Page 17

“Iguess we aren’t in Kansas anymore,” Cam said, shaking his head in disbelief. I stared at him, and he flushed. “Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting you’re a vampire. It just means that we’re a long way from home.”

He was right. Somehow, we’d stumbled across the remnants of an Immortal Plane city. Where and when this place was built, I could only guess. We had spent the last few hours combing the area before finally breaking for Cam to drink some water and feed scraps to his little blue companion.

The architecture was strange. It reminded me of some of the buildings I had seen in the merchant quarters of Itzarriol, but very basic in nature, with simpler structures and a much smaller scale.Everything was simple here.

”Can you sense what happened to this place?” Cam asked, after taking a swig from his canteen. “I’ve heard sometimes memories are left in immortal places like Vanim.”

”No, unfortunately my senses don”t allow me to pick up history about a place,” I explained, then hesitated. Vanim was the only place that sometimes gave a reaction, but humans were much more susceptible to it. ”It looks immortal in construction, but I can”t pick out a specific style, if that makes sense. I have no idea who built this place.” I studied a squat building across from us. We had stopped by a crumbling well, and Cam”s new spiked companion limped around the ruined bricks curiously. Even the material of the bricks was a bit off, with dull stonework. These buildings weren”t opulent like Itzarriol, and yet they were more complex than the sturdy structures we had in Vanim.

A scent hit my nostrils. I recognized it easily enough as the smell of death that I’d sensed the night before. It was old death. Otherwise, the blood would”ve been fresh to my senses, since there was a familiar metallic tang to new blood. I glanced in the direction of the breeze, which had brought the smell to me. Cam followed my gaze. He was perceptive to a fault.

”There”s something there,” I told him. ”It might be unpleasant. These bodies aren’t like you’re used to seeing…”

”Are there bodies?” Cam asked with a serious face.

”I highly suspect so.”

He followed me as I tracked the scent and confessed that I had also smelled it last night, but it had been too far away to be of concern. A pile of rubble sat near the outskirts of the destroyed city. It was oddly placed, as if the stones had crumbled apart only recently. The building might”ve just collapsed, explaining why the smell was everywhere.

I grabbed a few pieces of rubble, shoving them out of the way. Cam did the same. His creature sat watching us, playing with a strange nut it had found on the ground. It seemed to be miming our actions of unearthing the building by dropping the nut and picking it back up over and over again.

My fingers hit fabric. Our first body. I exhaled slowly and knocked the stack of rocks off to the side. In the excavated hole, the sight of a dead wildling made me pull back a few inches. I had seen dead wildlings, but never in this preserved state. Cam made a strange sound in his throat but was unable to say anything. I kept digging as he stilled for a moment.

Three bodies lay beneath this area of rubble. They were old and dried out, not rotted in any way. Had the climate done that to them? I frowned, unsure of what could cause these properties in wildlings. They looked peaceful in death, but their bodies were worn and thin.

”They starved,” I realized aloud. Behind me, Cam cleared his throat and turned his face toward the sight. More than that, these corpses had been drained of any moisture. The thin ends of tree roots curled around the legs of the bodies. I crouched down to look at them, noting how healthy the roots were. Sadness for the wildlings passed through me. They probably couldn”t find any sustenance here, given the differences between the Immortal and Mortal planes.

”How did it happen?” Cam asked.

I shook my head, spinning theories in my brain. ”It could have been that there”s not enough ambient dark energy. The wildlings eat plants, but the plants are nourished by dark energy.” I glanced up at the sky. ”Maybe a change of climate would have done it, too…”

”Interesting,” Cam noted. The full color had come back into his face. ”You touched the roots. Do you think that the trees trapped them, like they did to us? It looks like they drained them of water or dark energy or whatever exists inside a creature like that.”

I scratched my chin in thought. The scent of death made me feel antsy, like my skin was prickling with tiny insects. ”Maybe,” I admitted. ”The trees might have been trying to do the same thing to us before we escaped.” There was something else in the air, but I was unable to identify it.

”The trees might only be able to feed on dead bodies, so they figured out a way to survive in the Leftovers by preying on sentient beings like this and killing anything alive.” Cam looked down at the bodies with a sympathetic expression. His companion rodent ran up his pant leg and hopped up to his shoulder.

The discovery soured the mood, but I had to follow what else was around us. The smell of death continued to grow, so I suspected this wasn’t the only grave site. Unfortunate. I led Cam around the outskirts of the town as the breeze whipped through this place at an odd angle. I sniffed the air and scowled as I followed the trail, growing frustrated by the way a place like this could play with my senses. We returned to the squat building across from the well that had caught my eye before. Now, I recognized the scent of death on it as we grew closer. The breeze had obscured it earlier.

”Wind is a tricky thing when following smells,” I told Cam as we came to the entrance of the building. If he’d had a notebook with him, I was sure that he’d have been taking down notes on vampire biology. ”This one smells more human.” It was always good to give a warning.

”I”m ready,” Cam assured me. I pushed open the door of the building. It was half hanging on old, rusted hinges, and the wood easily fell onto the ground in front of us. We stepped over it and made our way inside. Light streamed in through broken windows. It was peaceful and still. The first floor held little of interest beyond scattered scraps of fabric, but I was surprised to find a door at the end of the hall. The smell pooled in this area, much stronger than by the entrance. I braced myself against the door and pushed it open.

Darkness greeted us. It was a staircase going down to the basement, where there was the narrowest slant of light. Cam pulled his lantern from his gear bag. His pet curled around his shoulders and gave a little protesting hiss. I”m not so excited to go down there, either.

It looked like this area was designed as a sort of panic room or safe haven. My eyes luckily needed no help from Cam”s lantern to see a Bureau badge on a discarded vest lying at the bottom of the staircase. What a greeting. Dreadful anticipation seized me as the scent of death tripled in this small space. It was stuffy with a dry heat, making me think of the wildlings again.

There were seven bodies. They were all human, all Bureau, and all dead and dried out like the wildlings. I sighed and went with Cam to examine them. They were at least a couple of weeks old. I spotted two guns on one of them, but the others looked more like researchers with sparse tactical equipment or uniforms. They all wore Bureau insignias somewhere on their dirty clothing.

My stomach curled with worry. It was an emotion I could usually push away on a mission, but this was different. What if Lyra”s parents were here?

”Keep an eye out for the name Sloane,” I told Cam. It took him a second to piece together what I meant by that, and he nodded slowly. We spread out and checked their dog tags and every pocket inside the uniforms. Roots curled at the edges of this building, breaking through the stone floor. I glared at the invading plants. They were like infectious particles wherever we went, completely invading the area they attacked.

”Nothing,” Cam said. Good. I hadn”t found anything either. From the looks of it, these sorry souls were other Bureau people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cam settled in to memorize their identifying information for our next report, since Bryce had put him in charge of typing the reports for the Bureau. I let him do that while I did a final sweep of the room. There were a few containers of food rations, still uneaten. I grabbed them for Cam and his pet. I would also need to feed eventually, but for now, I was all right. If the wildlings had starved from a lack of dark energy in their necessary food system, what might that mean for the other creatures in the Leftovers—what did that monster eat?

As I worked that out, a new sensation rose inside me. Someone was nearby, maybe multiple people. Their energies were mixed, but not unusual, since they were in flux with their darkness and light levels. Lyra and her friends always read very light for me, but these—two, there were definitely two—were more balanced. More in line with what I expected from the average human.

”We”ve got company,” I told him. ”They”re not especially dark, but we should be wary. If they are survivors, then they might be very disoriented.” I felt out the energy signatures. There was a certain amount of darkness, but not enough to make me hungry. I took that as a good sign that we might have run across some typical humans, maybe even Black Rock survivors.

Cam and I booked it back up the staircase. Out in the street, I caught the scent of a human and the trail of darkness. A floral aroma permeated the air, but it was foreign and artificial.

”Is that perfume?” Cam muttered. I frowned and sniffed. Even he could smell the odd scent, but he was right. It was perfume. Odd, but it was possible that the Bureau workers had brought personal effects with them, especially if they weren”t soldiers.

As we searched, Cam looked down at his scanner. There were no new signatures popping up, which supported the human theory.

”You know, it’s possible that people were just in the area when the meld happened,” he mused. ”Like campers, or teenagers having a bonfire.” I had no idea what a bonfire was, but it sounded like something human adolescents would partake in.

The energy signatures darted away at the end of the street. A flash of color caught my eye as the figure rushed behind a building.

”They”re hiding,” I told him. ”I”m going to tell them to come out.” In the light, my skin still had faint shadows dancing beneath the surface, but maybe it wasn”t enough to be a dead giveaway for a vampire. If they were Bureau survivors, they might be skeptical of my presence, since technically not even Cam was a member of the Bureau. We had been hired by them, but they might not believe that the Bureau would have contracted a private company to find them. Things had changed greatly since the meld.

We came to an intersection in the crumbling town. ”I know you”re here,” I shouted. ”We”re here to help you.”

Cam nodded, scanning everywhere for a sign of them. I caught his eye and subtly inclined my head in the direction of a taller building on our left. The signatures were concentrated there.

”We”re assisting the Bureau,” Cam yelled. ”We can take you to safety or medical care if you’re injured.” It was technically true. How had these survivors made it when the other Bureau workers died down in the basement, though?

The scent of artificial flowers hit me.

”Are you sure?” a high-pitched voice cried worriedly. Something about the tone struck me as strange, but I couldn”t place it. ”We”re… we”re scared.” The voice held a note of hesitation, but that was smart if they were Bureau survivors unsure of what faced them.

”We just want to help,” I said, putting on my best leader voice. Kane used to mercilessly make fun of me whenever I used it. What had he called it again? Your Everyone-Listen-To-Me Tone. My heart tightened for a moment as I pushed away the thought of my missing friend. One step at a time in this journey. First, Cam and I would help these humans.

Warily, a woman stepped out from behind the building. “Thank goodness, we”ve been so scared.” She emerged with a companion, a young man around her age. Both of them were in good health, but they seemed awfully… fresh and unscathed to be out here in this mess. They both wore basic outdoor clothing, no Bureau uniforms or patches, no outdoor fatigues like Lyra used to wear.

”My name is Jennifer,” the woman said, her voice wavering. ”Johnny and I were out exploring ghost towns when the whole world changed. We”ve been trapped here for months.” She wiped at her eyes, but I hadn”t picked up the smell of salt from tears. It was typically a pungent scent for me. Cam furrowed his brow as Jennifer went on. ”I cannot believe you found us. Oh, Johnny, we”re saved.”

Johnny muttered a few words, tripping over himself and mostly looking at the ground. In their gear bags, they had plenty of supplies, and the man had a large camera strapped to his side.

”She looks familiar,” Cam muttered under his breath. Only I heard it, and Jennifer just smiled awkwardly under Cam’s searching stare. Lyra told me some humans just have faces that look similar to a lot of people’s.

”Are you injured?” I asked, hoping to broach the strangeness of the situation with the basics. Even if this woman was strange, I couldn”t just leave her and the mumbling guy out here on their own.

”No,” Jennifer said with a little choking hiccup. ”Thankfully, we”ve been able to stay out of most of the danger.”

Cam and I approached. What else could we do? I wouldn”t tell them I was a vampire, but I needed Cam to catch on to that.

”My friend is Cam, and I”m Lance,” I said, pulling the first human-ish name I could think of out of my brain. Lyra liked a celebrity named Lance. Perhaps one day my knowledge of humans will extend beyond Lyra”s anecdotes… Cam caught my eye and smiled weakly at the survivors.

”Nice to meet you.”

Jennifer”s eyebrows shot up. ”Scottish. You said you”re working for the Bureau?” Her companion, Johnny, stared nervously at me. Why would she care about where Cam came from?

”Yes, I”m helping the Bureau. We have a strong exchange program in Scotland when it comes to supernatural-related messes,” Cam said. ”We can assist you… but I have to admit that we don”t actually know where we are yet.” His tone was polite but cautious. His new warmth seemed to suddenly drop away in this professional setting. Maybe Jennifer”s question had put him on edge. It was an odd one.

Jennifer studied me now with an appraising air. I felt suddenly self-conscious of my shadows. There was something prying and rude about her gaze, but I couldn”t put my finger on it.

”Did the meld affect you?” she asked, blinking innocently. ”Sorry, it”s just your skin seems a bit… different.”Wasn’t that rude to tell another human being?

I managed a polite neutral quirk to my lips as I cooked up an excuse. ”We have Research and Development to thank for that. They gave us Leftovers camouflage. It”s an experiment they”re doing to see if it helps us adapt to the area.”

Jennifer swiveled toward Cam. ”Oh. Why aren”t you wearing it then?” This woman was starting to get on my nerves. We were here to save her. Even a vampire knew basic etiquette in a situation like this.

”It”s normal for experiments to use a control group,” Cam said smoothly.

Jennifer stared at him for a second too long, but she smiled and shrugged. ”Okay. How interesting.” This woman was… interesting. It made me miss Lyra terribly, for some reason.

I eyed the camera on Johnny. It seemed like a reasonable item to bring along, although a camera was naturally fragile in the Leftovers. Cam and I needed to keep any survivors we found safe, but I had a weird feeling about these two. Their presence just added to our troubles at the moment.

“So, you don”t know where we are,” Jennifer confirmed.

No. We had no idea where we were, and now I needed to keep my identity as a vampire safe from these two while we looked for the rest of Callanish and my vampire allies.

”We”ll find out,” I promised them. Leftover camouflage or not, Cam and I were their only hope to get out of this situation.