corpses would be left there in the catacombs. Graves, Stone and Cross huddled together near the entrance around a makeshift campfire they built from shattered wood and old rags that they lit with holy oils. The fact that they rested at the charnel scene of a battle, with the gory remains of butchered vampires all around them, didn’t seem to bother them, and Cross tried to figure out when he’d become like that.
“ So what happens now?” Graves asked.
We lost two brothers today, but Snow is alive. You haven’t lost her yet.
He wouldn’t consider the possibility that his sister might be dead. He tried not to think about it all, just as he tried not to call up memories of her, or to dwell on what a horrible brother he’d been to her the past few years. If he thought about anything aside from just getting her back, he knew he’d fall apart.
Tears welled in his eyes. Cross did everything he could to focus them into intent.
Just go and get her.
“ We continue the mission,” Cross said.
“ Say what?” Stone said. “Our tracker is gone. Can you track them?”
Cross hesitated.
“ No. I’m…not even sure I can use magic.” He looked up at them. “I think my spirit might be gone.”
Graves and Stone looked at each other. Cross knew neither of them really understood what that meant. It was difficult for anyone who wasn’t a witch or a warlock to fully comprehend it. A spirit was tied to the soul — it was an inexorable part of a mage, intangible and distant, difficult to comprehend or explain, but at the same time it was as close to a mage as their own skin, as intimate as their own thoughts. Only warlocks, witches and some of the stranger races like the Eidolos and the Lith could willingly contact and bond with their spirits. When they did, the result was magic.
“ How…how is that possible?” Graves asked.
“ I’m not sure if she’s really gone,” Cross said, his head low. “I can’t feel her. She’s been at the edge of my thoughts for most of my life, and for the first time for as long as I can remember she’s just…not there.” He shuddered. “I think it happened when she saved me from that head wound.”
“ Morg saved you from that vampire,” Stone said, and he stood up. “And now he’s dead, and not only can you not track that bitch, but you’re useless to us.”
“ Hey, back off,” Graves said to Stone. He stood a full head shorter than the other man, but it was clear he didn’t care. “Cross knows more about magic than you and me combined. He’s far from useless.” Graves looked down. “Besides, his sister…”
“ Is just fine,” Cross said quietly. His chest ached, and his breathing was ragged and dry. “And we’re going to go and get her.” He looked at Graves, and then at Stone. Both of them watched him carefully, like he might explode. “Let me rephrase that. I’m going after her. It would be nice to have some help.”
Stone hesitated, but after a moment he just shrugged.
“ Fine,” he said. “But if we can’t track them, then what the hell are we supposed to do? We were sent to find and kill Red before she makes it to the Old One. If we can’t do that, we’re all screwed.”
Graves looked down. The longer they sat there, the worse the stink in the room became.
Cross stared at the floor and recalled the grave soil stench, the measureless sense of age, the sheer, dismal draw when Red had first emerged from the pit.
What were you doing down there?
“ The hole,” he said aloud. He stumbled to his feet.
The room with the hole was silent and still. Cross felt nothing, further proof that his spirit was gone, maybe permanently. The realization made him shake where he stood…but it also meant he could approach the hole now that he didn’t have a spirit that was vulnerable to its attacks.
He heard nothing, felt nothing. Whatever horror protected the pit, it had little interest in him now.
Graves and Stone were right behind him.
“ I’m not sure how Red managed it,” Cross said. “Maybe some of those algorithms that we found on the map back in Thornn, the stuff I couldn’t piece together, were part of some arcane shield she used to protect her spirit, or something.”
“ Are you nuts?” Graves asked. “You told us not to go in there.”
“ Cross,” Stone added. “This is not a good idea.”
Cross calmly came to the lip of the hole. It looked like the heart of midnight. The perimeter was smooth black mud that crawled with worms. Ancient and knotted roots twisted out from the rim of the pit like gnarled arms. He smelled decay and cold heat. Even without his spirit to guide him, Cross sensed there was something wrong down there, something ancient and deep. Something hidden.
“ You can’t be serious…” Graves said, but Cross removed his pack and put it down, pulled off his gauntlets and unhooked the wiring and set all of his gear aside. Then he removed his coat — his ribcage winced from the effort — so that he was down to just his shirt, his pants and his boots.
“ Cross,” Stone said sternly. He was in command now. It was easy to forget that Morg was gone. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“ Going down there,” he said, and having said it, he’d realized he’d decided, that he’d passed the point of being unsure or uncertain or capable of being talked out of it. “We don’t know who or what was buried here. We don’t know what this place is…not really. Red came here for a reason. Maybe there’s some clue as to what she’s up to.” He looked back at the pit. “Down there.”
“ We know what she’s up to,” Stone said. He moved into the room as if to stop Cross. “She’s going to give the Old One vital information and royally screw the human race.”
“ Which is exactly why I need to go down there,” Cross said. Stone watched him. He knew as well as Cross that no one knew how to find Koth, the Old One’s city. That necropolis of outcasts had managed to stay hidden from both the Southern Claw and the Ebon Cities for over a decade.
“ We don’t have much else we can do,” Cross said. “My sister is gone. We have no way of tracking Red without her, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going after her. We have to find out where she’s going. I don’t know if the answer is down there or not, but I have to try something.” He heard his own voice crack with desperation.
“ Stone,” Graves said. “He’s right. We have to carry on. If you have any better ideas…I sure don’t. Maybe we need to let Eric do this.”
“ Damn it,” Stone said after a long pause. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“ No,” Cross said matter-of-factly. “Not really.”
They secured a rope about his waist and made sure it was tight. Cross rubbed hexed salt and blood milk ointments on his face, hands and arms in order to protect himself from any poisonous maladies or arcane diseases in the blood-stained soil.
Finally, reluctantly, they lowered him down.
Descending into the hole felt like passing through a fleshy membrane. Rank and moist earth swallowed Cross and collapsed in on him the moment he sank beneath the level of the floor. Grime spilled all over his face, into his nostrils, through his hair and into his eyes. He breathed in rot and effluvia, and felt his blood run cold. Just like before, when he’d first glimpsed at the hole, he was drawn down. He felt himself wanting to sink deeper, to melt into the folds of the earth, never to pull back, down, safe, forever in that grave…
But without his spirit, the pull was weaker than it had been before. It wasn’t meant for him, or for humans at all, but for their spirits, and whatever malign intelligence had created the hole had intended to trap those arcane intelligences, not their human companions. Again he wondered how Red had managed it.
Cross held his breath, and let his body sink into the rotting fold.
He sees the maidens beneath the shadow of the mountain. Four women wait in the silver shadows of a vast black precipice. Thick rain and leaves blow through the glade.
The unicorns stalk them through the smoldering trees. Their horns glisten with acid and oil. Their eyes are dark pits of malicious intent.
He sees the city beyond the hills, a metropolis of black steel and vast furnaces, arcane towers and reflective metal rivers. Soldiers march from it, bound for a dismal end on a dismal field. Dark rain falls as the men leave a city caught in the tall shadows of grim monuments.
He sees the battle, the war against pale things from the dark. He sees a prison without walls. He sees the church. He sees the sacrifice.
Cross fell. He descended into a perfectly round and smooth sphere of a room carved from black rock. It was
