City of Light (Outcast 1)

In the end, I gave up, got dressed, and—once I’d grabbed a coffee and the last of the protein bars I’d stolen from Central last month—headed up into the old tower to watch the stars and the remainder of the night roll by.

Dawn came and went, but it found me no less restless. I leaned against the old metal railing and glared across at the park, wishing I could see beyond the trees and the lingering shadows. Wishing I could see Carleen and whatever truths might lie there.

But there was only one way I was ever going to discover those, and that was by going there.

I had no doubt that that was exactly what Nuri wanted me to do. Had no doubt she was hoping that one step would lead to two, then three . . . and in no time at all, I’d be incarcerated within the walls of Winter Halo, investigating the disappearances for them.

I wearily scrubbed a hand across my eyes. I needed to sleep, needed to rest and recharge after the stress of the last twenty-four hours, but that was unlikely to happen any time soon. There were many things in this world I could and did ignore—but a child in danger? No matter how much I might tell myself otherwise, I just wasn’t capable of walking away from something like that.

And if Nuri was telling the truth, then there was more than one child in danger here.

I swore softly, then thrust away from the railing and headed back down the stairs. The ghosts danced around me as I made my way to the weapons stash, their excitement stinging the air. Not that any of them would accompany me—they were content to explore vicariously through Bear and Cat.

I snapped two small guns onto the thigh clips, then grabbed a couple of sheer knives, strapping them onto my wrists as I headed down to the main kitchen to add a small water bottle and some of the old jerky bars that had been around forever to my day’s supplies. They were about as tasty as eating cardboard, but I could survive well enough on them. Not that I actually wanted to very often—not when Central was so close, and it was easy enough to steal more palatable food.

I headed for the South Siding exit. It would have been quicker to exit through the dome, but Central’s drawbridge was down, and there were people in the nearby rail yards, waiting to be shunted to work. I couldn’t risk anyone seeing the museum doors opening and coming to investigate. They probably wouldn’t see me, but they just might be tempted to run a more complete test on the system and discover my override c

odes.

The closer we got to the exit, the cooler and sharper the air got. Goose bumps chased one another across my skin, and I half wished I’d stopped to grab my coat. Beams of sunlight filtered through the upper levels of the thick grate protecting the tunnel entrance, but the lower part was packed with the rubbish that had washed from Central’s drains after last night’s rain. I stopped, wrinkling my nose against the soggy scent of refuse.

“Bear, Cat, could you check that no one is close?”

They hummed in excitement and whisked through me, forming a light connection before heading outside. As their ghostly forms disappeared into the bright sunshine, images began to filter into my mind. Chaos lay wrapped in shadows, and no one had yet stepped beyond its shipping container boundary. There was no way beyond actually going into the place itself to tell whether anyone on the upper levels was looking this way—although it wasn’t as if anyone beside Nuri and Jonas had a reason to. Cat and Bear continued on toward Central. There were plenty of people on the drawbridge, and more still on the rail platforms or crowding into the caterpillar pods. There were also about a dozen guards—stiff, green-clad figures bristling with all sorts of weaponry—standing in the various guardhouses dotted between the curtain wall and the museum. Thankfully, none of these posts had a direct line of sight down the remains of the river—a curious mistake, given the close proximity of the rift. But maybe because they’d classified it as inactive, they’d decided it was of little threat—although given how little anyone really knew about the rifts, I wouldn’t have been taking that sort of chance.

Still, their decision made it a whole lot easier for me. I’d have to wrap myself in sunshine to get past the rail yards, but at least they wouldn’t see me exiting our hideaway. Once Cat and Bear returned and broke our connection, I kicked the rubbish away from the grate, then stepped out into the sunshine. Just for a moment, I raised my face to the sky and let the sunlight caress my skin. I might be genetically adapted to night and shadows, but there was still a part of me that loved—even needed—the sun. Which made sense, I guess, given it was that part that enabled me to disappear into light—which was what I now needed to do.

I took a deep breath and drew in the heat and energy of the day, letting it flow deep into my body, into every muscle, every fiber, until my entire being burned. Then I imagined that force wrapping around me, forming a shield through which none could see. Energy stirred as motes of light began to dance both through and around me, joining and growing, until they’d formed the barrier I was imagining. To the outside world, I no longer existed. The sunshine that played through me acted like a one-way mirror, reflecting all that was around me but allowing no one to see in. Thus protected from casual scrutiny, I moved out, following the old riverbed toward the railway yards.

My two little escorts spun around me, their excitement becoming tinged with trepidation as we drew closer to the rail yards. A pod slid silently into the station, its interior lighting coming to life as it stopped and the doors slid open. The men and women crowded onto the platform pressed inside and, in very little time, the pod doors closed and the train whisked its occupants off to whatever factory or farm they’d been allocated for the day.

I ran across the lines, jumped onto a platform, and made my way through the complex, moving swiftly past stony-faced guards, then out onto the old road that ran between the museum’s dome and Central’s drawbridge. There was little traffic here, aside from those making their way to the pods and the occasional private vehicle taking its occupants to who knew where.

Pain began to crawl into my head. It was a warning I dared not ignore. I ran on, deep into the shadows of the trees, stopping only when there was no possibility of either the guards or any passersby on the street seeing me.

“Cat, Bear, keep an eye out,” I said, then released the sunshine. Motes of light danced around me, slowly at first, then faster and faster, as they seeped from my body with increasing speed. Then, with a sound that was almost a sigh, they slipped away into the shadows. I fell to my knees with a grunt, my body aching and my head booming.

For several minutes, I did nothing more than kneel on the hard soil, sucking in air and trying to ignore the pain. This was the price all lures paid for using the sunshine shield. Even shadowing had its cost, although it was far easier to gather shadows and disappear into them, simply because, like the vampires, I could physically become smoke. It wasn’t a psychic skill, but rather part of my nature—a magic that came from my soul and the darkness within it. But it nevertheless drew on our strength, and in the heart of a battle, it could certainly be deadly. I often wondered how many of my kindred had been destroyed during this brief period of helplessness—more than a few, I imagined.

Once the stabbing pain had eased to a dull ache, I pushed to my feet and looked around to check my bearings. Central lay off to my left, as did the clearing where we’d found Penny and Jonas. I had no idea where exactly they’d entered the park, but given that the vamps had come from a southerly direction, that was probably the way I should head. I spun on my heel and marched through the trees, keeping an eye out for movement—not that anyone in Central made use of this park. Not until the sun had reached its peak in the sky and the remaining shadows had fled, anyway, and that was a few hours away yet.

It took an hour to reach Carleen’s southern border. I stopped at the edge of the park, my gaze sweeping the remnants of the old curtain wall and the broken buildings beyond it. Though the old city was little more than a vine-covered mass of rusting metal and disintegrating concrete, it had once been home to over twenty thousand people, most of them families. In a way it still was home to many of those people, as the evacuation order had come far too late. Over a third of Carleen’s population had still been here when the last bombs of the war had hit it.

Maybe it was the presence of so many ghosts that caused the pall of darkness that seemed to hang over this place, no matter what the time of day. Or maybe it was the existence of over a dozen rifts, many of which were still active. I didn’t know, and I don’t believe anyone in Central did, either. All I knew was that, even now, those in Central avoided this place like a plague, and it wasn’t just because the vampires were more prevalent here. There was something very wrong about the feel of this place. Something slightly off center, almost otherworldly.

It was almost as if the rifts that drifted through this ruined city had leaked far more than magic—had spewed forth far more than demonic creatures.

All of which made it even more odd that Penny had somehow ended up here.

Hopefully, the ghosts here could provide an answer. Or, at the very least, point me in the direction from which she’d actually come. If they were feeling communicative, that was. I’d been here only a couple of times—and then only in the first ten or so years after the war, to scrounge through the wreckage in a somewhat useless search for parts for my old machines. While the ghosts had never been hostile toward me, they hadn’t exactly been welcoming, either.

I swept my gaze across the long, broken wall one more time, though what I was searching for I couldn’t actually say, then moved forward. The sunshine bathed me briefly, and I breathed deep, trying to capture and keep the warmth for as long as possible as the shadows crept toward me.

I resisted the urge to flick a knife down into my hand and leapt up onto a low section of wall. I hesitated, taking in the ruptured remnants of buildings and—farther to my left—the remains of what once had been a main road through the city. It was littered with building rubble, weeds, and trees that had twisted into odd shapes thanks to the eddying magic of the rifts. Plastic of various shapes and sizes—rubbish that had survived the destruction far better than Carleen itself—added spots of bright color in many darker corners, but otherwise this place was still. Quiet.

Yet not unoccupied.

Unease slithered through me. There was a watchfulness here that went beyond the displeasure of ghosts. It was almost as if something had crawled into this place and infested it with evil.