The Black Tide

by Keri Arthur

  Given the number of body parts around me, so many others hadn’t.

  I released the light shield, regained full flesh form, and then pushed up onto my hands and knees. I couldn’t immediately see anything more than a blur of smoke. After a moment I realized why, and scrubbed a hand across my eyes to clear the blood clinging to my eyelashes.

  And saw utter devastation.

  The bomb must have been planted under the seating nearest my cage. The guards and the lords who’d been sitting there were nothing more than raw remnants barely resembling anything human, but the main force of the blast had been directed at me rather than them, and those who’d been seated farther away were bloody but alive. And being herded out the building—Charles amongst them.

  Jonas? I said urgently. Are you okay?

  Yes. His reply was a little groggy, but fierce relief shot through me. As are Julius, Nuri, and Karlinda.

  And Dream?

  But even as I asked that question, I heard footsteps and looked up. Dream was on the move, but she wasn’t running away. She was coming straight at me.

  And she was armed with a wooden stake.

  With a scream that was all madness and anger, she launched off the stage, the stake held high and ready to use as she arrowed toward me.

  I thrust away from her and then spun around, lashing out with one leg. She landed with catlike surety and twisted away from the blow, and in that moment, I saw a glint of metal in her other hand. I swore and launched at her, grabbing at her, but she was faster than a lizard and, in one smooth movement, dodged, raised the gun, and fired.

  But just as she did, Bear hit her and knocked her sideways. The bullet that would have blasted my face apart tore instead into the wall three feet away. As she stumbled and fell, the weapon went flying. Bear chased after it.

  Cat, grab that stake, I said, even as I hit the ground and rolled back up to my feet.

  Dream was down, but she was twisting and cursing as she battled the unseen force that was Cat for the control of the stake. And then she started speaking, and though I didn’t understand the words, I felt the rise of energy and Cat’s squeal of surprise. I quickly stepped forward and stomped as hard as I could down onto Dream’s stomach.

  Her breath left in a sudden wheeze and the force of the spell died. Cat ripped the stake from Dream’s grip and Bear, who now held the gun, hovered several feet away. Given the anger emanating from both ghosts, Dream only had to twitch the wrong way for that gun to be fired.

  Cat handed me the stake. I sat astride Dream’s stomach and placed my knees on her arms to hold them still. She bucked and heaved, trying to dislodge me, but I held on tight. When that didn’t work, she began mouthing words that were undoubtedly the beginnings of another spell. As the threads of foul energy began to weave around me, I raised the stake high and thrust it into her shoulder. As much as I wanted to plunge it into her black heart, it would have killed her far too quickly.

  But like me, she had vampire genes, though hers had come from a rift rather than scientific modification.

  Like me, she would burn. Burn as fiercely as if she were standing in the fires of hell itself. And it wouldn’t end, not until the stake was removed, and I had no intention of doing that.

  The pain was obviously so fierce that she could no longer hold an alternate image. Her body rippled and pulsated with a savageness I knew from experience would—under any other circumstance—be both excruciating and draining, and the black-skinned, green-eyed woman I’d glimpsed only twice soon appeared.

  Her eyes were little more than slits, her face pale with shock and agony, and she was beginning to stink of sweat and fear. But all I could feel was her fury.

  “You think you’ve won?” Her words were little more than vicious pants of air. “You have won nothing.”

  “Which is why you’re now dying slowly rather than receiving a clean death,” I replied evenly. “Tell me what you’ve done—what plans you have in place regarding the UV lights—and I’ll end your life now rather than delighting in watching you suffer.”

  She hawked and spat. Bear batted the globule away before it got anywhere near me.

  “You’ll get nothing from me.” Her breathing was faster, her words more difficult to hear, and her body temperature was increasing so rapidly my thighs were heating up. “And my pain is nothing compared to the utter desolation and despair that will soon overtake this city.”

  “It’s impossible to totally erase light from this city,” I said. “Even if you manage to bring the grid down, there are backup generators and battery-sourced units all across the city.”

  Her sudden smile had a chill running down my spine. “Keep thinking that, déchet. It will make the inevitability of both your death and that of this city so much sweeter.”

  Footsteps approached. I reached across, grabbed the gun from Bear, and twisted around. Jonas raised an eyebrow at me and held up his hands—as did Julius. Neither of them had escaped unharmed—their clothes were torn and bloody, Jonas was limping and had a chunk out of his thigh, and Julius had a cut across his forehead and blood dripping from a roughly bandaged hand that was missing two fingers. But they were at least up and mobile. There were so many behind them who were not.

  “I do hope,” Julius said, “that it is not your intention to shoot us given our rather timely rescue of yourself.”

  “Sorry.” I lowered the weapon. “I thought it might have been her people approaching.”

  “I rather think her people would have simply shot you.” Julius squatted beside Dream, studying her as one might an interesting bug. “What madness has taken hold that you would risk this city’s safety?”

  Dream’s breathing was now loud gasps for air, her body was shaking, her clothes drenched with sweat, and the fire caused by the stake so fierce her skin was beginning to glow an eerie yellow-orange. But she nevertheless dredged up the strength to say, “Madness? No. It’s revenge. Revenge for everything your people did against mine.”

  “It was a war,” he said. “Atrocities happened on both sides.”

  Which were the very same words I’d once said to Jonas. I could feel his gaze on me and looked up with a smile. He echoed it, but there was a tension in him, one that suggested he, like me, knew there was far more to come. That the destruction would not end with Dream’s death.

  “We’ve shut down your labs, and destroyed all the pathogens and mutations you were developing,” he said. “Your vampires will never now gain light immunity—”

  “Maybe not in this generation, maybe not even in the next, but it will come.” Her voice was little more than a harsh croak now, but it nevertheless resonated with satisfaction. “They have been given the basic framework. It will spread and grow, and then humanity and shifters alike will no longer dominate the landscape.”

  “But you’re human, so why—” I hesitated as my seeking skills whispered her secrets to me. “You were a part of the HDP team.”

  Her gaze jumped back to mine and something cold—very alien—stirred in her eyes. “I ceased being human—ceased being Ciara Dream—the minute our paths crossed a vampire and a wraith in that rift.”

  Julius sucked in a breath. Obviously, Jonas and Nuri hadn’t gotten around to telling him that particular part of the story. “You cannot have had dealings with the wraiths—that is impossible!”

  “As impossible as déchet still being alive today,” she agreed, and began to laugh.

  Only her laughter gained a high note of keening that spoke of fear and grief, and then it became a whole lot more. It was almost, I thought with a chill, a call to arms. But who was she rallying? All her forces were surely either dead or captured....

  She started to convulse. I thrust up and stepped away from her; her keening grew until the sound went beyond human ears—possibly even beyond shifter’s ears—but not beyond mine.

  But why— The thought stalled. I had vampire in me. This wasn’t the crying of a dying woman in pain—she was mustering the vampires.

&nbs
p; My gaze shot to the blown-out, broken remnants of the arched windows. Even though UV lights burned any hint of the oncoming night from the sky, they had no effect on my inner timer.

  Dusk was settling across the sky high above us. Though the vampires might not yet dare to venture from the safety of their underground haunts, they would nevertheless hear the cry of their mistress. Not audibly, because I doubted Dream’s keening, however high-pitched and powerful, could reach that far across the night.

  But it didn’t need to.

  She was a part of the greater hive mind.

  Her keening would echo through the entire population—not just through the den nearest to Central, but all of them.

  And they would answer her call en masse.

  Even as that thought crossed my mind, the lights went out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There was a brief moment of shocked silence, and then a thick wave of confusion and terror hit the air. In the many years since the war, Central’s citizens had never faced darkness. And while this room was a long way from the true ink of night, it didn’t matter. Most of them were blind even in shadowed light.

  Jonas wasn’t. And, thanks to both my vampire and tiger genes, neither was I.

  If the surety with which Julius grabbed the gun out of my hand was anything to go by, he could also see. He shot Dream through the forehead, ending both her suffering and her rallying cry.

  “Why the fuck haven’t the backup gens kicked in?” Jonas said. “I thought you said you’d secured both the grid and the backup systems?”

  “We did,” Julius bit back. “But obviously not securely enough.”

  A heartbeat later, a siren started. Jonas swore and glanced at me. “That’s the gate closure signal. There must still be people out in the rail yards.”

  “They’re dead people if they don’t hurry up and get inside.”

  “If the entire city has lost its lights, neither the drawbridge nor the wall will stop the vamps.”

  I knew that better than anyone—the same way I’d gotten into the city countless times at night would be the very method the vampires used. Only this time, the towers would not be alight to stop them.

  Julius touched his ear-mic, and after a moment, said, “Thank Rhea for that—at least we’ve not been left totally defenseless.”

  Jonas and I shared a glance. Obviously, though this room—and the entire area around government house, if the twilight beyond the shattered windows were anything to go by—had lost light, some of the UV towers remained operational.

  There was yet hope that the destruction Nuri envisaged might not yet happen.

  “Order an immediate evacuation to the north side of the city,” Julius continued. “And that includes all units manning the southern end’s wall and the gates. Push them back to the lit areas and set up a new defense line.”

  “Chief, you can’t simply abandon—”

  “Ninety-five percent of the population has little to no night vision, Galloway,” Julius snapped back. “We have night vision glasses, but they’re useless against vampires in shadow form. I’d rather protect who and what we can and get the grid back online ASAP than waste lives fighting what will amount to a black tide we can’t even see. If the attack in Chaos taught us one thing, it’s that humanity has little hope against the vampires when they act to one purpose. And if the wraiths come with them—”

  Rhea help us all.

  He didn’t say those words, but it was what we were all thinking.

  “I don’t think the wraiths will be a problem,” I said, even as I crossed mental fingers. “I don’t think they’re quite ready to attack just yet.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Julius said. “Because the last thing we need are those bastards causing even greater chaos.”

  Because the wraiths would attack both structure and people, whereas the vampires at least only went after life.

  “The Others will not be our problem.” Nuri stopped on the edge of the dais and stared down at us. “But the only true hope this city has is to get the grid back online. It’s not just the local nest Dream called into action—it was all of them.”

  Jonas stared at Nuri, his gaze narrowed and tension emanating from him. “You have a plan.”

  “I do.”

  Her voice was as flat as her expression. Even the halo of her power was tamped down. It almost seemed as if she didn’t want to waste the tiniest fraction of energy on any sort of emotional or metaphysical display.

  “And I’m gathering it does not involve me.”

  “It does not.”

  “I won’t—”

  “Be of any use up on that wall—”

  “I’m a soldier,” he bit back. “And I have full night vision. I belong on that wall, fighting to protect this city.”

  “You will die on that wall,” she snapped. “You might be able to see at night, but you cannot see or sense vampires in shadow. You would be dead in a matter of minutes—”

  “As we all will if we keep standing here arguing about it—”

  “Not us all, Jonas. Not if we’re sensible.” She paused. “And is death what you really want, after possibly finding the one thing you have long searched for?”

  His fists clenched and anger practically leached from every pore in his body. For one instant, he didn’t say anything and he didn’t move.

  Then he looked at me.

  And I knew in that instant I was his “possibly.”

  I didn’t know what to say—there were so many emotions tumbling through me, many of them so very new and so very precious. And yet I didn't have the time to think about them, let alone savor them. Night was but minutes away. We had to move.

  “I will not leave you to fight alone—”

  “But I won’t be alone,” I said. “I’ll rally the ghosts again.”

  “No. It’s too great a—”

  “It’s the city’s only hope,” I cut in, “and you know it.”

  “What I know,” he growled, “is that I will not leave you and a goddamn bunch of ghosts up there alone to fight for this city.”

  “Ghosts?” Julius said. “What nonsense is this?”

  “Catherine is a witch,” Nuri said equably. “Only her power is the ability to call those who haunt this world.”

  “And what dead....” He paused, and an odd sort of dread spread across his expression. “Are we talking déchet who died in the bunker?”

  “Yes,” Nuri said.

  “Is that not dangerous?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Too damn dangerous,” Jonas said, glaring at me. “I will not allow—”

  “You,” I said gently, but with a steel that came from too many years of having no control over my own actions, “have no say over what I can and can’t do. Not now, not ever. I’m done with all that.”

  He scrubbed a hand across his eyes. I did not mean—

  I know. I gently touched his arm, and then returned my gaze to Julius. “I’ve done it once before, when we went into the den that lives in the remnants of the old city’s sewage and storm water systems. It was the only reason we were able to get those children out.”

  “Then do it.” Julius glanced at Jonas. “Galloway, I need you to lead engineering into the southern power station—”

  “You cannot order me to do anything, sir—”

  “Jonas,” Nuri said coldly. “This fight has moved beyond the grip of mere mortals—it belongs to those of us who are ultimately far more.”

  “Meaning one woman and a handful of ghosts? That hardly seems fair odds against what comes.”

  “It is not one woman, but two,” Nuri said. “It’s time I called to the earth to protect her people. Play your part, Jonas, and allow us to play ours.”

  “Besides,” I added softly. “We only have to hold for as long as it takes to get the lights back online. The faster that is done, the greater our odds of survival.”

  He didn’t say anything for several long seconds. He simply stared at Nuri before
switching his gaze to me. “Fine. But you survive, no matter what. Is that clear?”

  I crossed my arms across my chest, although all I wanted to do was to grab him. Hold him. “I will.”

  He nodded and glanced at Julius. “Is the team being assembled?”

  “As we speak. This way.”

  Julius nodded at Nuri and me, and walked away. Jonas followed, every step echoing with anger and frustration. I glanced at Nuri. “Will he be okay?”

  “If he’s sensible,” she said. “But I’m not entirely sure he’s capable of that right now. How fast can you get me to the wall?”

  I smiled, though it held little in the way of amusement. “Are you sure you’re ready to be transported as matter?”

  “It’s not like I have any other choice,” she replied. “I’m not exactly built for speed, and the vampires are rising as we speak.”

  Bear, I said, as I walked toward the dais. Can you go with Jonas? Keep him safe for me?

  And me? Cat said, as Bear chased after Jonas.

  I took a deep breath and released it slowly. I need you to go to Carleen and ask the ghosts to make sure no vampires get through their city. But be careful, Cat, please.

  I will, she said simply, and raced away.

  It made me feel altogether too alone. I walked up to Nuri and, once she’d slipped a long, thin backpack over one shoulder, wrapped my arms around her ample body and called to the shadows. Energy surged in response, tearing through me and into Nuri, breaking the two of us down to particles between one heartbeat and another. Feeling her in and around me—separate and yet not—was a very weird, and very different experience. And it was in that moment I realized Nuri was far more than a mere human capable of magic. She was the earth personified—she was the richness that gave life, and the quakes that could tear it apart. She held the strength of mountains and the gentleness of the gossamer grass that crawled across the highest peaks. She was human—and yet not. Because of the earth. Because of the power it imbued her with.