“ Kray’s wrong. It came later.”
“ What?”
“‘ What’ what?”
“‘ What what’, as in ‘what the hell are you talking about’?’” Graves hissed.
“ The crypt, moron,” Cross laughed. “Things shifted when The Black came. This crypt was probably somewhere else, and it transported here when everything went crazy.”
“ Why? Just…randomly?”
“ Maybe. Sometimes it was random. Sometimes it wasn’t. The Black was sentient…it had reasons for some of the things it did. It had a purpose.”
They were nearly to the crypt. Cross fell back to survey the area ahead with his readied spirit. Edged whispers and muffled static moans echoed in the back of his mind, and the skin on his arms and neck bristled at the touch of the electric cold. Snow was the one capable of following the lines of life or death to track their prey, but Cross would be the first to know if there was anything magical waiting for them in the immediate area, whether it was a weapon or some sort of trap. He walked on edge through dank waters that soaked his heavy boots. Cross didn’t want to think about what sort of filth floated in the warm and briny fluids.
Snow floated behind Cross and Kray took up the rear, where he watched for any sign of trouble from behind. Up front, Morg and Stone entered the crypt, confident that Cross would warn them of danger, while Graves stayed at the middle and kept everyone in sight. Cross’s skin was icy with anticipation.
He finally came to dry land, which was soft and thick with mud and collapsing soil. The earth was black, and it seemed to have once been part of a larger mass that had been swallowed up by the swamp and the Wormwood. A lair of smooth black stones was just underneath the surface of the soil. Ancient bones, cracked with age, lay nestled between the rocks. The land sloped steeply upwards, but the ground grew more solid as it rose towards the apex of the hill where the mausoleum waited, slumped and sinking into dark ground. There seemed to be a black cloud just inside the crypt. Shadows oozed and leaked from the stone like dark steam.
Cross felt something as it pulled at his thoughts, a hint of danger that swirled around his mind like a nagging fly. He looked around — everything was spinning, like he’d been thrown into the center of an out-of-control merry- go-round — and the whispers, which were normally so subtle and distant, filled his head with such force that they clouded his eyes and made his gums ache.
He glanced back at Snow. Her eyes were solid white because she was using her magic, but they suddenly went wide with shock. Kray seemed to notice something wrong, as well, and he spun and looked at the line of trees and the deeper waters of the murky lake, which seemed suddenly bigger and deeper than it had just moments before.
“ Ambush!” Cross yelled, but not in time. Shadows erupted out of the water and the trees.
Horrid figures came at them, all ebon flesh and wild hair, leathery bodies covered in pores and cracks. Stark white eyes and claws shone in the dim light, and long serpentine tongues lapped against razor fangs. White veins bulged from dark skin, leaking phosphorescent goo.
They weren’t vampires, but Chul, denizens of the Wormwood, corrupted souls made into shadowy and murderous zombies.
Smoking claws lashed out at Snow, but Kray leapt in the way and pushed her floating body onto the isle. With a single stroke of his blade he decapitated a Chul, splattering black blood everywhere.
Cries cut through the trees in a unified squelch of skin and sound, a high-pitched animal call like a chorus of metal. Cross saw at least a dozen Chul emerge from the darkness. His spirit, whom he’d held at the edge of his thoughts, coalesced into a mass of electric liquid that swam across his arms and fingertips, and with a fluid motion he released her. Daggers of ice-blue light exploded out of his hands like chill meteors. Tendrils of frost laced his fingers and burned the flesh beneath his smoking gauntlets. Orbs of electric cold burrowed their way into zombie bodies, perforated them with razor shards of ice and filled them with gouts of cold blue flame. Black torsos exploded into chunks of dripping matter.
Snow screamed, fell onto her back and crawled away from the carnage. Cross could barely catch his breath. His spirit still held him as if impassioned, and she was stuck to his skin like lover’s sweat. Cross had hit nearly every Chul in sight with his arcane bullets, but some of them still pushed forward, their bodies dissolving from the inside out as icy energy spread through their unnatural forms. The smell of entrails was thick in the air. Kray hacked falling creatures apart as he backed onto the shore. Gunfire from behind them blasted an uninjured Chul, spattering its misshapen skull.
Cross grabbed Snow by the arm and pulled her to her feet. Graves, Stone and Morg rained bullets on the Chul and mowed the unstable ebon bodies down beneath a ruthless barrage of gunfire. Smoke and ear-shattering noise filled the air. Cross kept his spirit at hand, and didn’t release in spite of her unspoken pleas. He held onto Snow’s arms.
The shooting, at last, stopped, and the Wormwood was silent once again. Oozing bodies sagged and deflated in the water and on the edge of the shore, and black ichors poured out of the punctured sacks of meat. Fumes rose out of the dead and mingled with the other poisons of the forest.
“ So much for surprising anyone,” Graves cursed as he reloaded his Remington.
Cross quickly checked Kray, and after he confirmed that the big man was uninjured both Morg and Stone returned to the mausoleum, their eyes on the stairs.
“ There’s no way they didn’t hear that,” Stone said quietly.
“ They already know we’re here, anyhow,” Morg said softly. He took a cloth out of his pocket and cleaned off the tip of his spear, a serrated silver blade with runic carvings of elfin maidens armed with swords. Morg stripped down to a flak vest, which left his arms bare and displayed the intricate serpentine tattoos on his dark and rippled muscles. He wore a silver and iron band on his right wrist and a strip of Kevlar and steel armor around his left elbow. Cross knew that he lived for this, the fighting, the struggle. He’d been a gladiator once, they said, forced to fight for the amusement of the vampire aristocracy in the city-state of Krul. “Are you ready?”
It took Cross a moment to realize Morg was talking to he and Snow. Cross hesitated. He was shaken from keeping his spirit on edge for so long (she was still there, poised, hovering around him like a deadly and erotic pet). The stress of having just detonated explosive ice bombs inside a dozen zombies had both he and his spirit coiled and tense. Snow’s eyes, in the meantime, were wide with shock, and Cross sensed the anxious emanations of her spirit, confused by what it saw and felt. The spirit was bonded to the soul — one reflected the other. What one felt, the other felt. If one suffered, the other suffered.
You’re too young, Cross wanted to tell her. You have to leave. You don’t belong here.
Snow nodded and offered a stoic: “I’m ready”. Cross glanced sideways at her for a moment, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She hadn’t wiped away the black blood that landed on her from the exploding Chul bodies. The tattoos on her neck dully pulsed with power, the foci for her harnessed spirit.
No one else seemed to notice the depth of her apprehension; if they did, no one chose to say anything about it. Cross rose, hesitantly, and helped her to her feet.
They moved down the steep steps and into the moldy darkness of the crypt. Dank weeds and dark, twisted roots covered with black soil hung across the narrow hole of an entrance, which descended straight down into near darkness. The steps were smooth and shallow, wide but unstable. The air smelled of mildew and age, and they had to light Kray’s lamp to see.
Stone was the first to descend, his M4 in hand, followed tightly by each of them in a single file line. Kray brought up the rear; he was barely able to squeeze down the cramped opening. Dirt and soil fell in occasional drifts from between solid blocks of aged and crumbling stone. The cramped quarters reminded Cross again of his childhood, of crawling around in the air ducts of old buildings, dodging vampires and waiting for help.
Why do I keep thinking about my childhood? Keep your head straight, Eric, or it’s going to get torn off.
Cross wasn’t sure how far they’d gone until they hit the bottom, when his feet awkwardly found solid ground. Kray’s lamp illuminated the area in front of them, and it all but negated any chance of their gaining surprise. Still, Cross reasoned, it was better than falling down the shaft. He turned and helped Snow down the last step by taking her waif-like waist in his hands. (She gave him a look. He scowled at her, in the way that brothers do.)
They’d descended into a round and empty room with a floor covered in white dust and shattered old pots. Strange emblems adorned the curved walls of the dome-shaped chamber — lightning bolts and bats, eyes and mouths, jackals and teeth.
“ What the Hell is this?” Stone said under his breath.
