The Humvees haul us across the Siberian countryside, the roads almost impassable in some places as a result of the recent blizzard. We barrel through snowdrifts eight feet high, roll right over fallen trees left lying on the road, and swerve around the odd abandoned car, whose interiors give no clues as to whether their drivers survived the snow or not. After more than an hour of slow progress, we close in on the GPS coordinates, and all of us begin looking for signs of human habitation.
Barnett finds the first sign. “That space in the trees fifty feet up ahead. Looks like an access road.”
Lucian signals our driver, and the man pulls over to the shoulder, the second Humvee coming to a stop behind us. Save the drivers, everyone climbs out of the vehicles, and as a group, we cautiously approach the gap in the trees. Looking at the gap from straight on, you can see that it was intentionally made, an unnatural neatness to the distances between the trees.
“This must be the place,” Lucian says, covering a shiver with a shrug. Vampires usually aren’t bothered as much by the elements as humans, but Lucian’s body is closer to human right now than he cares to admit. “You guys sense any trap wards along the path?”
“I don’t sense anything at all,” says Vidal, adjusting his glasses. He doesn’t need the glasses to see. They’re charmed with a few subtle spells that sharpen his eyesight far beyond human limits. “No animal movement. No human movement. No active magic signatures. Not even a wisp of residual energy.”
Everyone else murmurs in agreement.
There’s nothing waiting for us along the access road.
There’s absolutely no security at a facility doing secret magic research.
Esther frowns. “Do you think they packed up and left?”
“That would explain the lack of people and magic,” says Garland, chewing loudly on a wad of bubble gum, “but what happened to the animals? Why are the woods so dead?”
Barnett takes a few steps toward the tree line and blows a large white breath toward the start of the access road. Strangely, her breath seems to stop halfway there, the cloud peeling away in different directions, as if it’s come into contact with a solid wall.
“The hell is that?” Garland says. “Some kind of shield?”
“Not anymore,” Barnett answers. “It’s a null space.”
The group falls quiet.
Embarrassed by my ignorance, I ask, “What’s a null space?”
“It’s what you get when you suck all the energy out of a place. The magic energy. The environmental energy. The life force. All of it.” Vidal tugs his scarf over his nose as a brisk wind blows past. “It’s a literal dead space, devoid of all life.”
Barnett adds, “When you try to enter a null space, you encounter a slight resistance around its border, created by the spiritual contrast between a space full of energy and a space that has none.”
“But you can enter a null space, right?” I say. “It won’t hurt you?”
Barnett rolls her shoulders, uncomfortable. “As long as the null event, whatever created the null space, is over, then it’s safe to pass the boundary.”
I shove my hands into my pockets so no one will see them trembling. “What happens if you’re inside the boundary during the event?”
Barnett peers over her shoulder, a flicker of sympathy overcoming her usual ire for me. “Do I really need to answer that?”
I avert my eyes. “No, I guess you don’t.”
Garland blows a bubble with her gum until it pops. “There are only two types of null events though—that we know of. Either you summon an Eververse creature that has the power to absorb vast amounts of energy in very little time, or you create a portal to an Eververse realm whose properties allow the realm itself to siphon energy from our side of the veil.”
“A summoned creature wouldn’t stay in one place for too long,” Lucian says, “and a portal can’t sustain itself indefinitely. So whatever happened in those woods is likely long over. If it did in fact happen three weeks ago.”
Vidal draws his eyebrows together. “Null spaces don’t usually last three weeks. The Earth’s environmental energy typically reclaims the space in less than two.”
“Unless the null event was so violent that it disturbed the underlying physical structure of our universe,” Garland counters. She spits her gum wad into the snow. “Doesn’t matter though. The space won’t hurt us regardless of how it came to be. It’ll just give us the heebie-jeebies, like we’re in a horror movie.”
“So we go in?” I ask.
Lucian nods. “Yeah, we go in. Even if they’ve abandoned the facility, they might’ve left clues behind. And we need all the intel we can get on the Children of Enoch.”
No one can argue with that, so we press on.
Passing through the border of the null space feels like diving into a pool of static. Electricity prickles at my skin, making my hair stand on end, and the ground beneath my feet seems to shift slightly to the right. It’s like the land inside the space is out of alignment with the rest of the world, like the ground is moving slower than the spinning of the Earth, like time is set on the slightest of delays. My senses record information as if all the stimuli are being strained through a filter, the sights dimmed, the sounds depressed.
This feels like a place I’m not supposed to be.
This feels like a place that isn’t supposed to be.
Our walk down the access road takes almost thirty minutes, the facility buried miles away from the road that cuts through the land. We walk in two columns of three so each person has a “buddy” to help them if anyone gets attacked. I’m paired with Lucian in the middle of the pack, the man who is the weakest among us and the man who holds the most powerful weapon. Barnett and Esther take the lead, even though they don’t like each other, because they’re the two strongest people in the fields that matter here—tracking and fighting. Vidal and Garland bring up the rear, both of them with one hand in a pocket, clutching whatever magic weapons they favor.
The wariness turns out to be pointless. No one attacks us. Because no one is here.
At the end of the access road is a guard post with a boom gate, but the post is unmanned and the gate’s on the ground, looking like someone ran over it with a heavy vehicle. We pass the guard post and continue around the last bend in the access road, at which point the project facility finally comes into view. A squat rectangular building that sprawls across four acres, its design is clearly Soviet in nature. Perhaps an old military building repurposed by DSI Moscow.
From the front, the building looks undisturbed. All the windows and doors are intact. The walls have no cracks. Nothing is on fire, and nothing appears to have been on fire recently.
But Barnett quickly sniffs out something that isn’t quite right. She steps off the access road and jogs around the side of the building. The rest of us follow at a cautious pace, as the tinted windows cut into the long wall beside us produce the sensation of being watched. I have a feeling, however, a terrible feeling, that the only things watching us from inside the facility are the ghosts of those who didn’t make it out.
Barnett turns the corner of the building and stops cold.
The rest of us catch up to her a moment later, and immediately see what shocked her.
The entire back half of the building is gone. Not blown up. Not burned by fire. Just gone. It looks like someone took a massive knife and carved half the building out of the earth.
“How in the hell?” Barnett murmurs. “What kind of being did this?”
“The godlike kind,” Esther absently replies.
Garland, chuckling nervously, says, “Well, at least we don’t have to break down the doors to get in.”
Lucian scrutinizes the exposed interior of the building. “Looks like the half still here is mostly residential space and administrative offices. I’m guessing the half that got disappeared was the half where they were doing the ‘research,’ labs and what not.”
“We may still glean information from this
part of the building,” says Vidal. “The structure looks relatively stable. I think we’ll be able to sweep the place without the ceiling falling on our heads.”
“Then let’s get to it.” Lucian kicks a piece of loose concrete across the space where half the building should be. “This place has already been exposed to the elements for three weeks. The longer we stand here and gawk, the more damage the interior will incur. Any papers in the admin section may have already been destroyed by moisture.”
“Right,” Barnett says. “I say we split into our ‘buddy’ pairs and have each pair search a third of the…half-building.”
We do exactly that. Garland and Vidal take the admin area and start combing the cubicles and offices for intact intel. Barnett and Esther take the basement level accessible only by a set of exposed stairs leading into darkness. And Lucian and I take the residential area, two adjoining hallways lined with small rooms, akin to a college dormitory, with a set of communal bathrooms in the middle of each hall.
Most of the doors are unlocked, and most of the rooms are empty. The beds are bare of sheets. The desks are bare of computers. The wardrobes are bare of clothes. And so on.
But every now and again, Lucian and I come across a room that shows signs of recent habitation. Articles of clothing strewn across the floor, as if someone packed in a hurry and couldn’t grab everything in time. A bed with rumbled sheets, the comforter hanging far off the edge, like someone was woken from sleep in the middle of the night.
Finally, at the far end of one hall, Lucian and I encounter a room full of things that I remember. Things that belong to Cooper Lee.
A shirt he used to wear to work, lying on the end of the bed. A pair of sneakers he used for exercise, caked with dirt, peeking out from beneath the bedframe. A winter coat he once wore while emptying a gun into the body of an Egyptian death god. And lastly, some crumpled papers, left inside a small trashcan beside the desk.
I go for the papers first, my heart in my throat. But I find they’re just to-do lists, most of the items related to Cooper’s job duties, things like “look up this topic” and “revise that report.” Frustrated, I throw the papers onto the floor and proceed to work my way through the tiny room, practically tearing it to pieces.
I rip off the bed sheets and flip up the mattress, cut holes between the springs, but find nothing. I tip over the wardrobe to see if anything is hidden behind it, but find nothing. I pull out all the desk drawers and the keyboard shelf, but find nothing. I even hop on top of the desk and punch through some of the ceiling tiles, but find nothing.
I drop off the desk and stomp my boots on the floor. “Where is he? Where the fuck is he?”
Lucian, who’s been loitering in the doorway this whole time, watching silently as I unravel at the seams, replies, “We’ll find him, Kinsey.”
“Him,” I say, voice cracking, “or his body?”
Lucian gives me a wan smile. “Since there aren’t scores of corpses lying around, I think you have a reason to be cautiously optimistic.”
I lean against the desk, trying to ease the tension in my body that is far too close to the breaking point. “I can’t stand not knowing. I can’t.”
“You’ve weathered worse,” he says. “You’ll weather this.”
A bitter laugh rumbles through my throat. “You giving me real compliments now?”
“I’ve been giving you real compliments all along. You’ve just been too stubborn to notice.” He raps on the doorframe. “Now pull yourself out of your funk and finish up with this room. We’ve still got a few more to search before we call this a bust.” He eyes the forgotten clothing and shoes. “You should bring your boyfriend’s stuff along. We might be able to pull enough DNA from something to try a couple tracking spells.”
I take a second to force my mask of composure back into place before I say, “Good idea. I’ll store it all in the duffle.”
I slip the bag off my shoulder and unzip it, revealing the golden hilt of Dawn Slayer. The sword hasn’t demonstrated any of its supposed sentient aspects since it bound itself to me yesterday morning, but every time I look at it now, I feel like it’s looking back. Suppressing a shiver, I gather Cooper’s shirt and coat, fold them neatly, and place them in the bag, on top of the sword, so it can’t watch me with its nonexistent eyes.
Then I crouch and grab the shoes under the bed. They’re extremely dirty, so I smack each one against the floor a couple times to knock off the chunks of dried mud on the soles, not wanting it to stain Cooper’s clothing. As I’m beating the mud off the right shoe, however, I spot something odd. The insole in the shoe is out of alignment, one edge riding up the side.
Curious, I pinch the insole between my fingers and tug. It pops free.
Beneath the insole is a folded piece of paper.
“Lucian, I’ve got something here.” I grab the paper and toss the shoe aside. “I think it’s a note Cooper left behind.”
Lucian shuffles up behind me. “It’s not coded, is it?”
“I hope not.” My shaking fingers struggle to part the crinkled edges of the paper, but once they do, I unfold it so fast I nearly tear the paper in half. Then I hold it up to capture the dim light filtering in through the missing walls and ceiling of the building.
The rays of the sun cast through the sky of a dreary Russian winter highlight a message that ties my stomach into a cold, hard knot. Partly out of fear. Partly out of fury. And partly out of fervor.
There are five letters on the page, and all of them are written in blood. Combined, those five browning letters make up a single magnificent word:
PARIS
The Story Continues
IN STORM MASTER!
Coming soon!
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Books by Clara Coulson
CITY OF CROWS
Soul Breaker
Shade Chaser
Wraith Hunter
Doom Sayer
Day Killer
Spell Caster
Dawn Slayer
Novellas
Dream Snatcher
THE FROST ARCANA
What Fate Portends
What Man Defies
What Gods Incite
What Dawn Demands
What Dusk Divides
What Night Conceals
About Clara Coulson
Clara Coulson was born and raised in backwoods Virginia, USA. Currently in her mid-twenties, Clara holds a degree in English and Finance from the College of William & Mary and recently retired from the hustle and bustle of Washington, DC to return to the homeland and pick up the quiet writing life.
Clara spends most of her time (when she's not writing) dreaming up new story ideas, studying Japanese, and slowly reading through the several-hundred-book backlog in her budding home library. If she's not occupied with any of those things, then you can probably find her playing with her two cats or lurking in the shadows of various social media websites.
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