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Their excitement kissed the air as they spun off after Jonas. I took another of those deep breaths that did little to calm the fear deep inside, then reached once more for the shifting magic. I had a bad feeling I’d need all the strength I could get; holding a form that wasn’t mine was little more than a waste. At least until I knew what waited for me beyond the darkness of this rift.
The magic rose like a storm. I held my own image steady in my mind as my skin rippled, bones restructured, hair shortened and changed color. It still hurt, still burned. It always did, no matter how often I’d done it in the past. I gritted my teeth against the scream and did my best to ignore the sweat pouring down my altering flesh.
Then, finally, when the magic faded and I was once more as I was made, I stepped into the darkness. It felt ten times worse than it had only moments before. It was almost as if the magic sensed that this time, I intended to go all the way through it. It seemed heavier, more gelatinous; its thick strands resisted every step forward before they snapped, their fractured ends tearing at my flesh as they fell away. I have no idea how long it actually took to get through the barrier, but it seemed like forever. Even when I finally came to the base of the crater and broke free from the darkness, my sense of time and daylight was still scrambled. Whatever the magic was, it was playing merry havoc with that instinctive part of me.
For several minutes I did nothing more than stand there, sucking in air and waiting for the weakness in my limbs to retreat. The dark energy behind me crawled across my spine, but it was the energy in front of me that was sharper, more dangerous.
There was, as I’d suspected, another false rift here, and it was bigger than the one I’d gone through the previous day. It spun slowly on its axis, shimmering in the shadows, its surface regularly crisscrossed with jagged spears of lightning. The energy of them slashed the air and littered my skin with angry-looking welts. The cost of traveling through this rift was going to be far higher than yesterday’s, but if I wanted answers, then I had to go in.
I drew my gun, flicked off the safety, and strode forward. The jagged lightning peeled away from the surface of the slowly rotating sphere and struck at me, drawing blood as it wrapped itself around my arms and my legs, first capturing me and then dragging me toward the sphere. Dust spun around me, thick and foul and filled with bone and jagged metal pieces—the remnants of the people and the buildings that had once stood here, no doubt. As the sphere encased me, its energy burned around me, touching every part of me before it slowly, carefully, tore me apart, atom by atom. It was agony itself, and if I could have screamed, I would have. There was no sense of movement this time, just blackness in which there was no light, no sound, no sense of life. Just pain and the feeling that my particles were being stretched to the breaking point. Then, piece by piece, the energy put me back together, the lightning holding me died, and I was ejected into darkness.
I stumbled for several steps, then, as my legs gave way, fell full-length onto a surface that was hard, grit
ty, and cold. And that’s where I stayed, panting, groaning, my body on fire and the scent of blood thick in the icy air. I don’t know how long I remained there, desperately trying to ease the inferno of pain sweeping through me, before I heard it.
A whisper of sound.
A footstep.
My breath caught in my throat and my fingers clenched around my gun. The thick darkness was again still, silent. But it was not without scent, and that scent was old and rank.
And filled with vampires.
Chapter 8
If the richness and depth of that scent was anything to go by, there weren’t just a few vampires here, but a whole lot—maybe even a nest full. Most weren’t close, but one, at least, must have caught the smell of my blood and had come to investigate. He was off to my left, in the deeper shadows near the filth-covered walls.
So why wasn’t he attacking? If he’d been close enough to smell my blood, then he was close enough to have caught the beat of my heart and sense my humanity. Restraint was not something I’d ever associated with vampires before, and it filled me with foreboding.
But it also gave me a fighting chance of survival. Not that I intended to fight. If there were as many vampires here as the scent stinging the air suggested, then that would be nothing short of stupidity. I drew the darkness deep into my lungs and let it filter through every fiber, until it felt as if my whole body was vibrating with the weight and power of it. The vampire within me rose swiftly to the surface, embracing that darkness, becoming one with it, until it stained my whole being and took over. It ripped away flesh, muscle, and bone, until I was nothing more than a cluster of matter. Even my weapons and clothes became part of the night and the darkness. In this form, at least, I’d be harder to pin down and nigh on impossible to feed on—or so my makers had said. It was a theory I’d never actually tested.
And, as I’d said to Jonas, there were vampires who fed on energy. I just had to hope there were none of those in this place.
I pushed away from the hard, grimy floor and moved forward. Though I had good night sight in my normal form, as matter the night was as bright as day, though it was a day without color. Everything was black and white, and inverse to what it normally would have been.
The room the false rift had spat me into was long and thin, reminding me somewhat of a corridor. I had no idea what lay beyond the rift itself, because it gleamed with a fire that was almost blinding. At the opposite end of the room lay the bent and broken remains of a metal door. Between it and me waited the vampire. In the inverse light, he was little more than a cluster of softly gleaming particles. He didn’t move, didn’t react, though I had no doubt he was as aware of my presence as I was of his.
It was a weird situation—and one that could change for the worse at any moment. For whatever reason, this vampire was restraining his instinctive urge to attack, and I had to make use of it.
I moved forward purposely, as if I had every right to be here. Anything else could be my downfall.
The vampire stirred. Mistress? His voice was scratchy, guttural, and something I sensed through my particles rather than actually heard—telepathy rather than spoken words. But the mere fact I was hearing him at all had shock rebounding through me. Never once had my makers—or anyone else, for that matter—ever suggested that vamps were capable of any kind of legible, intelligent speech. You wish accompaniment?
Why would he call me “mistress”? Who was he mistaking me for? Surely not another vampire? He’d been in this room when I’d shifted from flesh to shadow, and would be aware that I wasn’t a true vampire.
Then I remembered the dark force I’d sensed when I’d rescued Penny, and the feeling that the actions of the vampires were being controlled. This “mistress,” whoever she was, might be the force I’d sensed.
But the Carleen ghosts had said wraiths used these rifts, not vampires, and that suggested that the two might be working together. It was a possibility that had chills racing through me. If it was true, Central was in deeper trouble than we’d initially thought. Although, how in hell had the wraiths learned common tongue—a language that these days was used in all but a few provincial outposts? I had no doubt wraiths were intelligent, but why would they bother learning our language when we were nothing but prey to them?
And how were they even speaking when they had no mouths to form words?
But then, everyone had believed vampires incapable of speech, too, and that was very obviously wrong.
Maybe that was what they’d wanted the children for. Maybe they were somehow siphoning language skills from them. But if that was the case, why choose children? Why not adults?
The vampire’s matter stirred, and I realized he was waiting for an answer. No. I kept my mental tones low and scratchy, and kept mental fingers crossed it was a close enough imitation of whomever he was mistaking me for. I wish aloneness.
So be it. He melted away into the whiteness.
