The Black Tide (Outcast 3)

“We’ve shut down your labs, and destroyed all the pathogens and mutations you were developing,” he said. “Your vampires will never now gain light immunity—”

“Maybe not in this generation, maybe not even in the next, but it will come.” Her voice was little more than a harsh croak now, but it nevertheless resonated with satisfaction. “They have been given the basic framework. It will spread and grow, and then humanity and shifters alike will no longer dominate the landscape.”

“But you’re human, so why—” I hesitated as my seeking skills whispered her secrets to me. “You were a part of the HDP team.”

Her gaze jumped back to mine and something cold—very alien—stirred in her eyes. “I ceased being human—ceased being Ciara Dream—the minute our paths crossed a vampire and a wraith in that rift.”

Julius sucked in a breath. Obviously, Jonas and Nuri hadn’t gotten around to telling him that particular part of the story. “You cannot have had dealings with the wraiths—that is impossible!”

“As impossible as déchet still being alive today,” she agreed, and began to laugh.

Only her laughter gained a high note of keening that spoke of fear and grief, and then it became a whole lot more. It was almost, I thought with a chill, a call to arms. But who was she rallying? All her forces were surely either dead or captured....

She started to convulse. I thrust up and stepped away from her; her keening grew until the sound went beyond human ears—possibly even beyond shifter’s ears—but not beyond mine.

But why— The thought stalled. I had vampire in me. This wasn’t the crying of a dying woman in pain—she was mustering the vampires.

&nbs

p; My gaze shot to the blown-out, broken remnants of the arched windows. Even though UV lights burned any hint of the oncoming night from the sky, they had no effect on my inner timer.

Dusk was settling across the sky high above us. Though the vampires might not yet dare to venture from the safety of their underground haunts, they would nevertheless hear the cry of their mistress. Not audibly, because I doubted Dream’s keening, however high-pitched and powerful, could reach that far across the night.

But it didn’t need to.

She was a part of the greater hive mind.

Her keening would echo through the entire population—not just through the den nearest to Central, but all of them.

And they would answer her call en masse.

Even as that thought crossed my mind, the lights went out.

Chapter Thirteen

There was a brief moment of shocked silence, and then a thick wave of confusion and terror hit the air. In the many years since the war, Central’s citizens had never faced darkness. And while this room was a long way from the true ink of night, it didn’t matter. Most of them were blind even in shadowed light.

Jonas wasn’t. And, thanks to both my vampire and tiger genes, neither was I.

If the surety with which Julius grabbed the gun out of my hand was anything to go by, he could also see. He shot Dream through the forehead, ending both her suffering and her rallying cry.

“Why the fuck haven’t the backup gens kicked in?” Jonas said. “I thought you said you’d secured both the grid and the backup systems?”

“We did,” Julius bit back. “But obviously not securely enough.”

A heartbeat later, a siren started. Jonas swore and glanced at me. “That’s the gate closure signal. There must still be people out in the rail yards.”

“They’re dead people if they don’t hurry up and get inside.”

“If the entire city has lost its lights, neither the drawbridge nor the wall will stop the vamps.”

I knew that better than anyone—the same way I’d gotten into the city countless times at night would be the very method the vampires used. Only this time, the towers would not be alight to stop them.

Julius touched his ear-mic, and after a moment, said, “Thank Rhea for that—at least we’ve not been left totally defenseless.”

Jonas and I shared a glance. Obviously, though this room—and the entire area around government house, if the twilight beyond the shattered windows were anything to go by—had lost light, some of the UV towers remained operational.

There was yet hope that the destruction Nuri envisaged might not yet happen.