vampire prison guards to battle their way past. If they managed to somehow escape through use of stealth, they had to navigate through an unfamiliar city populated with undead, a city doubtlessly filled with toxins and gases and poisonous fluids that had no effect on vampires but that would make the terrain all but impossible for living beings to survive in. And even if they managed that, Krul was still over a hundred miles behind enemy lines, in largely uncharted lands controlled by the Ebon Cities.
Cross had to believe that someone else would be sent to complete his mission: that the Sleeper, the long- buried fear called the Dra’aalthakmar, could still be stopped, if it hadn’t already.
There’s no way that the battle between Lucan and the Sleeper will have gone unnoticed. It’ll be handled.
And yet…that didn’t help his situation. He looked at Dillon, a quiet and stalwart man, a lonely soldier doing his duty no matter what was asked of him.
You got more than you bargained for, Dillon. I want to promise you that you’ll get to eat your sister’s crappy cooking again. I want to tell you that you’ll get to see your nephew. But I can’t. I can’t promise you those things, but I can damn well do everything in my power to get us out of here. That I can do.
“ Cross…” Dillon began, his mind obviously hinged on the same overwhelming scenario. “Listen…”
“ I’m not giving up,” Cross interrupted. Dillon’s eyes were glassy, and his lip trembled. He suddenly looked very old, and yet the fear in his eyes was that of a boy. It’s amazing what they can do to you. “Don’t give up,” he repeated. “Not yet.”
“ You might as well,” said a third voice. “Whatever you think you’re going to do, it’s never going to happen.”
The gravelly voice that interrupted them was somehow familiar, but it took Cross a moment to recognize it.
The Gol stood over them with a handful of brown lard. His short shadow blocked out the dull orange fire of the desert sun. His hood was drawn, but his face-wrap was down, revealing a grayed face lined with scars, cuts and pores. He looked like a leper, but such was the case with all of the Gol. They were a race of hostages. Once, they believed, they’d held another form, a larger form closer to that of humans. But that larger race’s collective consciousness was ripped away during The Black and deposited into new bodies, those of vile dwarves.
The worst part was that the Gol seemed to have no memory of who they truly were, what they’d been, or where it was they came from. Just like Earth itself, they had been re-written by The Black, forever cast into an unfamiliar shape with no means of escape, doomed with the knowledge that they had once been something different, something greater, but cursed to have that memory suppressed from their ever destabilizing minds.
“ Say what?” Dillon said.
“ You’re not escaping,” the Gol said. His teeth were black, as were his jagged fingernails. “No one does. To think otherwise is…pretty stupid.”
“ We have to get out,” Cross said. Even seated on the ground, he only barely had to incline his head to look right at the little man’s ugly face.
“ Oh, well, that’s different!” the Gol croaked with what passed for a smile. “Just tell the vampires that! I’m sure they’ll let you go.”
“ Do you want something?” Dillon said angrily. “Or are you just lonely?”
“ Of course I’m lonely!” the Gol barked with another laugh. “Most of the other humans here are farmers or criminals…not my class of people at all. We don’t get many Southern Claw Hunters.”
Cross stilled at that.
“ How do you know that we’re Hunters?” he asked.
“ Because I’m a genius,” the Gol smiled. “But only you are a Hunter. He’s a ranger,” he said with a thumb at Dillon.
Cross and Dillon exchanged glances.
“ They already know,” the Gol said, addressing the unasked question. “That’s probably why you’re still alive.”
“ Who in the hell are you?” Dillon asked him.
“ Tega Ramsey,” the Gol answered with a short bow. “Smuggler. Negotiator. Acquisitions expert. Obtainer of rare and difficult things. And just as fucked as you, at least at the moment.”
“ And what brings you to this little paradise?” Dillon laughed.
Cross gave him a look. He didn’t share the ranger’s amusement at the odious little troll.
“ Vampires don’t like when their weapons technology is sold to other races without their knowledge or permission,” Ramsey smiled. “I suppose in this case, ‘without their permission’ is the more accurate statement on its own, since they obviously had some knowledge, lest I wouldn’t be here…”
“ We’ve got it,” Cross interrupted. “What can you tell us about this place?”
“ What would I know that you don’t?” Ramsey asked in return.
“ How long have you been here?” Cross asked.
“ How long have you been here?” Ramsey asked in return. Cross almost answered him, but realized he couldn’t. Reading his confused look, Ramsey smiled. “Exactly.”
“ Look, you know something,” Dillon said impatiently. “Or else you wouldn’t still be alive.”
“ That’s why you’re talking to us, isn’t it?” Cross said. “You have something to offer us. In return…” Tega Ramsey was obviously fishing for friends, and for protection from other inmates. He’d likely survived in Krul by goading or coercing others into protecting him; he had to have done so, based on his size alone. One could only go unnoticed in an environment like Krul for so long, especially when the Gol made such easy prey. Most of the other inmates would have eaten him alive without someone watching out for him.
“ You’re smarter than you look, mage,” Ramsey told Cross.
“ Obviously not,” Cross said bitterly. “Or else we wouldn’t be here.”
“ Sometimes, you can’t control where you end up,” Ramsey smiled. “Sometimes the fates just have it in for us.”
Dillon nodded, but Cross shook his head.
No. For some damn reason, I think I’m supposed to be here.
Follow and you will find.
“ So tell us,” he said aloud.
“ Tell you what?”
“ Anything useful.”
Tega, it turned out, knew quite a bit, though little of it would prove terribly beneficial in terms of securing their freedom. Cross and Dillon also learned very quickly that it was best not to ask exactly how Ramsey came by his information. Cross believed every word of what he told them. If Ramsey was lying, he was a fantastically dramatic liar, but his words still rang true.
Besides, what the hell else are we doing to do aside from listen to what he has to say? And if he is completely full of shit, he deserves a medal for his storytelling.
Ramsey told them that Krul was five-hundred vampires strong — which was actually a much smaller number than what Cross and Dillon had guessed — and that there were twice that many prisoners. At least half of those prisoners were human commoners, farmers, laborers and criminals purchased from the corrupt wardens of Black Scar. He knew that the city was controlled by a vampire named Morganna, who among other luminaries had under her command the infamous Talos Drake, the same vampire smuggler to whom Cradden Black had planned to sell Lucan Keth. Ramsey knew that the tower they were housed in was one of the three tallest in all of Krul, part of a triad of towers called The Talons: Scar, Blight, and Fist. Scar was the prison tower, Fist was the command tower, and Blight was where prisoners were taken to be broken, experimented on, Turned, tortured, or transformed into some useful substance for the vampire legions. He knew that arcane dampeners made it so that nothing inside of the walls could be tracked from the outside, just as no arcane messages or missives could pass in or out of Krul.
But most importantly, Ramsey knew that there were other prisoners brought in with Cross and Dillon, and that they were still alive.
“ Two of the women,” he told them as they sat baking in the sun, nibbling on dried bits of brown food that looked and tasted like horse dung, “are in Fist. I don’t know why, and that bothers me. I like to know things.” Ramsey had covered up his face. His eyes were dull yellow, the pupils so faint they were almost impossible to see
