The Witch's Eye (22 page)

“Traven!” the scarred man shouted
.

Ronan.  His name is Ronan. I know him
.

“Go!” Traven shouted back.  His hood barely concealed the
fresh burns on his face.  Dragon tasted the wounded warlock’s spirit as it desperately tried to shield him from flying shrapnel.

Her
spirit turned the area to a blizzard.  Snow howled out of the forest behind her.  The frost bent around both her and the survivors from the crash, but the grinding storm hammered the Troj and forced their shots to go wild.  The gargoyles swerved and crashed into rock spurs and granite bluffs buried under the snow.

The man with blades

Ronan I know him I know I do

brought the Gol

Maur

and the woman with him as he trudged through a snow drift that now
rose to his knees.  He watched Dragon warily as he approached, but something in his eyes wasn’t as hard as she would have expected.

The woman seemed to realize where they were going.  She
had brown-hair, tattooed arms and severe eyes.  She raised her weapon and aimed it at Dragon, but Ronan put a hand on her gun and gently pushed it down.

They moved past Dragon
and headed for the trees.  She let them.  She still wasn’t sure why, but she knew she wouldn’t hurt them.

The warlock
, Traven, erected a shield of red and black ice, and Dragon could tell it took every reserve of his strength to hold it in place.  She sent her spirit forward and fused him to Traven’s, and as they joined the air filled with a cracking sound, like lightning cutting a tree.   

Traven
was about to die. Dragon sensed as he poured his own life-force into his spirit.  He didn’t let the spirit heal him, but instead healed
her
, and in that moment of vulnerability, that split second when his defenses were entirely down and he willingly merged what was left of his soul to the creature he’d loved all his life, Dragon understood how what she and her spirit shared was so
wrong
.  Traven cared for and nourished his spirit, regarded her as a mate and a friend.  She was closer to him than anyone else could ever be, and Dragon recognized that intimacy, understood it…and remembered it.  She remembered what it felt like, remembered how she’d shared that love not only with her spirit, but with other people.

Traven
’s soul burned away, but in the last moments of his life it flared bright like an exploding star. 

The tank fired
.  A deafening explosion wracked the air.  Razor shrapnel ripped Traven to shreds.  His spirit absorbed the force of the blast and pulled it in like a great and fiery breath, held it, and spat it back. 

Dragon
helped the failing spirit in that scant second it had left before it perished along with Traven.  Caustic energies fired by the hexed tank went screaming back towards the vehicle and raced straight down its barrel.  The iron hull exploded.  Dragon shielded her eyes from the blast.  Metal, fuel and meat hailed down.

Her legs shook.  The effort had taken more out of her than she
’d expected.  She prepared to call her spirit back and fuse him to her wounds, but to her surprise he moved to heal her cuts and burns all on his own.  Vitality crept through her limbs, and soothing heat pulsed through her veins.

“Danica!”
Ronan shouted from behind her.  “Come on!”

Danica?

Fliers appeared over the ridge.  Her attention had been entirely focused on Traven and destroying the tank, which had caused the cover granted by her arcane snowstorm to fade.  Predatory gargoyles and one-man hoverships with chain guns skimmed close to the ground.  The grind of engines filled the air.

Danica?

Do you?

She
sent shards of smoking ice through gargoyle flesh and metal hulls.  Grease and oil explosions tore across the sky.  They kept firing at her even as her spirit tore them apart.  Someone grabbed her from behind and threw her to the ground as a hover ship crashed into a row of rocks at the edge of the tree line. 

Ronan was on top of her.

“Danica!” he yelled.  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Her spirit gripped him with ethereal claws, but she pulled
it back – not forcefully, not with the same brutal domination she’d used in the past, but more carefully.  She
asked
him to release the man, and while her spirit was hesitant, it acquiesced.

“Who are you?” she
asked.

“Ronan!” the Gol shouted.  “More are coming! Maur suggests run
ning while there is still time!”

Ronan released
her and stood up, a look of loss on his face.  He was wounded and out of breath. 

Her spirit had torn t
he enemy fliers from the sky.  Chunks of smoking metal and pools of fire littered the ground.  She heard the groan of tanks and the engines of mechanized assault wings in the distance, far too many for her weakened spirit to handle.

Ronan

I know you

held out his hand.

“Come on, Dani.” He didn’t look like he actually expected her to take it.  The Gol and the woman watched with their weapons ready. 

Dragon
looked at him.  She knew they’d been friends, allies, maybe even lovers.  She couldn’t remember who he was.  But she was certain she knew him.

That was enough.

She reached out with her flesh hand, and he hauled her to her feet.

“Don
’t make me regret this,” she told him.

He nodded.

“I was about to say the same thing,” he said.

The Gol smiled. 
The sound of vehicles drew closer.  Without another word they entered the forest and started down the hill.

They raced past scrub oak and ice-rived brush.  Petrified trees with frost-wracked branches blocked sight of the sky.  The air was jarringly cold, and the ground was thick with iron-hard pine needles and thick crusts of snow.  They were close to the Nightblood River. 

The
y heard the grind of machines beyond the forest.  The four of them descended into a tree-clogged basin packed with stony soil.  No one spoke.  They felt the cold of the river even at a distance.  The ground was covered with black frost and leaves that cracked like glass. 

Dragon
’s spirit breathed warmth into her body.  She looked at her uneasy and largely silent traveling companions and had him do the same for them, as it was clear they were freezing.  They’d dressed for winter, but it still wasn’t enough.  She guessed they’d had no intention of being out there for so long.

T
rees cracked and exploded in the distance behind them, but eventually the cannon-fire ceased.  Dragon expected the Fanians to bombard the forest, but they didn’t.

After a time the
y seemed to lose their pursuers, so they stopped to rest.  Even with her spirit warming them everyone still shivered.  They were covered in cuts, burn stains and dried blood, and their armor and clothing was tattered and frayed.  They had only a few weapons.  It took her a moment to realize she’d lost one of the smaller Necroblades.

“Looking for this?”
Ronan said.  He pulled the black kukri from behind his back, flipped it over, and presented it to her hilt first.  “You dropped it back there.”  He watched her warily.  “Danica.”  The sound of that name made her cold inside.  She took the weapon.

“I
’m confused,” the other woman said, the tattooed soldier with darkness behind her eyes.  Dragon could tell she’d seen a great deal of death and pain.  “How do you know this woman?”

“That
’s Danica Black,” the Gol said.  “She used to be the co-leader of Cross’s team.”

Maur.  His name is Maur. 

“And now she works for the Ebon Cities,” the woman said bitingly.  “And
why
is this okay?”

“Because she doesn
’t know who she is,” Ronan said.  His eyes never left Dragon’s.  He pulled a length of black cloth from his pack and wrapped it around his scarred face.  “Do you, Dani?”

“I
’m Dragon,” she said.  “And I’m still trying to decide why I should let you live.”

The woman raised her weapon and aimed it at her.

“Reza,” Ronan said after a moment of charged silence.  “You saw what she can do.  I don’t think you’re going to win this one.”  Reza hesitated before angrily lowering her gun. 

“What happened back there?” Ronan asked. 

“The men of Fane tried to kill us,” Dragon said coldly.

“
Yeah, we
got
that…” Ronan said.

“Why was Wolftown destroyed?” Maur asked. 

“My guess is because it was in their way,” Dragon replied.  “They’re marching on Ath, and Rimefang Loch.”

“We know,” Ronan said.  “They
’re looking for the Witch’s Eye.”

She smiled.  Lynch hadn
’t thought the Southern Claw knew about the Eye. 

“
A nest of Witchborn had taken root in Wolftown,” she said.  “I was sent to destroy them, and gather information about the Eye.”

“Sent,” Ronan said.
  “By the vampires?”

She nodded. 
She almost remembered him. 

Almost
. 

What are you doing?  This is the enemy.  Lorn is your charge, and Lynch is your master.  Lady Riven gave you order
s.

Whispers
clawed at the back of her mind.  She knew she would suffer for even speaking to these people.

Ronan
stared at her steel arm. 

“What did they do to you, Dani?” he said.  His eyes
met hers, and she stared back at him.  She couldn’t answer, just like she couldn’t explain why she let him live, or why being there with him now felt so…
right.
 

“
So what now?” Reza said.

“Yes, Maur wants to know when he can start moving before his balls freeze,” the Gol said.

“I didn’t think Gol had balls,” Ronan said, and he stood up.  He watched Dragon, as if waiting for her to transform. 

“I don
’t want to discuss Gol balls,” Reza said.

“Fair enough,” Ronan laughed. 

I could kill you
, Dragon thought.  She tightened her hand around Claw’s hilt. 

“We should keep moving,” he said.  “Are you coming with us?”

Images of Lorn flashed through her mind.  She saw baths of blood and battles in the cold, Lady Riven’s gaze and Lynch’s barely contained lust.  She saw her existence as a slave.  Every time she’d started to question her place, Lynch had had her mind altered. 

She was
just a weapon to them.  A tool. 

The whispers
assaulted her thoughts.  Her brain felt sluggish and slow.

Who am I?  Not this.  I
’m more than this.

“
You…should come with
me
,” she said.  “I know where the Witch’s Eye is.”

They moved deeper into the forest.  Night fell.  They built a fire to keep warm, and even then Dragon still had to use her spirit to prevent them from freezing to death.  They sat close to the flames, and the darkness surrounded them like a black sea. 

Ronan stared out as if he could see something. 
The night was filled with noise, the calls of hawks and the sucking lamprey mouths of unseen predators, but nothing approached to threaten them. 

Sleep took Reza in fits and bursts, and after a time
Maur sat cross-legged and entered the meditative trance all Gol used as a substitute for sleep. 

Ronan
, however, stayed awake.  He sat perfectly still for a long time, as did Dragon.  The black chill gnawed at them.  They listened to the wind and the groan of distant engines: the Fanians might have given up their search, but they were still close by. 

Disciples of the Triangle were
like machines.  She wondered how he’d come to be where he was now.  She didn’t envy his childhood.

But at least he knows who he is.

She didn
’t notice the coming of dawn.  Time skidded to a halt: one moment there stood a wall of utter darkness and the next she saw the edges of the trees surrounding the clearing.  She was used to losing time, but it still bothered her.  She wondered how long ago it was since she’d actually been the person Ronan and Maur both thought she was.

The others roused,
and they moved stiff, like dried twigs.  The fire smoked black, but she kept it lit.  With the arrival of dawn she decided against using her spirit to keep them warm any longer.  He seemed grateful for the rest, as she’d tasked him with the chore all through the night. 

She hadn
’t forced anything out of him.  He’d given himself freely.