Holy ground — Vladimir Duran

On the heels of last issue's shattering conclusions Vlad goes on a pilgrimage. The Cairn of Bones, site of the battle of the Blood Ocean awaits. But the Cairn is no mere monument. It is the throne of the bitter dead. The dead are waiting and the dead are hungry. The dead will drag you down into the grave with them.

Excerpt

The sun finally crested the horizon, brining with it long shadows and heat. His body groaned in protest as Vlad got to his feet and began to move eastward once again. A few hours spent sitting cross-legged on a hard bit of rock was not the same as a good night's sleep.

If he'd been fully human or fully wizard it wouldn't have been as bad. Humans couldn't sense the Cairn or hear the whispers. They were deaf to the dead. Yesterday he passed a couple who laughed together as they held hands and walked along a train heading southeast. Apparently Death Valley California was their idea of honeymoon. A wizard could sense the Cairn, but a full wizard would have had a lifetime to build up resistance to ethereal wave phenomena. By comparison Vlad was a raw nerve next to a tough callous.

He kept walking.

Perhaps he should have taken more time to recover. The day after Mikael handed him his ass an idea took hold of him. Visit the Cairn of Bones. He didn't know why the idea had suddenly taken hold, or why it had to be this place. One or two wizards made this journey every year as a kind of Pilgrimage. Vlad had never been the type to go in for that kind of thing, however. The voice of instinct again. It told him that the next step would be taken here. Whatever that was.