‘We have to get moving as quickly as possible,’ Kane said.
With Jessie close by his side, Eden followed the master vampire through the tunnels.
The morphed lycans’ attack on the underground bunker was still vivid in Eden’s mind. There was no doubt Sirius Throme had orchestrated the ambush. They’d saved as many as they could but had lost many too, the genetically mutated lycans having ripped through the tunnels like an unstoppable force.
With Jask still in recovery, Kane had resumed the helm immediately, taking Eden and Jessie with him.
‘Now that Throme has located us, he won’t stop,’ Kane added. ‘They could attack again at any point, and my bet is it’ll be his specialist army that move in this time. I’ll show you the route, and then I want you two to head it up.’
‘Kane, with the technology the army has, they’re going to map out the tunnel system easily,’ Eden said. ‘All they have to do is send a few drones in and they’ll have an entire schematic within hours. Blackthorn’s too small for us to hide for long enough.’
‘That’s why we’re not staying in Blackthorn.’
Eden grabbed Kane’s arm to step in front of him. ‘You’re taking us into Lowtown?’
‘No.’ His navy gaze was resolute and composed. ‘You’re taking everyone into Lowtown. And then through Midtown and into Summerton.’
Eden’s heart pounded as he stared at the master vampire. Hundreds of individuals to shift: humans, lycans, vampires. It was going to be like a military operation in its own right.
‘Eden and I took that journey with Jask and Phia to go and collect Leila, remember?’ Jessie said, her expression echoing Eden’s unease as she stared at Kane. ‘It was challenging enough with a small group of us. It’s too much of a funnel. We’re never going to be able to shift that many quickly enough, especially if Eden is proved right.’
‘All the more reason to start as soon as possible,’ Kane said.
And that’s why he was so calm; that was why he was so composed.
Eden snagged his attention again. ‘This was your back-up plan all along, wasn’t it? When the war started, you were going to evacuate as many as possible to Summerton – right beneath Sirius’s nose.’
Kane met his gaze with the resolve of someone who was never going to be defeated. Kane who they all knew had entered Blackthorn after the regulations had been put in place. Kane who could have escaped back that way any time he chose.
No one truly knew where he had come from, only that it wasn’t that locale. For all they knew, Kane Malloy was the only non-Summerton resident who could go wherever the hell he wanted – and could take whomever he wanted with him.
‘But if they find us before everyone gets through. . .’ Jessie interjected.
‘For now, we focus on getting everyone to Lowtown,’ Kane said. ‘Eden, you know every recess of it, as does Caitlin should you run into trouble once you’re there and need to get above ground. She already knows exactly what to do. You’ll also have Phia with you, which will be a huge advantage if you run into the same problem in Midtown. And she’ll be invaluable once you reach Summerton. As for you, Jessie, you know we’re going to need those angel senses and skills should there be fourth species to contend with too.’
‘And you? Jask? Corbin?’ Eden asked.
‘We’re staying here. Jask will be back on his feet in hours. We’ve got the strategy sorted this end – and the less bodies we have to worry about getting caught in the crossfire, the better.’
‘I’m not leaving you guys behind to fight it out without me,’ Eden insisted.
‘I need to put those lives in the hands of people I trust,’ Kane counter-argued. ‘And you know as well as we all do that we have to prioritise getting you out of here, Eden. You have to get to Midtown. You have to find that doctor. And as walking proof of what angel tears can do to you, you are the one person who can prove what Sirius has been up to all this time – especially if he destroys evidence of his research at The Facility in the meantime.
‘At this point the only way we’re going to stop this snowball without bringing this prophecy into fruition is by getting the Global Council to call a ceasefire,’ Kane added. ‘I’m relying on you to get everything Caitlin needs in order to make that happen.’
Jessie squeezed Eden’s hand reassuringly, her eyes capturing his in the process. ‘We can do this.’
This was his chance to get Jessie out of Blackthorn, if he took the opportunity, and the rest of his family too – his brother Billy, Amanda, Honey. Eden looked back at Kane, his friend’s gaze characteristically uncompromising.
‘I know you’re geared up for battle, Eden,’ Kane said, ‘and that’s why I need you heading this up in case it comes to that. I need good leaders; people who are calm and strategic under pressure. Remember, I’m putting Caitlin in your hands too. Don’t think this is easy for me either.’
Eden looked back at Jessie. Her hand was still clutching his, her eyes fixed on his in anticipation. If she didn’t think it was a good idea, she’d already be insisting to the contrary.
He looked back at Kane and nodded. ‘Show us where we’re going.’
Kane slapped him appreciatively on the back as he stepped past him.
Unlacing his hand from Jessie’s, Eden wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close so he could kiss her tenderly on the temple as they followed behind Kane.
‘You know he’s picked me because I’m the only one man enough to do this, right?’ Eden whispered in her ear, knowing only too well he was far from being out of the vampire’s earshot.
Kane’s terse exhale echoed within the confines of the tunnel.
Jessie jabbed Eden in the side with a playful smirk, her light-hearted warning glance making it impossible for him not to grin back.
‘Just saying,’ he remarked, tilting her head so he could capture a fleeting kiss.
‘I’ve picked the route with the highest number of adjoining tunnels until you get to the Lowtown border,’ Kane said.
‘Which also means more angles to be attacked from,’ Eden remarked.
‘Offset by giving you the best chance of multiple places to run should things get nasty. I’ll have a full team of scouts lead the way and take the rear.’
Kane veered them left and then right again, the angel blood in Eden’s system allowing him to navigate with night vision in what would have otherwise been pitch-black tunnels. The chill was still all-encompassing to his human – albeit superhuman – body though, the damp of the underground depths lingering in the air.
Beneath Blackthorn, the tunnels were a maze of underground maintenance systems, storage facilities, defunct tube and train stations, rivers and sewage systems. Their extent had always been an urban legend. The authorities had infiltrated more than once over the decades, especially amidst alarm from residents of Midtown and Summerton regarding the myth of the tunnels extending as far as their cordoned-off districts. But a maze was a maze, especially one reconstructed with hidden doorways and illogical routes. As such, the urban legend had remained exactly that – until Sirius Throme had found them earlier that night.
As they turned the next corner, Kane stopped abruptly, Eden and Jessie following suit.
The glow was subtle, but it was definitely there: flickering from a source somewhere deep in the tunnel to their left.
‘Fourth species?’ Eden whispered to Jessie, given her ability to detect the low-level thrum of their presence before anyone else.
She shook her head as she glanced from Eden to Kane, the latter also awaiting her confirmation.
But there was definitely an echo from something, the low-level buzzing intensifying in his sensitive ears as they all took a few wary steps closer.
Kane put his hand up to indicate that Eden and Jessie should stay back as he turned the corner.
Eden’s heart skipped a beat when Kane froze as if hypnotised, multicoloured light dancing on the vampire’s face.
Unable to wait a second longer, Eden stepped up to the end of the tunnel alongside his friend.
Spanning the tunnel ahead was what could have been mistaken for a summer night sky – the type of sky he’d only ever seen in books: the sunset igniting the clouds with lilac, deep purple and fuchsia.
But there was no sky. And there certainly wasn’t a sun.
And this most definitely wasn’t the Northern Lights either, even if the vibrant wall shimmied and pulsed like it was.
‘Kane?’ Jessie asked on his behalf.
‘An electromagnetic field,’ the master vampire muttered, almost to himself.
Eden stared from Kane back to the spectacular visual that would have been invisible to his regular human eyes.
Kane’s frown deepened. His jaw clenched. He looked as if he was about to spit on something before he spun on his heels and brushed back past them.
Eden glanced at Jessie. As the multicoloured light-show danced in her eyes, her concern matched his.
Grabbing her hand, Eden turned on his heels too. ‘Wait up!’
But Kane ploughed forward, taking a left and then a right before marching along to the end of another tunnel.
The same sight lingered in the distance, bringing them all to a standstill again.
‘Kane, what is this?’ Jessie asked.
Kane shook his head. He slid his hands through his hair to clutch the nape of his neck. With a growl and a glower, he spun on his heels again, this time picking up even more pace.
Everywhere he led them, they came across the same thing.
Catching his breath at the pace and distance they had covered, Eden met Kane’s gaze as they stopped once more, the master vampire’s eyes worryingly lacerated with something between frustration, fury and despair.
‘The cylinders,’ Eden said, deducing for himself what Kane was already thinking.
‘What cylinders?’ Jessie asked.
‘The cylinders I told you we saw erected on the Blackthorn border wall,’ Eden clarified as he met her gaze.
He, Kane and Jask had seen them whilst they’d been lying on one of the rooftops a couple of days before, watching Sirius’s army first take position.
Jessie looked back at the buzzing wall in front of them before her eyes locked on Eden’s again, a flare of panic in hers now too. ‘They’ve done this?’
‘More specifically, Sirius Throme has done this,’ Kane said, anger resonating in his tone. He stared at the wall for a split second longer before spinning on his heels again. ‘Fuck.’
Eden cautiously approached the fluctuating waterfall of colour that rippled as if it were a sheet of loosely stretched silk in a breeze. Even from a foot away, sparks fired aggressively at his upheld palm, as if he’d set off sparklers. Sparks that warned him off amidst a multitude of pinpricks that became increasingly painful the closer he got.
‘Eden, be careful!’ Jessie demanded as she caught his arm to pull him back.
He didn’t need her warning though. He understood enough to know that the tesla rating was through the roof. One attempt to step through and they’d be fried.
‘A field of that intensity is impassable,’ Eden said, pointing back towards the barrier as he turned to face Kane pacing the narrow space.
Kane’s navy eyes met his. ‘I’d deduced that for myself, Eden, hence the minor profanity.’
‘Just how deep could this run?’ Jessie asked.
Eden shrugged. ‘Maybe miles.’
‘And this has likely blocked off all the tunnel exits into Lowtown?’
‘Every last one,’ Kane said, his voice echoing in the narrow space. ‘Those cylinders were around the entire circumference of Blackthorn.’
Jessie stared to Eden then back at Kane. ‘We’re trapped?’
‘Trapped and fucked,’ Kane replied.
Eden stared back at the light-show that now felt like a noose around all their necks.
‘There’s a weak point in everything,’ Eden said, his hand still stinging from getting too close to it. ‘We’ll find it.’
Kane’s glare rested on the electromagnetic field. ‘Sirius has been planning this for too long. If there had been a weak point, he would have discovered it and overcome it. We have to think of something else.’ He looked back to Eden then Jessie. ‘All suggestions are welcome because, as of now, I’ve no idea what the fuck we’re going to do other than kick-start the very war Sirius wants.’
As the steel door was unlocked from the other side, Xavier Carter instantly prepared himself for the worse. From his seated position on the floor, he braced himself for Kane Malloy to enter.
Kane had brought him there after he and Jask’s pack of lycans had overthrown Sirius’s army back at the compound. The master vampire hadn’t disclosed his purpose for him yet. Instead he’d been left alone to recover from whatever sedative Caitlin Parish had pumped into him.
Forty years of trying to get his hands on the vampire and now he was the one trapped in some unknown location.
But it wasn’t Kane who entered. Tentative relief was his instant response to Eden Reece’s unexpected presence.
He’d heard Reece’s name bandied around a few times since being there. Disappointment grated deep as the Curfew Enforcement Officer – who he had hired whilst in his role as chief of the Third Species Control Division – confirmed his suspicion: that the man he had recommended to Sirius Throme for one of their most important missions had gone rogue. Eden Reece had turned traitor to the organisation who had put food on his table and a roof over his head; who had given him the best opportunities he was ever going to get in life.
Eden strolled over to the wall directly opposite Xavier and sat on the floor. His subordinate mirrored him as he drew his knees to his chest and rested his wrists loosely on top, his head back against the wall.
He was subtly toying with a mint in his mouth. He regularly toyed with a mint in his mouth. He’d turned up to their recruitment day doing the exact same thing.
As Eden had sat alone in the small isolation chamber to take the aptitude tests, Xavier had ordered him through the one-way mirror to spit out whatever was in his mouth. He could remember it clearly, despite it being over ten years ago now. Eden had slam dunked it accurately into the bin from four feet away before leaning back, arms folded, to stare with indifference in Xavier’s concealed direction – not unlike he was now.
He would never have got that far if he hadn’t survived boot camp from the first round, let alone the combat round of the second.
A kid from the rough streets of Lowtown was a rare enough sight at open recruitment. Everyone expected the 26-year-old to fall at the first hurdle. But under the unassuming swagger, the self-assurance and the smart mouth, Eden could actually fight – and not just physically. He was smart, strategic, quick thinking, even manipulative. He read his opponents in a way Xavier had never witnessed in all his years at the TSCD. And when it came to the aptitude tests, his IQ was as impressive as the rest of his performance.
Regardless, the panel had wanted to fail him. Despite the ‘open-house’ policy once every three years, preference was always given to residents of Midtown or Summerton for the competitive jobs in the TSCD. There had been particular worry about how the others would feel about brushing shoulders with a Lowtowner – or Lowt as they nicknamed them – just as much as there had been concern over whether someone from that district could truly side with the TSCD. He’d had the final say though. Except now it seemed he’d been wrong all along.
‘Eden Reece. I’ve overheard your name mentioned a few times and, sure enough, here you are.’
‘There’s an electromagnetic barrier that’s gone up around Blackthorn. What do you know about it, Xavier?’
Eden’s tone was as direct as his brown-eyed gaze. He’d never been overly compliant or one to stand on ceremony, hence having had more charges of misconduct than any other CEO in the history of the TSCD. But that had always been countered by his having the highest success rate too. Eden Reece, although the preferable alternative to Kane Malloy right then, was not one to be underestimated when it came to unpredictability.
‘So Sirius has finally resorted to Plan B. And it’s Mr Carter to you,’ he added, the compulsion to pull rank too great. ‘I don’t believe I’ve had your official resignation as yet.’
Eden flipped the mint in his closed mouth again, his gaze unwavering.
Xavier glanced at the door before fixing his full attention back on Eden. ‘Unless I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe you’re even smarter than I give you credit for,’ he added quietly. ‘Or you certainly can be. That barrier is impenetrable, Reece. This is all coming to a head right here and right now. You can make the right choice. You can get me out of here. I’m willing to place money on your ability to get Malloy out too. This could be the making of you.’
The CEO didn’t flinch. ‘Maybe.’ He flipped the mint again. ‘If I was wearing my I’m-a-back-stabbing-traitor T-shirt today. Let me know when you’ve finished borrowing it.’
His humour was as unappealing as the unwavering look of resolve in his eyes, especially as Eden had dared to go there thinking he could get answers.
‘You do know Kane’s going to kill me, don’t you?’ Xavier asked. ‘Can you stand by and let that happen?’
‘For orchestrating the murder of his sister? For slaughtering his friends in your continued attempt to capture him, as well as putting innocent people like my family on the line, all for Sirius’s putrid ends? I can’t imagine why you’d think that would make Kane want to kill you.’
Xavier swallowed back his temper. ‘You could have had it all, Reece. You still can. I recommended you to this mission because I knew you were the best. You’ve always been the best. You and your family cannot survive this without my help. Get me out of here and Sirius’s offer will still be open. I give you my word.’
‘But as you’ve just confirmed, we’re all trapped in Blackthorn now, X.’
The shortened use of his name, the dismissal of his offer, had Xavier forcing himself to curb his temper again.
‘You either turn this around as of now, Reece, or you go back out there to your new vampire and lycan best friends. But this is the one and only opportunity I’m giving you.’
‘What if this is the only opportunity I’m giving you?’
‘You’re Malloy’s lapdog. You don’t have any say over what the outcome will be – we both know that. Unless you take control now.’
‘I’m asking nicely, X. If you know how to bring that barrier down, you need to tell me.’
‘It can’t be brought down, Reece. Not from inside. You know as well as I do how long Sirius has waited for this. His plan is infallible.’
‘Maybe I should tell Kane that. After all, if you’re telling the truth, that makes you defunct. One less piece of baggage.’
Eden eased himself up from the floor and turned his back on Xavier as he made his way across to the door.
‘It was me who fought your corner to get you a place in the Curfew Enforcement Unit, Reece!’ he called after him. ‘They didn’t want you. But I didn’t judge you by where you came from, only by what you had to offer. Up to now you’ve made me proud – and that unit proud. I know your background. I know what you stand for.’
Eden turned to face him again, his brown eyes still unflinchingly resolute. ‘Then you should know why asking me to choose the system that enforces it is a tad more than an insult.’
‘So instead you become a part of the rebels – those who murder, who bully, who deceive; who want to bring everything down around us for their own ends?’
‘And what was your intention when you sided with the rebels, X? You confessed to Kane for yourself about your involvement with Feinith. Does Sirius know about you using the Higher Order for your own ends?’
‘I told Feinith what she wanted to hear. I told Feinith what I needed her to hear in order to gain disclosure from her. I know exactly where my loyalties lie, Reece. I don’t bite the hand that feeds me.’
‘Yet you confessed to it all whilst cowering on the floor in front of Kane Malloy. See, I know about your background too, X.’
‘Come on, Reece. You know all about playing the game. You’re a survivor after all. The kid orphaned at thirteen. Playing big brother to his older sibling, who was incapable of surviving those rough streets you’d been abandoned to. I know how your mother was beaten into a coma. I found it in the records. I know your drunk of a father ended it all soon after that machine was switched off because he couldn’t cope with his own sense of inadequacy at not being there to help her.
‘You were clever at manipulating the recruitment psychologists, I’ll give you that, but your true underlying motivation for joining the TSCD didn’t go unnoticed. You used the system you despised because you knew deep down that you had every chance of becoming one of the very people you loathed. The TSCD was your only way out; your only way to stop it happening. We were there for you, for your family, when you needed us. And yet this is how you repay us?’
‘I’ve paid my dues. I didn’t start this.’
‘Sirius isn’t a monster, Reece, despite you trying to convince yourself to the contrary.’
‘Then how would you describe him?’
‘We can’t sustain this way forever. We all know that. Prophecy or not, sooner or later the third species were going to rise against us. Feinith knew we were putting the pressure on finding that cure. They were going to use the next election: put Amilek forward, knowing he would fail, so they could incite that uprising.’
‘And Sirius planned to use this barrier to manage that?’ Eden asked. ‘But, more than ever, he wanted Kane out first. It’s been Throme versus Feinith all the way, and you’ve been playing them both and keeping both your options open. Maybe I should check your arse for splinters from that fence.’
‘He’ll let you in on it too, Reece. You get me out of here and I’ll see to it that it happens. You’re fighting on the wrong side. Parish was warned, now you have been too. They’re using you. They’re using all of you. Kane can’t be trusted. He’s spun a line around you all.’
Eden stepped back over to join him. He crouched down in front of him, wrists on his knees again as he held his gaze.
‘There’s a weak spot in everything, Xavier, and that means there’s a weak spot in that barrier – and in Sirius’s plan too. If you don’t want to help, then I can’t help you. I just need to know if that’s your final decision.’
‘I don’t know who I’m more disappointed in: you or Caitlin Parish.’
Eden offered him the subtlest hint of a smile. ‘We’ll both struggle to sleep tonight knowing that.’
He stood again and made his way back out of the room.
Eden locked the door behind himself as Jessie backed up in the bunker tunnel.
‘No luck?’ she asked, her forest-green irises reflecting her concern.
‘I take it you listened to all of that?’
‘Of course I listened.’
And that meant she’d heard more than he’d wanted her to.
She reached for his hand, interlaced their fingers and squeezed as they headed back down the corridor.
Xavier’s words clogged his mind and made it hard to swallow amidst his irritation at his former boss trying to manipulate and use his emotions about his family, his past, against him. The fact Jessie had heard the conversation grated even more.
It grated because of how true it was: how he could so easily have become what he despised. And he didn’t need that pointed out to Jessie. He didn’t need the girl who had spent decades trapped amongst the worst dregs of humankind, the girl he now loved, knowing how close he had been to becoming the very thing she despised.
‘Whatever Xavier claims, I’m telling you an electromagnetic pulse will work,’ he said. ‘It’ll bring the whole barrier down.’
‘If we can get to the core circuitry, which we’ve already established is almost definitely on the other side. We’re going in circles, Eden.’
She knew it. He knew it. They all knew it.
‘Yeah, well it’s better than standing still.’
‘We don’t even have time for that now,’ Kane said, meeting them on the corner from the other direction. ‘So I take it you had no luck with Carter?’
‘Short of torture intervention, no. He’s a stubborn bastard but he knows what we could do to him. He’s insisting there’s no way through. What’s happening?’
‘Sirius’s army has moved from the border. They’re infiltrating the streets and moving door to door as of now. They’ve started at the northern boundary and are sweeping downwards.’
‘How many?’
‘Over a hundred by the last count, and that’s on top of standard military. They’ve got Curfew Enforcement Officers leading the way.’
‘Using my boys as the expendable grunts as always.’
‘And at the pace they’re moving, they’ll be infiltrating the hub within the next twenty-four hours,’ Kane added.
This was finally Throme’s decades-old strategy meeting Kane’s – though Kane’s had originally been intended for use against the vampire uprising, and certainly hadn’t included a total blockage of any exit route outside of the confines of Blackthorn.
‘Any news on Leila?’ Jessie asked.
With Jask still unconscious, his pack beta Corbin had taken the lead on the hunt. Leila had vanished from the bunker five hours before – around the time they’d discovered the barrier.
Whether she’d escaped as herself or whether the serryn had already taken over – as it had attempted to with her sister Sophia – none of them knew. Ever since she’d conducted the spell to transfer Sophia’s serrynity back to herself, they’d been preoccupied with the fallout of the attack on the bunker and then trying to pull all their resources together for a new plan since the barrier had curbed the last one.
Caitlin and Sophia – Phia to them – had remained on the case in-house, hunting for clues as to Leila’s intentions. She’d been adamant she wasn’t going to kill Caleb. Now none of them could be sure, especially as they had every reason to believe she’d left with Kane’s Tryan-killing sword in hand.
If she had gone for him and she messed up, if Caleb killed her and claimed his Tryan status, the prophecy would be back on track. He would rise as the vampire leader and he would win. They’d be wedged between two almighty powers with no option but to succumb to the war they were trying to avoid. Caleb would end up destroying Blackthorn in his clash with Sirius Throme. And, if the prophecy continued on its path, destroy everything as they knew it.
‘No,’ Kane said. ‘They’ve failed to find her anywhere. I’ve had to pull the teams back in. I can’t risk it. Any third species they find on the streets, they’re taking to camps they’ve set up in the north.’
‘What has Phia said about that?’ Eden asked.
‘The air was blue for a while, and I fielded one or two punches, but she knows as well as we do that it’s too high risk to keep searching. If Leila’s gone to fight this battle with Caleb alone, there’s nothing we can do about it now.’
‘She’d better know what she’s doing,’ Eden said. ‘Or we’re all screwed.’
‘She does,’ Jessie said. ‘Knowing she’ll go the same way as Phia did, she’ll be trying to talk Caleb round before it’s too late.’
‘Or she’s handing the pending Tryan a ready-made serryn on a platter,’ Eden counter-argued.
Jessie met his gaze with the glint of challenge that he loved about her. ‘She had no choice. The longer she delays, the more the serryn will out. We all saw what it did to Phia. We should be applauding her, not doubting her.’
‘I’m not the happiest camper that she fucked off without saying so, but I’m inclined to agree,’ Kane said. ‘Looking at the state of the streets, I’m betting Caleb isn’t going to rein it in for much longer. At the pace the army is moving, we’ve got about twenty-four hours until they’ve cleared the north and reach the east and west. He’s going to be a fucking time bomb waiting to go off once they hit his te. . .
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