The squad carried on with an eye behind them. The riders didn’t quicken or slow their pace, but they kept a perfect distance, dangling right there at the edge of sight.
“ Should we just take care of this?” Graves asked after a while.
“ No,” Stone said, clearly wishing he had a different answer. “Not yet. There’s no way to get any sort of advantage over them right now. All we’d be doing is riding right up to them. I wish there was some cover out here.”
“ When we get closer to the Rift, the ground gets rocky again,” Cristena pointed out. “And hilly. We should be able to lose them then.”
“ Or gain the advantage,” Stone said.
They rode on.
Cross felt cold. He sensed whispers in the air, the touch of the spirits tied to the area. As they rode out of the open desert and into a region of hills and dead trees, the feeling intensified. There were voices in the air, dead whispers. Cross felt the breath of ghosts on his skin.
I shouldn’t be able to feel this. My spirit is gone, and I can never have another. What’s lost cannot be regained.
He sees the woman, falling into the sky.
Who are you?
Cross felt like he was losing his mind.
Dusk approached. They rode through a field of sharp stones, some as large as their horses. The rocks were black quartz shot through with red crystal veins, and the seared edges of the stone smoked like glacial ice. The dark soil underfoot was crystalline and coarse.
Bones dangled from dead trees, skeletons of those left to rot. Shreds of ancient clothing were blown by the dry wind from the north, which carried the smell of carrion and rotted flowers.
They were getting close to the Rift.
And after they’d kept their distance for over an hour, the mysterious riders suddenly closed in.
SIXTEEN
They rode fast, but it wasn’t fast enough.
The six riders, who had started at such a remote distance, closed the gap between the groups seemingly without effort. At the rate they approached, they’d be face-to-face before nightfall.
The howls of the wolves started in again, closer this time. Much closer.
“ Let’s put some distance between us and them,” Stone said. “Now!”
The terrain had become much more difficult to manage, particularly in the failing light. A scarlet filter had been draped over the sky. Thick patches of rubble lay in the path, which led to a high hillside at the edge of a forest of dead trees. The bloody haze of the sun was rapidly disintegrating. Cross peered into the trees, but his eyes were unable to pierce the thickets, and all he could see were more shadows.
“ Are we going in there?” he called back.
Cross rode with Cristena at the head of the party. The riders were right behind them, only a few hundred yards away. Their thick red cloaks fluttered in the dry wind. They wore red armor and bandoliers stocked with knives, hex rods and grenades. They had thick black hair, pale and gnarled flesh, red eyes and ebon fangs. They rode Blood Wolves: massive, horse-sized lupines with dark red fur that was mottled and thick. The wolves’ oversized heads bore half-moon yellow eyes and enormous, slavering jaws.
Graves fired on them with a SIG Sauer in one hand and a snub-nosed Colt Python in the other. Most of his shots went wide, but one took a vampire in the shoulder and nearly threw it from its wolf mount, but the undead creature clung to the leather reins and held tight.
The vampires had the momentum of a runaway train. They were suddenly so close it was as if they’d been right up on the squad’s heels all along.
Cross and Cristena were nearly to the forest.
“ Go!” Stone shouted. He leapt out of his saddle, turned and knelt down with the M16A2 and the grenade launcher in his hands.
Cross pulled his pack off and desperately dug through it for something — anything — that might prove useful. He found vials of anti-toxin, rolls of bandage, chemical batteries…
“ Cross…” Cristena said as they rode closer to the forest.
“ We’re not leaving,” he said as he dismounted. Cristena followed suit. He heard the wolves draw close. Their staccato howls came at him in unison, a deadly dirge that shook the ground.
Cross found the pyrojack, and quickly pulled it over his shaking left hand. The leather and steel gauntlet fit snugly. There were two open nodes on the outside of the glove between the second and third knuckles. The first node still held a red-black stone whose face swirled with energies that hummed with arcane potential.
Graves fired his third and last loaded pistol, a banged-up HK45 like Cross’. A shot hit the lead rider square between the eyes, and both he and his wolf came crashing forward in a violent heap of skin and fur.
Stone knelt close by with his rifle at the ready. He was alone on the lower stretch of ground. He aimed at the riders as they thundered towards him.
The riders drew to within a hundred yards.
Cross felt a spirit whisper in the air around him. He even felt her against his skin. Something nearby howled with a rancid and bloodcurdling cry.
The vampires were fifty yards away when Stone pulled the trigger of the M203.
The grenade tore the ground apart with a violent explosion. Two riders and their mounts exploded in a mess of blood and fur, and two more crashed to the ground down behind them.
One wolf had just started to rise before arcane bolts of black rock skewered both it and its rider. Cross felt Cristena’s effort beside him, felt the strain that the magical attack placed on her spirit.
Graves and Stone fired at the other wolf and rider. The Remington took the wolf’s head off in a gruesome spray, and Stone moved in to finish the vampire off with his black-bladed machete.
The vampire was quick. It sprang to its feet and leapt up and over Stone’s head with a whirling flip that put it into position behind him, but Stone anticipated the move, turned, and took its head off with a clean turnaround swipe.
The last vampire-and-wolf pair leapt through the smoke left behind by the grenade blast. Stone’s back was turned, and the wolf landed on him and threw him face down to the ground with a crash. Graves called out, reached to his back and unsheathed his machete. Cross felt the pyrojack tingle against his cold flesh.
Behind him, Cristena screamed.
A vampire had grabbed her from behind. It had slithered out of the woods and outflanked them. Its black eyes reflected Cross’ face back at him. Cristena’s blood splashed across its pale cheeks. Her eyes went white. Her open jugular pulsed and oozed beneath the caress of black fangs.
Cross heard her spirit scream. He almost saw its gossamer entrails as it poured every last bit of its form into protecting her, into keeping her alive when her body already should have expired.
Then Cross heard Stone shout. He heard Graves’ cries of fury and the snarl of beasts. His heart raced so fast it felt ready to explode out of his chest like a cannon shot.
He aimed his HK at the vampire eating Cristena, right between its eyes.
She falls
He closed his eyes. up
And he is there with her in the glade. The black mountain looms over them, powerful, vast, ancient, dripping power so raw it congeals and falls like sick rain. The air is moist and cold. Ice floes drift in the stream. Rain-addled leaves plummet from the trees in curtain-like sheets and land on the forest floor.
She is there. She has not fallen, hasn’t left him alone, not yet. He only thinks she has. She is not yet gone.
