Snow floated out of the thick of the melee with razors of light balanced around her outstretched hands. Her body was covered in a glowing corona of white flame. One of the vampires grabbed her by the ankle, and although the contact scorched the beast it held on and violently pulled Snow to the ground.
“ No!” Cross shouted. He ran over the walkways and jumped over the streams, through the maze of coffins and pillars. Cross’ spirit tore chunks of granite away from the walls and hurled them at the vampire. The undead brute still didn’t let go of Snow.
Another vampire dropped down on top of Cross from the ceiling. The two of them collapsed in a heap. Cross landed on his back, and only his spirit’s shield saved his life. His legs were in the water, and he quickly felt himself sinking, held up only by his attacker’s claws where they gripped his coat. The vampire’s pale face was just over his. Its mask was gone, so its oversized mouth and massive fangs hovered just inches away from Cross’ face. White spittle and grave breath washed over him. Cross instinctively threw his gauntlets out in front of his body and sent waves of black heat into the vampire’s body. It pulled back, if only in surprise. As it rose, a bullet tore the vampire’s skull in two and it fell sideways. Cross pulled free of the freezing black water.
Morg dropped the Ruger Alaskan that he’d used to save Cross, spun round and used his spear to deflect a vampire’s katana. The sounds of fighting echoed loudly through the dark.
Cross struggled to his feet and found Snow. The burning vampire still gripped her ankle, and it held on in spite of the fire that covered most of its body. Cross’ spirit transformed herself into a wedge of razor-sharp ice that Cross launched like a spear. It connected with the vampire’s arm and took it off at the elbow, and the hand clung to Snow just a moment longer before it burned away like a wad of scorched paper.
Cross’ eyes felt heavy. The act of channeling and holding his spirit for so long had drained his strength, and fatigue rushed over him like a wave. He nearly slipped on the streams of blood and dark water under his feet.
The burning vampire came at him. Cross thought it had been destroyed, but even though the immolated undead smoldered with white arcane fires it ran right at him, its one remaining arm outstretched and its oversized reptilian mouth wide with hunger. Claws the size of knives raked across the stone. Cross stepped backwards and fired arrows of flame, but doing so sent him sprawling onto his back.
The fighting raged on behind him.
Cross sent a pillar of fire and stone into the brute’s body, but it just shoved its way through. It was easily the largest vampire he’d ever seen, seven-feet at the shoulder and as broad as an ape. Its knotted undead muscles pulsed with grave ooze, and cracked sinew tensed with incredible undead strength. It drew close, its eyes drawn tight and its grotesque maw open and hungry.
Graves threw himself into the brute with an armored shoulder and swiped at it with his machete. Cross seized the opportunity and sprang to his feet. He drew breath.
The vampire backhanded Graves and sent him flying. Cross cried out and released a three-foot-wide blast of fire into the vampire’s chest that pushed straight through its rotted skin.
Something struck Cross from behind. He heard something crack. The flames stopped and he tumbled forward. His spirit absorbed the force of what should have been a killing blow, but in so doing she nearly destroyed herself.
Cross lay there. Blood and sweat ran into his eyes. He was barely able to move, and he could only watch as the rest of the battle unfolded.
Morg dodged a blow from the vampire giant, and in the same fluid motion he swung his spear in a wide arc and cleaved open a different vampire’s skull. Chunks of white bone and flesh flew through the air. The giant took Morg in its grip and locked his arms back. As big as Morg was, the vampire was bigger, but Morg kicked backward and down and snapped the giant’s knee-bone backwards, buckling its weight and forcing it to the ground. Still it fought, its giant mouth wide, its arms out. Morg had been disarmed.
A blade of red light took the vampire giant in the back of the head and remained stuck there. The brute looked up and stupidly regarded the weapon that had pushed through its forehead from the back of its skull. Its arms went slack, and it finally fell forward in a thunderous heap. Snow stood there with a blade of purple and white energy firmly affixed to her gauntlet, and the force of her spirit swirled around her like a cloud of crystalline dust. Her eyes were fixed and blank.
Cross could barely move. He looked around. He heard and then saw Stone, but he didn’t see Kray or Graves.
He forced himself up, slowly and painfully. Blood streamed down the side of his head and the back of his neck, and it felt cold as it flowed under his armored coat. His left arm was numb. If not for his spirit he knew that he’d be dead. He felt her there, lingering, weakened from her prolonged activity and from having saved him from a pair of blows that should have ended his life.
Stone and a vampire fought near a mound of bodies and splayed limbs. The floor was littered with blades and shattered claws and heaps of humanoid remains.
Graves lay on the ground in a crumpled heap.
“ Sam…” Cross said. Morg ignored him, his eyes locked on something. Cross looked up.
Red was still there. She’d been blocked off from the exit by yet another Shadowclaw Creed, pale-skinned and red-armored vampires who’d been armed with saw blades and automatic weapons. She’d dealt with them. Their bodies hung from the wall, stuck there by arcane bolts of black force, spikes made of gray ice and blades wrought of translucent amber. The sheer force of Red’s spirit cascaded around her, invisible to the human eye but plain as could be to a warlock: it was a chaotic cloak, a shroud of male arcane fumes that burned like an explosive rainbow.
Morg didn’t hesitate. Surprisingly, neither did Snow. The bloodlust was on both she and her spirit. Cross struggled to rise, but he felt a sharp pain in his side, maybe a cracked rib. He reached out with his mind and breathed, tried to lasso in his spirit. She was there, barely, a fade of her normal self.
Snow shouted out, and her spirit launched himself at Red as a cyclone of shrapnel and bullet casings that left brilliant clouds of crimson dust in its wake. Morg followed Snow’s attack like a charioteer behind his steeds. He bore a serrated broadsword in his hands, and though his face was bloodied his eyes were focused. He was a human train, and he tore across the rubble and blood spattered ground. His armored boots tore chunks out of the stone.
Cross, unable to call up his ailing spirit, remembered his HK45, which had somehow found its way back into his unsteady hand.
Snow’s attack dissipated before it reached Red. The Witch’s spirit met Snow’s attack with a shimmering wall of prismatic rain, and he chewed through Snow’s magic like acid through paper.
Morg barreled his way through the chaos, howling with fury. Red focused, and in that moment, Cross fired his pistol. The shot took Red in the meat of her shoulder and pushed her back.
Red was a blur of motion. She spun with the shot, turned full circle, and lashed out with a violet wave of liquid daggers that expanded like a fan. Cross called up every last shred of his spirit’s power. He felt her scream, felt her energy fail, but he willed Snow to do the same. Static explosions of sound filled his mind. His stomach tightened, and he felt himself torn inside out.
He sees his spirit’s world. He sees her at the edge of a cold black mountain, a young girl seated near a stream. She hides in mists of silver silk. He sees bodies fall out of the pale sky, and black unicorns covered in grime and gore hunt her across that nightmare landscape, ready to rend her into pieces.