“Cross changed it, too,” she continued. “I’m not sure how, but he figured out a way to localize what happened to him. Like you and Ronan said, he exploded…but we’re still here. We stopped it. We somehow emerged from the time stream, in the past, with the knowledge that saved Thornn.”
Kane looked at her, dumbfounded.
“Ok…you’re confusing the shit out of me and pissing me off at the same time,” he laughed. He laughed a lot when he was nervous, and he always had. That was why, she guessed, he was always such a smartass. “This Dr. Who shit is great, but it still doesn’t explain the gun.”
“Think!” Black said. “We saw Shadowmere Keep, which had been an Ebon Cities stronghold. Cross’ gun was found bearing residue used by the Ebon Cities. Time isn’t a constant for him now, and it hasn’t been ever since he fell into that crap.”
Black stopped and took a breath. The realization of what she’d just figured out hit her like a hammer in the mind.
“Wait…” Kane said. “Are you saying that Cross is being held at Shadowmere Keep?”
“Yes,” she said. “And I think he’s been there for a very long time. Like maybe twenty years.”
They left later that night. Shadowmere Keep was over 400 miles away, south of Rimefang Loch and near Blackmarsh, but they didn’t plan to head there directly.
Creasy and Roth thought they were crazy for wanting to leave after sunset. Bloodwolves were nocturnal by nature, and though they were perfectly capable of hunting during the daylight hours they were even more dangerous at night. Still, without the Darkhawk, and with no other mode of speedy transport available, they had little choice.
The people of Wolftown sent them on their way with a stock of dried meat and flares, as well as extra winter clothing made from wolf hide. Kane joked that they were trying to avoid the wolves, not attract more of them.
Black’s spirit moved out ahead of them. It was strange to be the only mage in the group. She hadn’t even had time to reflect on the loss of Ash.
Both she and her brother had been good people, quiet but friendly members of the team, and Danica had gotten very used to them both. She tried to remind herself that this was not the first time they’d lost teammates – she’d witnessed the deaths of Frye, Zane, Tayanna, Kendrick, Hewer and Lorne – but it felt like it had been a long time since those others had been killed, and she hadn’t known most of them nearly as well as she’d come to know the brash but unassuming half-Doj and his knowledgeable and warm-hearted sister.
There’s no time for that now, she told herself. You’ll have time to grieve if you live through this.
They passed through fields of oily darkness. Bitter howls carried in the wind. The grim moon painted the plains white. Trees and jagged hills loomed in the distance like threatening predators. Black mist crept off the surface of dark ice streams and frozen pools.
They moved with their eyes alert and their weapons ready. Black’s spirit had done a decent job of knitting her wounded leg back together, and though she was still in some pain she was able to move at about three-quarters of her regular speed, or faster if she pulled him back from reconnaissance and allowed him to assist her movement.
She felt the anxiousness in her spirit’s motions, the fear. She wasn’t used to it. Her spirit was impetuous, masculine, and he always tried to pull away from her so he could be the first to act. Now he was cowed, not by any particular threat or danger, but, like the rest of them, by the gravity of what they’d lost. He was filled with regret and remorse.
Strange, she thought, how he picks up the slack for my emotions like that. I’ve spent most of my life suppressing my feelings. I could never allow them to get in the way.
Kane and Ronan moved ahead of Black and Maur. The Gol kept up with everyone as best he could – sometimes one of the other men carried him, but since Black wasn’t exactly moving at full speed he made a suitable traveling companion when the other two got too far ahead.
She would liked to have requisitioned one of Wolftown’s pack lizards, but Roth and Creasy made it all too clear they weren’t going anywhere near the crater again, and they wouldn’t spare manpower to a group of mercenaries apparently bent on getting themselves killed…which was why Black was so pleasantly surprised when Creasy suddenly caught up with them.
When she and Maur heard a steady thumping sound that turned out to be the pale lizard’s oversized claws pounding on the ground, they readied their weapons, sure they’d been ambushed. The fact that they’d not heard the lizard’s approach until Creasy was practically on top of them was testament to the natural stealth of the creatures, especially considering the moon-colored beasts were nearly nine feet long from tip to tail.
Creasy was accompanied by a trio of warriors, two men and a woman, all dressed in heavy white furs. Their faces were painted with pale blue and blood red war paint, and their hair was braided or pulled away from their weather-beaten skin.
“Son of a bitch,” Kane laughed.
Creasy just nodded. His dark face had also been rune-painted, and his thick fingers and wrists were bound in onyx jewelry that pulsated with arcane resonance.
“We thought you were busy,” Black smiled.
“Roth doesn’t take debts lightly,” Creasy said solemnly. “You helped protect Wolftown. Merely showing you where to go isn’t sufficient recompense for that.” Creasy smiled. His teeth were stark white, a sharp contrast to his dark skin. “Besides, Roth may look like a barbarian, but it’s easy to make him feel guilty. He wasn’t going to get a decent night’s sleep until we set things right.”
With the aid of the lizards (each of the team rode behind one of the riders, Black with Creasy, and Kane with one of the men, which he quietly griped about the entire time since Ronan got to ride with the warrior dame), their rate of progress tripled.
They leapt over dust dunes and traversed the craggy hills with ease. The beasts never seemed to tire, and they were nearly silent as they pranced across the plains. Their footfalls grew even quieter the faster they ran, and the slash of their lengthy tails against the dusty ground was the only sound they made.
Cold wind blasted the party. For a good stretch of time they easily moved as fast as motor vehicles.
The morning sun broke over the horizon, and they rode straight towards the molten dawn. Unnaturally grey mist rose from the ground. Ashes and soot carried in the chill breeze. Red-gold sunbeams sliced through charcoal clouds as the lizards crushed frozen moss and brittle stones underfoot.
The riders huddled in close and wrapped their cloaks tight to protect against the ice hard wind. No one spoke.
The white-skinned mounts and their cargo strode into black lands just minutes after dawn. Dead forests loomed to the east, and thin columns of smoke rose into the air from the south, seemingly straight out of the ground.
The crater was dark and quiet. Danica swore she heard a low moan in the air, as if some ghastly choir was at work.
They dismounted as they drew close, and kept their eyes and ears alert and focused on the crater perimeter, searching for sentries.
Everything was still.
Black sent her spirit ahead. Immediately she sensed something wrong with the area. The air was thick with death and magic, but it wasn’t the same signature as they’d encountered there before – this was something else, something more like traditional magic, a warlock’s magic, but it was warped and twisted.
It was also familiar. She felt like she recognized it, but the arcane signature had been changed, somehow, altered.
She signaled the team to move into the crater in two groups of four, her team and Creasy’s team. There was no need for them to circumvent the hole this time, as her spirit was quite certain nothing roamed around the machine gun nest. He noted nothing alive in the crater, period.
The slope was steep and the ground ran with dank red fluid that looked like meat juices. The stench of rot was thick. Their boots slid and slurped in black earth as they trekked down.
Black nearly
fell twice, but Kane kept his arm under her to steady her descent. Creasy’s team moved down a similar slope a little further to the east, and the teams came to the floor of the wide crater almost simultaneously.
The smoking remains of the arcane tower still smoldered on the ground, along with the bodies of the mercenaries they’d killed before. Nothing had been there to loot the corpses or lay claim to the area.
No predators will come near here, she thought. This area reeks of the unnatural.
Her spirit struggled against that bitter tide of resonant black energies. It was as close as a spirit could come to choking, she figured, but she held him firm. She’s need him, and soon.
The dark hole that led to the gate loomed before them. Icy scorch marks from the earlier battle still marked the stone on the crater wall, and the supply boxes inside the tunnel had been smashed and tools and munitions had spilled to the ground.
Inky clouds crept into the sky overhead, too sudden and quick to be natural. Danica sensed hex in the air, a charnel electricity mixed with churning cold. She cast her spirit out, and he almost collided with Creasy’s female spirit – the warlock had obviously sensed the disturbance, as well, and a quick reconnaissance to the south and west of the crater confirmed their fears.
Undead. Practically on top of them.
They used the same cloaking effect that the Ebon Cities had during the attack on Thornn.
Stupid, she told herself. You know exactly how to search for that now. You have no excuse.
“Trouble,” she told the others.
“Of course,” Kane said sardonically. “How many, and where?”
“South and west. Undead.” She concentrated for a second, tried to focus on the void auras, the unspaces, but it was difficult. The undead were still partially cloaked. “Lots.”
“That’s encouraging, Chief,” Kane said with a wry smile.
“I try.”
“We’d better hurry the hell up, then,” Ronan said.
“Maur hopes they come,” the Gol said. “He owes them.”
“Unless you have a tactical nuke handy, bud, then we need to beat feet,” Kane said.
Creasy whistled. Danica thought he was signaling them, but the sound had been directed at the lizards, who gracefully moved down the hill and across the crater floor.
Overhead, the clouds melted like freezing black sludge. A sound like cracking ice rang through the sky as vapors turned solid and folded into one another.
She saw eyes form in that darkness. Shadows fused into blade hands. Razor showers fell towards them, a dismal spray of hardened necrotic waste.
Danica raised a shield just in time. Onyx crystals shattered against her spirit, and his pain nearly doubled her over.
She looked up into the undead cloud. Vapors swirled into a vortex, a black tornado with smoking white eyes and dripping teeth. Dark blue lightning crackled within.
“What the hell is that?!” Kane shouted.
Black knew, but she couldn’t explain it. The churning undead force had abandoned all precept of concealing its arcane signature. That presence was possessed of magic, human magic – it had been crafted from it, would not exist without it.
That was impossible, of course…but not as impossible as whose magical signature Danica detected in the carnivore cloud.
Cross.
Cross’ spirit gave that apparition life, and fueled its madness and hunger. Its rage was almost limitless, as were its abilities.
It was an unrestrained arcane spirit, a free-floating specter of power. It didn’t make sense. When a spirit’s mage died, the spirit was returned to its own world, and forever lost. It shouldn’t have been possible.
None of this should be possible.
“GO!” she shouted. “We have to get through that gate, now!”
The spirit assaulted them again. Black was afraid to send her own spirit against it. She had no idea what would happen to him in a head-to-head confrontation with Cross’ out-of-control power.
The vortex spirit hammered them with its might. It hardened into a spiral of shadow, a behemoth spike that rippled with barely contained explosive force. Danica saw a phantom of a face in that roiling electric mist, a miasma of images that took on the semblance of a human female who looked vaguely familiar.
Left without a choice, Danica used her spirit and reformed the shield, which had only barely held off the first assault. She had little confidence that it would hold up against a more concentrated attack.
Creasy’s spirit soared in and reinforced them, but even with combined effort the spirit shield cracked and nearly shattered beneath the renewed onslaught. Dead breath washed over them with gale force. Danica’s feet fused to the ground, and her body twisted in pain.
Finally, the attack ceased. The dark spirit folded back into itself, broke apart and slipped like a smoke serpent into the hole in the crater wall. It moved towards the passage.
Moments after it vanished, void figures silently rose up from the earth. Utterly dark and still, the humanoids looked like miniature versions of The Sleeper, with white eyes and smoking claws and emanating cold so utter it gnawed through to the bone.
“Black wraiths!” Danica shouted, and she lashed her spirit out as a wave of sharp force that sliced a wraith in two. There were a dozen more of the creatures, and they rose all over the crater and came at the team from every direction.
“Go!” Creasy shouted. His spirit turned into sizzling flame spikes that hailed down on the undead. The Wolftown hunters fired at the wraiths and tried to hold them back.
Kane didn’t hesitate. He took Black by the hand and ran towards the tunnel.
Dark claws came at them, the hands of lesser shades, but Black’s spirit moved like a blazing wedge that cast the shadow humanoids aside.
Gunfire raged behind them, and Danica sensed Creasy’s spirit coil up tight before it lashed out and flung shadow men through the air. More wraiths came at them. Smoking limbs reshaped into keen edges that leaked dark vapors.
The Wolftown men leapt onto their lizard mounts and rode into their enemies. They fired rifles and slashed with blades. Creasy cloaked them all in hex shrouds of crackling arcane power.
One of the lizards stayed away from the melee. It ran right up next to Danica with such speed that for a moment she was afraid it wasn’t going to stop, but the beast came to a halt just a few inches away.
She quickly jumped onto its back. Ronan helped Maur climb up behind her, and he and Kane ran after them as they charged towards the cave.
Black wraiths bounced away from Danica’s spirit shield. Several undead threw themselves directly in front of the cave, and their forms expanded into sheets of shadow tapestry, a fused darkness that waved like a banner in their path. Her spirit tore straight through them. The battle rage was in him, and his spectral form was filled with fire.
They moved into the tunnel, threw themselves off the lizard and raced for the gate. The ice-colored reptilian mount turned and snarled with fury even as undead tore into its pale hide and brought it to the ground.
They ran past crates and camp remains. The horde of wraiths was right on their tail. Ice spread along the walls as the undead drew closer.
Maur and Ronan ran ahead, leapt over blankets and discarded canteens, and evaporated into the dark archway. Danica saw more wraiths move along the pattern of jagged stone. They melted out of the cracks like wax.
Her spirit circled her like a protective animal. She felt his hot breath, and heard the snarl of phantom fangs.
Kane blasted a shadow with his shotgun, once, twice, and then threw the weapon aside when it was out of ammo and drew his short sword.
Out in the crater, Creasy used his spirit to mow back and forth through the undead ranks like she was a massive saw blade. Two of his men had fallen.
“Danni…” Kane said.
“I know,” she said, and she took a deep breath. Choking vapors scratched down her throat. Her spirit burned in her lungs.
She exhaled, an
d her spirit roared out and exploded like a firestorm. The air turned molten bright as her spectral companion soared over Creasy’s head and erupted into a horizontal disc of flame. The wraiths assembled near the mage scattered, and those that didn’t move in time were torn into sparks and shreds.
The blast bought the Wolftown hunters just enough time to gather themselves. Creasy and his last companion had the advantage once more.
“Will more of those things show up?” Kane asked.
“I don’t think so,” Black said. She took a moment to steady herself. The effort of that last attack had knocked the wind from her lungs and left her dazed…she felt like she’d taken two shots of whiskey and then did fifty jumping jacks. “Whatever that thing is, it won’t bother with Creasy anymore. It’s going to try and keep us from getting to Cross.”
“Ronan and Maur…”
“Should have waited. Let’s go.”
Dread filled her veins as they approached the gate. The last time they’d stepped through, they’d fallen into the past, and after that they’d found themselves in a future where everything had died.
Part of her still felt trapped on the other side. She’d been incomplete ever since that journey, like she was only partially alive. If she in went again, there was a chance she’d lose even more of herself.
Too bad for you, she thought. You owe him. And you owe yourself.
Kane stepped through the archway and vanished, like he’d fallen face-first into an oily pool. Bitter cold emanated from the doorway, and Danica’s spirit recoiled.
Without another thought she pulled him in tight, took a breath, and stepped through the gate.
NINETEEN
KEEP
Ribbons of darkness unfold around her. She sees angel’s wings and broken glass as she falls through a sky filled with blistered clouds and frozen teardrops. It seems as if she has fallen for years.
Maybe I have been.
She recalls better times, all of them from later in her life. There isn’t much worth remembering from her youth: eluding vampires, keeping her brother alive, hiding from her father every time he decides she’s prettier than her mother, being enslaved and turned into a whore, and then a killer, joining the Southern Claw just long enough to be sent on a suicide mission.
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