Darklight 8: Darkwilds Read online

  Darklight 8: Darkwilds

  Bella Forrest

  Contents

  Problems reading?

  1. Lyra

  2. Roxy

  3. Lyra

  4. Roxy

  5. Dorian

  6. Roxy

  7. Lyra

  8. Roxy

  9. Dorian

  10. Roxy

  11. Lyra

  12. Dorian

  13. Roxy

  14. Lyra

  15. Roxy

  16. Roxy

  17. Dorian

  18. Roxy

  19. Dorian

  20. Lyra

  21. Roxy

  22. Dorian

  23. Lyra

  24. Dorian

  25. Lyra

  26. Roxy

  27. Lyra

  28. Roxy

  29. Dorian

  30. Roxy

  31. Lyra

  32. Roxy

  33. Dorian

  34. Lyra

  35. Roxy

  36. Roxy

  37. Dorian

  Ready for the next part of Lyra and Dorian’s journey?

  Read more by Bella Forrest

  Copyright © 2020

  Nightlight Press

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  1

  Lyra

  Saving the world had cost me many things in life, but it was a new day. The cold February air in western Utah nipped at my face as I took in the unnatural, foreboding jungle stretched out before us. What better way to celebrate my wedding than by setting off on a dangerous scouting mission into supernatural territory?

  Nicholas Bryce—my Occult Bureau captain turned fellow rebel turned Coalition conspirator, and now my partner in crime for our human-vampire consulting company, Callanish—stood a few feet ahead of me, surveying our mission site. After instructing our pilot to stay with the plane, Bryce had slung the weighty gear bag over his broad shoulders, giving him the look of a soldier ready to face the elements for weeks. I hoped this new mission wouldn’t take that long, but we’d packed accordingly. We’d started our company on Bryce’s suggestion, so that we could continue our supernatural work without being under the Bureau’s thumb.

  "Welcome to Black Rock Bureau office," Bryce said to our small group, tilting his head to indicate the site. He gave us a gruff scowl. "Or what's left of it." These days, the silver in Bryce’s red hair was more prominent, especially in his beard. Our journey over the last several months had hit us all in different ways, but right now all I could feel was the exhilarating anticipation in my veins.

  I gave Bryce a hum of agreement as I scanned the area. This campus used to have four buildings, but now only two remained. The main section was already overgrown with plants in this strange part of the world that we now called the Leftovers, remnants of the Immortal Plane that had been merged with the Mortal Plane while the planes were being disentangled from the meld. Ruk and the other arbiters had repaired the barriers, but they’d completely vanished after that. I still missed the Gate Maker’s wise, mischievous lavender eyes. But then, I still missed many of the people we’d lost.

  Callanish was trying to forge our path in this new, changed world. I was nervous, but excited to be back in the field. I stood with my new husband as we officially undertook our first mission, united in wedded and professional bliss. Dorian stared out at the closest building, which was covered with wily immortal plants that seemed bent on consuming everything in their path.

  The immortal trees greeted us with their eerie beauty. Vines seemed to crawl out of their crimson bark and circle up their thick trunks. The vines choked the sad remains of the building in front of us. I could make out the faded sign for the Black Rock office, but the metal in the ground was partially ruined, crumpled by some force of nature or giant creature. I turned a wary eye to the dark green leaves climbing the walls. They moved, waving tendrils around. There was no breeze.

  "That's... new," Dorian muttered with a note of interest. Everything felt off about the area. The air was thick with a humidity that was heavy to breathe. It reminded me of missions down South. I tried not to focus on the rotten scent in the breeze.

  Bryce’s nephew Cam followed our gazes. "The reports stated in their footnotes that all failed rescue teams noted strange flora, inconsistent with any plant life typically seen in this region. They noted the vines moved an average of several feet per day." He paused for a moment and adjusted his tight collar, his face deadly serious as he relayed facts from our briefing. "They also thought the trees were moving." There wasn’t an orange-red hair out of place on his head, whereas my ex-captain, Bryce, looked as if he might be an entrant in some kind of lumberjack competition. It was hard to believe the two were related.

  I glanced back at the tree in front of me. It looked firmly rooted to the ground, especially with the vines on it. I peered closer to watch the thin strands of vines swell and shrink. It was as if the vines were breathing, like an external lung.

  We needed to work our way through these buildings, creepy vines or not. Our first goal was to find a nearby portal site for Dorian and Sike to use. They would travel through in order to connect to the Immortal Plane. After Ruk and the arbiters closed the tear and separated the planes, they left the portals open, in their original state. Now, humans could use portals with the help of vampires. That way, we could easily move back and forth between the Mortal and Immortal Plane. This would help us to case the place without a lot of travel to faraway gates or trips to resupply. Regular Bureau soldiers had been chased away by the strange environment and fearsome creatures, but we could handle it.

  Finally, I could focus on my ultimate goal: finding my parents. They’d wanted to be useful to the Bureau before the mess with the meld happened, but the last phone call I’d had with them during the merging of planes had been disconnected by the unstable dark energy. Last I knew, my father had reported the area as swampy and glowing, but now, if there had been any water here, it had dried out and left these bizarre trees in its wake. Maybe that was responsible for the humidity, unusual for this arid part of the Southwest.

  I steeled myself with the knowledge that, several hundred yards away in a clearing, our carrier plane and pilot sat locked up with plenty of supplies. Since it was just outside the radius of the Leftovers, Bryce had agreed that it was safe to leave them there for the moment. Thankfully, the weirdness left behind hadn’t expanded beyond its current borders after the meld’s end. As far as we knew, there was nobody in this area but us and any misplaced immortal creatures in these strange parts. I had seen the occasional Mortal Plane squirrel here and there, but they avoided the edge of this place like the plague. It was like they could sense how wrong this area was.

  Sike, our last team member, sucked in a breath as he yanked his foot away from something. He was in a spot of lush grass that swept against his pant leg, a bright, unnatural green against the slate gray of our new uniforms.

  "Something fast just ran over my foot," he muttered with a quick grimace. "It wasn't the vines. I heard squeaking." I trusted Sike’s vampire senses. He and Dorian both had superior hearing to humans—well, that and just about every other sense. I frowned, straining to pick up the noise, and t
hen it came all at once, with a wave of rustling grass.

  A swarm of dark, scurrying blue forms rippled the grass next to Sike. He jerked out of the way with a curse as the creatures, slightly larger than rats with spikes like rogue, mutant hedgehogs, darted past him, every so often bounding several feet into the air, at a height that should've been impossible for rodents.

  We barely had time to react as the swarm went squeaking off into the forest. I shot a curious look at Dorian. He looked baffled.

  "Our woodland pests don't do that," he explained. “At least, not near Vanim.” His handsome face turned to study the surrounding area of the Bureau office, his glacial eyes keenly calculating. "They appear to be fleeing something." Fleeing away from where we need to go, how comforting.

  They disappeared into the forest and their fleeing steps echoed bizarrely back to us, almost like we were in a cave instead of near trees.

  I took a step forward to join Bryce near the entrance of the largest building, taking care not to let the trailing vines touch my hair. Somewhere, I hoped, my parents were surviving in this area. I had felt their souls when I’d briefly died during the fixing of the meld, and they’d still been living; I had to believe they were still out here.

  Dorian's brows furrowed with concern and stayed that way. He was listening along with Sike, while Cam watched them, seeming to note their every move. When he caught my look, he turned away, going a bit pink. It was Cam's first official mission with vampires, so he was naturally curious.

  Bryce cleared his throat irritably. "Cam. Scanner?" The young man stiffened at Bryce's tone, which dripped with the unspoken question, why aren't you already announcing this? It had been a long time since I’d heard that particular gruffness, but I remembered it. Bryce was always hard on newcomers when he was training my old teammates and me for the Bureau. Now, our client was the US government, and Bryce wouldn’t go easy on Cam just because they were family. If anything, I suspected Bryce might be even worse to his nephew.

  "I'm getting some signatures that suggest living creatures. They're certainly organic, but..."—his eyes roved across the black hand-held device that he gripped—"it's like it can't lock onto some of the signatures. The Bureau reports claimed that the human technology they brought along was only partially functional."

  Bryce snorted. "Don't read me back reports I've already read. Sike, can you confirm Cam's assessment?" Sike trotted over, his gangly limbs putting him just a few millimeters under Cam's tall, still-filling-out frame. He peered over at the screen. Our devices were based on Bureau technology, but they'd been tweaked by Reshi, the Coalition’s genius maker inventor. Although Sike wasn't very skilled with human machines yet, he had a natural affinity for technology, and Reshi's supernatural touch on the scanner allowed him to work on the machine easily enough.

  "He's right," Sike confirmed. His eyes flickered to Dorian. "The physics here don't make sense."

  "Is it the sound and plants bothering you?" I asked. I reflected on the vegetation, wild and overgrown but viciously beautiful in its own way, that had swallowed up most of the surrounding area. Old Bureau photos had showed a few weathered brick cabins from the old ghost town, but they were long gone after the meld.

  Sike nodded. "I don't think our technology is flawed. It's working as it should, since Reshi gave it an independent source of dark energy; the problem is likely that we haven't attuned it to deal with an area like this." He gestured to the area all around us. The Leftovers were strange, unique places. Good men and women had gone in for rescue and scouting attempts in this area and then fled. But Callanish can do it.

  A bizarre caw echoing from inside of the building stopped our conversation. We quieted, listening to the faint echo of what sounded like a bird's call.

  "It’s not a redbill," Dorian said. "And I don’t sense any auras or dark energy nearby."

  "Good enough for me, if the scanners and vampires say we’re good," Bryce said cheerfully. He gave us all a determined smirk. "Ladies first, to sweep the building?"

  I pushed past him with a tiny chuckle, glad that Bryce didn’t feel the need to haze me any longer. We’d been through enough together.

  We needed to be quiet while we went through the building. Although our scanners said there were no signs of large fauna, it was best to be careful. The animals we’d disturbed in this area could easily spook like the rodents from before. If we managed to find survivors around these parts, they might hide from our noises, too. Bryce and I had already agreed to identify ourselves as allies of the Bureau.

  Somewhere, an insect buzzed faintly. It sounded just as off as the rest of this place, like the wings were too fast and too heavy. I braced myself as I slid through the first corridor, searching the dark corners for motion. Weathered leaves sprinkled the ground. The hallway was dirty beneath my feet, kicking up a fine coat of dust around the edge of my new boots as I moved through the area. Besides the buzzing insect and the occasional bird trill, I heard nothing. Dorian followed, keeping close.

  Behind Dorian, Cam paused in a doorway, sweeping it with the practiced attentiveness of a soldier. His eyes missed nothing. I was beginning to think he had a photographic memory. He’d obviously memorized those reports. It was enough to impress me, but I wouldn't say anything just yet. I trusted Bryce’s instincts—not necessarily about the hazing, but I knew that we needed to make sure Cam got the right experience. I would be careful not to step on Bryce's toes with that. After all, I knew that he’d brought his nephew along because he believed in Cam. The young man was fresh from his military service in Scotland; he’d wanted to work with the supernatural, and he had the potential to be a formidable part of our team.

  My toe found the discarded wrapper of a granola bar next to the tiny skull of a dead animal. Initially, I thought the wrapper a result of scavengers, but a closer look revealed that it had been opened by human hands with a single tear. We moved on. Bryce kept watch at the front door.

  As we entered a new room, Sike pulled out his own scanner, one provided by Reshi. This one was meant to sense auras in a more comprehensive way than the Bureau scanners, which relied solely on human technology. Sike fiddled with the button. Reshi had taken to modifying human technology well—but we still didn’t have a perfect formula for transporting technology back and forth between the Mortal and Immortal planes. Sike noted the tech stopped functioning a third of the time as we neared the Leftovers. As brilliant as Reshi was, even she couldn’t plan for an area that was absolutely unstudied.

  "Nothing much, still," Sike reported. I had to trust him on the readings, unable to make much sense of the complicated graphs flitting across the screen.

  We forged deeper into the building. I came across turned-over trashcans, looking like sad artifacts of a fallen office, scattered with smashed glass and destroyed staplers. It looked as if a massive wind had come through this hallway. Everything was strewn about, and it was hard to say what the office had originally looked like.

  An unsettling sensation from the thick air made me stop. I looked down another wing of the building, but it was partially gone. When the meld happened, it had cut the flimsy wooden structures easily, like a hot knife through butter. On the other side, I saw the vines and overgrown plants thriving in the faint sunlight coming through the treetops. It was strange to see the mortal sun on immortal trees. It highlighted their eerie beauty, but dread clawed at my insides. Had everyone truly vanished?

  Whether or not that was the case, at least the vampire technology appeared to be working... when it wanted to. Sike held up a different scanner now, puzzling over it.

  "What's that one for?" I asked him. They all looked the same to me, although the scanners came in a few different colors of black, gray, and khaki. He held a khaki one at the moment.

  "It's measuring the strength of the barrier. It says there might be a gate nearby, but, just like the others, the range of the scanner is limited." He tapped his chin. "I can basically sense the same thing with my own abilities, but this scanner ac
tually maps things out for us mathematically. It'll give us a good picture of where we need to go if we ever got separated since only Dorian and I can sense the actual gates. Plus, I can send the map between all our scanners."

  A map of the barrier sounded good. I liked data and tangible things that I could work with.

  I glanced up at a partially destroyed roof. A nearby tree grew aggressively into the building, littering the ground with leaves and bits of vine. I stepped over them, ignoring the sensation of my hairs lifting up. It was hard to ignore the constant soft movement of the vines. I was just glad they didn't whisper, like some of the immortal vegetation we’d encountered on my first trip to the Immortal Plane.

  A rodent squeak made me turn in time to see something shadowy and blue darting past. I raised an eyebrow as it disappeared into a pile of rubble in the corner. My parents used to work in this place. Worse creatures than this could have found them. I frowned at the unpleasant thought.

  A dank, sweet scent of decay in the humid air of the next room made me gag. A pipe had burst and soaked the entire area. Wild mushrooms in bright eggplant hues grew in clusters around us. Some stagnant puddles remained behind, our footsteps splashing through them.

  When I returned to the main hall to continue the search, I spotted another granola bar wrapper by a crumbling wall. Coincidence? After finding one opened by human hands? Dorian watched me stoop over to pick it up. As I did, a blue shape came bounding out of the nearby underbrush. There was a hiss and a flash of tiny fangs snapping—one of the spiky, ratlike creatures came at my boot. I kicked it away and it spun, then landed on its feet. It fled, but the surprise made me grimace. I hadn't noticed or heard the creature until it attacked. The pests were obviously getting used to our presence.