Darklight 3: Darkworld

by Forrest, Bella

  “It gets better,” Laini assured me.

  She and Dorian were both strangely confident in a human’s ability to adapt. Maybe, after growing up here, they’d found the Mortal Plane to be just as strange at first as the Immortal Plane was to me. They assumed that since they’d adapted, so could I. I hoped they were right. I needed some good news after leaving the devastated city behind us.

  Sike’s form became clearer in front of me, Roxy walking beside him. For a moment, I thought Laini was right and my brain was starting to figure things out. Maybe I had gotten used to it. Looking ahead at the horizon between the sparse trees, however, I realized the amber soul-lights in the sky had merely grown brighter, helping me see farther. I could see now that Dorian was leading us along the edge of a forest, following a steady ridgeline farther into the mountains.

  I felt for the stone, Lanzon’s stone, that was in a leather bag on a cord hung around my neck. Those could be the mountains this stone had come from.

  A long way off, a multitude of tawny lights broke off from the main current, drifting lower and lower. They slowed as they descended, dimmer than their companions higher in the sky. It was beautiful.

  I craned my neck to see the sky full of those slow, drifting lights. They moved like stately, celestial jellyfish through water. After the brutal feelings earlier, I felt oddly peaceful.

  “Incredible,” Roxy breathed as she stared in awe.

  Bryce’s eyes glittered. The amber color reflected on his face, as it did on all our faces, basking us in an almost magical glow. They reminded me of the childhood storybook about fairies and fantastical adventures that my mom used to read Zach and me. I wanted to reach out and touch one of the lights, a tiny, childlike part of me hoping it would fill me with magic. The vampires appeared nonplussed by our reaction. Kane stared at us blankly, looking at the lights and then back at our stupefied faces, obviously wondering why it was such a big deal.

  Dorian glanced back to see what the fuss was about and met my gaze. A half-grin crossed his face. “It’s good that the sky is getting brighter.”

  “The lights are souls, but you may already know that,” Sike said.

  Bryce and Roxy nodded next to me. Apparently, we’d all been filled in by now.

  Sike’s tired face transformed as he smiled serenely. His features looked especially handsome in the yellow glow. “They’re both human and immortal, but most come from the Mortal Plane.”

  “How do they get here?” I asked. The lights filled me with awe. To think that something this beautiful could exist in the Immortal Plane. And here I stood, from the Mortal Plane, looking up at human souls coming from my homeland. This landscape was a collaborative work of beauty between our planes.

  “When people die, their souls are pulled into this plane. If the souls are full of light energy, they pass straight on, peacefully, to the afterlife. If they have too much dark energy, though, they have to be purified. It’s almost like they’re too heavy… they stick to the darkness in this plane and remain here until they’re purified,” he explained. “That can take a long time, since there are so many. Which is why a vampire needs to cleanse them before they get to that point, or else it’s up to the harvester. It’s not the best gig, but someone has to do it. Otherwise those souls would be stuck here for far longer than they already are.”

  “You’re all Kharon,” Bryce muttered in astonishment.

  Sike gave him a confused look.

  “Kharon is a character from one of the ancient mythologies of our plane,” Bryce explained, eyes still on the souls. “He was paid to ferry souls across the River Styx, which divided the land of the living and the land of the dead.”

  “Yeah, well,” Kane said, swiping at a trailing strand of moss that tickled his face, “we don’t get paid.”

  I brushed my finger over my lip in thought, finally hitting the life-changing realization that had been inevitable from the moment we arrived. Souls existed. There was an afterlife, both good and bad. Vampires were the ones who helped send souls onward to the positive afterlife. How much further did this story go? Although we’d agreed to keep our distance, I desperately wanted to speak to Dorian about this.

  I took a deep breath, feeling like my head was about to explode. Laini caught my eye and shrugged apologetically, sensing that I was struggling to take it all in.

  “It’s hard to believe,” she acknowledged. “But it’s true.”

  “Funny how you’re all in awe.” Kane chuckled. “I never considered that you humans would be so fascinated by something so ordinary.”

  “Ordinary?” I echoed, aghast. He couldn’t be serious. I pointed to the light closest to me, unable to contain myself. “That’s a soul.”

  He just blinked at me as if I’d pointed out a firefly.

  “So, this place is kind of a purgatory on the way to a good afterlife?” Roxy wondered aloud. “I thought vampires were bizarre enough as a concept, when the Bureau recruiter told me.” I sometimes forgot that not everyone had grown up with dinnertime tales of vampires over pasta. Our Bureau family had openly discussed vampires since Zach and I were young, before we could even consider going into the Bureau as soldiers. My mother would often report her strangest reactions from potential recruits when she delivered the news. If they couldn’t handle it, the Bureau made sure to keep them quiet with an aggressive legal agreement.

  Dorian cleared his throat. “We should get going.” Despite his serious tone, he failed to hide his amusement, obviously suppressing a grin. Why did the amber glow make all the vampires look so beautiful? Dorian’s lean face positively radiated in the ochre light. His glacial eyes took on a golden edge. Laini’s features, too, sharpened in all the right places under the lights.

  They were made for this place. Made for this land.

  We continued, and I dropped my mental line of inquiry on how flattering amber looked on the vampires. We had a mission. The sky lightened to an odd twilight. Our footsteps changed, or at least the sounds of them did. My steps sounded solid as we walked, but I could hear them echoing softly in the distance.

  “The souls remind me of fairies,” I confessed, hoping to stir the conversation in a lighter direction as we walked. The brightening sky brought a feeling of hope with it. Laini smiled.

  “Aye,” Bryce said. “I know what you mean. My ma used to tell me of the little folk in the fey realm, where sprites and brownies and will-o’-the-wisps live.”

  “Oh, we’ve got something like fairies in the Immortal Plane, if you’re interested,” Kane said wryly. “But I warn you, they eat eyeballs.”

  I grimaced at the image. Kane had officially killed my fairy comparison.

  “They’re not that bad,” Sike corrected. When he saw that he had our attention, he unraveled like a true storyteller, pleased to have an audience. “Most things here are just trying to survive. Animals and plants in the Immortal Plane follow the soul-light, like birds in your world follow the weather. The plants grow when it’s light out. When it’s not, the plants use their roots deep in the soil and stone, to feed off the energy of the darker souls that sink into the ground, or settle into rocks or inanimate objects—”

  “Be careful picking up a discarded shoe in the forest as a young vampire boy, is all I’ve got to say,” Kane muttered.

  I raised an eyebrow, but Sike continued. We would hear about Kane’s disastrous shoe story another day.

  “Sound is also super interesting in the Immortal Plane. It can tell you a lot. For example, it’s important to be silent during the darkening, like it was when we arrived, because when creatures follow the soul-lights to feed off blooming plants, it leaves empty dark areas,” Sike explained, his face animated as he showed off his knowledge. “The sound echoes through dark areas, since there isn’t much to buffer the sound. So, words and movements can be heard more easily and travel much farther in the dark.”

  Dorian threw a teasing look at the smaller vampire. “That’s why we only let Sike talk this much when it’s light.”
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br />   Roxy and Bryce laughed, but I stayed quiet. Sike bringing up the sounds made me think. First, the surrounding sounds disturbed the heck out of me. They were the opposite of comforting. Second, they sounded strange, even in the increasing light.

  Growls and grunts echoed from the undergrowth as we walked. A shrill bird sang a stilted song. I swore someone cackled in the distance, but nobody looked left when I did. The worst was the breeze. It hissed when it rustled through the tree branches, like hundreds of angry serpents slithering through the air. Trees shouldn’t sound like that. I shivered.

  The Immortal Plane was always going to be weird, Lyra. Cool it.

  The hissing wind brushed past my face, carrying a strong scent of cedar that hid something dank and musky. I once went mushroom hunting with my father as a child. He warned me to stay away from areas that smelled of pack animals. This smelled the same but more metallic. Unfortunately, I could taste it in my mouth like acidic blood.

  The sky continued to brighten, but a haze hung before my eyes. I couldn’t see perfectly. The trees, different from the mossy ones, leaned in strange directions. The world wobbled slightly in my peripheral vision when I turned to look elsewhere.

  “These trees are weird,” I muttered, mostly to Laini. The bark was slate gray. Disheveled fuzzy needles covered their spindly branches like thick, coarse fur. When the breeze pushed against the branches, they hissed again. I strained. No, not quite a hiss. There was something underneath it. Something like a sigh, or a whisper. My throat tightened as an unsettled sensation passed through me. It sounded like people talking about uncomfortable subjects from a long way off.

  “I kinda want to pet them,” Roxy said, staring at the trees with interest. I could see what she meant. The fuzzy needles looked appealing, in their own way.

  Kane shot her a look. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Tiny creatures scampered across the forest floor, appearing like bits of soot and cinder running before my feet. If I tried to focus on them, they became blurrier and ran off. Vines grew up from the ground as I walked. Occasionally, I felt a tug on my boot laces. Were the plants mocking me?

  “Where are we going?” Bryce asked, a tremor of unease in his voice. The forest probably put him off just as much as it did me.

  Dorian slowed his pace and hung back closer to us. “Most Immortal cities are roughly west and north from these mountains,” he explained. “We’ll eventually head to Itzarriol, the capital. It’s where the Immortals control their politics across the entire plane. Where they declared war against vampires.”

  I raised a brow. Eventually? What was first? And were we just going to waltz into Itzarriol?

  “If there’s a conspiracy to push things through the tear and use the Bureau to destroy vampires in the Mortal Plane, that’s where we’ll find evidence,” Dorian assured us. “On the way, I’d like us to carefully make a stop around Lake Siron and see if we can find any evidence of vampires, even if it’s just so we can tell them how to get to Scotland. We should find out if there are any truths to the rumors and warn them that the Immortals have heard of them.”

  “Hopefully without leading the hunters to their door,” Arlonne muttered.

  Dorian nodded acknowledgement. “We can’t fly on the redbills yet, since the Immortals will be scouting the area near the tear. But the redbills are following us until we find a proper place to mount up again. Then we can move faster. We need to set up surveillance, maybe plan a few trips into the city to gather information. The less time we spend out here in the open, the better. If we manage to find the other vampires, they might even be able to help. They could be great allies to help with the infiltration. Maybe they’re already infiltrating the Itzarriol.”

  Bryce grinned. “A ballsy government coup in two dimensions? Why, Dorian, you’re making my day.”

  I snorted, pleased to see my old captain excited.

  “Not so fast,” Kane said with a fierce scowl. “You said that you’re going to tell them about Scotland. Why bother with that place if they already have a stronghold themselves? They’ve managed to evade capture from the Immortals so far. Maybe we should join them here.”

  Would it be a stronghold, though? I got the impression that the vampires had managed to evade capture, but how much longer could that last?

  “It’s too early to consider that,” Dorian fired back. “Besides, it’s too much work to move our group from Scotland back through the tear. Our people would starve before they made it back here.”

  Not to mention Kane’s group had just left the Immortal Plane with their tails tucked a few weeks ago. Would they want to return so soon?

  “You’ve got ulterior motives,” Kane complained sourly.

  Dorian lifted his eyebrow. “Maybe, but my motivations also benefit our people. I’m confident that this group could help us.”

  Arlonne cleared her throat, setting her hand on her hip. “If such a place even exists.”

  She had a good point. We had only heard rumors about these vampire survivors up to this point.

  Dorian opened his mouth to reply, but his face froze suddenly with alarm. Something echoed in the distance, a ringing cry. It sent a jolt of startled electricity straight down my spine. Arlonne hissed beneath her breath as she looked up to the sky.

  “Dark energy is approaching fast,” Dorian said for the benefit of the humans. His eyes darted to the forest. “Everyone get to cover! Now.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  We scrambled to hide in the forest. There were plenty of trees but hardly any underbrush to duck behind. My hopes sank as we rushed through the ominous woods. The trees whispered softly as I ran past them. I tried to keep up with Laini as best as I could. Her hand wrapped around mine tightly. But the forest wouldn’t work. The lack of undergrowth meant the Immortal rulers would see us immediately.

  “Past the trees,” Dorian commanded. “We’ll find something.”

  I forced my eyes to focus even as a wave of lightheadedness came over me. Laini let my hand go as our group managed to catch up with one another in the trees. Good thing, because she might have dislocated my shoulder if that’s what it took to escape the Immortal rulers fast enough. I could see an opening in the trees toward our left, but only more of the towering trees before us. Our choices were left, forward into the forest, or back the way we came.

  Bryce muttered something foul and chose left. He shouted, “Here! Over here!”

  Laini weaved through the thicket of trees to a streambank, and I followed close behind. Bryce jerked his head toward the stream. “What are you waiting for? An invitation?”

  Kane leapt across the stream, splattering the mud on the other side. Dorian had already jumped, one of his legs narrowly missing the murky violet water. He pointed at Roxy and me.

  “Don’t touch the water.”

  I wasn’t planning on it. The stream stank of burning tires. The water looked like dark souls that had been left to liquefy and run together. Murky shadows danced in the rushing liquid. I stepped carefully alongside the running water, moving as fast as possible behind Laini and Sike. They came to a point where it would be feasible for the humans to jump to the other side of the bank. They leapt over the water easily. I followed suit. A splash of water flew up and singed my boots, leaving a tiny burn. I wrinkled my nose. Okay, definitely not touching the water.

  Behind us, the sound of flapping wings came closer and closer.

  Dorian led the group, keeping close enough that my chest had a tiny dull buzz. Well, I couldn’t tell if the burn was from our proximity or my heart working from the sprinting. Roxy and I nearly collided as we rushed up the other side of the bank. Kane waved us toward what looked like a mass of rotting plants.

  We came to the small underside of a cliff. Through amber-tinged dirt, the hardy roots of vines pushed through the earth and dangled to create a bizarre curtain. The moss-covered roots reached all the way to the ground. It would be perfect to hide under. The plant tendrils twitched as we ducked under them. Kane sw
ept them aside using his cloak and herded the humans into the center, keeping us away from the roots and the hanging greenery that covered our weak hiding place. The moss had thorns, now that I studied it up close, desperate to peek between the few cracks to see what was happening outside.

  This place would work for now, but if our pursuer crossed the stream, they would easily be able to spot us.

  “Quiet,” Dorian muttered.

  The vines trembled softly as wings flapped nearby. I crouched along with the others, thankful for the natural cover of the hanging moss, even though it stank of deteriorating plant matter. I held a hand over my nose.

  Something terrible hissed and landed nearby with a weighty thump above us on the cliff. The force shook a few loose bits of gravel from the underside. One pebble dropped onto the toe of my boot. Kane scowled when a wad of dirt fell onto his head. Above us, the creature stomped its legs, and something—or someone—slid off. I heard two distinctive points hit the ground. Heavy boots? It sounded like metal against earth. My mind dreamed up images of a knight in shining armor stamping across the dreary grass and dirt. I tried not to breathe, afraid that it might bring attention to us. I glanced at Roxy beside me, her hand also clamped over her face. Dorian nudged Laini and Arlonne. They exchanged silent looks. Kane would have been in on it, but the clump of dirt on his head prevented that. He couldn’t move without it falling and drawing attention.

  Arlonne jerked a thumb to herself and used her fingers to act out her running. She wanted to lure whoever followed us away if we got caught. It was a definite possibility, with the poor coverage of our hiding place. Dorian nodded. If it came down to it, Arlonne would lead a distraction and the rest of them would attack from behind.

  The steps faded slightly, but a low voice rang out.

  “What can I do for you?” the speaker asked. The voice sounded a touch feminine, but the tone brimmed with brasslike growls. It sounded like someone had taken a regular human voice and dragged it over rocks while lowering the bass.