world where the spirits roam, and yet you came back. They know you’re…unique. Special, even. And that makes you valuable.”
Hatred snapped Cross back to clarity for a moment.
“‘ They’?” he said sharply.
Ramsey smiled a hideous, black-toothed grin.
“ You count me as one of them?” He nodded. “If you wish.”
“ You are one of them.”
“ You don’t know what I am,” Ramsey said coldly. “You don’t have a first-born clue.” He paused, and drew an angry breath. They waited in silence. Cross heard engine turbines somewhere beyond the walls. “I do what I have to in order to stay alive,” Ramsey continued after a time. “The same as you.”
Ramsey turned to leave. The vampires let him out, and they waited when he paused at the doorway.
“ You’ll fight the Regost again,” he said. “Its name is Tower, by the way. But first the vampires will test you. They’ll pit you against lesser foes. See how much you’re capable of. And I suggest you do well.” He cast his eyes down. “For your friend’s sake.”
He left. The door was slammed and locked behind him.
Cross breathed in, slowly. His body shook all over.
After a while he rose. He ignored the pain that blazed through his body and he worked through every block and parry and thrust and swipe he’d ever learned. Images of his dead sister burned in his mind.
TWELVE
Cross stepped into the arena.
Just as before, death and silence waited for him. Floating silver flames and dead white snakes slithered through the air around the pale and rune-marked stone. Vampire eyes watched him from the dark stadium seats, calm and hungry. They never moved when the gladiators were present, but Cross could tell that they were anxious, and that they hungered for blood. He knew that the vampires fed on the fallen when the fighting was done, and that was why the arena floor was never cleaned between battles. That floor was immaculate when the gladiators arrived, but soon it would be covered in thick pools of blood and steaming flesh.
The bone blade that he wore on his back had been honed to a razor’s keen edge. The hilt was wrapped in black cord that had been stained and fused with oil and lacquer. The blade itself was yellowed bone taken from the fangs of some massive and primordial beast. The sword was lightweight but long, and it could cut through flesh and light steel.
Cross had used it many times. How many, he couldn’t be sure. He had been a fighter in that arena of the dead for what felt like weeks.
Cross was always the first gladiator to arrive, but never the last to fight, not anymore. He, Kane, Black, the Regost called Tower, and Gorge the Vuul were all that remained of the group that Cross had first been brought to the arena with. With the exception of the match between Tower and Cross, none of those fighters had fought against one other.
Until now.
Gorge was no match for Kane. Despite its ferocity, size and weapon — it carried a heavy flail made from bone and metal — the Vuul was nowhere near as skilled of a fighter as Kane was. The blonde gladiator’s face still looked boyish no matter how many scars he acquired or how thick and shaggy his beard became. He was too fast, too agile, and filled with too much raw fury for his opponent. Kane’s crescent axe sliced the flail’s chain, and when the gray-skinned Vuul tried to hammer Kane with its formidable fists, Kane switched to a thin scimitar made of bone, a faster and lighter weapon that was far more accurate than an axe. He hamstringed the Vuul and let it writhe and crawl along on the ground before he finished it.
Kane’s face was covered in gray blood. His eyes were vacant and haunted.
Danica Black battled a hellishly fast Lith warrior. The female Lith was light and thin and armed with a double-bladed spear adorned with human hair and chain grips. Black moved like a serpent, agile and strong. She wore dark leather armor and yielded twin swords. Her spirit whirled around her in a protective barrier of spinning blades. Dead wind circled the arena floor as the women darted in and out of the maze of bodies left from the earlier battles. Blades sparked and spun off of one another. Cross wasn’t sure if the Lith used magic, or if she was just incredibly agile. In the end it didn’t matter: Danica skewered the woman on both of her blades and held her bleeding body upright as she died.
Like Kane, something seemed dead inside of her.
They’re killing us slowly. Each of us dies a little with every life we take.
They could keep going, keep fighting, and they would. Presumably they would be freed at some point. That was the deal she had made, wasn’t it? Cross couldn’t even remember anymore.
All he knew was that if he didn’t fight and win, Dillon suffered.
They showcased the prisoners before every series of matches. Most of the prisoners were new. The cast changed as the gladiators did. Old prisoners were discarded or killed when their accompanying fighters failed, and new prisoners replaced them as new gladiators arrived. Every victim was tied to a fighter. Every gladiator had someone to win for besides themselves.
Dillon looked sick, and wracked with pain. He still gave that same knowing and brotherly nod every time Cross looked at him. In a way, it would have been better if Dillon had looked at him with hate or despair, but he didn’t.
He still believes that we have a chance. That, or he just wants me to believe it.
Cole was wasting away. Cross still had not seen Ekko, not once, and yet Kane battled like a man possessed.
He couldn’t think about it too much. It was his turn to fight.
Cross was matched with a pair of Gorgoloth armed with heavy stones bound to lengths of black chain. Their stark manes and sharp fangs made them stand out against the midnight chamber that surrounded them. Cross tried to keep them both in sight. They looped the flat stones in the air and growled, spaced themselves apart to try and flank him. His spirit laced herself tight to his skin, stuck to him as if with needles. The pain she caused kept him alert and angry. He felt her bloodlust course through his blood. His normally shaking nerves steadied, cooled like smelted iron dipped in water. He kept her close, and her cold radiated through his hands and across his chest.
The first Gorgoloth shouted out and charged, which signaled the other to attack from the flanking position. Cross released his spirit on the Gorgoloth behind him. She fell on the brute like a hail of explosive nails, while Cross met the other one head on.
Cold explosions detonated behind him. He heard screams and felt bits of fleshy matter as they rained down.
The other Gorgoloth swung its stone too wide, as it hadn’t expected Cross to step in to its attack. Cross severed the chain with a clean blow and raked the bone blade across the creature’s face. It howled in pain and grasped at its ruined eye. Cross called his spirit back from the cold and steaming remains of her victim. She swam to his blade and sheathed it in razor shadows, a humming ebon layer of dripping volcanic metal.
He cut the Gorgoloth in half with a single blow.
Cross returned to his place in the circle of gladiators. Time had lost meaning. He didn’t know how many fights he’d already won. When the match was over, after every battle had been fought, the gladiators were led back to their cold and featureless cells, stripped of their weapons along the way.
Cross saw the normally placid crowd descend upon the bodies as the gladiators left. The prisoners whose respective fighters had failed were added to the mix, dropped screaming from the hanging stone, and they crashed down hard on the ground to be consumed by a horde of aristocratic vampires turned suddenly ravenous.
Cross started to hear that noise wherever he went: smacking lips, tearing flesh, slurping blood. It turned his stomach sour.
Whenever he isn’t fighting, he is here with her, in the Reach.
