her through dark and mottled hair. Her face was badly bruised, and h er ranger’s armor was torn and bloodied.

“Now,” Burke said. “As I was saying… where is Cross? ”

Raven’s eyes glowed with delight. Cole started to cry.

Black couldn’t stop shaking. She’d never been so afraid.

SEVEN

Skins

The black lands batter him with coal rain. H ills like scars loom on the uncertain horizon. The air is a blood haze, and t he ground is brittle and dry. Cracks in the earth hold pools of stagnant water. V oices linger in the black wind.

T he city is behind him. He ’ s left t he Eidolos alone with its painful desire s to be free. Now h e stumbles across a stygian world filled with frozen ash.

Something in the sky seems to follow him, a vague shadow like an obtuse hawk. Distant shapes fold and distort, clouds twisted into dark faces.

He moves with purpose. He searches for the entrance to the Shadow Lord’s territory.

I can escape this place, he thinks, but the thoughts don’t come easy to him. His blade gives him the strength to retain a sense of his own identity in this shadow-drenched world. W ithout it he would be a formless shade, another refugee of th e perpetually eclipsed landscape. I can be free.

We can be more. The Eidolos’ words ring in his mind.

The land slopes up. He is suddenly close to the trees, which are sharp and twisted like handfuls of blades. Dark fumes fill t he air. T he roar s of beasts echo from deep within the black forest.

The constant blood sun dips lower, obscured by phantom clouds.

He ’ s never walked near these woods before. Somehow, in spite of years spent exploring the Whisperlands, he ’ s never witnessed this forest, not until the Eidolos directed him to it.

T he dread wind carries leaves that crackle like bones. Every step he takes kicks up ecologies of shadow insects. Pitiless moans ooze from the dark.

Vaguely humanoid c reatures twist and slither like half-melted serpents at the edge of his vision. L oose stone s and twigs roll down the hill as he ascends.

Distant storm clouds boil and churn with electric light. Thunder echoes through the tin sky.

His body groans with tension. He feels eyes on in him in the dark, the gaze of cold and hungry shadows.

N atives stand at the edge of the forest. They look out over the path that leads to the heart of the grim woods.

He can’t make the figures out clearly. They aren’t the same arcane wanderers he ’s spied before, those people made black b y the necrotic essence of the calcified plains. These new creat ures are different. They aren’ t human, but c onglomerations of dissident life forces. O ne moment the y resemble hawks, and in the next they are simian. They are leopards and then wolves, humanoid and then serpent.

Whatever they are, t he creatures keep their distance. He wonders if maybe they ’ re the basta rd offspring of fused worlds, random ly jettisoned souls that have melted together into unstable forms. They are h ybridized survivors without any true identity, creatures so drenched in darkness they don’t even realize what abominations they’ ve become. They mewl and growl at his passing, but they keep their distance.

The world is vast behind him. He looks back over his shoulder and sees endless plains like dry ocean s. The wastelands are broken and withered. Fissures in the ground leak vapors that congeal into mistsludge. The horizon is preposterously far away, a tiny cut at the edge of a blank nowhere. There are mountains and hills and the ruins of cities in the distance. Black lightning scars the sky.

He can see further than before. The shadows seem less thick.

Things are more real here, he realizes. I’m close r to the border. Closer to the edge of the Whisperlands.

He follows the Eidolos’ directions, empathic knowledge not so much known as felt. H is instincts guide him, even though he knows they are not his instincts, for the knowledge has been instilled in his mind.

The voices in the wind grow louder. They remind him of his spirit, and he is fil led with sadness. He suddenly feels very small, and very alone.

H e comes to the edge of the forest. Hard wind rattles the skeletal branches. D ead leaves fall like shards of glass. Black-grey mist obscur es any detail of what lie s deeper in the trees.

His fingers tense near the hilt of his blade. He knows he isn’ t prepared for this, even with the information the Eidolos has implanted in his subconscious mind.

The mist envelops him in frozen arms. His boots sink into dust and silt. He presses through the mire, and enters the trees.

W eb-patterns of shadow mark the path. Brackish fluid drips down and collects in rancid pools. The air is cold and raw. He smells organic waste and feels the tang of smelted iron on his tongue.

There are no paths, no means to find his way aside from following his false instincts. Soulrazor/Avenger cuts a swat h through the corpse-dry trees. The ghost wind drowns out the sound as he crash es through the underbrush.

He senses a presence nearby, a malign entity as much a stranger to th e dread wilderness as he is. W hatever it is, it keeps its distance.

He carries on. He ponders the dire reality of his situation.

W ithout his spirit, even Soulrazor/Avenger isn’t likely to do him much good against a cadre of mages.

This is suicide. But I have to try.

He walks. There seems to be no end to the forest.

Eventually he escapes the mist, and the trees thin. He moves through clearings filled with black earth and dead leaves. Piles of dark branches stand ne xt to long-abandoned campfires. He smells charcoal and mold. T he whispers of the dead are stronger there.

He looks closer. What he’d thought were branches are actually bones, burned to black and stacked in heaps.

Some of the trees are made o f bone, as well. Their blanched hue has been discolored by a fire that seems to have ripped through th at part of the forest some time ago. He runs his finger against a tree and wipes away a film of burned grime. The bone underneath is yellowed and cracked.

Skin flags dangle from the bone trees. They hang placid, as there is no wind that deep in the forest. The flayed flesh is coal black, the skin of some shadow-infused beast. The hide banners stretch like standards and mark an uneven path through the haunted woods.

He smells meat in the air, and he grimaces at the taste of salt and acetone.

The ground ha s been disturbed by the passage of other creatures. C rude blades made of fused carbon lie scattered on the ground. He hears a faint groan in the distance.

Mountains loom ahead, still many miles away, barely visible through the dead branches.

Bla de in hand, he follows the new path.

Tendrils of web stretch between the trees. Dark silk play s against his skin like smooth fingers. He feels dust on his skin and burned wood on his tongue.

Bodies dangle from the trees, suspended by necrotic threads. They appear frozen in mid-fall and hang at violent angles. Most of the ir flesh and clothing has corrod ed off the bones. They bob like grisly marionettes.

He pushes through the perpetual gloom. His joined arcane blade lights his way with a subtle shine like blue moonlight.

The forest grows darker. He smells dead fish and glacial moisture, a raw ice-water breeze that clings to the trees like saliva.

He sees m ore signs of passage, bla des and bedrolls and cold camps that have long-since been looted for anything of value.

The presence he sensed earlier return s. It shifts in the dark. Being close to it makes him f eel like he stands at the edge of an abyss.

The air is grey. His feet swim in a cold wash of shadow that obscures the forest floor. The air is so cold he feels crystals in his beard, and every breath freezes in his throat and lungs.

He realizes he hasn ’ t passed through any of the black webbing for quite some time. He’ s moved past its outer perimeter, past the warnings, and straight into the home of whatever made them.

A bone-white and bladed arm as long as a lance launches at him from out of the darkness. He uses Soulrazor/Avenger to knock it aside, then hacks through the carapace and severs the knife- limb. T ender layer s of pulsing red meat lie be neath the cracked bone shell. White puss oozes from the maimed appendage.

He sees the trees and the darkness, and nothing else. He stands surrounded by a world of shadow, and it grows thicker as the curled howls of his attacker draw close. Fear ices his gut. He holds the blade ready, and calls his spirit. H e remembers that she isn’t there, and his heart sinks.

Another blade-limb erupts from the dark. He barely rolls away before it slices by him and cleaves a bone tree in two. Another limb flies out, insanely long, a bone needle mounted on a pale and twisted tentacle. He can’t see the source of the limbs — they stretch back into the vertical sea of darkness beyond the trees.

He rolls beneath the hacking a ttacks and ru n s forward, leaps over piles of skin and bones left to wither and freeze on the soiled forest floor.

The creature bleeds into his vision like a white wound. It’ s humanoid, but only barely, a pale and writhing mutation with an elongated torso that twists like an eel. Its head is bald, with tiny black eyes and an enormous maw of razor teeth. Its many arms are spindly whips of flesh dotted with bone spurs.

It resemble s the strange creatures he saw before, back at the edge of the forest, only this one is white where they were dark. It’ s somehow resisted the corrupting pall of the Whisperlands, only to evolve into something much worse.

It whips another bone-claw at him, but he ducks beneath it and charges. The creature releases a blood-curdling scream that rattles the ground and chills his blood. He smells vomitous fumes and rot gases. Its teeth are curved and black, stained with ebon flesh.

It can’t raise its limbs in time to defend itself, and even with its fearsome fangs he knows he can kill it, and he does. Soulrazor/Avenger plunges into its skull and cracks it open like ice. White blood sizzles when it hits the dark ground.

The hunter falls without another sound. Its body melts into a milk pool. He stands over its remains.

He finds its lair. It isn’ t far away, a deep cave system built into the side of a massive hill, a dark orifice in a darker cluster of stone that’s been camouflaged by the shadow landscape. The forest continues on past the hill. He ’ ll scale the stone and ascend to the Shadow Lord’s next layer of defense.

The Eidolos had named the Shadow Lords leader: the Witch Queen. What was she looking for? Why had she built her stronghold t here, in that dreadful place?

H e feels that it ’ s important to search the hunter’s lair. Something drives him, a base instinct he can’t ignore.

The inside of the cave is dank and cold. He finds m ore skins, some of them human, most not, all tainted by the ebon touch of the Whisperlands. Tunnels lead off into deeper chambers. He smells rot and ice. Pools of neretic slime bubble up from the ground.

There are tools and weapons, spears and shreds of clothing. This thing has feasted on creatures in the Wh isperlands for some time. It’ s gorged i tself on travelers and refugees and natives and other mutations. He isn’t sure how he destroyed it so easily, except that it seemed unused to direct confrontation. It normally took its prey by surprise.

He wonders if m aybe it hadn’t wanted to die. Maybe it didn’t understand why it had n ’t changed like the other creatures, and it couldn’t go on living in a land carved from nightmares.

In a way, he feels sorry for it, even after he finds it’s young.

They a re grotesque. They mewl like sick kittens and writh e like lampreys thrown from the water. Their mouths have not yet fully formed, and their limbs have yet to grow their blade appendages. They are a mass, a pile of pale flesh and slime held in a bowl in the earth. They look like they ’ ve just been born.

They were, he realizes. That wasn’t the mother I killed, but the father.

He presses deeper into the cave. He isn ’t sure how, but he knows he is n ’ t safe, not w hile these creatures live. They evolve quickly, and they will hunt him.

The mother i s still weak from birthing the offspring. Her body is bloated, not thin an d flat like the male’s but fat and bulbous. She looks like a living egg-sack.

Her limbs whip out at hi m, but he’ s able to elude them easily. Without thinking he charges into the room and slaughters her. P art of him believes he is meant to do this.

That this family of hunters is not meant to be here, and that he is meant to set them free.

He finishes the young quick ly. His heart p ounds as he exits the cave. White blood covers his chest. His limbs shake, and he isn’t even aware of his own tears until he’ s halfway up the rocky hill side.

His feet tread across dark stone. The hill is steep and covered in drifts of black ice and frozen clay. Ooze clings to his boots. Rocks dislodge beneath his feet and tumble down to the forest below.

The trees grow thin ner as he climbs. They stand at slanted angles, aimed at the blood sky like jagged spears.

The forest beneath him is like a black ocean. A dead wind chills his skin. Shadows scramble just out of sight. He sees child-like shapes and hears cackling laughter.

Memories flash back at him, and it’s difficult for him to hold them off. He sees ghouls in the darkness as they chas e him across a mist-covered landscape. He sees a dead city at the edge of the world.

He thinks of Snow. He remembers her, burning on the train.

It wasn’t your fault, he tells himself, but he ’ s told himself this before, and he never believes it. He tries to convince himself she was dead already, that the girl he’d grown up with was gone, her identity wiped clean by the vampires of Koth well before he ’d found her.

It doesn’t help. In the end, he ’d killed her, and that guilt has scarred him. He will forever bear that wound.

Tears stain his face, but he pauses, breathes in air filled with grit and shadow, and thinks about wh at he wants to go back to. It’ s difficult, at first, to remember, and for a moment he feels a kinship with the hunter beast, a creature that had grown so confused and lost and desperate it no longer wanted to continue living in the nightmare it was trapped in.

But after a moment more memories come to him, good memories, and they fill with him with light and warmth. He sees Mike and Ronan and Maur and Grissom and Ash, and especially Danica, so beautiful, so much under his skin, and if he sees her again, he tells himself, maybe, just maybe, he’ll tell her how he feels, he’ll take advantage of the chance he’s been given, he won’t make the mistake again of drifting apart from someone he cares about, not again, never again, not like with Snow.

He wants to see them… all of them. No distance or obstacle will keep him from going forward.

I have to try. It’s all that I have left.

He comes to the top of the massive hill and steps over the ridge. A flat field stands before him. B lack skulls on the ground mark the border to another region of the Whisperlands. R ows of stakes protrude from the earth like broken fingers. Thin trails of blood smoke rise up from shallow pits and curl into the sky.

A cold building made from black bones stands in the distance, right at the edge of a nother dead forest. The shrine is low and built in vicious angles, like something reached down and crushed it into splinters and edges. A pair of unmoving skeletons, their frames burned black and their eyes fi ll ed with cold fire, stand s vigil outside the twisted door.

He steadies himself, readies his blade, and walks towards them.

EIGHT

Search

The skeletons are motionless as he passes between them and enters the shrine. Their cold and burning eyes stare out in to the wastelands.

Two of the arcane natives wait in side. The ir oily black bodies are so dark it’s almost impossible for him to make them out in the thick shadows.

They a re folded in contorted prayer. Their fing ers end in steaming frost claws and their eyes shine like frozen moons.

The rest of the shrin e is an endless void. E ntering is like s tep ping in to an icy pool.

He quietly sets his blade on the ground, kneels low, and spread s his hands. Information plac ed in to his mind by the Eidolos makes him understand this is needed to earn their trust.

They were once captives of the Whisperlands, just like he is, but they’ ve evolved. Decades spent in that fugue has destroyed whatever they once were. They are necrosis beings, more shadow than living.

And they, too, have reason to oppose the Shadow Lords.

They regard him suspiciously. He doesn’t understand what might be going through their alien minds, but he feels the darkness push against him.

They gaze into his shadow-drenched soul. He’ s forgotten so much about himself he i sn ’ t sure what they ’ ll find.

His body shakes. H e’ s afraid, but he knows this is necessary. He ’ ll endure anything if it will help him escape this prison, this quagmire in the endless dark.

They’ re closer now. He didn’t see the m approach. The ir bodies are featureless except for narrow slits for eyes and the barely discernible outlines of grim faces. They stand shoulder to shoulder and look at him, look inside him. Their touch is as cold as death.

H e’ s on his knees. He prays with them, only it isn’t prayer, not tru ly, for there are no g ods t here, no deities except for the soot angels, twisted succubi whose likenesses are cast upon a slab of stone: a mongrel avatar, an orgy of dark seraphim twisted together in a violent erotic dance. Claws and teeth and bat’s wings fuse together. T he trio of wom e n is locked in a tangle of shadow s.

He’ s seen this before, in history texts and drawings. It was in the church where Dane Knight performed the sacrific e that created human magic. There had never been any reports of the triple-succubus likeness having been seen anywhere else.

The statue bleeds darkness, a different dark ness than the air in th e Whisperlands. Theirs is an ancient and primal power. It fuels the mad arcane natives, tho se aboriginal marauders. They pay homage to the core of demonic flesh.

He looks i nto its gruesome multiple faces and sees a force that has beheld ages. It is not of his world, or perhaps of any world. It bears a purpose. It searches.

We search, one of the natives tells him. The words echo through his mind and repeat, layers of sound filter ed over one another, a resonant and whispered meaning. We hunt.

What do you search for? h e asks, but there is no answer. It occurs to him they might not even know.

He stares back at that twisted triple angel, that masochistic altar of vampire pain. He is dwarfed by its presence. G lacial smoke billow s from between its curved fangs and its molten seductive smiles. He breathes it in, and it soils his soul.

They walk through fields cleared of trees, over ground packed with clay and low mounds of rock and bone. He doesn’t remember leaving the shrine.

The two natives are with him. He doesn’t know their names, isn’t sure if they even recall the concept of names. Both wear primitive battle dress, armor made from the carapaces of shadow insects and bladed gauntlets carved from bone and steel. O ne wears a helmet made from some sort of longhorn’s skull, and t he other wields a tall staff adorned with dark skins and sharp edge s.

He’ s safe with them. They search, either for something in the Shadow Lord’s possession or something else that is located near their stronghold, the Black Citadel. The Citadel lies near a place called the City of Thorns, where these shadow beings are taking him. They believe he can help them somehow.

H e has become a part of some sort of shadow rebellion. H e is allied with the se shadow people, who search for the means to oust their oppressors. He has been caught up in the politics of the damned.

We can be more.

They walk through shadow- soul fields and past towers of crumbling iron. The patchwork landscape is a conglomeration of detritus sucked in from other worlds and drenched in darkness.

Flames send pale smoke into the sky. The fires form spot s of light in the perpetual dark.

The y pass the burned homes of shadow villages, haphazard settlements littered with the corroded remains of dust corpses. He smells cooked meat and vehicle fuel. Ashen remains drift in the air and land on his tongue.

If his escorts feel any sorrow for the carnage they witness, he can’t see it. Their grim visages remain unchanged, caricatures of human faces.

We search, one of the natives says. It ’ s been some time since they spoke. Their voices are utterly foreign and false, as if spoken by an automaton, but there is a soul buried somewhere deep inside, some semblance of the creatures they once were.

The details of his f ormer life gro w hazier by the day. They are more like dr eams now than memories, distant and hard to recollect. He holds on to j ust a few vivid details, and with every step more of th em fade away.

What do you search for? h e asks.

The stone, they say. The stone, and the door.

He fears that’ s supposed to make sense to him. It doesn’t, at least not in this world, or in this life.

O thers join them, natives with skin so dark they resemble walking carbon silhouettes.

There are only a few of them at first. A ll of them are attired like his two escorts, who he’s come to call Bull-Horns and Longspear. The new arrivals also wear battle-dress, and each of them maintains at least one article of armor or weaponry or clothing that sets them apart from the others. One yields a bone-white ceramic sword; another wears a steel helmet with no eye- slits; one holds a crescent axe in each hand; and yet another carries a dented iron shield with a skull emblazoned on its face. He doesn’t know if they do this for his sake, or for their own.

Soon they are a dozen, then two dozen. They march across the Whisperlands in near silence. The black wind comes, hard and cold and filled with particles of sharp dust. The air smell s of toxins and industrial waste. Blood smoke fills the sky.

Th e y march through barren fields, towards a fast-flowing black river. W reckage and war waste litters the path. The y see the s moking husks of burning homes and the opened c orpses of elephantine beasts. The e arth has been broken apart by cannon fire, and the fields are covered with poison fumes so dense they will never dissipate. There are d eep trenches where bone crafts fe ll from the sky. P iles of black corpses have nearly moldered to dust, and f lecks of collapsing bodies pull away in the wind.

We search, Bull-Horns says again, and all he can do is nod. His body aches with fatigue, his legs are weary, and worry gnaws at his gut. We search.

I know.

They come to the dark river. Bony refuse floats on the surface, and h e sees the outlines of beasts swim ming below. The river stands between the m and the base of a wide path that cuts its way through an imposing onyx cliff several hundred feet high. The path is difficult to see in the darkness, but it’ s been marked with the pale bones of massive creatures.

The shadow soldiers prepare for battle. They move towards a wide platform made of wood and steel, a c raft hooked to a thick chain that stretches across the river and is attached to pillars of cold iron on the opposing shores. Arcane r unes and sigils cover the chain and the barge. The vessel isn’ t large enough for even half of the shadow warriors.

They’re not coming.

After a moment, he understands why.

The Shadow Lords haven’ t left the entrance to their inner realm unguarded. Dark fliers take shape in the sky, human bats and draconic beings, things without form, nightmare avians. More shapes approach on the ground, humanoids that look like the arcane natives, only these enemy creatures wear human skins and ride bastard conveyances of living flesh and shadow matter, dark iron armor grafted to unstable reptile skin. The small legion appears from nowhere and moves with startling speed.

The black air comes alive. He doesn’t even see the battle begin. B odies fly into one another, shadow vapors and steel. The combatants are voiceless in their conflict. Metal explodes against metal and bodies explode like sacks of gel. Razor-white blades shear away limbs. Dark blood smears across the ground.

He watches in horror, but he’ s held back and hedged towards the barge. His allies restrain him, and they prevent him from tak ing part in the strife. Shadow limbs push and shove him along. His vision goes dizzy as he ’ s forced forward.

Fliers descend. They fall in an aerial wave. They fill the crimson sky with the sound of beating wings.

Blood rains down. The sound of ripping fill s his head. There are no shouts or screams, but he hears bodies torn apart in the razor storm. The ground gr ows thick with ruined corpses.

He stumbles, dizzy, his blade held ready. T he swarm of fliers launches down, and h is allies push him to the ground.

Blood pounds in his ears. His body aches. Dark fluid burns his eyes. Stone grates against his knees. Something hauls him to his feet.

White m issiles explode in mid-air and fan out like webs of steel rain. Behemoth hooves stamp s hadow corpses into paste. He swims through a sea of sand and blood.

Bodies fall into the water, where t hey’ re consumed by the ripping tides. B one fish and serpent limbs drag them under.

He can’t tell the combatants apart in all of the chaos. He swings at whatever come s close and threaten s him. He hopes he isn’t hurting his allies.

He’ s on the barge. He barely re member s getting there.

Bull-Horns and Longspear are with him. T hey toss the dark mooring rope ashore and push the heavy vehicle into the waters. The chain guides them across.

A feeding frenzy takes plac e just beyond their feet. Moon- pale fish with black eyes and knife teeth chew their way through dark bodies. Corpses come apart and drift like putty to the surface. Black water splashes on to his face.

An explosion shakes the barge, and he falls. Fliers descend, but they ’ re forced away by Bull-Horns and Longspear. He joins them in battle. His blade carves through shadow flesh and spills silver blood that s izzles o n the deck. Ozone and acid fill his nostrils. His arms grow sore as he saws back and forth and cuts through relentless waves of misshapen bat-like creatures with human faces and long prehensile tails capped with quivering hooks. He sees eyes, deep and cold and black, shards of ice encased in dark flesh.

His arm is wounded. He bleeds shadow bile that freezes against his sk in. Pain blazes from the cut. His skin is overtaken with cold.

Bull-Horns is ripped from the vessel and thrown into the water. The body thrashes before it’ s snapped up in the jaws of an oil-skinned marauder, a shark-creature with a pulsating orifice mouth. Bull-Horns vanishes underwater.

He fights on, one-handed. Longspear stands next to him. B lasts of cannon fire issue from the shore behind them, some crude artillery. Gargoyle bodies explode and scatter like clumps of wet sand.

The black warriors struggle on. It’s all but impossible to tell which side has the upper hand.

Deep cold gnaws at his bones. He feels a chill so utter it makes his shadow-stain ed flesh burn. His head pounds. The glacial air makes his body shake.

A twisted presence worms its way through his veins, some poison from his wound. Soulrazor/Avenger wills the corruptive toxin out of his body, but his flesh pays the price. He isn’t even aware of his own screams until the sound of them hurts his ears.

The barge lands on the far shore. Lon gspear pulls him to the bottom of the steep slope that leads up into the canyon wall. The bone addled path ascends into a veil of fog. A ncient fossil s and hieroglyph s lie embedded in the high stone walls.

When he turns, the barge is back in the river, headed towards the far shore. Longspear is on board, returning to his comrades, not wish ing for them to die alone.

Cross watches them fight. He knows they won’t survive. The faith they must have in the Eidolos — in him — is baffling. They know nothing about him, and yet they s acrifice themselves, for t hey feel he can bring the Shadow Lord’s reign to a certain end.

They have nothing to lose. They want things to change, and they think I can help bring i t about.

S kinwings fold their bodies around ebon warriors. E nem ies run each other through with saw- bone blades. M utated mounts trample foes into the ground. Skirmishers are skewered on spears and dragged howling into the waters, where they are consumed by aquatic terrors.

The fliers keep coming. More of the Shadow Lord’s minions storm in from the west.

They’ ve forgotten him. Even if the battle had once been about his getting across the river, it isn’t any more. They a re lost to the ir bloodlust and carnage.

He turn s away and climbs the path.

His arm throbs with pain. Hurt burns through his body e very time he tries to lift the damaged limb. He walks like he’s made of glass, and fears he has some sort of fever.

H e makes his way up the narrow path with his blade in his good hand. The rock looks recently shorn: t he remains of civilizations have been entombed in the black and crusty stone.

Dark shapes slither up and down the walls. K nots of tension run through his back. He slowly regain s feeling in his arm.

His legs are tired. Soot y sweat leaks from his skin. His armor coat feel s heavy, and though he no longer needs sleep he briefly re members what it feels like, and he longs for it.

Molten faces snarl and melt around him. He reaches the top of the path, and finds himself on a shallow trail filled with bone and gravel. D ark trees stand vigil like lost men. The valley and the river below seem like they’ re miles away. B lack mist rolls over his feet, like he ’ s stepped into an ink stain. D ark trees surround him, fused together by smoke and fog.

There are riders in the forest, vague silhouettes darker than the shadow-thick sky, gaunt figures who wear dangling fetishes and chains. They have long clawed limbs and curved weapons, hooks and hammers and double-swords, claw-handles and barbed shields. A dozen of the creatures file out of the darkness on sinuous mounts made of blades.

Part of him wonders how he could be so stupid. The emissaries of the Shadow Lords would never leave the entrance to their inner realm unprotected. These are hunters, and they’ve been sent to destroy him.

He doesn’t hesitate. He ignores his pain and moves fast and low into the forest. He knows that he has no chance i f he stands and fights, but t here’ s little room for the riders to navigate in the thick of the trees, and he can use that to his advantage. The iron oak s glow like slivers of the moon, unnaturally bright for the shadow re alm.

He is close to the Black Citadel. Things are more solid, more real.

The rider’s gangly weapons sweep low to the ground and stir dead leaves. Their mount ’ s eyes shine silver.

He bends around the trees and dodges a long blade. Sparks fly as steel strikes the forest, like the trees themselves are made of iron. He brings Soulrazor/Avenger up and cleaves through b lack armor flesh, metal fused to tissue. The blade hisses as he buries it in to the rider’s face. The creature makes a high-pitched draconian sound that reminds him of boiling lobster.

Another rider comes at him. He dodges back, uses the cobalt trees for cover.

His heart pounds. He hears the dissonant whinnies of primordial steeds that smell of carbon and fused metal. The air is deathly cold. E very breath freezes and falls.

The rider swings at him, but he deflects the blow with his double-blade. His arm reels from the impact as t he force of the attack drives him to the ground. The creature and its mount rear up, one a part of the other, a centaur made of shadows. The mount’s hoof ed feet kick at the air.

The blade gives him strength. Harlequin power surge s through him, a bastard fusion of diametric energies. His attack sears throu gh the mount and into the rider, and tears them both apart. They explode in a b rittle cloud of dust glass that rains like pellets to the forest floor.

White h ands erupt out of the ground, and they reach up and grab him. The other riders charge through the trees. D esperate, he cleaves through the clawing ice limbs. Pale blood sprays on to the black earth.

He flees deeper into the forest.

We search.

He runs for hours. Hooves thunder behind him.

He can’t stop. Blood pounds in his ears. He waits to be crushed by a blow to the back. His legs ache with fatigue. He runs through a forest covered in frost smoke and made dense with darkness. Trees like slivers of ice cage him in.

The riders cease their pursuit. He isn’t sure how long it has been since he’s lost them. He slows, and walks deeper into trees turned blue with frost.

The sky is different. The normally dank illumination that suffuses the Whisperlands fade s to a frozen lunar shine that makes everything ghostl y. The shadows recede. He see s the stark detail s of the bone trees and the scarred terrain. Skeletons sit in piles of frozen leaves and seem to stare at him.

Time is slower, like the air has thickened.

He struggles against the cold. Every crunching leaf echoes like breaking glass. The air tastes of forest rot and burning ice.

There are fires in the distance. He moves ahead cautious ly. Soulrazor/Avenger feels heavy in his hand.

The trees grow taller as he nears the gates of a grim city. The settlement is made of fortified wood held together by iron sap. Thin streams of milky water run in a perimeter around the forest outpost. Tall arrow slits reveal grim shadow faces with pale eyes. B ows are aimed at him, and he senses the presence of a mage’s spirit. The creatures are vaguely reptilian.

What is your business here? He hears the question, but when he tri es to answer they’ re all gone. Only the dead forest city remains. The water has turned to dust. The gates lie shattered.

There are no creatures there, living or dead. He finds crushed wagons and open homes, abandoned watch posts and weapons long unused.

His feet shuffle in frozen dirt. Open doorways look like hollow eyes. He feels like he’ s being watched, even though he knows he’ s alone. Nothing living has dwel l ed with in those walls for a very long time.

We search.

He knows this City of Thorns is where the arcane natives came from. This was their home, when they ’d had a home. This place i s stranded, exiled in t he Whisperlands just as Earth is stranded in the world After The Black.

He wonders why they left. He feels he should be afraid, but he isn’t.

He w a nders from house to house. The small wood en structures are bereft of furnishings. I ce and dust cover everything. Glitters of frozen crystal litter the ground like fallen stars.

There is a well at t he center of the city. Its broken stone wall surrounds a shaft that runs deep into the frozen sludge. There are bones at the bottom, frozen white shards of once-humans that glitter in the pale air.

He moves on.

The west end of the City is a small shrine, similar in many ways to the place where he’d first met the natives, the building where they ’d worshipped the triple-succubus deity. The build ing is sinuous and curved. It’ s an almost organic thing made of cold wood and black iron. Frozen glass covers the temple ’s face.

The gaping doorway seems to stretch wider as he approaches. He senses a cold presence inside, but he is be yond fear. He will keep moving and earn his escape, or e lse he will die. He is tired of walking with no purpose.

The air in the sh r ine is warmer than outside. The pale light won’ t penetrate the gloomy interior.

A black corpse waits in the shrine. The ebon warrior kneels in penitence, petrified in reams of ice. Its dead eyes are cast to the ground, and its arms are frozen forward. Its hands grasp at something it will never hold.

He steps closer, and his eyes follow to where the corpse’s fingers point at something buried beneath the frost on the wall.

We search.

He looks upon that frozen figure and understands. They’d left that place, their home, to find a way to escape the Whisperlands, but something kept them from ever returning.

They forgot what they were… who they were. They went off to find a way out, but once they left this city they forgot what they were looking for. T he Whisperlands corrupted the ir minds before they could complete their quest, and now that this place is dead they can never gain that knowledge back.

But they still remember that they search. T hey remember that they came from the City of Thorns, even if they can’t recall what they ’d left to search for, or why.

Maybe that’s why I’m here, he wonder s. Maybe t hey need me to finish the search for them. To find wha t they couldn’ t.

H e turns away from the corpse and wipes the ice from the stone. W hat he sees there chills his heart.

Suddenly, he knows what he must do. He knows w hy it ’ s so important for him to escape that dread realm.

I just hope I’m not too late.

NINE

Grey

They took Kane below deck and led him down a narrow and dimly-lit hall filled with dangling hooks and rusted steel plates. Dank doorways led to foul-smelling rooms. They brought him to a wide cabin lined with wooden pillars, work benches and a table covered in sharp tools.

Ronan sat on a chair in the middle of the room. H is hands were bound behind his back.

“Ronan!”

“It’s ok, Mike. They’re not going to hurt you.” Ronan looked up at the nearest reptilian, who glared back at him with yellow-gold eyes. “Well…not yet…”

They fastened Kane to a chair with a length of nylon cord and then cut Ronan loose. A reptilian sentry armed with an iron spear and a pistol in his belt escorted Ronan from the room, while t wo of the creatures stayed in the cabin with Kane.

“Just relax, Kane,” Ronan said as they led him out of the room. “It doesn’t take long.”

“What? WHAT doesn’t take long?!” he yelled.

One of the reptilian s stood right in front of him. It wore no boots, which gave Kane a clear view of its clawed and iguana-like feet. Its skin was deep grey and brown, and its claws were diamond black. The creature wore a sun-colored leather cloak with e paulets on the shoulders. Beneath the coat, the creature wore an armored vest covered in thaumaturgic apparatus, a network of opaque tubes and metal syring es managed by a small clockwork engine. Green-grey saliva dripped from beneath its gasmask, and its eyes shone brightly in the dim golden light that spilled through the shuttered port windows.

“Hi.” It was all Kane could think of to say.

The creature watched him for a moment, and then nodded to the other creature in the room. The larger reptilian stepped up and wrapped its arm around Kane’s throat as it put him into a painful headlock. His back and shoulders ached as he was twisted and contorted. Breaths caught like balls in his throat.

“ S top…that… ” he coughed.

The creature in the coat leaned in close. Its grey and scaly hands were encased in some sort of arcane gauntlet, just like the ones Cross wore, leather and metal straps set with spidery nodes that extended along the back of each long finger. A dull black gem on the back of the ga untlet pulsed with light that intensified as the creature’s hands drew closer to Kane. He felt heat pulse against his skin, a toxic glow that smelled of fish and seawater.

The air grew moist. Sweat trickled down his face.

Relax, a voice said in his head. We must prepare you.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Kane coughed as claws took hold of his face. “Wait…you’re not even… talking… ”

Quiet, the voice commanded. It took Kane a moment to realize the voice was his own voice, and that it spoke inside his head.

His skin burned. Sickness crawled in his stomach, and every ache and wound he’d a cquired in the past twenty-four hours came rushing back at him. He struggled there, wracked with pain and nausea and about to pass out, forced to keep still as grisly green energy poured down his throat.

Images flashed through his mind with violent force.

He sees sinking sand and giant faces, obelisks of bone slate and rust. M assive winged creature s, primordial brute s with razor maws and saw blade ridges down their armored backs, scream into a black sky. There is b lood on the ground and smoke in the air.

R ows of reptile-fleshed humanoid s stand bound and bloodied at the edge of a deep pit. Something pushes them down, one by one, and t hey writhe and scream as they fall. Something in the depths of the hole consumes them, a dark and ancient presence with cold and calculating hunger.

Kane was back on the ship. He felt wrung dry, drained of all his energy and strength. The taste in his mouth and the cloying dampness on his chest and legs told him he’d vomited. His muscles ached so badly it felt like he’d been running for days.

And yet somehow he had the strangest sense they’d done no harm to him…t hat they’d somehow prepared him for something important.

Those creatures in the vision were the same race as these guys on the ship. They showed me something that’s happened to them…maybe even the reason they’re here now.

He was dizzy and disoriented and felt like he’d been drugged. His limbs were tired and the inside of his chest was raw, like he breathed through a filter of dust and ice.

He gave Sol a nod when they brought the criminal below and returned Kane topside. They secured his wrists in front of him and chained him to an iron loop on the deck.

Ronan seemed to be in the same state of disconnect as he was. Even though he felt tired and drugged, Kane’s vision seemed somehow sharper. Colors looked clearer, details seemed more defined.

Too bad there isn’t shit to see in the middle of the cold — ass desert.

The skiff travelled for over another hour. The cool desert sky was pregnant with steel clouds. Dark fliers skimmed close to the distant dunes, and signs of recent conflict showed on the sandy landscape: shards of wrecked vehicles, charred bodies, drifts of greasy smoke that hung over the remains of ruined settlements.

They saw the bones of tusked creatures and flew through the dank stench of the burning dead. They saw the remains of sacrifices. Tall crosses made of bone and sharpened bamboo had been erected on islands of jagged rock l ittered with eviscerated bodies. The oozing corpses had been burned and left for the desert predators.

All of the corpses were reptilian.

They never came for Jade or Maur.

“Can you use your magic?” Kane asked Jade quietly. She looked as exhausted and as worn out as he was.

“I don’t think so,” she said. She closed her eyes and focused for a moment. “I think it would be dangerous.”

“Figures,” Kane said.

“Not because of them,” she said with an eye towards the roving crewmen. They’d more or less left the team alone since they’d brought back Sol, who’d been left as dazed and weak as Kane and Ronan. “This entire area feels unstable.” Jade looked around and shook her head. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Who are these freaks?” Ronan growled. He looked at Jade. “You still think they’re Grey Clan?”

“It would make sense,” Jade said. Ronan seemed unconvinced, and Kane had to agree with him: last he’d checked, the missing people of the fallen city-state of Desh weren’t exactly reptiles.

Once a significant port city, Desh had been an early membe r of the Southern Claw Alliance. Besides having to deal with vampire hostilities, Desh had been also plagued by creatures out of the dangero us and unexplored Ebonsand Seas. M utated sea horrors, Vuul pirates, and wave after wave of violent weather churning with dark sorcery had battered the city-state.

Then, one early morning in the year A.B. 9, the city-state of Desh vanished without a trace. No one could explain how it could have been there one day and suddenly be gone the next. All intelligence gathered indicated that the Ebon Cities vampires weren’t responsible for Desh’s disappearance, and that they were just as confounded as the Southern Claw as to what had actually happened. There was nothing where the city had once stood: it had quite literally vanished without a trace. Everything from its citizens and curtain walls had evaporated into thin air. It was like Desh had never been built at all.

Then, around 16 A.B., humanoid wanderers started to pop up along the Ebonsand Coast. They were surprisingly well-armed and piratical nomads who traveled on arcane-driven vehicles and eked out an existence along the rocky shores and sandy wastes. No one in the Southern Claw ever got close enough to learn any more about the creatures who’d come to be known as the Grey Clan, but it was widely accepted they were human, albeit somewhat more primitive and bestial in spite of their apparently sophisticated technology…technology that seemed to be based on that of the Southern Claw. Heightened activity on the front lines of the war prevented any further investigation of the Grey Clan, who deftly became even more difficult to find from that point on. They’d kept to the shadows, never posing any threat, but they were always on the Southern Claw’s watch list due to their mysterious origins.

But nothing I ever heard said they were frickin’ snake men.

Whatever they were, now that Kane, Ronan and Sol had been “treated”, the prisoners had been left alone. They’d even been given canteens of water and loaves of dark bread, which they vanquished hungrily. Kane felt like he hadn’t eaten in days, and since he’d actually been in that exact situation before he cautioned everyone to eat slowly for fear of making themselves ill.

Of course, it hadn’t been days, but whatever they’d done to him below deck had robbed him of most of his strength.

“Jade…what did they do to us?”

She’d been watching all three of the m en carefully ever since they’d been brought back on deck. The fact that the reptilians had left her and Maur alone was confusing. Had the humans been prepared for some sort of sacrifice? Or did they need some measure of protection that mages and Gol had no need for? None of it made any sense.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “How do you feel?”

Kane had to think about that for a moment.

“Like I’ve been drugged, only without the groovy buzz.” He looked up at the sky, then down to the sand. “My head feels weird. Clearer, I think.”

“Like you’ve been enhanced?” she asked.

“No, it’s just like…I can see more,” Kane said. “Things I don’t think I’d notice normally.” He looked at Jade, and he saw every curve of her pale smooth skin, the richness of her silky black hair, the etched details of the tribal tattoos on her neck, the subtle motions and sweat on her chest as she breathed in.

Everything was clearer and brighter. He was overwhelmed by the sight of things that he would have missed before.

They gave me HD vision. Terrific.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“ My breathing is strange,” he said. “I feel like I have asthma or something. And I told you about the…vision. Hallucination. Whatever.” Jade nodded. “Does that mean anything to you?”

Jade looked out at the desert. Kane had the sense she knew something she wouldn’t say.

“No,” she said. “Not yet.”

A behemoth city of pale rock and sea stone appeared in the wasteland of grey sand. Rickety bridges made from petrified sinew connected iron towers that looked shoved into the ground like wayward spears. Rings of blasted sandstone surrounded deep pits, and flags stitched from whale flesh flapped in the breeze. There were no streets, just sandy walkways that wound between rugged towers and houses thatched together with rope and metallic netting. Drifts of sand covered the buildings like metal snow. The Ebonsand Sea was just beyond the city, and it reflected the radiant light of the melting sun.

Large walrus-like beasts shuffled outside the city perimeter and left lines of acidic glue in their wake. More of the grey-skinned humanoids rode the slug-tailed creatures. Skiffs docked on rusting metal planks next to crashing ocean waves. A number of ATVs and dune-buggies drove in and out of a network of tunnels beneath the city.

Cold ocean air blew in from the dark sea. Kane tasted salt and engine oil.

The vehicle flew close to the ground. Something appeared over a dune just south of the city.

It was a nother skiff. It fl ew in low over the dune bank, and was also bound for the city. The vehicle was equipped with fewer guns and a wider deck than the vehicle Kane and the others rode, which meant there was more room for the dead and wounded on board.

There were at least two dozen of the grey-skinned humanoids. They bled green or were missing limbs, and had been flayed open or turned inside out. Their grisly wounds were crudely bandaged with wraps of linen. Some of the wounded thrashed about violently as they clawed at some imaginary threat. Others couldn’t stop screaming, or bled constantly from both eyes. Several others had decaying appendages turned to stumps of clay or ash.

The two crafts drew to within a hundred yards of each other. Kane heard dissonant whispers in the wind, a gritty chant made by gargling and guttural voices. It took him a moment to realize that what he heard was a chorus of the wounded. They all spoke jointly in a vagrant and sibilant tongue. Their eyes were blank as their mouths moved without their knowledge.

“What the hell…” Kane whispered.

“Anarchotech,” Jade said.

“Bless you,” Kane said as he looked at her. Her face was pale and her eyes were wide.

“And what the hell is ‘anarchotech’?” Ronan asked.

“It’s Ebon Cities experimental magic,” she explained. “They fuse chaotic energies with captured soul power to create a new type of energy. It’s unstable. And it’s incredibly debilitating towards living creatures.”

“Why don’t they use it all of the time, then?” Ronan said with a grim laugh. “And why haven’t we heard of it before?”

“They just started experimenting with it recently,” Jade explained as the ir skiff drew closer to the city. “It’s still in the early stages, I think. Most Southern Claw mages know about it, but they haven’t spread the word.” She shrugged. “I guess your military doesn’t want a panic on its hands. I understand it’s dangerous for the vampires, too…it’s just a lot more dangerous for living creatures.”

“So what does it do?” Kane asked.

“It destabilizes you,” Jade said. “Melds you with other possibilities, or something to that effect. No one knows just how powerful it is.” She looked back at the ship of the wounded. “Hopefully we won’t find out.”

“It looks like someone already has,” Kane said. “So it would seem these people are enemies of the vampires, too.”

“ Big deal,” Ronan said.

The skiff came to a stop over a n enormous landing platform hedged in by jagged towers. A seven-foot tall grey man with a lizard-like tail waited on the platform with a s mall contingent of guards armed with bolt-action rifles and wearing heavy cloaks to shield them from the icy wind.

“Now what?” Ronan groaned.

“Maybe they want to surrender,” Kane said.

Kane and the team were led off the ship and brought to stand before the large reptilian. Their wrists were still shackled in chains, and the armed sentries kept a watchful eye.

The massive draconian looked down at them. Kane watched more skiffs fly by in the distance.

“Hi,” Kane said. “Nice place you have here. Like an amusement park, only minus the amusement.”

The draconian grunted, then turned and walked away.

“What the hell?” Sol said, almost in a laugh.

“I get the impression we’re supposed to follow him,” Jade said.

“Maur thinks that’s a terrible idea.”

“For once, Ronan agrees with Maur,” Ronan said.

“Jade?” Kane asked without taking his eyes off of the giant. “Do you or your spirit have anything to add here?”

“There are no other spirits anywhere in the vicinity,” she said. “But this complex is shielded somehow. I can’t see past any of the outer areas.”

Well, that’s about as unhelpful as you can get. He cursed under his breath and followed the giant.

The complex was even larger than it appeared from the outside. They stepped through a pair of iron double doors and came into the guts of the refinery-city, a noisy industrial complex filled with dark metal and distant klaxons. The entire locale looked jury-rigged, a mismatched amalgamation of rusted steel towers and crooked iron girders, tube-shaped buildings with yellowed windows and stream pipes that filled the air with hot white smoke.

Scaly Grey Clan moved with purpose through uneven narrow streets that had been hobbled together with patchworks of asphalt, rock, and cobblestone. The air in the city was green and tasted like some sort of cleaning agent. The atmosphere was vitriolic and liquid, and moving through it felt like walking through a dissolving gel.

Kane noticed that the reptilians didn’t wear masks there in the city.

Strange organic creatures somewhere between jellyfish and seagulls navigated the space between the haphazard rooftops. Workers carted sacks of sea rock and vats of burning liquid. Everything smelled of industry and machines. The loud grind of gears and metal hammers sang into the sky.

The air took on a turgid quality. An enormous gel shield surrounded the city. Kane knew it hadn’t been there before, when they’d been on the skiff and on the landing platform, which meant the barrier was only visible from within. The Ebonsand Sea and the beach and the sky were all on the other side of a gigantic and sickly green lens. Everything in the reptile city was suffused with green muck, and e very particle of air was weighed down by intangible sludge, making it difficult to breathe.

Kane and the others were marched through the streets. Reptilian humanoids parted and watched the procession. The Grey Clan all wore faded grey overalls or simple patchwork clothing that allowed for the subtle variations in their specific body types: prehensile lizard’s tails, multiple arms, spiked ridges along the back, undulating chest cavities that rose and fell like organic accordions.

The giant reptile-man led them with the help of an entourage of guards. The mercenaries were marched towards what appeared to be the center of the metropolis of metal and recycled industrial parts, old ships and re-invented watercrafts. The streets ran low between elevated platforms filled with ramshackle housing. Thin walkways made of metal and sinew ran between the taller buildings. Kane looked up through the green air and saw the compressed sky.

“What the hell is this place?” Ronan said, but he didn’t really speak, even though his words sounded in the air. Kane answered, and that was when he realized they really did walk through liquid. The air was a chemical substance: they moved through a gelatinous atmosphere. Even though they’d been breathing it for several minutes, it wasn’t until Kane tried to speak that he actually felt the sticky fluid push down his throat. He almost gagg ed, but the words still escaped.

“Not Kansas,” he said.

Kane looked around. It was difficult to discern one building from the next. He saw vague outlines of old sea vessels and the shells of converted fuel tanks, the husks of land rovers and sheets of tin plating sco u red with burn marks and scratches.

The other reptile folk watched them silently. They seemed a silent people, a direct counter to the industrial din of the city they inhabited.

“Jade?” Kane said, fighting his desire to gag on the floating muck. He felt himself moving slower. “What the hell is this place?”

It’s New Desh, his own voice echoed back in his mind. It was the voice of the giant, filtered though Kane’s brain. Yes. We are the Grey Clan. And you are here to help us.

“What?!” Kane said out loud, but no other answer was given.

Enough of this shit.

He stopped walking. When t he lead reptile realized he wasn’t following, it turned and walked back with loud and deliberate steps. T he other sentries waited stoically.

Motion ceased all around them. Dozens of reptilians stopped what they were doing and cast their eyes to the scene as the enormous leader moved towards Kane.

Move, Kane’s own voice echoed in his head, the voice of the Grey Man. Now.

“Screw you,” he said, and he leapt forward and kicked the Grey Man’s knee. Even in the heavy air the force of the blow was enough to crack the bone with a sickening squelch. The creature growled and fell.

“Jade!” Kane yelled.

He was glad she decided to ignore her concerns about the area being too unstable and finally use her magic. The gritty air turned thin, melted by the presence of her spirit. Sol and Ronan struck out and knocked two of the armed guards aside. Ronan even managed to disarm one and steal its barbed spear. He swung it around and downed another sentry, leaving eight immediate threats for them to deal with. Jade’s spirit swept four of them aside, while Kane kicked the leader in its lizard’s nose. Sol grabbed two and knocked their heads together.

More Grey Clan descended from above. They came down slowly, altered the air’s viscosity to make it so they almost flew. They wore armored masks and bladed bracers and yielded double-edged swords. Their armor was covered in razor-tipped spines.

Kane kicked one in the face as it came down and sent it flying back through the air. He pulled a blade away from another and used it to defend himself. Even in that goop atmosphere he moved as fast as he ever had — if anything, he was faster, as the pain that had bothered his leg for the past few days seemed to vanish in that gel air.

Reptilian citizens scattered all around them. Window panels slammed shut and klaxon alerts blasted out like air-raid signals.

Most of the Grey sentries hesitated, as if unsure of what to do. Even though Kane and the others were surrounded, the soldiers held back, and those who did engage didn’t use their blades but instead tried to grapple the captives, who in spite of being shackled at the wrist still put up a valiant fight.

They want us alive. They didn’t expect us to give them this much resistance.

Jade shaped her spirit into a cone of razor air and scattered the scaled soldiers. Bodies flew and fell hard to the steel city floor. Sol pelted reptilians with his considerable fists, and Ronan hacked at anyone who came close. Maur stayed close to Ronan, spotting for him and barking orders as to who to slice up next.

Enough! Kane’s own voice shouted at him.

The Grey Clan sentries stopped in their tracks. Jade was held still with a dazed look in her eyes. A nimbus of crackling black fire surrounded her head in a net of ebon steel. Sharp points aimed in towards her skull from the inside of the sphere, solid midnight knives that hovered less than an inch from her skin.

A tendril of shadow energy ran from the sparkling orb back to a reptilian hand. Unlike the others, the creature that held the arcane whip was largely human, save for a greenish tint to his skin and scaly ridges on his brow and jaw. His fingers ended in dark claws, and he was dressed in a n armored coat made from oily skins and toothed shoulder plates. The arcane harness slithered and wrapped around his hand like a snake made of electric smoke.

Stop this! The voice shouted again, Kane’s own voice, the reptile mage’s word translated in his mind. One more move and I’ll crush her mind!

“Maur says ‘Screw that!’” Maur yelled, and he broke away from Ronan and tackled the mage around the midsection. Both of them crashed to the ground. The net of electric energy evaporated from around Jade’s head. She fell in to an unconscious heap.

Kane moved to help her, but the Grey Clan warriors unfroze and swarmed them. Kane was violently knocked to the ground. Bodies piled on top of him and seized his limbs. He swung and struggled, but a series of vicious kicks and fists hammered his sides. His vision went black and white. Metal scratched and pounded his body.

His vision dimmed. Kane only dimly registered the fact that Maur had somehow overcome the Grey mage and turned the tendrils of dark energies back on him. The crackling head-cage that had gripped Jade now surrounded the mage’s skull, and he stared blankly into the air while Maur held the warlock’s wrist tight.

“Maur says let us go, or you’ll be cleaning his brains off the street!”

“ That won’t be necessary ”, a voice said. This time, the voice was real, and it was human.

Kane was on the brink of passing out. Everything hurt. He couldn’t move, and the weight of angry bodies pressed down on him. The world blurred.

The speaker came into view. He was tall and lean and had thick brown hair. A jagged scar, obviously left by a creature’s claw, ran down the left side of his face, and the eye on that side was clouded. The man dressed all in black and wore an armored coat, and even through the green sludge Kane saw the slash sigil of Black Scar on his uniform.

“Burke…” Kane groaned. Everything faded.

He dreams of water. He floats in the middle of the sea. He’ s a little boy again, and that ’ s strang e because he’d never actually seen an open body of water until After the Black.

There is no land in sight. The plank of wood he clings to looks like it was once part of a sailing ship, bu t the rest of the vessel is gone, c laimed by the pitch black ocean.

Clouds roil in the sky. The waves froth and churn with violent motion. He swallows freezing seawater.

He ’ s never felt so alone.

Kane woke in a cold sweat.

The air was normal again: there was no gel to breathe, no green haze. He was alone in a sealed room.

Not good.

Kane’s head throbbed, and his hands were wet with refuse and the dank water that dripped down from the green-grey ceilin g. He was in a holding cell, a metal c hamber that contained a shallow pool, broken furniture and a pair of massive portal doors with wheels for handles. It all reminded him of the vampire city-state of Krul, and for a moment that’s where he thought he was. He struggled to remember what had happened, where he’d been.

Kane sat up, went to his knees, and tried to focus. He steadied his hands on his legs and breathed deeply, just like he used to do with Ekko whenever the stress of a situation was too much for him to handle.

Ekko had taught him a lot of yoga. He had difficulty remembering most of it now, but at least he was able to get through some of the simpler motions. She always used to guide him through the tougher steps.

I miss you, Ekko. I wish you could come back to me.

Tears rolled down his face and into his beard. Kane did his best to stay calm. The events of the past few days slowly came back to him, and he tried his best to make sense of it all. They’d been taken prisoner by a common enemy of the vampires, treated like dirt, and… altered somehow, a s well as shown visions of a damn creepy place. Kane had the sense th at he, Ronan and Sol had been prepared for something.

Congrats, dude. Your first time out as a leader and you manage to take everyone straight into the weirdest shit yet.

He knelt and meditated for what felt like a very long time. He ’d woke n up without a shirt, and after a while his skin grew cold. The air tasted like seaweed and brine.

Eventually the door opened, but there was no one there. Darkness poured through the doorway. The wind was cold and heavy.

Kane cautiously stood up and stepped forward. He expected something to leap through at any moment.

Open air waits be yond the doorway. The world h e steps into is impossibly dark and vast. Hard wind cuts up steep cliffs of brown rock covered with twisted black thrush. The air is thin and cold and filled with ebon mist. H e walks through the door and realizes he’ s been relocated to an impossible height.

H e emerges from a square building made of rusted steel. The structure is covered with many doors, a hub at the center of a small island of rock and thorny undergrowth.

Only a narrow ledge surrounds the structure. One wrong step and he ’ ll find himself in open air, as the island stands thousands of f eet above the surface, on the ti p of a narrow tower of red stone. The wind tears against him, and he feels the ground shift from its force.

A dark landscape waits far below. Everything drowns in blood-colored shadows.

The sky is filled with choking dust and grit. Black fumes congeal the air. A nother cold gust of wind nearly p ushes him over the side, but he twist s himself so it blows him back towards the building instead. He falls hard against the wall.

Wow, he shouts, but his voice is just a thought, a deep sound that resonates through his mind.

Kane?

Ronan comes around the corner. He looks colder and thinner tha n usual. Sol is with him. All of them appear inconstant, and darker. S hadows cling to them.

Guys, he says, and the sensation is strange. His voice is not a voice, but an echo. What the hell is going on? Where are Jade and Maur?

There’s no sign of them, Ronan says. Kane sees his words thicken and fall like sludge rain.

Sol’s eyes fall on something in the air behind Kane.

What the hell is that?

TEN

Bound

They flew through tunnels as vast as fields. Subterranean wind howled out of the depths of the Netherwere: the underworld, the realm beneath. It was a place of lightless pits and dank coves, a haven of things made of shadow, and born to it. In those troubled deeps lived things bred and raised in dark ness. They had never seen light, and never would.

The tunnels were smooth and unnatural, dug by the arcane engines and dread behemoth work beasts of the monstrous Cruj. Entire cities had been built in the soiled deeps, rune stone dwellings chiseled from rock and salt. Stalactites had been crafted into inverted towers. Sinkholes became watch posts.

The Cruj had unexpectedly left earth a decade ago, abandoning their vampire allies to face the human s alone. No one knew why they fled, including the vampires. One day the giants were simply gone.

But there in th at network of tunnels called T he Way stood ample reminder of the cruel black giants and the power they’d once held. There were sta tues of the twisted Drann, the Cruj’ succubi deities, monstrous threefold creatures twisted into a singular entit y, dread angels made molten and twisted, vaguely erotic but monstrous, all edges and splayed blade wings. There were shell remains of the gruesome Iron Eggs, intelligent arcane orbs, chromatic iron artifacts that commanded legions of the barbaric Sorn with their psychic transmissions and terrible power. There were vast bridges that spanned underground canyons, waterfalls of black water that flowed into complex aqueducts, blank slates of housing built into the rock like parasitic organisms.

The tunnels smelled of smoking carbon and glaciers, bat guano and wet clay. The air was dark and thick. Only phosphorescent algae lit T he W ay, as the ancient Crujian furnaces went cold long ago. Deep clefts in the earth led to shafts of frozen water and piles of scorched bones, bubbling pools of white slime and rock lizards, giant bats and eyeless walker fish.

Hard wind blasted from the depths of the tunnels. Depending on which tunnel it came from, that wind smelled like dead animals or raw ice, industrial smoke or human waste.

The ecology of the Netherwere had been forever altered not only by the presence of the Cruj, who twisted everything they touched with their arcane genius, but by th os e who came after the giants fled, the humans who took over the Cruj’ most powerful stronghold. In many ways the new masters of Meledrakkar were far, far worse. They didn’ t seek to alter the subterranean ecology out of experimental interest or coy malice, nor did they intend to build an empire.

All the new masters of the Netherwere wanted was money. Money, and more money, and they didn’t care who or what they had to kill or destroy to take it. Where the Cruj would sometimes let life flourish if it’s continued existence piqued their curiosity or provided a favorable variable to one of their experiments, the new lords of Meledrakkar — Black Scar, they now called it — were nowhere near so amiable or forgiving. In their own way, these humans were even m ore monstrous.

They were T he Revengers. And there was no escaping their wrath.

Danica’s eyes strained against the dark. She rode atop a platform on the back of a Razorwing that slowly fl ew down T he Way. Miles of frost — wracked stone lay behind them. The air rushed past her and lashed her face with tiny snow crystals.

Her skin was frozen. She was on her knees, with her arms bound behind her back. Her dark armor was stained with blood, dirt and ice dust. Blood had crusted to her forehead, and her skin was filthy with grime. Her body ached with fatigue. Tears stung her eyes.

“Oh, stop crying,” Burke said from the front of the platform. “T ears don’t suit you, you heartless bitch.” He turned and looked at her. “We both know what you did while you were here, Danica Black. We both know what you’re capable of. Don’t play like you’ve suddenly grown a soul.”

Danica said nothing, because she knew that he was right.

The platform of wood and steel was wide enough to house a contingent of Revenger guards and a handful of prisoners, with enough space to s ecure each passenger to the deck with chains. The entire contraption was secured to the back of the Razorwing, one of many such giant draconic creatures purchased at a discounted rate from the Ebon Cities. Each Razorwing was controlled by a warlock or witch who formed a special telepathic bond with the creature using a strange parasite provided by the Ebon Cities ’ beast handlers. The parasites grew in pa irs, and one was affixed to each the mage’s and the Razorwing ’s necks, which allow ed the stronger-minded of the duo to exert control over the other. Lucky for T he Revengers, Razorwings weren’t terribly intelligent.

Burke, Raven, six armed sentries, the warlock pilot, a pair of leath ery undead and two more warlock wardens stood guard over their prisoners: Danica, Lara Cole, and the unconscious body of Eric Cross.

You stupid bitch, she told herself. You couldn’t have messed things up any more than this.

She looked at Cole. Cole wouldn’t look back at her.

It had been two years since they’d last seen each other, when they’d barely survived the Battle of Karamanganji. Black had aban doned T he Revengers, stolen prisoners and gone to hell and back to save Cole’s life, but in the end that still wasn’t enough to erase their romantic difficulties. Danica still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened between them… things had seemed fine. Lara had always had some difficulty reconciling Black’s career choice, but Danica made sure she got out and saw Lara as often as possible, and they were very careful to make sure that nothing about their relationship in any way violated prison protocol or put either of them in danger.

They used to drink and go out on the town, carouse and shout and have fun, stay out late and sleep in later, get into trouble and never look back.

Danica might have saved Cole’s life, but by that point Lara had already saved Danica ’s soul. When the nightmares that the prison g ave Danica had all but destroyed her, Cole’s love and companionship pulled her back out of the darkness. Lara was so exciting, so joyous to be around, so full of life.

And then, one day — just a few weeks before Cradden decided to kidnap her so as to force Danica to give him valuable prisoners — Cole told Danica it was time for them to move on, and that she didn’t want to see her anymore.

Is this a second chance? Black wondered.

She looked at Cross. She’d betrayed one person she loved in a desperate bid to save the other.

You didn’t have much of a choice, she told herself. They would’ve tortured and killed you both. And they still might.

Danica felt like she’d swallowed freezing water. Her skin chilled as a gust of black wind sliced down the enormous tunnel. The platform on the Razorwing’s back creaked loudly. Everything shifted beneath her, and it was only the chains around her wrists that kept her from rolling into the air as the massive reptile twisted and flew deeper into the bowels of the earth.

Danica’s stomach lurched. The Way was so vast she couldn’t see the bottom. Black rock stretched over their heads, endless miles of stone reamed in ice and shadow. Outcroppings appeared out of the gloom like granite phantoms.

The Razorwing ducked beneath a massive stalactite, an iron and stone watch post that hung suspended from the endless ceiling. Rotating chain guns turned and tracked the reptilian flier. Gargoyles silently hovered through the air. The inverted tower hung over a giant fissure that ran up the face of the wall like a wound. The flaw led from one behemoth cavern to another.

Black Scar waited on the other side of the crack. The s ight of it always took Danica’s breath away. I ts dismal grandeur was awe-inspiring.

She always knew she’d return. It had somehow seemed inevitable.

Steel towers stretched out across the cavern. Pillars of dark fire roared to wards a ceiling so tall it might have been the sky. The air tasted like sweat and iron. D istant and d ark walls glowed in the blaze of furnaces. C rystalline f laws in the stone shone like false daylight in the gloom. Thick iron shields built over natural fissures helped maintain the cave’s stability.

The cavern stretched for over two miles in either direction. At its center stood an underground city made of cold iron, black structures molded together to form an edged metropolis.

The central Black Scar complex sat at the nexus of it all, a dome of pitted steel surrounded by needle-like towers webbed together with crackling electric-thaumaturgy. Circling blasts of cold ene r gy cast the ceiling in ghostly light. Grinding machines echoed and crashed in the distance. Droning Razorwings cried out, and their strangely hollow voices echo ed like tortured cries.

The prisoner population of Black Scar was l ocked within the iron walls, guarded by rotating watchtowers covered with ball turrets and arcane trebuchets. They lived in squalor in a tight arrangement of prison buildings, tiny structures packed like honeycombs and locked down around the clock. Those few prisoners visible on the grey lanes were chained together and held under careful watch by more of the gaunt wight — giants. Yet more of the undead stood on the towers and on the walls, their grinning skull visages unmoving, their cold white eyes glowing like torchlight.

The diamond mines were to the west, a scar in the rock. Danica saw streams of workers ushered in and out of the wide opening to the mines, their skin red with dust. Gouts of explosive vapors erupted from the open shafts and paint ed the air in a bloody haze.

Mechanical dreadnaughts strode through the city, faceless automa tons built like massive tin men with motorgun arms. Swivel- mount ed cockpits sat where the heads should have been, and they hous ed Revenger pilots who kept a careful watch on the metropolis of prison structures.

Black cables ran between the taller buildings. S pirit unguent race d along lines of iron wire. S trands of arcane energy crackle d and fe ll in sparks of electric rain.

“He’ s looking forward to seeing you, ” Raven said. She smiled at Danica. Danica didn’t say any thing. She didn’t even look at the Revenger, and after a moment the woman turned away.

“Lara,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Dani,” Cole said. She was crying. “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up,” Raven said coldly. Burke laughed.

T he Razorwing dipped down and flew beneath hex wires and razor ed turrets. Hot wind from the furnaces blasted up into Danica’s face, and when flame s poured from one of the central factories she went blind for a moment from the blazing white light. S he had to blink several times before her vision returned.

The reptile landed on an elevated steel p latform surrounded by a low barbed fence that had been decorated with human hair. The likeness of a black skull had been painted in the middle of the platform.

A number of leathery undead sentries armed with bladed rifles and hatchets stood at attention. The Razorwing folded in its wings and flattened itself down. An iron staircase was rolled up to the platform on the reptile’s back. Black and Cole were led down.

Danica had trouble finding her land legs — they’d been riding on the Razorwing’s back for hours, and the ground still seemed to shift and tilt beneath her even as she stepped onto the flat surface. Her head spun from dizziness and hunger, and her eyes watered in the smoke and haze. The light in the Netherwere was unnaturally dim and dank and often took Revengers years to adjust to.

They stood Cole and Danica side-by-side in front of a steep iron staircase leading to the depths of the processing tower. Both of t heir arms were still bound behind their backs. Black’s spirit wailed in the background, like he was lost at sea. Danica deduced that she had no chance of touching him so long as Raven was nearby and conscious.

She looked behind her. Burke supervised as the undead quietly hauled Cross down the ladder. He’d been wrapped up like a mummified corpse.

“Hey, bitch. Been a l ong time.”

Danica turned and looked at the man who’d sp o ke n. S he’d recognize the scratchy voice anywhere.

Vorgas Rake was lean, tall and unshaven, an imposing man with red-bl onde hair and a thin goatee surrounded by stubble. He dressed in black, and moved like a pan ther. The former pit-fighter had grown up as a street thug, but during his travels he’ d become extremely well-connected in the criminal underworld. Once he’d graduated from hired muscle to mercenary his influence and clout continued to grow. Eventually h e and his partners had formed T he Revengers, and they’d transformed Black Scar into what it was now. T hose partners were long gone, and Rake ran the show all by himself now.

“It has been a long time,” Danica answered. “ You d ick.”

Rake calmly stepp ed up and punch ed Danica in the stomach. He would never hit her in the face — he’d always told her how pretty she was.

The blow knocked the wind out of her, and for a moment Danica thought her insides might come spilling out. She wobbled in place and sank to her knees. Her breath s wouldn’t come, and her throat went raw as she tried to suck down air.

“You know you’re in deep shit, right?” Rake smiled.

Danica coughed.

“Just leave her alone,” Cole barked.

“Shut up, bitch,” growled a deep and monstrous voice. Geist stepped onto the platform. He was a mountain of a man, if indeed he was a man — six-foot-six and as broad as a barn, Geist was half-Doj and so badly scarred and burned he looked mostly dead. A cowl conceal ed most of his face, and a thick cloak made of gre y wool was wrapped around his bulk of muscles and heavy Revenger’s armor. Geist wasn’t terribly intelligent, but h e reveled in the act of killing and served Rake without question. A massive war axe and a n AA12 auto-shotgun were sl ung across his back.

“Should have known…” Danica coughed. “You two lovebirds…are never far apart.”

Geist stepped up and kicked Cole in the chest. She coughed and fell back. The gigantic steel-toed boot had torn open her shirt.

“You f ucker!” Black yelled. S he tried to get to her feet, but Raven secured her bonds and forced her back down to her knees.

H er spirit struggled in the distan ce. She sensed his frustration and rage at not being able to reach her.

“You’re t rying to call your spirit, aren’t you?” Rake smiled. “You’ve guessed by now that isn’t going to happen, I hope.” H is smile was cold and toothy. He actually would have be en quite attractive if not for the fact that he was such a lying and manipulative sadist. “Do you know why? ” he asked her. “ I’m sure you do.”

“I ’d thought…it was Narcosm…” she coughed. The Revengers had used the arcane drug for years to subdue captured mages, but when the effects hadn’t w o r n off and Danica had realized she could still detect her spir it’s presence, she ’d kno w n something else was going on. “But then I figured out that this ninja bitch behind me is a Fade.”

Rake smiled.

A Fade was a relatively new phenomenon, something of an anti-mage whose presence and force of willpower disrupt ed or suppress ed a mage’s arcane spirit. Danica had never actually run into one before, but she’d heard the stories. They were extremely rare, and some believed they didn’t even exist.

If only that were true.

“She’s smart,” Raven said behind her. T o emphasize her power, Raven exerted her will, and Danica sensed as her spirit slip ped even further away. She felt hollow and weak. H er chest w en t tight.

“Not too smart,” Rake said. Danica was still on her knees. She looked at Cole, who tried to get up. Behind her, the undead carried Cross towards a transport lift. “ I f she was smart she wouldn’t have stolen my ship, my prisoners and my men. And she would’ve had the good sense to stay hidden, so I c ould never find her.”

His smile was cold.

Danica smiled back.

“Who a re the new guys?” she asked with a nod towards the leathery undead, the tall and emaciated sentries with oversized grinning skulls and skeletal frames. “Is the Ebon Cities giving you troops now, too?”

“The Ebon Cities…” Rake laughed. He knelt down, and looked her in the eye. “Oh, Dani, you’ve missed so much in the last couple of years. I ’ve miss ed you. You know that, right?” His smile faded. “You were always one of my favorites. It really hurt when you left.” He stood up. “Th ey’re called Scarecrows: s pecial zombies with the martial skill s of a Vath but without the out-of-control bloodlust. They used to be Revengers. The Grand Vizier of Koth sold us the secrets of how to make them.”

Danica tried not to let her shock show. Koth was a renegade necropolis populated with outcast undead, exiled vampires and others not deemed worthy of rank by the Ebon Cities. The remote city of the dead had been relatively quiet the past few years, ever since Cross had destroyed their leader, the vampire called The Old One.

“Wh y are you allies with Koth?” she asked. “And w hat do you want with Cross?”

“Koth is the new super power, Dani,” Rake laughed. “The Southern Claw and the Ebon Cities have been so focused on destroying each other that you morons forgot all about Koth. And you forgot all about us.”

Raven pulled Black to her fee t and punched her in the kidneys. Pain flared down her back and into her thighs, and t ears of pain ran down her face. Geist picked up Cole, and a pair of Scarecrows stepped up and aimed their massive assault rifles at the women.

“Don’t worry about Cross,” Rake said. “He’s in good hands.” He stepped close r, un til his and Danica’s faces almost touched. His eyes were like icy glass. “You should worry more about what I’m going to do with you.”

ELEVEN

Citadel

The y look into the dread sky and see a vampire fortress.

An island of jagged rock stands atop a narrow stone tower just a hundred yards away. This n ew edifice is adjacent to the tower of stone they woke on, and it’s practically a reflection save for one impo rtant difference: instead of being to pped by a small steel building, the second island is dominated by a citadel made of black rock and red iron.

It’ s a Bonespire. It’s a small Bonespire, roughly the size of a manor, but a Bonespire nevertheless.

That’s terrific, Kane says.

Look, Ronan says, and he points between the islands of stone.

The only way to get to the other mountain is to cross a narrow bridge made of crumbling earth. The bridge is only four or five feet wide but almost fifty feet long. B its of stone crumble and fa ll into the air. Both of t he thin towers are at least a mile high. They stand over a land of red water, black earth and roiling dark smoke.

A pile of equipment lies on the far side of the bridge: swords, axes, armor vests, and strange gauntlets attached to short muzzle d guns and long ammunition belts.

Great, Kane says. We’re in a fucking video game.

Do they expect us to attack the Bonespire? Sol asks. Why not send our mage with us?

The idea might not be for us to actually survive, Ronan says. They’re probably watching us. This is all probably for their God damn ed amusement.

Then piss on them, Kane says. T he best thing we can do is stay right here.

As if in response, the ground shifts. The ir mountain cracks ope n like melting ice. C hunks of rock fly into the air as the bridge between the towers starts to fall apart. The rail-thin mountain crumble s beneath them. The island shakes and tilts under their feet. A ll three of them fall to their knees. Kane glances up, and notices that the other island remains stable.

Of freakin’ course, he says.

Do you guys ever shut up? Sol growls.

K laxons sound in the Bonespire. Dark fliers take to the air. Kane smells brimstone engines and arcane fuel. The small keep is five — stor ies of smooth black rock dotted with crimson battlements, and it stands just a short distance from the stone bridge. A single door slid es open and releases hulking Doj zombies with putrid grey flesh and hammers in place of hands. An undulating kaithoren — a mass of billowing tentacle flesh and uncertain mouths fill ed with grinding canine teeth — follows the zombies.

The three men run onto the rock bridge, and it falls to pieces behind them as they race for the other side. Kane waits for his feet to fall on open air. Vertigo hazes through his skull, and he expects to be ripped into the void sky at any moment. Everything spins.

T he zombies approach the bridge from the other end. Their monstrous dead forms grow larger by the second.

The mountain falls behind them with the dissonant roar of crashing stone. The y barely make it across. Kane jumps off the crumbling bridge and lands hard on his chest on the opposite ledge. Ronan falls next to him. Sol is the last one to make it, and he jumps f orward and lands on top of both Kane and Ronan, flatte n ing them b eneath his weight.

Get. O ff, Kane coughs.

The Doj zombies draw close. Red sweat pours down Kane’s face as he picks up one of the gauntlets. Hard wind claws at his back. P anic grips his chest as he glances over the edge and sees the blood sky below. Red clouds and shards of derelict rock float like ice in glacial waters.

He looks up. The nearest zombie is practica lly on top of the m. Its putrid skin drips vile grey fluid and worms. M assive neck muscles strain as the zombie raises its rusted hammer fists and clenches its rotted teeth.

He takes a breath. For a moment, Kane is back in the arena. He finds his focus.

H e calmly fixes the gauntlet to the back of his hand and forearm. The device is made of bone and pale metal and easily weighs five pounds. T he short-muzzled firearm consists of three short barrels, and t he ammo belt coils up around his elbow and extends to the mid-point of his upper arm.

Metal clamps snap shut and pierce his skin. T hin needles in the gauntlets send electric jolt s through his body. His flesh tingles, and he feels something shift in his synapses, an understanding of which muscles he has to use in order to activate the weapon.

He tightens the muscles in his arm and fires.

Explosive rounds fly from the weapon with such force he’ s nearly throw n from his feet. The rounds rip into dead flesh and explode. Skin shreds and bursts open in chunks.

The first zombie falls off the top of the mountain. The grotesque corpse tumbles like a flank of flayed meat through the open sky.

Kane growls and shoots again. His arm and side ache from the force of the weapon, but he uses his legs and lower back to keep his body stable as he advances towards the citadel.

He shoots th e next zombie giant in the head. It falls backwards, and its hammer arms flail wildly before the brute rolls down the slop e and plummet s into open air.

The kaithoren is further back, a bulk of flailing shadow limbs and dripping razor beaks. Roiling tentacles launch bone shard projectiles. Kane fills the air between them with gunfire and shatters the organic missiles before they can reach him.

A tentacle reaches for him, but he blasts it apart. The kaithoren roars through the air l ike a wall of kamikaze slime. Kane throws himself prone.

Machine-gun fire sounds over his head. S hells clank to the earth behind him. Ronan and Sol wear gun-gauntlets and flak vests. Their bullets tear into the kaithoren and drive it back. P utrid emerald slime sizzl es on the dark ground.

Kane lif ts himself up. Ronan hands him a saber. He runs forward with the weapon and slice s open the kaithoren’s suddenly exposed undead heart, a mass of fibrous tissue the color of old meat. It’ s the only solid thing about the c reature, an unholy core that holds the rest of the abomination together. Kane strikes at the stillborn mass and cleaves it in two. R ed ichor s explode outwards as the kaithoren squeals and melts to the ground.

Streams of red-brown ooze stain his face and stick to his skin like clumps of putrid mud. His nose is filled with the stench of animal rot.

This sucks.

Ronan hands him a flak vest, which he hastily puts on. It’ s too big at first, but a fter he buckles the vest in place it automatically resizes itself.

The sky grow s darker. T he fliers h ang back in the air, a host of gargoyles armed with nets and axes.

He checks his ammo, and realizes the weapon has reloaded itself.

Well that’s handy. I guess t his hasn’t been too difficult, Kane says.

The gates to the citadel open again, and a Creed of vampires emerges. They wear blue-black armor with bladed epaulets and yield smoking hand-cannons and pikes. Their greasy pale skin shines dull y in the autumnal light. D ark hair is pulled back in severe top-knots. Fangs glisten and drool with anticipation.

The hollow tower behind them is a shaft of red fog and black steel filled with equipment and machinery parts. More undead wait inside.

The gargoyle s descend and move to flank the three men, while the Creed advances on their position.

Ronan gives Kane an angry look.

Don’t say it, Kane says.

They battle their way through the citadel.

His arms grow weak from shooting the wrist-cannon and swinging the saber. Ronan and Sol fight beside him. They t ear thr ough red armor and black fliers and scorch the air with metal, fire and blood.

The vampires never stop coming.

Even after the first Creed falls, another emerges from deep er with in the Citadel. Not all of the undead in the Bonespire are soldiers — they fight wight technicians and zombie surgeons, skeletal laborers and ghoul messengers, hulking mountains of zombie flesh meant to carry large loads. Only the vampires are meant for combat, but they still j oin in the attempt to throw back the three-man assault.

The gargoyles, also, come at them in seemingly unending waves. The me n tear the air apart with thaumaturgic ammo. T hey shoot and cut down silhou ette fliers and send bloody bodies crashing to the ground.

They battle half- automaton flesh walkers, monstrosities of ebon iron fused to patchwork assemblies of smoking skin. Dozens of eyes leer at Kane as he ducks beneath steam-driven hammers and blasts through limb joints to topple the golem s.

P oisonous air fills the inside of the citadel, making t heir lungs burn and their eyes sting.

A vampire armed with twin blades descends upon them from the height of the tower, an unseen void of shadow over their heads. This undead is some sort of champion, a leader accompanied by two more red-armored vampire fiends with dark hair and iron fangs. Their e yes are hidden behind thick goggles, and they wear twisted tattoos on their dead flesh.

Z ombies pour out of vents in the floor and emerge from hidden storehouse s of mutated skin.

Kane feels superhuman. He is more in th at shadow world, better, stronger. He senses an arcane presence in him and around him, some subtle augmentation that not only allows him to breathe and exist in an environment that by all rights should be caustic to humans, but to excel in it.

It occurs to him this is what the Grey Clan did to them on the ship: prepared them for battle on this dread world of shadows.

The melee is a blur of motion and noise. E verything becomes instinct and reaction. Years spent in gladiator pits and dodging psychotic Bl ack Scar inmates forever alter ed his sense of reality when he fight s. His body becomes an engine. Weapons are an extension of his arms. Killing is as easy as breathing.

The vampire leader is skilled. Kane uses the saber to deflect it ’s swift attack s. He dodge s ghouls armed with short knives and zombies with rotating saws attached to their limbs.

The Citadel protects itself. Kane feels its alien intelligence, some vast and controlling entity that lurks with in the walls.

A sword slashes into his side. He bites through the pain. The wound is the price he pays so the vampire leader come s too close to dodge Kane’s gunfire. H e blasts its pale skull into paste.

Ronan and Sol battle the other vampires and shoot their way through ranks of ghouls. The air is blood meat mist, shrapnel and gun smoke. The air outside has whipped into a fury of black powder and razor rain.

He finds a dark iron ladder bol ted to the bleeding walls, and ascends. His hands grip pitted metal soaked with oil and blood. Gouts of dark steam leak from the iron tower. He climbs up a tube of jagged rust edges and leering bone faces. Phantoms melt through the walls.

A vampire appears out of a hatch, and Kane shoots it until its body turns to pulp. Another comes at him from behind. It flies through the air as if on wings, and he wrestles with it for a moment before he cracks its fanged mouth against the wall and sends it plummeting to the floor a hundred feet below, where Ronan and Sol tear through the undead ranks.

He sees munitions and glass spheres as he climbs; rooms filled with corpses await ing animation; strange whirring devices of thaumaturgic potential; bio-organic machines, skin pulled taut over control panels; strange workbenches covered with beakers and vials of bubbling fluid.

He and the others have been sent to destroy a research station. The Ebon Cities has come to this black wasteland with a purpose. T hey mean to find something.

The apex of the Citadel lies hidden beyond a steel hatch at the top of the ladder. The rotary-style door swings up into a cold and utterly black chamber. His wrist cannon glows blue-green and illuminat es the darkness.

The room is filled with sarcophagi. Flat black coffins crafted from iron have been bolted into the walls so the vampire inhabitants can step in side and sleep vertically. C orpse dust form s a runic circle i n the middle of the floor. Cold iron candelabra s dangle from the ceiling and paint the room with flickering silver light. A black mirror stands at the far end of the chamber.

He readies his weapon and carefully enters the vampire barracks, his heart in his throat. The hairs on his neck freeze. He walks slowly, careful to a void the circle at the center.

The coffins remain sealed.

He walks up to the black mirror. It’ s somehow darker than the rest of the lightless room, an utterly blank void that seems to suck away the ambient glow of his armaments. Deep iron mists float within the mirror’s face. The frame is made of bone and steel.

He shoots the mirror.

The glass explodes and throw s him back. Shards cut his face and arms.

The coffins fly open. Half of them are filled with undead that move with chilling speed. He stands in a chamber filled with warrior corpses.

Kane roars as he sweeps the room with gunfire. He can only see by the flash of bullets and exploding blood. F anged mouths his s. E bon claws reach for him. A sea of pale bodies swarms in.

He blasts his way back to the hatch door. Claws tear skin from his arms. He shoves the wrist — cannon into a vampire ’s mouth and bl ows open its skull. Another one tries to take him down but he shoots through it s torso. He slashes behind and ahead with his blade.

Teeth sink into his neck. He screams and shoots the top of the vampire’s head off before h e falls back wards through the hatch. The fangs break off and remain lodged in his wounded skin.

Everything turns end over end. He loses direction. Som ething hard smashes against his back, and knows it isn’t the floor. Blood swims in his vision. B lack air engulfs him.

He hears shouts. He’s no longer sure where anything is com ing from.

He hangs suspended from the iron ladder. T he harness that connects him to his weapon i s caught on steel rivets in the wall, and his boots are tangled in the ladder’s rungs. He can’t feel any pain.

The world is upside-do wn. Dark steel drip s with gore through an air filled with black shadows. He gazes up at the floor and down at the ceiling. H e dangles halfway between the two ends of the tower. Blood flows down his arms and neck.

He reaches up (down) and pulls the fangs from his neck. A jet of blood shoots out and soaks his face before it rains to the ground.

Ronan climbs up (down) to get him. Sol fires up (down) into the horde of vampires. They are nightmares that scale the walls, nude and unarmored creatures with black hair and pale flesh covered with blood runes and shadow tattoos. They crawl down the steel, fast and relentless even as Sol ’s gunfire cuts them apart and they plummet up and then down, past Kane’s swimming vision, to splash into mounds of blood flesh at the top (bottom) of the tower.

He screams. His vision goes dark, a pulsing beat of black visions, pale dancers on a distant vampire shore, undead matrons around statues of shadow flesh, undead cities that move like great beasts across the landscape.

His heart pound s, and then it slows. Impure blood flows through his veins and turns them black.

Ronan reaches him on the ladder and fires into the vampires. H e somehow untangles Kane with one hand and hoists him over his shoulder.

Gravity is gone. He feels like he ’ s floating. His strength has left him. Everything fades in and out.

He hopes they’ ve succeeded. He has the sense they ’ re supposed to destroy this place, to stop the vampires from finding something, and they aren’t doing it for the Grey Clan, and certainly not for Burke, but for the people he cares about. The people he fears he will never see again.

H e falls into a nightmare-plagued slumber.

Kane woke. He was back in th e steel room. This time he wasn’ t alone.

He sat up and vomited blood. He felt something in his mind, some dank presence that saturat ed his skin. He looked down and saw that his veins were still black. His body was wracked with hurt. B lood flow ed down his neck.

“What…?” His voice hurt. Tubes had been inserted into his sk in. A brown-haired woman in black Revenger’s armor knelt down beside him and dr e w his stained blood into a syringe. He saw crawling black insects in the glass.

He wanted to throw up again, but Ronan grabbed his shoulders.

“Hang on, ” he said. “Just…hang on.”

Kane looked around. The door was open, and just outside the room were industrial steel chambers filled with tables and chairs and medical equipment. He saw Grey Clan mov ing boxes of supplies, and he heard a clamor of activity.

He saw Jade, Ronan, Maur, Sol and Burke, the bastard Burke, a Black Scar warden and a cold-hearted murderer. He was accompanied by more Revengers, as well as a contingent of Grey Clan.

“ All of you… ” Kane started to say, but he coughed up another mouthful of blood. “ All of you…can go to hell… ”

He fell back, and passed out again.

TWELVE

Prey

The sky bleeds red and black. Clouds loom and twist like screaming faces. He presses ahead through the black wind.

The City of Thorns is far behind him. He walks across a dust sea. A forest of brambles, thorns and rock waits in the distance, but first he has to traverse field s of clay and black water. Cracks in the ground remind him of scars. Dark ice and petrified wood crack beneath his boots.

There is no faster route to take, and that knowledge claws at him. He has to hurry.

Because h e knows what the Shadow Lords are after.

He carries on without rest. His shadow body grows weary. He fades in and out. His blade is all that keeps him stable.

I’m turning less real. Soon, I’ll be just like them, like the natives.

Will I remember who I am? Will I remember why it’s so important that I succeed?

He can’t think about it for too long. He leans into wind filled with grit and debris and makes for the black forest in the distance.

He steps into a graveyard of trees. Dark filigree and necrotic ash drift at the perimeter of the forest and form a wall of ice shadows. The wind blows around the woods as if forbidden to enter.

T he air is dark red. The t rees are as pale as bones. Wind-felled trunks litter the forest floor like casualties. Tangled roots make the way treacherous. Witch’s hair hangs down from branches like petrified spider’s webs. Most of the trees are bare, as if some great fire ripped through the area without leaving any burns.

He follows a path bordered by twisted brambles and smooth stone. Shadows cling to everything like moss. Trees root inside one another. They grow inverted or thrust back into the ground like swimmers. Rocks split and bleed darkness that gathers in thick pools. Leaves hang petrified in the air.

He walks slowly, wary of upturned roots that pulsate and ooze a briny substance. His blade is ready, a dim shine in the forest corridor.

He knows these are forbidden w oods. Even the Shadow Lords don’ t come here, for they fear the rule r of this place. The Eidolos warned him, but even it could put no name to the master of the woods.

The n arrow earthen path gradually gives way to dark and dust-covered stone s that are flat and low and clustered together like teeth. Hoarfrost and petrified mushrooms push against his boots. The path widens into a creek bed, a low and elevated channel filled with shattered rock a nd derelict tree limbs. There’ s no way to determine if the ground is moist or not. Everything is too black.

Strange sounds call through the distant sky. He looks up and sees a storm of shadow just beyond the trees.

Enormous t oppled logs litter the ground in the forest, juggernauts of wood covered in dark growths and insects. Vines curl and unfold like languid snakes.

The air is cold and still. He hears the wind beyond the trees, but he doesn’t feel it. He can’t hear much besides the alien birds and the crack of forest growth beneath his boots.

He’ s covered in shadow. He loses his grip. He feels his mind slipping. He doesn’t re member his name.

The obelisk. Remember that.

The obelisk. The source of human magic. Its likeness was drawn on the wall of the dark shrine, surrounded by another image of six cloaked men reaching for it.

It was there, somehow. It had fallen through the Carrion Rift and wound up in the Whisperlands.

I should have realized it before now. I should have seen it coming.

The Shadow Lords are intruders in the Whisperlands. They rule by show of force, but to rule isn’t their goal. They don’t care at all what their presence does to the realm, or to those trapped inside it.

They know the way out. That’s why the Eidolos has sent him to find them, to challenge them. They aren’t from this world. They are here for a purpose.

They search for the obelisk.

I can’t let them have it. I don’t know what they want with it, but if the stone falls into their hands then the Southern Claw will be lost.

Remember the obelisk.

And Snow. Remember Snow.

He will not forget her. Not ever. She ’d died so he could succeed, so that their mission hadn’t end ed in vain. To fail now would be a desecration of her very memory.

He walks deeper into the night woods. He feels eyes on him.

The river bed opens to a wide beach on a black shore. Massive trees, some of them hundreds of feet long, lay toppled in a catastrophe of black wood. Roots dangle like melting blades. Stones shift into silt and sand beneath his feet. The ravine flows under the trees and empties in to a laggard flow of ebon waters covered in steam. The far shore is barren, and beyond it stands the rest of the shadow-smothered forest.

Something waits for him on the opposite shore.

At first he can’t make it out, as the large figure blends into the darkness. A grey disturbance surrounds it like a sullen cloak, a twist in the atmosphere, like the being wa s cut from somewhere else. It shimmer s like a heat haze. It is out of place, only temporarily present.

It is derelict. A refugee, just like he is.

Whatever it is, it watches, and it waits. It’ s twice as large as he is.

T entacles made of oil writhe just beneath the surface of the water. He hears a ripping sound, like a great wound has opened. The tendrils leap up and smother the ghost silhouette with thick necrotic unguent. Even from across the shore he smells the stench of hog’s blood and animal waste, of decay and dead sap.

Darkness creeps all over the master of the forest. It is a dread conflagration of nightmares that controls this wasteland of trees. It feed s on creatures who attempt to pass through its domain.

He hears the lost voices of scattered ghosts. The entire forest is filled with the remains of the lost. The dark smell of condemned souls burns in the wind.

This is the forest of a hunter.

The beast is humanoid. Its t hick arms end in curled claws. Forest topiary surrounds it like armor. Shattered antlers fuse to its head, and its torso is wrapped in a tapestry of bone blades. The spine of some slaughtered wilderness beast extends from the hunter’s arm and twists and sharpens to form a curved blade, a spear of shadow. The creature’s mass is blood and darkness held together by iron-hard sticks and forgotten bones.

Its body billows and expands. Smoke pours from the gap s in its grisly armor. Behind it, gutted animal remains an d hollow shells assemble into a host of beast soldiers.

He readies himself to face the hunter. Power surges through Soulrazor/Avenger. Chill energies course into his veins. Shadows fleck away from his body like dried mud. The light from his weapon pushes the darkness away.

The hunter’s a ssault is swift and brutal. The shadow creature is suddenly within arm’s reach. He d oes n’t see it cross the wate r, doesn’t see it move at all unt il it’ s on top of him.

Blood grease limbs thrust at him with the bone spear and Soulrazor/Avenger barely deflects the attack in time. His body falls to the ground, battered and bruised. There’ s blood on his face. F orest roots dig into his back. He rolls away from the next blow, which hits the earth and sends up clods of silt and stone.

It’s difficult to find his footing on the rocky shore. He swipes at the hunter, rips away root flesh and rot, and the beast howls with a voice like a horde of dying animals. His ears twist and bleed at the sound.

The bone blade knocks his weapon away. Pain shoots through his hands. The joined sword falls into the water. He chases after it.

A blow takes him in the back. He flies through the air and lands on top of a massive log. A branch cuts straight into his leg. Pain sears through the impaled limb. His scream carries into the sky.

The beast looms over him.

H e tears the branch away. It snaps like a bone, and the pain shoots up his leg and into his stomach. His vision blazes white. He falls. Up and down bleed together. Wood fragments spray onto his face as the shadow man strikes the tree where he’d been and nearly cleaves it in two.

He falls into the water, a blood broth filled with gristle and rotted meat. He tumbles head over heels. Mold fluid seeps into his lungs. He struggles to the surface, spits out muck and grime, falls back down. He bobs, weightless, along the surface. The fast-moving river carries him away.

The hunter beast is in the distance. Trails of smoke twist from its arms and into the sky. Flaming missiles bear down and scorch the skin of the river. He sees the waters burst and turn foamy where the small meteors strike.

He swims as best he can. Bone fish and slithering dead things push against him and threaten to drag him under. He can barely see as he tumbles through dingy waters.

He narrowly avoids jagged rocks. The waters become more violent. He feels himself going down. He sinks closer to the bottom of the river. Soon he’ s lost in the shadows and stones.

He ’s on the shore. He doesn’t remember getting there.

His clothes and skin are saturated, and his body is covered with forest debris. Pale leaves cling to hi m as he painfully pushes himself up from the rocky ground. His arms shake, and his back is stiff with pain. The wound in his leg peels open when he tries to move, and he almost screams again.

He’ s alone. The hunter beast chose not to pursue him.

He limps along the rocky shore, looks into the forest next to the river and sees nothing but darkness.

Dead leaves fl oat through the air as he struggles forward. His leg starts to go numb.

The sword kept him safe. Soulrazor/Avenger offers him some measure of safety. It knows he has purpose here, and it pushes him on even though his spirit has long since left. It will protect him again.

But first h e has to find it.

He struggles through ankle-deep waters and pushes past s tanding stones and sediment drifts. Black fish lie dead on the river bank. He sees scat and bones, and smells rot.

Someone waits for him.

These natives are different from the others he’ s encountered. They are paler, not as covered by shadow. They are m ore like him.

They are garbed in primitive dress. Remains of clothing from the other world he barely remembers have been mixed with dark animal bones, furs and hides taken from shadow beasts.

There are a score of these creatures. T hey watch him soundlessly. He waits with fear in his chest, and he wipes black substance from his eyes.

They don’ t say a word. They step closer, and though for a moment he feels he should resist he allows them to lay hands on him. Their touch is surprisingly warm, and solid.

They’ re real. More real than the rest of this place. Just like I used to be.

T hey are human-like, but not human. Their skin is scaly, and they are larger than he is, stronger and more agile. They move with a sinuous grace he’ s seldom encountered before, here, or anywhere. They move like a si ngle sentient being, like they’ re coordinated in their motions and thoughts. He fears they’ re just extensions, another horde of puppets like the Eidolos’ s false children, but something in their scaled expressions, their quizzical and almost concerned faces, tells him he has nothing to fear from them.

They help him into the trees.

Cross felt himself grow more solid the deeper they went into the forest. Before long they were away from the river, and they stepped into a large clearing where the ground was moist and dark but the grass was actually green.

He heard voices, a mixture of human and other tongues he didn’t recognize. There were over two dozen people in the open camp, several of them standing guard along the outer perimeter, where the otherwise clean air turned vitriolic and dark. They’d camped in an island of solidity, a place secluded from the polluted fields of shadow. Tall torches had been set in the ground like spears and filled the clea ring with flickering yellow light.

The people were a mixture of human and green-gr e y humanoids with reptilian skin. Some of them had other lizard-like features as well: sharp and yellowed teeth, snake-like eyes, forked tongues, claws in stead of hands. Once inside the shadow-safe zone their clothing was tattered workman outfits and light armor cast in earthen tones. Their weapons were archaic rifles, blades and spears. Every one of the creatures w as dirty and looked bone tired, and Cross imagined they’d been there in the Whisperlands for a very long time. There were women among them.

“Welcome to our humble camp,” said one of the men he ’d been leaning on, a grey-haired and mostly human individual. “I’m Kyver.”

“Eric,” Cross replied after a moment. He was disturbed at how long it took him to answer. His voice was dry and hoarse, and h e was exhausted beyond all measure. “Not to be rude, but…could we do something about my leg?”

“Sure,” Kyver said.

They brought Cross to a bedroll near a shambled collection of tents. Everything looked very temporary, like they were ready to up root at a moment’s notice.

“What is this place?” he asked. Kyver and another human helped Cross set himself down on his back as gently as he could. He was woozy and weak. Blood soaked his leg, and in the torchlight he saw how bad his injury really was. Cracked skin glistened raw beneath his torn trousers. The slightest breeze made the wound sting.

“This is Vala, our medic,” Kyver said. Vala was a tall black woman with severe eyes and tight skin. She wore a dingy tank-top and camouflage pants, and her arms had more tone and muscle than Cross could ever hope to have.

“Lay still,” she said, her voice as commanding as her angular face.

“You bet.” He did his best not to hiss as she applied s altwater salve to the wound. “Saltwater…i s it a vampiric infection?”

“No, but it’s similar,” she said. “You know how the shadows start to creep all over your body after you’ve been out there for too long?”

“Yeah.”

“If it gets too deep into your skin, you lose your mind,” she said.

“We call it Shadowplague,” Kyver said. “For lack of a better term.” He smiled. Dead wind howled in the distance. “You probably have questions…”

“Yeah…maybe not as many as you think, but…yes.” Cross propped himself up on his elbows as Vala tore away his pant leg.

“Hold still,” she snapped.

“Sorry.” He looked at Kyver. “Who are you? Grey Clan?”

Kyver paused. Vala looked up at Cross like she intended to use the blade at her side to cut his throat.

“There’s only one creature in the Whisperlands who could have possibly told you that,” Kyver smiled. “And unfortunately for you, the Eidolos is no t a friend of ours.”

“He… it…doesn’t see things that way,” Cross said. “Trust me, I have no reason to trust it either, but it told me how to get to the City of Thorns, and where to travel from there to reach the Black Citadel. It seems to think there’s a way out of the Whisperlands, and that maybe you could help me find it.”

“You’ll get yourself killed listening to the advice of an Eidolos,” Vala said sharply. She looked at Kyver. “Should I stop treating his wounds?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Cross said as amiably as he could.

“You: be quiet,” she said coldly.

“Hang on,” Kyver said. “You know who we are…who are you?”

“My name is Eric Cross,” he said. “I used to be a warlock and a member of the Southern Claw. Now I’m a mercenary. I’ve been trapped in the Whisperlands for…I don’t know how long.”

“None of us do,” Kyver laughed. “That’s one of the many lovely side effects of this place. No one ever know s how long they’ve been here, e ven if they came here on purpose.”

“Like the Shadow Lords,” Cross said.

“Yes, like the Shadow Lords,” Kyver nodded. “Like us.”

Cross hesitated.

“Excuse me?”

Kyver and Vala exchanged glances.

“You say that you saw the City of Thorns,” Vala said. “It was founded by those who came before us.”

We search.

“I thought the people from the city were trying to escape,” he said. “That they were looking for a way out of the Whisperlands.”

“That’s not exactly the case,” Kyver said. “They were looking for something. It just so happened that the people who know the way out of the Whisperlands are looking for it, too.”

Cross took a breath. He was in no position to do anything here, especially without his blade. A few more of the Grey Clan came close, the reptilians.

“‘Those who came before us ’,” Cross quoted. “ Tell me something…is there a way out of the Whisperlands that leads into a place called the Carrion Rift? ”

“ Y ou know the answer to that,” Kyver said. “ And you know what both we and the Shadow Lords seek. It’s called t he Obelisk of Dreams.”

Cross’ s heart went cold. He saw his sister, burning on the train. No matter how deep he tried to bury that pain it was there. There was no escaping it.

“I’ve never heard it called that,” he said quietly. He looked at them, hesitated, and realized he had little left to lose. “Why do you want it?”

“We don’t,” Kyver said. “And we never have. But we can’t let the Shadow Lords have it.”

Cross studied the man. He appeared young, even with his speckled grey-green skin and fading white blonde hair. His eyes were pale blue, almost like ice. The shirt he wore had upturned collars and loose sleeves; he looked like he should have been in a library instead of out there in the shadow y wilderness. The aspects of hi s reptilian nature were subtle, just faint scales and glittering shards of snake skin on the backs of his hands and on his neck.

“How do you know about it?” Cross asked.

“That’s…complicated. We are not from your world…”

“No. Way,” Cross said.

Vala glared at him, but Kyver laughed.

“This is actually difficult to explain,” he said. “The world we come from…originally… well, we gave you the obelisk. We gave you magic. Or our ancestors did, at any rate.”

Cross nodded, and listened. He wasn’t sure why he should believe anything they said, except for one simple fact.

Why would he make this up?

“The ritual performed by you humans opened up a channel,” Kyver said. “A gateway. It allowed our dead to flow into your world, bu t the nature of the ritual you in voked ensured that those dead wouldn ’ t be free to roam about on their own.”

“Your people…your dead…a re the spirits we use for magic? ” Cross said. “Jesus.”

“ Don’t feel bad about it,” Kyver said. “ It ’ s always been better this way. Things were different where we lived. The dead were harvested there. They were burned as fuel, consumed by those who used them. It’ s similar to what happens here, but…they didn’t survive.”

“You said ‘lived’,” Cross said. “Your world…”

“Is still there. But w e aren’t.” Kyver shrugged. “We knew that the connection was in danger. It was in danger when you humans first had cause to seek it out. After the Obelisk was buried in your Carrion Rift, we knew we had to act, so we crossed over. ” There was an unmistakable note of regret in his voice.

He misses his home, Cross thought. I never knew. I never had any idea that our spirits were any one’s dead but our own, or that they came from anywhere except our own world.

“Even once we made the voyage to your world,” Kyver continued, “we still couldn’t reach the Obelisk, because it doesn’t actually lie in your world. It hangs halfway between there and the Whisperlands, trapped on the boundary because of the Rift’s unstable nature. The Obelisk can only be reached from this side, in the realm of shadows.”

“How did you get here?” Cross asked.

“ Only the spirits humans use can make the trip directly,” he said. “For us to travel to your world, w e had to…occupy, I think you would say…lives on your side. We had to have vessels that we could reside in once we got here.” He looked up at Vala, and she nodded, as if encouraging him to finish. “We couldn’t just pass through. We needed to replace other living creatures with ourselves.”

“Desh,” Cross breathed. “You replaced the people of Desh. Christ…” He felt himself wanting to rise, but he knew his leg was in no state to do so. “How? What happened to them?”

Kyver’s grim nod told him all he needed to know. Cross felt his insides go cold.

“There really wasn’t any choice,” Vala said. “We had to make sure that our dead were safe. And we all know what would happen to your Southern Claw without the aid of magic.”

“So Desh’s people are dead?” Cross said. There was a touch more anger in his tone than he’d intended.

“Yes, they’re dead,” Vala said. “Our presences occupy their bodies, and what was inside those bodies has gone. Over time, some of the host bodies take on the physical aspects of our native forms.”

“But Desh vanished a long time ago,” Cross said. “ Years before the Obelisk fell into the Rift…”

This is a waste of time, a voice said in Cross’ head. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t his own, but one of the reptilians.

That must be how they communicate in their native tongue, he thought, not entirely convinced the thought was his own, or that it was even safe to have thoughts, less they be detected. He looked around, but he couldn’t tell which of the reptilians had addressed him in his own voice. Several of them were quite bestial, and had only vaguely humanoid limbs. Their eyes glowed green and yellow in the dusky light, and their weapons were made from jagged bones and ironwood.

The smell of the campfire grew stronger as the wind pushed the smoke back in their direction. The small conglomerate watched him, waiting.

“All right,” Cross said with a nod. “So was the Eidolos right?” he asked. “Will you help me stop the Shadow Lords?”

“Why do you think you’re still alive?” Vala asked.

“You’re not the friendliest person, you know that?” Cross said.

“All right, all right,” Kyver smiled. “Relax, Vala.” He looked at Cross. “Yes. We’ll help you secure the Obelisk and keep it out of the Shadow Lord’s hands. We’re not keen on the notion of helping that Eidolos, but if doing so help s keep our dead safe then it’s worth the risk.” He narrowed his reptile eyes and smiled. “I take it the Eidolos ga ve you some insight or information that will prove useful.”

Cross pursed his lips, and nodded.

“Well?” Vala said.

“No,” Cross said. “ If I tell you, you have no use for me after that.”

“Not true,” Kyver said. “Because you’re the only one, I think, who can use that.” He pointed behind Cross.

One of the reptilians — a tall and scaly creature with a cobra-like head and thick muscular arms covered in green scales — opened his armor coat and revealed Soulrazor/Avenger, which dangled from a cord tied around the hilt. The harlequin blade shone dully in the autumnal light.

“That,” Kyver said, “may be the only chance we have. It’s strong enough to combat the Shadow Lord’s magic. And it should prove useful in battling the creatures down in the Carrion Rift, should we wind up there.”

Cross looked at it for long, silent moments.

“What do you know about it?” he asked.

“I know it can heal you,” Kyver said. “We’ve been watching you for a while, Eric. We know that even without magic you’re very resourceful, and very capable.”

Cross snickered.

“I haven’t been feeling much of either lately,” he laughed. “What do you know about the Shadow Lords?”

To his relief, the Grey Clan started to disperse. They moved back to their tents and campfires and returned to sharpening weapons and arranging supplies, walking the shadow-drenched perimeter and staring out into the vast and surrounding dark. Kyver, Vala and a few others remained. To his surprise, the reptilian handed him his sword, and his wounded leg started to knit itself back together almost the moment he touched the weapon. It worked with the rapidity of a spirit, even if it lacked a spirit’s subtle touch.

It had never healed him with such speed before, and it wasn’t a peasant experience. He felt like hot knives pushed in to hi m as his skin laced back together, and he had to clench his teeth and struggle against the pain. Tears came to his eyes, and his fingers dug into the muddy ground.

He already knew the blade had a mind of its own. H e just wasn’t sure if he was happy about it.

Kyver sat down cross-legged in the dirt. Vala watched with some interest as Cross’s leg healed.

I feel like a pig on display out here, he thought bitterly.

“The Shadow Lords are all warlocks,” Kyver said. “A couple of them are supposedly Southern Claw defectors, but no one is sure about tha t. The rest are from the wild: fringe settlements, border towns, cannibal tribes, things like that. No one seems to know how they came under the common banner of the Witch Queen.”

Azradayne, the reptilian said, or one of the reptilians said. It was hard to know which, since they all used Cross’s voice when they spoke into his mind.

“Who’s Azradayne?” he asked.

“Something not of our world, or of any world we know,” Vala said. “But whatever she is, she ’ s learned to tap into the Obelisk’s powers just like a human witch.”

Terrific, Cross thought.

“So she and her Shadow Lords want the Obelisk all to themselves, and they’ve stake d a claim here in the Whisperlands to accomplish that,” he said.

“You’re not very quick, are you?” Vala said.

“I heal quick,” he said. The blade smoked cold on the ground beside him. “So when do you take me to them? To the Black Citadel?”

“As soon as you heal,” Kyver said. “And as soon as you destroy the Druid.”

“The Druid,” Cross said slowly. “You mean that antlered thing that nearly tore me apart?”

Kyver nodded.

“Um…why?”

“You’ve been here long enough to know that the geography of the Whisperlands doesn’t always follow what you might think of as ‘the rules of reality’,” Kyver said. “Logically, there should be some other way, some other path or stretch of wilderness that one could cross, some desert or river or field that would allow you reach the Black Citadel.”

“But there isn’t, is there?” Cross said with a grim and knowing smile.

“No. There isn’t. In order to reach the Citadel, we have to pass through the Corpsewood, and the Burned Hills.”

“You guys have a knack for naming things,” Cross said. His leg had finally healed enough for him to sit up and bend it.

“They’re the native names,” Kyver laughed.

“ Your people can’t handle him?”

Kyver shook his head. “And we’ve lost our fair share trying.”

“So what makes you think I’ll fare any better?” he asked.

Again, Kyver’s eyes went to the sword. “It’s unique,” he said. “The power of The Black combined with the energies of the White Mother. You have a far better chance of defeating the Druid than any of my people do.”

Cross nodded. This wasn’t going to be easy.

It never is.

“Fine,” he said. “You show me where to go. I’ll take care of it. And then you’ll show me how to get to the Burned Hills.”

“We’ll help you,” Vala said. “Even though some of us don’t want to.”

“Thanks,” he said.

Kyver nodded, and he and Vala left Cross alone.

Someone brought him a blanket, and he wrapped himself tight. Cross pulled his legs in close and huddled alone in the dark. The chill was suddenly intense.

Worry gnawed at hi m. He tried to push it away, to ignore it, but the ache of tension settled in side hi m like a worm. His stomach churned and his hands shook.

He had so much to lose. He hadn’t really realized it before, but it wasn’t just the notion of letting the Southern Claw fall or the Ebon Cities win that terrified him. It wasn’t even the idea of failing Snow and letting her sacrifice — the sacrifice made by all of Viper Squad — be in vain.

I f he failed, he’d lose Kane, and Ash, and Grissom. He’d lose Ronan and Maur.

He’d lose Danica.

That thought was the most terrifying of them all.

I don’t care what happens to me, he realized. And I haven’t for a long time. I just want them to be safe.

He couldn’t sleep. It had always been difficult to rest in the Whisperlands. It should have been easy there in the clearing, now that he finally had a moment of safety. He watched members of the Grey Clan quietly mingle with one another, huddled in their tents or blankets, and he listened to the dark wind and the crackling fire. T he hairs on the back of his neck rose at the sound of some distant and shadow-born beast.

His heart felt cold.

I’m not going to survive this, he thought. Even if I defeat this hunter beast, even if we make it all of the way through the Corpsewood and the Burned Hills, the Shadow Lords will be the end of me.

He felt that certainty in his bones. He didn ’ t doubt it.

And as much as he tried to deny it, he was horribly afraid.

He walks to a shore covered in dried wood and ground bones. Shadows cling to the sky. Drifts of rolling dust cut across his path like charcoal rain. The river runs fast and deep.

He steps onto the logs and balances over the water. The black flow carr ies bits of animal matter and gritty fat. He smells blood and tar.

Clouds like grease stains claw at the broken tree line. Eyes watch him from the edge of the forest.

The log is slick. He stands steady, waiting. The white-black blade is in his hand. He is whole. This time, he is ready.

Behind him, he hears Kyver and the Grey Clan move into position. They hold iron nets and bone spears, bladed bolas and glaives. They hide in the shadows and wait for the hunter to show itself.

They don’t have to wait long. The shadow beast takes shape from a cloud of bones and blood. Its massive body rises from the ground. M ismatched shadow horns and tendril limb s glow with spectral luminescence.

It stands as tall as three men and grips a spear made of ashen knives. Green-white eyes reflect on the murky surface of the water.

He doesn’t move. He waits for it, knowing it will come.

Mongrel soldiers made of forest remains and shadows emerge from the river. They are dead bodies and black crusts of earth, broken bones and claws like rusted nails. They are two, then ten, then twenty.

The Grey Clan fires at them. Arcane bullets tear into zombie flesh. Speckles of dark blood and molded skin fly onto the shore.

He smells gunpowder and blood. The h unter’s denizens growl as they’ re torn apart.

The beast moves. It takes to the sky, become s the sky. It blocks out the night.

The spear comes down, but he ’s waiting. He ’ s played this battle out again and again in his mind. His blade has joined with him. They share a consciousness. It responds to his thoughts, and is a part of his body. He and it are fused as one.

He moves at the last second. The spear strikes wood, and the log cracks. A sound like splitting bones rings out. He loses his footing, but only for a moment. The shadow beast looms o ver h im, blocks out everything. It’ s a waterfall of soot darkness.

The blade flies, and he follows. He breathes grave fumes and feels liquid rot. Energy from the sword extends around him like a bubble. He floats in side the hunter’s form like he’ s lost in a black sea.

He dives forward, swallows grit and oil darkness. The blade cuts through the shadow heart. A scream like a crashing train fills his ears.

He falls. Hard ground rushes up at him, and the wind is knocked from his lungs as he c rashes to the shore. Pain shoots up his limbs.

The air is silent but for the shouts of the Grey Clan, their crie s of victory. He catch es his breath. His ribs ache and his legs are sore, like he’s been pelted with stones.

He stares at the blade in his hand. He wonders which of them is truly in control.

THIRTEEN

Days

A few days passed while Danica sat in prison. It felt like a few years.

Cell Block D12 was large, grimy and dank. Gritty moisture dripped from the steel ceiling, and the heat was strangling. Drifts of metal debris floated through the air like laggard metal insects. F lickering thaumaturgic lamps cast dim illumination, but the corners and recesses of the chamber were drowned in shadow.

There was no segregation of the prisoners — Cell Block D 12, like every cell block in Black Scar, was just a big open room. There were no beds, just blankets, and most of those blankets were soiled and rancid. Food was provided at irregular intervals through grooved metal pipes that churned out sloppy gruel into large vats, and water was supplied through large faucets. There were a half-dozen of each food and water stations, and they were often claimed by the strongest inmates.

There were roughly 50 inmates per cell block. Black Scar prison housed nearly 3,000 prisoners, and it brought in more every day, because they were always running out.

Life for women in Black Scar was particularly brutal. But Black and Cole could both handle themselves, and they hoped that if they stuck together they’d be able to fend off any would-be rapists. T hey slept in shifts, and they also had their new “friend” Gath to watch their backs, but Black was n’t about to rely on him very much at all.

The air tasted like sweat and urine. Every now and again the distant doors to the cell block slid open a nd prisoners were either deposited or extra cted, but for the most part the metal chamber remained sealed, and the grimy population was left to fend for itself.

The inmates wore sodden clothes and crumbling shoes, and their skin was covere d in grey and green grime. Cell Block D12 was the size of a small barn. F ights frequently broke out, and they often ended with someone dead. Some of the inmates amused themselves and staged contests by throwing their shoes, steel rivets they ripped from the walls, or even severed fingers or toes. Whoever was most accurate or made the most distance won, which didn’t mean much except that no one was bored for a few minutes while the game was being played. Even then, most of the games ended in brawls.

They hung at the edge of barbarism. It never t oo k long for some prisoners to lose their minds and devolve into utter madness, if they weren’t mad already upon arriving at the prison. Most of the inmates in Cell Block D12 were human, but there were a few prisoners of other races: Vuul, Gorgoloth, Gol, and even a Doj, who held unquestioned dominion over a good portion of the water supply.

Black sat with her back ag ainst the wall. Sweat ran down her face, and her body was so covered in filth she felt sure she’d never get clean. Her bones ached, and her vision faded in and out. She hadn’t slept much since they’d arrived.

She and Cole occupied a far corner of the room opposite the doors. Dank water dripped down from the ceiling and formed a perimeter around their refuge of dry steel and dar k rubbish. The flickering green lamps didn’t penetrate the gloom in the ir corner, which allowed them to stay hidden in darkness.

Cole was asleep and wrapped in one of the few blankets they’d been able to get their hands on. The two of them had managed to avoid drawing too much attention. Part of the reason was because Cole had told the wiry Gath that both she and Black would sleep with him if he kept them well-stocked with food and water and gave them time to recover their strength. Somehow he’d fallen for it.

Thank God men are really stupid, Danica thought.

Gath was actually fairly efficient at providing sustenance for them, and he was good at keeping their existence a secret. He seemed connected, capable of getting goods and information from others, which was of vital importance to surviving in Black Scar.

All things considered, we’re doing okay. I figured we’d have been raped ten times over and dead by now. Which I’m sure would just thrill the shit out of Rake.

Rake. She couldn’t believe he’d whored out t he Revenger’s services to Koth, of all places. Selling prisoners to the Ebon Cities had been part of the plan from the very start, but for Rake to actively throw his lot in with the renegade necropolis of Koth meant he’d grown dangerously ambitious, and had bigger plans than Danica had ever given him credit for.

The alliance between Koth and T he Revengers didn’t bode well for anyone. They wouldn’t have enough power to directly challenge either the Southern Claw or the Ebon Cities, but they would still be a force to be reckoned with. And if they decided to join forces with a third party — like, say, the city-state of Fane, which she and the others had recently learned sought independence from the Southern Claw — the y could form a new superpower, a new faction in a world already torn a part by conflict.

We’d be screwed. That’s all there is to it. As it is, humans are barely holding their own. A third side in the war would tear everything apart.

And what did they want with Cross? Her guts twisted with worry every time she thought about him. Rake had clearly wanted Eric from the beginning — searching for him was what they ’d really been doing in Blacksand all along. Whatever they had planned for him probably had something to do with Soulrazor/Avenger, which was just more bad news.

Were they going to use him? Extract something from his mind? Turn him into a vampire?

God damn it. W e have to get out of here.

“Dani,” Cole said from out of the darkness behind her. Black hadn’t heard her wake. “Are you okay?”

They hadn’t spoken much, and m ost of the words they’d exchanged had been brief and necessary to their survival. None of what they’d said to each other had anything to do with them.

“No,” she said. “I’m not okay.”

A fight broke out between a dark-haired couple and a pair of Vuul savages. T he Vuul’s near-translucent skin pulsed with excited purple and black blood as they clawed for the female. The conflict didn’t last long. Black wanted to do something, but she’d just get herself and Cole killed in the process. Besides, it would be over soon enough.

“Dani…” Cole said.

“No. We’ll just get killed, too.” She looked away. A crowd soon surrounded the scene. The Vuul were amped up with adrenaline and violence. The woman would be dead before she suffered much. If Danica had access to her spirit, things would have been different, but he was still locked away. Sealed off, either by Narcosm their jailors slipped into the water or by some effect of the Fade, Raven.

“This is bullshit,” Cole said. Her dark hair was much shorter than the last time Danica had seen her. Black’s hair, conversely, was just past her shoulde rs, the longest she’d let it grow in a very long time. “It’s always like this, isn’t it?” Cole asked.

“What do you mean?” Danica asked. “Because you’re not talking about the living conditions here in Black Scar, are you? ”

“No,” Cole said. “I’m not.” S he sat up. They were side-byside in the darkness. The sound of water coming into the pipes drowned out the sound of murder taking place just a few yards away. “I’m talking about you.”

Danica looked at Cole. She still loved her. Lara had a brusque way about her, but something about her had always been so exotic, so intoxicating to Danica. She was a natural beauty, with her olive-colored skin and dark hair, her slight European accent and her glittering green eyes. And they’d had fun together. They drank and played and laughed, had sex deep in to the night and on in to the morning, stayed out on the town wreaking havoc and makin g other people smile, mov ed and dr a nk and danc ed and kiss ed and liv ed more than Danica had ever liv ed before. S he’d n ever felt happier anywhere else in her life, or with anyone else. Lara had shown her how to live again, and she hadn’t even really tried — just their being together had been enough.

At least for me.

“Why did you leave me?” she asked Cole.

Lara was taken aback for a moment. She looked down at the ground. Her tank top was soiled with grime and water, and her tattooed arms were covered in sweat.

“I don’t know, Danica,” she said with a sad smile. “I just…things were different. You always want ed to go further. You wanted t o keep partying, to liv e fast…”

“And you didn’t?” Black asked.

“No, Danica,” Lara said. She took a breath. “ I don’t know what I wanted… or what I want.” She looked at Danica, and her eyes welled with tears. “I don’t love you anymore. I’m sorry.”

Danica felt tears run down her face.

You bitch, she wanted to say. After all I’ve done for you. I betrayed T he Revengers and got a ranger killed. I gave up my best friend to keep you safe, and I m ay have screwed over the entire human race in the process.

She tried to stop her tears, but she couldn’t. They flowed fast down her cheeks.

That’s on you, she told herself. Cole didn’t do that. You did. And now you have to fix it.

Cole held her in her arms. Danica hadn’t even realized she’d come close until she felt Lara’s hair on her face, so familiar, so soft. She wanted to hate Lara for not loving her anymore, wanted to scream and shout at her, but she knew she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

“Are you, uh…you girls okay?”

Gath was an Islander. He had dark skin and hair, a thin goatee, and large and expressive eyes. His cloak was soiled brown and black with prison filth, and he had a n almost rat-like quality about him, with his darting eyes and an expression and stance that made it look like he was always ready to run for cover. His fingers were long and spindly and covered in old rings. He wore leather bracers and dog-tags, but he certainly didn’t come across as Southern Claw. Likely he’d scrounged them somewhere.

“We’re fine, Gath,” Danica said.

He gave them bowls of white-grey gruel from the feeding bins and a large clay bowl filled with water, which he s loshed around so they could hear that it was full.

“So…what are we doing?” he smiled.

“I’m going to puke if I don’t drink some thing in the next te n seconds,” Danica said. “That’ll be sexy, won’t it?”

Gath sighed and handed her the bowl. Lara chuckle d beside her.

“Well, we need to do this thing soon,” Gath said. “ I’m horny as hell.”

“That’s terrific, Gath,” Lara said. “ Not now.”

Gath pursed his lips in frustration and fiddled with some pebbles on the ground.

“We may not have much time,” he said off-handedly.

Danica took a bite of the gruel. It tasted surprisingly good, like cheese and meat, even if it did slide down her throat like a wad of mucus.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I heard something…” Gath said.

“Heard… what?” Cole insisted.

“I’ll tell you…for a kiss,” Gath smiled.

Black set down the b owl, took a breath, and as quick as a snake hooked her fingers around Gath ’s head and rammed it against the floor. Blood spurted from his nose and lip. No one even noticed — the violence in the middle of the room had died down, but inmates still linger ed there, laughing and mocking each other. N o one seemed to care about one skinny man getting beat up in the dark corner.

“Dani…” Lara said, but Black ignored her.

“Talk, you little shit,” she hissed as she ground Gath ’s face against the steel. “What did you hear? ”

“Okay,” he breathed through a mouth ful of blood. Danica eased up enough for him to sit up and talk.

“God, you bitch,” he started, and Danica moved to grab him again. “Okay, okay…Jesus…”

“Talk,” she said. “Now.”

“They’re taking you away, all right?” he said.

“Which one of us?” Cole asked.

Gath glared at Danica.

“ You,” Gath grinned. “They’re sending you to t he Gauntlet. ”

Danica felt her heart sink.

Shit.

FOURTEEN

Alliances

He walks through a city of the dead.

Black corpses stand in rows to either side of the wide road that runs through the necropolis. Bloody r unes cover their skin, and the bone blades used to carve those markings lay at their feet.

The b uildings are vague and dark, just shadows and edges in the smoking fog. The height of the buildings reminds him of Kalakkaii, the place where he grew up.

He recognizes the bodies. They ’ re people he used to know. He has trouble putting names to faces, but he knows their statures, their shapes.

His body goes cold as he walks down the lane. I ce ash fall s on his shoulders. Frigid wind blows in from the blue horizon. The sky is a pulsing slate of frost. The gelid sun hangs like a stain.

Bones are piled high in the streets. S ome devastating event has lanced its way through his hometown and turned it to a smoking graveyard.

His b ones ache from walking for so long. Kalakkaii i s n ot this big, and yet he feels like he’ s walked for hours down the same lane, always passing the same rows of the dead. He ’ ll never reach the end of that road.

Kane woke up coughing. He lay on a crude bed. The walls were green steel bolted together with rivets. The clang of furnaces and industrial equipment shook bits of sediment loose from the ceiling.

He sat up. His back was twisted with pain, and sleepy muck covered his eyes. His was shirtless, and his tattooed arms were both hooked to IVs connected to two different movable mechanical carts loaded with vials, bags and whirring engines.

Kane could barely keep his eyes open. He’d never felt so tired. He coughed again. He knew he should have been dead.

“Good morning,” Jade said from the doorway.

She’d changed out of her traveling armor and now wore a loose gray and brown shirt that was far too bulky for her thin frame. Her cargo pants ended just below the knee, and she wore long sandals wrapped around her well-manicured feet. Kane supposed he’d never realized just how lovely she really was.

“Good morning,” he groaned. “So I guess I’m not a vampire?”

“It seems that way,” she smiled. “But only barely.”

“Swell.”

Burke stepped into the doorway behind her. Kane stiffened.

Stanislas Burke was a Warden of Black Scar, one of the only Wardens, besides Danica, who Kane had ever been forced to interact with on a fairly regular basis during his time in prison. Burke had been the head of the hellish cell block where Kane and Ekko were held. A surprisingly personable individual, Burke nevertheless had a cruel streak a mile long. He also had a fresh scar run n ing down one side of his face that hadn’t been there when Kane had last seen him in side the prison.

“Good to see you’re alive, Kane,” Burke said in his thick British accent.

“I’d say it’s good to see you, too, Mr. Firth, but I’d be lying. ” Kane cough ed again. “Pretty scar you’ve g ot there. Did o ne of your pets get out?”

Burke smiled grimly.

“I’m afraid ‘my pets’ are no longer mine,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Get dressed, Kane. We have a lot to discuss.”

“Yeah, like why I shouldn’t stand up and beat the shit out of you,” Kane growled.

“Kane…t hat’s not going to do anyone any good,” Jade said quietly.

“Listen to your lady friend,” Burke smiled. “What’s done is done. Any differences you and I have will need to wait until after we resolve our mutual problem.”

Burke turned to leave. Jade lingered a moment, and then follow ed. Kane saw his clothes on a small stand next to the door.

“Wait!” he called out. His throat was raw and sore. “What ‘mutual problem’?”

Burke turned and looked at him. “We need to determine how we’re going to save your friends: Eric Cross, and my old associate Danica Black.”

They were still in the Grey Clan complex. Kane was thoroughly disappointed, but not at all surprised.

They walked through g reen steel halls and over metal catwalks. Burke led them past vats of industrial grease that stood beneath curved domes made of iron and pitted bronze. G outs of steam filled the air, and the grind of massive pistons and gears drowned out all other sound. The refinery never seemed to stop. S caly humanoid workers moved with grim determination, never paus ing to rest or socialize.

Kane and Jade followed Burke through a complicated network of mesh walkways. The metal ceiling pulsated with orange and green lights as strange fluids washed back and forth through highways of translucent tubing. The air smelled like burning iron.

“What do they do here?” Kane asked. He felt fluid in his lungs. They were walking in the strange green goop again, and he hadn’t even realized it. “Wait… Burke, what the hell are you doing here?”

Burke pointed to a door that led into a small cub e — shaped building made of grey concrete. A number of electrical cables and dangerous-looking antenna on top of the building flashed with pale electricity.

They walked through the door, and i t closed behind them. T he sound of machinery receded to a background haze, and the gooey murk they’d been breathing melted away to clean air.

I will never get used to that shit.

The room was large, sparse and riddled with cracks. Drifts of dust and piles of tools filled the corners, and a long pair of benches sat at opposing angles near the center of the room.

Ronan, Sol, Maur, a pair of Grey Clan wearing gas masks and two Revengers waited in the room. Most everyone sat facing a gigantic and primitive — looking monitor attached to metal beams running up to the ceiling. L oose wires and cables ran from the bottom of the screen to a small but noisy generator that leaked smoke.

The screen displayed a series of black and white maps, sepia quality images that flipped, shifted and realigned. The screen was controlled by a large control stick attached to the monitor via another cable. O ne of t he Revengers held the controls, the same tall woman with short brown hair who’d earlier drawn the vampiric para sites from Kane’s body. Her partner was an imposing black man with tattoos on his face and thick musc les. B oth of them wore the tell-tale dark leather armor of Black Scar.

The two reptilians were unquestionably the same ones Kane had met before: the brutish giant and the slimmer, human-like creature who’d nearly killed Jade with its magic. Despite the fact that Kane had injured the big one’s knee — it wore a splint around its leg — and that the other one had threatened to wipe out Jade’s mind, everyone seemed at ease. They s tud ied the schematics on the screen while the woman used the control box to search for something.

“What the hell?” Kane said. “Did everyone go nuts?”

“ Hi, Mike,” Ronan said. “Sleep well?”

“Maur is glad you’re okay,” Maur said.

“Yeah, thrilled to be here, been a long time…what the crap is going on?!” He looked at the female Revenger. “You’re name is Turner, right?”

“Charmed,” she said.

“And you’re Marcus,” he said to the other.

“Man, shut up,” Marcus replied.

Kane looked at Ronan, who just laughed and shrugged.

“ I knew these two from when I was at Black Scar. Which means I’m in hell.”

“Not yet,” Ronan said.

“Kane,” Jade said. “Please. Sit down. ”

Burke walked in front of the screens with his hands clasped behind his back. Kane had forgotten how tall the man wa s. Burke looked more imposing than ever with his scar, and he moved with a certain authority Kane didn’t re membered him having in Black Scar. The Revenger had never gi ve n off the impression that he enjoyed his job, but Kane remembered how good at it he was.

And I’ll never forget that, you bastard.

“Roughly one week ago,” Burke said without preamble, as if everyone in th e room was perfectly used to him addressing them like they were his soldiers, “ an Ebon Cities spy attempted to murder me and supplant a shape-shifter in my place at Black Scar. Half of that plan succeeded.”

“Whoa,” Kane said. “Huh?”

“Just listen,” Ronan said. Kane sat down next to him.

“Why are you so ok with all of this?” Kane asked him.

“Look, I don’t trust the guy,” Ronan said. “But he knows where Danica and Cross are.”

“Danica is back in Blacksand,” Kane said.

“No, she’s not,” Burke said. “The Revengers took her so they could get their hands on your friend Eric. They want something he has.”

“And what might that be?” Ronan asked.

“We don’t know,” the woman named Turner said. “At first we thought it was so they could gain possession of the arcane blade he ’d recovered, but…”

“Wait, hold on,” Kane said, and he stood back up. “How do you even know about that?”

“ Come now, Michael,” Burke said. “We know a lot more than you think. In any case, that isn’t what they want.”

“Then what is?” Maur asked as he stood up. His face-wrappings were off, so his scowl was unhidden. “ Maur has many questions. W hat is the connection between Black and Cross’s abduction and the vision that Maur and his allies had in the desert? Why have the Grey Clan allied with you?”

“And, best of all, why should we believe you, you son of a bitch?” Kane said to Burke.

Burke kept his eyes on Kane. Both of his Revengers looked at him uneasily, as did the Grey Clan. Burke smiled.

“Show them,” he told Turner.

Turner frowned as she manipulated the control stick. T he air stiffen ed, and her eyes turned ice blue. Power dripped from her hand.

The monitor shimmered and pulsed. It became a mirror, a molten glass sheet that throbbed with the tune of a dying heartbeat. Vaporous images like smoke shadows drifted into the air and arranged themselves into three-dimensional holograms. The images folded over one another, twisted and came together in a haze of white shadows. S ilhouettes fused into living beings. It wasn’t like watching them on a screen but like standing next to them, walking among them.

He’s in Black Scar.

He sees the vaulted passages and chain walkways and b lood-stained halls. He hears the roar of dread furnaces. Blasts of flame drown out the cries of prisoners.

The entrances to the mines stand in the distance, past the squat cell blocks and the walking iron towers lined with motorguns and grinding saws. Prisoners walk with their heads low. T heir backs strain beneath the burden of rocks and stones hauled from the red diamond mines.

Drifts of black dust fall in waves. Steam blast s into the subterranean sky and turns the walls ghastly and stark. Phosphorescent crystals glow like ghosts.

Burke is there, the false Burke. He has no scar, and he stands tall and proud. T hree Revengers accompany him as he surveys the scene.

T he false Burke looks at his cohorts. N o words are exchanged, and yet they communicate.

The four vampires stand on a platform over the pri son city. They watch the mines and the prisoners, but their thoughts are elsewhere. They think about Cross, and Danica.

The past unfolds in a flash of images and sound. Visceral emotions explode like wounds. The vampire Burke, whose real name is Krage, reflects for a moment, and the previous weeks unfurl. They expand and fill the skin of moments.

Burke, the real Burke, is telling the truth.

Krage ’s mind reveals months of planning. He sees bone vehicles and flesh juggernauts poised to make a strike, a massive force assembled in the wasteland s. They ’ re not there to attack the Southern Claw, or any human city, but something else, a remote and forgotten outpost that’ s important to their plans.

The memories play on. Kane is aware of his body, tense and on edge. It pains him to sit there. His consciousness ache s from viewing this.

He sees murder. Bodies flayed open and hollowed out. Vampire tanks and Razorwing fliers. B one giant s and two-dimensional skin golems. War wights in steaming armor. Vampire shock troops with curled blood blades and poison needle rifles.

Whatever it is they seek, Cross is the key to finding it. And the vampire’s enemies in the renegade necropolis of Koth want it, too. The undead nations will destroy each other trying to get it, and they ’ ll crush anyone who gets in their way.

It won’t be long.

Kane fell back from his vision. His stomach churned, and he almost vomited. Ronan, Maur, Jade and Sol had similar reactions. They all looked like they’d just been dropped off a cliff and then caught at the last possible moment.

Kane fell to his knees. H is face touched the ground, and t he concrete was cool against his burning skin. His body shook all over. After a moment, he understood why.

Dread whispers clawed through the air. They were just like the voices they’d heard in the desert before the Ebon Cities tanks had ambushed them. His head shook with pain. Blood dripped out of his eyes like tears and dribbled on the ground around his fingers.

Tortured cries, droning whine s, a high-pitched screech like a thousand wailing birds.

He saw Burke mouth something, saw Turner and Marcus struggle with the control stick. Everything was slow.

He saw Ekko’s face. He knew he was about to die.

Somehow, he stood up. He stumbled forward, seized the control s from Turner, and yanked the cable out of the screen. Sparks exploded across the floor. T he monitor cracked with a sound like a pressure cooker.

T he screech faded, and t he screams melted away. Kane’s arms still sh oo k, but he was a live.

Everyone gasped. Ronan help ed Jade to her feet. Maur and Sol were slow to stand up. Turner and Marcus looked dazed, but they weren’t as bad off as the others. Burke was shaken, but still standing.

Kane handed the ruined controls to Turner, stepped around her, and punched Burke square in the face.

“Dumbass,” he said.

Marcus pulled a gun and aimed it at the back of Kane’s head, but then he froze. Ronan had a kodachi to Marcus’s throat.

“You sure about that, tough guy?” Ronan asked in a quiet voice.

“Enough!” Burke roared. Blood ran down his nose and mouth. “Enough… God damn it, that shouldn’t have happened. The surveillance malfunctioned. Turner?”

“It worked fine the last time we used it…”

“What?” Jade demanded. “Used what?”

“Experimental technology, ” Turner explained. “ We call it a necroscope. It allows us to peer into the v ampire collective consciousness and transform their harmful thought stream into visuals and sounds that humans can comprehend.”

“And when it breaks, it makes our brains pop, ” Kane said angrily. “That’s awesome. Nice work.”

“I did n’t have a choice,” Burke said. “You saw what they’re up to. Four vampires have infiltrated Black Scar. They’ve taken my place, and the place of three of my closest Wardens.”

Ronan let Marcus go. The two men sized each other up, but Turner and Jade stepped in to settle things down.

Kane returned to his seat.

“So I get the fact that your people and Koth have teamed up and are looking for something, and Cross is the key to finding it,” Kane said. “ Great. And whatever it is, the Ebon Cities wants it, too. Swell. That just makes my butt pucker. The question is…what the hell is it? And what does it have to do with the beautiful people over here?”

The Grey Clan members had been largely unaffected by the malfunctioning glimpse into the vampire mind hive. They sat by, passive.

This concerns us greatly, one of them s aid. They spoke into Kane’s mind with his own voice, as usual.

I hate it when you guys do that.

Regardless… the voice continued. One of the entry points to the Whisperlands lies in our territory. That is wh y the Ebon Cities came into our lands.

“Wait…the Whisperlands?” Kane asked.

“Did you hit your head or something?” Ronan asked him. Kane realized that no one aside from he and the Grey Clan c ould hear the entire conversation.

“That’s what Greyface over there said…”

Raal, the voice corrected.

“Ok…sorry…wait, which one are you?”

The shorter, more human Grey Clan stood up.

My companion is Mourne.

“Figures.”

“Mike… who the hell are you talking to?” Ronan asked him.

“Them.”

Ronan and Maur looked at the two Grey Clan, who menacingly looked back.

“Maur thinks Kane is crazy,” Maur said.

“You’re probably right, B ro,” Kane said. “So there’s an entrance to the Whisperlands in your territory…I’m guessing it’s near tho se temple ruins where the Ebon C ities bushwhacked us, right? W ait…not to sound like a moron, but what the hell are the Whisperlands?”

“ One thing at a time,” Burke said. He sounded genuinely exasperated. “Let us explain.”

Kane shrugged. Jade, Ronan, Sol and Maur all sat down.

“The Whisperlands,” Turner explained, “is a transitional realm. The Black reconstructed reality, but not all of the changes — the shifting of creatures or locales, the re — fusi ng of spatial and temporal zones — was complete d. Some of it’ s still going on. Some of it outright failed. Some things that didn’t complete the transition between worlds still exist in exile in the Whisperlands.

“ The realm is finite, but it’s lar ger than one might expect. It’ s also just a shade of the worlds that have passed through it. Over time, any living creatures, structures, and even natural landscape s lo o se most of their original qualities a nd dissolve into darkness-infused version s of themselves. The land is literally drowning in shadow. It saturate s everything.”

“This is exciting,” Sol said. “When does this fairy tale start to make sense?”

“Open your mouth again, and I ’ll shut it for you,” Marcus said.

“Pretty boy, you couldn’t shut a toilet seat cover…”

“Dude, shut up!” Kane yelled. “I’m listening here!”

“ There’s been a recent development. ” Turner kept talking as if nobody had spoke n. Kane decided he liked her, even if he only understood about half of what she was saying. “ A group of m ages ha s discovered the means to enter the Whisperlands.”

“What?” Jade asked. “How?”

“It helps to not be a mage,” Burke interjected. “Though a warlock or witch can better acclimate to the dark environ, they have a more difficult time pulling away if they ever intend to leave.”

“That’s why you didn’t send Jade with us,” Kane said. “Why not Maur?”

“Gol are arcane creatures,” Maur said. “ They do not have spirits, but their bodies are powered by magic.”

“Exactly,” Burke nodded.

“And why did you send us there in the first place?” Ronan asked angrily. “We nearly died destroying that Ebon Cities murder squad and their little hidey hole.”

“There are ways to navigate the Whisperlands, if the right preparations are made,” Turner said matter-of-factly. “Because it’ s a liminal zone with its own spatial rules, it ’ s conceivable that one can travel great distances in our world without having to travel great distances there. More important ly, the Whisperlands can be used to reach areas that are totally inaccessible on our side.”

“A shortcut,” Jade said.

“Like the portal we used to save Cross,” Ronan said. “Only not. Because travel through that gate was instantaneous.”

“Right,” Turner said. “ Using the Whisperlands as a shortcut is less direct, but just as effective, provided you can survive the Whisperlands themselves.”

“Ok, ok, hold on,” Kane said. His brain ached. For some reason he was incredibly thirsty, and his gums hurt like he’d stabbed them with something. “A few things. One, what the hell is that temple thing we saw in the desert? Two, why did you have us destroy that outpost? Three, what does this have to do with Cross? Four, how are we going to get him and Dani out of Black Scar?”

The temple you saw was a remnant of our home world, Raal said into Kane’s mind. He looked around and saw surprise d looks on everyone else’s faces, which meant for once the Grey Cla n communicat ed with all of them, not just him. Our kings were barbarous beasts who worshipped creatures of the great deep. They sacrificed our people by the score. For many of us, the event that you call The Black was a blessing. It saved us. The temple of Mek’ta a r had been an unholy and terrible place. Its hold over us is gone, but so much magic o nce saturated its walls that it s power has not entirely died.

“ The temple is a zone of t emporal instability,” Turner explained. “That’s how we managed to identify it as a breach into the Whisperlands.”

“ When we learned of this Temple of Mek’taar, we contacted the Grey Clan,” Burke said. “ In return for providing them with good weapons to keep themselves safe from both sides of the war, they agreed to help us navigate into the realm.”

“And I take it the Ebon Cities beat you to it?”

“That outpost you destroyed was a reconnaissance tower,” Turner said. “They actually plan to encroach at another point, because only a small number of creatures can pass through the Mek’taar portal at a time. Still, t hey were able to squeeze a recon patrol through, and they set up a watch post to scope out the area.”

“Why did you send us in?” Kane asked Burke angrily. “You ass. ”

“Because it needed to be done,” Burke said. “I wasn’t going to ask the Grey Clan to risk themselves, and I certainly wasn’t going to send in Turner or Marcus.”

“So you dumped us in there?” Ronan growled.

“Yes,” Burke said flatly. “And you survived. And while I can understand how that might not make you feel all that happy with me, frankly I don’t care. Because i f you want to save your friends you’ll need my help.”

Ronan bit his lip, but quieted. Kane shook his head.

“So what do they want?” Jade asked. “Why are both Koth and the Ebon Cities trying so hard to get in there? And why are T he Revengers interested?”

“Honestly…I don’t know,” Burke said. “That was between Rake and the Grand Vizier of Koth. I do know, however, that the plan involves using Cross.”

“Why do they need Cross?” Ronan asked.

“Because you may have his body, but you don’t have his mind,” Turner explained. “He’s trapped in the Whisperlands. And both Koth and the Ebon Cities seem to think he knows exactly how to find what they’re looking for.”

“Why haven’t you made contact with your people?” Ronan asked Burke.

“We tried,” Turner answered. “But they’re rapidly approaching the final stages of their plans, so Black Scar is in full lockdown. No communication in or out. We literally have no way to reach them.”

“The best we can do now,” Burke said, “is to get to the portal to the Whisperlands before they do, expose the Ebon Cities spies, and stop them. If you manage to rescue Cross and Danica in the process…so be it. I’ll help you so far in that I’ll look the other way. We’ll consider it payment for services rendered.” He smiled. “Any questions?”

“On a scale of one to ten, how screwed do you we think we all are?” Kane asked him.

“You don’t want to know…”

They laid their rescue plans. Burke and his aides knew where T he Revengers and the Kothian forces planned to breach the Whisperlands: the ruins of Voth Ra’morg, once a city-state that had been occupied by survivors and desert hunters but that had later been sacked by Vuul raiders and left abandoned. Now there was little left except a hollow shell, but there was also a means to enter the Whisperlands hidden somewhere beneath an old industrial tower right in the middle of the city. Chances were better than not that the Ebon Cities would try to use the same access point.

Crap, Kane thought. T his is too much.

After over an hour of planning, Kane had to step away. His muscles ached from standing hunched over maps and diagrams of the area, and he was completely on edge. It didn’t matter that they had a temporary truce: he didn’t trust Burke and his crew any more than he could throw them, and he still had no reason to believe much of anything that Jade or Sol said, either.

He walked to the edge of the room and looked out through a sealed and dingy window. The gelatinous air the Grey Clan breathe d back o n their home world was thick outside. D ebris drift ed through the murk. Reptilians moved s heets of metal and tossed them into piles or placed them in the backs of heavy carts.

“Did Burke tell you what they do here?” Ronan asked. The swordsman had snuck up on him. He looked as exhausted as Kane felt.

“Yeah. They’re making ships and weapons.”

“Makes sense,” Ronan nodded. “The Ebon Cities have been pushing deeper into their territory. We saw some of what they’d done to these people on that ship full of wounded.”

“Ronan…I have a really bad feeling about this,” Kane said quietly. The others were still back in the chamber going over maps and strategy. They had very little to work with, and it was important to get every detail right. He worried about Maur being in there alone with the others, but decided he was just being paranoid. “I don’t trust them. Any of them.”

“ Good. That means you’re not stupid,” Ronan said with a grim smile. With the number of scars he bore, Ronan almost looked like a movie monster. He’d acquired th e worst of them saving Cross from his own spirit. “We can’t get anywhere without Burke’s help. You want to save Dani, right?”

“I want to save her, and Cross…”

“But mostly Dani. Right?” Ronan quietly waited for an answer.

Kane laughed. He always laughed when he was nervous. He gripped the steel windowsill tight. He wanted to break something.

“Ronan…I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore. ” He took a steadying breath. He was shaking. “ I’m not sure if I ever did.”

Ronan was quiet for a moment.

“Let’s just do what we have to do.”

“And what if Burke tries to screw us over? Or Jade?”

Ronan looked back into the room.

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.” He turned and walked back towards the meeting chamber. “Heads up, ” he said quietly as he went.

Kane turned and saw Jade approach him with a smile on her face. He didn’t want to trust her. Her disarming personality was just a way of getting him to lower his guard, and he knew it. He hated that he found himself liking her, wanting to talk to her. But he couldn’t take his eyes off her: she was radiant, even in grungy and weather-worn fatigues, even with her long dark hair disheveled and wild — looking, even though he knew her interest in him only extended so far as making sure that Klos Vago got what he wanted.

Get your head together.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Kane bit back a scathing reply.

“Yeah. Why?”

“You’ve been acting a little strange since you came back. And you’re acting strange now.”

“I wonder why? ” Kane said coldly. “Could it be because a guy who was personally responsible for most of my pain and suffering in Black Scar is standing thirty feet away and calling the shots? Could it be because my two best friends are in danger, and all I can do is hope that one of my so-called allies isn’t going to screw me over at the first convenient moment? Or could it be that I’m just sick and tired of being used and pushed around?!”

He turned away. Rage swelled in his veins. Jade didn’t say anything.

“Why are you still here?” he asked. “What could your boss possibly have to gain by you staying involved in all of this?”

“Maybe I’m not here for my boss anymore,” she said.

“And Sol?”

“He doesn’t care. He just wants to fight.”

Kane laughed.

“I want to trust you,” he said. “You know that, right? But I can’t.” He clenched his fists. “Not with so much at stake.”

“ I’m s orry,” Jade said after a moment. Her voice wasn’t angry or apologetic; it wasn't sad or dismissive. Just a statement of fact.

Kane turned, but she’d already walked away. He looked back out the window and thought about Ekko.

FIFTEEN

Gauntlet

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.

SIXTEEN

Rift

They enter a wasteland of broken stone.

The forest fades behind them in to a shroud of black ice mist. Steep hills made of shattered shale and loose plates of granite lead to bitter peaks that resemble teeth. The sky is flat and still, and the air is bitterly cold.

He walks with the small army of Grey Clan. The black wind batters them mercilessly. T heir clothing is weighted down with shadows.

The land slopes up. T he climb through the Burned Hills is arduous. H is muscles ache. H e uses whatever cracks and crevices he can find to haul himself up the rock face.

The stones grow tall er. Mov ing through them is like navigating a path of knives. The path is riddled with pits and flaws left by acid shower s.

The land is sharp. Blood sluices down his hand as he crawls through the razor peaks.

The Burned Hills are vast, and they are covered with caustic stains and burns.

The dark mountains fade into the endless dusk. There’ s nothing to the north or south, but to the west, many miles away, stands a mountain.

I know that mountain. I’ve seen it before.

The Black Citadel wait s on that distant peak. It holds the entrance to the Carrion Rift, and the way home.

The trek across the Burned Hills is riddled with hardship.

The mist on the ground conceal s dark crevices, wounds in the stone that lead to underground sea s of void darkness.

Several Grey Clan d ie. They don’t see the cracks until it’s too late, and they scream and fall and are gone before anyone knows what happened.

The sky bleeds liquid. It’s been so long since he’s seen rain he almost forgets what it’s like, but he know s it wasn’ t like this. The substance is b lack and viscous, like tar and honey. It paints them dark, makes their feet stick to the ground. Its touch is ice cold and stings the flesh.

They move on.

Vast worms slither across the landscape. Like the other creatures of the Whisperlands they are more shadow than real, smelted charcoal forms that writhe and twist across the Hills. The worms are halfhumanoid: slimy torsos with gangly arms and sharp talons and rows of razor spines atop massive inchworm bodies.

The travelers try to avoid these horrors, but can’t. More Grey Clan fall in an onslaught of blade s and poison-tipped tails, chewed to bloody bits or thrown against the rocks and reduced to blood stains on the stones.

He kills one of the beasts on his own, and with Kyver’s aid he kills another. Shadow skin reinforced with chitnous bone plate makes the beasts difficult to destroy.

After a time, bone-tired and covered in blue-black blood and worm remains, he and the survivors finally reach the far side of the Burned Hills.

There are only ten of them left now, where before there were over twenty.

The y stand at the edge of a poison glade.

Pools of briny water release bursts of vile yellow slime. Viscous pools churn with slithering grease. S tones shaped like coffins stand on the other side of the pools, near a small forest of dark trees at the base of the mountain.

They carefully navigate through the area. S mall animal-like creatures, purple and black lizards and razorback toads, race away as they approach.

The smooth stones are slabs of frozen crystal fused around humanoid remains. The creatures frozen within have claws and sha rp fangs, and he realizes they’ re vampires, trapped in the dark ice.

They pass through a graveyard of frost- en tombed dead. The sick pools bubble and pop as they walk through the labyrinth of ice sarcophagi.

A storm churns over the mountain. The peak is preposterously tall and looms over their heads. Dull bursts of thunder echo out of the sky. Pale explosions detonate within the cobalt clouds.

They’ v e nearly reached the forest when the stones fall apart.

Icy rock melt s like candles. Thick chunks of frozen crystal fly through the air. The cloying cold turns to a sweltering heat. Massive talons tear through the ice. Dripping anemic bodies pull themselves free. Slathering fangs open wide and issue cold howls.

He draws his blade. There are a dozen vampires, and they descend on the group from all directions. Flesh tears and blood flies. His arms ache as he does battle. Gore covers his face.

They are beset by waves of un dead. K ni f e — like claws pierce reptilian flesh. Hammers smash vampire skulls into pulp. C laws rend open torsos and tear off faces.

Kyver motions. He and Vala run for a narrow corridor lead ing into the mountain, located just past the small forest.

Cross follows. A vampire flies at him with such speed he can’t react before it throws him to the ground. The back of his head strikes rock. Everything bleeds to a blur. He feels the body come down on top of him.

Talons scrape across his knuckles. H e hisses as blood pours onto his face. He pushes back with all of his strength.

The vampire glares down at him. Cross sees himself r eflected back in its glassy eyes.

He kicks and rolls away from the naked brute. It lashes out and rakes him across the back. H e falls screaming. Razors burn across his skin.

Without thinking he rises to his feet, turns and buries his blade in the vampire’s face. Cold blood splashes on his arms. He wrenches Soulrazor/Avenger free from the gnarled bone.

The reptilians are dying all around him. They fight v aliantly. Spears skewer undead and curved sickle blades cut through the dark-haired fiends, but the vampires are too strong, and more of them appear out of other ice tombs, primitive undead interred in frozen prisons to act as sentries for the Shadow Lords.

V ampire s fall beneath wedge blades. Reptilian throats are torn out. Vampires dart in and out like wolves, stab their foes with eight-inch claws, pull away, stab again, a dance of blades and blood.

Something grabs him from behind, and he nearly turns and stabs Vala. She scowls, and pushes him forward. Kyver is a hundred yards away, just inside the dark doorway into the mountain. The corridor i s next to the copse of dark trees, a glade at the edge of an ice-water pool.

It looks familiar.

Heavy leaves fall in his path. He sees women assembled near the tree line.

She’s there. She has to be there.

He goes to find her. His feet splash in ankle-deep freezing waters that hadn’t been there a moment before. Tears of joy run down his face.

No, Vala screams, but he doesn’t listen. He can’t.

He only t akes a few steps when tentacle s wrap around his leg. Their touch is so cold they burn. The water bubbles and pulls back, no longer icy and cold but hot and turgid and filled with blood. Foamy eyes take shape in the murk.

The dark tentacles tighten around his limbs and lift him into the air. A great maw like an open wound rises from the water beneath his feet. It pulls open like a tear. T housands of tiny teeth glisten with poison and filth.

He hacks through the tentacles and falls into the water. He twists and kicks and swallows the sick fluid, emerges and gasps for air. A nother tentacle wrap s around his throat.

Vala charges in and hacks off the leathery appendage with an axe. Kyver grabs Cross’s arm and pulls him free. They struggle out of the water and make their way back to shore. Cross’s body is wracked with hurt.

The rest of the Grey Clan is all dead. The vampires feast on the remains and howl into the sky. Several of the undead turn and look and run after the three survivors as they struggle to escape the tentacle beast, a bulbous sack of meat limbs and drooping mouths. Teeth grind and twist in the gaping holes all over its body.

T he forest is now nothing but dead branches. Whatever Cross thought he’d seen had just been an illusion. The same is true of the mountain: it’ s actually a stout metal citadel made of twisted edges and serrated walls, towers like spikes and portals like wounds. The Citadel is fused to a smelted hill of granite and stained quartz. Jagged crenellations reach towards the sky like hooked claws.

The Black Citadel.

The y run for the doorway in the base of the Citadel. Vampires snarl at their backs. The tentacle beast lashes out, grabs some of the undead and pulls them to the water, but that does n’t deter the relentless mob as they scrape their way through bloody remains and tear across the open ground. L ong tongues drip acid drool and claws scratch against the ground.

Vala shoves him forward through the doorway and time slowed. The dark walls came into focus. The light brightened as they moved away from the shadow grime of the Whisperlands.

Kyver shoved Cross ahead and looked back at the door. The crowd of bestial vampires was less than thirty yards away.

“Go!” Kyver shouted. “This is as far as we can take you!”

“What…?”

“I hope your Eidolos friend told you what to do!” he shouted, and he turned back. Vala slammed the door shut, and t hey barricaded it with a thick wooden beam and propped up iron bars that looked like they’d once been part of a portcullis.

Hazy torchlight suffused the Citadel. B its of sharp metal protruded from every wall, which was dirty and covered with rust and dried blood. Dangling iron braziers swung back and forth on metal chains that ran up to the height of the narrow ceiling. Thin curls of grey smoke filled the hall with the smell of burning coals. The corridor that led from the entrance ran for as far as Cross could see.

The door buckled behind them, and they heard the wild growls of rabid vampires. C laws raked the door from the other side and filled the air with the song of knives.

“Go!” Kyver yelled again. “We’ll hold them for as long as we can…find Azradayne! Stop her from getting the Obelisk!”

Cross nodded, and ran. He wanted to say ‘thank you’, but it seemed ridiculous given the circumstances. They’d used him just as much as he’d used them. They all had something to gain, and plenty to lose.

He just hoped he wouldn’t fail them all.

The door buckled again. The growls grew louder. He glimpsed back, but Kyver and Vala faded into the dark ness behind him as he ran.

He didn’t have much time.

The hall emptied into a sort of amphitheater. Wide and rounded steps led up to a platform covered with large cages and slabs of ice turned grey with age. Multiple halls led away from the chamber.

Each cage held the skeletal remains of a creature, and not all of them were human: he saw Gol and Vuul, Gorgoloth and thin and mouthless Lith.

W hite-grey illumination bled down through dirty skylights in the tall ceiling. Thin sheets of grease ice covered the steps and the upper platform, and old gnarled bones and rocks littered the floor.

Cro ss looked down the hallways and saw nothing but shadows. He heard the growl of monsters in the distance.

The air tasted like smoke. With Soulrazor/Avenger in hand he crossed the chamber. His boots felt like they were ready to come apart. He looked down at himself and saw that his rotting clothing was brown and black with dirt and shadow y filth. He looked like a beggar.

It felt strange not having his spirit with him. In the confusing atmosphere of the Whisperlands it was easy to forget he was so alone because everything there was always in flux, and the unintelligible spectral voice s in the black wind never ceased. Here, the isolation struck him, and he felt naked. He had no ability to scout ahead or determine what lay down the corridors short of investigating them himself. He couldn’t sense if anything approach ed. He was just Cross, barely armed and alone.

Which means I don’t stand a chance.

All he had was the arcane blade, which, though powerful, remained something of a mystery. He was still unsure of its full potential. It could heal him, and it seemed capable of shielding him from harm. It could destroy powerful creatures, and it grant ed him more sword fighting skill than he actually possessed.

Still, it decided when it did all of those things. He had little control over the blade, and little notion of what it wanted. He sensed intelligence in it, a dark and powerful presence, but he couldn’t communicate with the weapon. It frightened him.

Cross stopped to cat ch his breath. His body shook all over. Now that he was back out of the black winds all of his aches and fatigue caught up with him. His muscles were sore and his bones felt bruised.

He remembered his old life, back with the team. He felt like he’d just seem them, like no time ha d passed at all. M aybe he’d just wake up from th at nightmare and be back in the manor, ready to eat eggs made by Ash’s homunculi and try ing not to trip on Grissom’s damn ed giant cat. He’d listen to Ronan and Kane bicker, and he’d watch Maur tinker with explosives at the dining table. A nd he’d see Danica, and maybe, just maybe, he’d tell her how he felt.

But that’s not going to happen on its own. You have to get there first. You have to earn it.

He steeled himself. He’d get nowhere standing around.

Cross made his way across the room. Drifts of dust and floating ice crystals hung in the air.

A sense of dread overtook him, and h e stopped in his tracks. Something else moved in the chamber.

He looked up at the ceiling and saw a massive white spider, easily the size of an automobile. It nest ed on an iron web, and its behemoth stomach stretched like it was ready to burst. Hundreds of milk — pale eggs pulled taut against its cadaverous sack. Diamond black eyes shone dark ly in the grey-white light.

The spider watched him. Cross stared up at it, petrified. Dozens of his reflections looked back at him, one from each of the spider’s many dark eyes, and each image was slightly different from the others. H e was a different man in every one of them.

The spider sat as still as a stone. He knew for a fact he’d seen it before.

It can’t be. It’s just another hallucination.

He ran.

Cross found himself in a maze of halls. There was no sound. He moved through crypts and pas t archways made of antler and bone. Razorblade tapestries and iron mirrors lined the corridors. Some areas were bound in darkness so thick it nearly suffocated him.

Eventually he slowed his pace. His heart raced, and his skin was flushed with cold sweat. G rime covered him, a layer of muck so dense he’d never shake it off. He felt dirt beneath his fingernails and around his eyes.

He looked around.

Dark murals covered the walls of a wide and long chamber, a sort of meeting hall or assembly area. Blood-red carpets lined the floor, but like everything else in the Black Citadel they ’d been eaten by age, and were covered with moth holes and frayed edges. A long table made of silver and stone took up the middle of the chamber, but it, too, had been ruined by the passage of time.

Things didn’t seem to last there. That was the Whisperland’s curse: nothing went untarnished. Decades passed in that realm while only weeks went by in the solid world, but the darkness of the Whisperlands corroded everything, living and otherwise. It decayed material things, caked the brain, and soiled the soul.

He cautiously moved deeper into the chamber. Blood welled up beneath his feet when he stepped on the thick carpet. He stepped away. Even w ith everything else he’d been through, for some reason he didn’t want that crimson filth on his boots.

H e approached the murals. They all showed a spider — the spider, his spider, an enormous a nd pale monstrosity ready to burst with young. She devoured cities. Mounds of humans fell before the creature's onslaught. In the murals she wa s vast, a legged insectoid moon. Buildings and monuments collapse d beneath her. People, their faces pale with horror, fe ll into dark rips made in the earth by her monstrous razor limbs.

It can’t be, he thought.

He stepped away from the murals and moved on.

He went deeper into the Black Citadel. Nothing challenged him. He had the feeling nothing would.

Cross passed through cold chambers filled with ice wells and shattered bone masks. He saw blood runes on the walls and floor, half-completed sculptures of man-beast symbiotes and gigantic insect skulls.

The inside of the Citadel was vast, much larger than it should have been, but he’d learned long ago not to trust anything he saw in the Whisperlands.

He knew he was near the Carrion Rift, the place where the obelisk had fallen. He could feel it.

Only the living are lost. That was what the Eidolos had told him, the knowledge he’d need once he breached the Citadel and faced its masters. It had told Cross he’d understand what it meant wh en the time was right, and that it c ould mean the difference between failure and success. Only the living are lost.

The air was colder the further he went. He walked through drifts of grave dust, and the stone halls grew darker. T he muted light from the hanging braziers dimmed. B urning fog covered the floor. Cross walked slowly, careful to keep his distance from the bladed walls.

Everything was deathly still. He tightened his grip on his sword as he passed crossroads that led to bone-dry rooms. Everything was cold and dead. He selected a corridor at random, and walked down it.

I can’t have escaped notice, he thought. They know I’m here. They’re toying with me.

He’d made a mistake. He had no idea how to find the entrance to the Carrion Rift, or if he could be sure the Obelisk was truly in the Citadel.

Maybe I should have circumvented the Citadel, and looked for the Rift itself.

Only the living are lost.

Cross pressed on. He passed hanging cages filled with cadavers long sucked dry of their blood and fluids. He tasted arcane fumes in the air; they were intoxicating, and he shook with need. Bodies had been submerged in pools of formaldehyde, and he saw workshop chambers populated by half-constructed automatons. There were rooms filled with sarcophagi and swords.

Cross’s anger mounted the further he went. He was nothing to the masters of this place. Azradayne and the Shadow Lords had no fear of the man who wandered the halls of their lair. He was insignificant, not even worth challenging.

The shadows deepened. After a while he could barely see. He held his blade steady, ready for something to leap out of the darkness at any moment. H e used it to probe the ground and the walls.

We search.

Only the living are lost.

Cross walked on. He was not afraid.

Shapes bled into view. The s ilence melted into the sound of distant fires and the echo of alien birds.

He came to a wooden bridge decorated with bones. The bridge spann ed a deep chasm.

He was no longer in the Citadel. He ’ d found the Carrion Rift.

Cross looked around. T he Black Citadel was behind him, with its bladed halls and piles of bones and its utterly dead smell. He stood on the edge of a plain of smashed black ice and oily stone. Purple mist curled against the ground. The sky was dead black.

The Rift lay before him, a massive rent in the dark earth. Green and black fumes filled the depths of the canyon, roiling poison smoke filled with vague shadows and monstrous calls. The walls were broken and jammed with jutting bones and gaping holes. Mounds of smelted quartz formed a crude ledge near the iron-chained bridge. Massive skulls — likely Doj — decorated the poles support ing the chains. The bridge rocked and creaked in the acid breeze. A path paved with glittering black scales led to the bridge.

Cross slowly stepped forward and looked over the edge.

We search.

The Obelisk of Dreams would be below, in the depths of the canyon, but there was little chance he’d be able to descend and find it, at least not without magic. He doubted his hybrid blade would grant him the ability to fly.

What, then? What the hell am I supposed to do?

He looked ahead. Dark shapes moved in the distance, silhouettes hidden in walls of grisly steam. They were giants, and they haul ed some large box es or crate s.

Or the obelisk. Shit.

He crouched low and stepped onto the bridge. It rattled and shook, and for a moment he gazed into its impossible depths. Stories told of the Carrion Rift being filled with deep channels of blood water and the half-submerged remains of cities destroyed during The Black. Monstrous aberrations and mutated horrors lurked there, things that had never known sunlight or clean air.

Cross carefully made his way across, holding onto the chain railing for support. The bridge pitched and almost threw him over the edge. F umes filled with acid whispers slithered a round him.

One hand on the chain, h e jogged across as quickly as he could, his eyes on the silhouettes within the smoke on the other side. He knew what was waiting for him.

Once off the bridge he ducked behind a low wall made of smoking dark ice filled with stone sediment. The ground was cold and hard. He waited, and watched.

As he’d feared, the giants beyond the smoke were Sorn: nine-foot tall humanoids with stony grey skin and mismatched steel and leather plate armor, short capped helmets and steaming thaumaturgic equipment, steam-driven hammers and large repeating pistols. Each had a single yellow eye in the middle of a wide forehead cove red with short horns. The four Sorn moved in and out of the smoke. They circled a twenty-foot wide hole in the ground. The hole was uneven and jagged, like something had fallen from the sky and punched through the earth.

The Sorn shifted large c rate s and steel-rimmed boxes filled with i ron t ools, welding torches, chisels and hammers. A nother broken wall of ice granite stood on the other side of the hole, and beyond that the world spilled into open dark plains.

Cross watched the giants erect a trio of iron beams to form a pyramid over the hole. Bolt guns punched thick iron nails through the metal and into the ground. One Sorn wore a face-mask and used a massive acetylene torch to bind the tips of the beams together. Another Sorn gathered lines of cable and a pulley.

They planned to descend.

That must be where the rip is, he thought. The way back to the real world. The place where they ’ll take the O belisk.

Something sounded in the distance behind him. He heard a boom ing sound, like dropping bombs. The dark sky rippled with twisted arcs of chain lightning. He smelled the tang of ozone and rain, a distant and half-remembered memory from his childhood.

Something was happening at the Black Citadel.

They’re looking for me, he realized. How they couldn’t have known he was there already was beyond him. He felt sure the spider had been a guardian pet of the Shadow Lords, a minion or a marauder in their service. And he knew it had s een him. Never mind that. They’re looking for you now. You don’t have a lot of time.

H e continued watch ing the Sorn from his hidden position. H is body was tired and cold, and the hexed fumes that pour ed out of the Rift made the air taste sick.

O ne of the Sorn hauled some sort of generator or engine towards the hole. Thick rubber tubes and hoses pumped translucent fluids into vibrating no zz les. The device sound ed like an airship’s turbines, and soon it filled the air with such noise it was impossible to hear anything else, even the distant echoes as the Black Citadel came to life. The Sorn plugged pneumatic filters into the engine and sprayed pale grey smoke into the hole. Cross guessed they were sen ding purifying fumes to make the air below less poisonous.

It’s now or never.

He raced forward. The grinding engines masked the sound of his movement. He ducked low and kept close to the shattered walls, and he used the columns of fused mountain rock for cover a s he dart ed between the crates. He dug around near the top of a box until he found what he was looking for. Cross stayed low and kept his breaths shallow and even so he wouldn’t be heard.

With the Sorn ’s attention on the hole, Cross stepped up and sliced open the fuel pump on the machine. Foul-smelling liquid ran all over the ground and formed sticky pools.

The Sorn turned soundlessly, and one moved to inspect the damage. Cross slipped back into the shadows and kept his body pressed tight against a twisted wall of glacial rock. He was thank ful the Sorn had poor night vision.

His m ind flashed back to the city of Rhaine. He saw Graves and Cristena and Stone. He’d watched them all die at the hands of the Sorn, and even though the giants responsible had all been killed, a hatred for the predatory race still burned deep in his heart.

He aimed the flare gun between the Sorn’s legs and fired. The engine fuel caught alight. Cross ran. He heard weapons being readied behind him, and he half expected to be shot in the back by massive nail shots or ball rounds.

The blast shook the air. Heat washed against him. Cross leapt over a low wall and threw himself back against the stone to use it as cover while he brought his arms up to shield his neck and head. His eyes stung from explosive fumes. His skin felt like it was melting, and when he breathed in it was like swallowing jet fuel.

He waited. After a few moments the series of explo sions stopped. He heard flames and smelled toxins and burning skin.

He carefully stood up and checked himself. He hacked up bloody phlegm, took a deep breath. He was okay.

The dig site was in ruins. The engine was split open and spewed ghastly spirit unguent that looked like slime milk. Thick bursts of oil bubbled and sank into the ground. A handful of the rock walls had shattered and fallen to pieces in the blast. Drifts of yellow smoke from the plains billowed across his path as he quietly walked back towards the hole with his blade in hand.

Two of the Sorn were dead. T heir grey flesh had been blown open by the blast, and their innards were exposed to the salty air. Their central eyes were still.

A third giant still lived, and it struggled a nd dragged itself across the ground. Its back and head were covered with burn marks, and the skin had torn away from its abdomen, where meat gristle and dark blood spilled out.

It looked at Cross as he stepped up and sliced open its throat. It died silently.

Cross scanned the perimeter. There was no sign of the fourth Sorn, and that worried him. Strange alarms blared in the distance, booming drum pattern beats mixed with arcane klaxons.

Maybe the spider he’d seen hadn’ t been associated with the Shadow Lords after all. Maybe it truly was his spider, there to ensure him he was on the right path.

He tried not to think about the murals…about the images of the spider as it destroyed cities.

Dark cries sounded through the sky. There was nothing beyond the mists and smoke around him except for pitch black plains. He felt like he stood in the middle of nowhere.

We search.

Only the living are lost.

Cross checked the iron beams. As he’d expected, most of the device had been damaged in the blast, and two of the beams had fallen down into the hole. The third, however, was still bolted into the ground, and it hung over the opening at a forty-five degree angle. The pulley mechanism was gone, but there was still plenty of cable, and he thought that if he secured a line tight enough he could lower himself down.

The fourth Sorn was down in the hole, where it clu n g desperately to the wall. The rock in the shaft was blasted obsidian that shone like dark stars. The one-eyed giant’s face and body were riddled with cuts, and it looked to have lost some of its fingers. It blinked up at Cross and grimaced.

He found a crate filled with machinery and slowly pushed it into the hole. He heard the Sorn fall as the box of equipment tumbled and struck the creature, and they both crashed down the sides of the shaft.

Cross couldn’t get the image of friends long dead out of his mind. He was shaking, and had to take a moment to right himself. He saw them, remembered them, and vowed to waste no more time.

It took him a handful of minutes to locate enough cable. He tore cloth from the Sorn’s clothing and wrapped it around his hands so he wouldn’t slice himself apart with the frayed metal line on the way down. He wound one end of the cable around a low column of quartz, then looped the other end twice around the beam and dropped the rest into the darkness of the shaft. He searched the Sorn’s bodies and used the smallest carabineer — like clamps he could find to secure himself to the line. He lowered himself into the hole with a handful of flares in his pockets.

The air was bitterly cold. It was like sinking into a pool of ice. Subterranean wind kicked up from below and sent shivers up his spine. His lungs itched from rock dust. Shards of crystal protruded from the walls. He lit a flare as he descended, but it would be tricky to hold it and repel at the same time, so he dropped it down the length of the shaft. To his great relief he saw it hit the bottom, which was several hundred feet below.

He repelled slowly, and his arms soon ached from the effort. He carefully kicked off from t he walls. The grey blood stains left on the jagged stone indicated how sharp it was.

Another blast of ice wind came up at him. Dread whispers filled the air, lost voices that hissed at him to leave. The black quartz was threaded with gold and radiated a primeval chill.

He thought about the spider as he made his descent.

Something wasn’t right. Something had happened when he’d looked into its many eyes, something he’d been unable to piece together. In the past, a white spider had always appeared when he was on the right path, when he was moving to where he was supposed to be. It had helped him prevent the Obelisk of Dreams from being destroyed, and it had helped him stop the Sleeper. It had been strangely absent from his life ever since the team had been formed, just a memory. He’d taken that to mean he hadn’t needed it — that he’d been making the correct choices, and that the path he’d walked had been the right one.

He felt cold inside. His breaths crystallized. The pull of gravity seemed to intensify the deeper he went down the shaft, an inescapable draw that led to the fused core of the mountain. He smelled iron and sulfur as he dropped closer to hell.

He remembered looking up at the spider in that cold chamber. He’d seen his own reflection s in its many eyes, and those reflections had a ll been different.

Different angles? Or something else?

The walls seemed to move as he made the descent. Everything rolled around him like he was stuck on a ship in a violent sea.

The light of the flare below him went out, leavi ng him in darkness. He stopped and dropped a second. The new light flickered as it fell, turned at odd angles. It seemed to phase in and out of existence, and when it landed he swore it was somehow different than when it had left his hand.

A different flare. A different possibility.

Reflections. Many eyes.

He realized the truth.

It wasn’t just different angles of myself I saw in the spider’s eyes. I was seeing different versions of myself. It was me, moving along different courses of action. Possible selves.

Cross ’s mind had always been overly analytical. He had a naturally photographic memory, a keen sense of calculation and data analysis. He could read a text once and commit it to memory, compare it to a similar text and see the differences and similarities line-by-line. He had a natural knack for solving arcane algorithms and hex theories, for unlocking codified texts and discordant formulae. He could see patterns and variations where many others couldn’t.

He analyzed the events of his own life, from the first moment he’d seen that white spider with Snow in the cemetery outside of Thornn up to where he was now, lowering himself down a frozen shaft, trying once again to save human magic from annihilation. He broke down every choice, every crossroads he’d ever stood at. He tried to determine what might have happened differently, how events might have changed if he’d made different choices.

The spider saw them all. She (he wasn’t sure, still, why he thought it was female, but he did) had known all along, had guided him.

Guided…or manipulated?

He stopped.

I’d always assumed she was some sort of…guide. Fate, maybe, showing me where to go, what to do.

But to what ends?

He saw the Sorn’s mangled corpse below his feet, so he kicked off and twisted himself around to avoid landing on the body. H e touched down on the rock at the nadir of the massive shaft. The black stone cracked under his feet: it was brittle as ice. A single wide corridor led off from the shaft towards a distant chamber filled with golden light.

His vision shifted, halted, and started again. The air felt uncertain, out of synch. It was like when he’d been dipped in the black fluid in the Bonespire and had stepped outside the normal flow of time. This entire place was disconnected, and it shifted away from the possible realms.

Cross paused, gripped by a cloying chill inside and out.

He knew in his gut that the spider in the Citadel was Azradayne.

Something not of our world, or any world we know, was what Vala had said about her. The Grey Clan hadn’t said what she was.

The more he thought about it, the more sense it made.

She’s moved me where she wants me to be. If she can see different possibilities, different versions of what would happen, then she could have seen how my being in certain places could alter the course of history.

It didn’t mean that he was all important. Chaos theory, the notion of a hurricane caused by butterfly wings, held to the principal that minor events led to greater events, distant chain reactions, small occurrences potentially initiating world-changing sequences. It could have been anyone. All that mattered was seeing the pattern, knowing what threads led to what.

Maybe s he wanted the Obelisk here, so she moved me, made it so my actions would cause it to happen when I destroyed that train.

He drew his blade. The cold caused the hilt to cleave to his skin.

But then why would she send me after it again? And why now?

His mind raced as he stepped down the corridor. The air warmed, but it also grew less stable. His shadow folded and doubled, fell away and danced along the wall like he was more than one self, a group of possibilities. His vision blurred, cleared, blurred again. The sound of his footsteps echoed down the uncertain hall.

Why send me here? he wondered again. Or does it even matter? Now that my part has been played, is she even concerned with me at all?

Was she ever?

He felt he should have resisted somehow, should have made some different choice, tried to act in an unpredictable manner. He also knew it was too late. If he was right, if Azradayne was indeed the spider and she’d manipulated him for the sake of altering the pattern of fates, if she’d spun her webs out as far out as he suspected, then she’d have planned for every contingency. He was nothing more than a fly now, caught in her strands.

Cross continued down the tunnel. Whatever she’d determined his fate to be, he’d meet it head on.

SEVENTEEN

Preparations

Do you?

Do you what?

Do you love me?

Danica woke in darkness. She’d dreamed of Cole. For a moment she couldn’t remember what had happened, and she panicked when she couldn’t find Lara next to her.

And then she remembered Lara was dead, and she was wracked with sorrow. She tried to keep herself quiet, but her sobs echoed into the dark. Memories of Cole flashed through her mind, moments they’d shared. W alking near Rimefang Loch beneath a blood sun. D oing shots of green liquor on an airship passing over Kalakkaii. S moking naked in Cole’s little apartment in Ath while they read cheesy lines to each other from paranormal romance novels. L ooking at one an other, staring at one an other, kissing and caressing and listening to music from the grammaphone.

Danica lay in the dark. She imagined Cole next to her, just like in her memor ies, with her dark hair spilled o nto the floor, her pale skin, her luminous eyes large and expressive and filled with something Danica could only hope was love, Black’s own helpless devotion reciprocated.

She smiled at the memories, even though they brought tears to her eyes.

Do you love me?

I don’t know.

She was on an airship. She heard the hum of machinery and smelled fuel. T he large steel vessel vibrated as it barreled its way across the frozen sky.

It was a large ship, she guessed, an Ironnaught, which meant t hey were on a long voyage. A vessel that big meant Rake had brought plenty of res ources along. Men, Scarecrows, vehicles.

What the hell are you up to? Why are you in bed with Koth?

No one came for her. She was left alone in the dark. H er spirit was distant and blocked off. Shielded by the Fade, Raven.

What do you want with me, Rake?

I guess we’ll use you after all, he’d said.

Use me for what?

She couldn’t come up with an answer. From what she could tell, he just wanted to make her suffer.

She slept.

S he and Lara and Cross and Kane are all in the Black Hag back in Thornn. The room bustle s with people. The air is bright in spite of the tobacco smoke. People laugh and smile and dance. The dark air swirl s with dissonant chords of tribal music and heavy beats. The smell of bacon and bread is strong.

She sits at the table, and all three of them look at her gravely. Their bodies fad e before her eyes. The y begin to crumble like they ’re made of sand.

She panics. She reaches across for Lara, but her hands pass right through her, and Cole’s body comes apart and collapses into dust.

She reaches for Cross, and Kane. She takes hold of them both, but her grip is tenuous. They ’ re slipping through her grip, slowly coming apart.

They ’ ll both be gone soon. She doesn’t have much time.

Danica woke in darkness. A gain. Voices from dreams and memories plagued her thoughts.

The air was colder than before. G usts of cold wind push ed through the gaps in the steel-plated hull. T he floor dipped at a steep angle. The ship must have been flying through some treacherous territory, navigating high peaks or sharp winds. Everything lurched.

Danica slowly rose to her hands and knees. Her body was rigid with pain. Her spirit had never had the opportunity to fully heal the wounds she’d suffered in t he Gauntlet, so her arm and leg were both tender, and they pulsed with hurt. A t least they were no longer bleeding.

Her back was sore, and her arms ached so badly she could barely lift them. She felt how swollen her face was from the battle with Creyzak.

Lara.

Do you?

She stood up and stumbled through the darkness. S he found a wall, and slowly explored the perimeter of the room. It seemed to be empty, which meant they’d likely stuck her in a spare cargo hold. Ironnaughts were massive ships designed to haul hundreds of prisoners at a time, and they were armed to the teeth in case they ran into any trouble. Even if Rake brought a massive force along there’d still be rooms to spare for the likes of her.

I’m not done yet, you bastards. You know me, Rake. You know I won’t die easily.

She found a recess in the wall, and after she probed around for a minute she realized it was the hatch door with a rotating wheel handle that was undoubtedly locked from the outside.

It occurred to her they must have placed her in some sort of shielded chamber. She doubted very much that Raven was just standing around outside so Black couldn’t channel her spirit.

She rested her face against the cold metal. The Ironnaughts weren’t terribl y well insulated. The heat she’ d felt when she’d first woken hadn’t been from the engines but from whatever lay outside. That meant they’d started off near the Scorpion Desert, not far from Black Scar, and now that it wa s colder they were likely entering the north. They were probably somewhere in t he Reach.

And what the hell do you want there, Rake? The Reach was barren tundra, a no man’s land populated by tribes of uncivilized creatures. Aside from some scattered settlements, there was very little to be found in the area.

But there are lost cities there, she reminded herself. Places like Karamanganjii. The last place she’d seen Lara until they’d both been taken in Blacksand.

God damn you, she thought. You knew they’d kill her anyway s. Why did you give them Cross?

You have to fix this. I don’t how, but you have to.

She st oo d at the door. She listened.

S he heard beastly roars that she thought came from below. Th at meant th ey were carrying Ebonbacks, and maybe Razorwings. Of course, if the Kothians had tagged along then there was no telling what sorts of undead monstrosities might have be en on the ship.

The fact that Rake had chosen to all y T he Revengers with the undead of Koth turned her stomach. If there was any modicum of kinship or familiarity left for her former allies, it had been dispelled by that arrangement. It didn’t matter that some of T he Revengers might not agree with the alliance: none of them would oppose Rake. Even his co-founders hadn’t been strong enough to stop him from taking over the prison. T he Revengers would follow him no matter what, and that made each and every one of them her enemy.

Black searched around the door, desperate for a way out, even though she knew there wasn’t one.

Save your strength. Prepare your mind. When an opportunity comes, you ’ll have to seize it.

T he door opened. It might have been hours later.

Danica was sitting on the floor. She rested and meditat ed as best she could. Kane had taught her some yoga on the ir lengthy train trip along the Dubrakki Railway, and she found it helped calm her mind sometimes.

She snapped to and stood up as the door opened. Danica looked for a n opportunity, but she quickly realized this wouldn’t be it. Two Scarecrows stood in the doorway with jury-rigged 20mm rifles aimed straight at her chest. T heir leering and near ly skeletal f aces seemed to grin. The corridor was filled with dim red light, like they stood in a darkroom. Danica had to squint to see.

“Slowly,” Raven’s voice commanded from deeper in the hall. “Try anything stupid…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Danica said. She was too weak and exhausted to fight the Scarecrows without the aid of her spirit, so she quietly stepped forward and offered up her wrists. They cuffed her with cold iron and led her down a long corridor lined with vault-style doors. The steel was riveted and stained. Everything smelled like fuel and sweat.

The Ironnaught lurched as they led Danica up a steep set of metal stairs. The Scarecrows flanked her front and back, while Raven stayed in the rear. The grave-rot stench of the undead was gut — wrenching.

“So where are we?” Black asked.

“Just walk, bitch, ” Raven said. Her voice was smooth and cold. “ No talking. And don’t screw with me: y ou don’t need to be in one piece for what Rake has planned for you.”

Danica’s legs ached, but she’d done her best to rec over her strength while she’d rested. The stairway shaft was barely lit with dim red bulbs set in iron wall- brackets. She looked up and saw no end to the stairs, just more grilled landings and darkness. They’d climbed maybe five floors already.

Screw it.

She waited until the Scarecrow in front of her reached the next landing. Danica threw her body back against the Scarecrow behind her while she held onto the railing. The undead’s spindly legs slipped just enough for her to shove it backwards, and i t lost its footing and crashed into Raven. T hey both fell down the steps and on to the landing be low.

She sense d her spirit. H e was free from Raven’s grip, and he rushed to her like they’d been separated for years. Her skin flush ed hot from his presence.

The Scarecrow in front of her turned. It couldn’t maneuver in those tight quarters, so Danica duck ed down and grab bed the sid e of the four-foot long 20mm cannon. The trigger sounded, and if not for her spirit shielding her the roar of the weapon would have blown her eardrums apart. The air glowed hot white. Shells pounded into the wall and the other Scarecrow. Danica tried to aim for Raven, but the Scarecrow that she struggled with reached up and grabbed her by the neck. D ead fingers that smelled of burned meat closed around her throat.

Her spirit hardened into an ic y blade, and s he arched backwards and drove it into the Scarecrow’s oversized face. Teeth and bone shattered. Its grip held for a moment, then faltered.

Danica charged past the brute and up the stairs three at a time. Part of her wanted to go back and finish off Raven, but she heard movement down below. Revengers, more Scarecrows. She ran.

The stairs just kept going. A brighter light appeared far overhead as a door opened somewhere near the top of the stairwell. Black’s heart leapt into her throa t. Voices came from above.

She looked around. T here was a small door on t he landing she’d stopped on. She pushed it open, moved through and closed it behind her as quietly as she could.

She stepped through d ark clouds of cold steam. The smell of chemicals was strong. Danica crept forward along a stark metal corridor. D eep blue lights cast a path of bruise shadows. She struggled to peer through the frost — black haze.

Dripping shards of ice clung to the steel. The air hum med with machinery. Danica tasted aged metal and salt. She heard voices in the distance, cold and alien. Thick pl umes of smoke billow ed out of the walls. She saw faces in the fumes, leering and distorted.

Her spirit pulsed against her skin. H e sense d something ahead, something she couldn’t make sense of.

S he inched forward. Her breaths clouded in the air. Cold steam curled around her feet as she stepped through broken pale light that pushed up through the grill beneath her. She couldn’t see anything below except shadows and smoke.

Danica kept looking b ack. She expect ed the hatch door to fly open at any second, but it didn’t.

Her feet found a hole. A narrow ladder led down. The passage continued on, but she made the descent almost without thinking. Her spirit clung protectively to her skin. The ladder was cold, and it was covered in something that felt like ice but was actually some congealed slime that clung to her gloves.

She descended into a claustrophobic room filled with tilted shadows. Massive devices like boiler tanks pushed in at her from all sides. The air was oppressively hot, but dark ice had somehow formed on the walls.

What the hell are you up to, Rake?

She found a large cylindrical tank filled with churning green and black fluid. A second tank waited nearby, and a third, all tightly arrange d. Dark soil covered the floor like someone had spilled dirt. Danica leaned down, and found bones in the soil.

Shapes writhed in the liquid. Humans stripped of their flesh, now turned to black husks of charred and wriggling meat. They hung upside-down in the murky fluid, tethered to metal hooks and glass tubing and surrounded with cables and wires that moved like undersea life. Dark juices were pumped out of t he tanks and into a humming and virulent machine the size of a refrigerator. The machine’s iron face bore a clear glass plate, a viewport to the guts of the device where a dozen or so separate containers had been filled with different colored fluids.

The bodies sagged as if being deflated. They looked less like human corpses and more like leather sacks with each passing second. The black muscles sucked inwards, pulled tight, contorted like burning plastic. The faces crinkled in a nd the eyes bulged and sagged down.

“What the hell?”

Her spirit screamed. Something in that fluid, in those bodies, made it recoil. She tried to restrain him, and suddenly found she couldn’t.

Because he wasn’t there.

A Scarecrow stepped out from around one of the machines and aimed its weapon at her. A pair of war wights followed. T heir peeled skulls and razor talons shone in the dull light.

A Fade was with them, but it wasn’t Raven. It was Gath. The wiry Islander cell mate who’d kept her and Co le safe for the promise of sexual f avor s was there, dressed in a Revenger’s dark armor. He smiled warmly. Danica felt waves of power emanate from him, that null field that kept her spirit from doing anything.

“You bastard,” she said. “Of course. No wonder you were able to keep me and Cole safe and well fed. I should’ve seen right through it.”

“I still want that threesome,” Gath smiled.

Danica backed away.

She heard footsteps on the walkway overhead. She knew she could have dodge d into the maze of machinery and floating bodies, but she didn’t know if there was another way out, and with two F ades nearby the only weapon she had was useless.

Not yet, then.

She held up her shackled hands, and was taken.

The upper decks of the Ironnaught were in chaos. Revengers moved about frantically. Danica got the impression the ship was in highly dangerous territory and might have even been under attack, except that she couldn’t hear any s ounds of battle.

The halls were made from black iron. Wide corridors led to cross-halls and large chambers. Every door stood open, allowing Danica to peer into t he officer ’s rooms and map chambers, and she saw the navigation console and the master gunnery. Scarecrows stood at almost every intersection. S he felt the distinct presence of war wraiths and murder spirits as they float ed through the ventilation ducts.

She was taken to the bridge, a stoic and humorless room cut in odd elliptical angles. There were no chairs, just standing stations at the control panels along the back wall. There was a massive viewport made from reinforced blood glass, and skylight s above and below. The ship floated high above a pale wasteland dominated by glacial floes and dark hills, jagged ruins and drifts of snow. D erelict clo uds seemed frozen in the dusk sky.

Rake was on the bridge, along with Geist, Burke and Raven, all dressed in Revenger black, with iron epaulets and blood-colored badges of rank on their chests. The Fade woman was bruised and had a nasty cut down one side of her face, presumably from whe n she and the Scarecrow had fallen down the stairs. She walked right up to Danica, and Black braced herself to receive a blow.

“No,” Rake said. Raven fumed. Her dark eyes narrowed with hate, and she clenched her fists several times before she finally stepped back.

“Good girl,” Danica said. “Can you roll over, too?”

Raven stepped back up and punched Black in the stomach. The blow was hard and fast, and Raven’s hand felt like it was nothing but bone. Pain flared through Danica’s abdomen, and she doubled over, the breath forced from her lungs. She coughed a few times before she was able to stand straight again.

Rak e walked over and slapped Raven hard in the face. Blood ran down her mouth.

“I said ‘Stop’, you undisciplined whore,” he said quietly. “Back away.”

Raven did as she was told. She looked at Danica and smile d.

“You never learn, do you?” Rake said to Danica.

“You have two Fades,” she said. “Impressive. I was wondering th is whole time how you kept my spirit restrained while I was in general population. I figured you’d just given me Narcosm.”

“Too expensive,” Rake smiled.

“I would think a Fade i s even more expensive.”

“Our good friends in Koth have all but perfect ed the process of creating Fades, ” Rake said.

“Creating?” Danica said.

“ They can’t make more than a handful every few months or so,” he said offhandedly. “So we’re not exactly ready to invade Thornn with a host of Fades. Not yet.” He smiled. “Koth has something a bit more direct in mind.”

“I can’t believe you,” she said. “ Joining forces with Koth. You’re human. Well…you used to be human…”

“Ha, ha,” Rake smiled. “Don’t push your luck, bitch. The only reason you’re still alive is because I can still use you.”

“So why the tour?” she said. “ I never pegged you as someone who liked to stick to Super-Villain cliches.”

“Rake…” Burke said, but Rake turned and gave him a look. Burke shook his head, and backed away.

“I really did miss you, Dani,” Rake said quietly. The shi p was in hover mode. Danica saw the remains of a ruined tower in the distance, some broken spire of black stone. D evastated ruins surrounded it, the smoldering husks of dark buildings and old walls. “You had a mean streak in you that always surprise d me. On the outside you were just another pretty face, a woman trying to make it in a man’s world. You walked the walk and talked the talk…but you were different. You weren’t afraid to do the things that needed to be done.” He smiled. “Remember Sandosa? That village? Holy shit, what you did to those people…”

“Go to hell,” she said. “I’m not like that anymore.”

Rake smiled, and smacked her. H ard. Blood welled from her lip. Her face stung, and painful tears came to her eyes.

“I know,” he said calmly, as if nothing had happened. “I know, Dani…and that’s what really stings. Because you used to be someone I could count on.” He backed away, and a Scarecrow took hold of both her arm s in its skeletal vise-grip. It held her so tight she was afraid the bony hand s would cut off her circulation. “Do you want to know what’s going on?”

“Why would you tell me?” she spat.

“Because it’s not a secret,” he shrugged. “Koth is going to enter the war, and it will d estroy the Southern Claw. It’ ll be fast, and it’ll be ugly. With the humans subjugated — oh, Black Scar will be the new capital of the human lands, did I mention that? — the Ebon Cities will understand that we’re not to be fucked with. If they can’t see that, then we go to war against them, too.”

The Ironnaught shuddered as a gust of heavy wind blasted against the hull. Dark birds took flight in the distance. The molten sun peeked through the clouds and turned the world dirty gold.

“What can you possibly have that would make war against the Southern Claw go so easy for you?” Black asked.

Rake walked over to the viewport. Tension mounted in Danica’s back. The Scarecrow ’ s grip was so tight it was difficult to even turn her head.

“We have Cross,” Rake smiled.

“And? He’s kind of a pain in the ass, just so you know.”

“True,” Rake laughed, and for just a moment Black remembered being friends with the man, remembered sitting and drinking and smoking in his chamber s, talking about old jobs or battles or past loves, just two friends having a drink, laughing, pretending their lives were normal. Pretending they weren’t mass murderers. “True. But he’s also invaluable.”

“This is about the blades,” Danica nodded. “Soulrazor, and Avenger.”

“Actually,” Rake smiled. “No. It has nothing to do with that.”

Black paused. The confusion must have been plain on her face, because Rake laughed again.

“You’re smart, Dani, but you’re not that smart. Did Cross ever tell you about Koth? He’s been there, you know. On the mission that killed his sister.”

“Yes,” Danica said. “He told me about it.”

“Did he tell you how he walked right in… how they let him enter the necropolis? No other hu man has ever done that except Red, and Cross’s sister.”

Where is he going with this?

“So…what, did he see something there?”

Her mind wen t back to the conversation she and Cross had had, the night he’d told her and Kane about his experiences in Koth. He rarely liked to speak of it. His entire squad had died on that mission to track down Margrave Azazeth, “Red”, once a leader of the Southern Claw who’d turned traitor and thief. She’d stolen secrets, important secrets, and dozens of highly trained Hunters had perished hunting her down. M any resources had been squandered try ing to stop her from giving Koth…

Oh, God. The obelisk. The artifact created when Dane Knight made the sacrifice that gave humans magic.

Rake smiled. He saw the realization dawn on her face.

“It’s been lost,” he said. “It’s buried somewhere in the Carrion Rift. Nasty things are down there, Danica. Stuff that even the Ebon Cities is afraid to face, dark creatures from realms of madness. Or something like that. ” He slowly walked over to her. “But there are other ways in. And by using Cross, we can use those backdoors. He’s the key, whether he knows it or not.” Rake gently ran his fingers along the side of her face, and then roughly grabbed her chin. “And so are you, Dani.” His voice had dropped to nearly a whisper. “You see, we’re going to use a door in those ruins down there — Voth Ra’morg — to enter the Whisperlands. We won’t be the first ones to have done it. Someone is already there looking for the same thing we are. We’re going to find it by using Cross, and when we do…well…”

He stepped away.

“Well what?” Danica said, shuddering. His touch was like oil. She felt filthy from being so close to him. Once she’d found him attractive, maybe even charming, with h is roguish mannerisms and wild appearance. There was a hint of lunacy in his eyes that she’d always mistaken for genius. He was a charismatic and powerful man. But he really was insane.

“Your new pals in the Southern Claw will be in a lot of trouble,” he said. “Because Koth knows how to destroy the precious obelisk, and that means human magic will just… go away.” He turned and looked at the dark ening horizon. “Raven.”

Danica turned just in time to receive a blow to the face. The Scarecrow let Danica fall to the ground, and she landed hard on her chest. Raven stood over her and kicked her.

“Oh, Dani, one more thing,” Rake said. “The ritual to destroy the obelisk requires a mage sacrifice. A special mage. You don’t quite fit the criteria, I’m afraid…but you will. Because w e’re not done with you yet.”

Dan ica’s senses blazed with pain. She saw Raven’s boot lift and descend. Everything went dark.

Lara. Lost, and alone.

Do you?

I’m sorry.

H urt blazed across her body like wild fire. Danica woke only intermittently, long enough to realize she was in a chamber, locked deep in the iron bowels of the airsh ip.

Raven and Geist took turns beating her. Pain exploded through her head. Her vision was white and grey. Her mouth filled with hot blood.

She lost time.

Her face was bloody and raw. Whips and chains tore s trips of flesh from her back. Her limbs felt heavy. Her eyes crusted over w ith broken skin and dried blood.

Screams filled the air. It took some time for her realize they were hers. They echoed through the ship like the mewling of some simpering beast.

Her eyes gummed over with mucus. Her stomach contracted in hard waves. Fists hammered against her ribs, always in the same spot. Blood and vomit blocked her nasal cavity and ran down her throat. Her back was on fire. Her skin was swollen with bruises.

You’re not weak, she reassured herself, but she knew that she was. She’d been so desperate to compromise, to preserve what was dear to her, that she ’d sacrificed everything.

So when Geist grabbed her hair and rammed his stone-hard fist into her stomach with such force she coughed up blood, she tried not to think about finding ways to block out the pain or to escape.

She thought about all of the mistakes she’d ever made in her life. She thought about how she deserved every moment of what she was getting.

She see s Lara again. They float through a sea of inky shadow, sailors trapped in an ebon sea. The waves are strong. Their vessel takes on water and breaks apart. T hey ’ re both engulfed by the turgid waves. P ale lightning rips down from a sky covered with stone clouds.

She can’t hold on. They grab each other’s hands and try to stay together, but the sea is strong, and dark things under the surface grab them and pull them down.

Down to lightless deeps where they will forever swim in the arms of nightmares.

At som e point she woke, and she wasn’ t being beaten. Her face was a mess of blood, and her bones were broken, but even as she lay there they painfully re-knit themselves. T he wounds on her face slowly sealed. Her i nternal injuries fused closed with agonizing force. She felt things realign and crack inside her.

She was in a dimly lit room. Gath was there, along with a Scarecrow. For a moment she thought he was there to help, and that was why he’d given her back her spirit, who desperately raced to seal her crushing wounds. But as her eyes healed and she almost regained full consciousness she saw the smirk on Gath’s face.

They’re letting my spirit heal me, she realized, so that they can hurt me again.

It was foolish to dream of Lara, so she didn’t. Because she knew no matter how hard she cried or how badly she wanted Cole to be with her, it was never going to happen.

She’s gone. And she’s not coming back.

She woke looking up at the inside of a black dome.

She was no longer on the ship, but down on the ground, in the ruined city. F rozen shadow vapors weigh t ed the air. Her skin was wreathed in wet frost. Her breaths were ragged and heavy.

Danica lay on her back. She’ d been secured to a slab of icecovered granite. The dome above her was made of ice and dark stone.

Her skin was frozen. The bonds held her wrists tight. She felt her spirit, just out of reach, screaming like he was in pai n. He struggled to be free. She sensed that he wanted so desperately to help her.

She looked around, desperate. She saw Rake and Raven and Geist and two more me n she didn’t know. It took her some moments to realize they weren’t men at all, but undead.

The first was a lich. Most of t he skin had fallen from his bones, and his skeletal visage bore burning black eyes. His l ong claws gripped some sort of medallion, an ancient trinket that looked familiar.

“Mor ning, Dani,” Rake said. “Are y ou ready?”

“What the hell is going on?” she asked. Her heart hammered with fear. She couldn’t move, couldn’t call her spirit. Her mind raced to find a way out, but there wasn’t any. She felt tears on her face. “Rake…please…”

“Sorry, Dani,” he smiled, and he nodded to the second undead creature. The vampire.

It s dark hood fell back to reveal a pale face with a wide mouth. His unnaturally dark eyes were voids in his skull. S harp fangs dripp ed dark venom. He was lean and muscular and bore a vicious and toothy smile. His nearness chilled her heart.

Geist stepped up onto the slab and stood over her. The Revenger held a wide-bladed axe. The tip was so sharp Danica could almost taste its razor edge. A distorted view of her face reflected back at her in the metal.

I won’t scream, she told herself, her last defiant act. I won’t give you the satisfaction, you bastard.

“What are you going to do?” she asked grimly.

“Prepare you,” Rake said. She was surprised he ’d graced her with an answer. “ Like I told you before, we need a sacrifice to des troy the obelisk and end humanity’s reign of magic. A few years ago, the leaders of Koth planned to use Cross, because he fit the conditions perfectly. He’d lost his spirit, and then regained it. But Cross no longer has a spirit. So now we need someone else.” H e nodded for Geist to proceed.

Black knew he hadn’t really answered her question. He in no way had explained what they were about to do to her, how they would make her useful to them. She didn’t bother pointing out that without magic he and T he Revengers would be just as much at the mercy of Koth and the Ebon Cities as the Southern Claw, but she had no doubts he’d already thought of that, that he’d already planned ahead. Rake always planned ahead.

She looked up at Geist’s twisted and ugly face. The axe was massive, and his expressionless gaze was chilling.

The vampire moved closer. It smiled. Its pale and twisted face was hideous to behold. T he forehead was long and smooth and the jaw was pugnacious and wide to accommodate the rows of razor teeth.

Geist raised the axe. When she looked up again, she wasn’ t afraid. Her last thoughts weren’t of Cole, but of Cross.

I’m sorry, Eric. I’m so sorry.

The blade fla shed down quick. The pain was so intense she black ed out the instant her blood splash ed onto the vampire’s face.

Darkness.

She swims in a black sea. It’ s calm now, rigid. Lonely.

There ’s no one there with her. She’ s adrift on ebon waves in the middle of a vast nowhere, a world made of water.

S he’d loved to swim as a child. She would get in and out of the water as often as she could. She did it to escape. She couldn’t bear her family. She was nothing but meat to them, and they were just trash to her. Her mother did nothing to help. Her father was a demon. Her brother was the same, only younger.

So she swam, just as she swims now. She drifts alone. It disturb s her that there are no voices. There ’ s no one there to tell her that she ’ s safe.

It doesn’t matter. She knows she won’t be there long.

She woke in darkness.

She sees razor claws and blood, teeth filled with meat.

She sees dead cities on a frozen shore next to a black and oily sea. Blood vapors fill the sky. There are b lack ships in the bay with engines that grind bones and scour the air with pale flames.

Rows of still-standing dead bodies line up at the edge of the icy sea. The anemic corpses step one-by-one into the waters, where the howling waves consume them.

That world is dying. It has always been dead, but now it falls apart. There’ s little left.

She sees the war labs and the factories. Sees the council halls and hears the endless arguing, the grinding alien tongue that for some reason makes sense to her now. She stands there, a cold body, naked but unafraid.

She is judged by a pale council. They regard her, inspect her. Cold tongues and clammy hands run over her skin. She stands stalwart, uncaring.

What more can they do to me?

She ’ s fed. Thick and vi s cous fluid pours down her throat. She takes it. Her instinct is to cough it up, to gag on it, but she knows it sustains her, and she wants to be sustained.

She isn’t done yet.

The scars on her neck won’t heal. They ’ re ugly and jagged and they ooze thick and congealed blood that runs down her skin. The arcane tattoos on her right arm faintly glow, resistant to this dread change in her physiognomy, but after a while they fade.

They bring her b lack blood in bone goblets. She drinks it. She can’ t get her fill.

She woke in darkness.

She was thirsty. Her breath caught in her chest.

Bone needles probed her. She saw nothing but pale light.

She felt no pain, and yet knew she wasn’t whole. Something cold pressed against her shoulder, metal and frigid.

Then the pain came, and she screamed.

Ravenous claws flesh blood drink blood falling in waves collapsing fields of flesh raw explosions this world ends your world erase us not them find you found you find him we will always find you find him this world erase

She woke in darkness.

She was thirsty, and she drank. She couldn’t see what. It tasted salty and thick.

She had memories of standing in a dead city.

Whispers claw ed at her mind. For a moment she thought it was her spirit, but what she heard was a myriad of desperate calls, a choir of ghastly voices. They spoke in unison, and yet the sound was chaos. They intensified, and came faster. They scratched at her ears and tore at her nerves. There was nothing she could make of it, no true words, just hisses and curses, virulent chants, dirty foreign cackles and animal sounds. She willed them away and sat up.

Danica was in a cold room. She felt odd…out of place. The pale walls were strewn with blood. She was naked and cold and she felt the bite on her neck.

Oh, God.

She lifted her left hand — there was something wrong with her right arm, because she couldn’t feel it — and felt the wound. The scar was ragged and tender to the touch, but she felt very little pain.

They bit me. I’m a vampire.

Panic surged through her until she heard another voi ce in the distance, a desperate and plaintive cry.

It was the voice of her spirit.

Vampires don’t have spirits. The dead can’t call magic.

There was no mistaking the voice. She knew who it was. She’d grown up with him always within reach. She’d know hi m anywhere.

She stood, and felt cold metal against her skin. Danica looked down in horror.

Her right arm was gone. She vaguely recalled the axe, the blood. She remembered Geist severing it, pulling it away just moments before the Koth ian vampire, the defector, had bit ten her.

In its place was an arcane appendage: a piece of smooth and animated red steel nearly the same hue as her hair. It moved with sinuous motion. Thin curls of crimson steam emanated from her fingers when she moved them.

She fe l t nothing. The metal moved clums il y, and when she clenched her fist she could only see the motion, not sense it. She touched the appendage with her opposite hand, and was amazed at how cold it was.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

A presence was ther e in the arcane animated steel. H er spirit.

He’d been trapped, somehow. Contained. A prisoner of her false limb.

God, no. This isn’t happening.

The joint was bloody and raw. She saw where the metal had fused with her skin, where it had joined and melted with her flesh. It was seamless.

No no no no wake up, Dani, wake up, wake up.

Pain flooded her head, sudden and quick. Her gums and teeth flared to life.

She was thirsty. She wanted blood.

She fell to the floor screaming.

What have they done to me?

EIGHTEEN

Web

Cross entered a labyrinth of shadow and stone. Everything was unstable, like he floated in a cold void sea. The d arkness twisted and bent. The details of the ceiling were obscured in a haze of swirling golden shadows and patches of inky darkness. The air pulsed like pools of rippling oil.

He passed crystal domes cracked open by some unnatural calamity. Twisted passages snaked like veins through the heart of the canyon wall. Bones and sediment had frozen in the milk rock. Murky blue-black light emanated from within the walls.

He stepped through an archway of whalebone, a massive jaw ridged with blunted teeth. Pale oil s dripped down and splashed onto the floor.

Cross came to a cavern of batholitic rock. The air was smelted and white. Curved stone spiraled away in cyclone s of ebony and silver. Cavernous echoes sounded through the Netherwere — the world below, a vast network of catacombs and tunnels that ran like a maddening maze into an infinity of twisted underground canyons and natural chambers, abandoned Cruj dwellings and Maloj temples, Vuul slave mines, subterranean Gol settlements and the hidden lairs of the secretive Regost.

Low rolling fumes buried the floor, so thick they seemed almost liquid. The mist rolled at hi m from out of a series of tunnels he thought led to the Carrion Rift. He followed them. Soulrazor/Avenger was heavy in his grip. His boots echoed loud in the darkness.

C oncentric rock formations twisted like black grain down a funnel. Sounds came at him, distant growls and shouts. He was getting closer to the breach, he could feel it. Geothermic pressure squeezed the air and made it sweat. Vents of bitter steam pushed out of scar fissures and blocked sight of what lie ahead.

He wandered for what felt like days. The blade tugged him this way and that, as if it knew the way. It took him to the source of the echoes. He heard wind, and something like rain.

The Obelisk of Dreams lay on its side at the end of the tunnel, literally pushed through the in side of the canyon wall, fused between two realities. Everything shifted around it, folded in to unnatural p atterns. Drifts of rock dust fell from the ceiling.

The artifact was just as h e remembered it, utterly black and icy cold. To even be near it chilled the blood. Faint whispers of pain bled from the cracks in the Obelisk’s surface. Silver runes like scars littered its utterly dark face. It was still whole, in spite of the violence it had lived through.

Drifts of rubble fell from the walls. E verything wavered like heat images. He saw his breath, and then saw it again. He stood at a place conjoined, where the boundaries threatened to come unglued. The floor stretched and compacted.

He moved close r to the Obelisk. It was safe. He’d beaten Azradayne and the Shadow Lords to it.

Now what?

Cross studied the monument. It was so innocuous, so still. It barely seemed possible that it could bear such import. The Obelisk had rested in the hands of the renegade necropolis of Koth for decades, but the undead had lacked the knowledge of how to destroy it until Red had offered them that information.

To destroy it required a sacrifice. A particular sacrifice.

That sacrifice was supposed to have been me, he thought. I wonder if the Shadow Lords have already prepared another.

Another sacrifice.

Cross looked past the Obelisk and through the shattered rock wall, into the wreckage and madness of the Carrion Rift. A shifting barrier like black smoke separated the two realities. He look ed through the ebon fumes, into the world he once knew. The top half of the twelve-foot Obelisk hovered over the void of the canyon. A sea of s creaming vapors melted down the vast trench. Black t entacles writhed and twisted in the bladed shadows below. The Rift was a place buried in darkness and mist.

Why would anyone want to rule this world? h e wondered. The Southern Claw fight to stay alive, to protect our own. What do the Shadow Lords want? Power? Dominion? They’d rule from atop a throne of dust, and wear a crown of ash.

Another sacrifice.

Cross stood at the boundary. He could reach through if he wanted and enter the Carrion Rift. He could step back in to his own world, onto ledges of crumbling roc k and jutting bits of stone on his side of the canyon. He could be free of the Whisperlands.

Not yet. Not yet.

Blood trickled down the Rift walls. Things lurked in the darkness below. H e felt their eyes on him, sensed their ravenous hunger.

Another sacrifice.

Because I lived, there will be another sacrifice.

There was another wide shelf of rock on the opposite canyon wall. It was littered with s hards of black iron wreckage. He saw broken engines and shattered railway cars, sunken turrets and cracked metal wheels.

It occurred to him that Snow’s remains might have been there in the ruined remains of the train. He’d almost forgotten what she looked like. He pictured her charred body folded in to the metal.

Cross tried to put sight of her from his mind, but he couldn’t. He saw her, burning on the train. It was one of the only memor ies he had of her whe re he could still picture her clearly.

Stop it, he told himself. This doesn’t help.

But he was already crying, and he couldn’t stop.

He waited. It was hard to know how much time passed.

Cross stood in the cold dark. The necronaught wreckage was in sight, and the Obelisk was just a few feet away. The caves shifted unnaturally all around him. He looked back down the twisted rock corridor and saw steam clouds and molten shadows.

Cross held Soul razor/Avenger ready. He wasn’t sure what good it would do, what good he could do against a cadre of powerful warlocks. He tried to remind himself he’d survived battle s with the necrotic angel minions of the Revenger Korva, and that this would be no different.

But the truth was he felt less sure of himself than he had for a long time. H e had no idea what he should or sh ouldn’ t expect from the arcane blade. It served its own whim, held its own agenda.

He shivered. His grip on the gelid hilt slipped, so he righted himself and held it tighter. He considered propping himself against a wall to rest, but the shifting atmosphere told him that would be unwise.

Another sacrifice.

He wondered who the Shadow Lords had found.

It had to be someone particular. The conditions for the sacrifice required to destroy the Obelisk of Dreams were exact: a mage who’d forcibly been separated from their spirit, and then had had that connection restored. So far as he or anyone in the White Council knew, Cross was the only mage that had ever happen ed to. Now he wasn’t even a mage anymore, something he tried not to think about.

They’d have to create their own sacrifice somehow. They’d have to force those conditions, find a way to do it intentionally. He was sure they could: Margrave had told him that Koth had found a way, and if circumstances hadn’t made it so Cross had wound up fitting their criteria, that sacrifice would have been Snow.

But do the Shadow Lords really want to destroy the Obelisk? he wondered. What else would they do with it?

What if the Obelisk isn’t even what they’re looking for?

He wasn’t sure why that last thought occurred to him. I t came like a bolt of lightning out of a clear and quiet sky. And like some festering wound or a horrible itch, once the notion was there, it wouldn’t go away.

Are they looking for something else?

Cross watched the tunnels. He glanced behind him, into the Carrion Rift. He waited for the Shadow Lords, or for their minions.

He wondered what else they could be searching for.

If the Shadow Lords truly had the means to come and g o from the Whisperlands at will, it made little sense for them to seek anything else. If they didn’t really have the means to leave the Whisperlands, if that had all been a lie, then maybe they sought escape, just like he did…but that meant Kyver and the Grey Clan had lied to him, and he had trouble believing that. He hoped his instinct about them had been correct.

Cross decided the Obelisk of Dreams really was the object of the Shadow Lord’s search.

But what about the spider? What about Azradayne?

He waited. Something sounded in the distance overhead, some shattering of rock. Probably Sorn tech, he thought, used to blast through the stone. He kept his eyes up. D eep shadows roamed the ceiling. S talactites dripped milky water and iron sediment.

What are you looking for, Azradayne? he wondered. He’d convinced himself it wa sn’ t the Obelisk, even if that wa s what the Shadow Lords wanted. They were her lackeys, powerful though they surely were.

What do you want, spider? What have you altered my life to accomplish? What hurricane did you trigger by directing my path?

What do you want?

Another sacrifice.

His mind raced. What else had he done by following the path laid out for him by the spider? He tried to think beyond the obvio us, beyond rescuing the Obelisk and defeating the Sleeper, beyond slaying Jennar and keeping Soulrazor out of Korva’s hands.

Someone he knew. Someone he’d met. His heart pounded hard against his chest.

Someone I’ve met, someone I wouldn’t have met without Azradayne’s interference. Again, was it someone obvious, some creature of import that, had he ignored the spider’s guidance, he would never have encountered? The Lith. The Soulweavers. The Eidolos. The Grey Clan. Or was it someone else?

Kane? Ronan?

Black?

What if one of them was what the spider truly wanted? Its web was vast, and the eyes in which he’d glimpsed so many versions of himself could have easily seen where the threads might conjoin, where the strands led, where tangential possibilities could take him. He tried to dissect his own path in his mind, tried to look backwards, but it was impossible to take it all apart, impossible to know the truth of where his choices might have led him. The possibilities were limitless, but all of it came down to what the spider’s purpose was.

What do you want?

Not the Obelisk. He was sure of that. Was giving the Obelisk of Dreams to the Shadow Lords just a matter of convenience, a means to an end? Had the spider so deftly manipulated Cross to arrange for one of his friends to wind up where it needed them to be? Did Black or Kane have something it wanted, or did they serve some greater purpose it needed them to fulfill?

Cross’s heart chilled. He could only dare guess at the spider’s goal s, at how great its vision extended through the network of space and time.

But he felt with dread certainty that his friends were in danger.

Cross gripped his blade with hands gone numb from the cold. He wiped rancid steam from his eyes, shook himself, breathed deep.

He’d make his stand th ere. With any luck, it wouldn’ t be his last.

It can’t be. I have to find them. I have to save them.

Shadow s moved in the distance. He heard the industrial grind of heavy machines and the ring of metal on stone. The air crackled and hummed with thaumaturgy, and he smelled iron and smoke.

They were coming. He pushed thoughts of Danica and Mike and the others from his mind.

They come for him. He’s waited, watched the inky darkness in anticipation of this assault. He believes he has no chance, but he knows, in th e s e last moment s of his life, at this final crossroads, that he can’t allow himself to fail.

H and-cannons lined with blades push through the darkness. He sees gi ant silhouettes and central single eyes. He sees grey armor fused with iron plate as Sorn enter the chamber.

Cross moves in a blur, not sure where his sudden speed come s from, not even cognizant of what ’ s happening until he cut s the first giant down, slices it from groin to neck and feels hot purple blood splash onto his face.

The blade is in control.

He swipes, ducks and weaves like a bladed dancer. He moves in and out of shadows like he’ s a shadow himself. He sees other versions of himself, alternate possibilities. He steps and steps again, cuts and cuts again. He strikes the same creature only once, but from m any angles. His stutter- strikes punch out from different dimensional possibilities. He is as the spider sees him: himself at a crossroads, the many paths conjoined into one. He is himself, striking from different futures, different pasts.

Blasts deafen his ears. Iron shot and nail spikes rip into the stone walls. The Sorn pour through, grim and silent, their enormous bodies blocking the way out. Monsters from the Carrion Rift scream as ballistics punch through the walls and rip into them.

He steps, strikes, steps away, strikes again. He hamstrings grey giants and severs fuel couplings, yanks grenades away from belts and tosses them at other Sorn. He sends hails of exploding flesh and fuel sailing through the air in molten waves.

He ha s become a walking nightmare, a shade. He sees them in blurs, barely aware of his own motions. The blade cuts up and through and across. Fingers and shells fall to the ground.

The Sorn are confused. He’ s everywhere and nowhere at once. They accidentally fire into one another, send flames back into their own ranks. Six are dead in the space of a minute.

One grabs him. It guesses correctly, or else the probability of his slipping past becomes too miniscule, even in this c onfused and chaotic place. He’ s thrown against the wall, and feels his back break.

Another Cross steps up and kills the offending Sorn, tears through its chest with his arcane sword. He sees a third Cross cut down by rotating gun barrels and stamped into gristle.

He is all of the versions of himself. The spider has joined more than one Cross to this battle: it has sent them all.

Condemned me to die. Every one of me.

He ducks back, hides in the dark. Sorn draw bludgeoning melee weapons and pursue him. He dodges around massive stalagmites. The giants spray the area with chain guns and nail launchers. Shards of stone and steel rain down around him.

He howls a nd leaps back into their midst. Soulr azor/Avenger hacks through flesh and tears through armor. He hears low grunts and watches bodies ooze purple waste on to the ground.

H e stands alone. He has defeated all of them. Over a dozen Sorn bodies lie in ruins. They sag and fade and bleed out without a sound.

H e regards the other versions of himself. They stand as if in council, half-concealed by shadows, wavering in and out of existence. They are barely recognizable. Some wear full beards, some are clean-shaven; one is missing an eye, while another is dressed as a Revenger; one still possesses his spirit, and he can even taste her in the air, her scent, her power. None of them is whole: they are half-illuminated shades, flickering ghost images. None of them is really there, and yet they all are.

They vanish. He is alone with the corpses.

Impressive, a voice says, and he turns around.

They’ re there. T he mages.

There are six Shadow Lords, each identical to the last, tall men in charcoal robes and high leather boots. Iron belts and bracers adorn their shadow-drenched skin. E ach wear s a simple and featureless mask, a bisected segment of skin-tight steel with dark eye slits. They are doppelgangers of one an other, and the air is alive with the force of their arcane might.

He readies his blade. He knows he can’t ho pe to defeat them all, but he has to try.

The first mage sends a blast of fire. He slices it in half, and t he pale flames sear out and strike another warlock, who dies screaming. Cross doesn’t give his attacker a second chance: he charges and removes the man’s head with a clean swipe.

Another warlock attacks him with gauntlets covered in crackling green waste. A fourth forges an ice sword and meets him in battle.

He shatters the ice sword and sends the mage back, then turns and severs the gauntlet-yielder’s hands. He spins and finishes the sword bearer, and both mages fall to the ground and die at the same moment.

But the last two mages have him. The first warlock slices his arm open with a blade made of black steel and diamond edges. He cackles like a child as he watches Cross stagger a nd bleed. The other mage hammers Cross with a cone of gravitational force that sends him to his knees and blasts the wind from his lungs.

Well done, Tregoran.

And you, Marklahain.

He falls on to his back. The uncertain world shifts even further. His sword is on the ground, well out of his reach.

What did the Eidolos tell me? He struggles to remember its words, to bring to mind the secret that had been imparted to him by the dread psychic. He feels certain the knowledge will save him.

The last two mages stand over him. One of them eyes their prize: t he frozen obelisk. They both laugh coldly.

He looks for the other version s of himself, but their connection to this place is g one. He’ s all alone, left with the burden of his failure, with the knowledge that he’d nearly stopped these mad warlocks.

But that doesn’t matter, he realizes. Because even if I’d beaten the Shadow Lords, Azradayne will still get what she wants.

He struggles for breath and grope s for his weapon, but it ’ s buried deep in the folds of shadow that creep a cross the floor.

Only the living are lost. H e re members t he words the Eidolos had given him. Only the living are lost.

Arcane energies fuse around him. His skin goes rigid, and his lungs free ze. He knows that i t’ s too late.

NINETEEN

Warzone

Kane took a deep breath.

“Relax,” Turner told him.

“ Are you my therapist?” he asked her sharply.

“No.”

“Then stop telling me to relax.”

Kane smelled ice, oil and gunpowder as the ship skimmed over the brittle surface of the Dark Sea, a largely frozen marshland between the Bone Hills and the vast tund ra called T he Reach. A ccording to Burke, that was where they ’ d find the ruins of Voth Ra’morg, where T he Revengers and the Kothians planned to enter the Whisperlands.

It was also where Rake and his cronies would likely kill Cross and Black in the ir attempt to get…something. No one seemed clear as to what it was Rake was actually looking for, but everyone seemed to agree that if he was going through this much trouble, it had to be something bad.

The cold ship rattled as it sped along. Kane saw the black and marshy landscape through the wide windows. The land was littered with icy reeds and mounds of frozen lichen, islands of damp earth and giant petrified mushrooms. The setting sun shone red and gold as it sank be hind grey-black clouds. Dark mountain peaks loomed in the distance.

Grey Clan skiffs, bulky grey vessels with indu strial turbines and heavy guns, trailed Burke’s squat and ugly warship.

Turner finished giving Kane his injection, an arcane healing solution made from a blend of salt water, holy oils and Type A Blood. S upposed ly it would help purge whatever was left of the vampiric infection from his system. Turner shot the fluid into his arm with a needle he thought w as roughly the size of a broadsword.

Under normal circumstances, a single injection should have been sufficient. Unfortunately, time progressed differently in the Whisperlands than it did in the sane wo rld, and so far as Turner knew — and the book — smart Revenger seemed to know quite a bit — no one had ever been bitten by a vampire while they were in the shadow realm and then transferred back to the physical world before the infection had set in. Supposedly, coming back had actually saved his life, since the slower flow of time delayed the infection process.

“But that also means,” Turner told him, “that the necrotic insects have actually been in your blood longer than normal. So we’ll need to continue giving you treatments, just to be sure.”

“ I hate getting shots,” he said plainly. “ They make me feel like I’m going to puke or fall over. Or both.”

“Good thing you’re a big tough guy, then,” Turner said matter-of-factly. “Because you ’re going to be doing this for quite some time.”

G reat, he groaned in his mind. As if things weren’t bad enough.

Turner walked away with the empty syringe, leaving Kane holding a wad of sterile cloth up to where he’d received the shot.

The bridge of Burke’s airship was wide and tall. The steel was grey-green and sterile.

Maur stood near the cockpit, where he watched the mostly reptilian pilot operate a complicated-looking network of handles, wheels and levers. Ronan, Sol and Marcus checked their weapons, while Burke went over schematic readouts of the area.

How did things get this screwed up? Kane wondered. We’ve been away from Thornn for what feels like forever. None of us expected that getting Cross back would be so damn complicated.

Or so costly. They’d lost Ash and Grissom, and now it looked like they were in danger of losing Black, too. And maybe even Cross himself.

Never really thought this was how things would end, he thought.

“ Kane?” Jade came and sat down next to him on the long and uncomfortable steel benches that ran along the back wall of the deck. The growl of arcane turbines filled the air with such noise she practically had to shout to be heard.

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

He looked at her. She was a gorgeous woman, far too alluring to be wrapped up with a scumbag like Klos Vago. H e knew what she really was: a cold-blooded criminal, an enforcer more concerned with a paycheck than with who she had to hurt to get it.

“What do you care?” he asked, and he turned back to the long window so he could watch the marsh.

She grabbed his hand until he turned to look at her.

“Because I feel like caring,” she said sternly. “Look, you and I started off on the wrong foot, b ut that doesn’t mean things have to stay that way.”

She was thin, practically a waif even in thick leather armor and armed with a veritable arsenal of knives and hex grenades. Her hand felt good in his.

“Decided to finally be nice to me now that we’re all marching to our death s, hu h? ” he grinned.

“ Try to stay positive,” she said. The way she said the words made it sound like she actually meant them. “ We ’ve made it this far, and from the sounds of things you’ve made it through worse. We should be okay… ”

“ Should be isn’t good enough,” he said. I want to live. I want Dani and Cross to be okay. God damn it, things were good before that mission into the Bonespire. I just want to go back to the way we were. “ Look, just… don’t try to make me feel bette r, OK? As things stand, we don’t have much of a chance of getting your bosses’ job done. Speaking of which… why are you still even here?”

“Excuse me?” she asked.

“What’s your stake in all of this? It’s not like you guys give a crap about Cross, or anything.”

“Burke hasn’t exactly offered to send us home,” she said plainly. “What else are we supposed to do?”

“You could s tay out of it,” Kane said matter-of-factly. “Mind your own business.”

“Is that what you’d do?”

“It’s what I’d do if I knew I wasn’t wanted.”

She gave him a wry smile.

“Did it ever occur to you that we may actually want to help?”

Kane looked into her eyes.

God, I want to believe her.

“You mean you and Sol?”

She hesitated, just for a moment, and nodded.

“Yes. Me and Sol.”

“No,” he answered. “Your interest in me extends only so far as getting Vago what he wants.”

Jade laughed. He could tell she was exasperated.

“ Ok,” she said. “ Never mind then, ” she said.

He almost stopped her from leaving, but he didn’t.

For a few minutes, while the rickety airship flew low over black waters and the sun started to set and they approached the ruined city-state of Voth Ra’morg, Kane sat alone. He longed for things to return to a place they never could. He was afraid, so afraid, because he knew this couldn’t end well, that more of them would die. A fist of pure fear slammed down his spine.

He would do what he had to do. He’d fight to his last breath to save his friends. But Kane knew they were already lost.

Voth Ra’morg was a shell.

The ruined structure came into view just as the sun set over the eastern horizon. Jagged stone walls and rusted steel towers glowed faint grey-gold in the light of the dying sun. B lack and icy marshlands surrounded the ruins. A thin and crumbling network of earth and wood en walkways provided safe passage across the dark bog. Tendrils of green m ist hovered just over the water, and wooden stakes surrounded the desolate city like a ring of black blades.

They weren ’t the first to reach the ruins: T he Revengers had beat en them there.

A large airship hovered just over the island, tethered by a mooring chain. Two smaller ships flew in a perimeter pattern around the structure. Both vessels were heavily armed with repeating cannons and arcane ballistae.

D ark war machines moved on the ground. The b lack juggernauts had massive iron wheels and swinging turrets, blade-rams and flame-cannons, and they cra shed through the laggard waters and flatten ed the mounds of earth and old wooden walkways in their path.

The vehicles moved quickly. D ark water burst skyward as explosions struck the ground. The air was riddled with machinegun fire.

The Black Scar invaders were under attack.

Kane moved to the window, stood next to the others and looked out at the scene. Ronan broke out his binoculars.

At first Kane thought Rake and his crew had run afoul of some natural creatu res in the area, or squatters who’d claimed the ruins. B ut he doubted the airship would have moored there if anything in Voth Ra’morg hadn’t already been dealt with. At worst, T he Revengers might have had to contend with tundra barbarians or Gorgoloth who roamed the area in search of plunder.

Instead, t he creatures who attack ed the Revengers were Troj — massive red-skinned humanoids with draconic faces, knotted muscles and heavy armor, thick swords and rifles as big as motorcycles. They were no swamp vagrants, but elite mercenaries, their loyalties marked by the slashed eye and fang sigils on their dark armor.

“Ebon Cities,” Ronan said.

“Damn it, they’re already here,” Burke said. “Signal the attack!”

Blasts tore the swamp apart. Mud and dirt exploded in bursts of black water. Troj raced through the swamp, nine-foot tall brutes that moved with alarming speed. T hunderously loud rifles pelted the dark iron tanks. The Troj moved fearlessly, well aware of their own near invulnerability, for t heir thaumaturgically modified metabolism healed most wounds with ease and they were bred to know n either pain nor fear. The fact that their barbaric minds were artificially infused with the latest military tactics and ordnance training made them all the more dangerous.

C reatures of equal size from Black Scar met t he Troj in battle. They were t all and gan gly undead with burn-black skin pulled taut against distorted bones, and their skeletal bodies were covered with thick body armor. The gaunt undead giants were armed with what Kane guessed were 20mm cannons.

Shells tore the marshy earth apart as the two ground forces advanced across the field. T he Troj mov ed towards the ruins, the undead defended it.

“Scarecrows,” Turner explained. “The first gift Rake accepted from Koth to seal the alliance.”

“Shit, there’s more, ” Ronan sai d. He’d turned his binoculars north.

A number of vampire warships drifted over the horizon, followed by a Coffin: a long and rectangular iron vessel that served as a troop transport for the Ebon Cities. Dark mist trailed the Wing of airships and paint ed the sky black.

M ist rolled ahead of the Ebon Cities ground forces. T hick fumes curled forward in a wave of fog that buried the marsh in blue-black smoke. Massive silhouettes were barely visible within, a host of slow-moving behemoth humanoids that moved jerkily. Patches of rotting green flesh appear ed as the figures came to the edge of the smoke. Blank eyes stared ahead. The Doj zombies dragged broken tree-trunks or planks of wood d otted with steel shards and nails. They walked with terrifying precision, and stamp ed their way through the swamp.

Many of the giants held large iron spheres the size of cauldrons. Small holes in the spheres leaked blue-black flames.

“ Let’s get the fuck out of here!” Marcus shouted.

“We can’t leave! ” Burke hissed. “Rake is inside now with Cross and the God-damn ed spy!”

“Then get us in there!” Kane shouted. “Now!”

Burke looked at Turner. The ship veered as gunfire rapped against the hull. One of the vampire warships had spotted them, and several more moved to intercept.

“Do it,” Burke said, and he nodded at Raal, the human-like Grey Clan sorcerer. Mourne stood close by. Raal nodded to the pilot, and the ship lurched sideways.

The world tilted. Kane’s insides twisted. Black explosions and tracer fire came so close the walls rattle d. Th e engines groaned and fired as the ship dipped closer to the sodden earth.

The Grey Clan skiffs turned to intercept the vampire warships.

Kane felt voices slither through his mind.

Kill black blood will eat the world you will kill lick gobble swim in our oceans black oceans beneath blood moon sickle cut the life from world’s veins twist bleed till nothing left nothing suck you dry the blood the blood is lost

“Gah!”

Kane’s head pounded so hard he felt like he’d caught a brick right between the eyes. He fell to his knees and tried to fight off the voices.

“It’s t he vampire collective consciousness,” Turner said. “We need to take him out. ”

“Whoa, what?!” Kane shouted. He looked at Turner. “You said I was fine!”

Marcus pulled a 9mm Beretta from a shoulder-holster and aimed it at Kane ’s face, but before he’d even released the safety Ronan had a kodachi to his throat.

“You’ll be dead before he is,” the swordsman growled.

“He’s being drawn into the vampire collective…” Turner yelled, but Kane barely heard her. Images flashed through his mind, painful stabbing visions that made his eyes wince and his heart g o cold. An obelisk of black ice. A grim stone bust of an ancient bearded man. Razors that fell like rain. Cold light at the end of a dark shaft. Eyes like mirrors, staring out from rows of pale faces.

I’m seeing what they see, he realized. I’m slipping closer to them.

“Contact!” someone shouted, and moments later the ship buckled. Ballistics struck the hull. Glass and steel ripped apart. Cold wind sc rap ed through the opened aircraft and suck ed Grey Clan and Revengers into the sky.

Cold sliced in to his core. The suction of air pulled Kane off his feet. Everything went end over end. He saw Maur wrestle for the controls as the dead pilot fell forward in a shower of sparks. Ronan accidentally sliced Marcus’ s throat as the ship lurched violently. Burke grabbed Turner and shielded her from the glass and steel that blasted through the bridge.

Kane grabbed Jade and held onto the bench. The horizon flipped. Everything spun. For a moment they hung weightless, suspended in mid-air as the ship fell.

Shit, was all he could think, and he knew it was a stupid thought, but it was all that went through his mind as the vessel drifted out of the sky. Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!

The ground blasted against them. Iron and metal bent inwards. The ship landed upside down: they seemed to crash into the sky. The ceiling was the floor, and it buckled in. Kane twisted around and positioned himself to absorb the brunt of the impact for Jade.

Even after they were still, h e felt like they were upside-down, stuck to the roof of the world.

Whispers growled through his mind. He ignored them by bit ing his own lip. He thought of Ekko, how she’d been mostly vampiric the last few hours of her life.

She went through this, this exact thing you’re going through now. She made it. She fought for you till the very end. You can, too. You owe it to her.

“Kane…” Jade groaned.

“Get up,” he said. “We have to get out of here.” Kane rose, aware of the gaping cuts in his leg. Blood poured from his skin where a piece of shrapnel was embedded in his calf, but he didn’t feel it, and he decided that was for the best.

Metal beams dangled from the floor overhead, and glass covered the ceiling beneath them. Sparks rained down from above. The roar of cannon fire and bomb blasts echoed through the air. The ship was rent and torn and oozed oil and fuel. He smelled fire and blood and heard groans of pain.

Several Grey Clan had been injured or killed in the blast, torn apart by the impact or the explosions. Others lay maimed. Grey-green blood was everywhere.

Sol was dead, impaled on a piece of steel.

“Kane!” Ronan shouted. “Let’s go!”

“Where’s Maur?!”

“Maur is here!” the Gol coughed. Kane couldn’t see him through the haze of smoke, but he knew the voice.

Burke was bloody and bruised, but both he and Turner had survived. Neither of them seemed all that concerned with the loss of Marcus.

“ Look!” he shouted.

They saw u ndead through the shattered windows. The roiling blue fog advanced like a vehicle across the ground. The rhythmic advance of undead giants sounded like massive drums as they closed in on the ship.

“Ronan, grab Maur!” Kane shouted. He looked at Jade. “I have to get to that city,” he told her. “Are you with us or not?”

Jade looked around. She seemed at a los s.

Another blast hit, a mortar shell that landed less than a hundred yards away. The walls rattled. W ater and mud splashed down outside.

“Jade?!” he yelled.

“Yes!”

She ran over to Sol and pulled off his pack.

T hey ran along the inverted ceiling of the crashed vessel. Cables and wiring sparked and oozed hydraulic fluid. Kane, Ronan, Maur and Jade raced out of the shattered viewport. Raal, Mourne, Burke, Turner and a handful of Revengers and Grey Clan followed close on their heels as they leapt down o nto the muddy field. They grabbed as many weapons as they could on the way, and Kane found himself with an M4A1. Ronan grabbed an MP5 A2, and Maur had a SIG SG 552, a weapon nearly as large as he was if not for the removed stock and the fore-grip. Burke and the Revengers held HK G36Ks, and they fired into the mob of giants.

The grey mist hung thick and low, and t he marsh ooze was deep and slick. Kane sank up to his ankles in fluid that smelled of brine and puss. T hey s loshed their way towards the nearest walkway, which suddenly exploded beneath a mortar shell, leaving nothing but ruined splinters.

They turned towards t he ruins of Voth Ra’morg, which were still half- a-mile mile away. Thunderous blasts and the roar of engines screamed through the sky as the Grey Clan vessels exchanged fire with vampire warships. Razorwings and gargoyles soared overhead.

Kane and the others had landed between the Ebon Cities’ waves of advancing troops: t he Tr o j were ahead of them, engaged with the Scarecrows near the city, while t he mob of undead giants was at their backs, still a good distance off but moving slow and steady.

“We are so screwed,” he said.

“Not yet,” Ronan said. His shemagh was o ff, but Ronan still wore a cloth wrap around his lower face. Even then, Kane could tell he was smiling evilly.

They ran. They could n’t waste any more time. T he giants behind them weren’t very fast but they covered a lot of ground with their long stride s, and they weren’t bothered by the marsh.

Burke shouted orders, and Turner pulled out a sending stone. Dark shapes appeared in the ochre sky, gargoyle shock troops out of Black Scar. Another mortar blast from one of the land tanks slammed into the mud a few hundred feet away.

Kane saw something shift to the north. He couldn’t be sure what it was, but he knew that it was big.

The u ndead giants closed to within five hundred yards. The line of Troj was maybe three-hundred yards away, directly ahead of them and between the m and the ruins. Between the team, Burke’s men and the Grey Clan, there were maybe twenty fighters on the ground.

“This is n’ t enough…” Kane said. His skin was cold, and panic welled in his chest. Whispers slithered through the back of his mind.

Hell no. Stay away.

“We have to go around them, ” Ronan sai d. “If we try to break through th at Troj line they’ll tear us to pieces.”

A war horn sounded through the blood-haze air like a hollow song. Several giants stepped forward and hefted the great iron spheres into the air. Flames trailed the balls and made them look like steel comets. They burst open near the downed Grey Clan vessel. V iolent explosions rocked the ground. Heat and deafening booms swept over the marsh, and Kane smelled burning gas.

“Shit!”

“Go!” Burke shouted. “We’ll hold them!”

A Grey Clan airship pulled their attention sky ward. One of the clunky grey vessels roared by and left thick plumes of black and blue smoke in i ts wake. Bomb bay doors slid open, and metal tubes plummeted to the ground. Kane watch ed the bombs descen d against the orange-black sky. H e realized they were about to land right on top of the Troj.

“Duck!” Turner shouted. Everyone went to their knees or fell prone in the mud.

A cid flames rippled across the ground. Burning cloud s rolled over the scaly humanoids. Guttural screams came from within the roiling f ire as burning b odies writhed and twisted and fell.

I hope they got the Scarecrows too, Kane thought as he helped Jade to her feet.

“Now go!” Burke shouted.

Kane hesitated, and looked at the Revenger. The man just shook his head.

“Weird shit,” Kane said.

“No doubt, ” Burke replied.

They readied their weapons, and ran.

T he dead giants behind them charged through the flames and ran even while immolated, m assive meat candles that surged towards the craft. The downed ship was caught in a cage of fire.

Kane pushed ahead. He tasted hex currents in the air as Jade sent her spirit forward to push mud and water out of their path, leaving a narrow trench of sodden clay.

Blasts sounded everywhere. Kane’s head rattled from t he growl of heavy vehicles and the fall of artillery fire. Mortar shells screamed down and into the giants. Gargoyle s flew over the wall of flames, oblivious to the four mercenaries on the ground as they dove at the Ebon Cities zombies.

Burke and the others held their ground with small arms fire and magic. Gargoyles snatched Grey Clan and hauled them into the air. Some of the reptilians plummeted painfully to the distant ground, while others grappled their aggressors and hacked into them with blades and claw- hammers.

The group worked its way around the wall of dying flames. Troj writhed and moaned inside the crackling barrier.

Kane saw Scarecrows through the smoke and fire. He fired at them, and Ronan and Maur joined suit. The Scarecrow ’ s armor was thick, but concentrated and repeated strikes brought them down.

The band of mercenaries drew to within a short distance of Voth Ra’morg. It looked like they’d be able to slip in through some cracks in the northwestern wall, on the opposite side of the city from the Black Scars ground forces.

Scarecrows and Revengers advanced on the front-line of zombie giants. Kane look ed back and saw the Grey Clan ship being destroyed. Shells pounded the ground. Ships tore apart in the sky. Debris and shredded bodies fell like rain.

T he y dodged around the flames and jumped into a shallow trench in the shadow of the city.

Bullets pounded the ground around them. Blood rang through Kane’s ears. Adrenaline flooded his body. He fired, reloaded, fired again. Every time he look ed up there seemed to be more Scarecrows. G angly black bodies advanced on the trench. Kane fired at grinning skeletal faces with e yes like white holes.

He tossed a grenade, and Jade ’s spirit rain ed down shards of blade d ice. Undead bodies sputtered and collapse d, but more stepped forward to replace them.

Something erupted out of the grou nd. C annon fire w as drowned out by a guttural and monstrous roar. S ickening slurps echoed into the sky. Kane smelled rot and earthen waste, something like bile and dirty rain.

A massive worm exploded into view. Glistening black and yellow, the creature was the size of a tank. An enormous circle of buzz saw teeth squeezed Scarecrows in half as its body rose and twisted. It had no eyes, but seemed to sense prey just the same. Gooey white blood exploded from its body as shells struck its carapace, but the attacks only seemed to enrage the beast further. It rose high into the air, a quivering black tower of placid skin, then fell and smashed a trio of Scarecrows beneath it s massive bulk.

“Now’s our chance!” Kane shouted. “Run!”

Jade ’s spirit ploughed the road. Mud and water flew from their path. Shells struck down near by, and Kane heard shouts from the other side of the ruins. Voth Ra’morg loomed over them as they made their way up the hill.

A black clawed hand came out of nowhere and grabbed Kane by the shoulder. He was lifted from the ground and hung suspended by nail-like talons. Pain flashed across his body.

The Scarecrow was covered in mud and filth, and its armor had been blasted apart. Thin bones pushed through the oil and leather skin. T he eight-foot tall brute held Kane up and extended its claws to slash open his stomach.

Ronan leapt between them. His katana deflected the Scarecrow’s claws, and in a blur he hacked the creature’s leg off at the knee. Grey sinew tore and the Scarecrow collapsed, dropping Kane to the g round and knock ing the wind out of him. Maur and Jade blast ed the Scarecrow to pieces with a barrage of bullets and cold fire.

Kane cried in pain even as Jade’s spirit tried to heal him. It had trouble, like his body didn’t want to heal, but after a moment Kane’s r ent skin stitched itself back together. The searing pain faded.

“ Hell of a day, ” Ronan said.

Kane looked at each of them.

“ Let’s finish this,” he said. “ We h ave to find Dani.” He reloaded and turned towards the city. “We have to find Cross.”

Because Cross and Dani and you guys — Ronan, Maur… even you, Jade — are the closest thing to a family I’m ever going to have. I lost Ekko. I don’t want to lose anyone else. Not while I’m alive to do something about it.

Vampire warships sailed low in the sky and pummeled Black Scar tanks and Scarecrows with incendiary missiles. C louds of burning steam rolled across the ground. The air was smelted and thick.

Only one Grey Clan vessel remained. I t floated low in the air and list ed to port thanks to a damaged turbine. Gargoyles clung to the outside of the ship and tore at the hull with razor claws.

The Ebon Cities arm y advanced. The Black Scars tank pummeled ranks of undead giants, war wights and kaithoren with hexed ballistic shot and razor bolts. Greasy corpses exploded in bursts of flaming skin. More Scarecrows and Revengers and Talons poured out of the tank ’ s cargo holds, a horde of dark armored bodies.

Shapes floated out of the blood- black smoke: sleek and bladed warships, vampire fliers, Razorwings and gargoyles, Bloodclouds and Hexbats. T he last rays of dying sunlight pierced through the grim barrier of clouds.

The opposing ground forces would collide in moments.

“Let’s go,” Kane said. “We have people to save.”

TWENTY

Skulls

The tops of crumbling buildings were just visible from outside the ruins. Kane, Ronan, Jade and Maur slipped through a gap in one of Voth Ra’morg’s pulverized stone walls.

They moved down streets lined with s hort round buildings. Patches of frozen moss, black grass and grease ice covered the ground. Thick banks of mud blocked off most of the alleyways.

The air in Voth Ra’morg was still. The cannon blasts and blade bombs and bursts of acid napalm all seemed a world away, even though the battle raged just on the other side of the walls.

Cold sweat laced Kane’s skin, and his arms and legs ached. His dirty armor was dented and covered with mud, and his long hair was pasted against his scalp. His gums burned with hunger.

It was becoming more and more difficult to keep the whispers out of his head. They promised blood and flesh, and though t heir voices sickened him he knew that if he accepted, if he just turned himself over to what they wanted, the pain would end.

Too bad, he told himself. Nothing has ever been easy for you. You don’t get to start now.

He thought about Ekko.

He would n’t let Danica die. For a time he’d actually wanted her dead. I t had been stupid to blame he r for what had happened to Ekko, because he knew that even if Black hadn’t smuggled them out of Black Scar they both would have eventually died in prison anyway. B ut knowing that still hadn’t stopped him from harboring deep resentm ent, and e ven though he’d tried to keep his anger to himself he knew that Danica had been all too aware of how he ’d felt.

He and Black had come together during their search for Cross, and they’d bonded in a way they never had before. There was no way he was going to let her or Cross go now.

They quietly made their way across the ruined city, through d rifts of grey smoke that smelled of ash and cinder. Wooden walkways creaked overhead, weighed down with hoarfrost and iced mold. The buildings were dark and smooth and seemed to suck in what little light remained.

They heard voices up ahead, and Kane signaled everyone to stop. He nodded at Jade, and she sent her spirit to scout. The team had stepped in to the shadows of leaning cylindrical towers clustered near the center of the city. The g aping holes in the towers revealed their twisted rebar innards.

Kane smelled axle grease and vehicular fumes. He heard a churning engine just around the corner of the nearby building. Ronan and Maur stood ready, but Jade was locked in concentration, and almost seemed to be in pain.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“My spirit is having trouble…” she said. “It’s like he c an’t get any further…something’ s blocking him.”

An explosive b last ripped through the air. Metal flew out of the closest tower behind them. Noise rang through his ears, and ice dust fell across his eyes.

“Contact!” Ronan yelled, and he leaned around the corner and fired.

“You think?!” Kane shouted back.

Gunfire cut the air apart. Maur and Jade dropped to the ground.

A n other explosive shell ripped into the tower behind them.

“Jade, do something!” Kane yelled.

“I can’t…it’s like my spirit isn’t there…God…”

“Shit, ” Kane said, and he fired his M4 around the corner.

“Move back, ” Maul said.

The Gol pushed past Kane, calmly stepped up to the corner of the building, and tossed a grenade at the source of the gunfire. Shouts of warning rang out, and Kane heard a vehicle back away. He poked his head out just in time to see a Scarecrow aim its cannon right at him. A dark armored Hummer and a small group of Revengers stood behind the undead. O ne of them looked familiar, and Kane realized he knew him: it was a former inmate in the prison named Gath. Kane didn’t have time to wonder why he was dressed as a Revenger.

The grenade went off, and the Hummer flew backwards. Its back end cr ashed into a nearby building.

The explosion made the Scarecrow’s shot go wide, and instead of hitting Kane it blasted away a chunk of stone high in the tower wall.

Several Revengers flew through the air and landed in bloody heaps. O ne was missing his legs, and another had lost an arm.

Gath’s chest had been blown open. H is corpse smoldered.

T he Scarecrow r a n straight at them. Kane and Ronan shot it in the face. B ullets smashed into its grinning skull. The gaunt undead raised its cannon and aimed while it charged, undeterred by their assault.

“ Duck!” Jade yelled from behind them. Her spirit came out of nowhere and drilled forward, a lance of green acid that impaled the Scarecrow and filled the air with ghastly fumes. The creature withered, and its gun lowered to the ground.

Kane ran up and snatched the weapon away. The rifle was heavy and almost 4-feet long, but he swung it around, dropped prone and balanced it on a loose rock to help him aim. Revengers fired at them from a block away. The Hummer roared to life.

The 20mm cannon ripped backwards. Kane felt the impact in his shoulder, and his eyes watered from the sound of the sharp crack as the shell launched. The front section of the Hummer exploded. Oil and water shot up from the shattered engine block, and the dead driver flew forward through the broken window.

Ronan leapt over Kane and ran at the other Revengers, firing as he went. Maur tossed another grenade as Jade’s spirit hammered the Revengers with cold black nails. Men fell screaming. Those that survived were mowed down by Ronan.

Kane hefted up the cannon and brought it with him. He felt stronger than he had in some time, and full of vitality. He could have hefted that thing around anywhere.

Careful, he warned himself. That’s not natural. You know where that strength is coming from.

At th at moment, he didn’t care.

Smoke drifted over them as they moved across the street and up to the building the Revengers guarded, a pale structure that looked like an industrial plant or a factory. They saw an open set of damaged steel doors at the bottom of a short iron staircase. Steel yellow barrels leak ed phosphorescent ooze. Kane smelled gas. The space beyond the open doorway was black and still.

“There’s something down there…” Jade said.

“Uh, that’s sort of why we want to go in…” Kane said.

“No, you don’t understand…there’s something down there. Something powerful.”

They looked at each another. Explosions hammered Voth Ra’morg’s outer walls. They hear d explosive bursts of gunfire and Razorwing calls. The ground shook from the battle outside.

“Then that is where Maur needs to go,” the Gol said, and he stepped forward. Ronan nodded and followed with a W hat the hell, why not? look on his face.

Jade hesitated.

“You don’t have to go,” Kane said as he stepped close. “ You don’t owe us anything.” He nodded at her. “ Find a place to hold up. We can take care of this.”

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. He realized it wasn’t fear that held her back — she’d been an enforcer for Klos Vago and t he Shard, after all, and she’d doubtlessly done and seen things that would have given him nightmares — but something else.

She’s making a choice. She’s deciding if we’re worth putting herself in this much danger.

After a moment, she moved towards the stairs.

“You’d better be worth it,” she said. Kane stood there, dumbfounded, before he turned and followed her inside.

Cold shadows filled t he building. Ronan lit a flare, but even that did little to combat the darkness.

Old machines l ittered an underground industrial graveyard. The light from the door behind them was muted, stifled by the black interior.

Jade couldn’t send her spirit ahead. Kane wasn’t surprised: he knew T he Revengers had their ways to combat mages. He only hoped she’d be able to call on it again when it mattered.

The air smelled like the underside of a car. T he floor was covered in frozen sludge pools and slicks of ice grease. Shell casings, iron filings and shattered steel were everywhere.

They found a closed trap door in the floor. Ronan’s flare revealed footsteps in the sticky f ilm on the ground and debris that had been pushed aside. A small group had recently passed through the area.

The y opened the door and found a n iron ladder that led straight down into metal darkness. Kane took the lead and descended the ladder two rungs at a time. His heart hammered, and his breaths were fast. Tension mounted in his arms.

We hear you

God damn it, not now.

We hear you know you feel the lust the pain in your heart in your blood your soul the pain that stabbing hurt the want the desire blood your blood her blood hers hers yes hers

Kane came to ground in a half-completed basement. He stepped away from the ladder and punched the steel wall, hard. P ain shot down his arm, and b lood ran from the broken skin on his knuckles. H is eyes regained their focus. After a moment the voices were unintelligible again, just faint whispers at the edge of his thoughts.

Pipe junctions issued steam jets and dripped semi-petrified drops of greasy water. Yellow bulbs lit the area the color of old bones. They hear d a boiler somewhere nearby, and the air smelled like a urinal.

They went just a few feet away from the ladder when they came across a section of wall that had been ripped open by some powerful force. A series of natural tunnels made of dark shale waited on the other side of the hole. Drifts of ebon dust fell across the low and n arrow passage. They saw m urky blue light in the distance, a glow the color of icy milk.

“What the hell? ” Ronan said.

“Maur is tired of strange shit like this.”

“You and me both, pal,” Kane echoed.

“We must be close,” Jade said. “My spirit is going crazy from all of the thaumaturgic activity coming from down there.”

Kane looked down the tunnel. He felt like they were nearing an end. For some reason, he didn’t want to step through. He closed his eyes for a moment, and he saw Ekko. His heart ached.

Without a nother word, Kane entered the tunnel.

He felt like he’d st epped into a freezer. The stone underfoot cracked like brittle ice. He tasted salt and the tang of frozen blood. Everything was so still he was almost afraid to move, for fear that the tunnels would collapse at his touch.

T hey follow ed the source of the light. The ice-wreathed walls glowed like a distant moon. Tiny cracks in the walls held glittering blood crystals like small red diamonds.

Kane’s skin was raw with cold, and his breaths frost ed as they left his aching throat. He shive red and pulled his dirty armor coat tight er around his body. He shook his gun to dislodge the ice shards in the barrel.

The tunnel emptied into a dark and massive chamber that looked like it had been the sight of a recent bombing. The walls were scorched and twisted. Shadows swam against the stone.

A ring of torches illuminated a sharp pillar made of monstrous dark ice skulls. Kane saw the bones of horned things, flat-headed beasts, creatures with tusks and snouts. He recognized some of the skulls as those of Gorgoloth or Vuul, but many were foreign to him, forgotten creatures from other worlds.

Each skull had been carefully packed and sealed in to place with some reflective organic glaze. The smoothed exterior of the ten-foottall structure flickered with dirty yellow light. There were no exi ts from the room except for a dark and mist-filled pit that somehow held the pillar aloft. T he bone edif ice drifted at the center of that purple and b lack morass of shadow fumes. Deep sounds issued from the pit like rhythmic metal pounding.

“Drop your guns!” Rake shouted. “Or we’ll drop your girl.”

The Revengers stood on the other side of the obelisk, at the far end of the chamber. Kane recognized Rake, the little — s een leader of T he Revengers and the man in charge of Black Scar. He was accompanied b y a number of other Revengers, among them Geist, his half-Doj henchman; a dark-haired wo man with tattoos on her face and arms; and Burke, the false Burke, supposedly a vampire named Krage, but his semblance to the Burke they’d seen just minutes before was almost exact, save for the fact that this Burke was unscarred.

A pair of Scarecrows h e ld a chain attached to a massive Talon beast ’s neck and six arms. The brutish creature scrambled against its bonds and growled noisily. It desperately wanted to get at Kane and the others.

Cross was there, unconscious and strapped to one of the Scarecrow ’ s backs like he was a baby in a papoose.

And t hey saw Danica… what had once been Danica.

“Black!” Ronan shouted.

“What have you done to her?!” Maur shouted.

Kane looked at her in horror. T he transformation that had been forced on her was stark. Blood stained the side of her leather armor. Her hair had gone almost white, and her glazed eyes glowed like sparkling ice. Her flesh was frosted. She looked something like the angel avatars the team had faced in the Bonespire, th os e undead machinations that Korva had used to try and capture Soulrazor, but in lieu of angel’s wings Danica had been given a n arcanemechanical arm, an animated appendage of blood-colored steel and iron. The flesh was visibly raw where the limb had been fus ed to her shoulder.

C rackling energies whirled in her grip. Drops of caustic fire fell from her golem fingers and turned the ground white.

“She’s better now,” Rake said with a shrug. He was so casual about the situation, like he was getting ready for a friendly game of cards. “We had to rip her spirit away, then give it back to her. It was the only way to make her a suitable sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice…” Kane said.

Oh, shit.

“ This nice little tower of skulls here generates a portal,” Rake said. “ It belongs to the Shadow Lords, t he mages who breached the hole and found a way into the Whisperlands. After we pass through, we’ll use Cro ss as a tool to track down the O belisk of Dreams, and then we’ll use Danica to destroy it. ” He paused, tapped a fingerless glove against his lips, and smiled. “Of course, you won’t be there…”

Black’s eyes flashed with hot light. The metal burned against her skin. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.

“Jade!” Kane shouted.

One of the Revengers, the dark-skinned and rail-thin woman, stepped forward. Kane saw her eyes flash, and he realized she was what interfered with their magic. She was a Fade.

He saw Jade’s face, saw her panic as she failed to call her spirit. H e grabbed her and threw them both to the ground.

Left, quick! a voice shouted in his head.

“Left!” he shouted.

Ronan and Maur followed them. All four barely dodged a barrage of steaming razors. Danica’s angry ghost folded into bleeding fog.

The Revengers loosed their weapons, and the Scarecrows leveled their cannons.

“Ronan, ” Kane shouted. “K ill that bitch!”

Ronan didn’t hesitate. Even as Revenger assault rifles and Scarecrow 20mm cannons took aim, Ronan drew a kukri, dove forward, and used the full force of his body to cast the weapon through the air. He landed hard on the ground just as the blade punched through the Fade’s skull and snapp ed her head backwards.

At the same moment, Danica fell to the ground in a heap.

“Ja de! ” Kane shouted. “Now!”

The sound of g unfire roared through his ears. Kane saw blasts and bullets flash towards them. H e balled up his body, read y to be torn apart.

Jade’s shield threw back shrapnel. A glittering star storm of white explosions flashed less than a foot from Kane’s face.

Rake pushed past the Scarecrows. The air was alight with hex rot and electricity. Swirling black winds kicked up a n icy storm.

Danica stood up, and shouted. Her eyes glowed like an exploding star. Re ve ngers turned and fired at her.

Geist growled and charged at Danica with a h eavy steel hammer. S he lashed them with wave s of spark and steel. Broken slivers and hot embers ripped through armor and flesh. Geist and most of the Revengers were dead before they hit the ground.

Rake saw the attack coming at the last moment and turned his own spirit to deflect hers. Energies collided in a pillar of liquid flame. Rake fell back. His cloak burned and his armor smoked.

Kane and Ronan leapt forward and engage d the Scarecrows. Jade dropped the shield and was about to blast the undead when Kane remembered that Cross was tethered to one of the Scarecrow ’ s backs.

“Wait!”

Chains snapped, a nd the Talon sprang forward. The dark-skinned brute was the size of a male gorilla. Knotted black muscles str ain ed with rage, and its six fists pounded the dirt. A decorative gold and iron mask had been surgically fused to its fanged face. T he creature issued a guttural and blood-curdling howl.

The Scarecrows fire d again. Jade hammered one of them with a blast of sub-arctic air. Ebon flesh peeled away as it fell to the ground.

Duck!

The voice came just in time. Kane barely dodged one of the Talon’s incredibly long arms. Claws the size of steak knives raked against the stone. Kane jumped back.

DUCK!

It was Danica’s voice inside his head. Kane flattened himself against the floor.

A screaming cone of fire and force tore the Talon open. Its chest cavity twisted and exploded in a mass of skin and molten guts. The beast’s howls rang loud and long as it fell to the ground.

Kane looked at Danica. Her steel arm smoked, and her body was shrouded in a corona of white fire.

“How did you do that?”

You were bi t t en, her voice told him. So was I. That’s how they kept me alive when they hacked off my arm. But I’m not going to T urn.

“Neither am I,” he snarled, and he rose to his feet.

Jade and Rake did battle with arcane blades and hex missiles. Their attacks spiraled and bounced off of one another, sparked green and red explosions that smelled like a furnace.

Maur dodged around the perimeter of the battle, trying to get a c lear shot at the Scarecrow that held Cross. Ronan circled the same undead and looked for an opening, his blades ready; h is wrapped face and dark hair made him melt into the shadows.

Cross was tightly secured to the Scarecrow’s back, but he was still unconscious.

Ronan found an opening. He raced in and sliced the Scarecrow’s cannon in half.

Kane! Help!

Burke was gone. He was Krage now, a vampire with pale eyes, pale r skin and enormous claws. He held Danica by the throat and dragged her towards the obelisk.

Krage’s vampire servants poured grave dust and unholy oils in a perimeter around the obelisk. T hey were preparing s ome ritual to breach the barrier to the Whisperlands.

“Hey asshole!” Kane shouted. He aim ed the cannon at Krage.

Duck, he thought to Danica.

The recoil threw him back. Danica pulled away and scream ed as Krage ’s talons tore out of part of her good shoulder.

The shell took Krage in the chest and tore him in half. Bloody meat and bone fragment s splattered all over the obelisk.

One of the other vampires thr e w vials of blood to the ground and chant ed in some sibilant alien tongue. T he other one leapt on top of Danica. They grappled, and claws slashed into Danica ’s ribs before Kane could find a shot.

He felt Danica’s scream more than heard it. T he force of it tore through his chest and filled him with loss.

“Dani! ” he shouted. He dropped the cannon and ran.

He heard a scream behind him. Jade fell to the ground. Blood seeped from her mouth and nose, and the side of her face was burned.

A fi st of light crashed into Kane’s side. H e felt his ribs crack. Blinding pain spread up and down his body. He went to his knees and fell inches away from Jade.

“Nice try,” Rake said, but he wasn’t talking to Kane or Jade, but to the vampires. “We knew the Ebon Cities would try to beat us to the Obelisk. Too bad.” The red-headed warlock held his clenched fists together. Whips of razor light shot out and tore a vampire’s head from its shoulders. The last vampire bore her fangs and soared at Rake with a dark-bladed scimitar in hand.

Danica struggled to rise. B lood poured out of her ruined stomach. Her eyes were lifeless.

Kane stood up. His head swam, and h is ribs felt like they w ere on fire. He drew his blade and ran at Rake.

Rake pulled out a Mac-10. He gunned the vampire down with hexed bullets. Kane was less than a yard away when Rake turned and shot him in the stomach.

Sharp p ain exploded through his body. He felt the bullets shred through his organs. Something inside him broke. He fell, stood up again, and stumbled forward. Everything faded in and out. Kane’s arms failed him. He couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t find the strength to lift his weapons.

He was only dimly aware of Ronan shouting to him.

Mike, Danica’s voice said in his mind. Mike…

He thought of Ekko. He saw her face, and felt her skin. He held her in his arms, touched the smooth curve of her back, felt the soft touch of her lips on his neck. He was warm, warm in the way that only Ekko had ever made him.

Everything bled to white. It was like he’d fallen into a world of light and snow. In his mind, Ekko was there, waiting in a pale field and wearing a blood red dress, the one she’d w o r n when they’d first met, when he’d be en so simple and lost and she’ d taken him away from a dull life and given him something go od, something worth living.

S he’d given him her love. I t was the greatest thing he’ d ever know n.

She was what he saw, and why he smiled, even as Rake shot him in the face and killed him.

TWENTY — ONE

Falling

Do you?

She floats in pale seas, adrift in the void. There’ s n o sound and no feeling: just her and the light.

It isn’t real, and she knows it, b ut she no longer knows what is. She hangs outside of time, held in a web. Here she is still whole. They’ve not yet robbed her of her arm and replaced it with some bastard arcane creation that doubles as a prison for her spirit. Here she still exists as she once was, not a s some monster, a fusion of living and undead, flesh and steel.

Here, she ’ s not yet become their sacrifice.

Where am I?

This is not where she is. This time, these events…they ’ ve already happened. She ’ s a prisoner again. Trapped to witness her own collapse, to watch a s a life she once knew is brutally erased.

Kane died, and Danica screamed.

Rake shot him in the face, then shot him again as the body fell soundlessly to the ground. Mike’s b ody crumpled in a bloody heap.

Her vision flashed white. The vampire voices in the back of her mind silenced as her spirit howled with rage. Her vision focused. The space between she and Rake seemed to close. Her hea rt beat filled her ears. Blood poured from her side.

“Raaaaaaaake!” she screamed.

She felt nothing in the blood steel appendage, but as the soul flame leapt from her metal fingers the false arm burned the tender flesh where it had been mounted into her scapula. Heat painfully radiated across her upper body. She cried tears of hurt.

Rake was too fast, and his spirit was too strong. B lue fire burned around his shield. He narrowed his eyes and moved towards Danica. H is spirit shimmer ed like a moving glass cage.

Ronan tackled Rake from behind. He found a hole in the warlock’s shield and rammed his katana through the Revenger’s shoulder. Rake cried out and backhanded Ronan with a fist covered in cold fire, but the swordsman held on and twisted his blade.

Danica lumbered to her feet. H er eyes caught on Kane’s corpse where it lay on the ground.

She thought about Cole.

Sickness welled in the back of her throat. She fought the whispers, the lunatic vampire dirge that lingered at the edge of her thoughts.

Maur screamed for her to watch out.

The Scarecrow came at her with its c laws. Danica leapt back, and h er spirit pulled her into the air. She barely felt hi s presence. Nothing seemed real. S he moved as if in a dream.

She barely dodged the Scarecrow’s attack. A cold arcane blade grew out of her false knuckles and hacked away a giant limb. Black puss oozed to the ground. The Scarecrow bit at her with blunted teeth. Its blackene d skull rammed against her body and knocked the wind out of her.

She felt nothing. Without even realizing it, she was back on her feet. Her blade severed its massive head. The Scarecrow sank to its knees and crashed to the floor.

Cross was tethered and tied to its back, unmoving.

Maur ran over to them. E xplosions erupted from out of the tunne l. Dark fumes and shrapnel filled the icy air.

Danica looked at Cross, and she looked at Kane.

You don’t have to lose them both.

Ronan screamed.

Rake had drawn a Bowie knife and pushed it clean through Ronan’s forearm. Energy leapt from the Revenger’s fingers and poured into Ronan, whose eyes filled with bloody light.

“No!” Danica shouted.

T he ceiling exploded with a deafening blast. B urning cinder s fell like red snow. A small airship crashed outside, just over their heads. Jets of fire seared down like blades. She saw red sky filled with fire and caustic fumes.

A flaming Black Scars tank rolled across the hole in the roof and blocked out the world. It hovered, impossibly, before it fell down through the crumbling ceiling. The groan of metal and stone filled the air. The steel juggernaut twisted and crashed to the floor with a deafening boom that shook the entire structure. Chunks of granite and rebar fell in its wake. Waves of dust and debris filled the chamber in a rolling cloud.

Maur threw his body over Cross to shield him as w ar wights and kaithoren ripped through the walls. A sickly mass of soldiers made of grave flesh and boiling rot flooded the chamber. Whirring blades and tentacles lashed everywhere.

Ronan somehow pushed through Rake’s arcane assault and head-butted him, brea k ing the other man’s nose. He pulled away and kick ed the Revenger in the st omach.

Overhead, g argoyles and vampires and Killraven s twisted and fired and tore at one another. Bullets and hexed fire roared back and forth. The sky was filled with screams.

Danica blasted undead soldiers with streams of ghost fire and acid ice. She dodged through clouds of crackling flames and blue-white explosions.

A massive and armored Razorwing twisted its way through the gap in the ceiling. Its barbed wings and hook ed claws scraped against stone. I t opened its mouth and released a horrendous howl. A vampire armed with a double-blade d axe rode in a massive saddle on its back.

Danica looked at Rake. H e stared right back at her. His eyes burned white and gold.

Rake shaped his spirit into a tendril of slithering light that he lashed around Danica’s ankle. It burned through her boot and into her flesh. S he threw a lash of razor ice at Rake, but his spirit deflected the attack, and the frozen shrapnel flew straight into the Razorwing ’s chest. The beast howled as obsidian magic pierced its dull heart and killed it instantly. It fell towards the tower of skulls.

“I’m gonna eat your fucking heart!” Ronan howled. H e leapt forward and tackled Rake. They flew over the pit and into the pillar of glass. T he Razorwing landed on it from above.

The world filled with the sound of a glacier breaking. The pillar shattered as if in slow motion. The flying beast fell through it one layer at a time. Green and white glass shattered around the draconic corpse in a hail of crystal shards. Its body writhed and twisted, and the brittle explosions eviscerated its rider.

The Razorwing plummeted into solid darkness. Thick fumes of green smoke billowed up around the dead beast and pulled it down to oblivion.

Rake and Ronan fell with the glass shards. They plummeted behind the Razorwing’s corpse, followed it into the void below.

The line around Danica’s ankle tightened and pulled her body backwards. Rake still held the other end of the arcane whip.

H er head struck the ground. She felt blood i n her hair. She slid across a field of sharp rock and shattered glass bones, out of the madness of the melee and into the open pit.

She falls. Blackness rushes past her. She’ s pulled into a shaft of midnight.

A hole fades in th e distance above her. Soon it’ s gone, obscured by yellow gases and frozen steam. She smells the age of worlds. H ollow screams and carbon wails surround her. She sees cracks in the jagged stone, holes to a bitter and smoke-filled landscape, a wasteland of bubbling iron pools and twisted flesh mountains, smoking blood geysers and pits of iron teeth.

She knows what she sees is the Carrion Rift: a twisted zone of unfinished transformations, a place of becoming, of things undone and never to be.

She sees herself fal l, a pale angel made of flesh and blood and steel. She plummets through crumbling barriers and breathing skies. Her body sinks closer to the darkness, then ascends, pulled back up towards a pocket of sanity, a place still bound by reason and solid walls.

Something hard slammed into her back. Danica’s breat h shot out of her. She twisted her body and looked around.

They were in the wide stone shaft, the Shadow Lord’s vertical portal to t he Whisperlands. They’d landed in some pocket of safety, a space unaffected by the shifting bonds and temporal winds.

She reach ed out and grabbed something. At first s he thought it was a jutting stone, and she panicked when she realized it was actually a massive talon. The surface shifted beneath her and scraped against the broken walls of the shaft. Greasy smoke hung overhead, and the hole emptied into a frosted void below.

Danica stood on the underbelly of the Razorwing. Its leather leash line and the chains that dangled from its platform saddle were w rappe d around a protrusion in the rock above, which had snar ed the plummeting corpse. Now the beast hung belly up like a massive and dead puppet, its four feet held straight up in the air. The tethered corpse banged against the side of the shaft.

T he hardened skin o n the Razorwing’s underbelly was slick with dark blood. The dragon was the size of a bus. T he chains tense d, and bits of rocks snap ped loose from the outcropping overhead. Rocks bounced off the walls and fell out of sight.

T he reptilian body shift ed beneath her. S he grasped one of its upturned hind claws and pulled herself closer to the middle of its long abdomen. Its dead tail dangled down below, and she heard it smack against the stone.

“ Danica!” Ronan shouted. His head poked out from the out cropping overhead. “Look out!”

Something slammed against her back. Danica flew forward and her face hit the stone wall. Her feet slipped, but she reached up and gripped the rock with her steel hand.

Rake came at her from behind. His fists were covered with corrosive energy. Sparks of green light licked the air. Blood ran down his broken nose and into his teeth. H e snarled with rage.

He punched at her again. Danica raised a shield, but not in time. Rake smashed through her spirit’s defenses and knocked her back. She slid and nearly fell from the dragon’s belly.

“God damn it, Danica, you ruined everything!” he yelled, and he kicked her in the stomach. Pain doubled her over. The air raced out of her lungs. “We had a nice thing going. W e were going to be on top of the food chain…” He reached down and grabbed her hair. She screamed as arcane flames leapt from his hands and burned her flesh. Her spirit kept her from catching on fire, but s earing pain flared across her face. “You’re going to be sacrificed, bitch,” he hissed.

He pushed his face close to hers. D arkness pulsed behind Rake’s eyes. D ank and oily smoke leaked from his gaze.

Rake’s mask started to slide. His skin seemed to crumble like plaster. What lay beneath the peeling flakes of skin wasn’t bone or skull, but darkness, the cold of the void, so utterly black it pained her eyes to look at him.

U nderneath the skin, he was just a shadow.

Just like Jennar. Just like The Sleeper.

She went cold inside. The darkness of The Black had hidden itself inside Rake. Maybe it had been guiding his actions all along, had used his magic and his resources and forged alliances and manipulated events to get what it wanted.

I t had put itself in a position to destroy the Obelisk.

This was not T he Sleeper. The Sleeper had been an entity of pure cruelty and destruction, an avatar of chaos and madness. This new agent of darkness was possessed of cunning and manipulation. It had laid its plans carefully and had worked in secret, only now revealing its true nature when all else had failed.

She look ed into his ic y eyes. Charcoal s moke leaked from his broken skull.

The thing that wasn’ t Rake forced its hands around her throat.

Her strength was gone. She tried to fuse her spirit into a blade, but her vision fad ed. Rake, or what had once been Rake, would win.

A sh adow fell over them, cast by the smok y light trapped in the green mist above.

Ronan yelled as he came down in a controlled fall. He grabbed Rake as he landed and pulled him away from Danica. Ronan fell back against the wall with a crack.

Danica blasted Rake with a cone of black fire that melted off his skin and knocked him from the Razorwing’s belly. He smoldered and burned as he fell, a black torch dropped in darkness.

The chains snapped. Links flew apart like shattered ice. The serpent ’s corpse dropped into darkness. Metal and stone fell like rain.

Ronan grabbed hold of the jagged wall. He reached out for Danica, but it was too late. T he dead beast fell, and she fell with it. The sight of Ronan faded from view, and she falls through liquid darkness. Dark stone passes by. There are gaps in the walls. She sees the bleeding skin of a festering land and smells an air corroded with fear.

She is weightless. She falls without fear of landing, like she ’ s suspended in an inky pool. She almost imagines herself sleeping on a bed of black down.

Her memory goes back. She remembers Cole and Kane, and her heart sha tters. She can’t believe they’ re gone.

She has the dream again, the dream of the soft room, the golden light and the feel of a lover’s skin. S he dissolves into that world, a place of silken sheets and soft pillows, of an olive dawn and the smell of plums and berries by the bedside. The desert is warm and inviting, and she wants to spend the rest of her life there, wiling away the hours, resting at Cole’s side.

Another dream. This time she’s with Kane. He’ s like a brother to her, a brother she wants, not the shit of a brother she wound up with. He smiles, and in this dream he’ s forgiven her, truly forgiven her.

She sees Cross, and she wants to hold him. She wants to fall in to his arms. She’ s dreamed about him before, but she hasn’t told him about it, can never tell him about it. She knows he ’ ll never want her, and never could. No one could, and after Lara she will never want another.

These dreams aren’t real, she tells herself. You don’t get to do this…to h ide. There can be no happiness. N ot for you. Not after the things you’ve done.

Because she remembers the prisoners, the torturous mines with their flesh-scalding steam and razor whips, the screaming children pushed into the Gauntlet to be hunted down by Ebonbacks and mutant tigers, the hollow eyes and soulless gaze of people marched to their deaths. Human life reduced to filth and chattel, and she was one of the architects of that suffering and madness.

How much blood is on your hands? Why did you think you would ever be given a chance for happiness?

She falls, and hopes she ’ ll never stop falling. S he knows she deserves no end from the nightmare of her life.

Do you?

Steven Montano

Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4)

I wait for you. You are here by my doing, and I will take you.

Steven Montano

Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4)

She lands in a field of black stone and shattered ice. The impact is somehow less severe than she’d feared. S he feels no pain, and her body barel y even registers the impact. It’s like falling into a bed of shadow, a landscape of black clouds.

The world is so dark it ’ s hard to tell if she’ s underground or not. Stones like red stars glitter overhead. The air is filled with heated smoke, and e verything is covered in dust. She tastes soot.

S he moves different ly there, steps to a strange pulse and rhythm. Everything feels slowed.

O bsidian walls riddled with fissures and cracks stand in the distance. Wine- dark waters drip down from the distant ceiling and scald the floor. The air sweat s.

Columns of bone and salt support the endless cavern. She senses something familiar about the area. A thought nags at her, a sense that she ’ s seen it before, that she’ s meant to be t here. She smells the age of th at place.

There’ s no clear path for her to follow. She stands at the center of a cavern filled with columns and mounds of bone. Echoes and howls echo th rough the darkness.

The Razorwing’s body floats by as if it’s carried by a laggard tide. D ark blood splotches the air like drops of oil. Its tongue lolls out of its mouth, and its razor teeth are cracked.

She moves, unclear as to where she needs to go. Something drives her towards a particular corner of the cavern. Blood stones and dripping red waters glow like a dusk sun. Her feet crush salt-dust stones. Blades and gun parts litter the floor, and she sees evidence of a ruined vehicle, metal machine parts and pistons, loose gears and plates of black iron. She sees a metal wheel and twisted ventilation ducts.

They are the remains of a train. She knows where she is, and knows where she must go.

Instinct makes her hesitate. If the shadow Rake has come this way, he will still need her for the sacrifice.

But what else can I do? I can’t go back.

Cross. She knows Cross is there, and without another thought she follows the metal innards of the ravaged Necronaug ht. Dust grates through her lungs. Her steps echo in the darkness.

She runs, determined not to let another friend die.

TWENTY-TWO

Morrow

Something hammers the air. It ’ s far off at first, like thunder. B lack dust shakes loose from the ceiling. The clang of metal rings in the distance. The dread ful sound approaches like a vast automaton of shadow and stone. What little light there is bleeds away.

The two remaining Shadow Lords — Tregoran and Marklahain — turn their masked faces to regard the approach. Cross senses their fear. Their p inprick eyes narrow beneath their featureless masks and their hands crackle with the glow of pale frost.

He tries to rise, but they push him back down. He can’t find his sword. Blood and puss ooze out of his wounded arms. H is eyes are crusted over with scabs.

He isn’t sure how long they’ ve beat en him. Shadows seep into his pores. Only their proximity to the gap in the worlds, the hole that leads to the Carrion Rift, keeps hi s body stable.

Only the living are lost. He still can’t determine what that means, what significance the message is supposed to hold. His mind races for an answer. It ’s something to focus on as he battles his way through the pain.

Blood pounds in his ears. He feels himself grow more corporeal by the moment. H e turns and looks at the Obelisk. T he gap in the wall is widening. Solid matter spreads like water. T he shadow dust and spectral smoke that’ s closest to the artifact slowly transforms in to crumbling granite.

Inch by inch, the cavern grows more solid, more real. He realizes this is the Shadow Lord’s doing, their way of transporting the Obelisk home.

Dark crafts float in the canyon on the other side, black iron vessels like half-moon platforms, iron dreadnaughts covered with spines and guns. They are Sorn ve hicle s. He sees the giants on the decks, grey silhouettes with crackling harpoons and massive guns. Their l one eyes shine like diamonds in to the bleeding dark of the Whisperlands.

The Shadow L ord s have communicated with them somehow, told them the Obelisk’s location in the physical world so they can come to haul it away. He c a n’t fathom how the giants ha ve survived the horrors of the Carrion Rift when no Southern Claw or Ebon Cities expedition ever has. He imagines the backing of a cadre of powerful mages and vastly superior alien technology plays some part, as does finally knowing t he Obelisk’s resting place, which the Shadow Lords had sought for so long. They had found the caverns, but they could have searched that labyrinth for years and never found anything.

And I led them right to it. Like a fool, I blundered my way to something they’d have never found on their own. Soulrazor/Avenger led the way. It knew the location all this time.

Only the living are lost.

Cross’ s heart s i nk s. The Eidolos wanted him to lead them to the Obelisk all along. It had doubtlessly been promised some power, some reward for helping the mages find their prize.

Only the living are lost. But the sword was n’t lost, and it never has been. A nd the Eidolos knew it. That clue was inc luded only as a mocking promise, a taunt to make him realize how easily he’d been used.

The Shadow Lords strike him with bludgeoning maces made of ice and darkness. The wounds dully sound in the echoes of his mind. His body twists and contorts with hurt. Blood sprays and bones crack.

Cross tries to strike back at them. He sees the sword, his sword, in Tregoran’s hand, and while the Shadow Lord can’ t use it, could never use it, the weapon is out of its yielder’s reach. He tries to grab it, and they beat him back down to the ground. His hand slips in a pool of his own blood. Frozen charcoal stone presses against his face.

The dark metal howl sounds again. A shadow stands at the edge of the shifting chamber, a man’s silhouette. It fades in and out of sight, flickers like a shadow in dying candlelight. The shape expands and recedes, twists and slithers out of view.

He knows what it is. He’ s faced it before, or something like it. Coal black skin fuses around a hardened meteor core that shines through the eye s and mouth, like the creature has swallowed an exploding star. The darkness rests in a human shell, a crumbling skin mask cloaked in black armor. The red-headed figure ’s broken skull barely contains the darkness within.

It isn’t The Sleeper — he’ s sure of that. But it’ s another refugee of the shadows, another aspect of The Black.

Tregoran and Marklahain recognize it, and they hammer it with arcane power. Acid bolts and razor lightning stream across the cavern. The air turns hot and molten. Stone melts and drips from the walls. P arts of the passageway collapse in a hail of steaming rock. He smells burning stone and scalding water.

The shadow advances, unscathed. The magic bend s around its outstretched hands and burn s new passageways in the shadow stone. Hollow screams echo through the cavern. Sonic bursts cut through the rock.

Pulses of black and red energy peel away from the shadow like waves of rolling water. T he Shadow Lords are crushed and eviscerated by storms of black sound.

The creature doesn’t stop. Its howl shakes the cavern. His ears bleed.

Its dark hands conjure a vitriolic ball of acid shadow, a sphere the size of a human heart. The missile flies at Cross. It s plits reality like a razored wedge pushed through an icy floe. He twists out of the way.

The sphere barrels past the Obelisk and knock s it aside. The artifact teeters at the edge of the cliff face. It dangles over the precipice, nearly fall s into the Rift.

The sphere of dread matter shatters the barrier between worlds and tears into th e Sor n vehicles on the other side. The vessels explode. Charred metal falls in to the Rift’s hellish depths.

The Shadow moves towards him. What’ s left o f its disguise melts away. It’ s just darkness now. C rumbling bits of bone and flesh dangle from its ebon body like shreds of paper. The ground melts beneath it. Glowing eyes capture Cross and freeze his heart.

A blast of fire strikes the Shadow from behind. The attack does no harm, but the flames distract it.

Danica stands in the distance, the source of the roiling flames. She has changed, somehow — the sense of her spirit is muted, the pulse of her life force has been altered and shifted, but there is no question it’ s her, in the flesh, adrift in the Whisperlands the same as he is. S he hammers the minion of The Black with as much power as he ’ s ever seen her channel at once. He feels the pain as it roll s through her body, and he senses her fatigue.

The Shadow turns toward her. In that fraction of a second, Cross’s hand closes around the hilt of his blade, and he lifts it from the ground. H e rises and strikes with every last reserve of his strength.

He pushes Soulrazor/Avenger into the Shadow’s back. The creature’s howl blasts the ceiling apart. Stone rain falls around them. Frozen vapors blast against Cross. His lungs crystallize, and his fingers go black.

H e manages to hold on. T he gale shoves against him. He clings to the hilt even as his feet slide back ward s al on g the ground. He smells the creature’s void heart. M eteor blood drip s like silver from its wounded shadow flesh.

He g rip s the hilt of his b lade and throws his body forward. He pushes the sword all of the way through the Shadow with a cry of pain and rage.

The Shadow explodes. Cross is thrown back. He loses direction. Everything twist s around him.

He sees Snow and Graves. He sees Dillon and St one and Cristena. He sees Mom and D ad. All of them stand together at the edge of a forest glade. He wants to run to them, to be with them.

Mold darkness fills his vision. He smells brimstone and hex fumes, forest rot and burning coal. He smells fresh cut wood and acrid smoke.

He smells the train.

Backwards. I’m fading backwards.

He sees the train fal l up through the air. I ts bladed crenellations fuse together. Thick cars bound with blade s and wire s collapse inward. Stones and rubble ascend along the cliff face, an inverted waterfall.

For the briefest of moments, he feels himself drawn into the past.

A face pulls him back. It hangs right over him. Green eyes like smoothed emeralds bleed into view. Hair turned pale blonde falls around his face. He feels her warm breath and her moist lips. He kisses her back.

His body knits itself together. Blood seeps out of wounds as they seal from within. His b ones realign and pull themselves into place. Sharp cuts hiss closed as if cauterized. Tears of pa i n roll down his face. He grips the earth with one hand, and holds her hand with the other.

Danica Black’s spirit heals him. S he mends the warlock’s broken body. Veins fuse closed. Muscles twist and right themselves. Internal organs that had been bruised and gashed pump o ut hostile fluids and eject them from the rents in his flesh before his injuries seal shut.

The process is agonizing. He feels every muscle shift, every ventricle fall back into place, every bone re- set and every inch o f broken skin pull back together. He screams.

His eyes open. He can’t be su re how long it’ s been.

Danica looks down at him. She is so beautiful. Her eyes glimmer in the half light. Her hair is paler, faded, but it feels like silk in his fingers. One arm is encased in armor, and it feels cold against him, but the rest of h er smooth skin feels so warm. She hovers just inches over his face.

He wants to tell her how he feels, but he can’t find the strength.

Something looms over her shoulder, something pale and monstrous. Glittering onyx eyes hold the reflection of he and Danica, many versions of the two mages as they rest there on the ground. They are happy and together in some reflections, and they lie dead in others. In the largest eye, the one he can best see as the massive spider silently twists in the air behind Danica, the image is clear. H e is alone.

The spider snatches Danica Black and rips her backwards into darkness. Ice tendrils and webs of iron wrap around her body. She doesn’t even have time to release a scream. The spider falls away and fades into the shadows.

It was her, he realizes. All this time, all of these events it manipul ated…it wanted Danica all along. B ut not just Danica… the transformed Danica. Whatever happened to her, whatever was done to her, it had to happen before the spider would take her.

He tries to rise, but he can’t. He’ s still far too weak. Tears pour down his face, and his heart pounds with loss. Wracking sobs overtake the warlock as he lies there, alone in the dark.

He looks out from the void.

He is nothing. A ghost presence. A phantom.

He has been t here for so very long.

He can’t be sure how long it’ s been since Azradayne took Danica. He can’t begin to imagine what the spider wants with her, or how Black was changed. He remembers her armor arm, and he somehow knows that her spirit is bound to it. He ’d felt the change in her, the shift in her life force. S he’d been prepared for some dread purpose of the spider’s design, even if whoever had altered her had n’t been aware of what that design was.

And it’ s his fault.

H e stands at the edge of worlds, finally given a way home. To get there he will pass through the Carrion Rift, a place where no human or vampire has ever returned from. He doesn’t doubt that the place will likely be his end, but he has to try.

He can’t return to the Whisperlands. He knows the spider is no longer there. It has plans for Danica, and he has to find out what they are.

If I have to search for you for the rest of my life, I will.

He stands next to the Obelisk. The wavering shadow curtain marks the final bound ary, the tapestry between realities. Everything is uncertain behind him, fading shadow s and repeating moments, tangents of himself folded one over the other. Everything ahead is solid.

The Obelisk isn’ t safe there. Not anymore.

H e throws his body against it. M uscles strain. His calves and shoulders ache, and he fears he isn’t strong enough, but finally the stone shifts, the dirt cracks and parts, and the Obelisk pitched forward into open air. The atmosphere was toxi c. Cross gagged on the scent of burning bodies and hex rot, and he fell against the canyon wall to catch his breath.

The Obelisk plummeted. The artifact struck the dark and jagged walls before it vanished into cloud s of black fog below. Cross heard no impact, and knew that he wouldn’t — it was just stupid luck that the Obelisk had ever landed t here and been lodged in that fissure in the Rift wall. I t had dangled there for years, stuck between worlds on a crumbling ledge.

M onstrous calls echo ed all around him. The ledge he stood on climbed up wards at a steep angle, forming a rough path along the canyon wall. When he was in the Whisperlands h e’ d spied clefts in the Rift’s wall s, shallow rock shelves and steep slopes, walkways and ancient ladders. If he was lucky he might be able to find his way to the surface.

Cross held the blade in his leathery fingers. He felt the beard on his face, and he ran his hands over cracked and aging skin. He shook as he stood t here, burdened with regret. He had n o idea what had happened to the rest of his team. He didn’t even know if any of them were still alive. He had no idea how to find Danica, or how to even start.

For a moment his eyes went to the black smog below, to the void of shadows and screams and vented cold fumes. I t would be so easy to go there, to drop down into that utter darkness. To be done with it all.

The notion only crossed his mind for a moment. He shook himself. He would n’ t take that easy path. All his life Cross had tried to do the right thing, to make the right choice.

And that means pain sometimes, he told himself. That means walking the difficult road and finding your way, even when there’s no one there to help you. The dead have the easy road: they know the way, because that decision has already been made for them.

Only the living are lost.

He held the image of Danica’s face in his mind, then turned and started the arduous climb up the narrow ledge. He had a long way to go.

Content

Steven Montano
Crown of Ash

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY — ONE

TWENTY-TWO