Chapter 5

The shadows thickened, became a real and solid presence that pressed down upon me like a ton weight. Every step became an effort; all too soon my leg muscles were quivering and my breath was little more than short, sharp jabs for air. It was almost as if I were climbing the sides of a very steep mountain rather than sliding into a crater.

Fear swam around me, fear that was both mine and that of my two little ghosts. As slow as my progress was, they couldn’t keep up with me. This darkness, whatever it was, was pushing them back, refusing them entry. No matter how hard they tried, they were falling farther and farther behind.

I stopped and looked back, my breath little more than a wheeze as I sucked in the putrid air. The rim of the crater couldn’t have been all that far above me, but it was barely visible through the ink that surrounded us. My two little ghosts were caught in an area between the thicker shadows and the murky light of day—sparks of energy that glowed brightly against the gloom of this place.

“Cat, Bear¸ you’d better go home and wait for me there.”

Their sparks moved in agitation, and I smiled. “I know you want to help, but I don’t want to risk your safety, and we have no idea just what this stuff might do to you if you continue to press against it.” Especially given the Carleen ghosts’ reluctance to enter this place. Maybe there was a reason; maybe they’d tried—and died—in the process.

No matter what humans might believe, ghosts could die—the fact that energy vampires could feed on their energy and thereby destroy them was evidence enough of that. I had no idea whether the darkness that inhabited these craters—or anything else, for that matter—could kill them, but it simply wasn’t a chance I was willing to take. Carleen’s ghosts feared something here, and if not this darkness, then what?

Both Cat and Bear’s concern and reluctance spun through my mind. “It’s okay,” I said, keeping my voice as calm and even as I could—a hard task given the weight of this place and my own growing fear. “I’ll be okay. I’ll call you when I figure out what this place actually is or where it goes. Go home, and protect the little ones.” I paused, then, as intuition itched at the back of my mind, added, “Don’t let Penny into our home. I don’t care what you have to do, don’t let her—or anyone else—inside.”

Their energy briefly danced about—they were happy to have something to do, someone to protect—then they pulled themselves free of the shadows and disappeared from my sight.

It was the first time in ages I’d been without them, and it felt oddly lonely.

I resolutely turned and continued pushing my way into the crater. By the time I reached the base, I was covered in sweat and trembling from head to toe. I paused again, sucking in the air, hating the thick foulness of it. Hating the taste of death that lay all around me.

Although I couldn’t see them, there were ghosts here. Ghosts whose energy felt as odious as the darkness itself; it was almost as if this place had infected them, made them into what it was.

Which made very little sense at all.

I frowned and took another step forward. The heavy darkness slid around me, a sensation not unlike the caress of silk against bare skin, but somehow unclean. Then, with little warning, it gave way and lifted.

I blinked and looked around. The crater’s base was strewn with rubble, bones, and refuse. And, in one corner, spinning on its axis, was a small, dark globe of shimmering, sparkling energy.

The fear crawling in my stomach exploded through the rest of me. That globe was a rift. Stationary, visible, and outputting a different sort of energy from the other rifts I’d come across, but a rift nevertheless. Penny had come through here, through it, if the Carleen ghosts were to be believed—and I did. There was no other reason for her to be here. No other way for her to get to Carleen without their having seen her.

But a rift . . . I backed away but hit the thick wall of shadows and was forced to stop. I hissed and tried to remain calm. Penny had come through this place. Where she had come, I could go.

But Penny had been stained by darkness—possibly this darkness. I didn’t want that darkness in me. Didn’t want it to even touch me.

I closed my eyes and weighed the terror of approaching—entering—that rift against the need for answers. I could walk away now and no one would ever know—no one but the Carleen ghosts. If they’d remained around to witness my retreat, that is.

It was tempting—very, very tempting.

But then I saw the disintegrating features of my little ghosts, heard their screams as the Draccid gas that was fed into our air systems ate at their little bodies. Could feel the weight of them in my arms as Cat, Bear, and I tried—and failed—to get them out of the nursery and save as many as we could.

We hadn’t known it was useless, that there was no safety to be found anywhere in the bunker. Not until the Draccid began eating at me, anyway, and Cat and Bear had crawled into my arms to die.

But I’d sworn, in the long months of my recovery, to never, ever let another child suffer if I could at all help it, and that was a promise I had no desire to break—not even now, faced as I was with whatever terrors might wait on the other side of that rift. Besides, I might have been called many things during my years as a lure, but “coward” had never been one of them. It wasn’t a title I wanted to earn now.

I clenched my fists and forced reluctant feet forward. The rift’s energy slashed at my skin, its touch sharp enough to draw blood. I bit my lip and drew a gun, flicking off the safety as the whips of power wrapped around me, drawing me closer, hastening my steps into that spinning orb.

I couldn’t have stopped now even if I’d wanted to.

The orb began to rotate faster and faster. Air spun around me, thick and foul and filled with dust, growing stronger and stronger, until it felt like I was being pulled into the heart of a gale. A dark gale, from which there was no light, no life, and possibly no escape.

Only the fact that Penny had somehow escaped not only from wherever she was being held, but from the orb itself, kept me from panicking, from fighting to be free.

The darkness of the orb encased me. Energy burned around me, through me, until it felt as if it were pulling me apart, atom by atom; it studied me, moved me, then, piece by piece, put me back together again.

Then the energy died, the whips holding me disintegrated, and I was spat out into an entirely different type of darkness. One that had a wooden floor, and where the air held the thick scent of perfume and sex.

Then pain overwhelmed everything else, and I shuddered, gasping for breath and kneeling on all fours, unable to move, sweat and blood dripping from my face and streaming down my arms to puddle on the floor beneath me.

The wounds on my arms, I reflected absently, looked like knife cuts—just as the scars on Penny’s arms had.

She hadn’t been attacked with a knife. Those scars had come from traversing the false rifts many, many times.

What the hell was going on?

To understand that, I needed to move. To explore where I’d been dumped. But moving was going to hurt; hell, even breathing hurt. It wasn’t like I had many other choices, though. Kneeling here, bleeding and sweating, wasn’t going to get me much in the way of answers.

I gritted my teeth and pushed to my feet, my breath a hiss of air as the shadowed room did several mad laps around me. For a few minutes, I did nothing more than stand there, battling to keep my knees locked and my body upright.

Then, as the pain eased, I looked around. The room was large and rectangular, with no windows and only the one door at the far end. Even from here, I could see the heavy padlock. Oddly, the lock was on this side, not the other, meaning it was designed to keep everyone else out rather than something in.

There was little else in this room beyond dust and cobwebs, and certainly no indication that anyone had come through here recently, much less a little girl.

I frowned and looked over my shoulder. The globe hovered above the floor, but it was less obvious in the shadows of this room. Its energy was muted, indistinct, as if all the fire had gone from it. A result of my using it, perhaps? Or was it naturally muted on this side—wherever the hell this side was? That was a question in urgent need of an answer, but first I needed to recover my strength.

I sheathed my weapon, then staggered over to the wall and leaned against it. After closing my eyes, I focused on my breathing, on slowing every intake of air as I reached the calm and peace of my healing state.

I have no idea how long I remained there. Healing could take minutes or it could take hours, and in this silent place of dust and cobwebs, it was rather hard to judge the passage of time.

When I finally opened my eyes, I felt renewed. The wounds on my arms—and no doubt those on my face—had healed, leaving no trace of the scars that had littered Penny’s body. I still stank of sweat and blood, but there was little I could do about that. Not until I got back home, or at least stole some clothes from somewhere.

The aroma of perfume spun around me again and on a floor above, a woman laughed. It was followed by the squeak of bedsprings, and a low sound of pleasure—though this time the voice was male rather than female.

I frowned. Had I somehow landed in the basement of a house? And where was that house situated, given I obviously wasn’t anywhere in Carleen anymore? I couldn’t be. I had no idea if it was possible for ghosts to have sex, but there was no way in hell they could do so in a place like this, simply because no such place existed in Carleen anymore.

I pushed away from the wall and walked to the far end of the room, my steps little more than a whisper on the dusty wooden floorboards. The lock on the door was thick and old, the chain thicker still, but newer, shinier. It would have been easy to shoot either the lock open or the chain apart, but that would warn whoever was having sex that someone was down here.

Unfortunately, lock picking wasn’t one of my skills, so I looked at the door instead. The frame was metal, as was the door, so even without the chain in place, it was doubtful I could kick the thing open without alerting the building’s occupants.

My gaze fell on the hinges. They were the old-fashioned type with hinge pins. If I could knock them out, the door would open. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to get them back in, not from the other side, anyway, but it was either that or go back through that sphere.

And there was no way in Rhea I was about to do that.

Before I escaped this place, however, I needed to change my appearance. I had no idea who or what waited outside, or how well guarded this building might be. The last thing I needed was my real image caught on some security camera. Better by far to conceal the truth and have them searching for a person who didn’t exist.

At least I’d taken the time to recover from the trip through the rift, because I was going to need my strength. Rearranging my features—becoming someone else, at least on the outside—wasn’t easy, nor was it pleasant. From what I’d witnessed over my years in the shifter camps, a shifter wanting to take on their animal form simply had to reach into that place inside where the beast roamed, and unleash the shackles that bound it. This type of shifting was more complicated. Not only did I have to fully imagine all the minute details of the body I wanted, but I had to hold it firm in my thoughts as the magic swirled through and around me. Easier said than done when the magic that changed me was anything but pleasant. Still, better that than someone recognizing me at a later date.

As I had with the healing state, I took several deep breaths and slowly released each in an effort to calm the tension running through my limbs. Then I closed my eyes and pictured a face in my mind. A face that was sharp, almost gaunt, with pale skin, green eyes, and a thin, unhappy mouth. She had a cleft in her chin, curly brown hair, and was slender. Flat-chested but strong. It was similar enough to my own build—aside from the flat chest—that it hopefully wouldn’t be quite as painful to change.

Then, freezing that image in my mind, I reached for the magic. It exploded around me, thick and fierce, as if it had been contained for far too long. It swept through me like a gale, making my muscles tremble and causing the image I desired to waver. I frowned and held fiercely on to the likeness. The energy pulsed as the change began. My skin rippled, bones restructured, hair shortened, curled, and changed color. It burned, hurt; I gritted my teeth against the scream that tore up my throat, my breath little more than sharp hisses as pinpricks of sweat broke out over altering flesh.

When the magic finally faded, I collapsed back against the wall, sucking in air and feeling very different. I opened my eyes and looked down. My breasts were definitely smaller, meaning the rest of the image had probably stuck as well.

I wiped the remaining beads of sweat from my forehead, then, ignoring the tremble still running through my muscles, slipped one of the knives from its wrist harness and knelt down. After sliding the edge of the knife under the hinge pin, I moved the blade along until the pin was jammed against the hilt, then hit the hilt with my hand. Unfortunately, I did little more than bruise my palm. I frowned, then sat down and dragged off a boot. A few decent thumps with the solid heel later, the pin came free. I repeated the process with the top pin, then grabbed the door and pulled it sideways, separating it first from the knuckles, then from the main lock. All that was now holding it in place were the chain, the old-fashioned padlock, and my grip on it.

I carefully peered out. The room was at the end of a long, somewhat shadowed hallway, and there were several other rooms leading off it. I couldn’t hear anything other than the couple in the room above me, and the air was thick with dust and disuse. Whatever this area was, it was all but abandoned.

I slipped through the gap, then maneuvered the door back into place so that the main lock was holding it upright again. At least it would look closed from a distance.

I padded down the hall, checking each of the rooms as I passed them by, but, beyond some ancient-looking beds, found little more than dust and cobwebs. It didn’t make sense. Why would the wraiths use a rift to transport themselves into a place like this? Why leave those above alive to go about their business when—up until now—all they’d ever done was destroy anyone and everyone who got in their way?

I reached the stairs at the far end. The basement door—if that was indeed what this place was—was locked, but this time by a fingerprint scanner. I cursed softly. There was no way I could get past that, not unless the damn power went out. And even if it did, they probably had a backup system . . . meaning there was only one thing I could do if I wanted to get out.

I pressed my ear against the sturdy-looking door but couldn’t hear anything on the other side. I raised the knife and thrust it, as hard as I could, into the unit. The knife was made from a specialized glass, and was harder than steel without the conductivity, so it presented little danger to me. There was a short, sharp explosion, and sparks flew as the system short-circuited. A second later I was through the door and in another corridor. This one was flooded with light, and the air was filled with warmth, perfume, and the tangy scents of men, desire, and sex.

I closed the basement door and quickly scanned the corridor. There were eight doors leading off the hall—most of them occupied, if the noises within were anything to go by—and an exit down the far end. Thankfully, none of the people in any of the rooms appeared to have heard the explosion, but I couldn’t count on my luck lasting.

Instead of moving on, I glanced at the control panel. Though I’d short-circuited the system, the panel on this side looked intact. It might be better if whoever owned this place believed that someone had been trying to get in, rather than out.

I shoved my knife into its electronic heart, making more obvious the destruction I’d already wrought, then padded quickly toward the exit. But as I approached, so, too, did steps from the other side. I cursed, spun around, and ran for the nearest unoccupied room. I’d barely entered when two people strode into the corridor. With no time to close the door, I simply pressed my body against the wall and hastily wrapped the bright light of the room around me. The footsteps drew closer. I didn’t dare move because I had no idea how secure my screen was, but I could hear and smell, and that was enough.

It was, surprisingly, two humans—one male, one female. The woman was heavily scented and heavier on her feet; an older woman, I thought. The male’s movements were much lighter, and he smelled faintly woody. He also emitted a vibe that was watchful, tense. A guard of some sort, not a companion. They stopped near the far end of the hall, near the door I’d shorted.

“Deliberate destruction, from the look of it.” The voice was gruff, masculine.

“So someone wanted to get in?” The woman’s voice was pleasant without being memorable.

“I can’t see any other reason to destroy the system like they have,” the male said. “You want me to check if there’s anyone in there?”

The woman hesitated, and her uncertainty and fear washed over me. “No,” she said eventually. “We’re being paid to ignore the basement, so ignore it we will. I’ll just notify them that something has happened. If they want to check it, they can.”

Them. They. Not he. Not she. There was more than one person involved in all this, whatever “this” was. But were they also involved with the wraiths? Or did we have two separate events happening here?

The two strangers retreated. I waited until they’d left the corridor, then released my light shield and looked around. The room held little more than a bed and a large wooden chest. Curious as to what the chest might contain—and whether it might offer any clue as to where I was—I walked across and opened the lid. Inside there was a variety of not just clothes, but sex toys.

I was, I realized suddenly, in a brothel. Which was a great place to hide something like the rift, because it wasn’t like visitors were going to be overly curious about what might lie beyond the rooms in which they were entertained. But that still didn’t answer the question of who. Didn’t answer the question of why the rift was here in the first place. Surely the authorities had not become so blasé about them that they’d allowed a building to be constructed around it?

I fished around in the chest and found a silvery gray cape and a gauzy white shirtdress. It was somewhat see-through and would probably reveal more than it covered—especially given that I now wore the clear under-breast shape-tapes, which were not only more comfortable than the old-fashioned bras the HDP had made us use, but far more supportive without in any way restricting movement. But it wasn’t like I had a whole lot to worry about in this form, anyway. I quickly changed, then bundled my clothes and my weapons together and shoved them into a bag I found near the bottom of the chest. Once I’d put the cape on, I headed out.

In the hallway beyond, a buzzer sounded. The rooms around me suddenly bustled with activity, and, in short order, a small group of men and women were filing out of the rooms and heading for the exit. I quickly joined them, keeping my head down, avoiding looking at anyone as the group made their way through the lobby beyond the door, past a reception area, and out onto the pavement. Pavement that was crisp and clean and filled with people going about their business, not taking any notice of those of us exiting the brothel. The sun was fierce and bright, and its position in the sky suggested it was midafternoon, at least. I’d lost a fair chunk of time traversing that rift. I jogged across the road, dodging air scooters and electric cars, then turned and looked back.

The building was small and narrow—little more than five stories high and four windows wide. Its rooftop was washed with the light of the UVs that lined the slightly taller buildings on either side of it, and it was nestled against a shiny metal wall that towered far above any of the buildings in this street. It was a curtain wall. And not, I suspected, any old curtain wall, but Central’s itself.

The wraiths had a direct line of transport into the city. No wonder so many children had gone missing without the populace ever realizing monsters prowled in their midst.

I shivered and scanned the building again, looking for the brothel’s name. Eventually I spotted a small, discreet sign that simply read DESEO. No doubt Nuri and her motley crew would be able to run a check on the owners of this place, as well as keep an eye on the comings and goings . . . if I contacted them about it, that was. I wasn’t entirely sure that was a wise move—given they hadn’t exactly denied a link to the government.

I turned and headed down the street. I had no idea where I was, but if this was Central, then this road would intersect the main thoroughfare soon enough. Central’s internal layout consisted of a dozen roads; the outer roads were semicircular like the wall itself, but the inner ones were full circles. Victory Street—the only street that ran straight through the heart of the city—intersected each of these roads, which also acted as delineation among the twelve districts within Central. Those near the wall were the poorer sections; the closer you got to Central’s heart—where the main business district and government centers were situated, as well as the only green space available within the city—the more exclusive and richer the community.

I found Victory Street—a spacious avenue that, despite the tall buildings lining either side of it, was still wide enough to allow real sunshine to bathe the street rather than just the UV lights—and headed north, toward the exit drawbridge.

The entire avenue at ground level was a mix of retail premises. At this end of town, closer to the walls, the shops and cafés tended to be smaller, and their contents—be it clothes, food stalls, or tables for the various cafés—spilled out onto the wide pavement, filling the air with a riot of scents and giving the street a wild, almost gregarious feel. It was these areas that I generally stuck to when I came here on ration raids.

The closer I moved into Central’s heart, the more sterile the street and air became. Even the people in this section of the city seemed to have undergone some sort of purity process, I thought, as my gaze roamed across the gently moving sea of people ahead of me. While they didn’t look anything alike physically, there was a common sense of serenity they all shared—an odd, almost superior air. And the fact that they were nearly all clad in white and gray outfits didn’t help the feeling that in these streets, there was an entirely different level of living. One I would never understand or be comfortable with. But at least in my stolen clothes, I didn’t stand out too much . . .

The thought froze as my gaze came to a halt on the wide shoulders of a man. A man who towered above the rest of the populace by a good foot, and whose short hair was the color of blue steel. My heart began to beat a whole lot faster and my footsteps quickened. Blue steel was a very rare hair color, and it was one that was very hard to reproduce in dye. I’d only ever seen that color five times in all the years I’d been alive, and all five instances had been during the war, on the head of a déchet. Not any old déchet, but rather, specialist assassins.

And that surely could mean only one thing.

I wasn’t the only déchet to have survived the war.