They went. But their small silhouettes had barely disappeared around the tunnel’s gentle curve when the vampires surged into the light. As they began to burn, I grabbed another weapon and fired—not at those who were becoming ash but at those who flung themselves at the light. As the bodies began to mount up and the stink of ash and flesh stained the air and churned my stomach, the ghosts reappeared, forming a somewhat ragged line in front of me. Less than half of them were left, and I had no idea whether the others had been killed or were merely depleted of energy and unable to help. Those who remained, however, radiated a fierce and utter joy. They were doing what they’d been bred to do, and they didn’t care about depletion or even death.
I spun and left them to it. But I resisted the urge to bolt after the children. It was better if I kept some distance between us, just in case the vampires broke through again.
Which they did.
And this time, they also shattered the light tube. As the light in the immediate area went out and darkness began to chase its way up the rest of the tubing, I spun and started to fire. Vampires screamed and went down, only to be replaced by three or four more. I kept firing until the weapons grew hot in my hands and the low-ammo light began to flash in warning. One weapon clicked over to empty. I flung it away, but before I could grab another, they hit me. We went down in a mass of screaming, biting, clawing flesh. I swore and fought with everything I had, battling to get one arm free so I could at least flick a knife down into my hand. But they grabbed it, tore at it, chewing at my flesh like dogs do a bone. I screamed and became darkness, hoping in that form I’d at least have a chance of escape. But they felt it and changed with me, and the attacks were somehow worse because it felt as if they were tearing me apart from the inside out.
Damn it, I wouldn’t die like this! I couldn’t do it to Cat and Bear and all my other little ones. I forced a hand through the stinking mound of flesh, pulled a gun free, and began to fire. There was no finesse, no aim; I just pulled the trigger and kept on firing. Bloodied vampire bits bloomed into the air, and the weight holding me down shifted. Not much, but enough. Energy surged from Rhea knows where, and I forced my way upright. I flicked the knife free and kept on firing as I slashed left and right, cutting limbs and faces and bodies. But there was no end to them; I would die here if I didn’t move.
The ghosts arrived, and vampires were picked up and flung away. “Thank you, thank you,” I said, then leapt over the pile of bloody, broken bodies in front of me and ran like hell.
This time, the line of ghosts didn’t hold very long at all. No matter how fiercely they wanted to fight, they were no longer flesh, and beings of energy could do only so much.
I kept on running. It was pointless doing anything else now. My trunk was a maze of bloody wounds, there were chunks out of my arms and legs, and my strength—like that of the ghosts—was ebbing. I needed to reach the sunlight. It was my only hope.
The vampires surged closer; the wind of their approach buffeted my spine, but I had no more strength, no more speed. I gripped my knife and gun so tightly my knuckles glowed. This was it . . .
They hit me. Again we went tumbling, but this time, I somehow twisted, firing nonstop at the stinking mass surrounding me. I hit the ground back first and slid several yards, firing all the while. Then the gun clicked over to empty . . .
Something whistled through the air, and a heartbeat later, light exploded into the tunnel. The vampires screamed and erupted into flame, their flesh becoming ashes that rained all around me.
Then a hand grabbed mine and hauled me upright. Jonas, I realized in surprise.
“What in Rhea—”
“Explanations can wait,” he said, voice tight. “The children are safe, and we need to run. That light bomb is only going to hold them off for a couple of minutes.”
As if to emphasize his words, the bomb’s light began to flicker and fizz. It was all the encouragement I needed. I ran as hard and as fast as I could. Jonas kept behind me, his hand lightly pressed against my back, as if to encourage even more speed from my aching, weary body.
We pounded around another long, curving corner. Up ahead, like a distant star, sunshine beckoned. We were close, so close, to safety.
Behind us, the light bomb went out, and the black tide was once again on the hunt.
“Faster,” Jonas growled. Despite the urgency in his voice, the pressure of his hand against my spine didn’t alter, though it must have been tempting to simply shove me.
But I had nothing left to give. My breath was little more than ragged gasps, every bit of me was bruised, bloody and sore, and I really had no idea how I was even managing to remain upright, let alone run.
But I didn’t want to die. It hadn’t been only my DNA that had kept me alive when the Draccid had killed everyone else—it had also been willpower. That same willpower was undoubtedly the only reason I was even functioning now.
Jonas began to fire over his shoulder. I kept my eyes on the ever-growing half circle of light, determined to reach it.
The wind of the vampires’ approach began to batter us. Jonas hissed, a sound filled with fury and no small amount of fear, but he kept his hand on my back, kept pushing, even though he could have so easily left me and saved himself.
A silhouette appeared in the bright circle up ahead. A heartbeat later, several flaming arrows shot past us and buried themselves in the flesh of the nearest vampires. They immediately exploded into fire, creating enough light that the mass behind them hesitated.
It was enough.
Jonas finally shoved me, and I went tumbling, rolling, into the sunlight. I came to a jarring stop at the edge of the old riverbed, and for several minutes didn’t move. I simply stared at the sun and sucked in its bright energy. Against all the odds, I’d saved the children and survived, and if I’d had the energy I would have whooped in sheer and utter delight.
Then a rush of dark air hit me, followed closely by the sensation of fury. The vampires had not finished with us yet. I somehow scrambled upright, my knives in my hand as I stood and stared at the sewer’s entrance. Jonas and Branna stood twenty or so feet farther up the embankment but far enough away from the entrance that the sun shielded them. Their bodies were tense and their guns raised. Nuri was farther away to my left, and the five children were with her.
A black tide of flesh spewed from the tunnel. They burned almost as soon as they hit the sunlight, but one or two broke through the gathering cloud of ash and ran at me even as their bodies exploded into flame and began to disintegrate. These ones, Jonas and Branna coolly shot.
Eventually, the tide became a trickle, then died. As the final gunshot rang out, I said, “Is that the last of them?”
“Not quite,” Branna said.
Then he looked at me and, in one smooth motion, lifted his gun and fired.
I threw myself sideways, but I was on the very last strands of my strength, and I simply had nothing left in the way of reflexes or speed. Even so, the bullet that had been aimed at my head tore through my right shoulder instead, spinning me around and throwing me to the ground. A second shot rang out, and I closed my eyes, waiting for the end to come.
It never did.
Confused, I pressed my hand against the bloody wound in my shoulder, trying to stop the flow of blood as I forced myself upright.
Branna was on the ground, blood pouring out of a hand that was now missing several fingers. Jonas bent and picked up Branna’s weapon, his expression giving little away but fury marking every movement.
“You were warned, Branna,” he said, voice flat. “Why do you not ever listen?”
“Because she’s déchet and dangerous! She should be dead, not living so close to us or the damn city.”
Something within me shattered and hardened. No matter what I said, no matter what I did, it was never going to make a difference to these people. If saving Jonas and the lives of five children had made no difference, then nothing would. I was déchet, and that was all they would eve
r see. Jonas and Nuri might overlook it long enough to use me, but their fear and prejudice undoubtedly ran just as deep as Branna’s.
When all this was over, and I was no longer of use to them, they would get rid of me. That was as clear as the sky overhead.
“As the other children should be dead?” Jonas snapped. “Because you know full well that she is our only hope—”
“Then there is no hope,” I cut in harshly.
Jonas’s gaze jumped to mine. It was a weight I felt deep inside, and filled with a fury that was suddenly aimed at me. “What?”
“I said there is no hope.” I clipped the empty gun to my belt, then looked at Nuri. Her expression was an odd mix of surprise and fear. “I can’t do this. I won’t.”
“You are not the type to walk away,” she said, her voice even despite the emotional turmoil I could feel in her. It wasn’t me she feared but rather my walking away. She really did believe I was the only hope to save the remaining eight children. “You can’t.”
“Watch me.” I took a step backward. Then another.
“The children will die, Tiger. I’ve seen this, just as I’ve seen that is something you do not want on your conscience.”
“You’re right, I don’t. I have risked not only my own life to save these five, but the lives of my little ones and those of the déchet. And in gratitude, he”—I flung a bloodied hand in Branna’s direction—“has attempted to kill me not once, but twice. There will not be a third time.”
“I swear to you—,” Jonas began, but I cut him off with a harsh laugh.
“As you vowed only a few hours ago to control him? As he vowed to do me no harm? No,” I said. “You can save your breath and your vows, because I no more believe them than you can believe it is possible for a déchet to be anything more than a mindless killer.”
“Tiger, you have to listen to me—”
“No, I don’t.” My voice was as grim as Nuri’s was urgent. “I’m done listening to you. I’m done helping you. I’ve been drugged, interrogated, had the lives of my ghosts threatened, and now I’ve been shot—and all by the very people who want me to help them. Enough is enough.”
“If you do not help us,” she said, voice grim, “then I will be forced to carry through with my threat and make you.”
“That threat worked before because I had no warning and no time to prepare. That is no longer the case. Believe me, there are still weapons hidden in the bowels of our bunker that have not been seen since the war, and I will unleash them against both you and your city if you ever attempt to harm my little ones.”
She studied me, her arms crossed and determination evident in her gaze. She wasn’t going to let the matter go, no matter what I said—and yet there was also a sense of acknowledgment that I really did mean to walk away, and nothing she or anyone else said would stop that.
The five little ones I’d rescued had gathered around her skirts and were now staring at me, their wide eyes seeing too much, understanding too much. Just like Penny. It made me wonder if they, like her, were somehow connected to the people who’d kidnapped and tortured the children. Made me wonder if it meant that those behind all this would soon know of my decision to walk away. Would it make any difference? Would it mean the vampires would stop attacking our home and leave us alone?
Maybe. Maybe not.
I doubted such peace was worth the lives of eight children, though.
“What we need to do is report her damn presence to the authorities,” Branna growled. “They can go in and raze the place, just in case there’s more of them hidden there.”
“There is no one else. With Sal dead, I am now the last of my kind. But go ahead and report my presence—it’s undoubtedly what you planned to do once all this was over anyway.” My gaze went to Jonas’s. “Because, hey, I’m not human and I’m not a shifter. I’m just a monster with no feelings or thoughts of my own, and therefore undeserving of consideration or life.”
There was no emotion visible on Jonas’s face. No acknowledgment of my words. Why I even expected there to be, I wasn’t entirely sure, given that I was only speaking the lies they wholly believed.
I added softly, “But if there’s one thing you should believe, then it’s the fact that I will do everything within my power to protect my home and my little ones. And anyone who enters that place with ill intent will regret it.”
He didn’t say anything. None of them did. My gaze flicked down to the weapons he still held. “Shoot me if you want. I really don’t care at this point.”
And with that, I turned and walked away.
They didn’t try to stop me.
They didn’t shoot.
But the weight of their gazes lingered long after I’d left them behind, and it made the guilt even harder to bear.
Because despite all my denials, Nuri was right about one thing—I couldn’t ignore the plight of those children. It wasn’t in my nature.
I just had to find a way to help them that didn’t involve Nuri and her men.
DON’T MISS THE NEXT OUTCAST NOVEL BY KERI ARTHUR,
Winter Halo
AVAILABLE NOVEMBER 2016 FROM SIGNET SELECT
There were ghosts in this place.
Most kept their distance, simply watching as I made my way through the broken remnants of their tombstones. One or two of the braver ones brushed my arms with ethereal fingers—caresses that reached past the layers of jacket and shirt to chill my skin. But these ghosts meant me no harm. It was simple curiosity, or maybe even an attempt to feel again the heat and life that had once been theirs. And while I knew from experience that ghosts could be dangerous, I was not here to disturb or challenge the dead.
I was here simply to follow—and maybe even kill—the living.
Because the person I was tracking had come from the ruined city of Carleen, which lay behind us. It had been the very last city destroyed in a war that may have lasted only five years but had altered the very fabric of our world forever. One hundred and three years had passed since the war’s end, but Carleen had never been rebuilt. No one lived there. No one dared to.
Given that the figure had come from that city, it could mean only one of two things. Either he or she was a human or shifter up to no good, or it was one of the two people responsible for kidnapping fourteen children from Central—the only major city center in this region. No one else had any reason to be out here, in the middle of nowhere, at night. Especially when the night was friend to no one but the vampires.
Of course, vampires weren’t the only evil ones to roam the night or the shadows these days. The bombs the shifters had unleashed to finally end their war against humans had resulted in the rifts—bands of energy and magic that roved the landscape and mauled the essence of anything and anyone unlucky enough to be caught in their path. But that was not the worst of it, because many rifts were also doorways into our world from either another time or another dimension. Maybe even from hell itself. And the creatures that came through them—collectively called the Others but nicknamed demons, wraiths, or death spirits, depending on their form—had all found a new and easy hunting ground in the shadows of our world.
These rifts were the reason Carleen had never been rebuilt. There were a dozen of them drifting through the city’s ruins, and there was no way of predicting their movements. Neither wind nor gravitational pull had any influence on them, and they could just as easily move against a gale force wind as they could leap upward to consume whatever might be taking flight that day—be it birds, aircraft, or even clouds. Once upon a time I’d believed that being caught in a rift meant death, but now I knew otherwise.
Because the people responsible for kidnapping those children were living proof that rifts were survivable—although by calling them “people” I was granting them a humanity they did not deserve. Anyone who could experiment on young children for any reason was nothing short of a monster. That they were doing so in an effort to discover a means by which vampires could become immune to light just made t
hem all the more abominable.
But it wasn’t as if they could actually claim humanity in the first place. I might be a déchet—a lab-designed humanoid created by humans before the war as a means to combat the superior strength and speed of the shifters—but every bit of my DNA was of this world.
The same could not be said about those responsible for the missing children.
I’d managed to rescue five of them, but I had no idea how they were or if they’d recovered from the horrific injuries inflicted on them. Those who could tell me were no longer my allies; they’d tried to kill me. Twice. They would not get a third chance.
I continued to slip quietly through the night, following the teasing drift of footsteps. Whoever—whatever—it was up ahead certainly wasn’t adept at walking quietly. Which suggested it wasn’t a vampire, or even a shifter. The former rarely traveled alone, despite the fact they had very little to fear at night, and the latter were apparently night-blind. Or so Nuri—who was one of my former allies, and a powerful human witch—had said.
I tended to believe her—at least on that point. Even before the war, both shifters and humans had lived in either cities or campsites that were lit by powerful light towers twenty-four/seven. Vampires had always been a problem—the war had just kept them well fed and had allowed them to increase in number. It made sense that after generations of living in never-ending daylight, the need for night sight would be filtered out of humanity’s DNA.
No, it was Nuri’s promise—that no harm would befall the ghosts living with me in the old military bunker if I helped them find the remaining children—that I wasn’t so sure about. While she might not hold any prejudices against déchet, the others in her group were all shifters and, from what they’d said, had all lost kin to déchet soldiers during the war.
While I wasn’t by design a soldier, I could fight and had certainly been responsible for more than a few shifter deaths. Only my kills hadn’t happened in open fields or battered forests, but rather in the bedroom. I was a lure—a déchet specifically created to infiltrate shifter camps and seduce those in charge. Once firmly established in their beds, it had been my duty to gain and pass on all information relating to the war and their plans. And then, when my task was completed, I killed.