Skye
Abby catches me from across the length of the hallway. Her dark eyes widen, her platinum hair pulled back from her flushed face as she rises from a crouch and shoves her way in my direction. I have only a handful of seconds to collect myself before we collide. She wraps her arms around my waist and squeezes so tight I lose the ability to breathe for a moment.
“What are you doing here?” she says into my coat, her voice muffled by the fabric. “I thought you were in Moonrise for another week?”
“Tell me everything.”
“Everyone needs to move now!” someone shouts at the end of the hallway, and I realize it’s Toby directing traffic as lab assistants and postdocs lift themselves up from the floor where they’ve been trying to catch their breath. Abby pulls me to the side so we’re flush against the wall, and people can pass by. There’re more people than usual, I think, especially for this time of night.
Toby notices me, and his expression shatters. I realize in that moment, based on the glint in his eyes, that I’m right.
Alex isn’t here.
He’s down there.
Right below our feet and several hundred meters of ice.
“How?” I ask, my voice cracking with emotion.
Abby continues to clutch me like her life depends on it, and I’m convinced she’s the only reason I’m upright.
“We’re not sure what started it. Abby picked up earthquake behavior, but that’s common on the ice regardless of drilling,” Toby begins.
“That’s what we were doing tonight. Drilling. Everyone was in the lab–every postdoc, every assistant we could find. This has been a long time coming and an entire production,” Abby continues.
“A carefully choreographed dance,” Toby confirms, widening his stance. A door at the end of the hallway I know leads to the upper levels of the lab–the elevator shaft and locker rooms–opens, revealing a group of maintenance workers. They pay us no mind as they pass, but Toby looks at the door, taking a deep, resigned breath. “Alex has been planning this for weeks, down to the last detail. The engineers, too. It’s been his main focus since Abby confirmed the fossil. Nothing should have gone wrong. We had postdocs in every single tunnel taking data to ensure we weren’t risking a collapse while drilling that section. All day, everything was fine. No cracks. No pressure changes. Then, an hour ago, we hit a water pocket unexpectedly. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It shouldn’t have meant anything. We hit pockets like that all the time when we drill, but the pressure changed, and… cracks began to form.”
“But the timeline aligns with the data I have and the small cluster of earthquakes,” Abby says, “which weren’t strong enough to cause damage like this. It doesn’t make sense.”
I shake my head. The ins and outs of this procedure and this lab are totally out of my wheelhouse.
“The sensors weren’t working properly, but we knew that going in, which is why we had teams taking data from every tunnel while we worked ours. The collapse… it doesn’t make sense data-wise. Something catastrophic would have had to cause it–an explosion or a major earthquake. We were being so careful.”
Abby reaches out to squeeze Toby’s arm. “I took my laptop out of the lab when we evacuated. All the data’s still there. We’ll find out what really happened.”
Toby looks down at his boots. “Alex isn’t answering his phone.”
“Well, he’s below–” I try to say, but he interrupts.
“I’m not sure he is. He was the last to leave the tunnels. We both were. We did a headcount while in the main channel, which is far more secure than the lower tunnels. We were safe enough for the moment to do it, but I walked around the corner to the entrance of the lab and he didn’t follow. I went back, shouted for him, and he answered that he thought someone was still down there and I–I couldn’t see how. I kept telling him to come back, and he said he was coming, I heard him running, and then everything just… fell in. The channel started to crumble. I ran, and I was sure he was right beside me. We got into the elevator with the last of the people evacuating, and I was sure he was on it. I saw him, for fuck’s sake.”
I straighten. “You saw him?”
“He’s the only one who wears dark clothing down there. He had his hat pulled down, his hand over his face like he was trying to collect himself.”
Something ugly twists in my lower belly. “How do you know it was him?”
“Because he was standing so still. You know, how Alex does. He barely moves.”
Abby looks wildly between us, sensing there’s something off about it.
“But when we all gathered out here and made sure everyone was accounted for, I couldn’t find him. He won’t answer his phone. Seeing you, I figured maybe he knew you were back and went to make sure you knew he was okay.” Toby looks at me like I’m about to confirm his friend is alive, and when I exhale, my eyes filling with tears, his expression crumbles.
“Oh, my Goddess. He’s still down there, isn’t he?”
“Fuck,” I whisper, sniffling. “Who else…? How…? What’s happening now?”
“The maintenance office sent a team down into the lab. The main lab is fine–messy and not stable, but fine. The tunnels are gone, essentially, but they didn’t search anything. We were sure everyone got out,” Abby tells me and then says weakly, “The engineering department has body temperature scanners they can drop down into the tunnels, don’t they? They’re strong enough to pick up heat pockets from the surface of the ice down at least half a mile. We can find him that way, right?”
Toby and I look at each other. Alex mentioned Toby knows the truth.
Abby does not.
“That won’t work, Abs,” Toby says in defeat.
“If he’s dead, it hasn’t been for long. We can find him! If he’s hurt–”
“Alex… doesn’t have a body temperature that can be picked up by those scanners,” I say, barely loud enough to be overheard.
Abby looks so confused, and it breaks my heart that she’s been left in the dark. She might not forgive me for this, or anything that comes after, because I have one choice, and I have to make it quickly.
“Is there someone private we can talk?” I ask Toby.
* * *
Abby cackles until tears stream down her face. “That’s not funny, Toby.”
I pull a pair of yellow thermals over my camisole and discreetly slip into the thermal leggings Toby provided.
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“Alex is not a… whatever you said.”
“You know what I said. He’s a vampire, Abby.”
“They’re not real. They don’t exist!”
“They do,” I say, draping my discarded clothing over a chair in the conference room we’re hiding out in against the constant clang of footsteps and tools while maintenance ensures the campus is secure and not falling into the ice. “And Toby’s right. Alex is a vampire.”
Abby laughs cynically but glares at us both. “So, what? He’s a dead man walking? He drinks the blood of innocents?”
“Not really,” Toby says, but his voice falters.
I clear my throat while zipping up the thickly insulated overalls that Toby snuck out of the locker room and fix Abby with a serious look that has her straightening her back. “Alex is a born vampire, which is very similar to a shifter or witch. His differences are plenty, but they mostly have to do with his longer than normal lifespan and his biological needs–such as blood. You’re right about that. However, he’s not a monster from our childhood fairytales, Abby. This is who he is. He’s a vampire, but he’s also Toby’s friend, and my–”
Abby shakes her head, looking stricken. “I knew you were sleeping with him.”
“I’m not going into this with you now. We have no time to waste.”
“You’re wasting your time, Skye. You’re not going to be able to gain access to the tunnels. I’ll get you into the lab.”
“I don’t need your help like you think I do,” I gut out, frustrated with the zipper on the parka that’s the same color as the sun on the hottest day in Maatua. It’s blindingly yellow. It would be so easy to find Alex if he were wearing the same thing. I choke back my misplaced anger at him and slip into heavily treaded boots and gloves and then pull a beanie over my hair, turning to my friends.
I take two steps to close the distance between us. “Don’t be afraid,” I whisper. “This will only hurt a little bit.”
“What?” Toby says, but I slam my hands on his forehead and Abby’s simultaneously, tearing into their minds as carefully as I can, but I’m running out of time to save him.
Usually, I wouldn’t need to do this. I could simply… reach out to Alex through the aether, letting the stars guide my way, but scrying is not my strong suit and never has been. My grandma Sarah is a master at it, but I never developed as strong a pull toward that skill as she has. I have to go backward to find Alex, so I do, poring through Abby and Toby’s memories of the last hour until Abby grabs her laptop and leaps into the elevator, and Toby calls out to Alex to hurry.
I catch a glimpse of Alex in that single memory–barely a second where he’s in Toby’s direct line of sight, and do something I’m not sure will work.
I grab onto Alex in that memory. He’s nothing but his voice for several seconds before my powers, dimmed to the point of pain, find something interesting.
A single thread in our tapestry that weaves through several different lifelines. He has affected so many lives in a positive way that he’s here, in my visions, the last ten years of his efforts forever cemented in the stars. I could follow each crossing of threads, I’m sure. Maybe one day I will, and I’ll be able to tell him how much good he’s given my world and my kingdom.
But not now.
Because I found his tether.
I grab it, letting his memories wash over me. He was sure someone was in the tunnel behind him. Red eyes. A familiar presence he couldn’t shake. He thought he was going insane, was debating his options, fighting his own instincts, and then the floor gave way beneath him.
A shadow leapt over him at the last second, running to safety. He saw it but barely. He was already falling, crashing, crushed.
But alive. I can feel him now. I know where he is.
I yank out of Toby’s head. Abby falls in a heap to the floor beside him, her eyes open but rolled back in her head. She’s still breathing, thank the Goddess, and Toby falls against the wall and slides down to rest behind her, groaning and gripping his temples. I toss my badge in his lap. He’s barely lucid, but he’s awake enough to hear me when I command, “Meet me in my condo in twenty minutes.”
The words are barely out when my powers erupt and suck me into depths so deep it’s suddenly impossible to breathe. It’s thick in the aether between realms. Sometimes, it’s a vat of nothing–inky black nothing that swells and constricts when I travel through it–but sometimes, it’s starlight, like now, that streaks and shifts until I’ve found my destination.
Maybe I’m insane. Actually, I know I am, because where I’m going is where Alex is currently stuck and fighting for his life over a thousand feet below the surface of the lab, but if I can just… touch him?
I can get us out of here.
The darkness doesn’t fade. I have no way of knowing I’ve reached my destination until I feel my back being shredded by jagged ice. Condensation drips from what used to be a tunnel, based on how smooth the wall feels. I blink several times, willing my happily lazy and dormant wolf to wake up enough to help me in the dark, and she does after some prodding. My eyesight shifts, and a collapsed tunnel spreads out around me, piles of ice blocking each end of the tunnel. Alex lies on his stomach, face down and silent, a block of ice crushing his legs.
He’s not moving.
That doesn’t mean anything to me.
I leap toward him, grabbing his arm, my powers screaming to stop and wait, but I can’t. Dark, black blood coats the floor where he fell so hard it knocked him unconscious. He’s been bleeding out slowly.
But it’s very hard to kill a vampire.
“Hold on.” I croak and scream in pain as my ragged, overworked powers surge and carry us both… home.
I hope.