Slowly, he straightened and returned his sword to its sheath.
Ashra turned her back on him and walked away, clearly expecting him to follow. She led him away from Lucas and the humans who hovered on the brink of transforming into vampires.
“How did you manage to find your way up here?” she asked.
He checked his pace to match her shorter stride, and spared her a glance, uncertain of what to say or whether even to respond.
She paused in front of the door on the far end of the corridor and looked up at him. “Well?”
His brow furrowed. What kind of game was she playing?
She folded her arms across her chest. A thin eyebrow arched.
He leaned down to peer into the glass panel beside the door. As it had so many times before, the door slid open.
Ashra’s laughter chimed again, musical and seductive. “But of course.” Her leather wings spread and beat down, lifting her a foot into the air so that she could stare directly into his face. “Such beautiful eyes.” A chuckle lurked in her voice. The sound was intoxicating, as mesmerizing as her kiss.
He could not tear his gaze from her golden eyes, where ancient wisdom mingled with deep sorrow. Something else lingered in those fathomless depths. He could not put a name to the emotion, but he had seen it before; he was certain of that.
Her lips parted as if a word trembled on the cusp of being spoken.
He cut her off. Perhaps he was a coward and a fool, but he did not dare listen to the voice that was more seductive than a siren’s. “What…are you?” Demon? Angel?
Her chin tilted up. The moment of vulnerability vanished. “I am an icrathari—the oldest of my kind.” Her wings folded against her back, and she landed soundlessly. Turning her back on him, she stalked past the open door and walked to the central shaft. The glance she threw over her shoulder was both mischievous and mocking.
Did she think he was so stupid as to trust her with his life?
On the other hand, how could he back down from so blatant a challenge?
He walked up to her, met her gaze, and nodded.
Her eyes widened. A ghost of a smile toyed on her lips. Her arm snaked around his waist, gripped hard, and she leapt into the shaft.
The rush of wind tore the scream from his throat. He squeezed his eyes shut until he heard her chuckle, low and soft. Forcing his eyes open, he realized that he had a death grip on her other arm.
Her wings flared, and her weight shifted. They swerved through the shaft and toward an open landing. Jaden’s feet hit the floor first, the impact gentle. Ashra landed beside him. She released him and strode forward as if he were of no consequence. Her wings stretched out before folding against her back. “This way,” she said without looking over her shoulder.
She led him down the corridor and paused in front of a sealed door. She rose to the tips of her toes and leaned close to the glass panel. After a moment, the door slid back. She stepped to the side and waved him ahead of her.
Jaden shot Ashra a sideway glance and preceded her into the room. He stopped short, inhaling sharply. He had expected a tiny cell, not a room that extended as far as his eyes could see. Long tubes, each only a little longer than Ashra was tall, were stacked on top of each other like peas in a pod. Narrow corridors separated the rows of tubes. The air was cold, far colder than in the rest of the tower.
His footsteps echoed, soft yet obnoxious like a whisper in church. “What is this place?” he asked.
“We call it the ark,” Ashra said.
He brushed his fingers lightly against the frosted glass surface of a tube. The thin layer of ice melted at his touch to reveal the face of a child, eyes closed, floating in a translucent liquid. He stumbled back. “What is it? Is the child—?”
“In hibernation, not dead.” Ashra’s fingers glided over the surface of the container, her touch gentle, as if caressing the face of the child within.
His gaze shifted. The room contained thousands upon thousands of tubes. “Is this what you’ve done with the children you’ve taken from us? You’ve stored them as food?”
Ashra rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. Why would we eat them? They’re not particularly tasty. Icrathari are immortal; we have no need for sustenance.”
“But the vampires are blood-drinkers.”
“The vampires are near-immortals. The only time they need nourishment is to heal from injury; and at those times, they need strong blood to heal—vampire or icrathari blood; human blood would not meet their needs.”
“Then why take the children?”
“Because there are too many of you. Aeternae Noctis cannot support all of you.”
“So you cull them?”
Ashra raised her chin. “Yes. Those with strong genes and bloodlines we leave behind and allow to reproduce. Those with weaker lineages we take.”
His brow furrowed. “But you don’t kill them.”
“We have no reason to kill them. The city cannot sustain increasing human numbers, but cryogenically frozen, the children don’t take up additional resources, other than space.”
“Cryo—”
“Cryogenically frozen in life pods, their growth suspended.”
“And then what?”
“They sleep, waiting.”
“For what?”
Ashra trailed her finger along one of the life pods, leaving a clear streak through the icy casing. “Someday, we might find a way to sustain more people here in the city, or when the planet is ready for us again, we will return the children to their parents.”
“But you have been taking our children for a thousand years. Are there millions of children in here?”
“No. When we run out of space, we selectively eliminate the children whose parents have passed on and whose families are gone.”
“How?”
Ashra moved to a lighted console. Words streamed over the screen. Her fingers tapped on the console. A single pod glowed bright, standing out from among the others that were still cast in darkness. Her hand hovered over the console, but it did not touch the red button. “We alter the nutrients in the selected pod. The child transitions from sleep to death without waking, and the acids liquefy the body.”
Jaden’s eyes widened. “And then?”
“And then the remains are recycled.”
“Into what?”
“Into the soil. Into your fields and forests,” Ashra said. “Waste not, want not.”
“What? You’ve been using our children to fertilize the land?” He grasped her upper arms and shook her hard. “What are you, a monster?”
“I know you’d like to think so,” she retorted. “But we’re not the ones you should fear.”
No, she wasn’t. She was the woman who danced through his dreams, her stunning face awash with delight as she spun flawless pirouettes to music only she could hear. In his dreams, her smile was compelling, her laughter infectious. Her eyes were gentle with love.
They were not the cool golden orbs that now stared at him.
What changed you? He bit back the question and instead looked over the array of life pods. “Where is Khiarra?”
Her fingers danced over the keyboard. A different pod glowed.
“Release her,” he said.
She frowned. For a brief moment, her hand hovered over the red button, and then moved toward another button. She tapped it lightly and entered a few more commands into the console. A robotic arm lowered from the ceiling and extracted the pod from its column before lowering it to the floor. The upper half of the pod swung open.
Jaden cast Ashra a narrow-eyed glance. He hurried toward the open pod. Khiarra was naked, her arms by her side. She lay unmoving, and her skin was cold to the touch. His heart contracted. Was she really only asleep? Perhaps they had miscalculated.
“She’ll need several minutes to wake,” Ashra said. “There are towels and smocks over there.” She nudged her chin at a row of shelves set close to the ground.
“Why do you have towels and smocks her
e?”
Ashra looked away. “Sometimes, we return the children.”
“When?”
“When we think it’s the right thing to do.”
A memory stirred. Jaden’s eyes widened. “William was returned. Three years ago, after his older brother was killed in a boating accident on the river, his parents found William in his bed, no older than he was on the day he was snatched by the vampires. You sent him back to his parents.”
Ashra shrugged. “Necessity. With his brother gone, the child had to carry on their bloodline. Genetic diversity is as important, perhaps even more so, than genetic excellence.”
What kind of monsters were these that culled children for genetic flaws, and then returned them to their grieving parents? He grabbed towels and a smock from the shelf, lifted Khiarra out of the viscous fluid, and toweled her dry, trying to rub warmth back into her body.
Khiarra’s eyelashes fluttered. She opened her eyes and stared up at him. Her eyes closed again as she sighed. The sound eased the worry out of his heart, though she was lethargic and her body was still cool to the touch. He tugged a smock over her head, wrapped a dry towel around her for extra warmth, and scooped her into his arms.
He turned to Ashra. “How do I get back to the city?”
Ashra’s smile did not reach her eyes. “Why?”
“I’m taking her home.”
“And what if I told you that your parents are dead?”
Jaden’s breath caught. He gritted his teeth against the wave of grief. His grip tightened around his sister’s small body. “Then she is my burden,” he said without hesitation. “She is destined to end the eternal night.”
Ashra waved her hand, the gesture weary. “She is most welcome to her destiny if she will take the humans off our hands in the process.”
Jaden shook his head. “I don’t understand. You’ve oppressed us for centuries. You need us to sustain you—”
“Understand one thing, human. Under no circumstances do we need you. For a millennium, we have been burdened with you. The vampires we created out of necessity. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done out of necessity and thankless duty. You want your sister? Take her and go. Her fate is in your hands.” Her wings spread and beat down, carrying her aloft, out of his reach.
He stared at the odd icrathari who stirred emotions in him that he was not prepared to address, who answered his questions with statements that evoked more questions; the icrathari whose face had haunted his dreams for five years—a face that finally had a name. “Ashra—”
Her shoulders moved in a dismissive shrug. “Run away, Jaden. If you can, return to your little life, to your small world. You have no place in mine.”
She is destined to end the eternal night.
Ashra snorted. She had tried to reach out to the human, to bridge the gap as Siri called it, but obviously all he could think of was the prophecy, the one that spelt doom for the icrathari, vampires, and humans alike.
She turned her face away, not wanting to see him flee with his sister cradled in his arms.
He was a human, and when he was awake and aware, he had no recollection of the precious soul or the memories he carried inside. He had no place in her world.
She had to let him go even though, for a moment, he had listened. He had questioned; he had challenged. Questions were often the start of understanding, but in the end, he had turned away.
He had not looked back.
Ashra threw a glance over her shoulder. Her chin lifted, though her soul ached. She could not let him walk away. She could not turn her back on him without knowing what portion of Rohkeus’s soul had come to fruition in its fragile human host.
How would he fare when faced with the truth of the ruined Earth? Would he have the strength to survive the revelation, and the will to thrive under altered circumstances?
How much of Rohkeus did Jaden possess?
She had to know.
We are not done. Curse you, Jaden, and damn the priceless soul you carry in you. I would never have given you a chance otherwise.
Chapter Six
Jaden's body should have given out hours earlier, but willpower and the driving need to protect his sister kept him going. Mercifully, the physical effort kept him from dwelling on the emotional turmoil stirred by the icrathari. Breathing heavily, his heart pounding from the effort of pushing past his injuries, Jaden emerged from the stairwell onto the lowest level of Malum Turris. The bundle in his arms stirred.
He sagged against a wall. Khiarra’s large blue eyes blinked up at him. “I can walk.”
He set his sister down, but supported her until he was certain she could stand in her own strength.
She did not wobble. In fact, she was steadier than he was. She peered around him. “Where are we?”
“Malum Turris.”
Her eyes widened, and an awed smile spread over her face. “We’re in the tower?” She looked down at her linen smock and plucked at the coarse material with obvious disgust. “What is this?”
“Ask me later. Stay close to me. We have to get back to the city.” With Khiarra beside him, he searched each room in the maze-like level. He opened every sealed door he came across by peering into the glass panel that he now realized was some kind of security system.
Khiarra’s mouth dropped open the first time the door slid back. “It’s magic.”
Jaden glanced at his sister. His mind spun—Ashra’s words melding with the wonders of a world he had never realized existed beyond the city of Aeternae Noctis. No, it’s technology—technology the icrathari have kept from us. What else have they denied us? They’ve kept the world from us too. There’s no reason they would have imprisoned us within the dome other than to sate their needs.
Except Ashra had said otherwise.
Would you believe the vampires’ demonic overlord? For a thousand years, they stole our children.
But they returned the children, some of them. The others sleep, eternally young.
And others are purged, their bodies stripped to their base essences to nourish the flowers.
How could so much light reside with darkness, so much good entwine with evil?
He growled low in his throat, turned, and slammed the palm of his hand against a wall. What are you, Ashra? Demon or angel?
“Jaden.”
He turned to see Khiarra standing next to a sealed opening set in the floor. His brow furrowed. The city lay around the tower, not under it, but Khiarra’s small fingers were already tapping on the console next to the opening. The floor slid away, and darkness yawned up at them. “Get back, Khiarra.”
It was too late. She screamed, falling.
He dived after her. His greater weight allowed him to catch up with her, and he pulled her into his arms. Her small body shuddered against his, her scream torn away by the wind. He twisted around so that his back would take the impact of any landing, though in the darkness, he could not tell when the landing would come.
Judging by the distance they were falling, he was certain they would not survive.
Chapter Seven
Jaden closed his eyes and held Khiarra tight. He braced for impact even though he knew his efforts were futile. Khiarra would die; he had failed.
Powerful arms seized him and Khiarra. His eyes flashed open, and he stared into a beautiful, pale face with golden eyes. “Ashra.”
Her bat wings were invisible in the darkness, their powerful beat soundless against the roar of Aeternae Noctis as it swept overhead.
Stunned, Jaden stared up at the underside of the city—a vast sheet of metal, its smooth surface marred by massive cylinders that gushed powerful, heated jets of air, bearing the city aloft, a hundred feet above the ground.
No, that was impossible. Aeternae Noctis was built on the ground. How often had he pressed against the glass, staring at the magnificent and unchanging vistas outside the dome, scenes of snow-capped mountains towering over lush meadows and pine forests?
Aeternae Noctis was not a city hove
ring above the Earth, constantly on the move.
He stared at the domed city as it raced toward the west.
But it was…
His jaw slack, he stared at Ashra. His pulse fluttered as his throat worked, the words lost, buried by disbelief.
The icrathari’s face was expressionless. Her silence carried a rebuke louder than words as she lowered them gently to the ground.
Khiarra’s rosebud mouth widened into a smile. “You’re pretty.”
Yes, she is. Jaden looked around. “What is this place?” He took a few steps forward. Dust and sand swirled around his feet. He knelt and placed his hand against the parched ground. Jagged lines cracked into the baked earth. There was no vegetation, none that he could see. The sky was clear and cloudless, the arc of the moon visible.
He shivered as much against the chill of the air as the iciness that lodged within.
Nothing. There was nothing.
“Are we in hell?” He scarcely recognized his trembling voice.
Ashra shook her head. “This is Earth, what’s left of it.”
“No, the Earth is verdant—”
Ashra shrugged, the motion indifferent. “What you’ve seen is a holographic image projected from the tower. We did not have the heart to take your memories of Earth from you. Humans wither without hope.”
“What happened?”
She kicked her sandaled foot, tracing patterns into the ground. “A thousand years ago, humans fought their last war. Their vaunted technology destroyed each other. Their ultimate weapon damaged the atmosphere.” She looked up, her golden eyes sad. “The sun, the source of life, brought death instead. It scorched everything in its path. The only safety was found at night.”
“But it doesn’t explain that.” Jaden waved his hand at the dome-encased city, hovering above the ground, its engines churning.
“When the humans began the final war, Rohkeus saw their doom. He designed Aeternae Noctis, and we turned humans into vampires by the thousands, conscripting them to hard labor to build the city.” She turned her back on him, apparently lost in memories. “He drove them hard; by the hundreds, they died from exhaustion, but the city was built and stocked mere hours before the planet began to die.”
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 151