The Black Tide (Outcast 3)

“The vampires will attack the minute you move against me. There are too many of them for you to beat.”

“You and Dream misjudge our strength and determination,” he growled back.

She studied him for a moment, and then said, “And what good do you think it would do if you could get me out of here? This darkness in me grows by the day, and there is nothing you or anyone else can do to stop that. I will endanger everything else you hold dear, Uncle, and we both know it.”

“What has been done can be undone,” he said. “We will find a way to save you.”

Just for an instant, tears glimmered in her eyes. And there was something else—a spark of sudden awareness and fear—that suggested the grip of whatever thrall she was under had briefly broken.

“If your desire is to save me,” she said, with just the smallest hint of desperation. “Then there is only one thing you can do.”

His shock coursed through my mind and added depth to my own. And yet, I knew in my heart it was nothing but the truth, however unpalatable. If the drugs and pathogens injected into her had already altered her chemistry and perhaps even DNA to the point that she now felt more comfortable with darkness and vampires than light, shifters, and humanity, there was a very big chance it could not now be reversed. That it would continue to change her until she reached the end point—whatever that end point was, be it as a vampire or the means through which the vampires gained immunity. In either scenario, the child Jonas had spent over a hundred years protecting would no longer exist.

I wanted to reach out, to offer him both comfort and understanding, but I very much suspected he'd rebuff both right now.

“No.” The denial exploded out of him.

“If you really want to save me, then it is the only way.” The desperation was stronger in her voice. “You will still die in this place, but at least I will be free of the darkness.”

The vampires flood into this tunnel, Bear warned. They will be on you in minutes.

I swore and looked at Jonas. If he'd heard Bear's warning, there was no sign of it.

“No,” he repeated. But it was softer, and filled with anguish.

“You must,” she said. “Please, I—”

Whatever else she was going to say died on her lips, right alongside the spark of awareness. Her body straightened fractionally and the remoteness returned. “Your death approaches, Uncle. Do not say you weren’t—”

She never finished the sentence.

Jonas raised his gun and shot her.

Chapter Ten

The vampires screamed in fury, and the force of their approach became so fierce it was a foul wind that ran before them, promising our deaths even as it battered our bodies.

“Turn on your halo light,” Jonas snapped. “And run.”

“There is nowhere to run,” I bit back, even as I obeyed.

He scooped up Penny's limp body and then raced toward the left tunnel. Vampires flooded out of the right one, their desperation such that they flung themselves at him, undeterred by the halo’s light or the ash of their comrades that rained all around them.

Bear screamed a warning. I slid to a stop, swung around, and unleashed a rain of metal at the thick mass that poured out of the exit tunnel. Some vampires went down while others flashed to particle form to avoid being hit. As had happened in Chaos, there was no pausing to tear at their fallen comrades; their hunger for flesh and blood might be so fierce that it had become a physical force, but the flesh they wanted was ours.

“Tiger, move it!”

I turned and raced after him. The vampires chased us, their noise deafening in the confines of the smaller tunnel. Every vampire who got close was killed either by the halo’s UV light or by bullets. The junction and the tunnel soon became thick with the dead, and the air heavy with their ash, but it didn’t stop them.

The walls of the left tunnel were again brick rather than concrete, and the air washing down from up ahead was much, much warmer than it had been in the other tunnels. That strange vibration was growing ever stronger, and there was a constant rain of grime coming from the ceiling. It certainly wasn’t the ventilation system causing this shaking. No system, however strong or out of sync it might be, would affect the earth as badly as this.

But it wasn’t just the shaking now—it was the noise. A weird crunching, grinding noise.

I ducked my head sideways as a vampire's talon arced toward my face. It hit as ash but nevertheless was a reminder of the fate that waited if these lights failed.

“Jonas,” I yelled, firing at the vampire who appeared between us before leaping over his cindering body, “have you any damn idea where we're going?”

“We need to find out what Dream is storing here,” he replied. “Especially if she does have plans to kill Central's lights.”