City of Light (Outcast 1)

She hesitated, and then said, almost shyly, “Penny.”

“We need to go, Penny.” I thrust upward, my legs shaking under the stranger’s sudden weight. Holding him steady with one hand, I unclipped the rifle and rested my finger against the trigger. “Run with Cat. She’ll take you into a safe place. Wait for me there.”

The little girl’s lips trembled a little. “And Jonas?”

“Jonas and I will be right behind you.”

She nodded, then scrambled over the tree trunk and ran after the energy that was Cat as she retreated through the trees. I followed, Jonas’s body a dead weight that allowed no real speed or mobility.

Bear reappeared, his whisperings full of warning. I ran up the hill as the night around me began to move, to flow, with evil.

They were close.

So close.

But there was something else out there in the night. It was a power—an energy—that felt dark. Watchful. At one with the vampires and yet separate from them.

And instinct suggested I needed to fear that darkness far more than the vampires who swept toward us.

I cursed softly and pushed the thought away. One threat at a time. I needed to survive the vampires before I worried about some other, nebulous threat. “Bear, I need your help here.”

His energy immediately flowed across mine, allowing me to see everything he saw, everything he felt. While this level of connection wasn’t as deep as some we could achieve, any bond between the living and the dead could be deadly. All magic had a cost, an old witch had once warned me. While my ability to link with the ghosts wasn’t so much magic as a mix of psychic abilities and my own close call with death, it still taxed both my strength and theirs. And it could certainly drain me to the point of death if I kept the connection too long.

But for certain situations it was worth the risk—and this was certainly one of those situations.

There was at least a score of vampires out there, which meant this wasn’t the usual hunting party. If I’d been alone, if I hadn’t promised to keep Jonas safe, I would have shadowed and run. The vampires might sense me in this form, but if I became one with the night—became little more than dark matter, as they could—then it was harder for them to pick me out from their own. I knew that from my time in the war, when the vamps had overrun a village I’d been assigned to.

But I had promised, and that left me with little choice. Using the images Bear fed me as a guide, I raised the rifle and fired over my shoulder, keeping the bursts short to conserve ammunition. The needle-sharp projectiles bit through the night and burrowed into flesh. Three vampires went down and were quickly smothered by darkness as other vampires fell on them and fed. The scent of blood flooded the night, mingling with the screams of the dying.

I crashed through yet another garden bed, my feet sinking into the soft soil. A deeper patch of darkness leapt for my throat, and the pungent aroma of the dead hit. I flipped the rifle and ba

ttered him out of the way with the butt, then switched it into my other hand and fired to the right, then the left. Two more vamps down.

I leapt over a fallen branch. Jonas’s weight shifted, making the landing awkward and losing us precious speed. Sweat broke out across my brow but I ignored it, grabbing the ranger’s leg to steady him as I ran on.

“Bear,” I said, my voice little more than a pant of air. “Light.”

Ethereal fingers tugged at the bag of flares by my side and lifted one. Energy surged across the night and light exploded, a white ball of fire surrounded by a halo of red.

It was bright enough to force them back, but they didn’t go far. They knew, as I did, that the flare would give me only a minute, at most.

And they knew, like I did, that a little ghost probably wouldn’t have the energy to light a second flare so soon after the first.

I ran on as hard as I could. The dome’s lights beckoned through the trees, forlorn stars of brightness that still seemed too far away.

The flare guarding our back began to sputter, and the black mass surged closer. I fired left and right. The nearest vampires swarmed their fallen comrades, while those at the back flowed over the top of them, hoping to be the ones to taste fresher, sweeter flesh.

Thirteen vampires left, if I was lucky. It might as well have been a hundred for all the hope I’d have if they dragged me down.

Sweat stung my eyes and dribbled down my spine, and my leg muscles were burning. But the end of the park was now in sight. The old tower’s searchlights suddenly came on, hanging free from both the tower and the dome, supported by ghostly forms. Their sunshinelike light swept City Road and provided a haven of safety if I could get to it.

Fifty yards to go.

Just fifty yards.

Then the flare went out and the vampires hit us.

Chapter 2