Strangest of all, his leg had healed. He felt healthy and strong.
The doors groaned open, out and away from where he stood. His heart skipped a beat. His spirit swirled and tore at him in her excitement. He felt her pull and plead, and it took effort to rein her in.
Focus.
Snow. Lucan. Dillon. Black and Cole. Kane and Ekko. Graves.
An arena waited on the other side of the metal doors. It was not what Cross expected. Everything he had seen in Krul up to that point had been desert pale or earthen, dust and sand and blood and grit. Only the industrial blue steel of the submerged lower levels had been different, and those chambers were staggering in their monotony.
The arena varied from all of that: it was cast in cool whites and soft greys, harlequin banners and a floor that looked as soft as a pale sea. Frescoes of jagged cities and serpent angels covered circular walls wrought from smoothed granite. The arena floor was spotless, cool marble covered with a massive painting of a half-closed eye impaled on a crescent moon. The air was filled with sweet incense, which only barely contained the palatable odor of rot. The entire space was enclosed by a dome as dark as a midnight sky. Glittering silver flames held suspended in floating sconces bathed the arena in uncertain light.
The stadium walls were perhaps twenty feet tall. Spikes made from black bone lined the tops of the walls, and thick fluid sluiced down the spikes like black milk. Beyond the spikes was a seating area, made from dark wood and black leather, which circled the arena.
There were hundreds of seats, each of them occupied by a vampire. The depths of their ranks was impossible for him to make out – beyond those pale and withered faces was a wall of midnight, a black curtain of dismal specter bodyguards and angry war ghosts left free to roam the air in a ghastly cyclonic barrier.
Cross breathed in raw eldritch air. His spirit bathed in it, basked in it. Her form expanded and shuddered, and Cross shuddered, as well. The depths of magic in that chamber were staggering. It bespoke of the status and power held by the dozens of vampires in the audience.
He had been brought before the vampire elite. Cross would fight for his friend's life before the noble undead caste, the aristocracy of the night. Dark eyes and monstrous pale faces regarded him pitilessly. Despite their number, the arena was utterly and deathly quiet. Cross heard his own breaths echo back from the two-hundred foot high interior of the dome. His skin felt brittle, and his blood ran cold.
Unbidden, he entered the arena.
He moved slowly, as if in a dream. He felt as if he had done this before. Bone fragments exploded into white dust beneath his boots. Nothing else moved.
A gaunt skeletal figure stood at the exact center of the arena floor. Black swathed and preposterously tall, the undead creature used a bone hand covered with razor blades to direct Cross to stand at the edge of the circle. Its elongated grin seemed mocking.
Cross did as he was commanded. He saw little to be gained from doing otherwise.
One by one, the other fighters came into the arena. They were all clothed in mismatched armor, patchwork steel plates and leather padding, chain mesh and bladed epaulets, faceless helmets and barbed weapons. Cross saw a pale-fleshed Vuul and an ebon-fleshed Gorgoloth; the smoking humanoid husk of a Regost, and a towering and muscle-bound Doj. There were more humans, puny when compared to the other monsters.
He saw Danica Black, her red hair pulled up into a severe top-knot. She wore a sleeveless armored vest and fingerless gloves, black pants and combat boots. Curved twin blades were sheathed across her back, and a draconic tattoo covered the entirety of her right arm, which pulsed with smoking purple light. Her eyes were dead and cold.
He saw Kane, entirely transformed from the joking moron Cross had met before. Kane was a blonde giant, his beard neatly trimmed and braided, his bare oiled muscles tensed and scarred. He held a crescent moon axe in his hands. Like Black, his eyes were unnaturally still. He gritted his teeth like an animal ready to hunt down its dinner.
Cross looked at the vampires in the crowd, and they were as stoic and as still as wax statues. They bore deep eyes like pits and moon-pale faces. Lips drew back to reveal gray fangs that dripped dark venoms. The vampires’ clothing was ruined finery, elegant hussars and gothic gowns all in dark shades – ebon and blood red, midnight and emerald – but the clothing was covered in aged flaws, dust and ancient stains and open tears. The undead wore silver bracelets and iron rings, bladed necklaces and bracelets of bone. They smoked black cigarillos and drank dark blood from silver goblets.
A creature presided over the arena from atop a throne of knives and bones. He was tall and dark, with his long hair pulled back half-up-half-down. His ashen skin was remarkably human, and his green and black armor was of the finest make. A dark-bladed katana rested in his spidery hands.
Talos Drake
. Cross wasn’t sure how he knew who the vampire was, but he did. Drake had once been a notorious black market trader. Now he was the Viscount of Krul, and the acting leader when the military commander of the city, Morganna, was otherwise engaged.
Dead black lions with eyes like white fire and fangs capped with rusted steel stood to either side of Drake. Their rotted bodies were perfectly still, curled and poised. At the foot of the throne stood a Gol attendant, an emissary or speaker of some sort.
It was Tega Ramsey.
That son of a bitch.
Cross’ senses slowly returned to him. Rage welled in his soul. The Gol looked on calmly, not a vampire, but a traitor, a willing servant of an odious race.
Talos Drake stood up. His height was impressive. His long coat was decorated with gold trim and bone fetishes. Braids of hair that were obviously not his own dangled from chains wrapped around his wrists.
The other vampires all looked at their leader. Hundreds of pairs of vampire eyes trained on Drake, and waited. Talos smiled a toothy smile, and nodded.
A platform descended from above. It had been entirely concealed in the false night of the aerial dome. Eyes turned to the circular slab of rock as it slowly sank down. The loud clang of chains and industrial gears rattled as the stone made its grinding descent. Over a dozen gladiators cast their gazes skyward, worried, bitter, angry and confused.
Cross looked with them. He was afraid that he knew exactly what it was they would see.
It was an inverted altar, a chunk of layered granite. A statue protruded from the bottom of the slab, dead center, a manmade stalactite. The statue was of vague and dark sexual creatures with bat wings and fangs. The statue-creatures twisted together in an orgy of black stone, many made one, a molten amalgam of succubus angels.
Suspended around the statue were the hostages. They hung cruciform, and they dangled like meat on hooks. Each prisoner was fastened to an inverted wooden pole that jutted down from the stone slab, and they were held in place by ropes and chains that kept their arms pinned behind their backs. Their bare feet dangled helplessly over the arena floor. The stone came to a drastic and ear-shattering stop, and it hung suspended a good thirty feet above the arena.
The prisoners had all been beaten and cut. Fluids dripped down, a slow tide of blood and urine and drool. Even the stench of decay from the presence of hundreds of vampires could not mask the scent of the prisoner’s suffering and fear.
Not every prisoner was human. Cross saw a half-Doj with one eye sealed shut beneath a wound; a Lith, with crushed toes; a Gol, whose bonds looked so loose he might fall at any moment.
He saw Cole, her face bruised, her cheeks cut, and her neck bloody. There was no sign of Ekko.
But he saw Dillon. The ranger’s feet were bare, and blood sluiced down his legs and ran off of his toes in a thin stream that pooled on the ground far below. His face was a mess of cuts, and some sort of crude pattern had been carved across his chest, an idiot artist’s attempt made into his dark flesh.
Dillon met Cross’ gaze. Somehow, he managed a weak smile, and he nodded.
Cross, again, felt that he had seen this before.
Fight
, said the gaunt skeletal being without making a true noise. The sound echoed inside of Cross’ mind like a sonic bruise.
Fight, and win, or they will suffer even more.
The stone groaned upwards. Cross looked at the skeletal creature. His hands tensed, and his spirit crackled. Without thinking, he breathed her in. Her heat filled his lungs with fire. Blood trickled from his eyes and turned his vision red. His skin smoked as he fused his spirit into a lance of black ice that he cast into the skeletal being.
The spear pierced the abomination’s folds with a sound like metal scratching glass. White sparks erupted from its dark heart. A rush of dead air escaped the figure as it collapsed in on itself in a shrinking black cloud. Cross smelled foul meat.
For a moment, no one moved, even as the slab of prisoners slowly groaned its way back towards the vast darkness of the ceiling. Black liquid oozed out of the tattered cloak.
Sharp pain filled Cross’ head. He heard the sound of screaming metal. Explosions rang inside of his soul. His skin went damp as invisible claws raked across his nerves. He fell to the ground screaming.
Above him, suspended and immobile, Dillon screamed, too.
“
No, no, no,” Talos Drake spoke. He was suddenly on the ground, looming tall over Cross’ hunched form. Cross felt as if he’d been beaten with stone clubs. He could barely lift his head to look at the vampire who stood like a pillar of shadow before him. “There are rules, warlock. You just broke one. Now your friend suffers, as well.”
Cross struggled. Every motion was wracked with pain. His muscles were on fire. He craned his neck and looked up at Dillon, whose desperate eyes looked back.
It’s okay
, he mouthed. The raw meat of his legs was exposed. They’d carved into his thighs like he was a flank steak. Cross could barely breathe. He wasn’t even aware of the tears in his eyes until they ran down his face and neck.
You barely even know him
, a voice told him. His voice. But that didn’t matter. He knew him enough. Dillon was in pain because of him. Any chance the ranger ever had of eating his sister’s crappy cooking or seeing his nephew (
what was his name did he ever even tell me?
) rested squarely on Cross’ shoulders.
The Sleeper. Lucan. There’s still so much that I have to do.
Cross felt the weight of another man’s life push down on him. Slowly, he rose. He met Talos Drake’s gaze, a difficult task since the Viscount stood a full head taller than Cross did. No more words were spoken. The vampire smiled, and the stone of prisoners continued its ascent into darkness. Dillon’s eyes never left Cross until he and the others vanished into a sky of shadows.
Focus.
Dillon. Lucan. Snow. Graves.
Kane was one of the first to fight. He and the Gorgoloth matched up while the rest of the gladiators were compelled to form a perimeter around the circular battlefield. Massive white serpents swam through the darkness around them as if it were water. The air tasted cool, and Cross smelled the white worm’s oceanic breath.
Kane made quick work of his ebon-fleshed opponent and proved himself the more barbarous combatant by far. Axe blades swung and connected with diamond sparks. The fighters danced around the dark and steaming husk of the tall skeleton. Kane moved with expert grace and sinuous side-steps that defied his size and that sent his opponent into frustrated moves that proved to be its undoing. When their axes became entangled and clattered noisily to the ground, Kane snapped the Gorgoloth's kneecap sideways with a well-placed punch. He calmly drew a bone scimitar while the Gorgoloth desperately tried to re-set its knee bone with a series of sickening snaps. Kane waited until the Gorgoloth realized the futility of its actions before he finally took off its head with a cold and efficient swing.
In the darkness above, whatever prisoner the Gorgoloth had been attached to howled in pain.
The vampire crowd remained silent. No bodies were cleared and no cheers erupted. The fighters moved when it was their time to fight, directed by some psychic missive.
Cross watched as humans slew humans and the Doj slaughtered the Lith. Blood and broken corpses collected on the once pristine floor. The smell of open bodies grew strong. The pale serpents writhed with excitement, and they hissed and bared enormous fangs. The ground turned red.
He realized that no mages had battled until it was his turn to fight. He wasn’t sure how he knew when it was time: he suddenly stood on the circle, as if he’d woken there. He held a thin but wickedly sharp bone blade in one hand, while his gauntlet crackled with dark fire and gripped his spirit in the other. She closed around his body like a suit of shadow armor. His flesh ran cold at her touch, and his lungs cooled when he breathed her in.
Up above, he felt Dillon wince in pain. Talos Drake and Tega Ramsey looked on, unmoving.
Win
, he told himself.
Focus. Dillon. Snow.