A Shade of Vampire 27: A Web of Lies (13 page)

I leapt beneath a black truck as they began to rain bullets in my direction. Only, I realized as they bounced off the ground that they were not actually bullets. They were darts. Darts drugged with some kind of powerful sedative, no doubt.

This at least confirmed my conclusion that they did not wish to kill me. Yet. Not before Atticus had completed his interrogation.

I crawled from one vehicle’s underbelly to the next, trying to get closer to the outskirts of the parking lot. Then, with a dull thud and a nasty scraping of talons against concrete, the mutants landed.

Oh, no. This is not cool. This is really not cool.

The mutants closing in around me, I backed up as far as I dared to the humming fence.

I looked wildly around the compound, hoping to spot some kind of gap in the fence. I spotted the gates—the main exit—but they were all the way on the other side of the lot. I estimated about half a mile away. I would struggle even to run ten feet now that the mutants were so close to me, let alone make it all that way.

The flames billowing from my palms were the only barrier left now between the mutants and me. A barrier that the monsters weren’t afraid to test. Without warning, one of them thrust its hawk-like head forward, right through my wall of flames. Its beak stopped about five inches away from my nose before withdrawing from the heat. I practically swallowed my tongue.

As I sensed the mutant was about to encroach again, likely more boldly this time—perhaps even gripping me with its talons—an idea sparked in my brain. A crazy and suicidal idea. But an idea nonetheless. Right now, even a downright insane idea seemed better than just standing here helpless and letting myself be plucked up.

“Wait!” I yelled out, before doing the unthinkable. I relinquished my fire to a tiny spark in my right palm.

Atticus and his two companions, still seated atop the mutants, had their guns at the ready. Now that I was so close, I wondered why they didn’t just shoot the sedatives at me, stun me once and for all. But I suspected that I knew the answer to that; they couldn’t interrogate me if I was unconscious. They wanted answers, and they wanted them now. They would do all they could to reclaim me while I was conscious. I had to do all I could to work that to my advantage.

Atticus tilted his head to one side. “Wait for what?” he asked coolly.

Balling my right hand into a fist, I let out an exaggeratedly long, deep breath—something that wasn’t exactly hard to do considering that I felt exhausted. I looked directly at Atticus. “Okay! You can wire me up to your damn lie detector and I will answer your questions! J-Just…” I adopted a petrified expression and moved my eyes from one mutant to the other. “Just… keep those things away from me.”

Atticus frowned, then exchanged glances with his two companions. I half expected him to instruct them to slide to the ground, grab me and bundle me onto one of their mutants… but they were smarter than that. None of them dismounted the mutants. Instead, Atticus instructed the hunter to his right to move forward with his mutant. The next thing I knew, the creature’s talons had closed around my midriff and I was being lifted into the air.

I had a matter of seconds to pull off what could likely end up being suicide, but I knew that I was doomed anyway. Either I died attempting to escape, or I died a victim in the IBSI’s clutches. I knew which route I would prefer any day, and I knew which my father would’ve taken.

As the mutants ascended above the top of the solid fence, I didn’t even spare a moment’s attention to gaze out at what was on the other side. I immediately focused all my concentration on welling up a powerful, sudden burst of fire, directly beneath the mutant’s underbelly. The unexpected surge caused the creature to screech and jerk forward—straddling the boundary of the fence.

Its talons loosened due to the nasty surprise I had given it, and it wasn’t difficult to loosen them even further by shooting up another billow of flames. I worked so fast that neither of the three hunters could react before I freed myself from the mutant’s grasp completely… and began falling.

I fell backward, narrowly missing the barbed wire, and down toward a moat of murky, black water.

I
’d thought
that it was a moat on first glance, but as the black water engulfed me, a strong current pulled me downward and along. I’d fallen into a river that ran past the IBSI’s base. A river whose bed I was certain would become my deathbed.

I kicked and struggled to reach the surface, even as the river continued swallowing me deeper. I had the power to manipulate water, but not water of
this
volume and strength. I was only half-fae, after all. I opened my eyes in an attempt to gauge how much distance had already been created between myself and the surface. I clamped them shut after an instant. An agonizing stinging erupted in my eyeballs. Stinging that water should never cause.

There was something wrong with this river. Something seriously wrong.

I couldn’t even bring myself to fear the mutants and hunters anymore. The river was pulling me down and along at such a pace, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d already lost track of me by now. I didn’t think they’d planted any tracking device on me while I’d been there… I hadn’t noticed and couldn’t think of when they could have done it. I’d been conscious the whole time.

The strain of holding my breath was starting to take its toll on my lungs. How much longer did I have before they collapsed? How much time had passed already?

My feet banged against rocks as they scraped across what I could only assume was the riverbed. My cheeks, bloated like a puffer fish, felt close to bursting. I was horrifyingly tempted to open my mouth and draw in water. My brain was beginning to pound.

It would be a lot easier to just give in to my fate by now. But the fighter within me was still alive, in spite of my rapidly dimming mental faculties.

There’s got to be something I can cling on to. The edge of the river. The bank. I need to push myself toward the bank.

I propelled myself with all the strength that remained in my legs toward where I figured the bank must be. Slowly but steadily, I inched myself away from the center of the rapids. I guessed that I must be drawing near the edge about now—the river hadn’t looked all that wide during the few seconds I’d had to glimpse it in my fall. I was just preparing myself to flip around and begin using my hands to feel for some crag, perhaps even a protruding tree root, that I could gain a grip on… when my head banged against something hard.

Too hard.

Although I was so sure that I’d managed to reach within inches of the bank, my body wouldn’t allow me to continue. A heavy fog descended on my brain, and all went black… blacker than the water surrounding me.

A
fter returning
to the small uninhabited islet that held the portal to the ogres’ realm, all of us gathered as many weapons as we could carry. Then, leaving Kyle with
Nightshade
, we piled in through the gate and returned to the ogres’ beach.

Here, our dragons shifted and we climbed atop their backs. The witches cast an invisibility spell over all of us and then we launched into the air. As we rose above the towering walls that encircled the ogres’ kingdom, I gazed over it, glimpsing their mountainous residences. And then my eyes moved beyond, to the mountain range in the distance, where we had previously spotted IBSI’s base glinting in the sunlight. The buildings did not glint this time, for the sky was overcast today. They were not difficult to find again, however. The dragons gathered speed.

“Weren’t there vehicles outside last time?” Sofia asked, her voice loud in my ear as she sat behind me, gripping my waist.

I paused, furrowing my brows. The empty parking lot caught my attention for the first time. “I’m sure that there were,” I muttered.

“Perhaps they’re out,” Xavier suggested, riding with my sister on the dragon next to us.

“Out where?” I wondered.

“There must be some inside,” Rose said. “They wouldn’t all just abandon base at once, surely…”

“I wouldn’t think so,” I said. Though, that being said, by now they must have received communication about what we had done to their people in The Woodlands. Perhaps, just perhaps they had already abandoned their base here as a precaution. If that really was the case then our visit to this realm would be far shorter than we had intended.

We reached the base and hovered directly over it.

“Ben and I will go down and see what’s up,” Lucas said, gliding off the dragon he’d been riding, along with Ben. I nodded and watched as my brother and son left our protective covering. They drifted down to the ground, where they disappeared into one of the buildings.

We waited tensely for their return, even as we continued to ponder whether the hunters truly would have simply left.

About twenty minutes later, Lucas and Ben returned.

“Nobody was around at all,” Lucas said, looking surprised.

“Not a single person?” Sofia asked, disbelieving.

“Not that we could find,” Ben replied. “We even checked the toilets.”

“Hm,” I muttered. “Curious. Curious, indeed.”

“We ought to check with the ogres themselves,” Vivienne suggested. “They should know better than us what’s been going on around here.”

“I agree,” I said, nodding to my twin. “Dragons,” I spoke up. “Most of you I believe are familiar with this realm and its inhabitants.”
Familiar, to say the least.
This realm was the dragons’ favorite stopover for food. I doubted that there was a single dragon within The Hearthlands who hadn’t visited this place at some point to grab a snack. “How do you suggest we approach them?” I was going to suggest perhaps Lucas and Ben, or one of our witches, swooping down to search for somebody to interrogate when Jeriad replied as though he’d read my thoughts.

“They don’t respond well to witches or subtle beings, in my experience.”

“I can vouch for that,” Mona said darkly, reminding me that she had spent a span of time in this realm, too, when she’d been on the run from Rhys.

“On the other hand,” Jeriad went on, “us dragons have a way of getting through to them fairly quickly…”

I rolled my eyes, hoping that this wasn’t some kind of covert excuse for a snack. “All right, Jeriad,” I conceded. “You know I trust your judgment.”
Even when it does become clouded by your appetite.

There were murmurs of agreement from other dragons, and then they all took a dive, soaring us down amidst the mountains, toward the ominous-looking palace that I believed was the home of the ogre royal family.

Of course, we were making the assumption that they still lived here and that they hadn’t already been wiped out by the hunters. But would the IBSI really want to wipe out the ogres? I doubted it. There would be nothing left here to control if they did. Just a piece of land. As had obviously been their primary objective in The Woodlands, they were here to manipulate and lord over rather than eradicate.

I couldn’t help but steal a glance at my daughter as we came within a few feet of the ground. She’d had some rather nasty experiences in this realm after being kidnapped by Anselm Raskid, the ogre prince at the time. Perhaps he was the king now. Rose was brave to be willing to come here again after that trauma.

Still invisible, we touched down in a clearing before a pair of thick oaken doors whose surface was lined with metal spikes. Not exactly the type of door that you could knock on, though I was certain that the dragons had no intention of knocking.

With a mighty swish of his tail, Jeriad whacked the door. The spikes had no effect whatsoever on his armored hide. But the doors were damaged after a single strike, enough for him to push them open with ease. Through them was some kind of dark hallway that was certainly too small for a dragon to walk down unless they shifted into their humanoid forms.

But again, I was certain that the dragons had no intention of doing that.

Jeriad let out a mighty roar, and the other dragons followed suit, until the noise they were generating actually became painful to my sensitive ears.

“Come out, ogres!” Jeriad bellowed. “Lest you desire for us to come in!”

We waited with bated breath. But there came no response.

“We wish to speak with only one of you,” Jeriad roared again. “And then we shall leave you alone!”

Lucas rolled his eyes and sauntered to the entrance. “You seriously think that is going to lure one out?” he muttered. “If anything, it’s going to make them hell-bent on staying inside and hiding. Which they should do, if even a speck of brain matter lurks within their bulbous heads…” He cast a glance at me. “I’m going to have a look around.”

Without waiting for my response, or even for Ben or Kailyn’s offer to accompany him, he disappeared through the dark entrance.

“I hope your brother knows what he’s doing,” Jeriad said, eyeing me.

I scowled. “I can assure you that he doesn’t.”

I
was
by no means an expert on ogres—I hardly knew anything about them except for what I had gleaned from Bella and Brett, the lumbering, yet good-natured couple living with us back in The Shade. But I had enough common sense to suspect that the dragons’ approach was rather moronic, to say the least. Common sense that seemed to have escaped my dear baby brother in that moment… Yes, Derek would always be my younger brother, even if he had spent some years as a human while Ben and River were kids to catch up with my age physically. (I had spent more years alive than him—in one form or another—and there was no argument that he could come up with to change this fact.)

The tunnel was long and dark as it wound round and around in dizzyingly sharp turns. This was the first time I had ever set foot inside the ogres’ residential area, let alone the royal palace. I guessed that I had to reach the other end of the tunnel soon, but for now, I didn’t bother assuming my subtle form. I would see and hear if any of the big oafs came blundering my way along this narrow tunnel.

When the tunnel finally came to an end, I emerged in a circular chamber with a high, cavernous ceiling. It was dimly lit by a single lantern burning in a steel bracket in one corner. Directly across the room from me was another doorway… though no door hung from its hinges. I approached and examined it. It looked like the door had been ripped off.

Hm
.

I strolled through the doorway to find myself in yet another corridor. I heaved a sigh, looking left and right and wondering which way to turn. I ended up opting for the direction with more lanterns lining the walls. Even after all these years of having escaped The Underworld, I still shied away from the dark. I suspected that my treehouse in The Shade contained almost twice as many floor lamps as those surrounding me.

My footsteps echoed eerily off the walls. I strained to pick up even the slightest sound. Right now, all I could hear was the occasional drip-drop of water.

Could the IBSI really have emptied out this place, too? What would they have done with all the ogres? The royal family? Would they have killed them, after all?

If indeed the hunters had stormed this royal palace already, their first destination ought to have been the dungeons where the humans were kept. Men and women imprisoned for the sole purpose of providing the royal family with their favorite delicacy—the flesh of human babies.

I smiled bitterly to myself. Somehow, I doubted that even the lives of those newborns came close to the top of the IBSI’s list of priorities. The League had witnessed too many times the lack of value they placed on even their fellow humans’ lives.

I continued wandering down this new tunnel for a bit, coming across more doorways on the left and right. I peered inside each of them only to find more dim, empty chambers—some of them pitch black, with no lanterns at all. I used my skill of fire manipulation to emanate firelight into these darkened rooms.

The fact that there were still burning lanterns in this place was interesting to me. If indeed this place was empty, it could not have been deserted long ago. Then again, I didn’t know how long these lanterns were supposed to last. If the wicks were long and burned slowly, I supposed that they could survive for days, maybe even weeks… Meh. I wasn’t a candle expert.

As I’d just about had enough of exploring this floor, I arrived at a narrow stairwell. I immediately ventured down it. I wanted to check out the dungeons to see whether they were empty, too.

I hurried down countless stone stairs until they gave way to a floor, and a small passageway, which contained another wooden door. This door’s handle was stiff, however. Rather than wasting time forcing it open, I took the easier option and assumed a subtle state so that I could pass through it. But I immediately resumed my solid form on arriving on the other side. Even more so than Ben, I never took the ability to possess a physical form for granted, and always chose to remain solid whenever I possibly could. Almost two decades of being a ghost had a way of doing that to you…

I moved through another empty chamber, and then another, and another, until I eventually arrived somewhere a bit more interesting. A lot more interesting. As I passed through perhaps the tenth door since leaving the stairwell, I found myself in a much larger chamber—more like a vast hall. It was filled with row upon row of metal cages, and a disgusting stench lingered in the air. All the cages were empty, and I could not spot any sign of life, but surely this had to be a dungeon where humans had been stored. Perhaps the hunters had evacuated them after all and returned them to Earth.

I moved along the rows of cells, peering through the bars. I soon wished that I hadn’t. The sight within them was sickening. And it certainly explained the smell. I wasn’t sure when they had last been cleaned, but whoever had been in charge of hygiene in this place should have been fired. The floors were littered with excrement and other bodily fluids that I preferred not to wonder about.

It was all I could do to keep myself from gagging, but I continued through the dungeon until I reached the other side, where I came upon another door. Opening it, I arrived in a dungeon almost identical in size and very similar in odor. I roamed around this one for a while before I could take it no longer. I decided to retrace my steps and continue exploring the higher levels of the palace.

But then I heard it.

Soft at first, and then unmistakable.

The crying of an infant…

It sounded like it was coming from behind me, from behind the wall that lined the back of this dungeon. Was there another dungeon there? Truth be told, I had not searched this dungeon as thoroughly as I had the previous one, because the stench was starting to give me a headache. Now, I forced myself to turn on my heel and scan the wall carefully. Indeed, there was another door here. But when I hurried to it and pulled it open, it didn’t lead to another dungeon. It led to a room a fraction of its size… what appeared to be a storage room.

It was filled almost entirely with heaps of tattered blankets. I gazed around for the source of the noise. It was emanating from the back somewhere… I leapt onto the piles and crawled over them. Right at the back of the room, against the wall and lying atop the blankets, was a sleeping young woman—I would speculate in her early twenties—and an infant. A very young one. I would have been surprised if it was older than a week. It was wrapped up in a small worn blanket. The woman had brown hair streaked with the occasional blonde highlight, and her skin was sickly pale, as though the sun hadn’t touched it in months. Her brows—on the thick side—were close to each other in a frown. She wore a torn dress and was half covered by a blanket. One of her arms was outstretched, loosely surrounding the crying baby, while the other rested over her abdomen.

For her to be unable to hear the baby’s crying, I could only think that she was indeed unconscious. As I moved closer still, she was terribly thin. I wondered when she’d last eaten.

“Excuse me.” I spoke up, loud enough, I hoped, to be audible to her through the infant’s crying, but not too loud in case there were still ogres around somewhere.

She didn’t budge. I crept closer and reached for her neck to check for a pulse. It was present, but worryingly weak. I clutched her narrow shoulders and shook her slightly. Still, she didn’t move. I could only assume now that she was indeed unconscious.

After casting a fleeting glance over my shoulder toward the door, I folded the blanket more tightly around the infant and picked it up gently. I couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy. I laid it along one of my arms and held it close to my chest. I had no experience with babies—honestly, little people had never been much of an interest to me—but I had watched mothers nursing their young before, my sister included. I rocked the baby gently in one arm while maintaining a firm hold of it. Then I turned my attention on the woman. She was not heavy as I moved to slide one arm beneath her. I secured her over one shoulder in a fireman’s lift while keeping my free arm around her in support.

The baby was still crying, but more intermittently now. It seemed to be distracted by me as it gazed up at me through sky-blue eyes.

I climbed back over the mound of blankets with the two of them and arrived at the door. Emerging back in the dungeon, I forgot all about the rest of my exploration in this palace and immediately raced to the exit.