“ Where the hell is she?” Graves asked as the three of them huddled together. “And how will we know her?”
Stone was about to answer when a new challenger was announced. The announcer’s voice was unnaturally loud and sharp, and seemed to issue from everywhere.
“ Let’s hear it for…THE WITCH!”
The Southern Claw men inched forward through the wall of excited bodies to get a better view.
The corpse of the former losing gladiator — a stout, black-skinned Gorgoloth whose white hair and fanged face had been torn clean away from its muscular body — was being cleared away. The winner, a fierce-looking Vuul, still stood in the pit. He was tall and broad of shoulder, with pale grey flesh covered in dozens of scars that were so entwined they looked almost like tattoo art. Anemic muscles tensed with the thick black blood that ran through his near-translucent skin, and his pale eyes bore a subtle glow that lit his hairless head and torso with smoky light. The Vuul wielded a maul. Its hilt was laced with leather straps and fetishes of bone and teeth, and its tip was set with a sharp black spike that still dripped the Gorgoloth’s syrupy blood. The Vuul wore leather pants only slightly darker than his grey and white flesh. He stood stoic and silent, which was traditional for his grim and humorless race, and he closed his eyes as the door behind him slid open to reveal his challenger.
‘ The Witch’, they called her.
Oh, God, Cross thought. You’re kidding me.
She was a lithe and pale woman, with dark hair that was not quite shoulder length, and a face as lean as her athletic body. A dark crimson cloak was cast aside to reveal tight blood-red leather armor set with black steel elbow guards and banded iron gauntlets. She wielded a pair of rune-carved scimitars, and even Cross could sense the swirl of an angry male spirit around her.
“ Is that…?” Graves said.
“ The woman from Thornn,” Cross said. “Cristena.”
She’s failed to find her husband, so now she’s looking for death.
Even though Cross recognized her, she seemed an entirely different woman than the one he’d met in Thornn. For starters, Cross hadn’t realized just how long she really was. She had to be almost six feet tall, even wearing flat-footed moccasins and after she’d shed her bulky cloak. She’d pulled her hair back tight into a pony-tail, which revealed an angular and beautiful face lined with rage. Her faint scar was only barely visible in the dull spotlights: a trace down her cheek and the left side of her neck. Her eyes were cold and hollow. Her movements were sinuous and graceful and entirely inhuman, like a feline predator with blades in lieu of claws.
This woman was nothing like the vulnerable, friendly, sad witch Cross had met just a few nights before. She licked her teeth and lips in violent anticipation while the Vuul held his fists in the air, much to the delight of the crowd.
“ She won’t be much good to us dead,” Graves said. Cross could barely hear him; the crowd had worked into frenzy. Noise collapsed against his ears. Cash and coins and notes passed hands with such speed Cross couldn’t fathom how anyone even communicated their bets. Maybe that wasn’t the point.
“ There’s not much we can do,” Stone said angrily.
Cross watched her. The space behind her cold, dead eyes was the deepest part of the room, a center of gravity that drew everything into it. An invisible darkness seemed to dwell there, an inky whirlpool that Cross felt himself drawn to in spite of himself, and he saw that he wasn’t the only one: every spectator was held entranced, deer before a lion, gripped by some terrifying fascination, like moths trapped before the brightest flame. Even the Vuul gladiator seemed to feel it, and it was only the race’s natural resistance to magic that prevented him from being entirely lulled under her spell.
That’s not something you can do all of the time, Cross thought. Or by choice. Her spirit must have been wholly enraged and left unrestrained to exercise that much power. It fed off of the emotions in the room, which was as dangerous for everyone else as it was for Cristena herself. If she was unable to contain her spirit if it decided to lash out, the arcane backlash would be like a warehouse of gasoline lit by a powder bomb.
If Cross still retained his own spirit, he could have helped her. Even as dangerous as it was to mingle spirits — especially spirits of the opposite gender — he could have used his magic to curtail Cristena’s raw power, and possibly minimize any damage it did. As things stood, Cross was just a well-informed spectator.
Lucky me, I’m the only one in the room who realizes how much trouble we’re in.
When the battle began, the air exploded like brittle glass.
Cristena moved like a violent shadow. She sprang through the air, and her blades swept across the Vuul’s chest. He went to his knees. The Vuul was fast, and before Cristena could strike again he caught her with a backhanded blow in the sternum that sent her crashing into the blood-stained wall. The crowd gasped, howled, and cheered. Cross could almost taste the bloodlust in the air. He watched Cristena, and wondered if she’d rise from the crumpled heap she’d landed in.
The Vuul strode over. Though injured, his supernatural metabolism had already started to stitch his wounds, and the cuts that leaked his ebon blood slowed to barely a trickle. Bones tensed and cracked beneath his sickly flesh. His cold face twisted from stoic to cruel. His heavy feet stamped on the muck-stained floor. Most of Cristena’s torso would fit beneath one of the Vuul’s boots.
“ She’s done,” Stone muttered.
There was nothing they could do.
Cross decided to do something, anyway.
The sweat and stain of the crowd hung like a miasma. Cross’ fingers glistened with grime and sweat. Blood pounded in his ears. He drew a deep and steadying breath, and grabbed the bag of phosphorous. Warlocks often carried explosive powders, sometimes as backup to their own magic, and sometimes just for kicks. Cross hated the stuff, but there were times when it proved handy to be able to provide a big flash and bang at the drop of a hat. The powders he carried were so innocuous in smell and appearance that they often escaped notice, which was exactly what Cross had been betting on when he’d smuggled them into the White Spider.
Cross tasted electric dew and salt on his tongue, and the powder in the bag seemed to dissolve straight through his skin. Cross pinched some between his index finger and thumb, held it for a moment, and then quietly dropped the white powder onto the floor. The air around his feet grew instantly cold, like he’d stepped into a frozen stream. The spectral tongues of ghosts licked his skin. It almost — almost — felt like he’d found his spirit again, but it wasn’t her. The energies he conjured from the arcane hex powder weren’t spirits at all, but trapped ectoplasmic essence, like a recorded voice or a rapidly fading memory.
Vapor crept along the floor like a freezing tide. White smoke, as faint as a snowy mist, slowly rose.
Cross glanced into the pit. Cristena had somehow roused herself and was on her feet again. She and the Vuul circled one another. She looked bloody and exhausted, but her eyes were as sharp as the scimitars in her hands, and her feet moved with cunning speed and grace across the floor. The Vuul, on the other hand, barely even looked winded, as his rapid healing had sealed nearly every trace of his wounds.
In moments, the sweaty air was replaced with the heady smell of magic, and the first row of spectators was neck deep in a hazy white fog. Ghostly faces shifted and melted in the smoke, aberrant spectral clouds that leered and growled. Cross, Stone and Graves pulled themselves off to the side of the room, where they could avoid being trampled by panicked spectators.
The room came alive with fear, and what had moments before been a chorus of cheers and angry shouts turned to screams. Bodies pushed together in a frenzy.
“ What the hell?” Graves shouted. “Did you do that?” he asked Cross.
“ Maybe,” Cross said.
“ Idiot,” Stone growled.
Cross kept his body pressed against the wall. Once the crowd thinned and the throng pushed and elbowed its way violently closer to the double doors that led out of the chamber, Cross was able to make his way down rows of seats to the arena. The ground was slick from the touch of arcane powder, even though the effect had already begun its rapid dissipation process.
By the time Cross came to the edge of the pit, the fight had already been stopped by White Spider bouncers, tall and heavily armored men with jagged swords and revolvers. The Vuul warrior looked as if it had calmly accepted that the match was over, as it had already moved halfway out the door down in the pit, but Cristena appeared angry. The pair of guards sent to retrieve her looked like they’d been sent to wrestle a wild tiger.
“ Cristena!” Cross shouted. She looked up, and their eyes locked. He saw the same desolate woman he’d
