The Witch's Eye (35 page)

“Why the hell did you follow us?” he said through gritted teeth.

“Shiv said you needed her,” Flint said. 

“And you
listened
to her?”

“Of course I did,” he said.  “I
’m her father.”

Flint tried to
pull him to his feet. 

“Get back,”
Cross warned.  Shadow blood seeped from his wounds.  A cold presence slid over him. 

Images flash before his eyes: a curved black edifice, some sort of gate; a woman with many arms, her dark skin covered with bleeding runes; the Eye, that rotating dark gem, accompanied by two others, slightly different in hue, not as bright but obvious siblings, shattered jewels that twist and coalesce into a single form, a jigsaw of shattered crystal, a melding edifice of half-broken stone fused at their core.   

The triple crystal hangs
in the air and spins, gains momentum.  Something inside the black gate pushes outward. 

Someone cries out
.  It’s a voice he knows.

He
’s too late.

He came to, and screamed. 

Witch leaned over him
. Dozer held his arms to the ground.  The mouthless Lith looked down on him impassively.  Their eyes bore into his soul.

He smelled burning meat
.  Terrible pain twisted in his shoulder and ribcage like he’d been stabbed him with a hot knife.  Cross writhed and howled as he tried to rise, but Dozer’s grip was absolute.  They forced a stick into his mouth for him to bite down on.

H
e saw Bull’s dead body on the ground nearby.  The Lith lay on his side, partially covered with a long sheet.  The battle mask he’d worn lay in front of him, turned face down. 

Witch pulled
a shard of black bone out of Cross’s side and dropped it to the sand.  The pain nearly tore him in half.  Dark steam curled from the wound. 

The pain
slowly settled.  Cross felt like someone had ripped him open and bathed him in salt.  He spat the stick out.

“Damn it!” he shouted
, and he sat up.

Shiv ran over and hugged him.

“Could you quiet yourself?” a woman’s voice asked.  Cross looked at Witch, thinking she’d somehow spoken, but he was surprised when a tall Doj female with wild grey hair stepped forward.  She was easily nine-feet-tall, covered neck to toe in silver and black armor that had seen better days.  She carried a massive javelin across her back and held a spiked warhammer in her gauntleted hands.  Her face was concealed behind a faceless steel mask similar to those worn by the Lith.  “The Maloj have what they came for,” she said, “but there are other dangers in the Rimefang.  The fewer of those we attract the better.” 

Cross hugged Shiv
. Flint stood nearby, looking shaken.  There were a half-dozen Doj, all of them garbed in similarly weather-beaten armor, the same giants who’d fought the Maloj.  They were the residents of that hidden island village.

“Who are you?” Cross asked.

“Wara,” she said.  Her voice sounded vaguely accented, almost African.  “I’m the leader of the Grey Watch.”

Cross thought for a moment. 

“The Grey Watch…borderland scouts.  You work with the Southern Claw, watching for signs of supernatural activity along the coast.”  He looked at Witch.  “Are you with
them
?” he asked her.

“It would do you well to learn the Lith
’s sign language,” Wara said.  She signed to Witch, who signed in return. 

“Is that a
‘no’?” Cross said.

“They
’re with us,” Wara said sternly.  “Happy?”

“Ecstatic.  Would you mind telling us what
’s going on?”

Wara stepped closer. 
Cross stood up shakily, and put Shiv behind him.  Wara could have broken Cross’s back like a twig if she really wanted to.  He had to arch his neck to look up at her face.  He couldn’t help but notice how her hammer was the size of his chest.

“I
’d be thrilled,” she said.  “But only because you brought the Kindred to us.”

She turned and walked away. 
The Lith and the giants made like they were ready to follow.

“What
’s the Kindred?” Cross asked, fearing he already knew the answer.  “Wait, you said you’d tell us what’s happening.” 

“I will,” Wara said over her shoulder.
  “On the way.”

“On the way
where
?”

Wara turned and removed her mask.  She was beautiful, a lean-faced woman with piercing steel eyes and hard skin. 

“To stop your friend from making a terrible mistake,” she said.  “Every second wasted here is vital, especially since the Black Circle has stolen what they need from this place.”

Cross
’s heart sank.

The Black Circle? 
And to think, I couldn’t imagine how this could get any worse.

TWENTY

STARS

Black and Ronan made good time.  They reached the head of the Nightblood River just past dawn, and found fresh water on the way.  They ate jerky and MREs, and in spite of their lack of sleep they both felt well-rested.

Black
struggled to keep her mind focused.  It was difficult, and that frightened her.  The vampires whispered into her subconscious.  She felt lashing tongues and saw eyes like blades, and whenever her concentration slipped she felt herself falling into a damp pit filled with apparitions and claws.

She couldn
’t make any sense of what the voices said, but their tone was darkly sweet, like a cloud of burning honey.  Her head buzzed, and she felt warm breath on the back of her neck.  Danica sensed the vampire nations buried in her subconscious, felt the grave dust and pollutants of their dead cities.

I
’m not a vampire.  I wasn’t Turned
. 

But
they’d wormed their way into her mind, and still had some hold on her.  If she concentrated she could block the voices out, but they were still there, a soiled presence at the edge of her thoughts.

She hadn
’t had much time to really think about what they’d done to her….she still couldn’t even piece together how she’d wound up in Lorn.  She had vague memories of seeing Cross in the darkness, bleeding in the shadows.  She remembered helping him, healing him, and then falling backwards into nothingness.  After that there were only fleeting images of battling the Witchborn, bathing in blood and swallowing drugs, standing alone in a cold stone chamber and feeling the touch of shadows on her skin.  Thinking about it brought the voices, the lunatic whispers of the dead, so she tried not to. 

I may never know what really happened to me.

The Nightblood River crashed against the hard stones at the edge of the Rimefang.  The pale moon hung huge and bright.  Thin traces of cloud hovered far above in a bed of stars.  Danica saw distant constellations, and some of the stars shone so bright they must have been planets.

Are they the same planets
that used to be there?
she wondered. 
Or did The Black
change that, too?

“They
’re beautiful,” she said.

They
made their way down a slope of sand and towards the stony beach.  They’d follow the shoreline north until they found some means of getting out onto the waters. 

“What
’s beautiful?” Ronan asked. 

“The stars.”  She
slowed, and watched them.

“Danica...we don
’t have time.”

“I know,” she said.  “We never do.” 

She’d been moving relentlessly, driven, ever since she’d met Cross.  She’d probably been that way before – that was most likely what had made it so she got along so well with Eric in the first place, why they’d connected, why they’d come to realize they were far from opposites but kindred spirits, restless and haunted souls who couldn’t stop, couldn’t rest, not until they were dead.

“Things have to change,” she said.  She
stopped, and looked down at the ground.  Ronan was a few feet further down the slope, but he stopped and looked up at her.  He slowly pulled down the piece of cloth drawn around his face. 

Danica
realized she knew Ronan better than anyone else on the team did, and yet she still knew so little, and she didn’t like that. 

“Ronan,
” she said, “when this is all over…I want to sit and look at the stars.  I used to do that all the time when I was young.  I used to swim, and I used to hunt…but mostly, I liked to go outside and look at the stars.”  Her eyes drifted back up to the heavens.  The air was deep and black.  “Would you like to come with me?”  She looked at him.  “When this is done, would you sit and stare at the stars with me?”

Ronan seemed taken aback
, but after a moment’s hesitation he smiled.

“I
’d like that,” he said.  “I’ve…never done that.”

Danica smiled.

“No.  I can’t imagine you would have.”  She came down the slope.  “So you’ve never seen a shooting star?”

He looked at her like she was from another planet.

“A what?”

“A shooting star?”

Ronan slowly shook his head.

“No.  I haven
’t.”

“Really?” Danica asked. 

“I can’t say I’ve ever looked for one,” Ronan said.  He pointed upstream, indicating that they should keep moving. 

The light of the moon made the path clear and wide.
Waters crashed against the shore, and distant yellow and gold explosions revealed the silhouettes of armored ships and distant reptilian fliers. 

They started up the beach.  The
sea was oily and thick.  They needed to find a boat so they could get out to the island. 

She saw the
ir destination in her mind’s eye.  The image of the Witch’s Eye at its resting point was one of the clearest memories she had, which was strange because it wasn’t really a memory. The gate they traveled towards stood in a crater filled with shards of black rock.  Mounds of ash concealed the charred bones of forest beasts.

They walked.  The night air licked their skin. 
Distant explosions sounded now and again, but it was difficult to hear them over the Rimefang’s crashing waves.  Blood trails of red smoke rose to the sky. 

Danica
looked up at the chains of stars.  They twisted and rounded back on one another like ember serpents. 

“Cross is afraid of the night sky,” she said.  “He said he used to have ni
ghtmares of falling up and never stopping.  Just floating off into space.”

“I understand,” Ronan said from ahead. 

“What do you mean?” she asked.  “Do you feel like that, too?”

Ronan stopped dead in his tracks, and turned around.

“Why are you trying to have a conversation with me?” he asked.  “Don’t we have more pressing matters at hand than having a friendly chat?”

“Sorry.”  She hesitated.  “Sorry.  I
still feel…disconnected.  There’s some nasty vampire shit floating around in my brain, and I’m trying to sift through it.  Talking to you, trying to remember things…it helps keep me focused.” 

He thought about that, and nodded. 

“Fair enough.”  He looked out at the waters and took a deep breath.  “I think what Cross is really afraid of is being insignificant.  Not mattering.  Being lost, or forgotten.”  He looked up.  “It’s nice to know where you belong,” he said.  “Not many people ever figure that out.  When you do, you have to fight to hang onto it.”  He looked at her.  “You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “I do.” 

She stepped up and hugged him.  It seemed such a stupid thing, but it was all she could think of to do.  She held him, and he held her back.  It was like embracing an old friend.  His grip was tight and familiar, and she didn’t want him to let go.

They stayed that way for what felt like a long time, even though she knew it was less than a minute.  He
seemed nervous as he pulled away, and wouldn’t look her in the eye.  He pulled his face wrap back up and gazed north along the shore. 

“We need to
keep moving,” he said.

“Ronan,” she said.  She allowed herself a faint smile.  “If we make it through this...you
’re going to look up at the night sky with me one of these nights, ok?  You need to find your first shooting star.  And I want to be there when you do.”

They followed the beach.  Bloody dawn light illuminated the ice-white mists on the water.  Dark birds soared high overhead, and the sound of crashing waves shook the morning air.

T
hey came upon the sailors an hour past dawn.  The five-man crew had a short trawler equipped with nets and wires.  They were well outside of the safety of Ath’s fishing zones, and were leery of Danica and Ronan.  A couple of them made a show of their rifles and harpoons, but once Ronan flashed some Southern Claw coin and they realized Danica was a witch they became much more amiable.