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“Are you Darien or Travis?”
Darien blinked his thoughts away and refocused on the situation at hand. “What?” Realizing what the man had asked before he had a chance to repeat it, Darien replied, “I’m Darien.”
“I heard you look alike.”
Darien selected a pistol from the compartment and loaded up the cartridge with ammunition. “I’ve heard that, too.”
“I’m Bill.” When Darien didn’t say anything, Bill repeated, “You’re going to need all of those.”
Darien managed to blink the Sight away as he glanced over his shoulder, taking in the solemn look on the man’s face without the colors of his aura getting in the way. Although some might argue that the Sight made you able to see better, sometimes it was nothing but a distraction, like wearing a pair of glasses with the wrong prescription in the lenses.
“I don’t doubt how good you are in your line of work,” Bill said. “But trust me when I say you’re going to want a good assortment of those weapons on your person when you take this thing down.” His thin mouth curled into a thoughtful frown. “Who sent you, anyway?”
“A guy named Greg. Works at 24/7 Stop on Redwater.” Darien set the pistol aside and loaded up another. “Where’s this thing hiding?”
Bill pointed a wrinkled finger across the moor. “By the fig tree.”
Darien frowned. “The Crossroads?”
Across the dark grounds sat a massive Strangler Fig, so close to the dense treeline that its silhouette blended in until it was nearly invisible.
“What of the Soul-eater?” Darien asked.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bill shrug. The strap of the rifle slipped off his shoulder, but he caught it before it could fall. “I don’t go near the Crossroads. I’m assuming she’s still in there.”
Something didn’t add up. The Nameless didn’t share their dens, so he was either following a false lead and there was no new monster out here, or something had happened to the creature that lived at this Crossroads. He couldn’t imagine what; those things were very hard to kill.
Bill said, “You got coins?”
Darien flashed him the two coins he’d stuffed into his back pocket, along with the single dove’s feather. He was lucky he’d found one in the tin he kept under the driver’s seat; the offerings were getting low, along with the coins in the bowl back at Hell’s Gate. It was nearly time to stock up. Each Crossroads had their own requirements; while some only asked for coins, others desired a specific bird’s feather, a berry, a gemstone, bones, animal teeth, claws or talons, the pieces of a clock.
There was one Crossroads near the city of Yveswich that asked for nothing save a memory of the gatekeeper’s choosing. Darien would avoid that place for the rest of his life, so long as he could help it. There was something about a Crossroads that stipulated such a personal offering from its visitors that didn’t sit well with Darien.
He was about to shut the trunk when something caught his eye.
The onyx ring Arthur had given him from the Fleet weaponry was lodged between two guns in the compartment of the trunk. A friend of Arthur’s had recently repaired the damage done to the magic-enforced bodysuit—the damage caused by the explosion of the Arcanum Well replica. Now, it had barely a scratch on it.
Darien wasn’t sure why he did it, but he grabbed the ring and put it on, turning it counter-clockwise.
Bill stumbled back as the sleek black armor spread across Darien’s body, fitting him like a glove. The protective spellwork snapped into place, buzzing across his skin like a blanket of electricity.
A low whistle slipped through Bill’s lips. “That’s one fancy bauble.”
Darien filled the weapons belt on the bodysuit with the assortment of guns and closed the trunk, the thump echoing across the rolling fields.
And then he made his way over to the fig tree. The man didn’t follow, though Darien could feel him tracking his every step.
The Strangler Fig was massive. An aggressive root system tunneled into the soil, protruding up here and there in twisting loops. A sight as beautiful as it was disturbing, it was like something straight out of a fairy-tale, save the soul-eating witch that dwelled below the ground at his feet.
When he made it across the field, the colossal tree looming out of the darkness, he saw that the base of the trunk was ringed with colorful mushrooms.
Darien crouched before the haunting face that was carved into the wood. The eyes were nothing but gouges, sticky golden sap that reeked of sulfur and corpse flowers dripping from the holes like tears.
He took the two coins and pressed them, one after the other, into the eye sockets of the carved tree. The next step was the feather, which he placed in the grass at the base of the trunk.
As soon as the feather touched ground, the wind and the rustle of nocturnal wildlife died, a quilt of silence dropping over the property.
When Darien spoke, there was a hollow echo to his words, as if he were talking through a pipe. Something was listening on the other end—he just didn’t know what.
