Darklight 2: Darkthirst Read online

  We filled the other tub with plain water for a rinse and cool-down, then took turns wringing out the clothes before hanging them on a makeshift clothesline made from a length of ski lift cable we’d found. It took us most of the day, but we were able to get the clothes strung around the cave close enough to the fire that they dried quickly enough. I made sure that Zach’s clothes and linens were cleaned first to help fight the likelihood of infection.

  Gina, Zach, and I slept together on a king-size mattress padded with half a dozen blankets, all of us curled together for warmth. On the same night that Dorian and I made our decision to keep our distances, Gina and I awoke to find Zach clammy and shivering, the area around his wound an angry red.

  For the next twenty-four hours, Gina worried over him, trying to make sure his leg was clean and disinfected, spending hours gathering snow and wood to boil the bandages. I tried to help, my own fear clogging my throat as I watched him sweat and twitch, but she kept telling me to take it easy. Thankfully, Bryce stepped in and helped soothe our fears somewhat, going with Gina on foraging trips for fuel.

  Whenever Gina, Bryce, and I found ourselves alone, we tried to brainstorm our next steps. Water was a manageable resource, made by gathering snow and melting it, although Zach had the current priority for the water rations. We would need food soon. Real food. If we weren’t careful, Zach might even need a hospital. If he gets worse, then I’ll coax a redbill into flying him to the nearest doctor, the Bureau be damned.

  The eventual consensus was that Zach needed to rest his leg more. For a day or two, Gina wouldn’t let him out of bed except to relieve himself, even then often helping him limp to the entrance of the cave and beyond to some privacy. I sat beside him to provide warmth and company, recounting tales from our childhood.

  “Injured, and he still manages to be a joker,” Gina said with a soft smile as she watched him sleep. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better too.”

  I just shrugged and smiled. “Better” was a somewhat meaningless term in our strange new life. Everything had been stripped away to the basics of food, water, sleep, and staying uninjured.

  Part of me was jealous that the vampires didn’t need to worry about water or infections. They did, however, need to feed, and it was a far more debilitating hunger than the occasional pangs we humans experienced. They took turns rotating groups to go on feeding sprees, which seemed to take the edge off the more hostile new vampires, a few of them becoming almost friendly as the days progressed. The sight of the shadows under their skin disquieted me occasionally, but it couldn’t be helped.

  During this time, I had a few run-ins with Dorian.

  We kept our greetings short and our conversations centered around the practicalities of survival. Trying to be friends seemed to be working so far, but there was an awkward undercurrent to our interactions that I could tell everyone noticed. Whenever we bumped into one another, I felt both human and vampire gazes upon us. We tried to maintain a friendly front, that of teammates working toward the general good of our group. I wasn’t sure anyone really bought it.

  On our eighth day in the caves, I found Bryce trying to feed bits of something to the redbills in the tunnel. I shook my head. Hard to believe he used to teach me how to take out these birds.

  “One tried to snatch my eye out,” he said with a hearty laugh. Still, he worked at it, holding out a stringy scrap of… something… toward one of the redbills left behind by that day’s group of vampires gone to feed. “If vampires can do it, we can do it.”

  I didn’t bother reminding him that the vampires had supernatural abilities and means of communication with the birds. As long as Bryce kept all his body parts, there wasn’t much else for him to do.

  As I turned to go back inside to chat with Gina about Zach, the redbill snapped up the food, its jagged beak barely missing my former captain’s fingers.

  Bryce snatched his hand back, shaking it as if to reassure himself it was indeed still attached. “Yes, well. Maybe that’s enough for one day,” he said, following me back into the residential part of the caves.

  Gina sat on a rickety chair just outside the nook where Zach was sleeping.

  “How’s he holding up?” I asked anxiously as we approached. He’d been exhausted and still feverish when I got up that morning.

  Her nostrils flared as she gave a weary sigh. The dark circles under her eyes almost made her look like one of our vampire allies.

  “He’s sleeping again,” she said, chewing her bottom lip. “Or sleeping as well as he can, anyway.”

  “Let me take over your shift,” I offered. “I’m feeling completely fine now.”

  She nodded gratefully, getting to her feet with a wince. “He keeps muttering about the Bureau and your uncle and keeping everyone safe,” she murmured, with a glance back at the blanket door. “He’s worried even in his sleep.”

  “Well, we’re all thinking about it,” Bryce said suddenly. “Our next steps,” he clarified in a firm voice, and I saw again the captain who had trained us all to be the best versions of ourselves. “We have to think strategically if we expect to beat the Bureau.” He paused. “Never thought I’d say that.”

  “Do we need to necessarily beat the Bureau?” Gina asked. “There’s a chance things might work out more diplomatically with them if we could get them to listen to us.”

  “Would we have a better chance with that if we split off from the vampires?” Bryce wondered. “We warned them, sacrificed our careers, and fought to save them. What else do we owe them? Our conscience is clean as far as that goes. They might even be able to hide more easily without humans weighing them down.”

  “It’s true we don’t technically owe them anything,” I admitted. “But if the Bureau turns out to be totally corrupt and intent on our silence, then the vampires are the best chance we have of protection. Discovery seems pretty likely given the Bureau’s reach. They found us once.”

  “Our knowledge of the Bureau is also the vampires’ best chance at avoiding detection from the Bureau,” Gina added, voice low.

  There’s still a chance the Bureau is trying to do good… but I can’t deny those plans. Unless the Bureau held knowledge about the vampires that we didn’t, we were going to need a serious explanation for the secretly planned extermination of vampires.

  As if on cue, a comm crackled to life, startling me badly. We all turned in the direction of the pile of our gear.

  Ice flooded my veins as a familiar voice poured into the air from the comm.

  “Anyone copy? I repeat, anyone copy?”

  It was Grayson.

  Chapter Eight

  Hurrying to the pile, I dug out the comm, fumbling momentarily with the sleek black item. I could see Grayson’s face from the Canyonlands in my mind’s eye. What does he want? Is this a trap?

  Gina and Bryce flanked me as we bent our heads toward the device.

  “How did they find this channel?” Gina whispered to Bryce. “I thought you said this frequency wasn’t used anymore.”

  “I repeat,” Grayson’s voice crackled through. “Does anyone copy on this line?”

  “They must be getting the boy to reach out to us and trying every channel,” Bryce muttered.

  “They can’t track it, though, right?” Gina’s eyes were suddenly panicked. “Zach’s not strong enough to go on the run again yet.”

  “They can’t trace the comms,” Bryce assured her. “We made sure of that. But we could use this chance to get some intel, see what’s got them trying this hard to find us.”

  He met my gaze and nodded with a captain’s understanding. “Answer the call.”

  It was time to dig for information. I activated the receiver, then held the mic to my mouth.

  “Grayson,” I said. “Tell me what’s happened. Are you safe?”

  Are you loyal to the Bureau or to me? My logic told me the latter, but his voice sounded off.

  “Lyra. We returned unharmed from the Canyonlands. The mutineers on Roxy’s team ha
d to face some consequences for their behavior, but they’re safe.”

  There was a tension in his tone that surpassed mere discomfort. I frowned. Did Grayson face these consequences too or just the rest of his team? He said they as if holding himself apart from them.

  Gina’s brow furrowed beside me. Possibly her thought process was paralleling my own. Something stirred behind us, and I glanced back to see Zach limping over. From his face, it was obvious he had heard.

  “Where is the rest of the team?” I asked.

  Grayson cleared his throat. The sound combined with another crackle on the comm gave it an eerie effect. “After our failed rescue attempt, the rest of the team and I went back to headquarters. We got backing from Director Sloane to negotiate with the Bureau to extend an offer of clemency to your team.”

  Zach’s eyebrows shot upward hopefully, but my suspicion only grew. Grayson hadn’t exactly tried to help us when we were in that situation before. My stomach sank like a brick with worry. The Bureau seems too willing.

  “Look,” Grayson said in a hurried voice, “I’m calling because we need to move fast. Are there any vampires around you?”

  “And why do you need to know that, Grayson?” I asked. As it happened, all the vampires were away either feeding or scouting, but like hell was I telling Grayson that.

  Zach shot me a pleading look, but I ignored it. I needed to get a better sense of Grayson’s intentions. There was a pause.

  “The Bureau has shown us additional evidence about the vampires, Lyra,” Grayson said. “I’m convinced now that trusting them is a bad idea.”

  “What evidence?” I asked. My suspicion was now tinged with unwanted uncertainty. What if the Bureau really did know something we didn’t?

  A crackle. “I can’t say over comms. But if you heard what I have, then you’d think the exact same thing. Trusting vampires is a mistake. I don’t blame you for getting pulled in, but they’re using you guys. They’re master manipulators.”

  An icy feeling washed over me. Master manipulators. My skin prickled with goosebumps. I could see the conflicted concern in all our faces. We had spent weeks with these vampires. They’d taught us things. They’d laughed with us. Surely not all of that was a twisted performance. It couldn’t be… could it?

  The comm crackled with a few weak sounds. The static built for a moment and then dispersed.

  “You there?”

  “Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m here.”

  “Okay. I’ve got something else. The Bureau has asked you to come to Phoenix HQ to hear their evidence,” he said.

  A lightning-fast chill moved through my spine. Of course, they wanted us to come and hear this mysterious new evidence in person. They were basically asking us to bring ourselves in.

  “They’re saying it’s a generous deal, and it’s not on the table forever. They need you to hurry. They need you to—” He broke off suddenly.

  The comm sputtered with another crackle of static and then died.

  I sucked in a breath. “What the hell?”

  “I was thinking the same thing with fouler words,” Bryce admitted with a disbelieving shake of his head.

  “I…” Gina shook her head, an unusual flare of anger in her eyes. “I’m going out for more wood. Maybe the walk will lessen the urge I have to punch Grayson square in the face.”

  “I'll join you,” Bryce said. “If they managed to get a signal through to the comm, they might be drawing in on us. I don’t want you out there on your own.”

  They bundled up in coats and took one of the gear bags to fill with wood. I noticed Bryce also took one of the guns with him, keeping the holster within easy reach.

  I settled with Zach in our makeshift room. His eyes had glazed over, optimism dancing across his face despite the negative reaction from the rest of us.

  “Incredible,” he muttered.

  “I don’t think it’s incredible,” I told him, my voice sharp. “I think it’s a trap. A terribly obvious trap. Either the Bureau is on their way here right now, or they’re going to lock us in cuffs as soon as we step foot through the doors of Phoenix HQ.”

  He was silent for a moment, and I thought he’d fallen asleep. But then he spoke, his voice low but the strongest I’d heard it in days.

  “Why are we running, Lyra?” He took in my confused expression. “I mean it. I know the vampires are afraid for their lives, but why are we so afraid to meet with the Bureau?”

  “Did you miss the part where they sent several armed soldiers to bring us in?” I asked, my tone dry. “We’re a liability, Zach. We know things we shouldn’t, and that makes a lot of people very high up the chain of command very uncomfortable.”

  “You mean like Uncle Alan?”

  We both fell quiet.

  “He wouldn’t let us be killed to ensure silence,” Zach said firmly. “He’s not that kind of person.”

  “I didn’t think he was the kind of person who would plan the genocide of an entire species,” I retorted. “I thought he and the Bureau were about protecting and preserving life, but we were wrong about that. So why shouldn’t I expect us to be quietly taken care of and have our dear uncle blame the vampires?”

  “I disagree,” he said, meeting my eyes. “While I absolutely believe the Bureau has been hiding things from us and is probably not the force for good we always thought it was, I can’t believe it’s all bad. Grayson used to be our teammate. I don’t think he’d lie to us. If he knew the Bureau was doing something wrong and had been deceiving us, he would’ve left himself.”

  I frowned, unconvinced. Nothing the Bureau had done since we escaped with the vampires suggested good intentions.

  “I want to be sure we know everything we possibly can,” he insisted. “The Bureau wouldn’t be doing any of this if they didn’t believe the vampires were up to something. Shouldn’t we hear the evidence regardless of our views?”

  My brother’s hope for the Bureau’s innocence was written across his face. The gears of my selfish mind began turning. If the Bureau could prove they weren’t actively evil but merely overzealous in their protection, then we might be able to work out a deal for surrender. We’d never work there again, but my team and I could live normal lives instead of hiding off the grid until we died of illness, exposure, or starvation or were killed as traitors. But… I couldn’t leave the vampires to a fate of extinction via gas chambers. I chewed my bottom lip.

  “What do you say?” he asked. His eyes searched mine.

  Go behind Dorian’s back? Potentially abandon Sike, Bravi, Laini? We had worked alongside them in the training facility, had escaped capture together, were surviving together. Master manipulators? I doubted it.

  “I say that I won’t—I refuse—to do anything behind the vampires’ backs.”

  We stared at each other, huddled together on the bed.

  “Trust me,” I said. “You said you were with me in this until the end, whatever that looked like.” I needed him to be both my colleague and my brother on this call.

  Finally, with a sigh and a nod, he agreed. “That’s fine with me. This decision impacts them too.”

  “Right,” I muttered, praying this wouldn’t be a huge mistake. I hoped the vampires would return soon and in good spirits.

  We had to figure out a plan.

  * * *

  A few hours later Bryce, Gina, Zach, and I were gathered around the fire in the main area of the hideout, eating our plain fare of boiled rice, this time with a can of mixed olives and our last protein bar split between the four of us.

  Over the crackle of the wood, my ears picked up the familiar sounds of redbill claws hitting stone and the whoosh of displaced air. We waited tensely as the vampires filed in behind Dorian. He looked relaxed enough, despite our circumstances, until he saw my face. The calm drained away, replaced by a hard, stoic mask that flicked over me, searching for injury.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “Something happened while you were gone,”
I said, putting aside my empty mess tin and glancing to the vampires behind him. Nerves would be better after a feeding, I hoped. After taking a deep breath, I hurriedly explained what had happened, trying to be thorough but fast. Grayson had said the deal wouldn’t last forever. Time was of the essence.

  A vast silence filled the chamber.

  “And you’re certain they can’t track your comms?” Bravi asked. “Because if we need to start preparing to run again, we need to know now.”

  “I’ve thought about it. I don’t believe they’ll know where we are,” Bryce assured her. “Finding us on that channel will have been luck more than anything, so we’re still safe here.”

  Finally, Dorian spoke. “It’s a trap. It has to be.”

  If the Bureau did have something to say about vampires, then I needed to hear it, even if just to confirm that it was lies. If they had evidence, I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

  “My thoughts exactly,” I said. Zach shifted beside me. “But we can't sit in this cave forever.” I glanced at Zach. “We need options, and if there is even a chance of reconciliation, then shouldn’t we reach for it?”

  “Reconciliation for you perhaps,” Oleah noted archly.

  Dorian held up his hand. “Lyra’s right,” he said. His eyes flickered as his mind worked. “We have no idea what our relationship with the Bureau will be like going forward… if there will be one at all. Did he mention what the evidence was?”

  “Only that it had convinced him not to trust vampires.” I paused. “He wasn’t able to tell me.”

  “If the Bureau truly has some sort of evidence against us, then we will need to know what it is to effectively argue against it and debunk it.” Dorian crossed his arms firmly, his expression determined.

  I ground my teeth, mulling it over. Zach was hopeful, but I had serious doubts. The Bureau miraculously producing new evidence that exonerated them seemed like too much of a coincidence. Did Dorian think they actually had evidence? That would mean the vampires had been dishonest… but I trusted them more than the Bureau in this moment. Uncertainty about the future filled me as I looked around at our group. Tired faces, even if recently fed. We humans couldn’t keep this up for long, and the Bureau wouldn’t stop hunting the vampires.