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position. “You don’t want to get on Warden Danica’s bad side…not that she has a good side…”
    Perhaps to prove Kane’s point, Black used her boot and pushed him forward and onto his face. Ekko shot Black a baleful look. Cross wondered if the deep scar on Ekko’s neck was the reason he’d not heard her speak.
    Black produced an old-fashioned lever-action Winchester rifle; it was made of black metal and decorated with an elaborate grip carved into the likeness of a dragon’s tail. Apart from the stock design, it was like a weapon straight out of the Old West.
    The broken turbine machinery was about four feet tall and twice that in width, so it provided good cover for the six of them. The device still smoked and crackled now and again, and the low hum and stink of broken magic made the area around it dank and thick.
    “ Is this thing going to blow up?” Kane asked.
    “ Yes,” Cross answered. He was relieved when Black smiled at that.
    The air tasted raw with cold. Cross watched his breath steam in front of his face. He only barely saw Dillon or Vos in the nearby ship.
    They waited. The sky turned the color of salt. Cross held his spirit ready and alert, but he didn’t want to send her out, at least not yet. He sensed Black’s spirit close by, and he didn’t want to leave himself exposed in case she tried something underhanded.
    The ground rumbled slightly, as if from thunder.
    It won’t be long.
    His spirit slid down his arms and onto his gauntleted fingers, which promptly went numb from the cold. Needles of pain tingled up and down his skin. His spirit was so excited it literally hurt him.
    Black’s male spirit was ambient and powerful and aggressive, made of tumultuous energy that was packed up tight like a bag of gunpowder.
    Cross drew his HK45, which he checked and rechecked far too many times. The prisoners waited. Lucan and Ekko did so quietly, while Kane whistled loudly until Black finally threatened to shoot him if he didn’t stop.
    “ Black,” Cross said. It was hard to sound casual when he knew that a horde of ebon-skinned cannibals were coming right at them. “Where did you say you were headed?”
    “ I didn’t,” Black answered through gritted teeth. She didn’t look at him.
    “ That’s right,” Cross said. “Is that because you don’t want me to know that you’re not supposed to be here?”
    At that, Black shot him a sideways glance. It was all the confirmation he needed to know that he’d guessed correctly.
    “ You’d be better off minding your own business,” she said. She had her rifle ready and aimed at the tree line to the east.
    “ It’s a little late for that,” he said.
    “ It’s too late for anything,” Lucan said. His voice took them by surprise. Cross looked at him. Lucan’s eyes were closed and his head was bent forward, as if in prayer. “An end is near.”
    “ Thanks, man,” Kane said next to him. “ Now I feel better.”
    “ What do you care, anyway?” Black asked Cross, ignoring the prisoners.
    “ Maybe I’m just curious,” Cross shrugged. “We may be dead in a minute.”
    “ What, do you want a kiss, too?” Black said dryly.
    “ I do,” Kane said.
    “ Shut up,” Black answered. “So why do you really want to know?” she asked Cross. “If you have something to say, then I’d prefer that you just say it.”
    “ Yeah, you seem like the forward type,” Cross smiled.
    He looked at the clearing. There were a few hundred yards of open space between them and the trees. Drawing a horde of charging Gorgoloth into the clearing was the only chance they had to funnel the brutes and control their movement to trap them in a cross-fire. In retrospect, staying deeper in the trees would have made it easier to avoid getting surrounded, but it would have been more difficult to set up any sort of defensible position.
    I don’t want to die here , Cross thought. Somewhere else. Not in the Reach.
    The mist thinned. Dark shapes took form in the distance,