Chapter 36 #2
“At least they’re not ferals,” I muttered quietly, more to myself than to them as my arms wrapped around my waist, my fingers pressing against the Sword of Angelus still tucked at my side.
The taller of the two was broad-shouldered and lean, his posture rigid in a way that read as discipline rather than tension. The shorter one moved half a step behind, though it felt less like deference than formation. Like they’d done this enough times to have developed a system.
I knew what they were before they reached us.
It moved through me the way it always did, that specific, wordless awareness my Slayer blood carried like a frequency, a pull in the chest that had nothing to do with instinct and everything to do with what I was.
Revenants. Both of them. And if I could feel them, I already knew they could feel me right back.
The taller one’s eyes confirmed it, bleeding to black as the distance between us closed to a few feet.
The shorter one stepped forward. He appeared more in control of himself, his expression measured where the other’s had slipped.
His hair was shaved close on the sides and left longer on top, tied back in a thin, dark strip.
A narrow piece of bone pierced cleanly through his septum, polished smooth and pale against the red of the sky behind him.
His eyes were sharp. Assessing. Intelligent.
He looked at us without expression. “State your House.”
My eyes moved over them as he spoke. Their clothing was scraps of mismatched fabric that might once have been coats, shirts, trousers, faded beyond color and bleached into variations of rust and ash by whatever light existed here.
The cuts were uneven, sleeves shortened and resewn, hems reinforced with crude stitching that looked practical rather than decorative.
Over that, pieces of dark metal had been fastened strategically.
Not full plates, but segments. Bracers along the forearms. Shoulder guards hammered thin and riveted into place.
Small, curved plates stitched or wired across their chests like reinforcement rather than armor.
Between the layers, binding everything together, were strips of something that made my stomach tighten when I looked at it too closely.
It wasn’t cloth or leather. It had a pale, stretched quality to it, faintly translucent in the red light, stitched along the seams and moving naturally with them when they moved.
I looked away.
“House?” asked Dominic, his tone carrying that familiar brand of polite curiosity he used when he wanted information without giving any away.
The two men exchanged a look. “First day in Sanguinarium?”
“Something like that,” said Trace, his dimples pressing in as a muscle flexed in his jaw.
The shorter one studied him for a moment with the patience of someone who had learned that silence was a more reliable tool than questions. “You came through together?”
“We did,” answered Dominic.
“Voluntarily?”
What a strange question.
“Not especially,” answered Dominic, giving nothing else away.
Another look passed between them, quick and unreadable. The taller one’s eyes had bled back to something closer to normal, though they kept drifting, almost involuntarily, to me. Not to my face. Slightly lower. To the pulse at my throat. I resisted the urge to pull my collar up.
“How long have you been out in the open?” asked the shorter one.
“A little over an hour,” said Trace, his tone even.
“Interesting. Most things that come through the seam don’t last long out in the open.” His eyes moved to me again, just briefly. “Especially not things that bleed.”
My pulse ticked up despite myself. It wasn’t a threat. Not a direct one anyway. It was more a statement of fact about how things worked around here, casually shared by someone who didn’t particularly care whether you were comfortable receiving it or not.
I straightened. “Well, we seemed to manage just fine.”
“You got lucky,” he corrected, without any emphasis. “Those aren’t the same thing here.”
I held his gaze and said nothing, which seemed to satisfy him more than a response would have.
“How long have you been in Sanguinarium?” asked Dominic, his eyes moving over the settlement with unhurried interest as though he were taking inventory. “I imagine it’s been a while to put all this together.”
“Long enough,” he agreed but offered nothing else.
“Are we talking months or years?” I asked, hating that I needed to know and already afraid of the answer.
The two men exchanged another look. Something shifted between them, some private calculation being run.
“Time moves differently here,” said the taller one.
It was the first time he’d spoken. His voice was lower than I’d expected, intentional in a way that suggested he didn’t use it often. “You stop counting after a while.”
The chill that moved through me had nothing to do with the temperature. I silently prayed I wouldn’t be here long enough to ever know what he meant by that.
“What about the others?” asked Trace, nodding toward the perimeter, where figures still moved between the structures. “How many of you are there?”
“Enough,” said the shorter one.
“That’s not really an answer,” I pointed out.
“No,” he agreed pleasantly. “It’s not.”
Trace shifted his weight almost imperceptibly beside me, and I knew without looking at him that his hand had moved closer to the stake at his back. The shorter one clocked it immediately, his eyes dropping to the movement and then rising again without any change in expression.
“We’re not looking for any trouble,” I said calmly, hoping to quell some of the tension that had suddenly sprung up in the air. “We’re just looking for information.”
“You’re looking for a way out.” His gaze moved slowly between the three of us, lingering a half-second too long on me before returning to Trace. “You’re not going to find that here.”
“Because you don’t know of one, or because you don’t want to tell us?”
“Because it doesn’t exist.” Something moved across his face. Not quite amusement. Not quite bitterness. Something worn smooth by repetition, the expression of someone who had made peace with an answer they didn’t like.
“It does exist, and we’re going to find it,” I informed, refusing to let his hopelessness creep in before we even had a chance to come up with a solid plan. “We’re not planning on staying here a second longer than we need to.”
“Everyone who comes through the seam plans to leave soon,” he said bitterly. “Some of them are still planning.”
The words hit their mark. I felt them land somewhere in the middle of my chest and sit there, heavy and deliberate. But I didn’t look away from him, and I didn’t let them settle.
“I’m not everyone,’ I said, the vow coming out more solid and even than my voice had any business being.
He studied me for another moment. Then he reached up and briefly touched the bone at his septum, an absent, habitual gesture, before dropping his hand. “The name is Cael,” he said. “This is Rhen.” He tipped his head toward the taller one. “And you are?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but Dominic spoke first.
“Heathcliff,” he said, without hesitation or so much as a glance in my direction. “Though Heath will do.” He nodded toward Trace, who didn’t react at all, his jaw remaining set. “That’s Edgar. And this is our Catherine,” he finished, his tone softening on the last part.
I looked up at him slowly, but he didn’t meet my eyes.
Of course he reached for Wuthering Heights.
Of course he’d cast himself as the brooding, morally compromised antihero who loved too darkly and burned everything around him for it.
The man was constitutionally incapable of not being dramatic, even here, with bone-pierced strangers eyeing my throat in a vampire purgatory.
It shouldn’t have made me want to laugh, but I had to fight it back anyway.
Cael’s eyes moved between us, giving nothing away.
Whether he believed us or simply didn’t care either way, I couldn’t tell.
In a place like this, I imagined false names were the least interesting lie anyone had told him.
Rhen’s gaze, however, lingered on me again, his nostrils flaring subtly, scent doing the work his composure wouldn’t allow his expression to.
“Is there anything useful you can tell us about this place?” asked Trace, his cobalt blue eyes on Cael. “About the seam or how it works? Anything that might help us get back through it?”
Cael was quiet for a moment, weighing something. “The seam opens from the other side,” he said finally. “It can’t be forced from in here.”
“Has anyone tried getting through it when it opens?” asked Trace, as I quickly caught up with his train of thought.
“The openings are random. Unpredictable.” Cael’s jaw shifted slightly. “Getting close enough to use one means being out in the open for long stretches with no cover and no guarantee. We don’t do that here.” He paused. “Especially not after the sky goes dark.”
“The sky goes dark?” I glanced upward at the unrelenting red above us.
“Eventually.” He held my gaze. “You don’t want to be in the open when it does.”
Something cold seeped into my stomach and stayed there. I wanted to ask what happened when the sky went dark. I also didn’t want to know the answer badly enough to ask it out loud.
Cael’s gaze lingered on me for a beat, something moving through it that almost looked like pity before he smoothed it away.
“I need to get back to my people,” he said, looking between the three of us one final time.
“We can give you some supplies. Enough to keep moving.” His eyes cut briefly, pointedly, to me.
“Though I’d think carefully about where you plan to move to. ”
“Generous of you,” said Dominic. “And if we preferred a roof to rations?”
“Then you’d be asking for something considerably more valuable than supplies.” Cael studied him. “What exactly do you have to offer in return that would warrant such a risk?”
“The risk is negligible,” said Dominic, his dark eyes on Cael.
“We have no allegiances here and no agenda beyond getting back to our Realm. But make no mistake of it, we will be returning to our Realm.” He paused.
“It seems to me that having a working relationship with the only people in Sanguinarium who already have a door might be worth considerably more than the cost of one night’s shelter. ”
That piqued his interest. “A door you say?”
Dominic’s mouth curved just slightly. “The details of which we’d be far more inclined to discuss somewhere with a roof over our heads.”
Cael went very still for just a moment. It was brief, barely there, but I caught it. The shift in his eyes when Dominic implied we didn’t come through the seam. Like a piece of information landing somewhere it hadn’t been before and rearranging things slightly on its way down.
Whatever he was weighing, he reached the end of it without letting any of it show on his face.
“One night,” he said. “You can shelter inside the perimeter for one night.” His eyes found mine and stayed there. “And then you’ll be on your way.”
I looked at Dominic. He looked back at me with the expression he used when he’d already made a decision and was simply waiting for me to arrive at it. Walking voluntarily into an enclosed settlement full of Revenants of unknown temperament was, objectively, a deeply questionable call.
It was also the only one we had. Because whatever came out when that sky went dark had clearly given Cael, who did not strike me as a man who spooked easily, sufficient reason to not want to be in the open for it. And that alone was reason enough for me.
“We appreciate the hospitality,” said Dominic smoothly.
Cael turned without another word and started back toward the settlement. Rhen followed a step behind, and after a moment, so did we.
“I really hope you know what you’re doing,” I said quietly, falling into step between Trace and Dominic.
“I always know what I’m doing, angel,” said Dominic, a smirk pulling at the corner of his lips.
“Famous last words,” said Trace, shaking his head.
But neither of them slowed down, and neither did I.