You’re not weak, she reassured herself, but she knew that she was. She’d been so desperate to compromise, to preserve what was dear to her, that she ’d sacrificed everything.
So when Geist grabbed her hair and rammed his stone-hard fist into her stomach with such force she coughed up blood, she tried not to think about finding ways to block out the pain or to escape.
She thought about all of the mistakes she’d ever made in her life. She thought about how she deserved every moment of what she was getting.
She see s Lara again. They float through a sea of inky shadow, sailors trapped in an ebon sea. The waves are strong. Their vessel takes on water and breaks apart. T hey ’ re both engulfed by the turgid waves. P ale lightning rips down from a sky covered with stone clouds.
She can’t hold on. They grab each other’s hands and try to stay together, but the sea is strong, and dark things under the surface grab them and pull them down.
Down to lightless deeps where they will forever swim in the arms of nightmares.
At som e point she woke, and she wasn’ t being beaten. Her face was a mess of blood, and her bones were broken, but even as she lay there they painfully re-knit themselves. T he wounds on her face slowly sealed. Her i nternal injuries fused closed with agonizing force. She felt things realign and crack inside her.
She was in a dimly lit room. Gath was there, along with a Scarecrow. For a moment she thought he was there to help, and that was why he’d given her back her spirit, who desperately raced to seal her crushing wounds. But as her eyes healed and she almost regained full consciousness she saw the smirk on Gath’s face.
They’re letting my spirit heal me, she realized, so that they can hurt me again.
It was foolish to dream of Lara, so she didn’t. Because she knew no matter how hard she cried or how badly she wanted Cole to be with her, it was never going to happen.
She’s gone. And she’s not coming back.
She woke looking up at the inside of a black dome.
She was no longer on the ship, but down on the ground, in the ruined city. F rozen shadow vapors weigh t ed the air. Her skin was wreathed in wet frost. Her breaths were ragged and heavy.
Danica lay on her back. She’ d been secured to a slab of icecovered granite. The dome above her was made of ice and dark stone.
Her skin was frozen. The bonds held her wrists tight. She felt her spirit, just out of reach, screaming like he was in pai n. He struggled to be free. She sensed that he wanted so desperately to help her.
She looked around, desperate. She saw Rake and Raven and Geist and two more me n she didn’t know. It took her some moments to realize they weren’t men at all, but undead.
The first was a lich. Most of t he skin had fallen from his bones, and his skeletal visage bore burning black eyes. His l ong claws gripped some sort of medallion, an ancient trinket that looked familiar.
“Mor ning, Dani,” Rake said. “Are y ou ready?”
“What the hell is going on?” she asked. Her heart hammered with fear. She couldn’t move, couldn’t call her spirit. Her mind raced to find a way out, but there wasn’t any. She felt tears on her face. “Rake…please…”
“Sorry, Dani,” he smiled, and he nodded to the second undead creature. The vampire.
It s dark hood fell back to reveal a pale face with a wide mouth. His unnaturally dark eyes were voids in his skull. S harp fangs dripp ed dark venom. He was lean and muscular and bore a vicious and toothy smile. His nearness chilled her heart.
Geist stepped up onto the slab and stood over her. The Revenger held a wide-bladed axe. The tip was so sharp Danica could almost taste its razor edge. A distorted view of her face reflected back at her in the metal.
I won’t scream, she told herself, her last defiant act. I won’t give you the satisfaction, you bastard.
“What are you going to do?” she asked grimly.
“Prepare you,” Rake said. She was surprised he ’d graced her with an answer. “ Like I told you before, we need a sacrifice to des troy the obelisk and end humanity’s reign of magic. A few years ago, the leaders of Koth planned to use Cross, because he fit the conditions perfectly. He’d lost his spirit, and then regained it. But Cross no longer has a spirit. So now we need someone else.” H e nodded for Geist to proceed.
Black knew he hadn’t really answered her question. He in no way had explained what they were about to do to her, how they would make her useful to them. She didn’t bother pointing out that without magic he and T he Revengers would be just as much at the mercy of Koth and the Ebon Cities as the Southern Claw, but she had no doubts he’d already thought of that, that he’d already planned ahead. Rake always planned ahead.
She looked up at Geist’s twisted and ugly face. The axe was massive, and his expressionless gaze was chilling.
The vampire moved closer. It smiled. Its pale and twisted face was hideous to behold. T he forehead was long and smooth and the jaw was pugnacious and wide to accommodate the rows of razor teeth.
Geist raised the axe. When she looked up again, she wasn’ t afraid. Her last thoughts weren’t of Cole, but of Cross.
I’m sorry, Eric. I’m so sorry.
The blade fla shed down quick. The pain was so intense she black ed out the instant her blood splash ed onto the vampire’s face.
Darkness.
She swims in a black sea. It’ s calm now, rigid. Lonely.
There ’s no one there with her. She’ s adrift on ebon waves in the middle of a vast nowhere, a world made of water.
S he’d loved to swim as a child. She would get in and out of the water as often as she could. She did it to escape. She couldn’t bear her family. She was nothing but meat to them, and they were just trash to her. Her mother did nothing to help. Her father was a demon. Her brother was the same, only younger.
So she swam, just as she swims now. She drifts alone. It disturb s her that there are no voices. There ’ s no one there to tell her that she ’ s safe.
It doesn’t matter. She knows she won’t be there long.
She woke in darkness.
She sees razor claws and blood, teeth filled with meat.
She sees dead cities on a frozen shore next to a black and oily sea. Blood vapors fill the sky. There are b lack ships in the bay with engines that grind bones and scour the air with pale flames.
Rows of still-standing dead bodies line up at the edge of the icy sea. The anemic corpses step one-by-one into the waters, where the howling waves consume them.
That world is dying. It has always been dead, but now it falls apart. There’ s little left.
She sees the war labs and the factories. Sees the council halls and hears the endless arguing, the grinding alien tongue that for some reason makes sense to her now. She stands there, a cold body, naked but unafraid.
She is judged by a pale council. They regard her, inspect her. Cold tongues and clammy hands run over her skin. She stands stalwart, uncaring.
What more can they do to me?
She ’ s fed. Thick and vi s cous fluid pours down her throat. She takes it. Her instinct is to cough it up, to gag on it, but she knows it sustains her, and she wants to be sustained.
She isn’t done yet.
The scars on her neck won’t heal. They ’ re ugly and jagged and they ooze thick and congealed blood that runs down her skin. The arcane tattoos on her right arm faintly glow, resistant to this dread change in her physiognomy, but after a while they fade.
They bring her b lack blood in bone goblets. She drinks it. She can’ t get her fill.
She woke in darkness.
She was thirsty. Her breath caught in her chest.
Bone needles probed her. She saw nothing but pale light.
She felt no pain, and yet knew she wasn’t whole. Something cold pressed against her shoulder, metal and frigid.
Then the pain came, and she screamed.
Ravenous claws flesh blood drink blood falling in waves collapsing fields of flesh raw explosions this world ends your world erase us not them find you found you find him we will always find you find him this world erase
