A Shade of Vampire 28: A Touch of Truth (5 page)

I couldn’t help but find that strange. How long had this part of Chicago been like this? It must have been years. And yet the authorities continued to provide a water supply. It seemed almost like a courtesy to those living here, to not leave them completely abandoned. But courtesy was not something that I linked with the IBSI.

Shaking away the thoughts, I dried my hands and returned to the main room. Maura had finished her lentils and moved to one of the mattresses, where she lay on her side, facing the wall, her back turned to the rest of the loft. Orlando was seated again at the table, tucking into his own tin of lentils.

As I sat down next to him, he gestured to the supply of tinned food beneath the table. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

I shook my head. I was many things right now, but hungry definitely wasn’t one of them.

“So,” Orlando said, brushing the side of his mouth with the back of his hand, “are you going to tell us how exactly you got here? Why were you in handcuffs, if you aren’t a criminal?”

I paused, still mulling over everything the siblings had told me until now. I really wasn’t in the mood to start talking about myself, but it was only courteous to respond in kind. “I came across something that the IBSI really wants to keep secret… FOEBA.”

Orlando’s long face scrunched up in confusion. “What’s that? Sounds like some kind of infection.”

I heaved a sigh. “Well, that’s just it. I was roaming around IBSI’s headquarters back in Hawaii, trying to get some clues. I had managed to infiltrate it, but then I got caught and taken to Chicago. I was unable to uncover anything at all other than the fact it’s something the IBSI is extremely touchy about.” I explained to him in brief about the thumb drive Arwen and I had found. As I thought of Arwen, I felt a sharp pang in my chest. Where was she now? Where were my parents? Were they still on the mission in the ogres’ realm with the League? Did they know that I was missing yet?

Thinking about the stress my family would be in once they found out I was gone tied my stomach up in knots.

I had to find a way to get back to them.

I cut my explanation short and turned my focus on the main obstacle facing me: reaching a phone.

“Orlando,” I said, “Do you have any—”

“I’m going to sleep now,” Maura called irritably from her corner, interrupting me. “So if you’re gonna keep talking, keep your tone down, please.”

“Sorry,” I murmured, glancing at her before returning my attention to Orlando.

He finished the last of his lentils and stood up. “It’s best we don’t talk here then,” he said. “Come with me.”

Maura sat up. “Where are you going?” she asked her brother. Anxiety showed in her eyes as she clutched her blanket.

“It’s okay, Maura,” he said. “We’ll just climb up to the roof and sit there a bit.”

“Go via the skylight, so you can hear me if I call,” she said. The angst in her voice reminded me of a child who was afraid of the dark. Quite at odds with the tough exterior she’d put on around me until now. I looked at her curiously as she settled back down on her mattress and pulled up her blanket. Clearly, there were layers of these two siblings that I had yet to unravel.

Orlando gripped the ladder, checking that it was steady, before he began to climb it. When he reached the glass in the ceiling, he fiddled with the latch and then pushed upward, easing it open. Splashes of rainwater trickled down into the loft as he slid out.

He gazed down at me. “Are you coming or not?”

The truth was, I would so much rather stay down here in the dry warmth. The last thing I wanted to do was go outside again, but, taking hold of the ladder, I climbed up to him and joined him in standing on the roof. At least the rain was not as intense as it had been. It was more of a light drizzle now—still unpleasant and chilling, though.

“Oh, hey,” I said, “Do you have a lighter, or matches?”

“I have a lighter,” he said, dipping into his pocket and handing one to me. I ignited a flame and coaxed it into my palms. I cradled it and balled it into a larger fire to keep the two of us warm as we sat and gazed out at the gray city sprawled around us.

Orlando stared at the flames in my hands. “Do you have any other powers?” he asked.

“I can mess with water,” I replied, “and sometimes I can manipulate wind, too.” The latter, admittedly, I wasn’t very practiced at, but I’d noticed since I was young that I could redirect gusts of wind, or cause them to be stronger to a certain degree.

Orlando’s almost-black eyes lingered on my face. “Maybe you won’t turn, after all,” he commented.

Thanks for reminding me.

I glanced down at my legs. The stinging of the puncture wounds was definitely less than before, and had not been replaced with some other kind of excruciating pain. Maybe Orlando was right. I had heard that Bloodless did not affect everyone—for example, according to Aisha, they couldn’t turn witches. Or werewolves, or other supernatural species that weren’t vampires. Maybe the fae blood running in me was just enough to stop me from turning as a normal human would.

I let out a long, slow breath, allowing myself to experience a moment of relief—a feeling that had become practically foreign to me in the past few days. The relief might have been unfounded—since, as Maura had pointed out, it could also simply be that the turning process was delayed due to me being half-human. But for now, I let it wash over me. There was only so much stress a person could take before they snapped.

And there was no point in worrying about something that might or might not happen—something that I had absolutely no control over right now. I had to simply do what I could… and that brought me right back to the subject I needed to ask Orlando about right now:
How do I find a phone?

“I need to make contact with my people, back in The Shade,” I said. “Do you have any idea where I might find a working phone?”

“A working phone,” Orlando repeated. His blank expression immediately made my heart sink to my stomach. “There are plenty of broken phones around here, but you won’t find any working ones. That was something that Maura and I tried to locate in the beginning. We have an uncle in New York whom we wanted to contact to inform him about what had happened to us… and ask whether there was something he might be able to do to help. Let’s just say we failed miserably.”

“What about in the neighboring human settlements?” I asked him. “I know you said that trying to gain entrance to the civilization on the other side of the river—where the IBSI is keeping watch—is pointless and dangerous. But there must be some other normal, human civilization somewhere nearby. What about further east? What about on the other side of Lake Michigan? You already have a boat, don’t you? What if we followed the river and just… sailed away from this pit?”

Orlando pursed his lips, his eyes fixed on the grim skyline.

“It’s a nice idea,” he said simply.

“Well?” I pressed, frustrated.

“Boat is rather a flattering term for what Maura and I were floating in when we found you,” he replied. “It’s just a raft made of junk.”

“So you’ve never tried to reach the coast? Have you ever searched for a proper boat? I can’t believe there’s not a single vessel on the shore that doesn’t have some kind of communication device. Even if the signal is out in this whole area, we could travel to somewhere that does have a working signal and—”

Orlando shook his head, cutting me off. “That part of the city is notorious for the most brutal gangs. It’s also where the Bloodless are most concentrated. The odds of you even reaching the shore alive are low… If the Bloodless don’t get to you first, the criminals will.”

“But if you’ve never been there, how do you—”

“We know,” he said, impatient, “because we’ve been told. Although we do lock ourselves up and try to avoid everyone, there are a handful of other survivors whom we are on semi-decent terms with. On the few occasions that we happen to pass each other, we exchange information.” He exhaled. “Even leaving aside the Bloodless and the criminals, there are electrified fences closing off the shore from the mainland, and there are barriers blocking the river’s entry to the lake. One thing the IBSI has made amply obvious to all residents of this craphole is that they want us to stay put… If you don’t believe me, go ahead and try it. Try to escape yourself.”

I clenched my jaw. Going out again all alone was my very, very last resort. Maura and Orlando knew this city a hundred times better than I did. They knew all its perils, how to dodge them and what to look out for. I was much more likely to survive and be successful with their help. Besides, venturing out alone into this place of nightmares… I gulped. It was downright terrifying.

In spite of Orlando’s words, I still couldn’t bring myself to believe that, together, it would be impossible to reach the shore. There
had
to be some way to slip through and find a proper boat. The siblings had their spinning blade-wheel thing, and I had my ability to control fire. Joining forces, surely we could pull it off—or at least attempt it without losing our lives.

I voiced my thoughts to Orlando, and in the end, he agreed with me that it
might
be possible, but… there wasn’t an ounce of life or enthusiasm in him to attempt it, even with my help. Maybe he really was just past thinking he could escape this place. Maybe they had just had one too many failed escape attempts and were worn out, preferring to accept this as their life. Since they had already accepted that they were going to die from the IBSI’s treatment, maybe, in their last days or weeks—who knew how long they had left to live—they simply wanted to avoid trouble as much as possible. Retreat into their shells.

That would definitely be consistent with Maura’s behavior—her desire to just leave me in that sewage tunnel… though I could not deny that they had gone to the trouble of chasing after me in the first place and rescuing me. Then Orlando had insisted that they bring me with them. They definitely had
some
fire left in them.

Maybe the problem was that they just didn’t know where they would be escaping
to
anymore. Maybe they thought that, even if they managed to escape, they would simply be recaptured again. After all, outside this Bloodless territory, the siblings were practically as good as dead anyway, having been sentenced to execution by the government. They would have to spend the rest of however long their lives were in hiding… on the run… which was basically how they lived now.

But what if I could make them see something more for their future? What if…

“What if we tried to escape, and find a boat, and together look for a phone?” I said, breaking the silence. “And what if I made you a promise that, if we found a phone, I would bring you back to The Shade? Our safe, beautiful island where there is no shortage of food or amenities. Even if you’re convinced that you’re going to die, I assure you that your last days will be better spent on our island than here.”

I realized as I said the words that I was promising a place on our island to convicted murderers. But my brain was muddled with desperation right now. I
had
to get back home. Besides, at least from what they had told me, they had murdered because they had been lacking food. If we provided them with everything they needed, I didn’t see a reason why they couldn’t be like normal upstanding citizens…

But I was getting ahead of myself.
Way
ahead of myself.

I widened my eyes at Orlando, waiting for his response.

“Even if we managed to escape, and even if we found a working phone and managed to contact your people back in
The Shade
,” he mused, “what makes you think that we would be welcome?”

“My grandparents are king and queen,” I replied proudly. “My parents are prince and princess. I would find a way for you to stay. That really ought to be the least of your worries.”

He rubbed his face in his palms and went quiet for several minutes. When he raised his head again and met my eyes, his expression was dark, but set with resolution.

“All right, Grace,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll talk to Maura in the morning. If she agrees, we’ll try it.”

“Not try.”
I imagined the oracle’s words in my head, the way my father told me she had once spoken to him.
“Trying is for cowards.”

I set my jaw in determination and gave Orlando a hard stare. “If she agrees,” I corrected him, “we will do it.”

He coughed out a dry laugh. “A lot easier said than done, Grace,” he muttered grimly. “A
lot
easier said than done…”

A
fter we had recovered
the ogre king, Anselm Raskid, and his people from the hunters’ clutches in their hideout beneath the lake, the League continued to search for other IBSI bases that might’ve sprung up around The Trunchlands. We found several others and destroyed them all before obliterating the final one—the one closest to the gate leading back to the human realm, which had been the one that had alerted us to the IBSI’s presence in The Trunchlands to begin with.

Then we decided to return to The Shade. We had to consider carefully what our next move ought to be. If we had discovered the IBSI’s footprints in The Woodlands and The Trunchlands, there was a good possibility that they had already set up in other realms too. I found myself wondering whether The Tavern had been affected yet. To me, that was the obvious place for the League to head next. Even if the IBSI had not made their presence felt there yet, there was a myriad of supernatural creatures passing through it and we should be able to quite easily gain the latest news and rumors of the IBSI’s movements.

We returned to Earth via the gate on the ogres’ beach. Kyle was waiting patiently with
Nightshade
on the other side. To my aunt Vivienne and uncle Xavier’s great dismay, he informed us that Victoria and Bastien had come this way, along with Regan and Azaiah. They had been on their way to the Blackhalls’ lair in The Woodlands, he said. After a worried conversation, Xavier decided that he too would head for The Woodlands.

“I’m going to bring Vicky home,” Xavier said firmly to Vivienne. “She might be an adult, but I don’t care in this case. She’s still a teenager and it’s a completely unnecessary risk, her hanging out in werewolf territory. Things are simply still too volatile between the dimensions for that right now.”

I certainly didn’t think that it was a good idea at all that Victoria returned there—even with dragons accompanying her—since there wasn’t a speck of supernatural blood in her. She was human and vulnerable. But it seemed that she really had fallen for Bastien. I knew all too well how hard it was to be apart from somebody you loved, even if it meant risking danger.

One of the dragons, Neros, volunteered to go with Xavier—both of them knew where to find the Blackhalls’ lair, since we had visited there already during our stay in The Woodlands. The vampire and dragon headed off, back to the supernatural dimension, while the rest of us piled into
Nightshade
to begin the short journey to our island.

I caught my wife’s hand as we made our way through the chopper, toward one of the empty back rows. River sat in the window seat and I sat next to her. As the aircraft prepared to take off, she leaned against my shoulder and slid one arm around my midriff. I kissed the top of her head, wrapping my own arm around her and pulling her close.

“You okay?” I asked. We had barely had any time alone recently with all the craziness that had been going on.

“Yeah,” she replied softly. “I’m just thinking about Grace… wondering how she’s been doing.”

“Yeah,” I said, leaning my head back against my chair. I gazed down into River’s turquoise eyes and we shared a smile.

“I’m so proud of her, you know,” River said.

My smile broadened. “I know,” I replied, dipping to kiss her lips.

I couldn’t have wished for a better daughter than Grace. I saw many of River’s qualities in her—her caring nature, her honesty and strength, to name a few—and I also hoped that I had managed to instill in Grace a lesson or two from what I had learned and been taught over my years of living.

I did worry about her though. It would be a lie to say otherwise. As much as The Shade’s way of raising children had changed—going from trying to stifle them and keep them away from danger at all costs, to encouraging them to develop the skills and experience to face it—of course, as a parent, I could never stop worrying. Now that I had Grace, I could appreciate more than ever what my parents had been through when Rose and I had been away from The Shade on our misadventures.

It hurt deep inside to watch your child walking into danger. But this was the world we lived in now. And I hoped that River and I had prepared Grace well for it.

River and I eased into a relaxed silence while we gazed out the window and watched the ground disappear beneath us. I relished the peace, the feel of my love in my arms as we soared back toward The Shade.

I had to admit that after almost two decades of possessing this fae body, my time as a ghost and those harrowing days I’d spent in The Underworld seemed so far off, so distant, almost like a different life. Although I would never, and could never, forget all that had happened, never taking a physical body for granted was still a decision I had to make every day.

But there were some things in life that you just couldn’t take for granted, even if you tried… and for me, that was River. She was my soulmate through and through. In all the twenty years we had been married, we’d rarely had arguments. Disagreements, yes, but never bitterness. We understood each other too well for that. We lived in line with one another. As she held my heart completely, I held hers. I’d never really understood the love that my parents shared until I met River. I’d never understood what it was like to feel like you couldn’t live without another person—as if without them, all would be for nothing. And as we had aged mentally over the years, it felt like my attachment to her had only grown stronger. There wasn’t a lot that could frighten me anymore, but a life without River was a thought that drove me to the edge.

“We’re almost home,” River announced, pointing out of the window to a familiar rock formation jutting out of the ocean. She looked up at me, apparently noticing my contemplative mood. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

I gazed down at her adoringly. Reaching a hand to her face, I brushed my thumb against her cheek.

“That I forgot to remind you about something today,” I replied, assuming a serious expression.

She frowned, clearly racking her brain as to what it could be. “What?” she asked.

I caught her lips in mine before replying, “That I love you.”

“You’re such a cheeseball, Ben.” She chuckled against my kiss, even as she draped her arms around my neck and returned it tenderly. Then her voice dropped to a whisper. “But you know I do love cheese…”

We enjoyed the last stretch of the journey together before my father, who was sitting near the front of the aircraft with my mother, stood and called to everyone, “We’ll be landing in a couple of minutes. I know we could all do with some rest, but before we head back to our homes, I’m going to ask you all to attend a meeting in the Dome. We’ll keep it brief, I promise, but we need to discuss how long a break to take and start throwing a few ideas around as to our next destination.”

I groaned internally. Right now, I wanted nothing more than to go with River to look for Grace. But I understood my father’s reasoning. So, after Kyle touched us down in the glade in front of the Black Heights, we all headed to the Great Dome.

We didn’t make it that far, however.

An anxious-looking Shayla came hurrying toward us, through the trees along the forest path. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

“Oh! Thank God you’re back!” she exclaimed. To my surprise, she looked past everyone else in the crowd and her eyes settled on River and me. My gut dropped instinctively, even before she said, “Grace is in trouble!”

River’s breath hitched.

“What?” River and I spluttered.

My stomach knotted tighter and tighter as Shayla began to tell us how Grace had developed a friendship with the sickly boy, Josh—or rather, Lawrence—and how she had been very disturbed when he left. She hadn’t trusted his father who’d come to reclaim him, and she’d wanted to investigate his circumstances. She and Arwen had gone off together to fish for some clues and—
dammit!
—the two girls had gone to Hawaii. Into the IBSI’s base. Arwen had told Shayla everything that happened: Grace had not come back out when she’d been expected to, and while Arwen had been waiting, she’d met with some trouble on the beach—a crowd of hunters who’d been patrolling had managed to detect her, which caused her to become distracted from monitoring the tracker for a short while as she tried to find a safe spot to wait. When she checked the tracker again, Grace’s signal wasn’t emitting from where it should have been. It was too far away. Over the ocean.

“Arwen says Grace must have been caught and taken somewhere by aircraft,” Shayla continued to explain. “Arwen left the beach to try to pinpoint the location, but then the signal vanished completely.”

I felt like throwing up.

“Where is my daughter now?” Corrine demanded, her voice boiling with anger. She wouldn’t have known about any of this. After Lucas’ discovery of the French girl and her infant in ogres’ royal palace, Corrine had left our group to transport the mother and child to The Shade. But she’d stayed on the island only long enough to settle them into the hospital, before rejoining the League.

“She was feeling so awful about it,” Shayla replied, “she’s gone off with a bunch of other witches to try to track Grace down. The idea was for them to go to the approximate area where Arwen lost Grace’s signal and try to figure out which direction she could’ve gone in. Arwen suspected, though, that they were headed to North America. They took one of the phones, but I haven’t yet heard from them since they left, so I don’t know how they’ve been doing or if they’ve made any progress. But they also took a tracker with them, so you can locate them.” Shayla reached into her pocket and handed Corrine a receiving device.

River’s panicked gaze met mine.
North America
. Why would they want Grace in North America?
Or, if the tracker has been destroyed, maybe she hasn’t even made it that far… No. No.
I shook away the thought violently. I could not start considering the possibility.

“I have to leave,” I said, my tone unsteady.

“Where to?” River asked desperately.

I had already started to rise into the air, preparing to begin hurtling across the ocean. “To scour every single IBSI base in the United States if I have to.”

“Ben,” Lucas spoke up, moving to me. He placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a hard stare. “This is a mission for supernaturals the hunters aren’t yet able to detect—for fae. But more than one would be useful… I’ll come with you.”

I looked gratefully at my uncle. His support meant the world to me in this moment.

“And I will come too,” Kailyn offered.

I glanced from Lucas to her and nodded. My throat was so tight, I could barely even speak to thank them. I glanced over at my family, who all still looked in a state of shock at the news, before my eyes lingered on River. She looked like she wanted to come with me—of course she did—but as my uncle had rightly said, this was a job for fae. Vampires would be more than useless, they would be a hindrance. Even witches would barely be helpful since the hunters’ alarm system was able to pick them up.

“Oh, don’t think you’re leaving me behind,” Corrine seethed. “I’ve got a thing or two to say to
my
daughter. I’ll come with you just as far as her, if you really think you should pull off the rest of the mission alone.”

Before leaving with the others, I stooped down quickly to River and grabbed her shoulders. I pulled her to me, giving her one last hug and pressing a firm kiss against her forehead.

“I will find our daughter,” I breathed into her hair, “and I will bring her back. I promise.”