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.
Down on the circle, Kane watched him with grim and knowing eyes. He also smiled, ever so slightly.
Danica Black did not. Her eyes bore straight through to his soul. For a moment, Cross didn’t understand why she regarded him with such hatred, but as the tide of pain washed over him and he slipped towards unconsciousness he realized the truth.
You want Dillon to suffer, because he killed your brother. You chose me…because you thought that I would fail. All this time, even with your deal, you meant for Dillon to die.
His last thoughts, before he passed out, were of killing Danica Black.
THIRTEEN
They run. They have turned from hunters into prey.
Dark silhouettes of fangs and blades pursue them through the trees. The vampires will have them soon — there is no doubt of that, nor any way to avoid it. It is the shadow in the sky that he fears, the shadow that will bring death.
What is this place? he asks as they run. He should be out of breath, unable to speak from exhaustion, but he isn’t.
It is a place from before the world, Lucan says. A slice of a time from before there was time. A refuge of the soul, and of the mind.