“ It’s been a while.”
“ Have I?” he asked.
“ Not with Viper Squad. We fought at least one Creed in Blackmarsh.”
Cross suppressed a shudder. He never wanted to even think about Blackmarsh ever again. Sometimes, he had still had nightmares about that campaign, his baptism of fire.
“ We’d better get the others,” Winter said, and without a word he started back towards their base camp, located just outside the boundaries of the woods. Viper Squad couldn’t actually camp inside the forest. People had died from prolonged exposure to the fumes that the black blood arteries pushed up from the ground and into the Wormwood. Winter told Cross they’d be fine so long as they kept moving and didn’t stay in any one spot for too long. For some reason, that didn’t make him feel any better.
“ Where are Morg and Stone?” Cross asked. Graves held up his hand for silence. He gripped a black chunk of rune carved stone; Stone, somewhere out there in the forest, had another just like it. The piece of meteoric rock churned with arcane energy. Cross watched as shadow leaked from it, and he saw ethereal black liquid ooze out between Graves’ fingers, and ebon steam squeezed out of his closed palm. With two of the stones, anyone could send simple messages across impossible distances without actually having to utter a single word.
“ They’re on their way,” Graves said.
“ Where are they?”
“ They’re dug into a rock bed two klicks east of here, watching the paths by the river.” Graves stood up. He was only about five-and-a-half-feet tall, but it was all muscle and grit. He was a short blonde-haired man with a scraggly beard, unkempt hair and black and red fatigues laced with stakes, knives, pistols, a pair of carpenter bombs and a wide-bladed machete strapped across his back. Cross was a good six inches taller than Graves, but Graves was easily the more intimidating figure, especially since Cross was excessively thin and pale. Cross’ fatigues were light and loose — a warlock had to be able to move and to allow his skin to breathe, lest their arcane spirits would boil or freeze their flesh. Most days, Cross would have preferred being able to wear the armor.
“ Did they see anything?” Cross asked.
“ We’d have known by now if they had.”
The outer ring of the forest was an unstable saltwater marsh. Brackish water littered with floating deposits of calcium and rust turned the flow to a half-frozen sludge that streamed around thick weeds, thorny brambles and drifts of dark silt. The forest loomed behind them as they returned to camp. Ancient and gnarled trees, some a hundred feet high, twisted and bent together in an obscene dance. A semi-translucent fog surrounded the forest. Bits of dead organic matter flitted in the breeze like flies. The Wormwood stretched for miles — Cross couldn’t make out its boundaries from their vantage, and due to the height of the trees it was difficult to see the breadth of the twisted forest from there on the ground. The land around the Wormwood was nearly as lifeless as the forest itself, though not nearly so cursed. There were cold plains, empty riverbeds, frozen streams of black and green water, and steep bluffs that overlooked oceans of red and grey sand. They were right at the southern tip of the Bone March, an amply named waste filled with drifts of white dust, ancient bones of ancient beasts, great fields of discarded finger bones and skulls piled high, and other monuments to the destruction wrought by The Black. The air tasted dead and cold.
The camp was in a dry streambed just out of sight from the plain. Winter was already there, and he, Snow and Kray had disassembled the camp and now looked ready for trouble. Cross’ stomach churned. No matter how many battles he’d lived through, the thought of willingly walking into a situation where he could die still seemed idiotic to him. He’d taken part in over a dozen missions with Viper Squad, and he’d seen more than his share of action before that when he was part of Wolf Company, defending Thornn from blood wolves and Gorgoloth. He’d faced vampires and the animated shadows of their victims in Blackmarsh. He’d seen people die, and he’d been covered in his friend’s remains.
Does this ever get any easier?
Cross knew that most of his anxiety stemmed from Snow’s presence. She was the only member of the Squad with less experience than himself, and whether or not anyone liked it one of Cross’ constant duties had become taking care of her. And while Cross was fully aware of his own worries, he could only imagine what was going through her mind. He had to give her credit: if she had any fear, she didn’t show it. The teenage girl that used to be his baby sister looked like a warrior now. There were draconic tattoos on her neck and all over her arms, and she wore a thick armored coat that covered the knives she kept strapped to her wrists. She calmly adjusted her leather gauntlets. Her eyes were calm.
I still see the younger Snow. I still see you with that floppy elephant doll, reading books all day in your room. You’ll always be that young to me.
Kray and Winter, the old veterans, looked even more at ease. When Kray, who had a giant’s presence even when he stayed in the background, yielded that mini-gun Cross was sure there were fewer living beings more frightening to behold. Graves hinted that Kray might have been half-Doj, but no one in the squad dared ask.
Cross and Winter hurriedly packed the rest of the gear into their packs. Graves checked and loaded his shotgun, and after a quick check of the camp they silently trekked back up the hill and into the trees.
Cross surveyed the forest again when they’d returned to where they’d carried out their reconnaissance, and saw that the vampires were still there. They hadn’t moved.
“ They know we’re here,” Graves said quietly. “Spread out. Morg and Stone are going to meet us in the forest.”
The air turned sour as they stepped into the trees and fanned out in a broken line. They moved with near silence in spite of the marsh water and dismal forest sludge that ate up their feet. The canopy of trees was so thick it was as if they’d walked into perpetual midnight. The mud sucked at their boots and spindly tree limbs grabbed their clothing. Viscous gases and gouts of gray slime erupted out of the ankle-deep water. Cross saw the vaguest semblance of faces staring up at him from inside the water, the ancient bones of a buried age.
Cross had his HK in his non-shooting hand, while his right was clenched with arcane energy. His spirit twisted and crawled across his skin like a rippling liquid suit. The condensation was thick in the air, and it tasted like honey left too long in the sun.
They closed in on the clearing. Graves and Cross moved down the middle of their formation, Kray on the left flank and Winter on the right. Snow floated just above the ground. Her spirit held her aloft as she attuned her senses to the folds between the material world, the shadows and the creases through which arcane energies flowed. Her eyes were dead white as she floated along, seemingly unconscious, and her hands trailed behind her.
She was their tracker, and she would find what they searched for.
They went deeper. The air was thick with buzzing insects that could drain all of the blood from a human body given the time, and the taste of rot in the air was as thick as porridge. White effluvia floated in the water, and Cross glimpsed shadows all around them, moving through the trees. His arm grew numb from holding his spirit at the ready for so long, but he didn’t dare let her go. It was so hard to keep her in check, so physically draining to keep her harnessed and complacent, that he feared if he relaxed it might take too long to make her ready her again if trouble arose, and by then it would be too late.
The clearing where the vampires had stood — a dry island amidst the ankle-deep mire — was directly ahead. Twisted trees with half-white roots where the Wormwood had sucked their life and vitality away stood at odd angles on the mound, tangled together like strings. Only Graves fully stepped onto the island, while the rest of them gave it fair berth, their eyes on the trees. Cross couldn’t see more than a few feet into the thick of the Wormwood. It was as if spider webs made of black silk had been strung across the path in every direction. Light simply refused to penetrate those deeper folds of the impossibly dense and gnarled forest.
Graves stood on the mound of land with his Remington 870 sawed-off shotgun at the ready. Cross watched Graves and tried to read the air, but the arcane energies were so dense it was like trying to look straight into the sun. Buzzing insects filled the air in spite of how unseasonably cold it felt.
Cross looked up at Snow, who quietly nodded towards the trees. After a moment’s hesitation, Cross nodded, too. He sensed nothing waiting there for them, but they both knew that could have been interference from the black energies of the forest, which proved adept at confounding their magical senses.
Graves carried on, and moved deeper still into the trees.
A sharp crack cut through the air. Cross heard a sick splash, like a sack filled with something wet had been opened and spilled.
