“Yes.”
I closed my eyes and swore softly. Part of me had hoped that Penny and Nuri had been wrong—that it wasn’t the wraiths taking the children. I guess I should have known that a child with a strong enough seeker skill to understand what I was would not be wrong about who her captor was.
I took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Where did this creature take Penny and the other children?”
“Into the false rifts.”
I frowned. “False rifts?”
He nodded. “The rifts that do not drift. The ones that hide within the shadows.”
The image of the crater, with its thick, threatening darkness, swam through my mind. I shivered. I didn’t want to venture into that darkness; I really didn’t.
“How many rifts are there like this?”
“Six,” he replied. “But only two are used when they are accompanied by the children. The large one you inspected, and one down the other side of this hill.”
“Can you show me the one Penny came through, the day she was rescued by the ranger?”
Fear slithered around me. It seemed the Carleen ghosts feared the rifts, though what danger any rift presented to ghosts I still had no idea.
The deep-voiced man considered me for a moment and then nodded. “Follow me.”
“I’ll have to break our communication off. I cannot walk when linked to my little one.”
“Unless you wish to join us here in Carleen, that is probably wise,” he said, with a half smile. He would have been a good-looking man in life, because that smile transformed his ghostly features. “I can see death’s claws gaining hold in your flesh.”
And I could feel it. “Thank you very much for your honesty and your help. I really appreciate it.”
He half bowed. “Perhaps, one day, you could return the favor.”
“It would be my pleasure.” I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do to help these ghosts, but I couldn’t see the harm in agreeing to the request, either.
“Then go. The little ones can follow our lead.”
“Cat,” I said as I closed my eyes. “It’s time to leave.”
Warmth spun through me, a sensation not unlike a featherlight kiss against skin, then her energy began to bleed from my body and condensed once more into my palm. The hands of death similarly began to retreat, but they left me shaking, weak, and colder than I’d ever felt in my life.
For several minutes I did nothing more than rub my arms with numb fingers in an attempt to get both blood and heat rushing back through my muscles. My toes ached as life flushed back into them, the sensation not unlike the pins and needles that flowed when I tried to walk after my foot had fallen to sleep.
I cursed again, then pushed upright. Carleen did a somewhat mad dance around me, and it took every ounce of concentration not to fall right back down again. It had been too long since I’d pushed myself like this; my strength—both physical and mental—was not what it should be.
I took another long, deep breath, and then said, “Okay, lead the way.”
My two ghosts leapt off to the right. Thankfully, we headed down the other side of the hill, away from the crater with the unsavory darkness, not toward it. This section of Carleen was even more ruined, though, and there was little here but drifting flurries of metal and concrete dust. Luminescent moss covered the few oddly shaped mounds of building rubble that did remain. Its stench stained the air and lent the shadows a sickly green glow.
The Carleen ghosts led us down the steep hill and into a flatter section. In the distance I could see the vine-entwined remnants of the curtain wall and, beyond it, more trees, these ones healthy, untouched by the magic of the rifts. Did that mean the rifts within Carleen were as restricted to this place as the ghosts? That seemed strange, but then, given how little anyone knew about the rifts and their movements, maybe it wasn’t. And there was little hope of getting the Others to tell us anything about the things. Beyond the fact none of them appeared to have any form of recognizable speech, all attempts to capture one of them alive had so far failed.
Bear’s energy tugged at my left hand. I followed his lead off the path, picking my way carefully through the moss and the dirt. Dust puffed up with every step, filling the air and making breathing difficult.
Dark energy began to crawl across my senses, and my steps slowed. Ahead was another crater, this one unrimmed by anything more than dust. The Carleen ghosts stopped, but I moved on until I was standing on the edge of the crater. It wasn’t as deep as the other one I’d seen, but the darkness was just as thick and unpleasant. I shivered. I really didn’t want to go into it—but if I wanted to find out what had happened to Penny and the other children, then I really had no choice.
I swallowed heavily, then glanced back at the waiting energy that was the Carleen ghosts. Their reluctance to come any closer stung the air. I couldn’t say I blamed them. “Thank you again for your assistance—and wish me luck.”
Amusement spun around me, but with it came the urge to be cautious. As if I needed that sort of warning.
I took another of those deep breaths that did little to curb the fear crawling inside my stomach, then resolutely stepped into the crater and made my way down into the heart of that creeping darkness.
Chapter 5
The shadows thickened, became a real and solid presence that pressed down upon me like a ton weight. Every step became an effort; all too soon my leg muscles were quivering and my breath was little more than short, sharp jabs for air. It was almost as if I were climbing the sides of a very steep mountain rather than sliding into a crater.
Fear swam around me, fear that was both mine and that of my two little ghosts. As slow as my progress was, they couldn’t keep up with me. This darkness, whatever it was, was pushing them back, refusing them entry. No matter how hard they tried, they were falling farther and farther behind.
I stopped and looked back, my breath little more than a wheeze as I sucked in the putrid air. The rim of the crater couldn’t have been all that far above me, but it was barely visible through the ink that surrounded us. My two little ghosts were caught in an area between the thicker shadows and the murky light of day—sparks of energy that glowed brightly against the gloom of this place.
“Cat, Bear¸ you’d better go home and wait for me there.”
Their sparks moved in agitation, and I smiled. “I know you want to help, but I don’t want to risk your safety, and we have no idea just what this stuff might do to you if you continue to press against it.” Especially given the Carleen ghosts’ reluctance to enter this place. Maybe there was a reason; maybe they’d tried—and died—in the process.
No matter what humans might believe, ghosts could die—the fact that energy vampires could feed on their energy and thereby destroy them was evidence enough of that. I had no idea whether the darkness that inhabited these craters—or anything else, for that matter—could kill them, but it simply wasn’t a chance I was willing to take. Carleen’s ghosts feared something here, and if not this darkness, then what?
Both Cat and Bear’s concern and reluctance spun through my mind. “It’s okay,” I said, keeping my voice as calm and even as I could—a hard task given the weight of this place and my own growing fear. “I’ll be okay. I’ll call you when I figure out what this place actually is or where it goes. Go home, and protect the little ones.” I paused, then, as intuition itched at the back of my mind, added, “Don’t let Penny into our home. I don’t care what you have to do, don’t let her—or anyone else—inside.”
Their energy briefly danced about—they were happy to have something to do, someone to protect—then they pulled themselves free of the shadows and disappeared from my sight.
It was the first time in ages I’d been without them, and it felt oddly lonely.
I resolutely turned and continued pushing my way into the crater. By the time I reached the base, I was covered in sweat and trembling from head to toe. I paused again, sucking in the air, hating the thick
foulness of it. Hating the taste of death that lay all around me.
Although I couldn’t see them, there were ghosts here. Ghosts whose energy felt as odious as the darkness itself; it was almost as if this place had infected them, made them into what it was.
Which made very little sense at all.
I frowned and took another step forward. The heavy darkness slid around me, a sensation not unlike the caress of silk against bare skin, but somehow unclean. Then, with little warning, it gave way and lifted.
I blinked and looked around. The crater’s base was strewn with rubble, bones, and refuse. And, in one corner, spinning on its axis, was a small, dark globe of shimmering, sparkling energy.
The fear crawling in my stomach exploded through the rest of me. That globe was a rift. Stationary, visible, and outputting a different sort of energy from the other rifts I’d come across, but a rift nevertheless. Penny had come through here, through it, if the Carleen ghosts were to be believed—and I did. There was no other reason for her to be here. No other way for her to get to Carleen without their having seen her.
But a rift . . . I backed away but hit the thick wall of shadows and was forced to stop. I hissed and tried to remain calm. Penny had come through this place. Where she had come, I could go.
But Penny had been stained by darkness—possibly this darkness. I didn’t want that darkness in me. Didn’t want it to even touch me.
I closed my eyes and weighed the terror of approaching—entering—that rift against the need for answers. I could walk away now and no one would ever know—no one but the Carleen ghosts. If they’d remained around to witness my retreat, that is.
It was tempting—very, very tempting.
But then I saw the disintegrating features of my little ghosts, heard their screams as the Draccid gas that was fed into our air systems ate at their little bodies. Could feel the weight of them in my arms as Cat, Bear, and I tried—and failed—to get them out of the nursery and save as many as we could.
We hadn’t known it was useless, that there was no safety to be found anywhere in the bunker. Not until the Draccid began eating at me, anyway, and Cat and Bear had crawled into my arms to die.
But I’d sworn, in the long months of my recovery, to never, ever let another child suffer if I could at all help it, and that was a promise I had no desire to break—not even now, faced as I was with whatever terrors might wait on the other side of that rift. Besides, I might have been called many things during my years as a lure, but “coward” had never been one of them. It wasn’t a title I wanted to earn now.
I clenched my fists and forced reluctant feet forward. The rift’s energy slashed at my skin, its touch sharp enough to draw blood. I bit my lip and drew a gun, flicking off the safety as the whips of power wrapped around me, drawing me closer, hastening my steps into that spinning orb.
I couldn’t have stopped now even if I’d wanted to.
The orb began to rotate faster and faster. Air spun around me, thick and foul and filled with dust, growing stronger and stronger, until it felt like I was being pulled into the heart of a gale. A dark gale, from which there was no light, no life, and possibly no escape.
Only the fact that Penny had somehow escaped not only from wherever she was being held, but from the orb itself, kept me from panicking, from fighting to be free.
The darkness of the orb encased me. Energy burned around me, through me, until it felt as if it were pulling me apart, atom by atom; it studied me, moved me, then, piece by piece, put me back together again.
Then the energy died, the whips holding me disintegrated, and I was spat out into an entirely different type of darkness. One that had a wooden floor, and where the air held the thick scent of perfume and sex.
Then pain overwhelmed everything else, and I shuddered, gasping for breath and kneeling on all fours, unable to move, sweat and blood dripping from my face and streaming down my arms to puddle on the floor beneath me.
The wounds on my arms, I reflected absently, looked like knife cuts—just as the scars on Penny’s arms had.
She hadn’t been attacked with a knife. Those scars had come from traversing the false rifts many, many times.
What the hell was going on?
To understand that, I needed to move. To explore where I’d been dumped. But moving was going to hurt; hell, even breathing hurt. It wasn’t like I had many other choices, though. Kneeling here, bleeding and sweating, wasn’t going to get me much in the way of answers.
I gritted my teeth and pushed to my feet, my breath a hiss of air as the shadowed room did several mad laps around me. For a few minutes, I did nothing more than stand there, battling to keep my knees locked and my body upright.
Then, as the pain eased, I looked around. The room was large and rectangular, with no windows and only the one door at the far end. Even from here, I could see the heavy padlock. Oddly, the lock was on this side, not the other, meaning it was designed to keep everyone else out rather than something in.
There was little else in this room beyond dust and cobwebs, and certainly no indication that anyone had come through here recently, much less a little girl.
I frowned and looked over my shoulder. The globe hovered above the floor, but it was less obvious in the shadows of this room. Its energy was muted, indistinct, as if all the fire had gone from it. A result of my using it, perhaps? Or was it naturally muted on this side—wherever the hell this side was? That was a question in urgent need of an answer, but first I needed to recover my strength.
I sheathed my weapon, then staggered over to the wall and leaned against it. After closing my eyes, I focused on my breathing, on slowing every intake of air as I reached the calm and peace of my healing state.
I have no idea how long I remained there. Healing could take minutes or it could take hours, and in this silent place of dust and cobwebs, it was rather hard to judge the passage of time.
When I finally opened my eyes, I felt renewed. The wounds on my arms—and no doubt those on my face—had healed, leaving no trace of the scars that had littered Penny’s body. I still stank of sweat and blood, but there was little I could do about that. Not until I got back home, or at least stole some clothes from somewhere.
The aroma of perfume spun around me again and on a floor above, a woman laughed. It was followed by the squeak of bedsprings, and a low sound of pleasure—though this time the voice was male rather than female.
I frowned. Had I somehow landed in the basement of a house? And where was that house situated, given I obviously wasn’t anywhere in Carleen anymore? I couldn’t be. I had no idea if it was possible for ghosts to have sex, but there was no way in hell they could do so in a place like this, simply because no such place existed in Carleen anymore.
I pushed away from the wall and walked to the far end of the room, my steps little more than a whisper on the dusty wooden floorboards. The lock on the door was thick and old, the chain thicker still, but newer, shinier. It would have been easy to shoot either the lock open or the chain apart, but that would warn whoever was having sex that someone was down here.
Unfortunately, lock picking wasn’t one of my skills, so I looked at the door instead. The frame was metal, as was the door, so even without the chain in place, it was doubtful I could kick the thing open without alerting the building’s occupants.
My gaze fell on the hinges. They were the old-fashioned type with hinge pins. If I could knock them out, the door would open. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to get them back in, not from the other side, anyway, but it was either that or go back through that sphere.
And there was no way in Rhea I was about to do that.
Before I escaped this place, however, I needed to change my appearance. I had no idea who or what waited outside, or how well guarded this building might be. The last thing I needed was my real image caught on some security camera. Better by far to conceal the truth and have them searching for a person who didn’t exist.
At least I’d taken the time
to recover from the trip through the rift, because I was going to need my strength. Rearranging my features—becoming someone else, at least on the outside—wasn’t easy, nor was it pleasant. From what I’d witnessed over my years in the shifter camps, a shifter wanting to take on their animal form simply had to reach into that place inside where the beast roamed, and unleash the shackles that bound it. This type of shifting was more complicated. Not only did I have to fully imagine all the minute details of the body I wanted, but I had to hold it firm in my thoughts as the magic swirled through and around me. Easier said than done when the magic that changed me was anything but pleasant. Still, better that than someone recognizing me at a later date.
As I had with the healing state, I took several deep breaths and slowly released each in an effort to calm the tension running through my limbs. Then I closed my eyes and pictured a face in my mind. A face that was sharp, almost gaunt, with pale skin, green eyes, and a thin, unhappy mouth. She had a cleft in her chin, curly brown hair, and was slender. Flat-chested but strong. It was similar enough to my own build—aside from the flat chest—that it hopefully wouldn’t be quite as painful to change.
Then, freezing that image in my mind, I reached for the magic. It exploded around me, thick and fierce, as if it had been contained for far too long. It swept through me like a gale, making my muscles tremble and causing the image I desired to waver. I frowned and held fiercely on to the likeness. The energy pulsed as the change began. My skin rippled, bones restructured, hair shortened, curled, and changed color. It burned, hurt; I gritted my teeth against the scream that tore up my throat, my breath little more than sharp hisses as pinpricks of sweat broke out over altering flesh.
When the magic finally faded, I collapsed back against the wall, sucking in air and feeling very different. I opened my eyes and looked down. My breasts were definitely smaller, meaning the rest of the image had probably stuck as well.