him feral and bloodthirsty, but it also gave him incredible regenerative capabilities. He didn't want to test its limits, but he knew that before long he would have to. He only hoped that Ekko's captors didn't find a way to block the connection. It had been foolish to speak with Ramsey about Ekko's being Turned, but it had been the only way for Cross to be sure of what was happening to him.
He rose. There was a sharp, almost tearing pain buried deep in his stomach. He wondered if there wasn’t some internal damage, something that couldn’t be fixed by either his spirit or Ekko’s vampiric power.
Not long ago he would have worried that the pain was an effect of the food and drink they’d given him. He knew that it was tainted: there had never been any question regarding that. They wouldn’t want him at full strength except during the duels in the arena.
But now that’s out of their hands, he thought with grim satisfaction. Now Ekko heals me, and she purges those poisons out of my system, just like a spirit would.
Cross tried not to think too much about the fact that he benefitted from a vampire’s power, that it was the strength of creatures he hated to the core of his being that now allowed him to carry on when he should have already failed.
His heart burned with anger, and he pushed himself until his muscles burned with pain. He ran back and forth, pushed off of the walls with his booted feet. He stayed twice as long in the plank position, and pushed his body to its limits. He didn’t tire. He punched the air until his arms were so sore from motion that he couldn’t move. It didn’t matter. His body would heal before his next battle.
He wasn’t sure how it worked, exactly. He felt no thirst for blood, no ravenous hunger like a vampire’s victims were supposed to feel when they were Turned, or when they were in the process of being Turned. But hatred fueled him: hatred for vampires, for the leaders of Krul…and hatred for Danica Black. The rational part of his brain knew that he couldn’t kill her, if for no other reason than the fact that he needed her. If what was left of Lucan, those bits of his ancient soul, had indeed bonded with Cross and Ekko and Black, she had to live.
But not for one second longer than is necessary, he promised himself.
He went through his motions, through thrusts and parries and dodges. Cross battled imaginary foes. He worked himself to a sweat. He drank water, and at some point was given food, real food, a metal bowl filled with strips of cured pork and beef and a crust of bread along with a jug of purple wine. He devoured it all, and licked the juices from his aching fingers.
It was difficult to slow his mind down. He had to determine how they would escape. They had to save the Woman in the Ice. If she fell, the Dra’aalthakmar, the Sleeper, would raze the cities of the Southern Claw and the Ebon Cities alike, and while Cross didn’t give two shits about the vampires he didn’t want to be the man who’d failed humankind. There had to be a way out, and one that didn’t rely on Danica Black. He knew now that they would never be released, no matter how well or how many times they fought.
Cross fell onto the cot, exhausted. Bright sunlight seeped through the high bars of the door, and the air was sticky and hot. It would be some time still before nightfall. He allowed his body to rest, even though his mind continued to race and rage.
He stands on an ashen peak. The night sky is vast and starless. The wind is bitter with the taste of glacial salt, and so cold it makes the air brittle. Cracks in the ground threaten to widen and swallow him up.
The mountaintop is surrounded by a void. It is an island of ruined stone in a sea of endless night. The ground shifts beneath his feet like a raft lost in an inky sea.
The Sleeper is there. It is a thick and charnel presence, a smoking husk of primordial rage and defiled power.
His feet kick mounds of dust like fine black snow as he circles, trying to gain advantage against a foe that can likely destroy him with ease. The Sleeper manifests a physical presence. It is a tall and thin shadow of bladed edges and serpentine limbs, with eyes like dead stars. Cross tries to lock his eyes onto its form, but his mind burns from the effort. The Sleeper is an inconstant, an eye-numbing haze in the vague semblance of a giant.
He realizes he does not face the shadow alone. His spirit hugs painfully against his skin, like armor made from shards of broken steel. There are two others there with them atop the thin spire of crumbling rock, standing next to him at the foot of a Stygian titan.
One of them is Ekko, pale and bloody, her eyes dead crimson, her hands replaced with thick claws encased in iron gauntlets.
The other is Danica Black. Her katars are as ebon as her armor, and the fresh scar around her right eye is bloody and raw. She looks at Cross, and he looks back, their eyes direct doorways into their tainted souls.
Even with that brief connection, that understanding, they both know there will be more blood spilled between them. And that only one of them will survive.
He was shaken awake by vampire sentries. His vision swam, and his head throbbed with pain. The runes on his forearms pulsated with bloody purple light, and for the first time Cross realized it wasn't the food or drink that kept him in a dreamlike state, but the arcane runes that had been cast onto his skin. They made him more susceptible to the vampire’s control and suggestion. It occurred to him that those runes might have been how Ekko had managed to maintain their empathic vampire bond — the shards of Lucan’s soul that had embedded themselves in Cross, Black and Ekko in the wake of his apparent destruction had established a link between the three living mages, but these mind-weakening runes had in their own way perpetuated it. If not for them, Cross doubted Ekko ever would have been able to reach out and telepathically infect him at all.
Telepathic vampirism. I’ve officially heard it all.
Cross was fit into his armor by withered zombie hands. His gauntlet was clamped onto his hand and his blade was strapped to his back. His spirit cooled against his skin like a soothing vapor.
He cleared his mind. He was brought again to the arena. The trip was clearer this time. The controlling runes were losing their efficacy. He saw the stone halls wrought in blood-spattered stone. They were lined with the cells of other condemned prisoners, their eyes vacant and hollow, their faces grim, sucked of all life. Each of those condemned inmates looked as dead on the outside as he felt on the inside.
Cross passed bladed reliquaries and filthy operating rooms with stained floors. There was a chamber where the pieces of a dead giant were being grafted together to form a titan zombie, a tower of shambling armored flesh held up by scaffolding and dark iron ladders. Cross walked on bridges that spanned pools of bubbling acid fuel. He walked through open courtyards populated by bone trees that grew in blood soil. He smelled decay and human fear in exercise yards, where prisoners were forced to leap over swinging blades and duck beneath oversized claws. Chambers grew long with shadows as the sun descended. The air turned as dark as wine, and the sound of chains rang like song through the approaching night.
The air turned pale as they approached the arena, and it was heavy with the tang of sweat. Cross wondered if the cold feeling inside of him was still fear. He should have felt more apprehension as he approached those doors. His limbs should have shaken, and thoughts of doubt should have plagued his mind. But all he felt was the cold, a gnawing chill that encased his heart, as if in armor.
The doors groaned open, and the arena waited for him. He was once again the last fighter to arrive. The prisoner slab had already started its descent, and it filled the air with stone and metal noise. The fading desert light from outside was overwhelmed by the burn of floating silver torches. The predatory bone serpents passed nearby as he entered the room, and he smelled their dead breath. He ignored the undead eyes that glared down at him. His own eyes were cast ahead, locked on his opponent.
Danica Black waited for him. Her armor had been discarded in favor of mobility and speed. Her dark-bladed katars shone with a wicked crimson light, and her dark clothing made her fade into the shadows. Pale and tattooed skin was exposed at her neck and midriff, and her bare and serpent-inked arms ended in dark fingerless gloves. Her hair was the color of blood, and her black lips were sealed in a determined scowl.
Cross had never beheld a woman as beautiful as she.
He drew his blade as he approached the arena floor, and with his other hand he removed his armor coat and dropped it to the ground. His eyes never left Black's, but at the corner of his vision he saw movement near the commander's chairs in the stadium seats, likely a gesture made by Drake or Morganna to indicate that they approved of the match.
Only when he'd reached the pale killing floor did Cross allow his eyes to go up, to look upon the dying. Cross knew he would carry what he saw there with him for the rest of his life, whether he wanted to or not.
Dillon looked withered. His skin hung loose from his bones. His one eye was sunken and dark, and his mouth hung slack. He looked feverish, but he was so devoid of strength he couldn't even shake in pain. His legs had been
