by Chloe Neill
“We try to keep it light,” Scout said. “There’s more than enough darkness in the world as it is.”
“The dark isn’t as dark as you’d think.” We all glanced over at Naya, who was walking with arm extended, the tips of her fingers trailing against the wall.
“What do you mean?” Scout quietly asked.
She glanced back at us, her cloud of coffee-colored hair bobbing as she moved. “We aren’t the only ones here, or there, or anywhere. They’re all around us. They live in the gray land—the not-quite world—all around us.”
I swallowed thickly, goose bumps lifting on my arms as I fought the urge to look around me, scanning the near darkness for shadowy figures.
“Can you see them?” Scout quietly asked, and Naya shrugged.
“Sometimes. Mostly, I call to them. Talk to them. It takes a lot of energy to become visible. Sound is easier. Temperature is lots easier.” Suddenly, she stopped, eyes wide. “Have you ever been somewhere dark and quiet, and you felt a cold chill? Like the wind had blown right through your soul?”
I nodded, eyes wide, like a kid around a spooky camp-fire. I also wondered about that first time—the first time she’d seen them, or heard them, or called them. Can you imagine what it would have been like to learn about the other in the world by hearing, suddenly one day, the living dead?
I decided learning a weird tattoo and a little electricity was a pretty good way to go.
Detroit glanced over at Scout. “So Daniel said you were a spellbinder?”
“Yeah,” Scout said. “Why?”
“I heard you were a spellcaster. And I thought, wow, big whoop, spellcaster, dime a dozen.”
“Dime a dozen?” Scout asked. “I thought spellcasters were a myth?”
“Do you know what a spellcaster is?”
I lifted a hand. “I actually don’t.”
Detroit held out her hand. “Okay, so there’re the three I’s, right?”
“Intent, incantation, incarnation,” I offered up.
“Right. So it takes intent and incantation to get to the incarnation part. Writing the incantation is basically the spellbinding. You’re putting the right words together in the right order to create a spell. So when you’re looking through your Grimoire—you’re looking at a flip book of spells, which are the result of the spellbinding.”
“Following you so far,” I added (helpfully).
“Once you get to saying the incantation, using the intent of it to make an incarnation of some kind happen, you’ve got the spellcasting. Making the magic take life. Spellcasters just work from Grimoires that have been passed on to them. Or the Internet.”
Scout lifted her eyebrows. “They get spells from the Internet?”
“Well, not all of them.”
Okay, apparently the Internet was a magical forest just waiting to be explored.
Detroit waved her hand. “But you’ve got something special, Scout. You can do more than just repeat some words and make magic happen. You can bind the spells in the first place. You can transmute them from letters and words into magic.”
“That’s why the Reapers were so interested in you,” I said. “You said they mentioned that, right, when you were at the sanctuary? That they were after your Grimoire , and that they were talking about the difference between spellcasters and spellbinders?”
Scout nodded. “That would explain why they came after me, and why they wanted my book.”
“That makes sense,” Detroit agreed. “It’s a rare power. And if the whole point of your organization is to support the use of magic, finding someone who can actually make new spells would be huge.”
“Wicked huge,” Scout agreed. “I had no idea. I mean, I just assumed I did what everyone else did, you know? Writing spells, then actually making the incantations work.”
“Wow,” I said. “For once, you were actually being too modest.”
She stuck her tongue out at me. Probably I deserved that.
We eventually came to a fork in the tunnels and took the path to the left. This one sloped upward, and continued on for only a few dozen yards.
We stopped at a jagged hole that had been ripped into the brick.
“In there,” Detroit said.
Scout gave the hole in the wall a suspicious look. “What do you mean, ‘in there’? Where does that thing lead?”
“Into a janitor’s closet, actually,” Detroit said. “We have to switch over from the railway tunnels to the Pedway.”
I leaned toward Scout. “What’s the Pedway again?”
“Stands for pedestrian walkway,” she said.
“The Pedway is a set of walkways through buildings in the Loop,” Detroit said. “Some aboveground, some underground. It’s supposed to give people a way to get around downtown when it’s too cold to walk outside. It’s also lit and a lot less damp.”
Scout looked weirdly unhappy about the possibility of walking through what I assumed were aboveground, carpeted hallways. “We usually try to avoid the Pedway,” she said.
Detroit nodded solemnly. “I know.”
I made a mental list of the things we might be trying to avoid: security guards, security cameras, locked doors. Or maybe anyone who thought a band of teenagers running around Chicago in the middle of the night was a little off.
“Vamps patrol the Pedway at night,” Scout complained.
Well, I obviously forgot to mention them. “What do you mean ‘vamps’?”
“The usual,” Scout said with a dismissive gesture. “Goth, fangs, death by crucifix, never see ’em eating garlic bread. Vampires aren’t friendly with Adepts.”
“They aren’t friendly with anybody,” Detroit said. “It’s not personal. And we might not even see any. The covens stick to quiet parts of the Pedway. The odds we’d actually run across them are pretty low.”
Scout didn’t look impressed with the logic.
“Look,” Detroit said. “The Pedway is a shortcut. It takes a lot longer if we stick to the tunnels. And we’ll only be in the corridor for a few blocks before we drop back into the tunnels anyway.”
We stood there for a few minutes, the Adepts of Enclave Three exchanging glances as they figured out what to do. Since I was still a newbie, I figured I’d leave the decision-making to the more experienced members.
Jason looked at Jill, Jamie, and Paul. “What do you think?”
“Well,” Paul said, “I’m not crazy about having vamps between us and wherever we’re going, but I like the idea of being in the tunnels for as short a time as possible. Besides, if we have trouble on the way in, we can always take the long way back.”
“Good enough for me,” Jason said.
And so it was decided. One by one, Jamie and Jill in the lead, we ducked into the hole in the wall. We emerged, just as Detroit had promised, into a janitor’s closet. All nine of us stuffed into a tiny, dark room among push brooms, mops, and buckets on wheels.
“Would you like some light?” I whispered.
“Let’s keep it dark,” I heard Jill say. “At least until we figure out if anyone is out there. Michael—you wanna fill us in?”
“On it,” Michael said. I heard shuffling, probably as he squeezed through to get to a wall.
“Echoes of business,” he finally said. “Busy. Always walking, moving. Faster. Faster. The world spins, and the feet keep moving.” He paused. “That’s all I got.”
“Hmm. Doesn’t tell us much about whether the vamps are out there,” Detroit said.
“No, it doesn’t,” Jason agreed. “But we’ve got to get out there regardless.”
I heard shuffling; then a glow lit the room from something in Detroit’s hand. It was the locket she’d worn, now open in her palm. She swiveled it until it projected a complicated map onto one of the closet’s walls.
We oooohed and aaaahed at the sight.
“Gadgets are my gig,” Detroit matter-of-factly explained. “Now, when we open the door, we’re going right. We stay straight until the corridor ends; then
we take a left. Halfway down that corridor there’s an emergency stairwell. I’ve got to pop the sensor on the door, and then we’re in. We take the stairs all the way down, and we’re back in the tunnels. Everyone got it?”
“We’ve got it,” Paul said. “Let’s do this.” He cracked open the door and peeked through it, light slicing through the darkness.
“Clear,” he said, and one by one we slipped into the Pedway.
It looked exactly like you’d expect a pedestrian walkway to look. This part of the corridor was wide and made of concrete, and the floor was made of chips of stone and tile stuck into concrete. Not much to look at, but it would certainly keep you out of the snow.
We all run-walked through the corridor toward our next turn until Paul, panicked expression on his face, motioned us back against the wall. My heart suddenly pounding, we flattened against it.
I blew out a nervous breath, my ears straining to hear whatever had triggered Paul’s concern, but heard nothing. The hallway was silent except for the hum of the fluorescent lights above us.
And then the voice behind us.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
Slowly, I turned around. There were three of them—a tall and dark-haired boy stood in the front; two girls stood behind him. All three wore gray and black clothes in complicated layers over bodies that were supermodel—or maybe just anorexically—thin. By the look of them, I would have guessed they were about my age. But then I got a look at their eyes—dark, dilated, and definitely not young. Better yet, none of them looked happy to see us, and they were positioned between us and the janitor’s closet. Our escape route.
“Vampires,” Jason murmured. He glanced back at me. “Be ready,” he said and then stepped forward. Paul stepped behind him. I reached out and grabbed Scout’s hand. She squeezed back.
“You’re out late, aren’t you?” asked the vampire in front. He had a low, heavy accent, and when he talked I could see the tips of his fangs.
One of the girls behind him hissed like a cat, her fangs gleaming in the overhead lights. She took a half step forward. I pushed back against the wall a little more, my muscles suddenly straining to run. It was like my body knew they were bad—and wanted to get away from them as quickly as possible.
“We’re on our way out of your territory,” Jason said. “All we ask is safe passage for a few hundred yards.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “We only want to go as far as the next corridor. Just to the stairwell, then we’re out of your way.”
The vampires spread out, forming a line—and now a total barrier to the closet.
“Safe passage is expensive,” said the one in front. “You want to dance with the devil, you have to be prepared to pay the price.” The female who’d hissed stepped toward him, then draped herself along his side like a languid cat, one hand on his shoulder, the other across his stomach. She made a low growl. There was something very disturbing about watching these kids play at being monsters.... It didn’t help that they actually were monsters.
The other girl pulled a wicked-looking knife from her knee-length gray vest. Its blade gleamed in the overhead lights. She licked her lips.
I guess blood was the price they wanted us to pay.
“We pay the price every day,” Jason said darkly. “You know who we are?”
The boy in front scanned each of us in turn, his dark eyes judging and evaluating.
“I know,” he agreed after a moment. “But your sacrifice doesn’t pay the fee. This is my land. My territory.” He slapped a hand to his chest. “If we let you move through our land, the thieves begin asking questions of us. And we don’t like questions.”
I couldn’t help it. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself. “The thieves?” I asked. Scout called my name in warning, but it was too late. All their eyes—dark and dilated—were fixed on me. The boy in front tilted his head and let his gaze slip up and down my body.
Gooseflesh lifted on my arms. Scout squeezed my hand harder and moved incrementally closer, like she could protect me just by being nearer.
“Your magic is young,” he said. “Untested.” He sounded intrigued by the idea, maybe by the possibility that someday, someone would test it. That thought wasn’t exactly comforting.
I may not have been thrilled to have his attention, but I wasn’t going to cower. Vampire or not, he wasn’t going to bully me. “It’s been tested enough,” I assured him. “Who are the thieves?”
He blinked slowly, like a drowsy tiger. “I believe you call them ‘Reapers.’ We refer to them as the thieves of life.”
I almost pointed out that he and his crew were vampires. I wasn’t sure how they could drink blood without a little thieving of their own.
“And our passage?” Jason asked, getting the vampire back on track.
“I believe I mentioned the expense?”
“Name your price.” I could hear irritation rising in Jason’s voice . . . and in the new one that chimed in.
“I don’t think the price is yours to name, iubitu.”
We all turned to look behind us. At the other end of the corridor—the one we needed to get to—stood another group with the same dark hair and the same black eyes, the same young skin and very old eyes. But these vampires wore lighter colors, and their clothes were all old-fashioned. Pencil skirts, red lipstick, and short fur coats for the girls; greased-back hair and long trousers for the guys. They looked like they’d stepped right out of the 1940s.
At the front of the group was a girl with long blond hair that fell in tight curls across her shoulders. She was the one who’d spoken.
The boy in black spoke again. “This is not your concern, Marlena.”
“Oh, but it is my concern,” Marlena replied. “You’re here, entertaining guests, in my territory.”
Oh, great. Not only were we standing in the middle of a mess of vampires, we’d walked into some kind of fangy landgrab.
The boy showed his fangs to Marlena, and my heart began to thud in my chest like a bass drum. I felt like I was standing in a room with a wild animal . . . or a pack of them.
“Your territory stops three blocks back, Nicu.”
“My territory stops where I say it stops.”
I leaned toward Scout. “Are they arguing about a couple of blocks of industrial carpeting?”
“Not just carpeting—entrances and exits to the tunnels. They control getting in and getting out from the Pedway. That means Adepts, Reapers, and anyone else who uses them. That’s why we avoid the Pedway.”
“Guess they’re a little fuzzy on the boundaries right now.”
“Sounds like it,” she agreed.
“Lily?” Jason asked, without turning around. “Can you do something if we need it?”
“Yes,” I told him, answering the unspoken question—could I use firespell to take them out? “But it’s a lot easier if they’re standing together.”
“Perhaps now is not the time to have this discussion,” Nicu said. “Not when there are Adepts in our midst.”
Marlena barked out a laugh. “I don’t care anything about Adepts, iubitu. Nor, I think, do they care for us.” She put her hands on her hips, her short red nails tapping against her skirt. “Are you scared?”
This time, the bravado came from Paul. “Hardly. But we do have things to do tonight. So if you’ll give us passage, we’ll get out of your way.”
Marlena and her crew took a step forward, their movements synchronized. “Vampires do not give. Vampires take.”
Paul made a sarcastic noise. “You think no one will notice if you harm us here? You think no one will care if you spill Adept blood in your hallways?”
“I think I find it amusing you believe we would spill your blood.” She ran the tip of her tongue across one of her inch-long canines. “Oh, to be young again.”
Ironic, I thought, since she looked like she was barely older than me.
“Lily?” Jason prompted.
“I’m not sure I have en
ough juice to take two shots,” I whispered. Even if I took out Nicu’s crew, that left another set of vampires who clearly weren’t conflicted about drinking from well-intentioned teenagers.
“No worries, Shepherd,” Scout quietly said. “I got this one. Parker, rile them up. I’ll keep them talking. And when I give the word, lose the lights.”
Scout’s lids fell, and she began to mouth words. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it must have been a spell. I also had no idea what she was planning, but I trusted her. She’d been an Adept longer than I’d been in high school, so I ignored the panicked roll in my stomach, sucked in a breath, and took a step to the left—directly into their line of sight.
“Hi,” I said, waving until all eyes were on me. “So, Nicu, what were you saying earlier about this being your land? I think you said this was your territory?”
Just as I’d predicted, Marlena wasn’t thrilled by that. She let out a low, threatening growl. “Your kingdom? Such hubris from someone so undeserving of it.”
The woman who’d wrapped herself around Nicu untwined her arms and pulled out her own set of weapons—some kind of sharp, round blades that fit over her knuckles. Nothing you wanted to run into in a dark ally—or even a well-lit pedestrian walkway.
“And what have you done to deserve it, you harpy?”
“Me? I honor our memories, our traditions. You, on the other hand, are an embarrassment to the vampyr,” Marlena said. “You and yours are pitiful. And we know that you are weak.”
The vampires around Nicu began to hiss and show their fangs. He glared across at Marlena, his eyes half-hooded. “Never forget, Marlena, who made me vampire.”
“Mistakes,” she growled out, “can be remedied.”
Scout was still mouthing her spell. With each word she spoke, the vampires seemed to become more and more angry. Soon they were screaming at each other in a heavy language I didn’t understand.
I stood at the ready, hands at my sides, wiggling my fingertips as I waited for Scout to give me the signal to douse the lights.
“Three,” she finally said, “two, and one.”
I tugged on the power, and the lights went out above us. The vampires began to yelp. I wasn’t sure if they could see any better in the dark than we could, but they clearly weren’t happy about being plunged into darkness while enemies were in their midst.
