Black Scars

by Steven Alan Montano

  Then, Lucan dropped his hands, and the Gorgoloth exploded.

  Their bodies tore apart almost silently. All that Cross heard was a series of soft thuds, like underwater explosions. The Gorgoloth’s ashen skin became clouds of white dust. Each of them froze for a moment, petrified, before they were blown apart.

  A few seconds later, time caught up with them, and the sound of the explosions rang through the forest. The crack of electric fire roared out in every direction. Cold air blasted against Cross’ skin. He crouched into a ball and held his spirit tight to his soul, fearful she would somehow be torn away.

  No. I’m not losing another.

  He screamed as a storm of undead energy swept over him. Cross breathed in frozen fumes.

  He sees a city of ice. He stands beneath it, in ancient rock chambers. The walls are dark stone, a glacial labyrinth filled with poison fumes that crystallize into bitter fog. Black stalactites dangle from the ceiling like predators.

  This place is old. His life energy evaporates like steam.

  Tunnels lead away from the chamber. They snake their way into hidden corners and ancient tombs. They wind their way down to a central hub, a frozen core. The air is so cold there it burns.

  He sees a woman in the ice, frozen, a pale silhouette embedded in ebon glass. He has seen her before, and before this is all over he will see her again.

  Cross barely rose his shield in time. He felt his spirit cry out as raw undead matter collided against her. Tendrils of dark magic flayed them both.

  Lucan’s screams sounded through the air, a rising crescendo of pain. It might have been a thousand voices.

  Cross held on. Cold wracked his body as he bowed into blasting waves of dark power, like standing in a flash flood of burning oil.

  Those few moments felt like an eternity. Finally, the blast stopped.

  Cross released his spirit the moment that Lucan’s lightning faded. She collapsed into a scattering cloud. He had to give her a chance to heal. His own body shook with pain. He was soaked with cold sweat and the frozen drool of ghosts.

  One more second spent being pummeled by those energies and he’d have lost his spirit for good, he was sure of it. She wracked his side with a sharp snap of pain. She was angry, and she wanted him to know it.

  Lucan fell to his knees. His head lowered and his eyes closed. He looked barely alive, let alone conscious. His skin was damp with sweat, and he breathed rapidly, almost hyperventilating.

  Black had somehow shielded Kane and Ekko. While visibly shaken, they appeared relatively unharmed, and they gripped each other tightly, like they were lost at sea. Cross saw Dillon and Vos out of the corner of his eye, alive and well and on their way to join them.

  The Gorgoloth, all hundred or more of them, were dead and gone. Where they’d stood was a field of smoking black meat and ash. Grisly steam melted snow from the trees. The scene smelled like a burning slaughterhouse.

  Kane laughed.

  “Lucan…that was COOL!”

  Black bound Lucan’s wrists behind his back.

  Cross seized the opportunity. He reloaded, walked up to Black, and pressed the barrel of his HK against her temple.

  “What,” he said. “The hell. Was that?”

  “Hey!”

  Vos trained his gun on Cross, but only for a moment. Dillon forced Vos’ MP5 to the ground and wrapped his arm around the other man’s throat. Before Vos could adjust, Dillon had a knife-point to his face.

  “Uh-uh,” Dillon said calmly. “You clearly don’t know who you’re screwing with.”

  “Neither do you,” Black barked.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” Cross said to her. “I know that you’re not here on Revenger business. There is no way that a warlock as powerful as Lucan and a troupe of vampires would be shipped anywhere without a full contingent of Black Scar guards. There were bodies from the wreck, but not that many bodies…and that means you only had a small team with you. That’s not like the Revengers.” Her expression was furious. Cross nodded. “You’re doing something off the record,” he said. “Tell me I’m right.”

  “You’re right,” Lucan said. His voice took both Cross and Black by surprise. “I am far too dangerous to be out here in the wilderness.”

  “Yeaaaah!” Kane shouted.

  “Shut up, Kane!” Black snapped.

  “I want answers,” Cross insisted. “Now…please.” He lowered the gun. “No more games. It isn’t coincidence that we found you out here.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “The Lith guided us here,” Cross said. “We were meant to find you.”

  “Why?”

  “I think it’s because you can help us. With our mission. And maybe…maybe we can help you, too.”

  Black laughed quietly.

  “So you think our meeting is…what, destiny?” she asked with a dour grin. “You believe in that shit? In prophecy?”

  Cross hesitated.

  “Yes. I do.”

  Black’s smile vanished. Her piercing eyes locked with his. Her gaze was firm and commanding, but it betrayed traces of fear, and sadness. She considered him.

  Cross could tell that she was usually made of stone, that she redefined the notion of No Nonsense. She likely garnered equal amounts of resentment and respect from those who knew her. On any other day, he was sure she’d have just told him to go to hell.

  But not today.

  “All right,” she said at last. Her voice was quiet and controlled. “All right.” She swallowed. “Maybe you were meant to find us, Cross, because the truth is…I do need your help.”

  FOUR

  DEEP

  They camped as far from the scene of the battle as possible, since the entire area reeked of burning flesh and smelted metal, and the ground looked like scorched meat pie and had the consistency of hot tar. Even the carrion birds dared not come close.

  The camp was east of the dead forest, near some fallen dark stones that had probably once been part of a shrine or a remote monastery. The ground was cold and hard, the air the same, while the sky was vast and dark. Whenever he camped out under the open sky, Cross got the sensation that he was floating in a black sea. It wasn’t a feeling he particularly enjoyed.

  Kane and Ekko were allowed use of their hands so that they could eat. Vos passed out MREs – Cross got Cheddar Mac, not that any of the flavors could really be distinguished from one another – and they collected cool water from a small stream that ran into an ice field.

  Cross’ spirit hovered at the edge of the white wastes. He felt Black’s spirit circle the camp like a hungry dog.

  Of Lucan’s spirit, there was no trace.

  Cross had never heard of such a thing. No spirit as powerful as that could go undetected.

  And yet no one had ever lost their spirit and gained a new one, until I did. Nothing is impossible, especially when we don’t fully understand the rules of the game.

  The vampire had a hood over its head. It stood rigid as a board and hovered inches above the ground, held aloft by the same invisible force that generated the flaming cage that constrained it. The vampire made no sound.

  Lucan, Kane and Ekko all sat nearby while they ate. Kane and Ekko shared a blanket to hold off the night’s chill. Lucan sat alone, absent-mindedly eating while he stared off into the eastern wastes. Vos and Dillon stood guard, suspiciously watching each other as much as they did the prisoners and the plains for any sign of trouble.

  “Lucan is special,” Black began. She and Cross sat a few meters away from the prisoners, on opposite ends of a low cook fire just beyond a jumble of stones that might have once been a wall. Coffee boiled inside of an old black pot that dangled over the campfire. “His spirit isn’t like yours and mine. It’s…older. Larger. More primal, I suppose.”

  “He looks like he’s in his forties,” Cross noted. Cross was twenty-seven. He would be lucky if he lived to see thirty-two or thirty-three. Short life expectancy was a fact of life with warlocks and witches, w
ho spent most of their lives tied to their arcane spirits, bonded with spectral undead forces that literally fused with their souls. When you held hands with the dead, eventually they pulled you down into the grave. “How has he survived this long?”

  “His spirit has been controlled and repressed for most of his life,” Black said. “Lucan Keth was born in the wild, bought from his parents by slavers, and raised to be used as a weapon. He has never known control of his spirit, because no one who ever controlled him has wanted him to. Without thaumaturgic constraints, his spirit would run wild. It would go on a destructive rampage.”

  “Are there any others like him?”

  “If there are, I’ve never heard of them. I doubt they’d survive past puberty without strict supervision by an experienced mage.”

  “How did Lucan’s spirit know to target the Gorgoloth, and not us?” Even though Cross and his spirit had been forced to protect themselves from Lucan’s power, it had become clear that the only reason they’d survived at all was because Lucan wasn’t trying to harm them. Cross didn’t want to believe there was anyone with that much power, especially not someone who had so little control. He remembered the feel of Lucan’s spirit when it had blazed over him, and he went cold from the memory. Cross had been to the necropolis of Koth and had stood in the presence of the Old One: the touch of Lucan’s spirit was colder by far.

  “We’ve had Lucan at Black Scar long enough that we’ve learned how to focus his spirit’s rage based on how we measure its release from the thaumaturgic bonds. It’s a combination of timing and degree.” Black poured them each a cup of coffee. The steam felt soothing in the brittle air. “No one really controls Lucan’s spirit. The best we can do is manipulate it.”

  Cross chewed on that.

  I’ve never seen such pure destructive force contained in a human being.

  “Where are you taking him?” he asked. “And, more importantly, why are you taking him there?”

  Black bit her lip, and looked away. Cross got the feeling that she wasn’t used to being in a situation she had no control over.

  “They have my lover,” she said at last. “And if I don’t give them Lucan, Cole is dead.”

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  “A gang of mercenaries and thieves led by my brother, Cradden Black.”

  “Wait a second,” Cross said. “Your brother kidnapped your boyfriend…”

  “Girlfriend.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Girlfriend, you misogynist prick. Lara Cole is my girlfriend.”

  “OK,” Cross said. “Your brother kidnapped your girlfriend, and the only way for you to get her back is to give him Lucan…the most powerful warlock I’ve ever encountered, and I’d bet I’m not the only person who would say that. Do I have all of that right so far?”

  “That about sums it up,” Black said sardonically.

  “You’re willing to go through all of this, for her?” he asked. Black nodded. “She must be pretty special.”

  “She’s worth dying for,” Black said matter-of-factly.

  Cross nodded. Of all of the things he’d ever known a Revenger to do, stealing a prisoner out of Black Scar to free a loved one hardly ranked among the worst. Still, Black clearly wasn’t too concerned with the ramifications of releasing Lucan’s spirit into potentially deadly hands.

  “What does Cradden want with Keth?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, avoiding the question. “Your turn. I know you’re offering to help…and I also know that you aren’t doing it out of the kindness of your heart. What do you want from me.”

  “You know what,” he said. “The Woman in the Ice.”

  Black watched him like he was something poisonous.

  “I don’t know…”

  “No,” Cross interrupted, sternly. “You know something.”

  You have to.

  Follow and you will find.

  “Why do you need to find her?” Black asked him.

  “Why do you follow up every question I ask with another question?”

  Black laughed.

  “The art of negotiation, my friend.”

  “We’re on a mission,” Cross said after a moment. “For Mother.”

  He could tell that his answer caught her off guard.

  “As in…the White Mother?”

  “No, your mother,” Cross said. “Yes, the White Mother.”

  “And what does the White Mother want with the Woman in the Ice?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” Cross said after a pause. He considered telling her, but he still wasn’t quite sure if Danica Black was the sort of person who would care or not.

  Because something so evil you can’t even imagine it is going to slaughter thousands of people, and we have to stop it. Not that I have the faintest idea how finding the Woman in the Ice is supposed to help.

  “I don’t know where the Woman is,” Black said. “But I’ve heard of her.”

  “Yes,” Cross said with a nod. “And not many have.”

  “Cole could find her.” Every time Black said her lover’s name, Cross heard her voice crack a little. “Lara hires herself out as a gun and a guide for treasure hunters and archaeologists. The last time that I spoke to her was just before my brother took her, and she said she was leading an expedition that was looking for the Woman in the Ice. And that they were getting close.”

  The fact that someone else was looking for the Woman presented problems all its own. Cross decided to file that particular problem away in his head until he dealt with the other eighty-six already on his list.

  “Did she say where they were going?”

  “No,” Black said. “Just that she was somewhere here in the Reach.”

  Cross nodded.

  Damn it. I hate prophecies. Layers and layers of them now, stacking up, burying us deep. It had been a prophecy that had led to the mission in the first place. Another had led him from the Lith camp to the Dreadnaught. And now this.

  “Well?” Black asked.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Does it usually take this long?”

  “Yes. Shut up, please.”

  The air turned dark. Ebon claws of shadow crept over the horizon, and pale fog thickened close to the ground. There were strange calls in the distance – carrion birds, wolves, inhuman echoes that seemed to crawl into the width of the sky. The wind died down, but that didn’t help with the incessant chill. Not far away, Kane and Ekko talked quietly, while Dillon and Vos struck up a conversation. Lucan stared out into the night, his eyes glazed.

  “Cross…”

  “What does your brother want with Lucan?” he interrupted.

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “That’s not what you said. You didn’t say anything. You just dodged the question,” Cross said.

  “You’re a pushy bastard, you know that?” she snapped. Danica Black had her limits, too, it seemed. The fact that she had something of a temper wouldn’t make much of a difference in Black Scar, he supposed; if a prisoner was lucky there they’d get beaten to within an inch of their life.

  “Is Cradden a Revenger?” he asked.

  “No,” Black said dismissively. “Not all of Ma and Pa Black’s children turned out well.”

  Great, Cross thought.

  Silence again fell between them, longer than the last time.

  “I’ll make sure,” Black finally said, after the lack of conversation had almost lulled Cross to sleep, “that Lara helps you find what you’re looking for. All you have to do is help me deliver Lucan to my brother.” She shrugged, and smiled darkly. “Without a ship, I can’t exactly do this with just Vos to help me. And Cradden has men. Lots of men. If I waltz in there with just two guns he’ll screw us.”

  “Why not use Lucan?” Cross asked, afraid to hear the answer. “You obviously have no qualms about doing that.”

  “Screw you,” Black said quietly. “Cradden’s my brother. I’m not sure I’d be able to protect both he and Cole if
I turned Lucan lose like that.”

  Cross thought about that for a minute. He let Black wait while he pondered his options.

  “We’ll help you, and you’ll get Cole to help us. But there’s a caveat,” he said. “I can’t let you give Lucan to your brother. Especially if you’re not going to tell me what Cradden has in store for him.”

  Black smiled, almost sadly.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s too dangerous to give him up.”

  “Then go to hell,” Black said, and she stood up.

  “Can I finish?” Cross said, as calmly as he could manage. Cross considered his own people skills less than stellar, especially when he had to deal with women. Women who looked like Danica were particularly tough for him to handle. “I’ll help you get Cole back, if you’ll convince her to help us.” He stood up, and looked Black in the eye. “But I can’t let you give Lucan to anyone but me. He’s too dangerous. He has to go back to Thornn.”

  Black watched him carefully. She reminded him of an angry cat. Her nostrils flared with barely contained anger. A sudden cold breeze caught her dark red hair and pulled it across her face. Cross couldn’t have pulled his eyes from her even if he’d wanted to.

  Stare away, stud. She has a girlfriend. Even if she wasn’t a lesbian, you’d be about as interesting to her as a pile of corkwood.

  “I don’t want Cradden hurt,” she said at last.

  “I don’t want him hurt, either,” Cross said. “But I also can’t let him have Lucan. And I need to find the Woman in the Ice. A lot of lives may depend it.”

  She shrugged.

  “Saving lives doesn’t mean much to me,” she said matter-of-factly. “You have to protect what’s yours. That’s all that matters.”

  Black left Cross alone, and walked back over to the rest of the group.

  Cross ran his hands over his face. He felt like he hadn’t slept in days. His eyes were raw and tired, and his skin was so dry he could’ve used his face to take the edge off of a piece of wood.

  Why the hell can’t anything ever be easy?