A Trail of Echoes

  Gripping Ibrahim’s shoulder, I leaned in close to his ear. “Hover us down there so we can see through the windows,” I said, in a voice barely louder than a breath.

  I felt myself being lifted from the ground as Ibrahim levitated us until we were level with the first window. When we peered through it, it was clear that this was a cabin room. It was small, and there were two bunk beds. One man was sitting at a small table, reading a book. He wore a black polo neck shirt and black pants. Since there was nothing of importance here, Ibrahim moved us to the next window. Yet another cabin room. We continued moving around the ship at the level that we were on, but all we found were more cabins.

  “Let’s go further down,” I whispered.

  Ibrahim lowered us down a level, and now we began to see things that looked more interesting. Behind the first window was some kind of meeting room. It was a large room, and there was a long glass-topped table running down the center, with high-backed wheeled chairs around the edges of it. There was a light cream carpet on the floor, and everything looked sleek and modern.

  We moved on to the next window, and here we found some kind of control room. The walls were lined with desks upon which sat dozens of computers and other equipment I couldn’t put a name to. From where we hovered, I could make out five men—also wearing all black like the others we had seen previously. They were eating around a small table in the center of the room and were caught up in conversation, though I couldn’t hear a word they were saying from outside. Even when I pressed my ear up against the glass, I couldn’t hear the slightest thing. This was one thing that I found odd—Xavier and other vampires had tried to listen in from a distance to make out any conversations happening on the ships, but they had been totally unable. They should have been able to make out at least some human voices from where they stood listening. Now I was beginning to believe that these hunters had deliberately soundproofed the boat—yet another thing about their presence here for me to feel disconcerted about.

  “I want to get into this room,” I whispered to Ibrahim. “But in order for me to look around, I’m going to need you to create a distraction.”

  Ibrahim paused. “A distraction… Okay. I’ll think of something. But this will mean being separated for a while.”

  “That’s all right. Just make sure that I stay invisible. I will stay in this room until you return. Say something when you enter so we can find each other.”

  Ibrahim grunted, and then he held my arm again. A moment later, we appeared inside the room. We emerged in one corner, and I remained deathly still, barely daring to breathe as the rope attaching the warlock to me slipped from my wrist and I felt the warlock’s presence leave me alone with the hunters.

  I backed up further against the wall as I watched the men cautiously. I was now able to hear what they were saying.

  “How is Sarah?” one of them asked.

  “Due in three months,” another replied.

  “Do you know what it’s going to be?”

  “We want it to be a surprise… How is your other half?”

  The man sighed. “Jenny hasn’t been well recently. She’s been in the hospital more than she has been at home. But when I left, she was doing okay.”

  To my disappointment, the conversation continued in the same mundane vein, so I focused my attention on the computer monitors. I did not dare budge from my spot just yet, in case the floor creaked beneath me. So I remained standing as I was. I had to wait for Ibrahim to figure out a way to draw these hunters out of the room so I could explore.

  Barely a minute later, a deafening siren went off. It was so loud, it reverberated around the entire ship. I had no idea what he had done—perhaps set off a fire alarm. In any case, his idea worked. The five men exchanged confused glances and, dropping their food, they ran out of the room.

  As soon as all of them had exited, I walked over to the first monitor. The screen was blank, but I had learned a bit about computers from Sofia—at least, how to work a basic laptop. While these were certainly more complicated, I recognized that most of them appeared to be in sleep mode. The screens were dulled, but not completely black—there was still a light behind them. I moved the mouse. Nothing happened. I pushed a button on the keyboard. A pop-up appeared requesting a password.

  Hm.

  Moving away from that particular monitor, I scanned the rest of the computers. All of their screens were blank… except for one, in the far corner of the room. This was a taller and wider monitor than all the others. I walked up to it and stared at the computer, trying to make out what I was looking at. Possibly more than a thousand small white dots were speckled about the screen over a dark red background, and each moved around seemingly randomly. Some whizzed left and right, others moved slowly, while some weren’t moving at all.

  I scanned all corners of the monitor, looking for clues as to what this was. But it was in full-screen mode, so I saw nothing but the dots and red background. Placing a hand over the mouse, I moved it until a cursor showed on the screen. I glided it upward and clicked the minimize button.

  A pop-up window appeared.

  “Minimizing window will stall motion sensors. Hit ‘Y’ to continue, or ‘N’ cancel.”

  I held my breath as I stared at the words.

  Stall motion sensors.

  Realization fell upon me like a block of wood.

  These white dots. They were my family. My friends. My people.

  I didn’t know how they were detecting our movements and keeping tabs on every single one of us. I could only guess that they must have some sort of advanced satellite technology that was able to sense movement that the witches’ spell wasn’t blocking.

  A chill settled in at the base of my spine as I wondered what else they had discovered about us. How else they were watching us.

  I started as Ibrahim’s voice rose above the loud siren behind me. “Derek.”

  “What?”

  “We need to go.”

  Before I could object, the warlock’s hand closed around my shoulder and the next thing I knew, I was hurtling through air at the speed of light. When my feet hit solid ground again, we were back at the jetty of our Port.

  My mind was reeling as I tried to process what I had just witnessed. I felt irritated that Ibrahim had removed us from the ship after so little time. If I’d stayed longer, there were many more things that I might have discovered from that unlocked computer.

  As he removed the invisibility spell from both of us, I turned on him.

  “What happened?” I asked, trying to reel in my frustration. Ibrahim would not have brought us back here so soon without good reason.

  He gazed back out at the ship we had just left, disturbance in his eyes.

  “That alarm,” he said, “I didn’t set it off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I didn’t deliberately set it off. I was vanishing myself from room to room, looking for a fire alarm of some sort to trigger, but as I paused in a corridor, that siren went off, and I… I heard someone yelling: ‘Witch on board!’”

  I stared at Ibrahim.

  “Witch on board?” I repeated, wondering if I had somehow misheard.

  He nodded, fixing his eyes on me. “The hunters are gaining intelligence faster than we’ve given them credit for. They have sensors, a radar, or something on the ship that is incredibly astute.” He looked like he was still in disbelief himself. “They were able to pinpoint not only that some kind of supernatural had set foot on the ship, but exactly what kind… I guess they didn’t sense you because you’re still a human. Perhaps they’re not yet at the level of detecting a fire-wielder.”

  I held up a hand. “Wait. Are you sure that nobody could’ve seen you?”

  Ibrahim breathed out impatiently. “No. I was invisible, Derek. Just as you were.”

  My mind reeled at the implications of Ibrahim’s words. If they could detect witches, what other supernatural creatures could they detect? Vampires for sure, but what else?
>
  And how on earth could they have developed such technology so quickly?

  I had no idea how such systems could work. But I didn’t need to understand. The fact was, the hunters were upping their game in ways that none of us—not even Eli or Aiden—had dreamed of. And now we knew for certain that it wasn’t just vampires they were targeting, it was all supernaturals.

  Although in theory Ibrahim and I could have stayed on the ship longer—after all, he was a powerful warlock—he’d been right to return us to The Shade. We did not know what tricks and surprises the hunters had up their sleeves with their new technology, and it was better not to aggravate them.

  “Did you manage to discover anything at all?” Ibrahim asked.

  After I explained what I had seen, his jaw dropped.

  I looked up at the dark sky. “You and Corrine need to work on reinforcing the spell so that our movements will be invisible to their sensors also.”

  He nodded. “I’ll go and see her. We’ll try to fix this as soon as possible.”

  Then he vanished.

  Casting one last glance back at the ships, I left the Port. As I made my way toward the Residences to find my wife, it chilled me to imagine those black-clad hunters watching my every step from their control room.

  Chapter 10: Sofia

  I could hardly believe Derek when he told me what he and Ibrahim had discovered on their short trip to one of the hunters’ ships. Although we didn’t want to worry any of our people unnecessarily, we also didn’t want to keep them in the dark, so we leaked the story about what Derek and Ibrahim had witnessed, and news soon spread to everyone.

  Ibrahim and Corrine thought that they’d figured out how to tweak the spell so that the hunters could no longer sense our movements, and Mona helped them, although she had lost many of her powers when Lilith died.

  There was outrage from the dragons when they found out that the hunters were watching us so closely. It seemed that some of them had not even been aware of the ships stationed around the island to begin with. Clearly they were very territorial creatures and Jeriad was immediately up in arms and wanted to go scorch the ships.

  Of course, they could have done that, but that was not what Derek wanted, and that was not what I wanted either. We didn’t want to cause more bloodshed or make enemies out of the hunters. So far at least, they had not harmed us—although we all knew what their intentions were. Still, we had no desire to spark a war between The Shade and the human world. We were on their side, even if they refused to believe it.

  I was tempted to go with Derek to visit them and start a dialogue with the hunters, try to reassure them that we meant no harm, but my father said we would be crazy to do it. At this stage, he didn’t think that they would even give us a chance to talk. He suspected that they might agree to meet with us but only as a trap and as soon as we were within range, we would be shot. And so that idea was pushed aside.

  Derek forbade anyone to go outside of the boundary except with our express permission. He and I started going for walks along the beach every evening, to check if the ships were still there. Each time, they were. Weeks passed, and they still remained, just waiting and watching… for what exactly, we still weren’t sure.

  Although Derek was firm in his decision to let them be and not launch an attack, I could see the effect that the hunters’ presence was having on him psychologically. I knew my husband, every part of him—often better than he knew himself. Even when we were talking about something else, I could sense it playing at the back of his mind, and I couldn’t miss the worry behind his eyes.

  Then one evening during our walk, to my dismay, we spotted two more large gray ships moored near the other three. My hand tightened around Derek’s.

  His brows furrowed as he stared out toward the new vessels.

  I was proud of him for how he’d handled the situation so far—it was quite unlike Derek. Usually he was not the first to suggest a peaceful course of action. Now I worried that if any more ships arrived, he might forget all notions of peace and just start planning to blast them out of the water. But this would not be good for anyone in the long term. And we had both witnessed too much bloodshed already.

  But as I stood there with him that night, watching the dark outlines of the five ships above the waters, I wasn’t sure what to say to him. I did not want to tempt fate and assume that he was going to resort to violence. So I just kept quiet and waited for him to reveal his mind to me.

  But he didn’t. He stayed just as silent as me. After ten minutes had passed, I didn’t see the point in remaining out here longer. So we had five ships watching us now instead of three. It was what it was.

  Turning to face him fully, I reached my arms up and draped them around his neck. I pulled his head down so that he was looking at me instead of the ships.

  “Baby,” I said softly. “Let’s go to bed. You’ve had such a long day. Worry about it more in the morning, if you have to.”

  He looked reluctantly back at the ships, and then down at me. An expression of regret settled in on his handsome face. Dipping down toward me, he kissed my lips tenderly and whispered, “I’m sorry, Sofia. I haven’t been present with you recently.” He paused, brushing my cheek with his thumb. “But I promise I’ll be yours tonight. All yours.”

  The smile that spread across his lips warmed me. He reached around me and picked me up. Relieved, I heaved a sigh and rested my head against his chest as he carried me back toward the forest.

  I cast one last glance toward the ships. As Derek sped up, I was about to look forward again when I spotted something odd just beyond the boundary.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Derek stopped, looking down at me in surprise. “What?”

  He put me down on the sand so I could stand on my own two feet and then, grabbing his hand, I ran toward the water again. Just beyond the boundary, a smooth rounded surface stuck out from above the waves. It looked like… the roof of a submarine.

  My heartbeat quickened.

  “What is it, Sofia?”

  I’d forgotten that Derek’s eyesight wasn’t as good as mine. “It looks like a submarine is trying to enter The Shade.”

  Derek cursed beneath his breath. “So they’re actually trying to enter the island now…”

  I moved into the waves until the water reached my waist. Something clicked, and a hatch opened. A head pushed out. The head of a man. I frowned in confusion as the rest of him was revealed and he stood up straight on the roof, his back facing us as he gained balance. He didn’t appear to be armed with any weapons at all, and he wore just a loose checkered shirt and jeans. The way he was dressed… he did not look like a hunter. When he turned slowly to face us, I used my acute eyesight to study his face closely.

  And then I gasped.

  “What is it?” Derek said, his voice a mixture of nervousness and impatience.

  Vampire vision or not, I still wasn’t willing to believe my eyes until I was standing right next to that man.

  “To the Port!” I said.

  Grabbing Derek’s hand, I raced with him to the jetty and jumped into one of the submarines we had floating there.

  “Navigate us toward that submarine,” I said.

  “Sofia, what the—”

  “You’ll see,” I said breathlessly. “Just get us there quickly!”

  He gave up trying to get an answer out of me and just hurried us forward as fast as the vessel would go.

  I could see the belly of the submarine beyond the boundary as we approached. It was a small one, and it was… oddly familiar. My heart pounded as we arrived right next to it. I left the control room and climbed out of the hatch. In the time that it’d taken us to travel here, another person had climbed out of the submarine—now there were two humans standing on top of its roof.

  A man and a woman.

  Almost twenty years older than when I had last seen them.

  Cameron and Liana Hendry.

  Chapter 11: Sofia
br />   My voice caught in my throat, as did Derek’s when he climbed up through our submarine’s hatch and stood behind me.

  “Cameron!” Derek gasped, his voice hoarse.

  The redheaded man swiveled in our direction and looked around blindly.

  “Derek?” he whispered, squinting. “Is that you?”

  My heart leapt to hear his voice for the first time in so long. Cam’s Scottish accent was still as thick as ever.

  Without warning, Derek dove into the ocean and resurfaced on the other side of the boundary. He gazed up at his two old friends whom he had shared centuries of his life with.

  I leapt into the water too and swam until I bobbed in the waves next to Derek.

  Cameron broke out into raucous laughter while Liana squealed at the sight of the two of us. The lines in Liana and Cameron’s aged faces showed as they beamed. The couple bent down and stretched out their hands to us—but Derek and I could manage without their help. If anything, we might cause them to slip and fall into the water.

  We climbed up next to them. Liana pulled me in for a tight embrace while Cameron enveloped Derek in a strong hug.

  When we drew apart, all four of us just stared at each other, speechless.

  “What are you, King Derek?” Cameron asked, half grinning and half frowning. “You’re warm like a human, and yet you hardly look a day older than when we last saw you.”

  “And Sofia?” Liana said. “You’re a vampire? I thought you both turned back into humans.”

  Derek looked like he wanted nothing more than to just stand there and talk, as did I, but the two of us looked anxiously toward the direction of the hunters’ ships.

  “It’s not safe out here,” Derek said, clutching Cameron’s shoulder. “Let’s get on the other side of the boundary first.”

  “I guess it’s been so long since we were last here,” Cameron said, his voice reminiscent, “we don’t have permission to enter The Shade like we used to.”