City of Light (Outcast 1)

Waking was painful.

My head felt like it was full of roaches trying to claw their way out, and my body was on fire. Sweat poured from my forehead and down my spine, and the T-shirt I wore under my jacket was soaked.

But none of that mattered. Understanding the situation did. And that meant concentrating every bit of awareness on my surroundings and what was going on.

I guess the most obvious fact was that I still lived, which surprised me. Given everyone’s reactions, I’d expected the opposite.

I lay sprawled against cold metal, and the air was not only heated and still, but also ripe with the scent of urine and rubbish. There was no one close—no one I could smell or hear, anyway. I was fully clothed, and—despite the ache in my head and the fire in my body—unhurt. But the weight of my weapons was gone; no surprise there, especially if they’d believed Penny—and the question of how she’d known my true name let alone even suspect I was déchet was a point I could worry about once I’d escaped. If I escaped.

I opened my eyes, only to be greeted by a light so harsh I blinked back tears. Vampire lights. They were using vampire lights on me. I would have laughed had I not felt so shitty.

While I couldn’t actually become light—as I could become shadow—I could certainly make it appear as if I had. It was a skill that had allowed me to get out of situations like this in the past. If a cell appeared empty—if it appeared the prisoner had already escaped—there was little reason to lock said cell back up.

Of course, it wasn’t a skill that all déchet had, just those of us designed to be lures and assassins—and we’d been few enough in number.

Little fingers patted my face. It was a reassuring touch, but both Cat and Bear were confused and angry, and their emotions stung the air. I opened my hand and briefly wrapped my fingers around the energy of theirs.

“It’ll be okay,” I said softly. “We’ll be okay.”

They hummed, happy that I was awake but not really reassured. I pushed upright, but far too fast. Pain hit like a sledgehammer, so sharp it felt like my head was about to split apart. I hissed and hugged my knees to my chest, breathing slowly and deeply until the sensation faded. Once it did, I studied my surroundings. The room was little more than a ten-feet-square metal box—which was huge in a place where space was at a premium—and had obviously been, at one point in its life, a storage container, as there were no windows and the walls were pockmarked with welded-over drill holes that must have once held shelving in place. Silver mesh covered all four walls and the ceiling. This was a room designed to hold shifters and vampires, meaning Nuri’s place was more than just a bar. And though this prison should have set off my fear of enclosed spaces, it didn’t. Maybe it was the light. Or maybe the fear of not knowing what these people wanted or intended was drowning out everything else.

I glanced at the door. It, too, was silver-coated and made of thickened steel, with only a minute space between the bottom of the door and the floor. Even so, I might be able to get out that way, but not until the weakness that assailed my body eased. Shadowing in light was extremely hard and not always successful; to have any hope of escaping that way, I needed full strength.

I studied the ceiling again, squinting against the harshness of the lights. I couldn’t see anything to indicate I was being monitored, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t.

Bear, I thought. Explore.

He hummed with pleasure and whipped through me, connecting us on a level far deeper than what we’d achieved in the park, because this time, the connection lingered once he pulled free.

I closed my eyes and saw through his.

There was a dark lane little more than a foot and a half wide just beyond my cell, and the air stirred sluggishly, suggesting there was a vent of some sort nearby. Bear spun around, but there were no other buildings behind my cell—nothing but a glimpse of stained silver that was Central’s curtain wall. Unbidden, he turned again and moved down the little lane, checking the small rooms to the left and right, finding nothing but wet, musty darkness. But as he drifted toward a short flight of stairs, voices began to edge across the silence—thick, angry voices. Bear followed the sound into a room slightly larger than mine. A half dozen chairs that had seen better days encircled a small electric stove on which several blackened pots sat. One held little more than water, and the other some sort of meat and vegetable mix.

The voices were coming from the next room. Bear whisked through the wooden door, then stopped. We were back in the bar. One of the shifters—a female—leaned against the bar while Nuri stood in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips as she glared at the second of the shifters. He was a thickset man with a mass of golden hair and yellow eyes. Lion, I thought, as Bear drifted closer.

“Fuck it to hell, Branna,” Nuri all but exploded. “Did you have to use the Iruakandji on her?”

Iruakandji. No wonder it felt like I was knocking on death’s door. That particular drug had been developed in the latter part of war by the HDP, but rarely used. While it did kill shifters with great alacrity, it had proven unviable as a weapon not only because it was extremely costly to make, but because it was just as deadly to déchet, no matter how little shifter blood they had in them.

What was even more interesting, though, was the fact this lot not only had access to it, but kept it close enough to use.

“If there’s even the slightest possibility she’s a fucking déchet,” Branna said, flinging his arms out wide to emphasize his point, “then what does it matter? They’re supposed to be dead, and now she is.”

“Most of us are supposed to be dead, Branna. Does that mean you’re going to use the poison on Jonas? Or Ela?”

“He’d better not try,” the brown-haired woman said without looking up, “or he’ll find his balls shoved in the back of his fucking throat.”

Branna grimaced. “Look, that’s totally different, and you know it.”

“What I know,” Nuri said, “is that the déchet were designed to kill all shifters on sight. And yet this woman—if she was a déchet, and we have no real proof that she was—saved not only Penny, but a ranger. I wanted to know why.”

“Well, it’s one of life’s little questions that’s going to have to remain a mystery, isn’t it, because I can’t fucking undo what I did.”

And he didn’t want to, if his expression was anything to go by. Although if they were expecting me to be dead, then they were going to be pretty disappointed. When the HDP made those who were destined to become lures, they’d ensured we were immune to all known toxins and poisons. They had to, because that’s generally how lures killed when tasked to do so. Which didn’t mean we suffered no ill effects—we did. We just didn’t die from them—though I’d certainly prayed to Rhea to swiftly take both the little ones and me when they’d filled our bunker with Draccid.

/> But then, Draccid was a particularly insidious gas that entered the body through breath or via exposed flesh, and melted you from the inside out. It was a hideous way to die—something I knew because I’d come very close to death myself. In fact, the strong psychic connection I had with Cat and Bear was undoubtedly due to the fact that they’d not only died in my arms, but that some of our DNA had mingled on that dreadful day.

But being immune didn’t make me immortal. Far from it. Any regular weapon that would kill a vampire could kill me, with the exception of light.