by Kayleigh Sky
“Not without my map, you wouldn’t.”
Why the little—
“It’s not your map.”
“But I have it. And yes.” He dropped his arms. “I want to go. Now?”
Rune shrugged. “If you’re ready.”
“Give me a minute.”
“I’ll meet you out front. Bring a jacket.”
After Isaac scurried off, Rune returned outside to Camiel still lounging poolside. “I need your keys.”
The witch opened an eye again. “Do I have a say?”
“No.”
“On my dresser.”
“Where is Pomariah?”
“About seventy miles west of here. Just get on the highway. There’ll be signs.”
After grabbing Camiel’s keys, he went out front. Too much to wish the car wasn’t bright red, but Isaac’s face lit up the minute he set eyes on it. “This is pretty. Is it yours?”
Rune scowled, opening the doors with Camiel’s fob. “Black is more my color.”
“That I believe.”
Little—
Isaac ducked under the roof as he got in, and Rune climbed in after him. He started the engine and followed the roundabout back to the highway.
Isaac wriggled back against his seat. “This is comfortable.”
“Camiel does like his luxuries.”
“It’s nice,” Isaac said.
“I didn’t say it isn’t nice. I like cars.”
Isaac’s stare was palpable, warm like sunbeams. “You do?”
“Jessa used to take my Porsche. But I prefer my Jeep. It gets me where I need to go.”
“Where is it?”
Rune frowned, glancing away from the road. “Where is what? Where I need to go?”
“No—Both.”
“The Jeep is with Uriah. I go wherever I have to go. That’s usually where the damage from the Upheaval was the worst, and where the topography is unrecognizable from what it once was.”
“And you like that?”
Rune nodded, a hollow place forming under his solar plexus that always spoke to him of loss. He had no illusions he’d return to his old life, though he hoped to. “I loved it. I have no emotional connection to the places I visit. None were my home. I see the skeletons of what was. Broken skylines. Cities buried or flooded. I can’t explain it, but it’s almost like music, like the strains of an instrument playing far away. Nothing can repair the damage except time. But I can map it, record it, put it down on paper, so maybe nobody forgets what used to be.”
Isaac’s eyes brightened, and he sat higher on his seat. “That’s kind of like recipes.”
The reply was so beyond Rune’s expectations he laughed. “I don’t— How?”
“Recipes are memories. It’s more than what you eat. It’s what you give. What you pass down. The things you share. You write them down, and every time you make a certain dish, it has a memory. That’s why Jessa loves those tarts so much.”
Rune smiled. “I do too, but Jessa’s crazy about them. Bettina, our cook, always had to shoo him out of the kitchen whenever she made any. We bought them from a store in the city too.”
“That’s so strange to me. That there are whole cities underneath us.”
“You’ll see.”
They fell silent after that. Isaac tipped his head back and closed his eyes, arms folded across his chest again.
Why hadn’t he told Camiel to ransack Isaac’s room until he found the damn map? Idiot. But he cringed internally at the expression that would have been on Isaac’s face if he had done that. Betrayal. But betrayal was better than losing him to the Adi ’el Lumi, wasn’t it? It was too dangerous for him to come on this hunt. But maybe there were worse things to lose. Faith and hope. Not that Isaac had any faith in him.
A thought worked its way to the surface of Rune’s brain, and a smile danced on his lips. “You have the map on you, don’t you?”
“Yep.”
The answer had come fast with a hint of laugher. Rune chuckled, and when he looked sideways, Isaac was smiling.
An hour and a half later they passed the last sign before reaching a parking lot in front of a large white trailer with an open door.
Rune parked, and Isaac yawned.
“Don’t forget to bring your jacket,” Rune said.
“Where’s yours?”
“I don’t need one. I’m used to it.”
A half dozen other cars surrounded them, and a few humans stood in the shade of the trailer. It wasn’t hot, but the rays of the sun bounced off a bleached landscape. There was little here but pale weeds and dirt as fine as flour. Snow-topped mountains wavered on the horizon and a smudge of trees surrounded a city farther down the highway.
“Whoa, we almost missed the tour,” Isaac murmured, gazing at the placard that leaned against the trailer.
The schedule listed three tours a day. Rune hadn’t thought to check on that, but they were in time for the last one.
He glanced around again, but with no vampires here, he had no worry of anybody recognizing him.
“You’re paying, right?”
He smiled. “No, I’m going to take the tour while you stand out here.”
“Ha ha.”
Rune chuckled and climbed into the trailer. The artwork, reproductions of Ellowyn mosaics and tapestries, caught his eye first. Brochures and postcards displaying the same cluttered the countertop. A cheerful strawberry blonde bounded up from her stool. “You’re just in time. Two?”
Isaac stood behind him.
Rune nodded and gave her a twenty-dollar bill. Isaac grabbed a brochure and stuffed it into his back pocket.
Outside, the other humans sent surreptitious stares his way. Rune grinned and flashed the tips of his fangs at them. They didn’t exactly scatter but most found things of interest to examine yards away.
“Did you have to do that?” Isaac had his arms across his chest again.
It didn’t take much for Rune to piss him off. No telling why he actually liked that about Isaac. Rune wasn’t beholden to anyone. He spoke, and people behaved, but not Isaac.
“I smiled.”
“You scared them.”
“Oh no,” he murmured. “This isn’t my scary face.”
“I wouldn’t be scared of that one either.”
Rune laughed, the sound booming, and a smile twitched on Isaac’s mouth. He pursed it in a tight line when the tour guide appeared on the top of the step and glowered at him. “Be good. I want to enjoy this.”
Enjoyment wasn’t Rune’s plan, and if he had to sneak Isaac into any off-limits section, nobody in red floral capris and a hard hat was going to stop him.
“My name is Joy,” said the human, “and I will be your guide. You may know this is the only safely accessible Ellowyn city. Although excavations proceeded on several cities, it was soon deemed a safety issue. That’s something we might pursue in the near future, but for now the faults are still unstable.”
“Aren’t vamps still living down there?” a man asked, tossing Rune a quick glance before scooting another foot away.
“People like to speculate about that, but there’s no evidence this is true.”
Isaac pressed to Rune’s side, and heat bloomed all the way to his toes. Sweat broke out on his forehead. The kid radiated heat.
“Is that true?” Isaac whispered.
He bent toward Isaac’s ear, inhaling the scent of his hair. “Yes. They are there.”
“Why?” Isaac’s horrified gaze held his.
Rune put a finger to his lips. “Later.”
Isaac frowned but held his tongue.
“After three years of work, large sections of Pomariah are available to tour. Pomariah is not representative of many vampire cities. Quite a few were surprisingly modern.”
Surprisingly?
Rune gritted his teeth and resisted explaining that his people had lived there for thousands of years and were hardly dirt grovelers.
Idiot humans.
“Pomariah
is shallow. In most places the ceiling is lower than the ones in our homes nowadays.”
“Comfortable,” somebody snickered.
“No.” She threw Rune an uncertain smile. “The Ellowyn people are usually taller than humans. The inhabitants of Pomariah must have been quite intrepid. The nearest other Ellowyn city is hundreds of miles away.”
Rune didn’t know much about Pomariah, but he believed most of them had been on the run from Qudim’s war if not his rule. Rune had never had much pity for them. Until the Upheaval, Qudim had been a just leader.
“You’ll see residences built from solid rock and a market square. Pomariah, like most Ellowyn cities, had a large plaza we hope to have open sometime next year. You’ll see that the residences are very shallow. Space was at a minimum. We think some of the reason for that was because the city was so new. It was in many ways separate from the rest of the Ellowyn society. You won’t see jeweled walls or elaborate artwork. This was a small working community. One surprising feature you’ll notice, though, is a playground in the square.”
Surprising because we usually flayed our children alive?
Stop.
He glowered down at the top of Isaac’s head.
Stop listening to me.
Stop bitching.
Fine.
The little bastard.
“A few safety tips. Stay together. Off-limit areas are marked by yellow tape. When we enter, you’ll see two barrels. One for flashlights and one for hard hats. Our tour will bring us back around and you can drop them off before you leave. So…” She clapped her hands. “Are we ready?”
A murmur ran through the crowd, and Isaac bounced. With a quick look at Rune, he said, “Don’t ruin this for me,” and darted ahead.
Well fuck, because Rune was going to have to do more than ruin the tour. Where had he ever gotten the idea that Isaac was a sweet, malleable kid? And being human, Isaac really had zero fucks to give that Rune was a prince.
A crown prince.
Stopping before he stepped into the mouth of the portal, Isaac glanced back with a laugh.
Jesus, had he said that out loud?
He had to get a grip, because none of this was laughable. No matter how much he wanted to forget everything and let the pleasure of being near Isaac wash away his troubles and the filth of the life he’d led so far.
He followed the group inside where Joy stretched a hard hat out to him, only to yank it back at his baleful glare.
“He’ll take it,” Isaac called out.
Joy’s eyes widened. She extended the hat. Pulled it back again.
Goddamnit.
He took the hat and clamped it down on his head.
Isaac beamed.
And why did he like this bossy little Isaac so much better than the other one? Not that he didn’t like the other Isaac. He liked gentle, shy Isaac too. Not that it mattered because neither Isaac could ever be his. He was too much of a risk to people. The defeat of the Adi ’el Lumi was his sole task.
When they followed the landing at the end of the corridor, Joy scurried to the top of a stairwell and turned back. “The portal was once a steep tunnel. Not as steep as the ones that serve the deeper cities, but the stairs behind me were added to bypass most of the original entry. We’re going to descend about two hundred feet.”
Somebody chuckled. “Lucky nobody decided to drill for oil here.”
“No, they decided to drill for gas and blew up the world,” Isaac retorted.
You tell him.
Isaac smiled.
“There are no oil fields here,” said Joy.
“I wonder if they knew that,” someone said.
Rune growled. “Yes.”
The group fell silent and hurried down the stairs.
Isaac hung back. “You like to make yourself popular, don’t you?”
“It’s not my job to be popular.”
“What is your job?”
Rune stared at him. “My people.”
“And me?”
“I’m not free, Isaac.”
Without a word, Isaac scrambled down the stairs.
21
Isaac Stands Fast
Oh my god, oh my god…
Isaac didn’t know how he’d gotten away with talking to Rune that way, but the hot anger burning in Rune’s eyes didn’t flare into anything worse. And his eyes were always burning—dark and smoldering as coals, mysterious, secretive, and totally mesmerizing. Sometimes Isaac wondered if Rune had cast a spell on him. Could he do that? Like Camiel. When Anin had mentioned over a card game that Camiel was a witch, Isaac had been flabbergasted. “That’s not real.”
Anin had stared in surprise as though how could Isaac not believe? True, there’d been rumors of strange things going on at the coven meeting, but Isaac hadn’t been a part of that. And true he spoke to Rune in his mind, and true Rune materialized in a fog in the middle of his bedroom, but some part of him had always thought the world made concrete sense. Even vampires weren’t fantasies or monsters. They were real.
Flesh.
Hard, sweet-smelling flesh. God, Rune had the best smell.
But so? He needs to act like you count too. You need to act like you count.
At the bottom of the steps, he glanced behind him and bit his top lip to stop from laughing. The white hard hat on Rune’s head listed precariously to the side. His hair hung loose underneath it, and his dark eyes glittered with—peevishness. And it struck Isaac in that moment that Rune wore the hard hat for him. Maybe only him.
He let a smile curve his mouth before turning back to Joy.
“This is where we enter into the Ellowyn world. This last flight of stairs was built over a set that led to the original portal. Remember to stay in the designated areas. Your flashlights are just in case we lose electricity. One of the first places we’re going to see is a transportation station. The Ellowyn traveled by train and also used cars on a pulley system to ascend and descend the portals. There’s an outdoor seating area with tables, and they more than likely had food carts like the food trucks outside some of our own train and bus stations.”
Isaac wriggled his way to the edge of the landing to peer below. The rock in front of the stairs angled away but descended so low, it cut off most of Isaac’s view. It wasn’t until he got to the bottom of the stairs that a space as large as a football field spread in front of him. Rows of stone pillars lined end to end gave the impression of a parking garage. Stone tables and a few wood ones clustered in front of a structure that extended only a foot from the rock wall.
They funneled to the doors and cutout windows to peer inside. A stone counter partitioned the work area from a small waiting area up front.
“What a way to live,” somebody muttered.
Isaac tensed, but when he looked behind him, Rune wasn’t within sight. He stepped away from the group, scouting the open space.
Where are you?
Rune stepped sideways from behind a pillar near the far wall. Behind him was a black hole like a door.
Come look.
Biting his lip, Isaac glanced at the others—“And you can see here,” said Joy, “that they carved tracks into the shelves so they could insert wooded drawers and doors…” then hurried over.
“What are you doing?”
Rune smiled. “Exploring. Come with me.”
“In there?” Up close, the yellow tape across the hole was visible. Light seeped from in back though. “Why’s it blocked off?”
“No idea. Let’s see.”
“You don’t follow anybody’s rules, do you?”
“Would you ask anybody what rooms you could go into in your own house?” Rune stepped over the tape.
“I don’t have a house.”
Glowering, Isaac darted a quick look behind him then followed.
The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees at least. Rune ducked in a few places, but Isaac was short enough he didn’t have to worry about bashing his head in.
The tunnel forked a few ya
rds ahead, branching in one direction toward a lit area with more yellow tape across the exit and angling downward in the other.
“We aren’t supposed to be here.”
“I won’t let you get lost.” Rune stopped and rested a hand on the rock, tipping his head back, his face only a foot away from the ceiling here. “Look.” He pointed at something above them.
“What is it?”
“A bolt. Celestine and most of the other cities took advantage of natural caverns, but where we didn’t and carved out of the rock, we reinforced the ceilings with bolts. You humans do the same in your mines. That terminal we left was a natural structure for the most part, but not this tunnel. Turn on your flashlight. There are steps up ahead.”
Steps down, down into the earth. Isaac’s heart quickened, sending adrenalin rushing along his nerves. Senses heightened, he detected sounds that surprised him. The murmur of the group behind them, reverberating with an echo, a faint rhythmic drip, a whisper of air like an escaping sigh. This was crazy, unimaginable, but… amazing. And Isaac was here, in a place vampires had lived before anybody had believed in them, and he was following a vampire prince, a… a king.
And then his heart sank.
What would a king want with somebody like him?
Rune had no trouble resisting the fated love message. Maybe because Isaac was his fated. Maybe he’d fall head over heels for somebody else. Somebody who wasn’t skinny. Willowy, my ass. Isaac drooled over Rune’s thick wavy hair, his broad shoulders, and his waist… tight with muscle. An iron body that blazed heat. He sighed.
“Almost to the bottom, I think,” said Rune.
The tunnel curved like a spiral staircase. A chuckle rolled back, and Rune stretched a hand up. Isaac took it.
He stepped on the floor, and his flashlight danced across… a lake surrounded by buildings carved into the rock. Stalactites dripped from the ceiling over the lake and wispy plants grew in the walls and…
He opened his mouth on a gasp.
“This is why they don’t want us here,” Rune said.
Isaac’s light bounced off the jewels embedded in the rocks, scattered and random like stars. “Wow.”
Rune chuckled. “We live in a marvelous world. All of us.”
“Is this natural? Why don’t the caves humans go into have jewels like this?”
