The Black Tide (Outcast 3)

Thanks, Bear. To Penny, I added, “You don’t belong here. You’re not one of them, no matter how much the drugs in your body are making you believe otherwise.”

Though my voice was as soft as hers, it echoed loudly across the black silence. In the right-hand tunnel, the vampires’ stirrings got louder and the sense of their hunger grew.

Jonas is ignoring your order, Cat said. He will be with you in a few minutes.

Which was both frustrating and unsurprising. He'd gone against all common sense—against even Nuri's advice and fears—to keep Penny in Chaos and as close as practical to him. There was no way he'd leave a confrontation such as this to a second party.

“I do not belong in Chaos or Central, either,” she said. “I never really did.”

“You belong with your family and friends—”

“My family is dead,” she broke in. “I do not know those who would call me kin these days.”

“You have Jonas—”

“Jonas will die in this place, as will you. There is no escape.”

A statement I had every intention of disproving. But the mere fact she could say something like that without even the barest flicker of regret chilled me to the core.

“What is this place, Penny?” I asked. “What do they do here?”

“Here?” she said, vaguely waving a hand. “Nothing.”

Was the vagueness deliberate, or did she really not know what I meant? And if it were the latter, why not? She was neither young nor dumb.

“I meant this place as a whole. What does Dream keep here other than vampires? What does she do?”

“It is little more than a storage facility,” came the remote reply.

Mere storage facilities didn’t vibrate like this place was. “Storage for what?”

“Weapons, equipment, ammunition.” She shrugged lightly. “Everything that is needed for a war.”

“And is that what Dream intends—a war?”

“I don't know her plans or desires,” Penny said. “I cannot hear her thoughts.”

“And yet you heard mine?” And if she could read my mind, did that mean Dream would also be able to?

But surely if that had been the case, it would have applied to both Sal and Winter, given they all shared the same DNA.

Penny smiled, but it contained little in the way of warmth and her eyes remained remote. “Because we both now share a connection to Jonas.”

Relief surged. At least if I did unknowingly run into Dream in some incarnation other than her Hedda Lang one, my thoughts wouldn’t give the game away. “And the vampires?”

“Their blood runs through my veins, as it runs through yours and hers. While it merely enables you to hear them, it has made me a part of the greater mind.”

Greater mind? Did that mean vampires were capable of some sort of shared consciousness? I seriously hoped not. Up until now, the various vampire nests had been operating independently, but if Dream had somehow tapped into that shared consciousness and could make them to act as one, we would be in serious trouble.

“Why is Dream part of that consciousness and yet I’m not?”

Penny shrugged. “I do not know.”

There was too damn much that she—and we—didn’t know, I thought grimly. “Then how did she become mistress? Surely only someone vampire-born could become the mistress?”

“Again, I do not know,” Penny replied. “It is not my place to question these things.”

“What does the greater mind tell you?”