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Authors: Steven Alan Montano

Black Scars (22 page)

BOOK: Black Scars
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He worked through a physical routine that he somehow remembered even when everything else had grown hazy and disconnected. He lunged and parried with a phantom blade, leapt and kicked away from the walls, positioned his legs to do sit-ups and lunges.
Snow. Dillon. Graves.
Lucan.
Slowly the details of the dream returned to him. His fingers shook as he moved them to his neck. There was, as expected, no wound there, but he
had
been wounded, and though he didn’t understand how he at last knew what was happening to him, why he continued to heal even when she shouldn’t have been able to.
His spirit bristled at the realization. The air around him turned cold and bitter, the taste of her anger. Cross ignored her. She’d have the opportunity to vent her rage soon enough. He felt her frustration build and fester like a boil. It would be ugly when it erupted, but that was what he needed this time. He kept imagining a way to beat the Regost, and containing his spirit’s anger was the key.
If Lucan was still alive, that meant the Sleeper could still be stopped, and that was all that mattered. He tried not to think about Dillon or his pain, dangling from that stone, watching Cross fail, praying to see a family he had no chance of ever seeing again. He thought about Danica Black, and Kane. He would have to fight them at some point, he knew it.
Win. That’s all that matters. Win, at any cost.
By the time the bolt on the door slid back, he was ready. They would give him his weapons later, but Cross’ mind was focused and alert. He knew what he had to do.
Tega Ramsey was there with the sentries. He often came into the cell with the salt-encrusted zombie whose sole purpose was to prepare Cross for battle. It helped him don his leather and chain armor, fastened the arcane gauntlet to his hand and gave him his bone blade. Its rotting eyes were perfect mirrors that showed Cross his weather-beaten face.
He tried not to look too long. He barely recognized himself.
“
So tell me,” he said to Ramsey as the zombie slid the black gauntlet onto his hand. The Gol stood leaning against the doorway with his arms folded. “Does Kane know that you’ve Turned Ekko into a vampire?”
Cross took some satisfaction in the surprise that showed in Ramsey’s milky eyes.
“
He knows that she is
being
Turned,” he said carefully. “He knows that she will not be fully of The Blood unless he falls.” Ramsey turned his head. “And there is no way you could know that, Cross,” he said. The crease in his face wrap betrayed his wry smile. He understood what was happening, maybe even better than Cross himself did. “You are so very full of surprises.”
“
Yeah,” Cross said. His rage was growing. “And you are so very full of shit. I’m getting out of here, Tega. You and I will settle accounts after I do.”
The zombie handed Cross his sword.
Ramsey stood there in his tattered crimson robes, his scarred and ugly face defiant, a full two feet shorter than Cross. Cross badly wanted to put his blade through the little man’s head, but he knew it would accomplish nothing. Ramsey smirked.
“
The chances of you ever leaving this city are slim, my friend,” Ramsey said. “And the chances of you being rescued are even less, not without someone on the inside to
help
you be found. But you already knew that.” He paused, and his eyes narrowed. “Tell me…did you ever wonder why
you
were the one fighting, and not Dillon?”
Had I?
Cross felt sure he had. It was a logical question. Between the two of them, Dillon was unquestionably the better physical specimen: he was tall and muscular, athletic and graceful, strong.
“
Cross,” Ramsey smiled again. “Think. Both you and Dillon are only alive because of the deal that Danica Black arranged for you. The deal was that one of you would fight, and the other would suffer as a hostage.” Ramsey stepped close. It would have been so easy for Cross to kill him then and there.
No. Dillon. Dillon needs you. You have to find Lucan. Snow. Dillon. Graves. Lucan.
“
And?” he growled.
“
It was Danica Black that chose
you
to do the fighting, and not Dillon. Any idea why?”
Ramsey didn’t wait for a response, but turned and marched down the long hallway. The vampires shoved Cross into the corridor. He felt he could destroy them before the spirit dampeners sent lances of fire into his brain, like they had when he’d struck down the skeleton on the arena floor.
But that meant Dillon would die. That meant Lucan would die. He had no way of knowing what the Southern Claw knew. Cross had no choice but to assume that there was no one who would act against the Sleeper but himself.
Why did Danica choose me?

 

He lost time. He always fell into a sort of trance when he moved towards the arena, but he couldn’t tell if it was some effect of Krul or if it was the mind-altering drugs they fed through his water and food to make him less dangerous until it was time to fight. The world faded to a blur. His steps grew distant. Everything slowed.
He thought about Snow. The memories came unbidden, but he didn't fight them. He saw her at her apartment that first night after he'd learned she was to be a member of Viper Squad. He should have felt rage and pain at her betrayal, but all of that had been left behind. They sat in her cramped apartment, surrounded by thin shelves of books, and they ate warm bread and cheese and drank red wine. They tried to make up for years spent distant from one another in a single night. In the end it had just felt awkward, like they'd only brought to light how far apart they’d grown.
“
I'm sorry, Snow.”
He wasn't sure if he spoke aloud or not. He didn't really care.
The arena doors opened ahead of him. Cross immediately noted that something was different. The air wasn’t as still as it had been on past trips to the arena. Something had come alive. He could all but taste it in the air, a sense of predatory anticipation, an animal musk.
Pale lights floated in the air and cast the world in ghastly shadows. Hundreds of vampire eyes watched as he entered the arena. For once he was not the first gladiator there, but the last. The semi-circle of other combatants watched stoically as he approached. He saw several humans, a new Vuul, and a Sorn. He saw Tower, Kane and Black. Every fighter, Cross included, wore darker armor than they normally did, pitch black leather and chain and hard plates that made the fighters almost invisible in the false indoor night. Floating silver flames and flying serpents passed like fish through a shadow sea.
The platform started to descend. Heavy chains rattled in the darkness.
A new figure in the stands caught Cross’ eye. She had never been there before, but he knew who she was: Morganna, the true leader of Krul, Talos Drake’s lover, and an assassin and enforcer for the Grim Father. She was moon-pale and severe, with a jutting jaw and thick hair held in place with a silver-capped stick made from black bone. Her dark dress and talons matched Drake’s hussar, and she wore a katana identical to his in every way. Morganna’s eyes were on Cross as he walked across the floor. He held her gaze.
His spirit knew what was coming. He felt her lustful and bloody desire to release her pent-up rage.
The stone platform from above came to a halt just as Cross reached the circle and took his place. He didn’t want to look up, didn’t want to find his friend. If he didn’t see him, maybe he could imagine that he was stuck in some terrible dream, a nightmare he might still be able to wake up from. Maybe if he didn’t see Dillon, the soul-breaking pressure of how badly he needed to win wouldn’t weigh him down.
Kane stood directly across from him. His eyes were closed, and his arms were at his side. He had no one to look for on the stone.
Cross also saw Black out of the corner of his eye. Her face was a mask, hard and unafraid. The space behind her eyes was dead and cold.
In spite of himself, Cross looked up. He found Dillon after just a few seconds, and his heart cracked. The ranger was emaciated and thin to the point of being skeletal. One eye was gone, replaced by a dark and dripping hole. His legs were swollen, covered in cuts that had caused his flesh to go gray. Dried blood encrusted his arms and wrists where they’d worn beneath the chains that held him suspended. His one eye looked dead and void, but after a moment Cross realized that Dillon stared right at him. The ranger trembled as he dangled there beneath the stone. His jaw set, Dillon slowly nodded the same confidant nod that Cross had grown used to seeing, and then he smiled.
Something inside of Cross died at that moment.
He stepped onto the arena floor unbidden. The tall skeletal form that was the master of ceremonies recoiled, and it hovered higher off the ground.
Cross’ breathing came in fast and violent bursts. He felt like he’d grown jaws. His spirit concentrated her form into a nimbus of crackling black energy that filled the air with the tang of ozone and burning matter. She covered his left arm like a gauntlet of shifting shadows.
Tower stepped onto the arena. Its great blade was honed from a single shard of obsidian steel. Its armored faceplate concealed dead and false skin. Salt-and-pepper hair had been pulled back to reveal entirely blank and useless eyes. The Regost’s boots stamped the stone as it marched. It kicked up dust and made pale clouds of bone debris.
Tower charged without a moment’s hesitation, the attack silent but for the shift of its armor. Cross’ bone blade was in his hands in time to deflect the first heavy blow and spin Tower away, but the Regost’s timing had improved, and it turned and hammered two, three more blows against Cross’ blade. He fought one-handed, held the bastard blade at an angle that made it an extension of his arm. He moved with the attacks, and even though the blows rattled his bones his feet were fluid and kept moving.
Cross counterattacked. His strikes were fast, aimed to deliver quick jabs into Tower’s husk of a body, testing his defenses rather than seeking to do damage. Tower’s armor was thicker than Cross’, made of dark plate held in place with leather straps. Soul smoke churned beneath the faceplate and out of artificial eyes as the Regost furiously blocked Cross’ blows with such strength it was a wonder the blades didn’t snap.
His spirit retained her composure. Something about their bond with Ekko calmed her. She was able to wait rather than explode in anger, which would have surely killed them both.
Cross continued to dance around his opponent, and while the Regost’s host body wouldn’t tire, the vaporous being within grew impatient. Dark and spectral steam wrapped around the flesh automaton and turned the air into haze. Steel rang against steel and sent sparks to the ground.
Unmoving faces watched the two warriors shift and dance. Cross’ heart pumped with power and anxiety. His spirit froze his arm till it was nearly ice.
He anticipated Tower’s moves. Every sword swing was a powerful strike, but he moved quicker than Cross recalled, so both the force and speed of the attacks made the Regost difficult to guard against. Regardless, Cross could dictate the direction from which Tower launched its strikes simply by changing his own stance.
He saw Dillon’s nod in his mind’s eye.
Cross grit his teeth, stepped in close, and forced Tower to set its feet and make a downward swing that would take Cross’ head and arm off at the shoulder. His spirit exploded around his skin, scalded him with bitter cold that froze into a solid barrier around his left arm.
His veins froze. His bones felt brittle and weak.
Cross’ arm was coated in dark frost, and he held it out before him like a shield. The ice armor ruptured as Tower’s sword crashed down, and both sword and ice shattered like glass. Black crystal light and fused steel exploded into crystal shards.
Pain echoed down Cross’ body in waves. Every bone in his arm broke, and he screamed in pain.
But with Tower committed and its weapon destroyed – Cross’ magic had never touched the Regost, only its sword – Cross threw himself into his opponent and pushed his bone blade into Tower’s abdomen. The Regost panicked, put all of its life force into holding its host body upright, but Cross kicked forward and threw off its weight, forced his enemy deeper onto his sword. Cross sank his blade in to its hilt.
Blinded with pain, Cross held the blade firm. Dark artificial blood pooled around his unwounded hand. His spirit held on in the air behind him, extended, exhausted. He watched the gray liquid vapor of the Regost drain away. The creature’s life force sizzled as it fell to the ground like dripping fat.
Cross collapsed onto his knees. Already he felt Ekko’s vampiric power fuse his shattered bones back together. His spirit did what she could to numb the intense pain. Tears welled in his eyes. He heard his bones crack as they mended and realigned like puzzle pieces inside of his flesh. The world spun, and then it seemed to fall away beneath him, as if he floated. He dropped his sword.
He felt the disapproving eyes of Morganna and the vampire elite. Cross looked up at them defiantly. Hatred for the vampires of Krul burned in his soul.
Cross teetered at the edge of consciousness. He arched his body backwards and looked up at the prisoner’s slab, that grisly chandelier that hung over the battlefield. Dillon had passed out. Cole, her eyes deep and sallow and her arms riddled with so many cuts that she looked like a grisly road map, gave him a faint smile.
BOOK: Black Scars
2.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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