City of Light

  But at least one good thing had come from their arrival—it had finally forced shifters and humans to set aside all differences and act as one against a greater foe.

  And yet humanity’s fear of vampires had not been usurped by this newer evil. Even I feared the vampires, and I had their blood running through my veins. It didn’t make me safe from them. Nothing would.

  Ghostly fingers ran down my arm and tugged at my fingertips. I followed Cat as she drifted toward the left edge of the building, my gaze scanning the old park opposite. The shadows growing beneath the trees were vacant of life, and nothing moved. Nothing more than the wind-stirred leaves, anyway. I frowned, moving my gaze further afield, studying the street and the battered remnants of what once had been government offices, trying to uncover what was causing the little ones so much consternation.

  Then I heard it.

  The faint crying of a child.

  A young child, not an older one, if the tone of her voice was anything to go by.

  She was in the trees. At dusk, with the vampires about to come out. An easy meal if I wasn’t very quick.

  I spun and ran for the stairs. The ghosts gathered around me, their energy skittering across my skin, fueling the need to hurry. I paused long enough to slam down the hatch and shove the bolts home, then scrambled down the steps three at a time, my pace threatening to send me tumbling at any moment.

  At the bottom I again stopped long enough to lock up behind me. I might have an instinctive need to save that child—a need no doubt born of my inability to save the 105 déchet children who’d been in my care the day the shifters had gassed this base and killed everyone within it—but I wouldn’t risk either discovery or the security of our home to do so.

  The ghosts swirled around me, urging me to hurry, to run. I did, but down to the weapons stash I’d created in the escape tunnel rather than to the front door. I fastened several automatics to the thigh clips on my pants, then strapped two of the slender machine rifles—which I’d adapted to fire small sharpened stakes rather than bullets—across my back. Once I’d grabbed a bag of flares and threw several ammo loops over my shoulders, I was ready to go. But I knew even as I headed for the main doors that no amount of weaponry would be enough if the vampires caught the sound of either the child’s heartbeat or mine.

  The dome’s security system reacted far faster than mine, the doors swishing open almost instantly. The pass-codes might change daily, but I’d been around a long time and I knew the system inside out. Not only had the motion and heat sensors installed throughout the museum been programmed to ignore my lower body temperature, but I’d installed an override code for the outer defenses that didn’t register on the daily activity log. I might be flesh and blood most of the time, but as far as the systems that protected this place were concerned, I was as much a ghost as the children who surrounded me.

  Once the laser curtain protecting the front of the dome had withdrawn, I headed for the trees. Cat and Bear came with me, their ethereal forms lost to the gathering darkness. The others remained behind to guard the door. It would take a brave—and determined—soul to get past them. The dead might not be the threat that the vampires were, but the astute didn’t mess with them, either. They might be energy rather than flesh, but they could both interact with and manipulate the world around them if they so desired.

  Of course, the smaller the ghost, the less strength they had. My little ones might be able to repel invaders, but they could not hold back a determined attack for very long. I just had to hope that it didn’t come to that tonight.

  City Road was empty of any form of life and the air fresh and cool, untainted by the scent of humanity, vampire, or death. No one—living or dead—was near.

  So where was the child? And why in hell was she alone in a park?

  I ran into the trees, breathing deeply as I did so, trying to find the scent of the child I’d heard but gaining little in the way of direction.

  Thankfully, Cat seemed to have no such trouble. Her energy pulled me deeper into the park as the stamp of night grew stronger. Tension wound through my limbs. The vampires would be rising. We had to hurry.

  Bear spun around me, his whisperings full of alarm. Like most of us created in the long lead-up to the war, there was no human DNA within his body. In fact, despite his name, he was more vampire than bear shifter and, in death, had become very attuned to them.

  They were rising.

  Sound cracked the silence. A whimper, nothing more.

  I switched direction, leapt over a bed of old roses, then ran up a sharp incline. Like the crying I’d heard earlier, the whimper died on the breeze and wasn’t repeated. If it hadn’t been for Cat leading the way so surely, I might have been left running around this huge park aimlessly. While my tiger-shifter blood at least ensured I had some basic tracking skills, basic wouldn’t cut it right now. Cat, while not trained to track, was almost pure tabby. Her hunting skills were both instinctive and sharp.

  The urgency in her energy got stronger, as did Bear’s whisperings of trouble.

  The vampires had the scent. They were coming.

  I reached for more speed. My feet were flying over the yellowed grass, and the gnarled, twisted tree trunks were little more than a blur. I crested the hill and ran down the other side, not checking my speed, my balance tiger sure on the steep and slippery slope.

  I still couldn’t see anything or anyone in the shadows, but the desperation in little Cat’s energy assured me we were getting close.

  But so, too, were the vampires.

  Their scent began to stain the breeze, a mix of decay and unwashed flesh that made me wish my olfactory senses weren’t so keen.

  Where was the damn child?

  I reached for a rifle, unlocked the safety, and held it loose by my side as I ran. Bear whisked around me again, whispering reassurances, his energy filled with excitement as he raced off into the trees. Seconds later I heard his whimper, strong at first but fading as he ran away from us. If the vampires took the bait, it would give us time to find our quarry. If not, I would be neck deep in them and fighting for life.

  I broke through the trees and into a small clearing. Cat’s energy slapped across my skin, a warning that we were near our target. I leapt high over the remnants of another garden bed, and saw her. Or rather, saw the bright strands of gold hair dancing to the tune of the breeze. She was hiding in the shattered remains of a fallen tree. Beside that tree lay a man. I couldn’t immediately tell if he lived. The scent of death didn’t ride his flesh, but he didn’t seem to be breathing, either. Though I could see no wounds, the rich tang of blood permeated the air—and if I could smell it, the vampires surely would. Bear’s diversion probably wouldn’t last much longer.

  I dropped beside the stranger and rolled him over. Thick, ugly gashes tore up his chest and stomach, and his left arm was bent back unnaturally. I pressed two fingers against his neck. His pulse was there—light, erratic, but there.

  Yet it was the three uniform scars that ran from his right temple to just behind his ear that caught my attention. They were the markings of a ranger—a formidable class of shifter soldier who’d once been used to hunt down and destroy the déchet divisions, and who now formed the backbone of the fight against the Others. While it was unlikely this ranger would know what I was by sight or scent—especially given that lures had been genetically designed not to have any of the telltale déchet signatures—he still wasn’t the sort of man I wanted anywhere near either me or my sanctuary.

  Especially not when there were nearly three platoons—or, to be more precise, ninety-three—of fully trained adult déchet haunting the lower levels. The children might have few memories of the hideous way the shifters had killed everyone at the base, but the same could not be said of the adults.

  I shifted my focus to the log and the strands of golden hair blowing on the breeze.

  “Child, you need to come with me.” I said it as gently as I could, but the only response was a tightening o
f fear in the air. But it was fear of me rather than the situation or even the night.

  Cat spun around me, her energy flowing through my body, briefly heightening my sense of the night. The vampires would be here soon.

  The urgent need to be gone rose, but I pushed it down. Dragging the child from the log would only make her scream, and that in turn would make the situation a whole lot worse. Noise was our enemy right now. The vampires weren’t the only dangers night brought on—many of the Others tended to hunt by sight and sound.

  “The vampires are coming, little one,” I continued, even though I was talking to scarcely more than a strand of hair. “Neither of us are safe here.”

  “Jonas will protect me. He promised.” Though her words were stilted, there was nothing in the way of fear or uncertainty in them. Which was odd.

  “Jonas is injured and can’t help anyone right now.” Not even himself. I hesitated, then added, “We need to get out of here before the vampires arrive.”

  She didn’t respond for a moment. Then a dirt-covered cherub face popped up from the hollow of the tree. She scanned me, then stated flatly, “I won’t leave without Jonas. I won’t.”

  “Jonas is unconscious, but I’m sure he’d want me to get you to safety rather than worrying about him.”

  She continued to study me, her blue eyes wide and oddly luminous. I had a strange feeling that the child understood all too clearly just what I was saying—and her next words confirmed that. “I won’t leave him here to die. I won’t let you leave him for the vampires. You have to save him.”

  “Child—”

  “No,” she said, her lip trembling. “He saved me. And he’ll save you. You can’t leave him here to die.”

  I frowned. He’d save me? A ranger? Even if he didn’t realize what I was, it was an unlikely scenario, given rangers had been notorious for forsaking the wounded. And if he did realize . . . I thrust the thought away with a shudder and simply said, “His wounds are fairly serious—”

  “Promise me you’ll help him!”

  Cat spun around me, her whisperings filled with urgency. If we didn’t get moving soon, we’d be dead. Given I had no wish to die, I had to either snatch the child and race her—screaming—to our sanctuary, or do as she wished. The first would attract all manner of trouble other than the vampires, but to help a ranger . . .

  I took a deep breath and released it slowly. I might have been trained to seduce rather than destroy, but that didn’t alter the fact that shifters had eradicated everything and everyone I knew or cared about. It went against every instinct I had to save this one.

  And yet the instinct—need—to save this child was stronger still.

  “Okay, I’ll help him.”

  She eyed me for a moment, a little girl whose gaze seemed far too knowing. “You promise?”

  “Yes.”

  Cat whisked through me. The image of the vampires flowing through the trees rose like a deadly black wave. We had five minutes, if that.

  “Who’s that?”

  The child’s blue gaze wasn’t on me, but rather on the energy that was Cat as she hovered near my shoulder. I raised an eyebrow. “You can see Cat?”

  “Cat? What sort of name is that?”

  “It’s short for Catherine,” I said. Which it wasn’t, but I had no idea where this child was from or how much she might have been taught about the war and déchet. Those who’d created us hadn’t afforded us real names—couldn’t humanize the military fodder in any way, after all. So they used the breed of shifter we’d been designed from, and whatever number we were of that breed. Cat was number 247 in production terms. And while it was unlikely our names would be a giveaway, I wasn’t about to take a chance. Not when there were still shifters alive today who’d survived the war. “Mine’s Tig.”

  She didn’t ask me what it was short for. Her gaze went from Cat to me, then back to Cat. “She’s not real. You are.”

  “She might not have flesh, but she’s as real as you and me.”

  The little girl frowned and stood. She was wearing a smock that was grimy and blood-splattered, and there were half-healed slashes all over her arms and legs. Anger rose within me, then swirled away. I needed to make sure we were safe before I could allow any reaction to those cuts.

  Because those cuts were too sharp, too straight, to have been caused by anything other than a blade.

  “How can she have no body and be real?”

  There was still no fear in her voice, and no apparent realization just how close to disaster we truly were. I wondered briefly if she was human. She didn’t smell like it, but then, she didn’t exactly smell like a shifter, either.

  “Because not everything that is real has human flesh.”

  I clipped the rifle onto a loop on my belt and squatted beside the ranger as Cat’s energy hit again. Images slashed through my mind—dark beings running through the trees, their hunger surging across the night. We needed to go. Now.

  I gripped the man under his shoulder and heaved him over mine. “Do you have a name?”

  She hesitated, and then said, almost shyly, “Penny.”

  “We need to go, Penny.” I thrust upward, my legs shaking under the stranger’s sudden weight. Holding him steady with one hand, I unclipped the rifle and rested my finger against the trigger. “Run with Cat. She’ll take you into a safe place. Wait for me there.”

  The little girl’s lips trembled a little. “And Jonas?”

  “Jonas and I will be right behind you.”

  She nodded, then scrambled over the tree trunk and ran after the energy that was Cat as she retreated through the trees. I followed, Jonas’s body a dead weight that allowed no real speed or mobility.

  Bear reappeared, his whisperings full of warning. I ran up the hill as the night around me began to move, to flow, with evil.

  They were close.

  So close.

  But there was something else out there in the night. It was a power—an energy—that felt dark. Watchful. At one with the vampires and yet separate from them.

  And instinct suggested I needed to fear that darkness far more than the vampires who swept toward us.

  I cursed softly and pushed the thought away. One threat at a time. I needed to survive the vampires before I worried about some other, nebulous threat. “Bear, I need your help here.”

  His energy immediately flowed across mine, allowing me to see everything he saw, everything he felt. While this level of connection wasn’t as deep as some we could achieve, any bond between the living and the dead could be deadly. All magic had a cost, an old witch had once warned me. While my ability to link with the ghosts wasn’t so much magic as a mix of psychic abilities and my own close call with death, it still taxed both my strength and theirs. And it could certainly drain me to the point of death if I kept the connection too long.

  But for certain situations it was worth the risk—and this was certainly one of those situations.

  There was at least a score of vampires out there, which meant this wasn’t the usual hunting party. If I’d been alone, if I hadn’t promised to keep Jonas safe, I would have shadowed and run. The vampires might sense me in this form, but if I became one with the night—became little more than dark matter, as they could—then it was harder for them to pick me out from their own. I knew that from my time in the war, when the vamps had overrun a village I’d been assigned to.

  But I had promised, and that left me with little choice. Using the images Bear fed me as a guide, I raised the rifle and fired over my shoulder, keeping the bursts short to conserve ammunition. The needle-sharp projectiles bit through the night and burrowed into flesh. Three vampires went down and were quickly smothered by darkness as other vampires fell on them and fed. The scent of blood flooded the night, mingling with the screams of the dying.

  I crashed through yet another garden bed, my feet sinking into the soft soil. A deeper patch of darkness leapt for my throat, and the pungent aroma of the dead hit. I flipped the rifle and ba
ttered him out of the way with the butt, then switched it into my other hand and fired to the right, then the left. Two more vamps down.

  I leapt over a fallen branch. Jonas’s weight shifted, making the landing awkward and losing us precious speed. Sweat broke out across my brow but I ignored it, grabbing the ranger’s leg to steady him as I ran on.

  “Bear,” I said, my voice little more than a pant of air. “Light.”

  Ethereal fingers tugged at the bag of flares by my side and lifted one. Energy surged across the night and light exploded, a white ball of fire surrounded by a halo of red.

  It was bright enough to force them back, but they didn’t go far. They knew, as I did, that the flare would give me only a minute, at most.

  And they knew, like I did, that a little ghost probably wouldn’t have the energy to light a second flare so soon after the first.

  I ran on as hard as I could. The dome’s lights beckoned through the trees, forlorn stars of brightness that still seemed too far away.

  The flare guarding our back began to sputter, and the black mass surged closer. I fired left and right. The nearest vampires swarmed their fallen comrades, while those at the back flowed over the top of them, hoping to be the ones to taste fresher, sweeter flesh.

  Thirteen vampires left, if I was lucky. It might as well have been a hundred for all the hope I’d have if they dragged me down.

  Sweat stung my eyes and dribbled down my spine, and my leg muscles were burning. But the end of the park was now in sight. The old tower’s searchlights suddenly came on, hanging free from both the tower and the dome, supported by ghostly forms. Their sunshinelike light swept City Road and provided a haven of safety if I could get to it.

  Fifty yards to go.

  Just fifty yards.

  Then the flare went out and the vampires hit us.

  Chapter 2