City of Light (Outcast 1)

At the bottom I again stopped long enough to lock up behind me. I might have an instinctive need to save that child—a need no doubt born of my inability to save the 105 déchet children who’d been in my care the day the shifters had gassed this base and killed everyone within it—but I wouldn’t risk either discovery or the security of our home to do so.

The ghosts swirled around me, urging me to hurry, to run. I did, but down to the weapons stash I’d created in the escape tunnel rather than to the front door. I fastened several automatics to the thigh clips on my pants, then strapped two of the slender machine rifles—which I’d adapted to fire small sharpened stakes rather than bullets—across my back. Once I’d grabbed a bag of flares and threw several ammo loops over my shoulders, I was ready to go. But I knew even as I headed for the main doors that no amount of weaponry would be enough if the vampires caught the sound of either the child’s heartbeat or mine.

The dome’s security system reacted far faster than mine, the doors swishing open almost instantly. The pass-codes might change daily, but I’d been around a long time and I knew the system inside out. Not only had the motion and heat sensors installed throughout the museum been programmed to ignore my lower body temperature, but I’d installed an override code for the outer defenses that didn’t register on the daily activity log. I might be flesh and blood most of the time, but as far as the systems that protected this place were concerned, I was as much a ghost as the children who surrounded me.

Once the laser curtain protecting the front of the dome had withdrawn, I headed for the trees. Cat and Bear came with me, their ethereal forms lost to the gathering darkness. The others remained behind to guard the door. It would take a brave—and determined—soul to get past them. The dead might not be the threat that the vampires were, but the astute didn’t mess with them, either. They might be energy rather than flesh, but they could both interact with and manipulate the world around them if they so desired.

Of course, the smaller the ghost, the less strength they had. My little ones might be able to repel invaders, but they could not hold back a determined attack for very long. I just had to hope that it didn’t come to that tonight.

City Road was empty of any form of life and the air fresh and cool, untainted by the scent of humanity, vampire, or death. No one—living or dead—was near.

So where was the child? And why in hell was she alone in a park?

I ran into the trees, breathing deeply as I did so, trying to find the scent of the child I’d heard but gaining little in the way of direction.

Thankfully, Cat seemed to have no such trouble. Her energy pulled me deeper into the park as the stamp of night grew stronger. Tension wound through my limbs. The vampires would be rising. We had to hurry.

Bear spun around me, his whisperings full of alarm. Like most of us created in the long lead-up to the war, there was no human DNA within his body. In fact, despite his name, he was more vampire than bear shifter and, in death, had become very attuned to them.

They were rising.

Sound cracked the silence. A whimper, nothing more.

I switched direction, leapt over a bed of old roses, then ran up a sharp incline. Like the crying I’d heard earlier, the whimper died on the breeze and wasn’t repeated. If it hadn’t been for Cat leading the way so surely, I might have been left running around this huge park aimlessly. While my tiger-shifter blood at least ensured I had some basic tracking skills, basic wouldn’t cut it right now. Cat, while not trained to track, was almost pure tabby. Her hunting skills were both instinctive and sharp.

The urgency in her energy got stronger, as did Bear’s whisperings of trouble.

The vampires had the scent. They were coming.

I reached for more speed. My feet were flying over the yellowed grass, and the gnarled, twisted tree trunks were little more than a blur. I crested the hill and ran down the other side, not checking my speed, my balance tiger sure on the steep and slippery slope.

I still couldn’t see anything or anyone in the shadows, but the desperation in little Cat’s energy assured me we were getting close.

But so, too, were the vampires.

Their scent began to stain the breeze, a mix of decay and unwashed flesh that made me wish my olfactory senses weren’t so keen.

Where was the damn child?

I reached for a rifle, unlocked the safety, and held it loose by my side as I ran. Bear whisked around me again, whispering reassurances, his energy filled with excitement as he raced off into the trees. Seconds later I heard his whimper, strong at first but fading as he ran away from us. If the vampires took the bait, it would give us time to find our quarry. If not, I would be neck deep in them and fighting for life.

I broke through the trees and into a small clearing. Cat’s energy slapped across my skin, a warning that we were near our target. I leapt high over the remnants of another garden bed, and saw her. Or rather, saw the bright strands of gold hair dancing to the tune of the breeze. She was hiding in the shattered remains of a fallen tree. Beside that tree lay a man. I couldn’t immediately tell if he lived. The scent of death didn’t ride his flesh, but he didn’t seem to be breathing, either. Though I could see no wounds, the rich tang of blood permeated the air—and if I could smell it, the vampires surely would. Bear’s diversion probably wouldn’t last much longer.

I dropped beside the stranger and rolled him over. Thick, ugly gashes tore up his chest and stomach, and his left arm was bent back unnaturally. I pressed two fingers against his neck. His pulse was there—light, erratic, but there.

Yet it was the three uniform scars that ran from his right temple to just behind his ear that caught my attention. They were the markings of a ranger—a formidable class of shifter soldier who’d once been used to hunt down and destroy the déchet divisions, and who now formed the backbone of the fight against the Others. While it was unlikely this ranger would know what I was by sight or scent—especially given that lures had been genetically designed not to have any of the telltale déchet signatures—he still wasn’t the sort of man I wanted anywhere near either me or my sanctuary.

Especially not when there were nearly three platoons—or, to be more precise, ninety-three—of fully trained adult déchet haunting the lower levels. The children might have few memories of the hideous way the shifters had killed everyone at the base, but the same could not be said of the adults.

I shifted my focus to the log and the strands of golden hair blowing on the breeze.

“Child, you need to come with me.” I said it as gently as I could, but the only response was a tightening o

f fear in the air. But it was fear of me rather than the situation or even the night.

Cat spun around me, her energy flowing through my body, briefly heightening my sense of the night. The vampires would be here soon.

The urgent need to be gone rose, but I pushed it down. Dragging the child from the log would only make her scream, and that in turn would make the situation a whole lot worse. Noise was our enemy right now. The vampires weren’t the only dangers night brought on—many of the Others tended to hunt by sight and sound.