Rhome gazed at Dorian again. Bravi’s face softened from angry to something more forlorn. Kreya turned from the group, her auburn hair falling down her back.
“You’d better be right,” she said. “It’s not like you gave us much of a choice.”
Rhome squeezed Dorian’s shoulder once more before he followed Kreya to a dark corner of the cavern.
“I still don’t like this,” Bravi said, her green eyes sharp. She glanced up at Sike, then stalked after Rhome and Kreya.
Sike stood beside Dorian for a moment, but they said nothing to each other.
Even though the immediate danger seemed to have passed, adrenaline still coursed through me. My body was ready to fight my way out of there. Dorian had said I wasn’t a hostage, but I felt like one.
Now that the others weren’t scrutinizing his plan, his face creased with pain, despite the confidence of his words from moments ago. I couldn’t fully trust him, but those feelings weren’t put on for my benefit. I could see that they were real.
He nodded at Sike and then turned to me. “Let’s go.”
He led me toward the cavern’s doorway. That’s when Kane finally spoke up.
“First you drag us to the middle of a desert to waste away. Now you’re handing us over to the humans?” he growled. As he spoke, the older female vampire with the injured leg limped toward us.
“We’ll die faster if we do nothing,” Dorian said curtly.
The older woman spoke for the first time. “Whose side are you on?”
“This isn’t about sides anymore,” Dorian said. Once again, he stood between them and me, but that offered little comfort. I’d seen how fast vampires moved.
“It’s the humans’ fault any of this happened in the first place,” the woman spat. Her lips seemed permanently curled downward. “Our kind shouldn’t have to placate such vicious fools.” When she reached that final word, her eyes fixated on me. I didn’t react, not wanting to provoke them further.
“Kane, Halla, have you two heard nothing that I’ve said?” Dorian asked.
Kane snorted contemptuously. “Yes, we all know what a loving, caring pacifist you are. Even when it comes to those who have no problem destroying every other living thing on their own planet and beyond.”
“They have to pay for what they’ve done.” Halla now spoke directly to me. “We can’t grovel at their feet. They’ve sown—it’s time to reap.”
My fight-or-flight response told me to book it out the passageway.
“You haven’t been listening to me, either,” Kane said. “I’ve said a hundred times that we should return to the Immortal Plane and rally our clans there. There is safety in numbers.”
“You think that we’re in danger here?” At that, for the first time, Dorian seemed to lose his temper. His shoulders rose like a hissing jaguar. “You want us to return to the place where we were attacked and torn apart?”
“The Immortals will have our necks faster than the humans, Kane,” Rhome said tersely, his deep voice echoing as it drifted over to us. He must have been listening from where he sat with Kreya and their two children.
“You know that,” Dorian said to Kane, then looked at Halla. “Your mother knows it, too.”
So, hatred of humans runs in the family. Great. As much as I wanted to believe their animosity was unfounded, I felt a pang of guilt in my chest. If the tear were real, and humans had caused it…
We were defending ourselves, I reminded myself. From brutal murders.
“It’s shameful, what you’re doing.” Halla curled her lips into an even deeper scowl. “Vampires groveling at the feet of humans, begging for asylum. It’s a disgrace that our kind should even consider stooping so low.”
Dorian matched her tone. “Your pride blinds you.”
“You’re one to talk!” Kane snapped.
Dorian dropped his gaze and exhaled sharply. “This is why I didn’t ask. We have to do something, but all of this bickering amongst ourselves is cementing our fate.”
Kane and Halla fell silent, but their glares did not break.
Dorian raised his palms. “This is the best we’ve got right now. It’s better than throwing our lives away by returning to the Immortal Plane. At least this way, we have a chance.”
“Just let him go, Kane,” Kreya said. “The damage is already done.”
Kane snorted again, shook his head, and turned to his mother. “They’ve all lost their minds,” he said, loudly enough that the entire cavern echoed with it.
Rhome and Kreya stared at the ground in the corner. Sike aimlessly drew lines in the sand with a rock.
After one more smoldering stare, Kane and Halla removed themselves to an unoccupied corner, Kane with a parting shot: “We’re putting a lot of trust in you.”
Dorian stood still for a moment, breathed out hard, and then stalked off again. I followed closely, looking back every so often to check that nobody planned to attack us from behind as we made our way back into the pitch-black passage.
I felt surprisingly grateful to be walking blindly through the dark again. It was preferable to the intense stares in that cavern. Dorian must’ve heard me sigh with relief in the cool air, but he said nothing about it.
We walked for a long time, but I didn’t mind, as each step put more space between me and Kane and Halla. Despite the growing distance, their words rang sharply in my head.
One thing was clear to me: unless this was elaborate playacting, the rest of the vampires believed the same crazy stuff that Dorian did. They were just as upset and worried for the survival of their kind as he appeared to be. Staging this kind of tension just to pull the wool over my eyes seemed less and less likely.
I listened to the rock door scraping open, then winced as a crack of light stabbed my pupils. After one more grind, Dorian led me out of the dark. He closed the door in the rockface, and we slid between the narrow stone walls.
Outside, the desert air shimmered across the horizon. I plodded behind him as he scanned the brush and rocks. Could he be watching for Bureau soldiers?
I followed him down the incline and spotted the redbill standing amongst the brush. It caught sight of Dorian and grumbled, as if waking up.
He stood beside the redbill for a moment, looking around, his eyes calculating, then back at me with a stony gaze. “I’m not sure how to help you mount without touching you,” he said.
I watched him for a moment, gauging his sincerity before deciding. “I’ll take your hand.”
He nodded, then leapt onto the bird’s back and gazed down at me, offering an open palm. I took it, his firm grip easily helping me climb up behind him. His skin was cool and smooth as he slipped it from mine.
“Hold on tight,” he murmured.
I placed my hands on his waist, every nerve in my body tightening as I considered what we were about to do.
The bird shook its head. I gripped Dorian as the bill jogged across the sand, extending its wings.
We shot into the air, and my stomach dipped, my heart pounding. I squinted my eyes and hid my face behind Dorian’s shoulder as the wind roared around us.
What have I just agreed to?
Chapter Nine
Everything around us vanished in a burst of blinding white light that forced my eyes closed. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. A snapping sound filled my ears, like the fountain fireworks Zach and I used to set off when we were kids. The crackling intensified, and it felt as though the air was pressing into my body. Electricity tingled down my spine, a static blanket of heat that made me gasp.
Then it was over.
I opened my eyes to darkness. The air was gentle as a breeze coming off a warm ocean, but thick in my nostrils like humidity. It held a hint of something akin to cedar. My lungs felt heavier.
We were still flying, but the bird’s wings made no sound. Did I go deaf?
I looked above and saw only a shroud of black. It had the texture of water, but it didn’t ripple. I could not find a sun, moon, or even a sing
le star in that watery ink, but somehow, I could still see my surroundings. A faint amber glow filled the air, staving off the pitch blackness. Below, I took in an endless stretch of mountains. Their distant peaks looked as if they’d been carved from charcoal. Ribbons of gray mist drifted around their bases.
A gust of wind flowed over us, and my eye caught something gliding through the air. It was a wave of glinting golden lights, drifting across the sky like twinkling pollen. They ebbed and flowed with the shifting breeze, growing bright and then softening. The wave washed over us, and suddenly thousands of them surrounded us. The lights darted, caught in whorls and eddies of the air under the redbill’s wings.
Something moved in the gray below us—a flock of redbills circling over a misted peak. One of them screeched, and the sound drifted through the heavy air up to us.
Our bird drifted lower, and more redbills came into view below us. As we neared the ground, other specks of light shone on the rocks. These were duller, darker than the ones flowing through the sky. They reminded me of dwindling campfire embers.
“What are those lights?” I breathed into Dorian’s ear.
He didn’t respond, instead leaning over to pat the redbill’s neck, and we dipped lower to catch another breeze, soaring downward toward the mountains.
The peaks and valleys came into focus, and some of the mist moved off with the wind. I thought I saw an expanse of gray water, but once the clouds cleared, I knew I was mistaken.
Miles and miles of rubble stretched over the mountainsides. Hollowed-out stone buildings jutted from the scorched ground. A fallen bridge lay crumbled in the basin of a dried-up riverbed. The broken skeleton of a massive open-air colosseum protruded from the black dirt. Little square rock foundations clustered together. None had a roof. Shattered stone walls trailed through countless burnt-out homes.
The air soured in my nose. My eyes burned more the lower we soared.
I scanned the horizon but saw no end to the dilapidated city. It reminded me of photos of atomic bombings. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt closed shut.
We flew over a valley with a massive hole carved into the ground, like a manmade lake. There were piles of… were those bones? This time I clenched my eyes shut of my own volition.
Were we really responsible for this?
I opened my eyes again, and in front of me, Dorian’s shoulders sank. He looked out to the side instead of down. In profile I could just about make out his eyes, darkened and rimmed red. “I think you’ve seen all you need to.”
I nodded, speechless.
He exhaled and placed his hand on the redbill’s neck. The bird ascended, turning back the way we came. I set my forehead on the back of Dorian’s shoulder for a moment, too dizzy to keep my eyes open. Thankfully, the bird increased its speed, and the putrid air drifted away behind us.
As we flew away from the city, a sound cut through the breeze from somewhere in the very far distance—it was like a lilting, wavering trumpet call. It echoed away but then grew louder, like an approaching train’s horn. My muscles went rigid as the call filled my head and reverberated inside my chest. It enveloped us, sharpening every second. The air vibrated around us.
“It sounds closer than it is,” Dorian said. “They must have found someone. We should go. I don’t want to draw them here.”
He clicked to the redbill, and our speed suddenly increased. Barely five seconds later, the white light exploded over us again, replacing the sound with zaps of electricity. The buzzing wrapped around me, jolting through my head. Sweat instantaneously covered my entire body. The last crack dissipated.
The familiar heat of the desert sun on the back of my neck returned. The redbill cut through the clouds. We soared over the red stone and sand again, the rock formations blurred into a pale red finger painting.
“What was that noise?” I gasped in Dorian’s ear, between the beating of the bird’s wings.
He turned his head, one of his glacial eyes meeting mine. “There are a lot of strange noises in the Immortal Plane, and you don’t want to know what any of them are. Forget it. It was never meant for human ears.”
The redbill circled lower. I loosened my cramping grip on Dorian’s waist. The shrubs and rocks drew closer, and we landed on the sand.
Dorian dismounted, and I slid off behind him. He walked a few paces away before turning back to me.
I felt his question in his eyes before he said a word.
The crumbled houses and burnt soil flashed in front of my eyes. The broken fences. The heaps of crisscrossed bones.
I exhaled. I couldn’t confirm exactly what I’d seen, but if it were what Dorian had described, his plea for help was understandable. I knew this could still be some elaborate ploy, but I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that it was true. I needed to present this to the board, either way.
“Yes.” My voice rang the clearest it had all day. “I’ll help you.”
Chapter Ten
As our redbill thundered through the sky, my thoughts roared louder than the bird’s wings.
They’re going to think I’ve gone insane. An Occult Bureau lieutenant trying to convince the board to help vampires. Can they commit me for that?
The redbill descended through a wet patch of clouds. I recognized D.C. once we cleared the vapor; the bird pointed toward a forested stretch northwest of the city.
The air blasted over its wings, pushing Dorian’s back into my chest. I braced my face against him, waiting for my intestines to return to their proper place.
Our downdraft waved through the long grass as we landed on the edge of a field, flanked closely by trees. The sun hadn’t reached its peak. Birds called from the forest. The calm was unsettling and foreign after the morning I’d had.
Dorian dismounted and turned to offer me a hand, but my boots had already hit the ground beside him. I was so done with flying. I saw him smirk slightly out of the corner of my eye.
I scanned the edge of the field for signs of civilization and spotted a hiking trail marker through the trees. There’s my way home.
I turned back around, and we held a stare. The bird grumbled.
I sighed, then scrunched my nose, gathering my thoughts. “I’m going to talk to my uncle first,” I began. “Today. I’ll see what his response is. This won’t be easy.”
Dorian nodded slightly.
“I don’t know whether I can convince him that I’m telling the truth, or if he’ll believe you brainwashed me.” I set a hand on my hip. “I’m going to sound like a lunatic. And a traitor, too.”
Gina saw Dorian, so at least I had a witness to prove his existence. But how can I prove he’s not a threat? I stared at the grass, searching my mind for a strategy.
“I need proof,” I told him, testing my thoughts aloud. “But I can’t just waltz home with a vampire in tow.”
Dorian reached inside his cloak and thrust a closed fist toward me. His fingers opened, revealing my ear comm and cell phone, which I’d switched off before the mission that morning.
You’re freaking kidding me. This whole time?
I shook my head. Relief and a grin replaced any sense of anger. “Are vampires also expert pickpockets?”
He suppressed a smile. I snatched them from his hand, immediately checking to see if the phone responded, noting the lukewarmth of his skin as my fingers brushed it. The phone turned on. As I stared at the device, an idea occurred to me. A kind of ridiculous idea, but…
“I have to take a picture of you. No, both of us. To show them you’re not a threat, that you let me go,” I said matter-of-factly.
“Seriously?” He shied away.
“Got any other ideas?” I gazed up at him over the phone screen, the camera app already open. “What, you’ve never had your picture taken before? Vampires don’t have family photo albums?”
He frowned at me and rolled his shoulders. “If it’ll help.”
“It will.” I held the phone up.
I could see him frowning through the phon
e’s screen. I snapped a photo, then looked at it, shaking my head. “You just look like a pale guy in a field. A bad senior photo. I need some teeth.”
He squinted at me, then pulled his lip open with his finger, exposing one of his unnaturally elongated canines.
“Got it,” I said. “Okay, now one of us.”
I stepped toward him, realizing as I did that I wasn’t afraid. It felt strange. Given the crazy things I planned to go do right after this, I probably wouldn’t know what “normal” felt like ever again.
I positioned myself at his elbow and leaned toward him, leaving plenty of space between us, then held my arm out in front of us to take the picture. Neither of us breathed until I stepped away.
“Well, that’ll work,” I said. In this photo Dorian’s eyes were a brighter blue. I angled the screen toward him. “We caught the redbill’s head, too. Talk about proof.”
Yeah, this is still going to be an impossible conversation.
I put my phone in my vest and tucked my comm into my pants pocket. A wave of exhaustion flooded my body. My head buzzed. “I’m gonna go, then.” It felt surreal, being released by a vampire. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
But if even part of what Dorian said was true, then I hadn’t been told the whole truth, had I?
“Wait,” Dorian said, just as I turned to leave. He reached inside his cloak again, then offered me an onyx-colored stone wrapped in a piece of cloth. The edges of the stone were tinged with gray, making it look a bit like a carved piece of charcoal, but not enough that it looked like any stone I’d ever seen.
“This should help you convince them that there’s a world they don’t know about,” Dorian said. “This doesn’t exist on Earth. It’s from my old home. The mountains you saw.” His voice softened and trailed off on the breeze.
I cautiously took the stone from him, making sure to touch only the fabric wrapped around it, then searched his face. “Why do you carry this with you?”
He contemplated the stone in my hand but didn’t respond, his eyes faraway. In that moment, he didn’t look like an otherworldly creature who’d kidnapped me with unnerving speed and rode about on bloodthirsty beasts. He looked like he was reliving something that I could only imagine.
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