“No, but you’re a shifter capable of full-body transformation—who actually knows what you look like?”
“I was wearing my true form when I brought Penny to Chaos—”
“A form I didn’t see as I was unconscious,” he cut in.
“But you saw it later, when you and Nuri questioned me in the cell. As I said, do I actually look that old to you?”
“No. But then, we’ve established the fact you’re not exactly telling us the whole truth. This could be just another of a long line of subversions and half lies.”
“And I’m not the only one doing that, am I?”
“We have told you nothing but the truth.”
“Except for those times when you avoid it. Like when I asked just how connected you are to the government.”
“We aren’t.”
“Liar.”
He half shrugged. “You are free to believe what you wish.”
“And I will, just as you may, shifter.”
“At least we have reached agreement on something,” he muttered, and, from there on in, increased his pace.
I didn’t actually care, because walking at such a fast clip meant I had to concentrate on the path and gave me less time to actually think about the stubborn, angry man in front of me. The trip back to Central was also done in silence, which at least meant I wasn’t running the risk of saying the wrong thing and possibly outing myself.
He stopped at the back of the museum and opened the ATV’s door on my side. I climbed out, then hesitated and met his gaze. “Contact me when you get back from the raid. And good luck.”
“Hopefully we’ll have the raid planned well enough that we won’t need luck.”
I hoped he was right, but a whole lot could happen in the time between now and their raid tomorrow. I stepped away from the ATV as he hit the door-close switch, and watched until it had disappeared through the trees before spinning around and heading for the bunker’s exit.
Dusk was just beginning to drift pink-and-lemon fingers across the sky by the time I arrived. Thankfully, the grate was still in one piece, and no ghosts waited for me, which meant nothing untoward had happened during the day.
I entered the tunnel, deactivating the electro-nets as I approached each one, then resetting them once I’d passed. With that done, I headed for the bunk rooms. I needed to wash the day’s grime from my body, although all I really wanted to do was drop into my bunk and sleep for a good ten hours. It had been a long day today, and an even longer night last night, and I was running close to exhaustion.
The ghosts rallied around me as I exited the nursery sections, and began bombarding me with images of everything they’d done during the day. Mostly they’d spent the time in the museum, following the visitors and gossiping about them, but occasionally they amused themselves by moving items placed in one spot by museum staff to another.
“Are Cat and Bear back yet?” I asked once they calmed down a little.
A wash of negativity ran through my mind, rapidly followed by worry. “They’re okay,” I added quickly. “They’re just on a mission for me. Keep an eye out for them.”
Some of the older youngsters rushed away immediately to return to the main tunnel and keep watch, but most of the littler ones stayed with me, happily filling me in on everything else they’d seen and done during the day.
I was out of the shower and just pulling on a tank top by the time Cat and Bear arrived. Their excitement and happiness stung the air and I couldn’t help smiling. They’d not only enjoyed their assignment, they wanted to do it again tomorrow.
I sat cross-legged in the middle of my bunk and patted the blanket on either side of me. “Tell me what he did.”
Their images began to flow through my mind. Sal hadn’t immediately left Hedone after he’d bundled me out the door, but had instead gotten back on the com unit and made a rather long phone call.
“To whom?” I cut in. “Did you catch a name?”
Cat’s energy ran across my skin, briefly connecting us on a more direct level. No, she said, her voice soft and sweet, we didn’t get close, in case he sensed us. But it was a woman.
Meaning it was more than likely the woman who’d been caught in that rift with him. “Thanks, Cat.”
Her energy retreated, and the images ran on. After the long conversation with the woman, Sal changed and headed downstairs to Hedone, spending several hours doing paperwork and talking to customers and personnel.
It wasn’t until the early afternoon that he’d left and walked directly to a glass-fronted, ten-story building. The name Winter Halo flashed into my mind, and I swore and briefly closed my eyes. Despite everything, part of me had hoped I’d been wrong, that he wasn’t involved, that he and I could go on as we always had, as friends and lovers.
But I guess surviving the war and remaining undiscovered was all the good luck the goddess Rhea was going to extend my way.
“Did he see anyone while he was in there? Talk to anyone?”
The image of a tall, thin-faced man with dark hair, shadowed skin, and oddly magnetic blue eyes flashed into my mind. With it came a thick sensation of uneasiness. My ghosts hadn’t liked this stranger’s feel or presence.
“Why?” I asked. “What was it about him you found so unsavory?”
This time it was Bear who touched my skin and formed a deeper connection. No surprise there, given the toll it took on them to initiate contact like this. My initiating it—as I had when I’d talked to the Carleen ghosts—drained me, not them, though why it worked that way I had no idea.
He feels strange. Bear’s voice broke slightly, a physical sign of puberty and one he was eternally stuck in.
Like a vampire feels strange?
No. Vampires feel like the dead. This was . . . He hesitated, and I felt his mental shrug. Alien. It was almost as if he didn’t belong in our world.
Jonas had said that the darkness I’d seen in Sal’s mind—the one that had caught all four people and forever changed them—had been a rift. And while some rifts simply did nothing more than rip apart anyone or anything unfortunate enough to get in their way, many were gateways by which the Others entered our world.
And Jonas had also said that Sal’s scent had undertones that reminded him a little of those creatures.
Which more than likely meant I’d guessed right—the fourth person I’d seen had been one of the Others. It would also explain why they’d killed him so quickly. But it meant Sal now had that creature’s DNA in him, and surely to Rhea I would have sensed a change as big as that.
Or would I?
Over one hundred years had passed since I’d last seen him, and that was more than time enough for memories to become rose-colored and unreliable.
Bear’s touch retreated, and the images resumed. Whoever Sal had seen inside Winter Halo had not been happy. Neither of the ghosts had been close enough to catch the conversation, but the other man had certainly been animated. On body language alone, it looked like he’d been laying down some ground rules, and that meant Sal wasn’t in charge—not if what I was now seeing was any indication. But why would he be, when we’d been bred to follow rules rather than give them? He may now run several successful brothels, but that didn’t mean he’d entirely escaped his DNA programming—even if it was programming those other two people now shared.
When Sal finally left Winter Halo, he didn’t—as I’d half expected—return to Hedone, but had instead headed straight down Victory Street, away from the first district and toward the twelfth. I had a bad feeling I knew exactly where he’d gone, and the very next image proved me right.
I closed my eyes for a moment and swore softly. Cat’s energy patted my arm, offering sympathy even though I doubted she really understood my anger.
The images rolled on. Sal, heading into Deseo, walking unchallenged through the establishment and down into the basement. He punched a code into the newly fixed security control panel, walked down the steps, and disappeared into the false rift.
&
nbsp; There really was no doubt now. Sal was involved with whatever was happening to the children.
“Cat and Bear, you did a great job,” I said. “Thank you very much.”
Their pleasure at being able to help was so strong I could almost see their smiles. They danced about me, eager to repeat their adventure tomorrow.
“Maybe,” I said, “but the first thing we’ll do tomorrow is head to Carleen. We need to find out what Sal was doing, or where he went from there.”
Bear’s energy settled against my skin again, briefly renewing that stronger connection. Why not tonight? Tomorrow gives him too much time to escape.
“He’s not escaping. He can’t.” Why I was sure of that, I couldn’t say. But he and the others seemed very tied to Central, and not only because the businesses they ran were all very successful—a point that made me wonder just what their female partner was involved in. “Besides, we can’t risk moving at night, Bear. The vampires are aware of our presence now, and I have no doubt they’ll be watching our bunker even if they can’t get in.”
Bear wasn’t happy with this decision, but, despite his grumbles, I knew he understood. Just as I knew he had no more desire than me to confront vampires at night, when they were at their strongest. “Tomorrow we’ll head to Carleen and see what the ghosts say. In the meantime, could you keep an eye on the electro-nets I set up in the tunnel? And let me know the minute one of them activates?”
He zoomed off, happy to have something to do. Cat also drifted off, but I could her chattering to the other little ones, no doubt filling them in on their adventures over the day. Smiling, I climbed into bed, shut down the lights, and slept the sleep of the dead.
• • •
I woke just before dawn and headed to the main weapons cache. I had no idea what I might find in Carleen now that Sal and his partners were clearly aware that someone not only knew of their activities, but also was actively trying to stop them—and that meant I had to be prepared for any eventuality. So I strapped on as much weaponry as I could physically carry—it was better to be overprepared than underprepared.
The city’s drawbridge was still closed as we made our way through the rail yards, but many of the pods were already humming to life, powering up for the day’s activities. I crossed the main road quickly and moved into the park. Shadows still haunted the more densely treed sections, but Bear assured me that—no matter what my imagination might be saying—there were no vampires lurking in the undergrowth, ready to jump out at us.
It took us a little under an hour to reach Carleen’s broken curtain wall. I scrambled over it and once again moved carefully through the clumps of luminescent moss, avoiding the darker energy of the rifts as I headed toward the road that climbed up to the remains of the town’s main center.
But the Carleen ghosts met me halfway up the hill, and their anger was so fierce it felt as if I’d slammed into a physical wall. I gasped and bent over, suddenly battling to breathe.
“Blaine,” I somehow managed to croak, “the force of your anger is too overwhelming—you need to tell everyone to tone it down.”
The emotive output immediately pulled back. I took several quivery breaths, then dropped the rest of the way to the ground and crossed my legs. The fastest way to find out what had been going on since I’d last been here was to connect directly to them via my ghosts, but it would have to be fast. Creating this type of connection so often in a short space of time was a severe drain on my strength, and I had a bad feeling I would need to be at peak abilities to cope with the crap that was heading my way.
Of course, that same intuition didn’t illuminate exactly what it meant by “crap,” which was damn frustrating.
“Cat, I need your help again.”
I held out my hand. Cat’s energy immediately began to seep into my body and, just as quickly, the chill of death began to creep into my outer extremities.
With the countdown to death begun, I ran my gaze across the figures clustered in the middle of the road until I found Blaine. He was standing to one side of the main group and was accompanied by several others. No matter what the crisis was, it seemed the leaders of this place still preferred to hold themselves apart from the general public.
“What’s the problem?” I said.
“The wraiths came back,” he said. “This time they did more than just shift a false rift. This time they created a wall we cannot get through.”
My gaze jerked to the top of the hill. All I could see were the skeletal remains of once-grand buildings. Certainly there wasn’t any sort of barrier visible—not even that of a false rift. I frowned. “What sort of wall?”
“Magical,” Blaine spat back. “It banned us all from our resting place, and it burns at our bones.”
If it felt as if the magic was burning at their remains, then it was probably some sort of earth magic. But witches capable of using the energy of the earth to power the creation of magic were few and far between, and those capable of twisting that energy to evil purposes even rarer.
But it was scary knowing the people behind the false rifts were apparently capable of doing just that. “How many wraiths were there?”
“Two—one male, one female. It was the latter who performed the magic.”
The chill of death was reaching past my knees. I had to hurry this along. “And they were both wraiths?”
“In appearance, yes, although they were speaking common tongue.”
If they were speaking, then despite appearances they certainly weren’t wraiths, as wraiths had no mouths. But then, I didn’t really expect them to be. Not after everything I’d learned over the last day or so.
I imagined Sal’s facial features in my mind, superimposed the larger eyes and grayer skin of a wraith, and then pushed the image out to the ghosts. They immediately began to stir and mutter, answering my question before I even asked it. But I asked it anyway, just to be certain. “And is this one of them?”
“Yes,” Blaine said immediately. “You know him?”
“I thought I did.” My voice was grim. “Did they do anything other than raise the wall and boot you out of your resting place?”
“Yes. They moved the children.”
“They what?”
“Moved the children. Five were taken by the male into a rift; the other eight were taken by the women into the vehicle she arrived in.”
I could understand their splitting the children to help prevent a total disruption of their plans in the event of discovery, but why split them so unevenly? “What sort of vehicle?”
He shrugged. “It was a large ATV, military in design but not holding military registration.”
Why would they take five through a rift, and the others in an ATV? None of this was making any sense—unless, of course, they were preparing a trap. “What sort of registration did it have?”
“Government.”
“Government?” I couldn’t help the surprise in my voice. “Are you sure of that?”
His smile was thin. Humorless. “Yes. I was an official here in Carleen, remember. Military vehicles were often used to ensure our safety, especially in the latter parts of the war.”
The ice had reached my thighs and was beginning to leach through my torso, making it difficult to think, to move. To breathe. I needed to end this.
Fast.
And yet I couldn’t. There were still too many things I needed to know. “Which direction did the ATV go when it left here?” I hesitated, then added, “I’m presuming it did leave?”
“Yes. It went toward Central.”
For the second time in as many seconds, shock ran through me. “Central?”
He nodded. “We followed them to the boundary, but no farther. They were heading through the park, moving toward your city. Whether they actually continued in that direction, we cannot say. We prefer not to leave the boundary of our home.”
Most ghosts didn’t. Bear and Cat were a rarity in that regard, and it was undoubtedly due to the fact that they’d died
in my arms.
“And the . . .” My breath caught in my throat and froze the rest of the question in place. Panic surged, but a heartbeat later, I sucked in a breath and quickly said, “Other three—which rift did they go through?”
“The one that remains outside the barrier the gray witch raised.” Concern crossed his expression. “You had best end this conversation, unless you have a sudden desire to become one of us.”
“I don’t, but thanks for your help.”
He bowed and, as Cat’s energy began to pull away, quickly added, “Find these people. Stop them.”
It was all I could do to say, “I plan to.”
With Cat’s connection gone, I slumped backward and stared up at the matte gray skies, sucking in air and waiting for the chill of death to leave my body and for feeling to creep back into my limbs. My two little ghosts pressed against me, offering the comfort of their presence as much as their energy, but I had no intention of pulling on their strength to restore mine.
After what seemed like ages, the shivering stopped and I felt strong enough to stand. I stared up at the long road rising ahead of us, then resolutely pushed myself on.
It was a tedious climb in my weakened state, and I was sweating heavily and shaking with fatigue by the time I got to the top. I seriously had to take time out to heal myself; I might have had a good night’s sleep, but it wasn’t enough to restore me at a cellular level, and that’s what I needed right now. If I didn’t heal, I was going to be in big trouble—especially if I hit trouble.
I paused at the top of the hill and looked around. The dark energy of the false rift that hovered around the resting place of the ghosts was easy enough to spot, but I couldn’t see or feel anything that indicated there was any type of magic at work here. Certainly there didn’t appear to be anything that would prevent my moving closer.
But as I tried to step forward, Bear spun in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. Red flashed through my mind—a warning of danger.
I frowned and raised a hand, carefully pressing one finger forward. I was almost at full stretch when a thin strip of green light leapt up from the broken road surface and snatched at my finger. I jerked it away quickly, but the sliver followed, reaching for me, its feel foul and somehow corrupted. I ran backward, afraid to turn my back on the thing, and, after several steps, the sliver faded away. I sighed in relief and said, “Thanks, Bear.”