“The Eye,” she said.
Ronan stood next to her. He held a blade in his hand.
“Danica?”
“Yeah. It’s me,” she said. She looked at him. “I remember everything, Ronan. Everything.” She drew in a cold breath. She was on the verge of losing it, of breaking down, but she wasn’t going to let herself. She couldn’t. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “We still have to destroy the Witch’s Eye. I don’t want to help the Ebon Cities any more than I already have…but if that thing keeps creating Witchborn, it’ll destroy all of us.”
Ronan watched her carefully. His scarred face betrayed no hint of emotion. The brief moment of vulnerability she’d glimpsed had passed. He was Ronan again: the killer, the weapon. The one member of the team she knew would always do his job no matter the cost.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “If there’s any way we can use this thing to beat the vampires…”
“No,” she said. Her muscles ached, and her skin was flushed with cold. “It’s too dangerous. The Eye only has one agenda: to destroy. That’s what the Ebon Cities built it to do, and now that they’ve lost control over it that’s all it can do.”
Trees stood to the north and south. A trail of cracked black rock led east, cutting through the thorny briars as it wound back into the hills. To the west lay Rimefang Loch. Its churning cold waters pounded against the stony shore. Green drifts of sediment and muck floated on the surface like oil slicks. Dark islands stood half-concealed by distant drifts of fog.
Danica heard distant bomb blasts and the whistle of far-off artillery. Ebon Cities and Southern Claw forces battled for control of the waters day and night. While the city-states were the most heavily protected Southern Claw resources, Rimefang Loch was the front line of the war. Southern Claw warships and arcane dreadnaughts armed to the teeth with howitzers and flame cannons roamed the deeper waters and did battle with Ebon Cities marauders, undead vessels made of twisted iron and black flesh and outfitted with bone cannons and acid incendiaries.
She and Ronan stood on the shore. The afternoon light made their shadows long. Ronan held his blade low but watched Danica like she was ready to pounce.
She understood. She’d been sleeping with the enemy for she didn’t know how long, and she knew how monstrous her appearance must have been. She remembered fighting him, and fighting other Southern Claw soldiers. For all she knew there was still something inside her, something binding her to the Ebon Cities. There was no reason why a swim down a violent river should have suddenly made everything in her head all right.
And yet she felt like herself again. She sensed that whatever hold the vampires had on her had been broken. Vampire presences still swam in the back of her thoughts like white noise, and the sickening cold whispers sent razor shivers down her spine, but she knew with certainty that her mind was finally her own. She remembered who she was.
She looked at Ronan, and then at his blade.
“Are you going to do something with that?” she asked.
“That depends.”
“It’s me, Ronan,” she said. “I don’t know if what they did is gone or not. All I know is I’m in control now, at this moment. And I want to finish this.” She looked back to the hills, through the field of rocks and thorns. “But there’s something else we have to do first.”
He watched her. His newest scar ran down one side of his face. It many ways it mirrored hers. His eyes were grim. More than ever he looked like a man on the edge of sanity.
Her spirit pulsed around her, and her metal arm tensed. She’d never feel with it, but it reacted to her thoughts and instincts, and that frightened her. Pain still flared in the socket now and again where the metal was fused to her flesh. Even if she really had managed to expunge the vampires from her mind, the arm would always be there: an indelible reminder of what she’d lost, and what she had become.
“If the Witchborn are as dangerous as you say they are,” Ronan said, “we need to keep moving. No matter what’s become of Maur and Creasy.”
Danica looked at him. He didn’t flinch. This was the Ronan she knew.
It felt wrong not to go back. Maur and Creasy could have been in danger. There was no telling how many more gargoyles had been waiting in reserve, and the forces that had attacked them had almost certainly reported to a vampire Creed.
And yet they were miles away from where they’d fallen into the river, while the eastern shores of the Loch were just a short distance away. They’d lose precious time if they went back, and every second was vital if they were to stop the Witch’s Eye from causing even more damage than it already had.
She nodded. And they carried on.
They came to a beach of sand and shale. The Rimefang cast frost-iron vapors across their path. Cold waters noisily lapped against the shore. Clumps of deep green kelp and seaweed lay like refugees on the stone beach. The forest loomed to the east, its gaunt trees wreathed in shadow.
Danica stumbled, and righted herself. Her tall boots weren’t made for traversing difficult terrain, and the Necroblades on her back were just long enough to make walking difficult. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten around with them at all when she’d been enslaved to the vampires.
She still heard them, that distant dirge in the back of her mind. Their voices grew fainter with every step.
She smelled fish and salt. Explosions sounded in the distance. A frozen spray rolled off the thick crystal waters. Ronan followed her at a short distance as they hugged the shoreline.
“How far?” he asked. It was the first words either of them had spoken since they’d made the decision to leave Maur and Creasy behind. His rough voice could barely be heard over the waves.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I have a sense of where the island is, but not a clear image.” She concentrated and saw it in her mind, a cluster of ruby and moon-colored rock held in a haze of cyclonic energies. There was something there, some other presence, but she couldn’t make it out. “I think we have a ways to go. It’s going to be out near the center of the Loch.”
They passed mounds of organic matter, the twisted remains of large fish and sea mammals that had been scorched by wraith incendiaries and hexed napalm. The Ebon Cities strafed the far side of the Rimefang’s shore whenever they could get ships in that deep, for no real reason other than to keep the Southern Claw sea patrols off balance. The smell of the bodies was horrifying, and the sight of the greying innards made Danica’s stomach clench. They walked past the immolated cadavers and came to a field of sword grass that swayed eerily in the steady breeze.
Ronan stopped walking.
“Danica…” he said.
She stopped and looked at him. Something in his eyes worried her. He looked exhausted. Beaten.
“Yeah?”
He hesitated, and stepped closer.
“What did they do to you?” he asked. Something in his voice sounded afraid. There were small lines of tears on his face, and he didn’t even seem to be aware of them.
“They cut off my arm,” she said. “And replaced it with this.” She felt herself shaking. Memory of that wound would forever plague her. It had been the beginning of her nightmare.
“What else?” he asked.
She thought.
“They bit me. A vampire…bit me. Not Ebon Cities. A Kothian vampire.”
“Is that how they controlled you?”
Her spirit tensed within her false arm. Even though she no longer kept him constrained he still stayed close to it. She wasn’t sure if he drew strength from the bloodsteel or if it had just become familiar to him after being locked in it for so long.
“I think so,” she said. “The one that bit me was a defector, but I think Lady Riven was able to use the fact that I’d been bitten to latch onto my mind and draw me into the vampire consciousness. I don’t feel them as much now…the whispers were much stronger before.” She took a breath, and looked again at his katana. “Ronan…if you plan to do something, do me a favor: just get it over wit
h.”
Ronan laughed quietly.
“I’m not going to kill you, Dani. You’re one of the only friends I have.” Ronan suddenly seemed to realize he’d shed tears. He looked at her almost guiltily, and wiped them away.
“Ronan…”
“It’s nothing,” he said. “Sorry. I just needed to…make sure you were okay,” he said. He stepped around her and kept on walking like nothing had happened.
Danica didn’t move. Cold waves crashed against the rocks.
“What did they do to you?” she asked.
Ronan stopped, and his back stiffened. His black armor and dark red cloak stood in stark contrast to the pale rocks and ice-blue waters. His wild hair stood up in the frigid wind, and when he turned to face her his expression was a blend of anger and pain.
Danica shivered. Her spirit wrapped round her body to keep her warm. It was the first time he’d done that on his own since she’d broken free from Lorn’s control.
“What did who do to me?” he said quietly.
“Cut the shit,” she said. “We’re well past that.” She took a breath. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to cross that line, so she just did it. “I’m talking about the Crimson Triangle,” she said.
She swore he stopped breathing for a moment. His fingers tightened.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“Kane was the one who guessed,” she said. She heard her own voice crack. Her chest twanged with loss.
I’m sorry, Mike. God damn it, I’m so sorry.
Ronan nodded.
“He wasn’t as dumb as he tried to make us think he was, was he?”
“No…he wasn’t,” she smiled. She felt tears bud in her eyes. “I know you two didn’t get along…”
“I always respected him,” Ronan said, almost defiantly. “I know he was a little afraid of me. And well he should have been.” Ronan looked up at the grey sky. “I’m pretty fucked up, Danica,” he said. “I was an initiate for years, until I was a teenager. I remember everything they did to me.” He licked his lips. “Everything.” He looked at her. “I don’t feel things the way you do. I don’t know how to be human anymore.” He took a breath, like he was reassuring himself. “But I’m trying.”
Danica slowly walked up to him. She heard gulls out over the water. Silver clouds curled in the sky.
“How did you leave?” she asked.
“Leave?”
“The Triangle. I’ve never heard of anyone getting away from them.”
“I’m the only one,” he said quietly. “So far as I know.”
She saw his scars up close. He had too many to count, slash and burn and claw marks on his cheeks and jaw and forehead and nose. His face was a map of wounds. Even then, he was a handsome man – his face was proud and angular, he had a chiseled jaw, and his eyes were deeply set and blue. His black hair was unruly and thick, and his lip looked like it was pulled back in a snarl where part of it had been hacked away when he’d dove into a storm of blades to save Cross.
Danica waited. Ronan stood quiet.
“Who is ‘he’?” she finally asked.
“What?”
“When you woke up, after we came out of the river, you said ‘Don’t kill him’? So…who did you not want to kill?”
Ronan was shaking. She didn’t think he was going to tell her, but he did.
“I never knew his name,” he said. “Just another initiate. The best initiate, besides me.” He looked out to the waters.
He was barely holding himself together. Ronan, the hardened killer, was coming unglued. He’d never backed down from a fight, never argued with an order. He’d never been part of the important decisions, but like a good soldier he did what he was asked, and he was a fiercely loyal teammate. It frightened and pained Danica to see inside him like this, to see him made weak and afraid by a memory. He seemed like some lost little boy.
She couldn’t imagine what he’d been through. There were plenty of rumors about what the warlocks of the Crimson Triangle did to their young initiates. If even half of those stories were true, Ronan had been raised to be a monster. She and Cross and Kane had always suspected his origins – it explained why he rarely left the mansion, why he didn’t care to go out drinking with them and obsessively kept to himself. He’d always regarded the rest of the team as if they were so strange to him, so foreign.
And I guess we were.
“What happened?” she asked.
Silence. He stared at the waves. She didn’t dare move. Something inside told her it would be dangerous if she did.
“He and I were supposed to fight,” he said at last. His voice was so quiet it was almost lost in the sound of the waves. “It was the last test. The winner would become part of the Order.” He laughed bitterly. “I would have won,” he said with a small amount of pride. “I would have beaten him.” Tears again. He ignored them. “But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to fight him. It felt wrong. He was the closest thing to a brother I’d ever had. I didn’t want…” He looked down at the ground. “I just couldn’t. Even when they sent him to kill me a few years later, I couldn’t do it. I beat him then, too. And I let him go.” He laughed again. “Maybe a part of me thought if I killed him…”
“That you wouldn’t be human anymore,” she said.
“Pretty stupid, really, considering I’m…barely human now.”
Danica looked straight into Ronan’s eyes.
“You’re more human than you think,” she said. She looked up at the sky, then back the way they came. “And so am I.”
She turned back.
“Danica…”
“No, Ronan.” She looked at him. “We have to save Creasy and Maur. You need to do it as much as I do. We’re not going to leave them back there. We can’t.” She turned to go. “We just can’t.”
She waited for an argument, waited for him to tell her how doing that would endanger everyone…how they couldn’t let themselves be delayed from destroying the Witch’s Eye.
But he didn’t. He fell in time beside her, blades sheathed, eyes ahead.
Something at Ronan’s core had always remained untouched by the brutality of the Crimson Triangle, a hidden part of his soul that had kept him from killing that boy, that had made him hold the two of them back after they’d already made the decision to abandon Maur and Creasy, a decision that would have doomed he and Danica forever, even if neither of them had really been aware of it at the time.
They moved fast. The Rimefang was at their backs. They traversed the hill and entered the field of sword grass, which Ronan pushed from their path with his katana held sideways as they ran. Inky clouds moved in from the north.
More blasts sounded behind them. Whatever battle was going on out at sea was getting bloody. They moved into the tree line and did their best to follow the river from there, so they could stay out of sight.
Danica thought about Cole, and Kane. Her heart pounded with loss. She’d never see them again, and for a moment she seized up and had to stop as something inside of her locked, like a deep breath held frozen. Tears ran down her face. She tasted the salt of loss.
Ronan waited patiently. After a time, he asked if she was okay. She couldn’t answer. But she thought of Maur and Creasy. She thought of Cross. She couldn’t know if they were okay, if any of them were okay. For all she knew, it was already too late.
But maybe it’s not.
And that was enough.
SEVENTEEN
WATCHERS
The Lith party took a winding route to the Loch. Once they exited the Bone March they came to the badlands northeast of Wormwood. It was a desolate region devoid of resources or tactical value, which thankfully meant the vampires weren’t likely to keep a watchful eye on the area.
Dry plains, scrub oak and fetid lakes dotted the wastes. The soil was black and red and covered with fire moss, and everything lay heavy with the stench of a bog. Blood flies and mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds plagued them as they traveled. Cross wasn’t sure wha
t would drive him crazy first, the bugs or Flint’s ceaseless gripes.
The silent Lith moved with grim resolve, always grouped in twos and threes, never stopping for longer than they had to and never venturing into an unknown area without scouting it out first. Of course, since they couldn’t speak, Cross, Flint and Shiv had no idea what was going on half of the time, but the dark-haired Lith leader was usually able to get them to understand when she wanted them to stay put.
Cross was impressed by the Lith’s stealth. Even their strange crystalline horses moved with fluid grace and effortless momentum, like they glided rather than walked. The small band proved capable of moving in and out of the shadows with ease. It was as if they and their mounts were ghosts.
He was also impressed by Flint and Shiv. The two of them trudged on with determination, even if Flint did make it a point to communicate his general level of discomfort at every available opportunity. Cross had hoped against hope he’d be able to find some safe place to take them, a settlement or a caravan, but they were too deep in vampire territory.
But is where I’m going any safer?
They lost one of the horses a day out of Dirge. The creature cut its leg coming down a slope as they made their way around the Wormwood. Without magic there was little Cross could do, so Flint put it down.
Flint and Shiv rode the remaining horse, a dark-haired Shire with a steely coat and enormous hooves. It was so broad they could have mounted a tent on its back. The beast trod noisily and tore up clumps of mud and soil as it walked, but it was surprisingly docile for its size, and it didn’t give Flint any trouble in spite of his insisting he’d never been much of a horseman.
“I much prefer walking,” he said.
“How did you get to Rifttown?” Cross asked him.
“Airship. We booked passage on a cheap vessel and hitched a ride.”
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