He saw a flicker of movement near the vampire. Cross aimed his shotgun in that direction when Keegan came out of the shadows behind him, machete in hand. Cross couldn’t turn in time.
A bullet took Keegan in the back of the head, and he stumbled and fell.
Danica and Cole appeared from behind a nearby chunk of stone. Danica held a smoking Colt Python in her hand. She still bled from her side, and if not for Cole supporting her weight she wouldn’t have been standing at all. They both looked exhausted beyond measure.
“ Cradden,” Danica said. “He took Keth.”
“ Which way did they go?” Cross asked.
“ Through the far alcove, straight across.”
Cross ripped a piece of cloth out of his pack and quickly tied it around his leg. The bullet had gone clean through, and he’d already lost a fair amount of blood. The wound stung, and even just shifting his weight made him wince with hurt. His spirit swam beneath his arms like ghostly crutches. She poured energy into him, melted into his blood like warm vapor. He felt her mend the torn flesh and stitch his skin back together. It would take time to properly heal, but with her stabilizing him Cross knew that he wouldn’t have to worry about further blood loss or infection.
If only she could make the damn pain stop.
He looked at the women. Though she looked like she’d had a brush with death, Lara Cole forced Danica Black to sit down. Cole dutifully opened Black’s armor jacket, lifted her shirt up to clean her belly, and pulled a strip of cloth from her own undershirt to help stem the bleeding. She smiled at Black. Her expression was sturdy and stern, yet tender.
Cross was suddenly very jealous.
“ Do we still have a deal?” he asked Black. She gave him a venomous look. “Look, Dillon and I just saved your girlfriend’s life. Twice. And for the record…it hurt.”
“ What deal?” Cole demanded of Black. She had a husky voice, hard-edged, and her tone was just as poisonous as Danica’s.
Oh, yeah, you two make a lovely couple. I bet you’re tons of fun to hang out with.
“ Yes,” Black said. “We still have a deal. And Cross…thank you.”
Cross reloaded the Remington, returned it to its shoulder strap, and pulled out his pistol.
“ What are you doing?” Black asked him.
“ I can’t let your brother take Lucan. It’s too dangerous.”
Black’s contemptuous look turned to something like fear.
Good, Cross thought. That means you might finally understand how serious I am about this.
“ Don’t hurt him,” she said coldly. “Don’t hurt my brother.”
“ Screw that,” Cole said angrily. Black winced as Cole less than delicately cleaned the buckshot wound in her side.
“ What are the odds that Cradden can undo Lucan’s safeguards?” Cross asked. “Can he release Lucan’s spirit?”
Black looked at him uneasily. Understanding seemed to dawn on her.
“ Cross,” Black said. “There’s something you should know…Cradden owes a lot of money to a man named Talos Drake.”
“ I figured he was in debt, or something…” Cross stopped as realization dawned on him. I know that name. “Wait…Drake. Is he a smuggler?”
“ Yes,” Black said with a nod.
“ And a slave trader,” he added.
Black looked at him guiltily.
Love makes you do crazy things, I guess. Like putting everyone else in danger to save the one you care about the most.
Cole glared at Black. She clearly knew the name as well as Cross did.
“ You stupid bitch,” she told Danica. Black didn’t argue; she just kept her eyes down.
Warfield had mentioned the name Talos Drake to him in the past. The man was a black marketer she claimed she’d never do business with again, not after what had happened to him.
Because now Talos Drake is a vampire, and hardly anyone knows it, but he’s also second-in-command of the Ebon City of Krul. Shit.
Lucan Keth was dangerously unstable and vulnerable, a warlock with the highest level of raw power that Cross had ever seen held by a human being. For all Cross knew, Lucan was somehow tied up in the same damn prophecy that had landed he and Dillon hip-deep in trouble, searching for the means to destroy an evil that no one understood.
But Lucan’s role in the prophecy didn’t matter, not right then. The fact remained that Lucan Keth was incredibly volatile and dangerous…and he was about to be delivered right into the claws of the Ebon Cities.
The vampires? Cross wanted to scream at Black. How could you agree to give him to the vampires?
But he didn’t say another word — he just set off after Lucan.
SEVEN
The tunnel beyond the alcove was pitch black and filled with broken stones. Cross limped through inky darkness. His spirit held the bullet hole in his leg shut and regenerated the damaged tissue with her spectral form; if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to move at all. She reminded him of that fact by letting him feel most of the pain.
The passage emptied into the Reach. Stone walls and ruined buildings that resembled crumbled sand castles refracted the jade moonlight. Everything seemed to glow, as if immolated.
The sky was vast and deep. Most of the ground was covered in smoke-colored ice. Mounds of frozen ash marked which areas were safe to walk. Steam curled off of a glassy and frozen black lake whose surface was visibly cracked.
Cross inched forward. The night’s chill was bitterer than before. He heard something in the air, a distant dirge like birdsong.
Gunshots rang out and echoed into the sky. They came from the far side of the structure. He saw no trace of Cradden, Lucan or Maddox, so Cross shuffled down the hillside and carefully toed the edge of the ice-covered black lake.
He listened.
There was something there with him, and it was neither human nor spirit. Cross had sensed it before, that same overwhelming and ancient presence he’d felt when they’d first arrived at Shul Ganneth. Whatever it was, it was very old, and it made the air seem brittle. Cross had wondered if what he sensed was an effect of Shul Ganneth, as that would have made some sense. That place had been a temple refuge for the Maloj, after all, primal arcane natives who in their time had commanded vast and terrible powers. According to tales, their home had been as devastated as Earth had by The Black, and significant portions of their twisted arcane geography and spatial biomechanical tools had been left half-lodged between worlds. Earth had only been exposed to a fraction of what that mad race of lupine theurgists had created. Cross had only seen some of their locales and relics, but what he had seen was powerful, and defied most of what he’d learned about magic.
But what he felt there outside wasn’t born of Shul Ganneth, he was sure of it. It was a presence. Something else was there in the ruins, something Cross hadn’t seen yet. It froze his spirit in her place, and cowed her. He felt her wither in its shadow.
Cross traced his way along the edge of the frozen shore, which broke into salt crust beneath the toes of his boots. Cracks littered the edge of the black lake and shot out several feet into the ice, like caricatures of dark lightning.
He saw where dust piles had been broken apart or flattened. Cross pulled his spirit close, and her slippery electric form pushed against him. He set her to the task of keeping his weight light as he moved. She took pressure off of his wounded leg, and she gave him just enough of a telekinetic lift to glide him along the ice.
Cross felt himself fading; he was on the brink of passing out. His spirit’s anxiousness kept him conscious.
Stay alert. There’s something out there in the dark.