Darklight

by Forrest, Bella

  "Captain Bryce, facility captain, here,” Bryce blustered in his most official voice. “We need you to escort this group inside for an assessment before they're relocated."

  That man was good on his toes.

  "We have orders from the director and a schedule to keep, Captain," an unfamiliar soldier replied, looking confused as he stepped up to Bryce. He knew we were not supposed to be here.

  "There’s been a change in the schedule, for confidential reasons. Please escort them inside, and I'll explain in my office," Bryce told him cheerfully, and I watched the two of them face off, sizing each other up.

  I glanced down at the waists of my bare-bones team. Everyone had their handguns. Thank God.

  The other soldiers closed their fingers on the triggers of automatic rifles. One spoke over his comm. About ten more unknown soldiers filed out of the facility doorway, making their number twenty-three. They had more of a force here than I'd expected. That didn’t bode well at all.

  I glanced at the vampires. At the edge of the crowd, Thoth and Rhome breathed heavily, clenching their jaws, eyeing the soldiers surrounding them with irritation. The children seemed restless, their parents hard-pressed to keep them under control. Kane's glare reminded me of the one he’d worn when I first met him in the cavern. His dislike of humans was more justified in this moment than ever before, whether he realized it or not.

  "I won’t ask again," Bryce growled at the other captain, squaring his broad shoulders. He was pulling out his scare tactics. I was grateful; if they scared this team as much as they did mine, maybe they’d work now. "Will you please—"

  "Your orders are not sanctioned by the board. Step aside and leave this facility," the first soldier ordered. “Or we will treat you as hostiles.”

  Dorian's eyes caught mine. His expression was darkly rigid—just like in the alleyway in Vegas before his fangs sprang out. I inclined my head toward him, trying to communicate everything I could in one plaintive look: my fear for them, that we were here to help, that all his instincts were correct.

  Please trust me. Even if it’s just one more time.

  Bryce clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Well, I was worried about that," he mumbled to himself, then turned to the vampires. "Friends, accompany us inside, would you?" He jerked his head toward our jet.

  The vampires on the tarmac no longer moved toward the Bureau transports. Instead, they stood completely still, their eyes flickering between my group and the soldiers who directed them forward, the tension in their decision unmistakable.

  "Final warning, sir!" the lead soldier yelled.

  The unfamiliar soldiers cocked their weapons, and I got to experience the new, uncomfortable sensation of Bureau gun barrels pointing at me. This was really happening.

  Bryce turned toward the lead soldier, his voice hard. "It's Captain."

  And then Kane's jaw snapped open and he sank his fangs into the neck of the soldier standing beside him.

  Screams reverberated over the tarmac, and Gina, Zach, and I drew our weapons as the vampires exploded into action. One moment they were still, and the next a flurry of teeth and horror scattered about the pavement.

  Gunshots rang out, but the soldiers couldn't move faster than the vampires. Vampires washed over them like a tsunami—fangs flashed and soldiers toppled, their guns flying from their hands. Bryce leapt into the fray, cracking a soldier’s cheek with the butt of his gun. Zach fired a shot into a foreign soldier's leg as he ran to accost Bryce.

  My brother had just shot a soldier. A vice of dread closed around my chest, but I couldn’t stop moving.

  A soldier stormed me, fumbling to get his weapon aimed. I put a bullet in his foot, and he toppled to the ground with an angry cry, dropping his weapon to clutch his boot. And now I’ve shot one.

  More screams bounced off the facility walls. Rhome and Kreya left two soldiers drained on the ground and leapt onto others, their growls mixing with the gunshots, their faces suffused with rage. Carwin and Detra sat on an unfamiliar soldier, their teeth deep in either side of his neck.

  More soldiers swarmed, and Gina deflected a fist that nearly caught the side of my head. She twisted the arm, breaking the elbow, and kicked its owner to the ground. There were still more soldiers than we could handle—because the vampires were slowing down to suck them dry. I lashed out again and again, my pent-up anger flowing through me like fire.

  "Keep fighting!" I yelled to the vampires, pounding a soldier with my fist. "We have to escape!"

  I spotted Dorian crouched over a limp body, drinking deeply as blood flooded from the soldier's neck. Couldn’t he move faster? But from the desperate way he gulped, threw his head back, and went back to drinking with blood streaming down his chin, I could see that he’d gone to another, darker place, controlled by his instincts. Shadows writhed in his eyes. I’d seen this demon in him before.

  Dorian was so engulfed in his feeding that he took no notice of a soldier rushing up behind him with a gun pointed at his back. A yelp caught in my throat, and before I could think, I shot the soldier in both thighs. The man toppled back, his face contorting in painful screams, his gun clattering on the pavement as he fell.

  The fight had taken over me. There were no feelings, just thoughts. Prioritized, logical, step-by-step thoughts. Getting Dorian on his feet was next on my list.

  I ran over and pulled his arm. He jerked away from the man’s neck, snapped his fangs at me, and yanked his arm free of my grasp. I’d dealt with this side of Dorian before, and I wasn’t afraid of him.

  Our eyes bored into each other. Weeks of frustration boiled in my guts and pushed at my throat. I’d put my neck on the line for him repeatedly, thrown away my career, stolen a plane to be at his side. I'd had enough.

  "Don't push me away!" I roared. “I’m trying to help you!”

  Dorian startled, then his face softened in recognition, almost like he was waking up, the muscles going so lax his jaw lowered.

  Then his eyes flickered, and a snarl raged from him, spit flying from his mouth.

  He lunged at me, and I instinctively jerked to the side, furious that he’d decided I was also an enemy. But Dorian flew past me and sank his teeth into a soldier preparing to unload a bullet into me from behind.

  I stood in shock, watching the man’s blood spill over his uniform and the concrete. Dorian rose to his feet, wiped his face, and met my eyes. We took one moment to hold each other’s gaze. Thank you.

  He nodded as if he’d heard me.

  There was no more time for communication. Three soldiers rushed us, and we dodged the crosshairs of their guns. I clocked one in the jaw with the butt of my weapon, and then Dorian rushed in, grabbed his head, and snapped his neck. I heard the sickening crack.

  Another soldier lunged at me from the side, and I put my boot in his groin before Dorian tore his neck open. Screams continued ringing out all around us, and as I scanned, I realized there were still more soldiers than we could handle if the vampires kept slowing down to feed. Another dozen had spilled out of the facility. A kind of fear I’d never felt before built in me.

  “Vampires, keep fighting!” I cried again, before putting a bullet in the back of a soldier’s leg.

  I caught sight of soldiers restraining Sike. They signaled to one of their cohorts to aim at the writhing vampire.

  Without a thought, I wheeled toward them, a spike of fear turning into protective rage. They couldn’t do this to him. But I didn’t know if I would make it in time to stop them. He was thrashing so much, I feared I’d hit him if I fired at this distance.

  As I raced toward Sike, I felt wind and heard the pounding of wings above me.

  The redbills screamed, clacking their beaks and diving to the tarmac to defend their vampires. They continued the war call as they grabbed soldiers with their talons, slamming them against the concrete. More redbills landed, lashing out and closing their serrated beaks around the unfamiliar soldiers. With horrifying, gurgling growls, they shook them violently, one tak
ing off a soldier's arm with a single snap.

  I busted the chin of an attacking soldier and looked around. The vampires leapt onto the last of the enemy soldiers. Bryce pivoted, searching for any still-conscious enemies. Zach clutched his thigh, Gina pulling his other arm over her shoulder. My heart stopped in my chest. I hadn’t seen him get hurt.

  The soldiers would have backup in no time. We had to get out.

  Dorian’s eyes scanned the perimeter, his thoughts clearly parallel to my own.

  "Fly!" he roared.

  The vampires rushed to their birds, picking up my team without a second thought. Rhome lifted Zach onto a bill. Harlowe grabbed the three children whose names I didn’t know and thrust them up onto her redbill. I rushed to Dorian's animal and, without missing a beat, he took my hand and pulled me up behind him. Fear still pounded through my veins, but feeling his hand in mine sent those old tingles up my spine. I threw my arms around his middle and held on, relieved to be flying on one of these animals—for the first time ever.

  Kreya wrapped her arms around her children atop their redbill and cried out to her bird. Around us, the vampires’ birds worked their wings, jumping into the air.

  We rose into the dark sky, forming a V-shaped flock. The lights of the facility shrank to tiny blinking dots. They suddenly reminded me of the glowing amber specks on the mountainsides of the Immortal Plane. My chest clenched. The vampires were fleeing for their lives from our facility, which had turned on them just as their old home had.

  Dorian growled, and his bird flew even faster, the speed shaking my insides, the wind buffeting my face. Through my blurring vision, I saw Rhome holding Zach steady on his bird. Nearby, Bryce clung to the back of Laini. Gina held Bravi for dear life, trying to shield her face behind the vampire’s small but muscular frame.

  My team was accounted for, as were all the vampires. No bird lacked a passenger. We cut into clouds, and I closed my eyes, enveloped by the chill, swirling fog.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Our birds carried us for miles through the dark. I had no way of telling our location after we entered the clouds. The birds chirped to each other through the wind.

  I listened to my heart racing in my ears until we slowed and descended. If the birds were riled from the attack, I couldn't tell. They gracefully fluttered to the ground, landing within seconds of each other. Desert crickets thrummed around us in the cool night air.

  I still felt shell-shocked from the fight on the tarmac. Numbness layered on top of anger, fear, and worry in my mind. And now a sense of uneasiness settled in, as I had no idea what our next steps would be.

  I had no idea where we were. The night gave scant light. I could pick out some pale rocks in the dark. Sand shifted beneath us.

  Dorian dismounted. I took his hand and slid down, holding it just a bit longer than necessary—which he didn’t protest. Part of me wanted to drop it and shout at him for ignoring me for so long; a bigger part wanted to ask if this meant he would speak to me again. But we had more pressing concerns. For now, just the pressure of his fingers for a moment longer than necessary, a tiny sign of solidarity, helped me keep myself together.

  The others dropped from their birds, their labored breathing audible in the dark. Gina approached Rhome, and together they eased Zach off the bird. He sat shakily in the sand. I rushed to his side, my heart clenching at the sight of his limping. I’d rather be injured myself than watch his pain.

  Bryce came up, after thanking Laini for his ride, and tore some fabric from his undershirt to bandage Zach’s leg. I crouched next to my brother, silently assuring myself that he would be okay. He winced in pain as I set my hand gently on his back but shot me a watery smile to show he would be fine. My training told me that because the bullet had scored the fatty tissue of his outer thigh, he’d be okay. We just had to keep it wrapped and clean. Walking wouldn’t be fun for a while, though.

  The moon crept from behind the clouds, painting the sand white.

  For a few moments, all of us sat in shaken quiet, the vampires in a circle and we humans in our tiny cluster nearby. I guessed that everybody else was also trying to wrap their heads around what had just happened. I kept shooting anxious glances at the vampires standing in the moonlight, unable to formulate an apology that would make up for what my species had done. Or tried to do.

  "We have everyone," Dorian said on a hoarse exhale, his eyes scanning the dark. The vampires all clustered together, their birds huddled nearby in protection.

  "And we're lucky to!" Kane said harshly, his anger passing through the group as a wave of mutters followed. "So, Dorian,” he continued, his voice dark and mocking, “I’m assuming that you sensed what I did in those soldiers back on the tarmac. I guess I should be grateful that those four showed up,” he tossed a hand in my direction, “to confirm what I suspected. Was this how you envisioned your grand, harmonious plan? We all join hands, work together to make humans happy, and then get murdered as the finale?"

  Dorian looked at Kane. His sleeves dripped from our trip through the clouds; his face was worn and fallen, sadness hanging under his eyes.

  "I had no way of knowing what the Bureau was planning," he said. The defeat in his voice was palpable enough to make me wince. "How could I? They outsmarted me, Kane. I’m not proud."

  "You should've known not to trust humans from the beginning!" Halla hissed. "We may as well have handed ourselves to the firing squad the moment we got to the facility."

  Thoth nodded beside Halla. “She’s right. We went against our better judgment,” he said lowly, shaking his head.

  Dorian raised a weary hand to his hair, looking from group member to group member as though trying to figure out how to proceed.

  "I can't believe I took my children there. I feel so stupid," Kreya said, a sob caught in her throat. “We starved ourselves for weeks, suffered, lived in cells. We should've trusted our guts. We knew better.” In her arms, Detra whimpered.

  "Should've left the minute that girl fell ill," Halla snapped, then corrected herself. "Never should've been there in the first place."

  Her words fired up the anger still lingering in my gut. I’d swallowed it out of fear for the vampires’ safety, but it hadn’t been extinguished. So Dorian had been telling the truth, or the vampires’ version of it, when he’d told me that they’d iced us out because of my coma. Did they all believe this “sign” crap? Halla seemed to. Around the group, I saw Rayne and Harlowe nodding, but Sike and Bravi had their arms folded, and Sike particularly looked as though he wanted to disagree.

  Was the pain I’d been going through really because of the feelings Dorian had for me? The thought shot sparks of anger through my mind, but other kinds of sparks kindled too. I pushed them down, irritated at myself. This argument wasn’t about that. It was bigger.

  Trying to stay out of the vampires’ argument, even if it pained me, I gazed around at the rock formations as the vampires argued. By now, my eyes had adjusted, and I could make out a familiar stone wall with a jagged crack down the middle in the moonlight. Canyonlands.

  "We have to leave," Kane said. "There's surveillance everywhere. These bastards have probably already ratted out our location to them." Kane threw a hand in our direction. As irritated as I was with Dorian, Kane was getting dangerously close to nabbing first place.

  “Leave them out of this,” Sike interjected, his voice less angry but no less firm. “You’re not even making sense, Kane. Why on earth would they have risked their lives for us back there just to turn on us now?”

  “Lyra has never done anything but help us,” Dorian added sincerely, heaviness in his voice. “Same goes for the others.”

  His defense of us pained me even as it warmed me. Was he going to support me now as if he’d never tried to cut me out of his life? I reminded myself, again, that this wasn’t about that.

  I had to speak up. "We truly didn't know what the Bureau had planned, Kane," I said, rising to my feet and moving forward so they could hear me better.
"They were planning to harm you after relocating you. I found out about an hour before the soldiers came to take you away. We got there to warn you as quickly—"

  "Don't listen to her!" Kreya said, her voice cracking apart from her fury. "This whole thing happened because of her."

  Kreya’s words cut me like a knife. A flood of guilt and anger battled in my chest, and I placed a balled fist against my lips, unable to respond.

  "She was only trying to help, Kreya.” Rhome grabbed her shoulder, anxiety straining his voice. “Why would she have attacked other soldiers to help us escape if she were lying?”

  "You're still believing humans?” At that moment, Kreya lost it. Her previous anger was nothing compared to her snarl now. “Rhome, listen to yourself. Have you lost your mind? Our children were nearly killed. You sensed what those soldiers knew. They planned to murder us.”

  "Yes, and I’ve never sensed any deception in Lyra or her friends. Neither have you, Kreya," Rhome replied evenly. "We’re safe here for now. We need to work together to figure out a plan."

  "Just because these four aren’t trying to kill us right now doesn’t mean we should risk staying around humans. Not after this. They’re backstabbing murderers. I will not stand around and let us get that close to death ever again!" Kreya shouted, whirling on her partner, her face warped by anger into a feral grimace. Her children clung to her legs. Detra started sobbing. "I can’t do that to our boy and girl."

  Kane growled in his throat. "The plan is, we're going back to the other plane. Now."

  "No," Dorian said, but without strength. Hope had dwindled from his posture. "It's more dangerous. A few humans trying to kill us is nothing compared to what we’d face there."

  "That excuse won't work anymore, Dorian,” Kane snapped. “We tried your way. It's time to stop playing games and do what we should’ve before. We were never supposed to come here." He clicked his tongue and helped his mother onto their bird.