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Cam peered through our makeshift barricade in the stone tower. “The forest sounds absolutely wild out there.”

What was wild was that we were safe and alive after that plane crash.

I had luckily held on to Cam in the ensuing aftermath of the plane splitting apart. Lyra’s horrified face still haunted me. I wished I had been fast enough to yank Cam back, but now, we were separated from the rest of our team. We’d barricaded ourselves inside the crumbling remains of a stone building with materials from the Mortal Plane that somehow involved a tower. What mortal building used to have a tower? I was beginning to think the Leftovers were just messing with us at this point. We’d been lucky to find this place before sunset. It was odd how perfectly we found the pathway leading to this place, but there were no creature auras around except for one. It wasn”t the beast that had attacked our plane, so I wasn”t too worried. This area did smell of death—old, not new. I kept those things to myself for the moment. Humans didn”t particularly like knowing that death was in the air, no matter how old.We had placed discarded wooden planks over the hole in the wall to barricade ourselves inside. One lantern from our gear bag cast a small, warm circle of light.

I blinked my tired eyes as Cam glanced back at me. “You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” I muttered. It was a lie. I was exhausted. Passing out wasn’t exactly my style, but the world had gone black when we had landed. I’d woken to see Cam’s frightened face. His concern poured out of him. My body reacted to his outburst with an instilled reaction of calm after I realized we must be on the ground and safe. Honestly, it was nice to wake up to him instead of that monster. Using the powers from the necklace made me weaker than I recalled feeling in the Immortal Plane. It took even more out of me to use it here in the Leftovers.

We”d wandered around looking for the others to no avail. Cam had to support me with his shoulder. It was incredibly frustrating to be slower than a human, but I eventually got over my embarrassment. Still… if I had my strength back, I felt like I could find Lyra more easily in all this. Cam”s actions from the plane irritated me, but he was just trying to save the little animal.

Anyway, he paid for it. When he released the rodent beast from his jacket, it clung to him, whining. I had smirked, informing him that even with my exhausted senses, I could tell when an animal was bonded to someone. Good luck getting rid of it now. It had hung on his backpack with its little claws as we walked. Cam had accepted it. He seemed to have a soft spot for animals, which made me miss Drigar. A redbill could”ve gotten us around this area much faster than picking our own way over the large tree roots.

Now, Cam offered a bite of his granola bar to the creature. I contained my frustrated sigh. Well, if Cam starved because he’d fed all his survival rations to the rodent, that was going to be fun…

We were in for a long night. I was tired, but I knew I should stay awake. Leaving Cam alone to watch out for us didn’t seem like a good idea with that monster possibly around. I staggered to the ruined wall Cam was currently peeking out of to join him. He offered his arm, but I was okay as long as I could lean against the bricks. They would hold under my weight. I surveyed the forest. We only had a small line of vision, thanks to the wooden barrier, and it was too dark to see much, even for me. Cam”s intense stare was what I sensed the most.

”Yes?” I asked expectantly. Maybe he was realizing that he was going to have to stay awake with me until I regained my strength.

”Are you sensing the area when you look out like that?” Cam asked, genuine interest flooding his face. ”Sorry, it”s just… I”ve never worked up close with a vampire like this.”

I snorted. ”And now you have a vampire using you as a crutch. You”re in for an adventure.” I shrugged, staring out at the trees. ”Vampires are always using our senses, just like you can’t turn your ears on or off. It”s a matter of paying attention to the right things. You learn as a child to tune out the tiny auras of smaller creatures, who pose no threat.”

”Fascinating.” When Cam said it, he actually meant it. Sometimes, I was asked questions by humans who didn’t really care… or who just wanted another reason to see vampires as freaks.

”We”re safe for now,” I informed him. I settled back against the wall as his blue rodent stared at me. ”You”ve become the parent of a smart animal, at least. He knows how lucky he is that you rescued him.” The thing kept close to Cam, as if the young man was his mother.

Cam pressed his lips together. ”I”m sorry for not following orders… I just thought I had enough time.”

”It”s in the past,” I told him with a sigh. ”I’d tell you not to do it again, but I know you won”t because Bryce and Lyra will have a lecture waiting for you whenever we find them. I”ll let them handle that.” I wasn”t a bitter person, or one to hold grudges, but I was secretly looking forward to seeing Lyra draw herself up for a strong smackdown. The lecture would be about priorities and not going after half-dead furry blue things while an airplane was breaking apart in midair. I studied the creature, who slowly stepped behind Cam, and added, ”Actually, your new friend seems to be doing better than me.”

”He healed quickly. His leg is still messed up, but I was surprised to see how okay he is,” Cam admitted. “Maybe it’s an effect of the Leftovers.” His watch flashed. I couldn’t believe the thing was in working condition. It was a few minutes past midnight in the Mortal Plane. We were going to have to talk to keep each other awake through this. Cam wasn’t going to be able to sense the monster, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open at the moment.

This plan proved easier than I thought, because once I opened up a little, Cam was insatiable with questions.

”So, what does an aura feel like?” Cam asked. The blue rodent, who hadn”t been named yet, squirreled away into his arms.

I stared down at my hands, recalling how odd the invisible creature”s aura felt around the plane before it attacked.

”It starts like an itch and then keeps tingling,” I said. ”You can feel it down to your bones.”

Cam”s eyebrows raised, clearly impressed. ”Wow. You”re like a superhero.”

I let out a chuckle. By tomorrow, after some rest, I would be okay, but I was no superhero. ”That would be nice, but even vampires have limits. The jumping you saw me do earlier isn”t standard for vampires.” I tapped the necklace around me. ”I had some help from some old friends, which allows me to work that specific kind of magic. It’s just very draining and only for emergencies.”

”My mother said many vampires trained as warriors. How young did you start?”

I reflected. It was always hard to give ages like humans did. Vampires never cared that much for numbers. ”I was an adolescent, I suppose. It was right after I hit puberty, although I knew I wanted to be a warrior before that. The elders preferred you to choose a path early on, so that you could focus all your training on your skills… unfortunately, for my generation, our numbers were already decimated. Everyone went into warrior training out of necessity, but a majority of us specialized in it due to the needs of our people. Many older vampires were lost because they weren’t able to fight at all.” I paused. Thoughts of Vanim no longer plagued me with such sadness, after I accepted my grief and saw Lanzon.It left a bittersweet feeling in me, but it was manageable now.

Cam seemed like he was working hard to keep his fascination at bay, but I didn”t mind. It was better than silence.

”What was training like?” he asked, looking through our peep hole and scanning.

I smirked. Warrior training seemed far away now, but I remembered the misery well enough. ”Brutal. I remember the first time I tried to jump off a redbill’s back and my old trainer, your equivalent of a military drill sergeant, just shoved me off. I landed on my face in a heap of thorny bushes. The healers had fun trying to reconstruct my nose, but thankfully my speed of healing helped a lot.”

Cam stared at me, as if searching for any hint that something like that had happened to my face. ”Is it strange for you to fight among humans? I”ve heard stories that the humans had a hard time in the Immortal Plane.”

This young man is incredibly perceptive.

”It was hard for them,” I explained. ”The Immortal Plane can be a vicious place, but they adjusted. Your kind has an immense capacity for adaptation. I won”t try to speak for Lyra, for example, but it”s been impressive. I mean, obviously, I married her.”

He smiled. It was the first easy expression I had seen on his face. ”Yeah, that”s true. It”s fascinating for me to learn about the background of everyone involved in this mission.”

I studied him, realizing I hadn”t asked much about his own past. I trusted Bryce’s and Lyra’s judgment, so I’d never probed too deeply into the people they brought along in groups. Yet, I knew nothing of Cam besides his relation to Bryce.

”You have your own past, though,” I said. ”What was your training like?”

”I did two years of military service, but things changed when my mom became the face of the international fight to help vampires. I didn”t know much about supernatural stuff back then,”Cam said. Hescratched the rodent in its furry spikes and the creature relaxed happily into his arms. ”Things got a bit crazy. Some of my fellow soldiers took a strong stance against vampires, which I found to be frustrating after my mom told me about them. I don’t like feeling ignorant, but I was. That’s something that bothers me most—lacking knowledge. There”s still a lot of ignorance about supernatural things, something I”m coming to realize after I figured out how little I knew. I decided to leave and get involved, but I wanted to do it on my own terms.”

A soldier setting out on his own terms was something I respected. I nodded. It was interesting to hear him talk. If I had been born human, perhaps I would”ve become a soldier like Lyra or him.

My bleary vision grew stronger as we chatted, trading stories from our times in training. I gave him some first-hand accounts of my crazier adventures since the fall of Vanim. He seemed especially fascinated by the way I’d just kidnapped Lyra at first sight.

”You just… took her?” Cam asked, aghast.

I smirked. ”You know Lyra a bit. Back then, she hated vampires like the others. Kidnapping was my only option. All the Bureau, besides the ones secretly working with the Immortal Plane, hated vampires. She thought I was the enemy, and I had to gain her trust quickly.” Talking about her made me miss her terribly. I hoped she was okay, wherever she was. Hopefully with the others. Since Cam and I managed to stay together, maybe they did too.

We went on like this for another hour before Cam started yawning. I told him to take a nap. My strength had slowly returned to a stable level during our discussion, the pleasantness of trading war stories distracting me from my fatigue. Now, I felt refreshed in a different way. As he slept, I glanced outside our barrier. It was still stupidly dark, but I could see the outline of the trees. Tiny creatures scurried nearby, but they were harmless and even smaller than the blue rodent, so I paid them no mind. I turned and stared at the brick wall in front of me, wondering where Lyra was sleeping tonight. Was she safe? I hoped she wasn”t worrying. Cam and I could handle ourselves.

The creature from the aircraft was nowhere close to us, thankfully. I wondered why it had left our plane and then returned to attack us again. Something was missing from the puzzle, but I couldn”t figure it out yet. Maybe I would ask Cam what he thought, when he returned to the land of the conscious. He was pretty crafty. For now, I wanted to let him sleep. He was smart to ask about the other humans’ experience and human limitations. Now, I sort of hoped Bryce and Lyra would go easy on him. Even the rodent was growing on me as it snored alongside Cam, curled up contentedly on the young man”s stomach.

Time passed slowly but surely. I watched the forest. I tried to feel for the creature’s aura, but there was nothing. Cam snored in his sleep.

Surprise shook me when I finally heard the shrill cry of Cam”s watch alarm. He’d set it for seven in the morning, but darkness still covered everything. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and seemed to be thinking the same thing as he stared out in confusion at the shadowy woods.Why was there no light? It should be daytime.

Something was wrong. I looked forward and caught the familiar sight of bark. Okay, these trees are smarter than we thought. They had wrapped around our hideout during the night.

”This stupid sentient forest,” I muttered angrily. The rodent scurried up Cam”s back and latched onto his backpack. I pushed against our barricades of old wooden planks, but they didn’t move. Frustration rushed through me, along with a beat of urgency. We needed to get out of here. A root poked up from beneath the ground. By going underground with their roots, the trees had completely secured our own barricade against us, trapping us inside their growth. Cam swore. I looked around the corners of the room more carefully. Past the debris, I saw the ends of tree roots protruding from the ground. They must”ve grown at such a slow pace that I hadn”t noticed them.

”The trees are trying to eat us,” Cam said in stunned horror. The roots curled and uncurled at their spindly ends, creating unsettling snaps inside our little refuge that was now a death trap. I glared down at the tree barrier, trying to think of a way out of this. Had the trees purposely lured us here? Cam reached into his bag and fumbled for a lighter. He flicked it near one of the roots to study it, trying to see what we were dealing with.I held up the lantern beside him to help, though its light was now flickering in and out. Was there some kind of fluctuation happening? I wished Sike was here. He”d have a scanner and a joke ready, and I missed both right now.

The root recoiled from the lighter’s flame. It didn’t like fire?

”The heat repels it,” I blurted. Cam nodded enthusiastically. He darted toward our barricade and held his lighter to the biggest root he could find. To my delight, it uncurled in an angry slither and pulled away from the fire. Cam pressed on, forcing the roots to pull back from the plank of wood. Soft light peered through the opening. The roots must’ve slowly crept over in the darkest hour of the night to trick my tired eyes. I ripped at the board with all my strength as Cam focused the lighter on the remaining anchoring roots. The trees let out a groan in the distance. Icy pricks of unsettled fear spread through my body, followed by a wave of determined anger. The trees were hurting. Good.

Serves you right for trying to send your roots to kill us.

I successfully tore the plank off. ”Let”s go,” I barked. Cam hurried after me as we stumbled through our exit and into the clearing. The daylight stung my eyes at first, but then I made out the distinct lines of buildings. A part of the forest had cleared, giving us a new view of the area.

We had somehow found a ruined city. I narrowed my gaze as I noted the familiar architecture, one not found anywhere in the Mortal Plane. It couldn”t be, and yet the truth was staring me in the face. Cam gazed around in wonder.

”What is this place?” he asked.

”The Immortal Plane, from the looks of it,” I replied uneasily. ”We”re in the ruins of an old city.”