Page 10 of The Vampire King's War

ENEMY TERRITORY

Earlier…

Christian sank into the miasma of ghosts. It was like diving into icy water. He drew in a sharp breath and all of his muscles seized for a moment. When he breathed in, he became worried that he was breathing in the spirits. Was it possible to literally suck down someone’s soul?

He hadn’t realized that he’d closed his eyes once he sank below the surface of spirits, but he had. He considered keeping them closed. He imagined seeing spirits’ faces pressed against his own, looking at him with horror or longing or whatever it was a soul separated from its body would feel at the great sorting place of the Well of All Souls. He even told himself that he should keep them closed so that he could concentrate on who he was actually looking for: the Harrows.

But as he sat there minute after minute with nothing happening--and practically jumping to his feet every time he thought he felt a hand on him--he realized that this wasn’t going to work. He had to open his eyes. He had to see in order to… well, see.

Drawing in a deep breath through his nose--he’d clamped his mouth shut after he imagined drinking a spirit down--he slowly let his eyelids flutter open. Even if it had been pitch dark beneath the wave of spirits, his vampiric senses would have still allowed him to see. But it wasn’t dark where he was. The spirits gave off a bluish-white lambent glow.

What the glow showed him was, at first at least, comforting. The ghosts were swirling past him on all sides, but they were keeping an inch or so from their ethereal forms from his physical one. There was over a foot between his face and the nearest ghost, enough room that it allowed the twin plumes of frosty air leaving his mouth to dissipate. He opened his mouth and breathed more deeply, his shoulders relaxing as he did so. There was no chance of inhaling a ghost.

But the ghostly light around him also showed that the flowing fog was not fog at all, but people. He saw faces turned towards him, mouths open in gasps of fear or sadness or confusion, eyes wide with the same emotions, fingers trailing through other ghost’s ethereal forms. These faces surfaced and then disappeared as they all flowed towards the well, flew upwards to the lip of the well and then poured over the edge and inside.

Where are they going exactly? What’s at the bottom of the well?

But even as Christian wondered these things, he didn’t really want to find out. There was a tug on his mind, telling him that he could find out, that he could hitch a ride with one of these beings and experience at least part of the journey.

But would I ever be able to get back?

Caemorn had looked like a man addicted to drugs seeing a room full of his particular poison laid out in front of him. Spirits to a Kaly Vampire would be everything. This would be a sumptuous feast. And yet, there were no other Kaly Vampires here. Christian wondered why not. He couldn’t imagine them ignoring this place. It wasn’t a secret. So why not? Christian frowned. He hoped that Caemorn hadn’t “forgotten” to tell them something that would end up putting them in danger. He hadn’t sensed anything but the usual caginess from Caemorn.

But what if he doesn’t know himself? Maybe the sight of all these spirits has overcome his good sense.

Christian though couldn’t imagine lesser Kaly Vampires not risking coming here too. Even if there were great dangers. It would be worth it to them.

Unless this is someone else’s territory…

Christian shook himself. If this was someone else’s territory or Caemorn was unaware of something greater here or even if Caemorn was keeping his thoughts to himself on the matter, it was all the more reason for Christian not to dwaddle. He had to try and find the Harrows!

With that, Christian rolled his shoulders back and straightened his spine. Meditating would help him focus and open himself to find his best friend’s parents. He laid his hands, palms up, on top of his crossed legs with the thumbs and middle fingers touching. He started to count his breaths. He made sure that they were full and even. He concentrated on his breaths and nothing else. He felt himself beginning to relax.

First, his sense of being cold left him. Next, he became nearly unaware of the fact that he was seated on the ground. The ghosts’ blue-white “fog” allowed him to disengage from his body. Following that, everything in his vision sort of faded out. He was hardly aware of anything but the movement of the “fog”. Finally, he was left only with the sound of his own breathing and the thumping of his heart. But those too faded away in the distance, first his breathing and then his heartbeat. He was left in a cocoon of stillness and silence.

He let his mind drift, thinking of nothing, focusing on nothing. He bobbed along with the sea of ghosts and that was all there was. He was weightless. And in that moment of nothingness, he saw the threads. There were millions of them. Like some kind of amazing spiderweb where spiders had spun the entire world into one gigantic web. The threads glittered and thrummed.

This is what Caemorn was talking about. Two of these threads are the Harrows. But which ones?

Just asking the question seemed to elicit a response from the web. Two thin, filament-like threads glowed gold for a moment. His eyes were drawn to them. He found himself reaching out towards those strands. He was so careful. He did not want to break them. The barest brush of his fingertips though was enough.

It was like a tow rope used in downhill skiing. The moment he touched them, he was being drawn towards the other end of them. Everything blurred, racing by. Christian’s eyes closed until they were just slits as they were weeping from the force of air pushed against them, even though he was certain he had not moved physically at all. He tried to see where he was going, or to glimpse landmarks that he could describe to the others when he returned to give some clue as to where the Harrows were being held, but everything was a blur.

Abruptly, the flying sensation stopped and Christian was standing still. He nearly pitched forward, but pinwheeled his arms at his sides, just managing to keep upright. Despite these physical reactions, Christian knew that he was still seated, cross legged in the sea of ghosts with the others in the Ever Dark. But he was no longer in the Ever Dark. He was in a place as familiar to him as his own home. Because it was his “second” home. It was Wingate, the Harrows’ estate.

This can’t be right!

Christian was in Julian’s study, which had been Julian’s father’s study. The green shaded banker’s lamp on the mahogany desk was the only illumination in the room. Something about how it looked in that moment had Christian frowning even more. It wasn’t right.

It was familiar, but the souvenirs of his and Julian’s adventures were not littering the top of the desk. There weren’t the crazy coils of cables they needed for their camera equipment either. The usual backpacks, already filled for the next adventure, were not leaning against the bookcase. The room wasn’t neat or anything like that, but the usual detritus of their lives here was missing and was replaced by someone else’s.

A man strode into the study with a book in his hands, open in front of him, his head lowered as he read it while walking. At first, Christian thought this was Julian and was about to call out to him. The lean muscled frame was similar. The ability to walk and read at the same time was also a Julian trait. But it was not Julian who walked right past Christian as if he was not there and sat down at the desk without even so much as glancing at it.

It was Jack Harrow, Julian’s father, though he looked about a decade younger than when Christian had last seen him in the flesh when he and Julian were both twelve. So this was a time well before that.

Jack leaned back in the high-backed swivel chair and put his booted feet up on the desk as he continued to page through the book with the leather tooled binding.

This isn’t where Jack and Joanna are being kept. I know they aren’t at Wingate. I wonder… I wonder if this is a moment of his life that means something special.

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