The moon was unchanged. The Earth, as ancient, was no longer the same. The land the humans saw from beneath the dome—the Earth that they yearned after, of endless meadows and lush forests resting in the shadow of snow-capped mountains—was an illusion, an image created and sustained by the powerful projectors that encircled Malum Turris like a ring of light.
The Earth, the true Earth, was a barren wasteland, its surface parched and cracked beneath an unforgiving sun. In the new world, the icrathari were the unchallenged masters—the only immortals to have survived, unchanged, from the apocalypse. She would never allow their dominance to wane.
With Tera and Elsker beside her, Ashra soared toward Aeternae Noctis. She swooped under the city, skimming between the powerful repulse thrusters, and up through the opening carbon steel doors.
Dana stood inside the entrance, her face distraught. “He’s gone,” she burst out. “Jaden’s gone.”
Chapter Five
Ashra leaned against the cool walls of the chamber, her arms folded across her chest, while her icrathari companions and Dana hovered around her in various stages of alarm.
“Why in the Creator’s name did you leave him out in the corridor?” Siri demanded. “We have holding cells for a purpose.”
“He was unconscious, and I underestimated his resilience. Can you find him?” Ashra asked.
Siri spread her hands. “Lucas is tied up with the new vampires who are still feverish from blood sickness. Phillip is busy processing the children we culled last night.”
“What about remote surveillance?”
“Only in the holding cells and at all entry points into Malum Turris. The chances of us catching a glimpse of him are slim.”
“And your engineers?”
“Engineer. Singular, not plural. I can’t pull Xanthia away from her work. She’s the only thing keeping the engines churning and the damned city afloat.”
Dana stepped forward. “I’ll find him.”
Siri shook her head. “You’re underestimating the size of the tower. Even with the ark, we use scarcely a fraction of it. There are sections of the tower I’ve never seen, and I’ve been exploring in my free time—mapping it out—for a thousand years.”
“You have?” Ashra asked, her eyebrows arched.
“Yes, of course.” Siri huffed. “And before anyone calls me something rude that will force me to shove your words and your tongue down your throat, I’ll have you know that knowledge is a weapon.”
“Of course it is. Where is your map of the tower?”
Siri tapped the side of her head.
Ashra rolled her eyes. “What is the point of knowledge if it is not accessible?”
Siri chuckled. “It’s accessible to me. Let’s think about this.” She paced the length of the room, the flowing red gown molding to her curves. “Where would he go? He’d try to escape from the tower, so it stands to reason, he’d stay on the lowest level, seeking a way back to the city.”
“Will he?” Ashra’s brow furrowed. Turning her back on her companions, she walked to the window, each step slow and measured. Jaden’s memories, reaped from his soul, flashed through her mind—images of a girl child smiling and laughing, at play, secure in the knowledge that she was loved and protected. Jaden’s half-sister—a fundamental and irrevocable part of his world—would likely never have been born if the icrathari had not taken Dana twenty-three years earlier. Dana’s grieving husband, believing her dead, had eventually remarried.
Oh, the troubles we bring upon ourselves. “Jaden will not leave without his sister.”
Siri sighed.
Ashra glanced at her. “What is it?”
“It’s a shame; he’ll probably die of starvation before anyone comes across him. He was our best chance at connecting with the humans.”
“What?”
Siri shrugged. “You have to admit that he had possibilities. A human with the soul of an icrathari—we couldn’t have picked a better person to bridge the gap with the humans.”
“The gap cannot be bridged.”
“We’ve never tried.” Siri looked away. Her shoulders sagged. “Each month it gets harder to do what we’ve done for a thousand years. What’s going to happen when the icrathari…the immortal icrathari begin counting down the days?”
Ashra’s eyes narrowed. “Siri?”
The voluptuous icrathari sighed. “I’m tired, Ashra. We all are. A thousand years with no end in sight.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if we can do this for another thousand years.”
“And how will bridging the gap with the humans make it any different?”
“I don’t know.” Siri shrugged. “At this point, I’m up for trying anything. How can it possibly be any worse than everything else we’ve tried so far? Twenty-five vampires maintain and defend this city—and this includes our newest recruits—down from five hundred in the days following the apocalypse. Each month, we bury more vampires than we add to our ranks.”
“This isn’t about the numbers, Siri.”
“No,” Siri said. “It’s about survival, and we’re losing our edge, an edge that not even the technology and defenses of Aeternae Noctis can compensate for. At some point, we will be overrun, and then what? You have to stop coddling the humans, Ashra. You have no choice.”
“Would you risk them all going mad?”
Siri shook her head. “No, of course not, but—”
“Every human who has found out the truth has gone mad and lost his will to live. Have you forgotten how close humanity skimmed to the edge of extinction immediately after the apocalypse? We lost them by the thousands. Hundreds of them died every day through suicide or simply because they had lost the will to live.”
Tera snorted. “After what they had done to the planet, who could blame them?”
Ashra turned on the warlord. “They were fixated on the past when they should have focused on the future.”
Elsker interjected. “It’s beyond them. The humans can’t deal with their present, let alone their future. Even some of the Chosen whom we selected for their mental and emotional resilience, couldn’t handle the facts. How many newly turned vampires did we lose to suicide when they discovered the truth about the planet? Too many to count.” He shook his head. “Why do we keep defending the humans?”
Because it’s what Rohkeus would have done. It’s what Rohkeus would have wanted us to do.
She closed her eyes. An image of Rohkeus rose from her memories. He would have frowned at them in his inimitable way, and made it seem simple, obvious. “We are the firstborn of the Earth, the only true immortals. If we do not protect the Great Mother and the life she cradles, who can or will?”
However, no one else felt the same way, Siri least of all. Siri, upon whom Ashra depended to manage the engineering, medical, and scientific functions of Malum Turris and Aeternae Noctis, apparently no longer believed in Rohkeus’s vision for a restored Earth.
Far worse, she had no response for Siri, Tera, and Elsker. Ashra was willing to trudge through eternity, driven by duty and the memory of a lost love, but how could she subject others to the same?
She turned her back on the three icrathari. “I’m going to talk to Lucas and check the progress on the latest batch of humans.”
“And what should we do about Jaden?” Siri asked.
Ashra shook her head. “He will have to live or die by his own ingenuity.”
“He won’t make it,” Siri said. “We’ve kept the city in the seventeenth century; in the tower, he is a man out of his time. Think about it—artificially intelligent technology, biometric identification, and remotely controlled devices. He’ll never find his way around the thirty-second century.”
“The twenty-second,” Tera corrected quietly.
Siri arched an eyebrow.
“It is the thirty-second century,” Tera conceded. “But we haven’t made any real progress in science or technology since the twenty-second century, since the apocalypse.”
Siri shrugged.
“No matter. More progress was made in the five hundred years prior to the apocalypse than in any age prior to that. I stand by my assessment. He’ll be stuck at the first locked door he finds.”
Deep in the bowels of Malum Turris, Jaden traced the outline of the door, differentiated from the wall only by the seams around three of its edges. What kind of sorcery kept the door sealed? What magic did the icrathari command, and how could he, a human, possibly hope to challenge it?
In some distant part of his mind, the icy talons of terror clawed at him, but he swallowed hard against his fear; he had no choice. Jaden drew in a deep breath, consciously slowing his breathing as a defense against the rapid pounding of his heart. He took a step back. He did not see any swiveling cylinders such as he had seen back in his cell, but approximately five feet off the ground, a two-inch square of dark glass was embedded into the metallic doorframe. He crouched to peer into it. Thin red lines flickered across the surface of the glass. With the soft whisper of steel against steel, the door slid back without protest.
He stared, mouth agape, at the open door. Why would the magic favor him?
No matter. Urgency plucked at him. He had to find Khiarra.
The walls were cold to the touch, and the chill in the air leeched through his clothes. With an arm wrapped around his stomach to still the trembling and contain the bleeding from his injuries, Jaden traveled along the corridor as it twisted and turned. He explored every room and found his swords, which he wiped clean and sheathed in the leather scabbards strapped across his back.
The weight of his weapons anchored him against the fluttering edge of panic as he searched for something, anything, to point the way out of the tower. It was as if he were in a different world. The air in the tower was odorless, even sterile compared to the stenches and noises of life that infused the city. A low hum shuddered through the tower, a vibration so intense that the air trembled and the floor shook.
Raw grit rather than curiosity pushed him on. His exploration took him into rooms so large he could not see the wall on the far side; rooms enshrouded in darkness, save for the pools of yellow light emanating at regular intervals from the walls.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out massive, funnel-like shapes, each as tall as the cathedral in the town square. The machines were pockmarked with narrow rectangle slits cut through the metal, reminding him of the heat vents in his kitchen oven. The large cylindrical pipes that emerged from the tops of the machines interconnected in an aerial labyrinth. He peered up, but the tangle of pipes was lost in the darkness.
No human could have designed such awe-inspiring machines.
Who then? The icrathari?
They were monsters, like the vampires—predators who preyed on humans.
His gaze searched the room. It appeared empty. Still cautious, he walked to one of the machines and peered through a rectangular slit. Wide, flat blades spun, emitting the now-familiar hum that pervaded the tower. The machine core glowed deep red as it forced condensed bursts of air through vents under the machine.
But under…to where? What lay under the tower?
Jaden quashed the flicker of curiosity; he had to focus. He was almost certain of one thing; he would have to head up the tower to find Khiarra.
Hours of searching netted him little but exhaustion. He found a central shaft that soared so high it eventually vanished into darkness, but there was nothing he could use to access the upper levels. Jaden frowned. The icrathari flew, but the vampires were as land-bound as he was; there had to be a way to scale the tower. He turned and paced forward. His thoughts turned inward. If he had designed a tower around a central shaft, he would have put a stairway right about—
A large square pillar stood several feet from the shaft. He had mistaken it for yet another foundational structure, but closer examination revealed a square panel of dark glass, similar to the one he had encountered beside the sealed door.
Here.
He leaned down to look into the panel. Once again, the thin red lines flashed horizontally across the glassy surface, and the entire wall of the pillar slid up. The motion was slow and grudging, as if it had not been opened recently. He peered into the darkness. His heart raced. Within the pillar, a narrow staircase wound up.
He sighed and sagged with relief against the yawning opening. Hope inched forward as he began the climb.
Hope kept him going when the minutes lapsed into an endless grind. The chill pervading the air, combined with his injuries, sapped his strength. He paused several times to rest, sinking onto the cold floor, his chest heaving from his efforts. Exhaustion lured him to the edge of collapse, but the fear lodged in his chest drove him back to his feet. He had to find Khiarra before the vampires killed her.
By leaning against the wall and doggedly placing one foot in front of the other, he forced himself forward. After what felt like an hour of strenuous climbing, he dragged himself onto a landing sealed by a door. Once more, he opened the door by peering into the glass panel. He stepped out into a corridor lit only by light effusing from a room at the far end. A low murmur of indistinct voices wafted toward him.
Careful to stay out of sight, he pressed against the wall and inched forward to look into the room. Panels of white light lit the large room, casting a pale glow upon the ten men and women who lay, apparently unconscious, on narrow beds. Thin translucent tubes engorged with blood emerged from the humans’ tender veins, and flowed into steel machines at the head of each bed.
Unintelligible symbols danced across the machine screens in an endless stream of information that seemed to make sense to the vampire and icrathari who stood with their backs to Jaden. The two surveyed the machines, occasionally tapping on the screen, but otherwise apparently content to watch the data change.
“I’m hopeful that the latest batch of humans will survive the transformation,” the vampire said. “I’m using the same ratio of icrathari to vampire blood that we used two months prior.”
“That’s when you last managed to transform the entire batch?” the icrathari asked.
Jaden tensed. That voice, sultry and low, was like black satin wrapped around a razor-sharp blade. Ashra.
Her face, more dream than memory, flashed through his mind. For five years, since Khiarra’s birth, he had dreamed of her, a slender woman dancing beneath the light of the crescent moon. Waves of silver hair framed a face of ethereal beauty. Her golden eyes sparkled, gentle with love and sweet humor, as she looked at him.
In his dreams, he had not seen her black bat wings.
However, those wings made all the difference in the world.
An icrathari. I have been dreaming of an icrathari. He recoiled mentally and emotionally, yet curiosity damped his instinctive revulsion. Why her?
In the room, the vampire nodded in response to Ashra. “Siri keeps trying to increase the concentration of icrathari blood to strengthen the vampires we create, but the humans can’t handle icrathari blood in meaningful volumes anymore. I’m diluting it at a ratio of one to a hundred, and even then, it’s a hit or miss.”
Ashra shook her head. “How much weaker are the vampires now compared to the early days of Aeternae Noctis?”
The vampire shrugged. “Impossible to quantify. Record-keeping is not an icrathari’s strength, and there have been no elder vampires since before the apocalypse.”
“We have created them,” Ashra said.
“The elder vampires who go on to lose their minds and become immortali don’t count.”
Ashra nodded, apparently conceding the point.
“At least the trial has kept the city safe from the insane fury of an immortali,” the vampire continued. He shook his head. “I know we need stronger vampires, but I’m inclined to agree with Elsker. The humans can no longer tolerate full transfusions of pure icrathari blood; the transformation requires greater strength of mind and will than the humans today possess.”
Ashra looked away. Her leather wings ruffled against her small back. “A
re we fighting a losing battle, Lucas?” she asked, her voice quiet.
“Perhaps,” Lucas said. “But you’ve been fighting it for a thousand years.” He chuckled. “Why stop now?”
Ashra laughed, the sound like silvery bells. “It’s true. Thank you for what you do.” She turned away from Lucas.
Jaden pressed back against the wall beside the entrance. He held his breath, but his heart pounded. Careful to make no sound, he drew a blade.
Ashra stepped out of the room, her tiny face serene and lovely. The uneven hem of her white chiffon gown brushed against her calves. Her sandaled feet made no sound against the cold metal floor.
He lunged forward. Jaden threw his arm around her slender neck, and pulled her against his chest. He held the point of his blade to her neck.
She did not react. In fact, she did not even seem surprised.
Confusion flickered through Jaden, but his grip around her neck tightened. “Where is my sister?”
His voice was scarcely louder than a whisper, but the vampire Lucas appeared at the threshold. His bright blue eyes surveyed the scene with mild interest, and a flicker of a smile appeared on his lips. “Ashra?”
She flicked her fingers at the vampire, dismissing him.
Lucas shrugged and turned away.
With a sinuous motion, Ashra twisted out of Jaden’s grip and turned to face him.
Stunned, he stared at his empty hands before his gaze jerked up. Their eyes met.
She shook her head, warning him against a foolish attempt to recapture her. She did not smile, though her golden eyes glittered with self-mocking amusement. “I will take you to your sister.”
It had to be a trap.
Her eyes narrowed. “Put your sword away. You can’t hurt me, and you’d only irritate me if you try.”
His left hand clenched into a fist. He ground his teeth. Could he trust a monster?
What choice did he have? His heart wrenched. Khiarra.
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