The Black Tide (Outcast 3)

Chapter One

Sunshine.

Bright, fierce sunshine.

It bathed my body, burned into my closed eyelids, and had sweat trickling down the side of my face. Only that sweat felt as warm as the sunlight and oddly sluggish.

I frowned and tried to open my eyes. Couldn’t.

Panic stirred, along with an odd sense of urgency. I raised a hand, but the movement was not only as slow as that trickle, it hurt like hell.

I carefully touched my eyes; something sticky glued my lashes together. Further probing revealed a barely healed wound that slashed my forehead, and one I couldn’t remember getting. In fact, the last thing I remembered was looking back at Jonas—a cat shifter who was, like me, a surviving relic from the war that had ended 103 years ago—as I’d stepped through the smaller of the two rifts we’d found at Winter Halo, a now-defunct Central City pharmaceutical company. It had played a key part in the mad scheme to give both vampires and the creatures we knew as wraiths immunity to light, and the scientists there had not only dissected the brains of women with latent psychic skills, but had been testing unapproved drugs and pathogens on children they’d stolen from Central City. We’d put a stop to the dissection, rescued seven of those children, and had now killed two of the three people behind the insidious plot. One of those had been Samuel Cohen—the man who’d assumed the identity of Rath Winter, the person in charge of Winter Halo, and whose death had, in my opinion, been far too quick given the pain he’d caused so many others. The other death was Sal’s—a man who’d been a déchet like me, and someone I’d once considered my closest friend.

But two out of three was not good enough. We still had to stop Ciara Dream—the very elusive final member of that unholy trinity—before she managed to give either the vamps or wraiths full immunity.

Light—be it sunlight or the UV light that was cast from the huge towers that surrounded all cities, banishing both shadows and night—was currently the only thing protecting both human and shifter alike from the relentless attacks of either monster.

I scrubbed the muck away from my eyes and then opened them. The sky was an endless sea of blue. There were no clouds, no birds, no sign or sound of life.

I tried to sit upright, but pain surged and a hiss escaped through my clenched teeth. My entire body ached—even my damn hair felt like it was on fire.

Which I guess wasn’t really surprising, given the rift I’d come through was one of the biggest I’d dared enter so far.

True rifts had come into being 103 years ago—after the shifters had unleashed the bombs that ended their five-year war against humanity. But such was the force of those bombs that they’d not only leveled entire cities, but had also torn drifting holes in the very fabric of our world. While a few of these were doorways between our world and another, most of them simply mauled the essence of anything and anyone unlucky enough to be caught in their path. For most, being ensnared in such a rift meant death. Those of us who survived were forever altered by the magic and the energy that were part and parcel of the rifts, though the consequences of Jonas’s and my recent encounter with one had yet to be fully revealed.

But the two we’d found at Winter Halo weren’t a result of the bombs. They were what we called false rifts, and had been created by the people behind the immunity scheme as a means of transportation from one point to another on this world.

It was my task to uncover where the damn things led to, simply because I—thanks to my rather unique DNA makeup—had the unfortunate luck of being the only other person outside those behind their creation able to both see and use them.

But doing so came at a cost—at least for someone like me, who wasn’t “tuned” into them. The false rifts worked by breaking your body down to atoms before transporting you to the other end, where you were reformed and released. They did at least spit me out in one piece, but my state was very definitely bloody and worse for wear.

But why would this one dump me in the middle of nowhere? Every other false rift had at least led into a building of some kind; landing in the middle of a desert was definitely outside the norm.

I took a deep breath and rolled onto my stomach. Once again various bits of my body protested rather vigorously—something that wasn’t helped by the grittiness that rubbed into the sorer spots. My clothes obviously hadn’t come through the rift intact this time.

When the pain had eased again, I pushed up onto my hands and knees and studied my surroundings. There wasn’t much to see—just a long flat plain of yellow sand. I had no idea where I was; as far as I knew, there were no deserts anywhere near Central City or its surrounds. But my knowledge of the world was somewhat limited to the areas I’d been assigned to during the war. I certainly hadn’t traveled far after it. In fact, I’d basically spent the century since living in the remains of old military bunker outside Central, along with the ghosts of all those who’d been murdered there.

As a déchet—a lab-designed humanoid created by humans before the war as a means to combat the superior strength and speed of the shifters—I’d had little other choice. While the war might be a century past, the hatred and fear of déchet remained, even though I was now—at least as far as I knew—the sole survivor. Everyone else had been erased at the war’s end.

I twisted around to check out what lay behind me. Twinges ran through my shoulders and torso, but it was nowhere near as bad as it had been only moments ago. My body seemed to be healing at a far faster rate than was normal for me, and I’d been genetically designed to recover quicker than either humans or shifters.

The false rift sat about forty feet away, a dark orb of oily energy that gently turned on its axis. There was no sign of the jagged strips of lightning that ran across its surface when active, but that really wasn’t surprising. I wasn’t close enough for it to recognize my presence, and I seriously doubted Dream would risk using it when Winter Halo’s activities were currently under full investigation by both the corps and the council.

I pushed back onto my heels and took stock. The rift’s whips had indeed shredded my uniform, but the two automatics and the spare magazines were still clipped to the remains of my pants. Both my backpack and the slender machine rifle—which I'd adapted to fire small, sharpened stakes rather than bullets—were missing. After another look around, I spotted the pack half buried in the sand about fifteen feet away. Relief stirred, and not just because that pack still had the rifle attached to it, but also because it held—amongst many other things—a small geo-locating device. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to record my current location or where the base—or whatever else this rift had lead me to—was. Both were important, given my main mission here today was simply one of discovery. The t

ask of dealing with the base—and whatever evils it might hold—would fall to Jonas, his mercenary partner and human witch Nuri, and whatever government forces they were working with. Not that they’d ever actually admitted to working with the government on this particular case.

Of course, I was also well equipped to deal with a worst-case scenario—such as the discovery that they were far further along the road of making wraith or vampire life forms immune to light than we’d hoped or feared.

I crawled over to the pack and pulled out the geo-locator. After inspecting it to ensure there was no damage, I pressed the switch to log my position and then grabbed the water bottle and quickly swished the metallic bitterness from my mouth.

A sound invaded the stillness. It was little more than a soft whine, but it was coming toward me at some speed. I turned around. A plume of dust was now visible on the horizon, though I couldn’t yet see the vehicle causing it. Which was good, because if I couldn’t see them, they more than likely wouldn’t be able to see me.

And I needed to be sure it remained that way.

I stoppered the water bottle then raised my face and let the sunlight caress my skin. While the bits of vampire DNA in my makeup meant I was genetically adapted to night and shadows, there was still a part of me that needed the heat and life of the sun. It was that part that enabled me to disappear behind a shield of light. It wasn’t magic, but rather a psychic talent, one that had been enhanced in the lab during my creation. And it wasn’t the only talent they’d given me. Shifters might have hated and feared déchet soldiers, but we lures were far more deadly. Soldiers had strength and speed; we'd been built not only for seduction but with a veritable arsenal of both psychic and shifting skill sets at our command.

I took a deep breath then called to day’s brightness, drawing it deep into my body in much the same manner as I could draw in darkness. Heat flowed into every muscle, every fiber until my entire being burned with the force of it. I imagined that force wrapping around me, forming a shield none would see past. Energy stirred as motes of light danced both through and around me, joining and growing until they'd formed the barrier I was imagining. To the outside world, I no longer existed. The light playing through me acted like a one-way mirror, reflecting all that was around me while hiding my presence.

I pushed to my feet and retreated as that plume of dust drew closer and the vehicle became visible. It was a hover, and military in design, but much older than anything I’d ever seen in Central City. For some reason, the blast shields at the front of the vehicle were up, which possibly meant they were relying on radar to guide them. If that was the case, then my light shield might be next to useless. I unlatched one of the automatics and held it at the ready.

The vehicle came to a halt twenty feet away, blasting me with dust and hot air as its skirts lost shape and it settled onto the sand.

There was no immediate indication that they’d seen me.

A door on the left side of the vehicle opened and a woman got out. She wore a combat uniform that was obviously designed for desert use, as the camouflage swirls were gray and gold rather than the black and gray of mine. A rather old-fashioned electro pulse rifle was strapped to her waist and an odd strip of thick black plastic wrapped around her head, completely covering her eyes.

My fingers twitched against the automatic, but I didn't move. I had no idea who these people were or how sensitive this woman's hearing might be. She smelled human, but that didn't mean anything when we were dealing with people who had the technology and the determination to alter DNA.

The woman took several steps away from the hover then stopped, one hand on the pulse rifle. Her banded gaze did a long sweep of the area, sliding past me without any indication she'd sensed my presence, and then returned to the rift.