A Wind of Change

  “Yes,” I said, with as much confidence as I could muster.

  “It sounds like the party is dying down up there now,” he said, looking up at the ceiling.

  I followed him out of the bedroom toward the front door. He opened it and we both stepped out, looking around. Vampires and half-bloods were descending through The Oasis’ entrance and heading back to their apartments. We remained standing by the doorway for the next fifteen minutes, until the last trickle of revelers seemed to have returned. But strangely, neither of us had spotted Jeramiah, Lucretia or Michael yet.

  I looked back at the clock hanging from the hallway. It was already 2:30am.

  We were running out of time.

  I exchanged glances with Joseph.

  “Where do you think they are?” I whispered.

  He shrugged. “We just need to keep waiting.”

  Ten minutes later, all three of them finally descended. I wondered why they had taken longer than the others. I didn’t give it too much thought though. I was just relieved that they had finally come.

  I was expecting the couple to part ways with Michael once they arrived outside Jeramiah’s apartment, but instead they remained standing and talking. Joseph and I looked away as Jeramiah turned, spotting us standing in the doorway.

  Joseph’s hands found my waist. He lowered his mouth to my ear. “Put your arms around my neck and pretend that you’re kissing me,” he breathed.

  I stared at him, raising a brow.

  Then I realized why he was asking this of me. Standing here doing nothing but staring looked odd. We needed to look like we were doing something.

  Joseph positioned me in front of him, so that he still had full view of the trio. Slowly, I draped my arms around Joseph’s neck and craned my neck upward. He leaned down until our lips were less than an inch apart. My breathing quickened as his green eyes met mine. He lowered his mouth to my cheek and pressed his lips gently against it, then averted his gaze back toward Jeramiah.

  My skin tingled at the touch of his lips, so close to the side of my mouth. I hadn’t expected him to touch me. But now that he was… I couldn’t say that I objected. At all. When his hand rested on the small of my back, pulling me closer still, I felt butterflies in my stomach.

  Geez, River. Get a grip.

  He’s just an… incredibly handsome guy.

  “Are they still there?” I breathed, attempting to distract myself from his touch.

  He didn’t respond for almost a minute as his lips continued to graze my cheek. Then he said, “They’re gone now.”

  He loosened his hold on me and I took a step back. Our eyes locked before he cleared his throat and looked back through his doorway.

  We both knew what had to be done now.

  Chapter 21: Ben

  I was thinking of River as I left her in the apartment and made my way up to the desert.

  When I’d bent down so close to her face, her radiant eyes gazing into mine, I’d found myself drawing closer to her than I had either intended or needed to… without even realizing it.

  I shook myself.

  Stop being a fool, Novak.

  Focus.

  Arriving aboveground, I was glad to see that nobody was still up here. Everyone had returned to their rooms. Thank God. It was 2:45am already. That left only fifteen minutes before Jeramiah knocked on our door. Fifteen minutes to get three humans up here undetected. We couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong.

  Sure that the area was empty, I ran back down to the atrium and headed back to my apartment. I found River alone in the living room, standing over a basin that she’d placed on a coffee table. She had already cut herself again and was draining more blood. I walked over to help her, slitting my own skin and allowing my blood to flow into the wide container. Both of our bloods mixed and formed a dark red pool at the bottom of it. Once I felt like we had enough, I healed her, then took a mouthful from the small container of River’s blood in my pocket while she hurried toward the sauna to retrieve the humans.

  I backed away, watching as she herded them into the living room. Walking to the basin, she dipped a hand in the blood and began to smear it over her sister. She looked toward Morgan and Hassan.

  “Cover yourselves with this blood as much as you can.”

  The humans had looks of disgust on their faces—especially Lalia.

  There wasn’t enough blood to completely douse themselves with, but it was enough to dull their scent. It shouldn’t be much more detectable than the other human blood that was stored in all of the vampires’ apartments around The Oasis.

  After the blood in the basin had been used up, I went into my bedroom and grabbed the dark beige rug that lined one corner of the floor. Rolling it up, I put it over one shoulder and then returned to the hallway to find that River had gathered the three humans to wait outside the door.

  We had only ten minutes now before Jeramiah knocked.

  I glanced at the three humans. I was going to have to carry two of them—the largest ones, Morgan and Hassan—while River would carry her sister.

  This would be the closest I had ever been to a human without ripping out their throats since I’d turned into a vampire.

  I swallowed hard. River looked nervously at me.

  Here goes…

  I allowed Hassan to climb onto my back—it was lucky that he was shorter than me—and then I picked up the girl in my arms. Even with River’s and my blood smothering them—as well as River’s blood on my tongue—they still called to me like a siren, especially the girl.

  Her neck was so close to my mouth. So painfully close. All it would take to have her warm blood flooding down my throat would be leaning down a few inches…

  I forced the thought out of my head and was about to head out of the door when River said, “Wait!”

  She put her sister back down on the ground, and hurried into the living room. Reappearing a few seconds later, she was clutching her backpack, which she flung onto her back. I supposed that taking the backpack was a good idea. River didn’t know how long it would be before she reunited with her family. She might need money in the meantime.

  River picked up Lalia again, so that the girl clung to her front like a monkey. And then we ran. I was so fast, I was sure that I was a blur to any onlooker. River was slower, but she wasn’t too far behind me. Reaching the elevators, we hurried inside and made our way to the top. And then the final stretch of the journey… I carried Hassan and Morgan through the trapdoor and began speeding through the sand toward the edge of the boundary.

  Six feet away from the exit, the brand in my arm began to burn again.

  I looked over my shoulder to see River staggering, her face contorted in pain. Her brand was scorching her too.

  What are these damn things?

  It was almost as though they were conscious and were aware of our intent. I had been aboveground in the desert before without the tattoo causing me agony—like earlier this evening at the party. It only burned when it sensed that I was trying to escape. It sensed. I felt mad thinking of these tattoos as though they were conscious beings, and yet there was a clear pattern.

  Clenching my jaw against the pain, I continued forward. As soon as we reached the boundary five miles away, I lowered Hassan and Morgan to the sand. Removing the beige rug from my shoulder, I waited until River had caught up with me and placed Lalia next to the other two humans.

  “My God, River,” Lalia gasped as she staggered around, apparently dizzy. “When d’you learn to run so fast?”

  All she got from her sister in reply was a hush.

  I dropped the rug and moved backward. The blood covering them felt like it was wearing off—or perhaps I was just becoming immune to it. I took another swig of blood out of River’s container and breathed in deeply, desperately trying to distract myself from the humans’ sweetness, especially the little girl’s.

  River picked up the rug that I had dropped. “Sit down in a huddle,” she said. The trio did as requested and
then she placed the rug over them so that they were somewhat camouflaged. Then River handed the backpack to Hassan for safekeeping.

  We had just a few minutes to get back to the apartment now. I hoped that Jeramiah wouldn’t arrive early. I scooped River up in my arms before sprinting back to the atrium. It was much faster than her trying to run after me.

  Hurtling through the door of my apartment, I looked up at the clock. One minute until 3am.

  River and I ran to the nearest bathroom and washed our hands. I looked at her clothes. They were stained with blood.

  “You need to change,” I said.

  Her eyes roamed me. “So do you.” She was right.

  After we had washed our hands and faces, we found clean clothes. River ended up wearing one of my shirts, although it was far too large for her, and a pair of shorts—she hadn’t been able to find any female clothes other than dresses.

  Then, taking deep breaths, we waited in the hallway and stared at each other. I was sure that the same worries were going through our minds simultaneously.

  Jeramiah had said that he planned to bring Michael and Lloyd with us. I had to capture one of them in order to get us through the boundary. I didn’t know just how strong Jeramiah was, because there hadn’t yet been occasion for him to display his full strength in front of me. But I knew that he was a Novak, and that was enough to know that I ought not underestimate him.

  The plan was wild, and so many things could go wrong with it, but it was all we had.

  Jeramiah ended up knocking two minutes late. I walked to the door slowly, and opened it.

  His dark hair was tied up in a bun, and he was dressed all in black.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  He seemed sober. I guessed he hadn’t drunk much at the party.

  I looked over my shoulder and called to River. She arrived next to me.

  Jeramiah smiled as he laid eyes on her.

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  That journey up to the desert was possibly the most nerve-racking experience I’d had since arriving at The Oasis. As we crossed the atrium, I looked down at the gardens below, my eyes traveling past Lucas Novak’s memorial stone, and I wondered whether this would be the last that I saw of this place.

  Aboveground, Michael and Lloyd were already waiting for us. I looked around, glad to see that no witch was present, as Jeramiah had mentioned. If a witch had come with us, our whole plan would likely have fallen to pieces.

  My fists clenched.

  We had hit the first obstacle. How are we going to ensure we leave the boundary near where we left the humans? There were any number of directions we could exit the boundary. We had to leave near them, or the distance we had to run could cause our plan to unravel.

  I decided to just take the lead.

  “Shall we start moving then?” I said briskly.

  Holding River’s hand and keeping her firmly away from Michael, who was glaring daggers at the two of us, I began to march toward the humans. Jeramiah looked a bit surprised at my initiative, but to my relief, nobody objected. They followed after me.

  I sped up, and so did they.

  “What time does the sun typically rise?”

  “If we aim to be back by around 5am, we will be fine,” Jeramiah said. “That gives us two hours—plenty of time to catch a few humans.”

  “Where do we plan to go exactly?” I asked, wanting to keep the conversation going as we approached the humans.

  “The nearest town,” Jeramiah replied. “It takes about fifteen minutes to travel there at our full speed. And we must run at our full speed if we want to travel past the hunters alive… So we’ll have ninety minutes to look around the streets for any people out late.”

  “Hunters,” River murmured. “Those men in tanks set up nearby… they’re hunters?”

  “Yes. They’re the reason we typically travel with witches whenever we need to go out.”

  “Do you steal people from their homes?” River asked.

  “Sometimes. It depends on how many humans we come across outside—”

  Jeramiah stopped dead in his tracks. My breathing quickened as his eyes shot toward the three humans, now only twenty feet away.

  That’s it.

  He’s detected them.

  I let go of River. “Go,” I hissed to her. She darted toward the humans.

  Lurching forward and grabbing Lloyd by the throat, I began hurtling after her. I ran with all the speed that my legs could muster, and I didn’t look back once. When Lloyd tried to struggle with me, I dug my claws deeper into his flesh, then snapped his neck to paralyze him.

  “I’m sorry, Lloyd,” I muttered. I felt bad for doing this to him. He had only been friendly to me. But he’d been closer to me than Michael, otherwise I definitely would have grabbed the latter.

  We approached within feet of the boundary, and I pushed us both full speed toward it. To my relief, we went flying right through it and tumbled down on the sand. Staggering to my feet and grabbing hold of Lloyd again so that I could pass through the boundary, I stepped back through where I sensed the humans were and grabbed Lalia by the hand. River had positioned all the humans in a row, linking hands with one another, while River stood at the end. I tugged on Lalia and stepped back out of the boundary again, pulling them all through with me… except River. I was expecting her to be holding on to Hassan’s hand at the end of the chain, but he appeared without her.

  She screamed.

  I swore.

  “Move back,” I hissed to the humans, keeping myself in front of them, while still maintaining a grip on Lloyd.

  Jeramiah and Michael stepped through the boundary ten feet away. Michael was holding River by the throat with one hand, while the other reached into her long hair and yanked her neck downward at a painful-looking angle.

  “River!” Lalia screamed.

  I positioned my claws over Lloyd’s chest, above his heart.

  “Let her go,” I growled.

  I looked from Michael to Jeramiah. While Michael’s expression was nothing but vindictive, Jeramiah barely looked fazed at all. It was almost as if he had expected me to do this.

  “Let the half-blood go,” I repeated.

  “Take him down, Jeramiah,” Michael said, tightening his grip on River, who was beginning to groan.

  I was expecting Jeramiah to lurch forward… or at least do something, but he did nothing. He just stood rooted to the spot, looking at me. Michael’s claws were inching dangerously close to River’s heart. I was about to shove Lloyd aside and dive for her myself when Jeramiah spoke.

  “Let her go, Michael,” he said, his voice steady.

  Michael looked as shocked as I felt.

  “What?” He gaped at his companion.

  “I said let the girl go.”

  Jeramiah eyed Michael as he loosened his grip on her and stepped back, dumbstruck. Clutching her throat, River staggered across the sand toward her sister.

  Then my cousin returned his gaze toward me.

  “I thought you were grateful for us having taken you in,” he said slowly. “Seems I was mistaken.” He let his last words linger before continuing. “Well, I don’t want to keep you here against your will, Joseph. So go on, take the half-blood and the humans… You’re free to leave.”

  He spoke the last sentence louder, and the burning of my tattoo stopped. It was as if it had never hurt to begin with.

  Jeramiah had an odd glint in his eye as he turned his back on me and headed back toward the boundary. Just before he reached it, he muttered beneath his breath: “Although something tells me you will be returning…”

  I let go of Lloyd, whom Michael took hold of and dragged through the boundary behind Jeramiah, after shooting me a dirty look.

  I wasn’t sure what Jeramiah Novak meant by those last words. Perhaps he just thought that I wouldn’t be able to survive the hunters outside and would come back begging to return, or perhaps one of the witches had put a binding spell on me, similar to the one my parents had
once endured at the hands of Annora.

  But something about the look in Jeramiah’s eye as he turned his back on me told me that it was neither of those things.

  Something told me that after my weeks trapped in The Oasis, I hadn’t even scratched the surface of what really went on here.

  Chapter 22: River

  As I stood in the desert, rubbing my throat and watching the three vampires disappear through the boundary, I was overwhelmed by a mixture of confusion and relief. I had not the slightest clue why Jeramiah had let us go so easily, but I felt nothing but gratitude to finally be beyond the boundary of that terrifying place. And the fact that my brand had stopped burning only added to my euphoria.

  I clutched my sister close to my chest, kissing the top of her head and holding her tight. Hassan returned my backpack, which I strapped on my back again. Joseph was still staring at the spot where the three vampires had left us.

  Until now, we had been so focused on just how we were going to escape The Oasis, we hadn’t talked about what we would do once we actually got out.

  Now that we found ourselves free, so suddenly and so unexpectedly, I wasn’t sure what our next step was.

  For one, I wasn’t the same person I had been on entering The Oasis. While I practically trembled with excitement at the thought of reuniting with my family again, I wondered what my life would be like now as this bizarre… creature. I guessed it was almost like being a human. I could still eat regular food, and be in the sun, at least for short periods. There were also perks I still hadn’t quite wrapped my head around—like my superhuman speed and strength, and my heightened senses. I’d just have to find a way to cope with the aching cold…

  I wasn’t sure if my grandfather had told my mother yet that Lalia and I had gone missing—I assumed by now that he would have since days had passed. It made me ache inside to imagine how much pain she’d be in. She’d be worried sick. I couldn’t wait to see the relief on her face.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. We were still in the middle of the desert. One thing was for sure: I wanted to get as far away from this area as possible, in case Jeramiah changed his mind.