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
.
They untied his hands and pushed him into a vertical metal coffin. The inside of the box was filled with wires and blades. The vampires seized his wrists and secured him to sharpened straps that dangled from the edged walls of the box. The coffin would lift him into the air, where the tree would slowly flay him into chunks of meat.
The shadow again howled from the desert. This time, everyone heard it.
The sound shook the city of Krul, and it echoed long after it should have faded. The temperature dipped from the chill of a desert night to almost frigid. Small shards of tiny razors fell from the killing tree and clanked noisily to the platform.
The city froze. Vampire eyes cast themselves westward, towards the source of the dark roar. Arcane chants and silent rites had already begun deep inside the residencies and on the streets of Dirge, vampire spells meant to ward off enemies and raise the city defenses.
They'll do little good
.
A general alarm was raised. The sight of the vampire city-state was something to behold when the city was under attack. Vampires quietly moved in military precision to gather weapons and armor. Deep horns like something from the bottom of the sea cast dull booms into the sky. Buildings folded together as Krul's massive chains began the lengthy process of sealing the city off from attackers. Cross heard guns in the outer walls shift and extend. The columnar metropolis squeezed tight as the buildings pulled and folded together. Winged fliers and airships took to the air. Sharp musk carried on the dead breeze, as did the whispers of incorporeal servants and homunculi messengers.
For a moment it seemed as if Cross had been forgotten. He looked through the crowd of vampires and searched for Black and Kane. The deep night turned even blacker.
It found us. It came for the shards of Lucan’s soul.
Ramsey.
Cross struggled against the straps that held him in the bladed cage. They’d not been fully secured.
Tega Ramsey did this. He shut down the city dampeners, or manipulated them. He made it so that the Sleeper could detect us, so that it would find us.
Cross shoved his foot against the cage door and pulled. Leather and metal scraped against his hand. Blood and skin tore away as the straps snapped. He fell out of the cage and onto his back on the cold stone, where he stared up into the heights of the razor tree. Slivers of dark steel and thick drops of blood rained down around him.
Claws punched through Cross’ shoulder and pinned him to the platform. He screamed, and threw his arms around the vampire who’d attacked him. The undead's blank mask was all that looked back. Pain flooded through Cross’ body.
The distant shadow howled again. Its call rattled the city and shook the massive platform, which started to tilt. Chaos spread like fire. Vampire soldiers and spectators spread everywhere. Cross expected shouts and cries and sounds of panic, but then he remembered where he was. The guards and the bureaucracy and the minor nobility of Krul were silent in spite of the dire situation.
The world turned black. Cross’ vision and his senses dulled.
The vampire held him down and looked around at the chaos, unsure of what it was supposed to do. Chain bridges and iron catwalks swiveled as the out-of-control execution platform drifted too close to one of Krul's buildings. The Sleeper's approach either distracted the platform's pilot or it had disrupted Krul's arcane mechanisms. Klaxons and sirens blared through the sky. Armed serpent riders and their mounts soared by in the night. Vampires on the platform raced for the edges, seeking escape or weapons.
As the platform tilted, Cross clearly saw the Sleeper through Krul's columns of smoke and industrial fires.
Its size, even its form, defied comprehension. It was a roiling mountain of darkness. Seas of ghostly matter swam within its form, storms of cold lightning, molten pools of stale moonlight. Its eyes were like blazing scars, and its smoking ebon claws were the size of warships. It towered and blocked out the sky. The great lumbering mass loomed over Krul's un-breakable cylindrical walls. The air was heavy with shadowy grit and a spectral vapor of charcoal fog.
Cross looked at the Sleeper, and his insides froze. Even just seeing it was like falling into the sky.
The execution platform was being evacuated. Already most of the vampires had leapt onto Razorwings or small airships that had swept by on their way to engage the beast.
The vampire above him brought its knee into his sternum, and Cross cried out in pain. The vampire leaned forward and pushed down with all of its weight. Cross tried to move, but the eight-inch claw embedded in his shoulder kept him flat on his back. The blade twisted and tore at the meat in his arm. Cross screamed, reached up and pulled off the creature's mask. The wide-jawed creature smiled. Dark eyes watched the warlock with hate, and pale drool ran from its stark-white fangs and dripped onto Cross' face. It smelled of dead animal.
“
Too quick for you,” the vampire growled as it raised its other claw. Cross brought his free hand up and smashed the ball of his fist into the vampire's face. He got his legs up underneath his attacker and threw it off of him and onto its side. The claw tore painfully out of his shoulder.
A horde of fliers and bone airships flew toward the Sleeper, which stood so massive it might as well have been the sky. Its inhuman howl was so loud its ripples could literally be seen as they shook the air. The entire city lurched.
The platform collided into a building with a deafening ring of steel. Gravity fled as Cross was lifted into the air to hang weightless for a moment before he came down painfully on his chest. The air was knocked from his lungs. He felt like he'd been pitted. His entire body was a bruise, and his left arm had gone numb because of his shoulder wound.
The platform tilted. It must have lodged into the building it struck, but it was still propelled by its arcane turbine engines, which, unable to propel the device forward, instead pushed one end of the disc higher into the sky.
With nothing to grasp onto, Cross slid down the platform. His stomach lurched.
Cross collided with a low set of steel poles that jutted out of the deck like quills. The impact sent sharp pain through his ribs and his back. He turned his body and propped his feet onto the poles. The ship hung at an angle that grew steeper by the moment as one end continued to climb. Vampires and consorts fell from the platform.
Above him, the vampire sentry howled in rage. It slid down the deck with controlled speed and held its claws out like a raptor's talons.
Ekko came out of nowhere and tackled the vampire. Her claws took it in the throat, and as it turned to lash back at her she tore its head from its body.
She looked at Cross. Her skin was deathly pale, and her claws were easily seven inches long in hands too large for her slender frame. Her eyes were black orbs without pupils. Her mouth was large, and lined with razor-sharp fangs.
Cross almost felt the connection between them. His vision flashed, and for a moment he saw himself in something like a bloody heat signature through her eyes. He tasted blood in the air. For the briefest of moments, Cross gazed into the minds of the vampire collective. He recoiled at the hundreds of vampires across Krul who worked in tandem as the shadow called Dra'aalthakmar approached. The twisted and alien hive-mind of the undead nearly tore his consciousness apart.
Not now
, a voice came. Ekko's voice. She spoke inside of him.
Now we have to go.
The platform pushed against tall Krul structures and continued to tilt: it was nearly vertical. Cross pushed his back against the floor of the platform and kept his feet on the metal bars. He felt like his body could fly into the air at any second. Ekko hung at an odd angle, with her claws stuck into the steel so that she hung like a sinuous ape.
Krul was in chaos. Buildings shifted and folded into defensive stances. Metal shells erected like insect carapaces and lent Krul the appearance of a metropolis of iron beams. Razorwings with steel-tipped claws moved in flotillas toward the attacking shadow, and their armored vampire riders assaulted the Sleeper with nail guns and handheld bone cannons. Airships made of ossified bone and dark iron launched explosive harpoons and razor-wire nets, necrotic torpedoes and pyroclast phalanx missiles.
Everything that was launched simply vanished into the Sleeper's form, swallowed into its dismal midnight heart. The mass of vaguely humanoid shadow didn't make a counterattack. It didn't need to, when it’s very presence was destroying Krul. Arcane engines sputtered, and stopped. Razorwings were overwhelmed by the maelstrom of psychic effluvia let loose in the city, and the shock of it caused them to fall out of the sky. Chains buckled and snapped their links, which shattered into steel shards that fell like rain into the darkness of the city below.
The air tasted like smelted iron. Cross stared into that mass of murderous shadow, and he saw oblivion.
There
, Ekko commanded. He tore his eyes away. His feet slipped, and he desperately clutched onto the pitted steel at his back. Vampire bodies dropped hundreds of feet and faded to writhing slivers before they vanished into the obscurity of the distant poison fog. Cross shook so badly it was a wonder he hadn't fallen himself.
Cross
! Ekko yelled into his mind.
Go
!
“
Go?!” he shouted. His voice was hardly audible in the groaning dirge of the Sleeper. “Where?!”
Ekko pointed. Directly below them, maybe thirty feet down, was the smaller sentry vessel with the prisoners tied to the bottom of the hull. Kane was already in the open bowl of the vehicle, locked in hand-to-hand combat with the Doj vampire. One of the females lay headless over the lip of the giant metal raft, one piloted the vehicle using some sort of console at the center of the vessel, and the third female, in spite of having lost an arm, pulled herself up from the floor of the open cockpit. She moved towards Kane’s back with her one set of claws bared.
Ekko took hold of Cross' arm and pulled him away from the platform, and into empty air. Cross would have protested, but all that came out was a panicked yelp.
He and Ekko plummeted through open space. Ekko held him as they went, twisted her body under his and took the brunt of the impact when they collided loudly with the vessel below. Ekko's mostly undead body was as hard as iron. Cross’ head hammered, and his arm felt like it was about to pull clean away from his body.
The smaller ship listed to the side, and he heard panicked screams from the prisoners secured beneath it.
They'd landed right next to one of the motor guns. The vampire pilot screamed and hissed at them. The other female saw them, stopped, and turned.
Go
! Ekko barked. She pushed Cross out of her way, and he barely managed to shoot out his hand and grab hold of the motor gun instead of falling over the side.
Ekko and the one-armed vampire attacked each other with vicious claws. The pilot pulled a large-bored pistol from her holster and, with one claw still on the control panel, aimed it at Ekko.
Cross spun the motorgun around so that its massive rotating barrels aimed inwards, at the pilot. It wouldn't work, and he knew it. Vampire weapons were specifically encoded so that the living couldn’t use them, so that they wouldn't activate if touched by living hands.