City of Light (Outcast 1)

“What I want is neither here nor there. Nuri wants you alive, so alive you will remain.”

“Damn it, you don’t understand! The ghosts are down there!”

“The ghosts are already dead. The vampires cannot hurt them, but they can and will tear you apart.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand!” The panic emanating from the exit was growing, as was my desperation to move, to get down there and help my little ones. “There are vampires who consume energy or souls, not just blood.”

“I still don’t see—”

“What do you think ghosts are?” I cut in. “An ectoplasmic force, that’s what. And it can be consumed by some vampires.”

He glared down at me, his green eyes bright and fierce despite the night. “I think your two little ghosts are clever enough to avoid—”

“That’s the whole problem!” I spat back. “It’s not just two ghosts. It’s hundreds.”

And with that, I lurched forward and smashed my forehead against his. It was a move he wasn’t expecting, and it knocked him sideways. I pushed him the rest of the way off and, despite a spinning head and blooming headache, scrambled to my feet and ran on.

He cursed and all too soon was running after me. But my fear was fierce, and it gave my feet greater speed even if he had longer legs. Cat and Bear reappeared, carrying several larger guns and a couple of flares between them. Not much, and certainly not enough, not by a long shot, but better than nothing. I sheathed my knives, caught the weapons, tossed a flare back to the shifter, then clipped the other one to my pants. I raced over the slight hill that ran down to our bunker. Below me, vampires milled around the exit, scrambling over one another in their efforts to get through the ghosts who were valiantly attempting to hold back the tide. The scent of burned flesh stung the air, suggesting that at least some flares had been lit before I’d gotten here, and vampires were still being tossed left and right. But some were getting through . . . and it was at that point I realized that the exit was open.

By Rhea, how had that happened? Why were they even here, when in one hundred years they’d never come within sniffing distance of this tunnel?

They wouldn’t come here. Not unless they were being forced. I couldn’t feel that dark, oddly mutated energy that I’d felt the last time I’d encountered the vampires, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t near.

Not that it mattered. Not immediately. First I had to secure and clean out our bunker before I began to worry about the hows and whys of the exit being open.

I raced down the hill, my weapons gripped tight. As several vampires turned to face me, I began to fire, mowing some down, missing others. Behind me, Jonas unleashed his own weapons, the soft sound of rifle fire almost lost in the hissed snarls of the vampires.

“Bear, flare,” I said. His energy spun around the flare, and an instant later it was lit. I snagged one gun onto a belt loop, then grabbed the flare and threw it into the middle of the vampire pack. They fled, creating a temporary clearway in the middle of the doorway.

“Cat, light the other one.”

Her energy ran past me, and, a second later, light flared across my back. The shifter swung his flare back and forth threateningly, keeping the vampires momentarily at bay. But they ran along the edges of the light, ready to attack—desperate to attack—the minute the flares died.

I ran into the bunker, the shifter two steps behind. My flare began to sputter and fade. As Jonas threw his on the ground just in front of the entrance, I hit the EMERGENCY CLOSE button. The grate slammed home, but that didn’t mean we were safe; this gate wasn’t protected by either silver or a laser screen, and the vampires merely had to shadow to get through it. We needed to get to light, and that meant getting out of this tunnel and into the bunker itself—the one place I had no desire to take the ranger.

But it was either that or die, because we simply didn’t have enough weapons and there were still far too many vampires.

“This way,” I said, voice tight. The ghosts fled before me, happy to see me, but their collective energy was so depleted and fear-filled it made me want to cry.

We ran down the tunnel, leaping over the bodies of the vamps who’d made it into the tunnel, our steps echoing in the silence—or mine did. The ranger’s were whisper quiet. Darkness fell behind us, and the ghosts screamed a warning—the vampires were in the tunnel and coming after us.

“Bear, Cat, get those lights on up ahead.”

They surged past us. A second later, the lights came on, the sudden brightness eye-watering. I blinked away tears and ran on, desperate to reach that room before the flood of darkness behind us hit. I ran into the light but didn’t stop until I was at the far end of what had once been a nursery. Or one of them. This one happened to be empty at the time of the cleansing; the other one hadn’t.

Jonas stopped beside me, radiating tension and a readiness to fight. I gripped my weapons, waiting, as the flood of darkness drew closer. They were shadowed, so they made little sound, but I could feel them. Feel their evil, hunger, and desperation.

I shivered, even as I wondered at that last emotion. There were plenty of easier pickings in Chaos, so why come here, after me?

Or were they, perhaps, still after Penny? They’d certainly prowled around the museum long enough last night, attempting to find a way in. Was this just an extension of that search?

Maybe. Maybe not. And it wasn’t like I could ask them.

Shadows flickered across the edges of the light; then vampires re-formed. I raised my gun, as did Jonas, and together we picked them off, one by one, until the doorway was packed with smoldering bodies and we couldn’t see the vampires beyond it.

Which, again, was odd. Vampires usually consumed their dead. “Waste not, want not” seemed to be their motto when it came to flesh and blood.

I stopped firing and lowered my weapons. Jonas kept his at the ready, his expression grim a