The unicorns emerge from the silver fog like a chain of nightmares. Their skin is black and coarse, and thick dark blood oozes from their nostrils and hooves. Their eyes are white and their horns are jagged and covered in scratches. Their teeth are fanged.
They descend on the girls and kill one of them in an instant. Her terrified face is reflected back in the unicorns’ eyes as their horns rend her fragile body apart. Her mangled remains fall up into the sky, where she is swallowed by rain that falls like inverted tears.
The other girls run through the marsh, slowed every step of the way by thick vines and walls of foliage. Fog cages them.
Again, he sees their memories of the place they once called home. Black rain falls onto steep stone steps that ascend to a grim palace, the heart of the black city. Silhouettes of soldiers surround them, men and women determined to keep their realm safe from the faceless advance of a distant enemy. White fires burn in great pits at the outskirts of the city, dank beacons to light the soldiers’ return. Armor grinds against stone as they march out of the city and onto fields wet with blood and rain.
The soldiers die in battle and fall in waves, face down in the mud where they swallow earth and grime before their lives are crushed from their bodies.
The unicorns are persistent hunters, and they show no mercy. The women are exhausted, and their bodies are covered in silver ice. Their hair and dresses have been soaked through with water, and they huddle together in the shadow of tall rocks shaped like broken fingers.
The unicorns smell of brimstone and blood. Their horns are bloody and their manes have gone white. They feed on these women, these souls without mates.
She is alone now, and she is no longer needed. He reaches for her, and for a moment see sees him, and she wants to reach back.
Her mind returns to the creeping shadows over the fields of war. Her memories bleed to recollections of the glade, her small paradise filled with silver haze and the girls with white skin.
She falls up. Even as the unicorns come for her, all that she can think of is how the worst days are behind her. She falls into air filled with tears and leaves.
The sky freezes as she ascends into its embrace, and she remains there, held in gray stasis, forever frozen at the edge of death.
SIX
The black walls rumbled. Cross tried not to think about the fact that there was 1,000 feet of open air past the wood beneath his feet. At the nadir of that drop was the Wormwood, likely the last place he’d ever wanted to go in his entire life, or the first place he’d always planned to avoid.
Either way, I don't really want to go there. Too late.
“ Two minutes!”
They were perched on benches than ran parallel to each other on opposite sides of the airship, a tight space barely eight feet across and twice that long. A tiny ladder at one end of what was basically a large closet led up to the command deck, while the descending ladder at the other end dropped to the landing platform.
“ For as big as these ships are, you think they’d have more elbow room,” Graves shouted. They had to shout to be heard over the turbines and the rattling walls.
“ They’re over sixty percent armor,” Stone said. “I think they figured you’d rather be safe than comfortable.”
Graves just laughed. None of them were safe, and they all knew it.
They were packed six deep: Morgan, Stone, Kray, Graves, Winter, and Cross, all strapped tightly to their bench seats. Each of them wore black combat fatigues and a heavy armored coat. Bandoliers and thick belts packed with equipment that ranged from scopes and knives to grenades and canteens weighed them down. The armored coats went just past the waist, and they were cut tight so as not to snag on their surroundings and impede movement; each coat was set with flexible Kevlar strips that helped minimize injury from glancing blows, though there was little it would do against a direct bullet wound or a blade. The regular soldiers wore additional armor beneath the coats, sections of steel and tightened Kevlar that protected their vital areas. It was all designed to allow mobility and speed. The best soldier, they taught, was the one fast enough to avoid getting shot or stabbed in the first place.
Snow was upstairs with the flight crew, in part to help the pilots navigate with the aid of her spirit, but also, Cross knew, because she wasn’t comfortable being pent up in tight quarters with a bunch of soldiers. She’d have to get used to that pretty quick.
We all did, Cross thought.
The rickety airship descended through a pocket of turbulence that rattled the walls. Cross was convinced that he heard the wooden planks pull apart behind him, which was all but impossible since they were held in place by an inch of magnetically reinforced steel plate. The craft shook violently, and then fell ten feet in two seconds before it leveled out again. The contents of Cross’ stomach clawed at the bottom of his throat.
“ This is awesome,” he muttered.
“ This is the life!” Kray was normally a quiet man, but he acted like a jubilant kid whenever they got to fly to missions. Cross wasn’t sure how anyone could get used to being on airship at all, let alone enjoy it. He had been on plenty of missions, but he wasn’t sure if there was some magical number of aerial drops he’d have to take part in before all of the sickness and strained nerves became easier to cope with. He hoped he’d live long enough to find out.
“ Hang in there,” Graves laughed. “The real fun starts when we touch down.”
“ You have a twisted idea of fun, my friend,” Cross smiled.
“ Come on, Cross,” Kray bellowed. “Stop being such a woman.” Kray was strangely quiet whenever they were on the ground — it was only in the air that he turned obnoxious.
“ What would you know about women, Kray?” Winter smiled. The mage was calm and self assured, just like always. Winter, the “old man”, was a foot shorter than Kray and twice his age. He was also the senior mage on the team and an experienced warlock, so they all knew better than to mess with him. Winter actually deferred most of the team’s arcane matters to the much younger Cross, but Cross was always sure Winter knew how comfortable he was having the older mage in the group.
There are two other mages again, he corrected himself. Snow isn’t your sister today. She’s your tracker. As if his nerves weren’t already shot because of how important the mission was, Cross also had to worry about keeping his only living family member alive, as well. Damn it, Snow. Why did you have to go and be a hero?
“ I know plenty about women,” Kray smiled.
“ Really?” Stone said with a grin. “What women do you know, Kray? Beside your Mom?”
“ I know your Mom,” Kray said with as straight of a face as he could muster.
They all laughed, save Morgan. “Morg” had on his game face. He stared straight ahead, smiled politely to encourage his troops, but it was clear that his mind was already on what lay ahead.
The Wormwood. Perhaps the worst place to go on a world that had redefined the notion of bad places. It was over a hundred square miles of twisted trees and dank marsh occupied by Chul, Gorgoloth, Maloj, and other things Cross didn’t know about and didn’t want to know about. And in that mire of witched wood and poison swamp they had to find a woman. A traitor.
And we have to find her before the vampires do, Cross thought. Wonderful.
Cross knew that he just needed to stop worrying. He had skills and talents to contribute to the Alliance, and that was just what he’d do. This was what he was meant to do…or so he’d been told. Some days, he wasn’t so sure.
I’m drifting, he realized. Growing numb, complacent, and unhappy. And if I slow down to think about what’s going on, I freak out. So just get on with it.
“ Gear up!” Morg called. “Check your equipment! One minute!”
