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“Good.”
And with that, I left.
The day was still too new for either the drawbridge to be down or the pods at the station to be powering up, but I nevertheless made my way swiftly across both City Road and the rail platforms, and into the park beyond. This place had always been a green barrier between the city and Carleen, but these days it was a silent place, devoid of any life. The vampires—who lived in what remained of the underground sewage and utilities systems—guaranteed that.
It took an hour to reach Carleen’s southern border. I stopped on the edge of the clearing that separated the park from the broken city ahead. Though Carleen was now little more than a vine-covered mass of rusting metal and disintegrating concrete, it had once been home to over twenty thousand people, most of them families. Unfortunately, it was still home to many of those people, as the evacuation order had been issued far too late. Even then, many of the people who’d died here had done so in the one place they thought they'd be safe—the massive bomb shelters under the city's main plaza.
The only scents riding the strengthening breeze were that of decay and neglect, and I could see no movement beyond the wall other than the occasional bit of bright plastic being chased along by the wind. I couldn't even feel the presence of the ghosts, but that wasn't surprising given they'd recently relocated to the other side of the city. They hadn't done so willingly—they'd been forced into it by the false rift that was now, in their words, staining their bones with its corruption.
I hesitated a bit longer, unsure as to why, then pushed on. After leaping onto a low section of wall, I stopped again, taking in the ruptured remnants of buildings and—farther to my left—the remains of what once had been a main road through the city. It was littered with building rubble, weeds, and trees that had been twisted into odd shapes thanks to the eddying magic of the rifts. Those eddying bits of plastic added spots of bright color to many darker corners, but this place remained eerily shadowed. And while a pall of darkness had hung over this city ever since its destruction, it now felt deeper.
Darker.
The false rifts—and the magic Dream used to create them—was corrupting not only the bones of those who had died here, but the entire city.
I jumped down from the wall and made my way through the luminous splashes of alien moss and the broken remnants of life and buildings until I reached the main road that sloped up to the main plaza. I was barely halfway up it when the faint but foul caress of alien energy touched my skin. I stopped abruptly, knowing immediately what it was but unable to believe Dream's shield had grown to such an extent that it now covered half the hill. I reached out with one hand, just to be sure, and a jagged whip of light instantly appeared, snapping toward me with a speed and strength that was frightening. I leaped back, but even so, the very tip of it hit my arm and raised a welt not unlike that of a burn.
I cursed and moved off the road, picking my way through the both the rubble and the moss that was beginning to take over the entire area. While the moss had been present in Carleen for as long as the rifts, ever since Dream had created the false rift that now dominated much of this hill, its spread rate had all but doubled. Maybe it was feeding off the energy coming from her rift—an energy that felt almost as alien as the moss itself.
But the bigger question was, why would Dream want a rift so large? It was now more than double the size of the ones they'd used in Winter Halo to transport trucks and was, in fact, as big as some of the old battle cruisers I'd seen in the war. I had no idea if such machines still existed, but even if they did, surely Dream could not acquire one without alarms being raised.
Unless, of course, the size of the rift had nothing to do with transporting machines across this world, but rather transporting them to this world.
Cold dread stepped through my body and I shivered. Perhaps Dream’s plans had evolved since the deaths of her partners. Perhaps she and the wraiths were now planning an all-out war, and this hideous rift was their starting point.
I pressed the ear-mic and said, “Jonas, can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he immediately said. “Is there a problem?”
“Yes and no. You know that rift Nuri investigated—the one hovering over the bones of Carleen's dead?”
“Yes.”
“The shield protecting it has grown massively, and it also rather weirdly seems to be feeding the alien moss. Nuri needs to find a way to either stop it from growing any further or destroy it.”
That's presuming she could do either, of course. It was always possible that this rift had grown so strong it had not only taken on a life of its own but was now beyond any chance of destruction.
“I'll pass the info on, but she won't be able to do anything immediately.”
“Okay,” I said, and signed off again.
I was nearly back at the old curtain wall before I found a way around the rift's girth. I picked my way through the thin strip of land between the two, trying to avoid both the acidy moss and the whips of energy trying to grab me. My arm still burned even though the first whip had barely touched me, and the skin remained red and puckered. Given the wound was neither very serious nor deep, the healing process should have at least kicked in by now and eased the pain.
Unless, of course, a wound caused by such unnatural magic was beyond even my rift-enhanced healing capability.
It was ten minutes before the foul caress of the rift’s energy began to fade, and by that time I was on the other side of the plaza. The desolation here was almost complete—beyond the remnants of the road, there was just dust, weeds, and the occasional splash of the luminescent moss. I had no sense of the ghosts, though they should have been here somewhere. Had Dream gotten rid of them? As an earth witch, she had that power.
Concrete and metal dust puffed up with every step until I was surrounded by a cloud of fine gray soot that not only announced my presence, but made breathing difficult. If Branna was here, he would see me coming.
If being the operative word. I still had no sense of him, but then, he was soldier trained and I was not. It was totally possible I'd never see him—not until it was too late.
Once again the desire to call to my ghosts stirred, and once again I resisted. I just didn't like the feel of this place—or the fact that the Carleen ghosts seemed to have disappeared. If something here had so frightened them that they hadn't even appeared to remonstrate my lack of progress in freeing their bones from the rift's taint, I simply couldn't risk bringing either Cat or Bear here.
As I neared the bottom of the hill, foul energy began to lash my skin, though it had none of the power of the rift at the top. Up ahead, to the right of the road, was an odd, circular patch of darkness in an area that was nothing but sunshine and dust. That darkness wasn't the rift itself, but rather the wall of gelatinous shadows that protected it.
I paused, waited until my accompanying cloud had be
en swept away by the wind, and then drew in a deep breath. There was nothing to suggest I wasn’t alone in this place. And yet... the more I stared at the rift, the more I was sure I was walking straight into the arms of a trap.
