guess luck doesn’t have anything to do with it, eh?”
Ramsey took his leave.
Cross couldn’t sleep. The image Ramsey had formed burned in his mind.
It was Southern Claw hand code. One simple message, conveyed just barely long enough for Cross to even see it.
BE READY, it said.
FOURTEEN
Cross woke to the sound of grim drums. They filled the night like a shattered heartbeat. Dread build in his chest. His arms lay still.
When he was unchained and led from the cell a few minutes later, he realized he wasn’t shaking at all, at least on the outside.
Be ready, Ramsey had said. It might have been another trick, something meant to lull him into a false sense of calm before he was executed. It might have been a beautiful lie, a gesture from a friend that ultimately had the same result, leading Cross to believe he would live, when ultimately he would die. But at that point, there was little else he could do but wait.
Something had changed while he'd slept. Cross couldn't say what it was, what had caused the shift that he felt, but its presence was unmistakable. The air held a gravity it had lacked before, a sense of presence. It was a familiar feeling. He'd felt it before, in a dream he could only half remember. Whatever it was, it filled him with a sense of foreboding as solid as lead.
Something was coming. He tasted its charnel odor.
Cross' arms were tightly bound behind his back and secured with metal wire that sliced painfully into his wrists. Black-clad vampires in blank masks pushed him through the door and marched him down a steep set of stairs that circled the sandstone tower he'd been held in.
The night was hot and stale and deep. The moon loomed like a swollen silver eye, so massive he felt he could have reached out and touched it. Blight Tower stood at a dizzying height over the City of Chains. There was no railing for the stairs, and it would have been easy for Cross to fall off the side and into the valley of steel that waited below. Krul was a labyrinthine network of iron webs and canyons of steam and shadow. The sound of grinding metal tore through the night like an animal cry. Blasts of industrial smoke trailed into the air, which reeked of body ash and burning blood. Razorwings soared through the sky, reptilian beasts with scaled wings and tails like bladed whips and serpentine mouths that exhaled clouds of poison dust.
Deathly whispers filled Cross’ head as they led him down the stairs and onto a steel bridge that was barely two feet wide. The bridge was held in place by pale chains and bone girders, and it led over a platform that floated in the air all on its own: a massive disc of black metal, a juggernaut of dark iron that was hundreds of feet across and that hovered and turned like the head of a massive screw.
Black obelisks stood upon the face of the bobbing platform, as did a massive and complicated contraption that stood at the nexus of a cluster of pillars. This central edifice was like some ossified steel tree constructed from mirror shards and shattered saws. Its limbs were as spindly as a spider's legs, and its central trunk dripped dark fluids that ran into gutters filled with slime. Fluid as thick as oil leaked from the massive platform and fell like grisly rain into the smog and shadow-filled obscurity of the city below.
The narrow plank was a dozen feet higher than the surface of the revolving platform. Cross was flown down by a spike-backed gargoyle whose black eyes reflected Cross' exhausted and haggard face back at him. He only barely recognized what he saw. He didn't recall being so pale, so worn, so bearded and scarred. He looked like a corpse.
The massive rotating platform felt unsteady beneath his feet. Dozens of vampires stood in attendance. Most of them looked like prison sentries, but Cross saw Talos Drake with his dark undead lions, and a pair of vampires clad in blood red cloaks and armor and equipped with weapons made of Crujian steel — Shadowclaws, elite Ebon Cities commandos out of Rath.
He also saw Tega Ramsey, who attended Drake. He saw Danica Black, Kane, and several of the other gladiators, all bound and on their knees, brought to bear witness to the fate of one of their own who'd chosen not to die with honor in the arena.
A second, smaller disc floated above the platform, well above the tree of razors and the whirling bones. This smaller vehicle was only about the size of a truck, curved in a bowl shape, and lined with massive downward- pointing saws like the inverted dorsal fins of some razorine shark. A stout turbine engine at one end of the vessel pushed it through the air, and the vehicle left a stream of black and green smoke in its wake. Inside of the wide- mouthed interior of the bowl-shaped vessel were a trio of bone-launching motor guns operated by female vampires with black masks, tight green armor and tall scimitars they carried slung across their backs. A massive male vampire at least seven feet tall piloted the vessel. He was all undead muscle and thick armor, and Cross guessed he’d likely been a Doj before he’d been Turned.
Chained to the bottom of the small vehicle were a dozen prisoners who looked as though they'd been dipped in blood and dragged through the desert. Their arms and legs were tied over their heads and to the bottom of vessel, while their bodies faced out, like they were figureheads on the underbelly of the dark ship. The vessel was designed to aerial dock, where it would float perpendicular to a loading platform; if it were actually forced to land, every prisoner would be crushed.
Cross spied Cole among the other prisoners as the vehicle floated close to the surface of the execution platform. He could barely recognize her, since her bloody hair was pasted to her face and she’d gone bone thin.
You bastards.
Cross was seized by the arms and marched across the platform. Kane nodded at him as he walked by. Black looked at him with…fear? Remorse? Either way, she didn't seem happy about his execution.
Well, at least there's that.
He glanced at Ramsey again, who nodded at one of Drake's other attendants as she whispered something to him. She was a young-looking female vampire with short blonde hair.
Cross turned away. That vampire was Ekko.
Something growled in the air, guttural and deep. It was distant, but the sound was strong enough that he actually felt it. No one seemed to notice but Cross.
The drums pounded slower than before. They'd become a heartbeat for the bestial city. Cross heard chains and smoke and cries, and he smelled metal and oil and rotting flesh. He moved stiffly, exhausted beyond measure.
They led him towards the tree. Drops of grisly matter rained down from the clockwork branches and their whirring blades. The pale moonlight cast the shadows of limp bodies held in the tree at awkward angles, crumpled and missing appendages. A dank and stale air wafted over Cross.
Dillon's body was on the platform at the base of the tree, so ruined that Cross only recognized it because it made no sense for any other body to have been placed there. Knowing his friend's fate before seeing his corpse had prepared him somewhat, but Cross still felt sick.
No one deserves to die like that. He'd been a simple man, and he hadn't wanted for much. He’d wanted to protect his home; he’d wanted to see to it that the sister and nephew he likely felt awkward around were safe and taken care of; he’d wanted an occasional companion of his own. I'm sorry. God, I'm sorry.
A pair of cloaked vampires stood at the base of the tree, their white robes and skin like pale torches in the claustrophobic shadows. Murderous mechanical branches moved overhead. The vampires smiled. Something deep in Cross' soul sealed away the rage and hatred he felt at that moment, so that he could reach back in and use it later, when he'd need it the most.
He’d have the opportunity: Cross knew that he wasn't going to die.
Not yet.
