“ You apologize too much,” Jonas laughed. “Drink!”
“ Maybe later,” Cross said, and he patted the priest's shoulder and pushed his way past dancers and waitresses.
Black and Kane sat at their table, quietly sharing a drink in an unquiet place. Both wore dark shirts and armored coats. In Thornn, it was unwise to ever go unarmored, or unarmed.
“ How are we doing?” Cross asked them. The corner they'd tucked themselves away in was a bit quieter than the rest of the Hag; you could actually hold a conversation, provided you got close enough.
Cross set down his black guava. He felt a bit dizzy, and he knew he'd need to eat soon.
“ You know,” Kane said. “I may actually need to have another drink.”
“ You've had four,” Black laughed. “I have no qualms about leaving your drunken ass here…just so we're clear on that.”
“ I can't feel a thing,” Kane shrugged.
“ That’s evidence that you've had too many!” Black laughed. She'd had a few too many, herself.
Cross watched them, and smiled. In reality, he still only barely knew them, and he wasn't sure how well he'd ever really know them…or how well he really needed to.
I know you both need this, he thought. Kane needs to kill vampires, and find Jennar. Black needs a cause, something to do that doesn't involve taking bribes and mistreating prisoners…something good.
They both needed something good.
How about you? Cross asked himself, and he was surprised at the question. Everything seemed to fade, the sound in the bar, the smoke, the choking tobacco air. Even the table fell away, along with Black and Kane and his slithering and anxious spirit. It was as if Cross sat alone.
What do you need?
I don't know. I don't know what I need. But I hope that I find it soon.
He came back, and took a drink.
Black told Kane about how all of his various escape plans from Black Scar would have failed. Kane, in turn, explained to her how he'd have easily beaten her had they been matched up in Krul. Both of them laughed, and drank, and smiled. Cross had never imagined seeing either of them like this: so present, and so full of life.
I need to feel like that. I need this, and I need them.
“ Was that a spider?” Black said as she leapt up from her stool.
“ You're afraid of spiders?” Kane laughed.
Black splashed her drink onto Kane’s face. Kane laughed, Black laughed, and Cross laughed, too, and they kept laughing together deep into the night.
Steven Alan Montano
Black Scars
It stirs. It breathes.
It slips through oceans of pain. Eyes like sharp white blades blink and struggle against the tide of blood that washes its body down the river. The flow is turgid and thick. Unknown fish, eyeless and pale, slither against its legs. Its body thuds against rough stones in the river.
It is underground again, confined to black fluid.
Another prison.
No. This is different. Not a prison. An escape.
It fell. The Pale Goddess has bested it again. Her servant found a way to reform, to pass its powers on so that they could be yielded by the warlock.
The Sleeper will do the same. Even now, a fragment of its greater whole lives on. It rests in the consciousness of this man, this barely living creature who floats in oil-black waters in an underground river. The body is not whole. It has been engineered, modified by unnatural means. Some of those means are familiar to the Sleeper, as the science is based on its own physiognomy.
Curious, the Sleeper looks closer, into the heart of this man. He has been re-imagined, organs and limbs replaced. His blade, an unholy thing made of fused realities and twisted thaumaturgic science, is still in his hand, and its power sustains him, keeps him alive.
He will do. Even that fragment of the Sleeper's form is enough to animate this dying husk, this hybridized being. He will live as a host.
His muscles darken as the Sleeper takes full control of his faculties. It slides into his pulsing muscles and forces itself into the space behind his eyes. It activates necrotic engines in the man's circulatory system so that they pump blood into his darkened heart. It grips the blade, and dark power that even the brilliant architects of the weapon couldn't fathom pour through its body and lend it strength.
When the waters exit the ruins beneath the ice city and spill into the arctic wastes, the man called Jennar rises, infused with the power of The Black.