Page 5

Ihad grown accustomed to the sound of both mortal and immortal birds in the distance wherever I slept, but the creatures in the Leftovers were something different. They were changed. Something about their song grated on my nerves and made it hard to rest comfortably. The problem with being a vampire was that I heard everything… even among vampires, my hearing was considered exceptionally strong.

Waking up to see Lyra sleeping in front of me was an immediate comfort against the strangeness of the sounds outside our carrier plane, but my relief quickly faded to concern. She was having a nightmare. Ever since the meld, she slept like she was fighting in her sleep. Right now, she tensed and tossed her head to the side on the bedroll right next to mine. I rested a hand on her arm, and her body immediately eased.

We had no privacy inside the carrier plane, but the others knew we were married. It was no secret that our bedrolls were pushed up together so that we could sleep alongside each other at night. Bryce had joked it was the least he could do for newlyweds, since we hadn’t had much privacy in our first month of marriage. Cam had looked partially scandalized at Bryce”s joke. Perhaps his military training told him that there could never be anything between team members, especially on a mission. Oh, well. We weren”t hurting anyone. The curse was fixed for the moment, and the snoring in the plane told me that everyone else was sleeping.

Lyra twitched beneath my hand. Her face had relaxed at my touch, but she was still in the depths of her nightmare. I pulled myself against her to cradle her gently. She turned to me, adjusting to fit my body perfectly even in sleep. In Chicago, she’d told me that she would never need to turn on a heater at night, since vampires run warm. I would happily serve as her heater for the rest of her life. I ran my hand through her hair, admiring how silky it felt against my rough fingers.She would throw it into a quick braid when she woke up, but it was loose for now.

We had been through so much together. It was hard to believe that we were here—partners in life and work—on a daring new mission into the world after the meld. There was nobody else I could imagine myself with.She used to be a stranger, but Lyra now occupied a priceless space in my life. I admired her in ways that sometimes scared me. I had no idea I could have these feelings for someone, but we were here on this new mission together.

Lyra”s eyes sprang open as she jerked awake from whatever nightmare she’d suffered. Most nights, she was used to waking up this way. Her hazel eyes were wide as she took a deep breath.

”The survivor,” she breathed. Although she was groggy, she quickly realized the others were still asleep thanks to Bryce”s snores. They covered her whispers. Her eyes sparked with some clarity. ”I was dreaming that I found the survivor.” She sighed with disappointment, and I ran my hand down her cheek.

Cam reviewed the records last night after we returned from searching the office, and confirmed that there was a Joseph on the roster of original Black Rock Bureau staff stationed here. Lyra had been tossing and turning all night after that revelation.

”It’s okay, you’re safe,” I told her gently. She hated having nightmares, as she thought they might be a sign of weakness. I disagreed completely. After Lanzon”s death, I’d dreamt of nothing but the fiery rubble of Vanim and my brother”s face for months. Now, when I dreamed, they were merely shadows dancing in the distance. These shadows were always too far away for me to catch, but Lyra was real and beautiful. She dropped her gaze with a tiny, frustrated pout.

”I”m always having nightmares,” she admitted and rubbed her eyes. ”It might have something to do with… well, everything we”ve ever done. I dreamt the survivor was out in the forest with something terrible.” She shivered and hunched closer to me. I pulled her tight against my chest, enjoying the way she smelled. I wanted her to feel safe.

Lyra wanted to find the survivor who had apparently barricaded himself in the remains of the Black Rock Bureau Office at one time, but I suspected that the human was long gone. We had found a large amount of blood. If he hadn”t managed to return to his safe room, then I didn”t have much hope for the guy. In my experience, humans often thought of themselves as invincible even if they didn”t admit it, but their optimism was often misplaced.

”We”ll look today,” I assured her, and pressed my lips against her forehead.

She fidgetedagainst me and glanced up with a hopeful look. ”We could go now, so we have a full day to follow the creature”s trail.”

This was why I loved Lyra. She never gave up or stopped caring, and her dedication fueled my own motivation. The early morning light was coming through the windows of the plane. I kissed her quickly before we pulled ourselves up to get ready. When in love and working on dangerous missions, I had to sneak in the romance when I could.

The carrier plane sparked to life as soon as Cam”s alarm went off a minute later. He sprang out of his bedroll with such speed that I nearly laughed. Sike and I prepped for the day as Bryce went over communications from the outside world, while the other humans dined on oatmeal. For people who once gasped at my kind feeding on blood, they sure liked to eat gross-looking food.Charles, the pilot, still needed to be relieved from his late-night watch. Since he’d stayed with the plane yesterday and rested, he insisted on taking the last watch alone so the rest of us could sleep before going out again.

”Let”s get going,” Lyra pressed. She was already undoing the locks on the door. ”We might still be able to find him.” She glanced outside to survey the immediate area, and Bryce shot me a wary look, one that said he also believed our survivor was long gone. Still, we needed to investigate. If the survivor was dead, then we needed to look for clues about what had killed him.

Odd. Charles wasn’t where I would have expected him to sit on watch.

Lyra sucked in a sharp breath as she stalked toward the Leftovers. I was behind her by several yards, but I saw what made her react. The forest had changed… Overnight, the trees had rearranged themselves around the Black Rock office building. I stared at the branches, which still moved without the aid of any breeze. Cam hurried behind us, furiously documenting everything with a small camera.

Last night before I entered the plane, I’d noticed movements in the trees, large and small. The creatures had mostly stayed out of the lights from the carrier plane. The big signature didn”t appear during our watch, nor did it show up for Bryce or Sike.I stared at the trees more carefully than I had the day before.They were livelier than we’d anticipated.

”The forest moved, just like in the reports,” Cam said as he knelt to photograph a set of prints leading to the office. The soldiers who had gone into these woods hadn”t managed to stay long, since they weren”t used to fighting supernatural monsters, but moving trees were mentioned. I hadn”t thought that an entire forest was capable of changing overnight, though. Even in the Immortal Plane, this was unheard of.

Lyra looked at me with concern. ”Do you think this means our trail is gone?” The front door of the office building was rigged and locked just as we’d left it. She suddenly jerked her head to the side. “Wait, where is Charles?”

Everythinghad changed. The pilot was gone. The trail was gone. Lyra”s shoulders slumped, and she cursed under her breath.I looked around the area. Had Charles gone inside the building and gotten lost, trapped by the forest?

”This shouldn”t be possible,” I noted, and ran a hand over the bark of the closest tree. The surface was leathery and soft, but the angles of the tree were unnatural. It was like the forest had rushed to rearrange itself, damaging itself in the process.

Sike let out a sigh. ”It”s reacting to our external presence like we”re a human virus or something. The trees only seem to be reacting when we enter the area, unlike the little rodents.”

I nodded, mulling his words over. These trees were alive in some attached network that allowed them to work together. I crouched to the ground to see if I could find any clues at their roots. If we dug deep enough, could we find how they all linked together? My mind raced as I considered the implications of a living, breathing forest, a mix between mortal and immortal, surrounding us. Could it swallow us up if it wanted to?Had it gotten Charles?

All around the plane, there had been tracks of varying sizes leading to and away from our craft. The tracks here, small and pointy like stars, ran across the dirt in every direction, sometimes looping back on one another. The animals were curious around here and clearly moving a lot more than we thought, both around our plane and in this ruined office building.

My stomach twisted with worry. Charles had been outside. He would have left his own tracks around here, but there was nothing.

”These tracks are well preserved. I wonder if there’s any human footprints around…” Lyra said beside me as I examined them. They had to come from those rodents we’d encountered earlier, judging by their size.

”Those aren”t the only ones,” Bryce called, creeping closer to the newly arranged trees. We turned to see him lean down where a much bigger, wider track with sharp nail impressions scored the ground. Lyra frowned as we went over to examine them. Whatever had come through here was huge.

”These tracks look like they were made recently. Within the last several hours, at least,” Cam commented. He tested the dirt beside the track with his finger. He followed the tracks as they disappeared into the forest and traced a line in the air, drawing out an imaginary path. ”The trees must”ve maintained our old path for a while, maybe until full nightfall, before they changed to cover everything.”

A tingling sensation pricked at my neck. The creatures of the Leftovers, I had assumed, would be most active at night, but I’d never considered the plant life.

”It’s not just the creatures,” I noted. “Things aren’t animated like this in the Immortal Plane, even in the wildest parts of it.” Lyra studied me, searching my face. After so much time together, it felt like she could read me like a book, and vice versa.

She crossed her arms and pointed down at the tracks. ”So, we were expecting things to move, but not a potentially sentient forest that recognizes our presence. Our pilot is mysteriously gone now, too. I originally thought that the soldiers who were sent out weren”t used to immortal landscapes, but they were right about the true extent of what they saw.” Her attention turned to the thicket of closely bunched trees that now blocked off our trail from yesterday. ”Fantastic. We”ve got more danger around us than we thought, and those trees look impossible to get through.”

Her eyes were filled with sadness and defeat as she mourned the loss of the only trail we’d had that led to our missing survivor. We also had a new missing person. The others turned away from the conversation to check the scanners. I hesitated, not sure if I should approach Lyra. She was staring out at the woods as if they might give up an answer to us if she glared hard enough.

”Nothing on the scanners,” Bryce reported as he looked up from Sike”s device. ”We’ll stay closer to the carrier plane today.” He eyed the woods with deep suspicion. Even in the daytime, they felt wrong and unnatural. I hated the way the trees bent angrily in the warm mortal sunlight. Part of me missed the Immortal Plane. I”d grown used to the Mortal Plane, but seeing the odd combination of both in the Leftovers unnerved me. Ruk hadn”t mentioned what the world was like before the Separation. Now, I wished he’d given more detail about what the arbiters had changed in the planes when they worked their powers on the universe.Had trees been able to move in the past? I doubted it. This felt like something entirely new.

”Looks like there”s no hope of getting through or chasing down the survivor or our pilot for the moment,” Lyra said bitterly.

Bryce grunted. ”We”ll talk it over.” We trudged back to the carrier plane. Lyra asked Sike and Cam about the readings. The hopeless look on Lyra”s face tugged at my heart. As a leader, I was used to stuffing down my feelings for the mission, but she brought out something else in me. When I looked at her, I saw a part of my truest self. We were trying to learn how to live in a universe that constantly upended our basic understanding of existence.

We solve one mess, then jump right into another.

I offered to look around the carrier plane. This time, I examined the tracks more closely, looking for any sign of creatures that looked familiar. There was nothing but deep footprints around us. It rained lightly last night, making the ground perfect for finding evidence.

I picked up Lyra”s scent before she caught up to me.

”Getting some air?” I asked her.

”Yes, even if it carries that strange scent with it,” she said and sniffed the air purposefully. ”It”s like the atmosphere is rebelling here. The pressure feels like being partially underwater.” She shuddered for a moment and clenched her eyes shut. ”Sometimes, it reminds me of rot. It feels like these entire areas of land are just rotting away.”

I gently placed my arm around her. She leaned into me, touching the collar of my open cloak. She made fun of me for wearing it, but I”d worn a cloak since I was a boy. I felt naked without one. She sighed.

”Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, and paused, searching for the right words. ”You seem sad.” I was used to seeing disappointment or frustration in Lyra, but this hurt was softer… more personal. She averted her eyes for a moment to the tracks on the ground.

”I’m here for you,” I reminded her. As much as she used to gently push me to stop stuffing down my emotions, Lyra struggled with burdening others with her worries. As her partner and team member, I wanted her to share them.

She nodded. ”I know. I’m really upset about Charles. I barely knew him, but he was so considerate to us last night, and I’d hate to think he got hurt because of it. I hope he’s alright, and that we find him soon.”

I nodded, waiting. There was more, I could tell from the inflection of her voice.

“I”m worried about the survivor, too. I don”t know them personally, but I wanted to help them so much. My dad”s phone call about Black Rock getting hit by the meld keeps replaying in my mind.” She shrugged. ”I know that we can”t control what happened, but we”re here to help now, and it feels like we’ve already failed. They survived all this time, and the same day we arrived…”

Understanding flooded through me. I understood. After all, I’d looked for survivors of my own kin in the mountains of Vanim before forming our group to head into the Mortal Plane. It was devastating to consider that if any person—our team included—had done something differently, lives might”ve been saved. Those thoughts would torture her, but they were inevitable in someone of her character.

She breathed out into the cold air. ”I want to find my parents.”

And there it was. I tucked her head underneath my chin. ”I know you”re disappointed that they”re not here.”

”I am,” she admitted, her voice wavering slightly. ”I want so badly to find them safe and sound. I need them to know about Zach, and… losing anyone else at this point might be too much. It”s a reality that felt so far away before Zach passed on.” She didn”t say died, likely because it was so painful. I remembered this feeling from when I’d lost Lanzon.

”You push yourself too hard to try to fix things,” I said gently. “Some things can’t be fixed by pushing, and you end up breaking yourself, instead.” I didn”t want to upset her, but I was going to be honest. She was my wife.

She wiped at her eyes. ”I know. Isn”t that why we make such a good pair?” I let out a husky laugh, and she gave me a weak smile. ”I won”t push myself to the breaking point.”

”Good.”I kissed her on the forehead. ”You know, I think we”re both changing in the pushing department.” After everything that had happened in the Higher Plane, I was forced to deal with my emotions in a new way. They all came flooding back to me at once, like ghosts emerging from my past to show me how badly losing my family had hurt me. Now, we hoped that both Lyra’s parents and my own were out there somewhere… alive. It was our job to investigate and look for them along the way.

After seeing Lanzon in spirit, though… something shifted inside me. I got closure. I knew he’d made it to the afterlife, and that brought everything full circle for me.

”Do you think we”ll find them—all of our parents?” Lyra asked. Her grief was fresh, far from my years of suppressed sadness. I needed to give her time and space, but most of all, my love and support.

”I can”t promise that, but I can promise that whatever happens in life, you”ll be okay. I know you well enough to say that.” I brushed a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and she smiled at my touch. ”Uncertainty is difficult, but I daresay we”re getting used to it.”

She pressed her lips against mine. I wrapped my arms around her, and then we broke apart, our breathing filling the space between us. She rested her hands on my chest and played with the band around her finger. It still made me delirious to think that she was my wife. We were united against the world, now.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the trees twitch, and the movement sent a cold sensation through my body as they arched toward us… sensing us. Lyra spotted them too, since they were impossible to ignore for long, and looked up at me with heavy eyes.

”Let’s see what we can do,” she said. I took her hand in mine, and we continued the search. I looked out to the forest on the other side of the clearing with our plane. A new scent hit me as I inched closer to the woods. Dark red dotted the bark of the nearest tree.

It was blood, and it had a familiar scent to it… My gaze trailed down to the source. A hard lump of dread settled in my throat.

We’d found Charles. Or what remained of him.