"Stay here," I ordered.
"Like hell." Seamus stepped into the hallway after me and pulled the door shut. "You may be some sort of ancient badass, but I know my way around modern tech, and you very well might need my help. And I—I know these people. Not well, but still. I'll stay out of your way, but I'm not leaving your side until we know what happened here."
I stared at him, revising my estimation. There was no hiding his fear, though he made a valiant effort to do so. He kept himself stalk-straight and stared at me as if staring down a mountain lion. His pupils were wide, and the faint sheen of sweat—so fine he could not feel it himself—smelled of fear hormones. When I had first seen him, I had thought him very naïve indeed, but now I revised my estimation upward, seeing the determined set to his squared jaw.
I have known countless humans throughout my many years, and one thing I have learned: Courage is a rare trait indeed. One worth being rewarded and nurtured. I nodded to him.
"Stay behind me, and if I tell you to do something, you must do it without hesitation."
"You're the boss." That firm expression cracked into a tight, nervous smile. I could learn to like this Seamus Canavan.
Blade in a guard position, I moved to the balls of my feet and stepped with care down the stairs. Blood and rot pervaded my senses, making it difficult to tell if there were any living sources in the room below. The nightwalker stench hung heavy on the air, but the trouble with scenting out the undead is that it's hard to tell just how old their scents are. It was strong, yes, but that scent could be provided by a nightwalker lurking around the next corner, or a whole coterie of them that had passed through a week ago. Erring on the side of caution, I decided to proceed as if an ambush waited below.
Here's the thing about me and ambushes, though. If there's going to be a confrontation, I like to get straight to it. No sneaking about or hoping I get the drop on them. I could feel the echo of the sun on my skin, and Emeline's blood ran fresh in my veins. Ambush or no, I was the most dangerous motherfucker in the building.
I took the last ten steps at a dead sprint and shouldered the ajar door wide open. I burst into the room, coming to a skidding halt a few paces in from the door. Seamus thundered after me, but he stopped short of the door, letting me clear the area first. Good man.
Nothing lived in this room. Mortal corpses had been broken by nightwalker hands, thrown like rag dolls across two rows of desks. Their blood painted dark sunsets upon the once-cheery yellow walls. My new boots sank into the carpet, squelching from the saturation of blood with every step. It had crusted over, oxidizing on the surface, but the stifled confines of the room kept it moist. And the volume. It'd take days under direct sunlight to dry up this much blood. Humans were full of so very, very much.
A blond corpse in what once had been a pale pair of jeans and a silky button-up shirt slumped nearest me. His hair, long enough to reach his ears, stuck up like the frill of some exotic bird, frozen in place by his own blood. He lay chest-down on his desk, one hand stretched toward a phone set in the corner, but not quite reaching it. Congealed blood crusted the keys of his keyboard. A fine mist of arterial spray fogged his monitor, but a small power light, as Seamus had called it, blinked beneath the crusted fluid.
A sharp gasp sounded behind me and I spun, blade up. I'd been so entranced by the carnage I'd forgotten about Seamus.
His black and white shoes—Chucks, he'd called them—soaked up the blood of the carpet, the dangling white laces dying a slow, garish red. Pure horror distorted his features, transmuted quickly to raw, unabashed anger. He clenched his fists at his sides, then turned away, jerking back into the stairwell. I let him go without comment, unsurprised to hear retching, and the wet splat of vomit against the stone.
I sheathed my blade, letting him take the time he needed to compose himself, and made a slow circuit of the room. The scent of human blood became background noise to my senses, and I began to pick out strange irregularities in the room. The blonde man had been struck from behind, his heart stabbed clean through the back. The mortals appeared to have been taken by surprise, or at least unawares. Most of the bodies lay across their desks, or slumped in their chairs. Only one sprawled upon the floor.
She had been a strong woman in life, ropes of muscle visible beneath the tight fit of her long-sleeved top and stretchy black pants. Her boots were a lot like mine, and she'd been walking toward the door, a gun in her hand, when her throat had been opened by what I suspected were nightwalker claws. Not much else left that kind of deep, but ragged damage. Something was off here. There was... a smell. Something else. Something familiar. Something warm.
"Her name was Marcy," Seamus said.
He'd crept back to the doorway, his face so pale he might as well have lain down amongst the dead and joined them as a ghost.
"She was security here at the compound. The Sun Guard doesn't bring on a lot of security unless the compound's in a location that uninitiated mortals might stumble across. Never really seemed like we needed it at Somerset."
He let out a low, bitter chuckle. I caught his eye and held it a moment. He gave me a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
"I'm going to check the integrity of their crypt," I said. "I need you to take a look at that man's computer." I pointed to the blond one. "It's still on, and I think he was trying to do something with it before he died."
"Killian," he whispered.
"Seamus." I took a step toward him, drawing his attention back to me. "Killian was trying to do something before he died. Help him finish it."
Seamus nodded, and I moved away, knowing that to push him now would only make him angry with me, and that was the last thing I needed. I had no idea what this new world had in store for me—aside from a battle to come—and I needed all the help I could get from the sidelines.
Though I'd never been in this compound before, it was easy enough to find the way to the crypts. Despite sunstrider love of the day, it's always been safer for us to hide away our caskets in the same manner as the nightwalkers. The less trouble we caused the humans, the better, and mortals didn't exactly find it palatable to watch an undead being rise from a coffin in the middle of a warm afternoon, even if they were on the side of mortals.
A narrow staircase wound down into the cold bedrock of London. The door before me had been left open, and the scent of snuffed oil lamps was still rich on the air. Whoever had been here, they had not left long ago. I grabbed my blade, knowing I would not need it, but hoping that, if I were very lucky, I just might.
As expected, all the lights in the crypt had been snuffed, but my night vision was as good as any walker's. The remains of lanterns carpeted the floor in a mosaic of glass shards and twisted metal. Not a drop of blood marred the room, but there might as well have been. The three vaults of the St. Martin's coterie had been busted open, their stone shields cast to the ground with the rest of the rubble. The coffins themselves had been broken open, one tipped over on the floor, the other two propped as if they'd been dragged out by the feet and left to fall.
I kicked rubble from my path as I approached them, squinting. So far as I could tell, there was no presence of ash here. Whatever had happened to these sunstriders, their bodies had been intact when they left this place.
"Mags! I've got something."
Thank the light. I sprinted up the steps, happy to leave that place of devastation behind.
Twelve: Not Close Enough
Seamus had nudged Killian's chair out of the way and was bent over the desk, a tissue between his palm and the mouse. I glanced at the monitor, but he had a collection of small squares crammed with text up and I couldn't tell what I was looking at. Frustration mounted, but I released my clenched fists and forced myself to pay attention. Losing out on a couple hundred years of technological advancement was something I would have to get used to. Seamus's willingness to help had to be enough to get me through until I could spend the time needed to learn about everything I'd missed.
Maybe this
was the real punishment of the oubliette. Not forgetting what you'd done, and the motivations behind it, but waking up in a world so alien you cannot find your place in it again.
"There's a rogue program in the system that started sending automated emails out two days ago. This place was hit recently and, now that I've seen how the program works, I compared it against the emails I flagged as strange back at Somerset House and was able to make the timeline more granular."
"Which means?"
"I know the exact date each house was hit. But here's the good news—not all of them have been hit, and there's a pattern. I can't analyze it completely from here, I'd have to scrape this system and bring all the data back to Somerset to really bust it open, but I can say for certain that they hit every two days, and it seems to be in a concentric pattern skirting the edges of Somerset."
"Two days? You said this place was hit two days ago."
"Yeah. I think they're going to hit another place today. Well, tonight, probably, if the nightwalkers are involved."
"Where?"
He frowned. "I can't be sure, you've got to understand this is just a guess, but I think... I think they're going for the Chatham House stronghold, on St. James's square."
"I know the square."
"Wait." He spun and grabbed my arm to stop me. "The area's changed a lot over the years. I called up Talia and she and Basil are waiting for you in the spot they dropped us off, she has a map queued up and an entry plan worked out. Meet her first."
I chafed at the delay, but he was right. I didn't know this London as I had known my own. If things had changed enough, I could waste more time trying to find my way into Chatham House than simply listening to Talia.
"Understood."
"Take this." He dug a small, coiled piece of metal out of his bag and pressed it into my ear. Standing so close, I could not help but notice the sweetness of his living blood over the stink of death. He placed a similar device in his own ear and pressed a button. "Can you hear me?"
His voice came clear as daylight through the earpiece. "I can."
"Good. Go, listen to Talia. I'll be in touch if I find anything."
"What will you do?" I asked, scanning this horror show of a mausoleum and wondering why he wasn't eager to leave.
A grim set came over his features. "I'm going to dig up every useful scrap of data I can find."
"Good luck," I said, squeezing his shoulder, and sprinted up the steps.
Talia waited with the car door open, a tablet clutched in both hands. The moment she saw me she perked up, then paled and slunk back a step. I must have had blood somewhere on me, I knew I was trailing footprints through the trees.
"Chatham House is here," she said, wasting no time as she turned the map for me to see. The girl rallied quickly. "The main entrance is going to be your easiest way in, unfortunately. There will be security, but we have credentials to get you through. I don't know if there's an event going on tonight, but if there is you're going to have to skirt around the guests. Either way, you need to make it to the library on the first floor. Wait until the room is empty, then access the stairs down to the compound by tugging on the only copy of Dracula on the shelf. It's next to a bookend.
"We're in rush hour traffic, so it will take about thirty minutes to reach the house. I've called ahead, but no one from the Sun Guard is picking up the phone. General house security knows one of our order is on the way, however."
"Half an hour? It's nowhere near that far."
Talia winced. "This is the point modern convenience becomes a curse. There are too many cars on the road right now. As people go home from work, it slows us all down."
"I see. And if we follow your plan, then by the time I arrive at the crypt we may be too late, and it will be dark. The nightwalkers will be in their full power, while mine wanes."
"If there were any other way..."
"There is. Follow me, if you can."
Mortals and their conveniences. I understood why Talia would think the car was the best route—she was built for life, not dealing death. But while she would have spent all her strength running to Chatham, I was fighting a different constraint. If nightwalkers were indeed descending upon the place this moment, then the best thing I could do would be to arrive before sunset. They'd be vulnerable in the light of day, just as I'd be weak under the light of the moon.
I pushed strength into my legs and leapt. The cool air of summertime London whipped past me as my jump took me through the shadow of the trees and to the roof of one of the taller monuments dotting the land behind St. Martin. My boots slapped the stone loud enough to draw a few eyes, but before the tourists could discern what was happening I was gone, leaping the rest of the way to the roof of St. Martin's.
Just as my nightwalker cousins can bend shadow to their will, so can I manipulate light. Don't get me wrong, sunstriders are not a species meant to hide. Most of our uses of the sun's gift are to blind or dazzle, to startle our foes while we rally a better offense. But this new mortal world, with Victoria's Veil, left me reaching into the light for another purpose.
I gathered the sunlight glancing off the tiles of St. Martin's into my hands and coated myself in it, shifting it so that it was an incomplete barrier. Anyone who looked directly at me would find the experience as painful as staring at the sun, and anyone who glanced me from the side would see only a streak of light—a crash of lightning in the middle of a calm sky.
Despite my urgency, the view from the roof of St. Martin stunned me. London sprawled in all directions. Her myriad, twisting streets disappeared into neighborhoods and enclaves I could not name. And yet, I recognized her still. Old icons dotted the modern construction, hints of stone almost as weathered as I peeking out here and there between the steel and the glass.
The tiles of St. Martin's were slick with grime and age, but my footing held as I sprinted across the sun-baked tiles. At the edge of the church I reached what Talia's map had dubbed the National Gallery, a gleaming complex spanning half the distance between me and my target. I hit the edge of the roof at a full sprint, leapt into a tucked flip and, suspended above the crowded road, a cloud passed above.
It was a difficult thing to be a sunstrider in England. Somewhere equatorial would have made my unlife quite a bit easier. The light blocked, my illusion wavered halfway through my jump. I reached within myself, drawing upon the inner power of my blood, but still the light coalesced around me fractured, strained, and stretched.
Gasps and shouts sounded on the street below as my face and hair whipped free of the blurring light. Cars blared their horns, cracking the otherwise peaceful evening. I hit the roof of the National Gallery and pulled light back to myself, free of the cloud cover, and reshaped the illusion. Adelia would be furious, but I had bigger worries than her veil.
As I sprinted across the modern construction of the roof, I was grateful for my boots. Their grippy rubber made my footing true, and despite the blood clinging to them I didn't slip an inch. Who knew modern fashion would make nightwalker slaying more efficient.
Keeping Trafalgar Square to my left, I angled for the back of the National Gallery, knowing that I needed to cut catty-corner across the blocks to reach Chatham House. As high as I was, it was easy to see the lush green treetops of St. James's square. London's weather had decided to work with me after all, and the clouds stayed away as I leapt across the rooftops and cleared roads crammed with cars.
My disguise stayed intact until the moment I hit the roof of Chatham House. I ripped off the light, letting it dissolve through my fingertips into miniscule sparks, like a fire dying. Talia had assured me that they knew I was coming, and so I didn't worry about my strange eyes or the odd manner of my arrival. In retrospect, perhaps I should have worried a little more.
I dropped the four stories from the roof to the sidewalk. A burly man unloading a thick roll of carpet from a white van took one look at me, dropped his load, and sprinted off into the trees of the square. So much for Adelia's veil. That
little interaction was bound to get me into trouble. But never mind that. If Seamus was right, I didn't have time to hold the hand of the mortal world.
Night came on hard and fast, the light in the sky changing from a soft, milky blue to a hard-edged gray. The longer I waited, the more I risked coming across the nightwalkers when I was at my weakest.
There was no way I could know how many nightwalkers or ghouls awaited me. No way to know just what exactly I faced. The scent of the nightwalkers had muddied by the time we reached St. Martin, and so I didn't know their numbers. I could be walking into a den full of them. A dozen or more. And that very well might mean permanent death for me, as my powers waned as the sun fell beneath the horizon.
Ignoring the workman's shouts from the park, I strode up the short steps to the Chatham House door. With my illusions gone, I must have looked a mess. My hair had flown out in all directions from my trip across the rooftops, and my clothes were stained here and there with blood from the St. Martin compound.
Two large men in navy suits stood on either side of the door. They gave me one look and paled considerably. I couldn't blame them. An apparition appearing on your doorstep had to shake even the most seasoned of guards. As a testament to their training, they reached instinctively for the clubs holstered at their hips.
I held up my hands, palms out, to show I was unarmed, but I'm sure that didn't help much. There were quite a few blood stains stuck to my fingertips. This day was just getting more and more complicated.
"Identify yourself," the larger of the men said. I wasn't used to taking orders. Most people took one look at my eyes and knew exactly what I was. But this was a new London, a London that didn't know me anymore and, to be honest, I didn't know her either.
I shrugged and tried to look serious as I said, "My name is Magdalene Shelley and I am with the Sun Guard."
Sun Cursed (Shades of Blood Book 1) Page 6