God, Cross thought. I will never get used to this.
“ Let’s try to make a respectable exit this time,” Morg said as he walked towards the back of the airship. He used an iron pole that ran the length of the ceiling as a handhold. “Our deployments have looked like a comedy routine lately. Let’s clean that up before you make me unhappy.”
Morg was a big man, tall and lean but well muscled, and he had a deep and resonant voice that was loud even when he whispered. He wasn’t as big as Kray, but if Cross had to pick which of the two men got to beat the hell out of him, he’d pick Kray in a heartbeat. He felt at least then he’d have a chance of surviving.
Cross’ HK45 automatic was at his side, and he made sure both the pyrojack gauntlet he’d purchased from Warfield and his spare pair of standard gauntlets were in his pack, which he then cinched up tight. The pack itself was laced with armor and clamped to his heavy armored coat. Emergency release triggers set under his armpits allowed for a quick getaway from his pack in case he had to ditch his gear for speed, or if any of his equipment was compromised and turned unstable. The small battery pack for his arcane gauntlets was located on his belt. The thin wiring that reached between the pack and his wrists tensed as he checked the connection. Copper wiring hummed with potential.
The air stiffened around him as his spirit tensed, sharing his anxiety. He felt her cool touch against his skin, a reassuring pressure that reminded him of her presence.
Snow came down as Viper Squad prepared to disembark. Her hair was pulled back from her face, and Cross heard the whispers of her spirit as she prepped for the descent. Her spirit would soon extend its form into a wide perimeter pattern, so as to better detect distant anomalies and arcane patterns that would help them track their quarry. Cross’ and Winter’s spirits, on the other hand, would be held in tighter rein, allowed to roam only short distances for close proximity readings.
Weapons were checked and rechecked. Blades slid into sheaths. Straps of leather and plates of steel armor were cinched tight. Cross checked his pistol again, even though he’d done so already. There was nothing left to do but worry. Those last sixty seconds seemed to stretch on for an hour.
Finally, the chemical lamps in the cramped cabin turned red, signaling their descent, and moments later they turned green. The bay door fell open, and crashed onto the dirt.
Black trees loomed before them like a grim wall. Cross smelled moss, brine, mold and sap. The Wormwood lay directly ahead. Blood fell from dead tree branches. Shadows bent and twisted unnaturally, lending the darkness a dizzying depth.
The airship — a bare sailing vessel as big as five wagons — hovered in the air behind them for a moment. Its muted turbine engines blew air and dust away in an expanding cloud and created a swirling funnel of dead leaves. Cross felt the ship's exhausts push against them, and the entire Squad remained crouched until the airship lifted up and turned away. It would circle the area until they returned. Morg signaled, and they silently entered the haunted forest.
SEVEN
There was something in the trees.
Cross stepped back. His handheld telescope was banded with bone, and it was freezing to the touch. A few years of experience had done little to get him used to the feel of some of his arcane implements, most of which were all as cold as death.
“ Well?” Graves asked. They stood at the edge of the Wormwood, a grim forest of grotesquely misshapen trees and ravenous bogs. The Wormwood was populated with refugee warlocks, soul miners, clouds of black poison and lost relics of the world before The Black. The unexplained energies from The Black had twisted everything with the taint of madness and magic, and it had killed millions of people in the process. The Wormwood was just one of many mutations left behind in the wake of that apocalypse. Its thick branches and dark roots blocked out the sky, and a horde of psychotically carnivorous animals roamed its depths. Arteries of black blood ran through the roots of the trees and into the dark soil of the immense forest, and necrotic fluids lent the air the stench of rot and organic matter.
“ There’s something there, but I can’t quite make it out. Not clearly, anyways.” Cross handed Graves the telescope. Up close, Cross could clearly see the scars on Graves’ cheek and neck. He’d acquired them after the campaign in Blackmarsh, when he’d been held prisoner in the Ebon City of Krul, a place where the vampires tortured prisoners and took their time turning them to undead. It was a technique that normally assured total obedience while still retaining a converted human’s original skill set, which otherwise wasn’t possible — most vampires held no trace of their former selves.
Cross was no beauty, either: he bore a scar from a vampire attack that ran down his left cheek and onto the lower left side of his mouth and jaw, but nothing as grievous as Graves’ wounds. If not for quite a bit of luck and some inside help, Graves never would have made it out of Krul at all.
Cross’ spirit brushed against him, and he quietly breathed her cold vapors in to let her ethereal form swim into his lungs.
“ Are you okay?” Winter asked him. The older mage was a few yards behind him, where he was busy adjusting a much more elaborate thaumaturgy harness than what Cross wore. Winter’s heavy implement was strapped to his torso like a parachute. It weighed a good twenty pounds and was as bulky as a tombstone. Cross didn’t need such an excessive pack, at least not yet — his was just a battery, four inches across and weighing barely a pound, strapped to his belt and hooked to his gauntlets with nearly invisible copper wires. Unlike Winter, he also only needed his implement when he manifested magic. Winter had to wear his just to stay alive.
Just like I’ll have to, eventually.
“ I’m fine,” he said. “Jitters, is all. I’m worried about Snow.”
“ She’ll be fine,” Winter said after a moment.
“ Damn,” Graves breathed. “I see them.”
Cross and Winter both knelt down behind Graves. They looked deep into the dank innards of the forest. The bone-pale tree they hid behind was ancient and gnarled and as hard as concrete. Long dried fruit dangled from the withered branches, solid white and covered in gooey webs.
Cross took the scope back from Graves, but Winter put a hand on it.
“ No,” he said. “Save your strength for what matters. I’ll do this.”
Cross’ fingers ached as they peeled away from the icy steel. They’d grown so cold they felt scalded from the touch of the metal. Winter took what was seen in the scope and projected it into the minds of all three men. The image was not physical, not real, but light that was bent and twisted into a paradox of ethereal intellect, shifted and sent to their corneas so they could all see the same image when any one of them looked through the scope. Winter aimed the scope into the heart of the trees.
Past the twisted trees and black marsh, through green air and methane gas and slithering red snakes that clung to the trees like leeches, beyond a stump covered with shredded bones and dark red oil, there stood a trio of men. They were dark silhouettes shrouded in cloaks. Al three had weapons strapped across their backs. A cloud of dark air clung to them like a swarm of icy bees. They were small even in the scope, which meant they were a considerable distance away.
“ Sentries?” Cross asked.
“ A Creed. Shadowclaws,” Graves said with a shake of his head. “The vampire version of us. They’re looking for Red, too. And they’re ahead of us.” He spat a dark wad of corrosive chewing tobacco onto the ground. “Again, I say ‘Damn’.”
“ How do you know they’re Shadowclaws?” Cross asked.
“ Well, for starters, there are three of them,” Graves said matter-of-factly. He may have come across as a backwater hick most of the time, but Graves was an expert Hunter. “They wouldn’t send a regular unit out this far from Rath. Shadowclaw Creeds move faster, and they’re elite.”
“ But there can be more than one Creed out there, right? Working together?” Cross had expected the nod Graves gave him. “Damn it. Have you faced them before?”
