The Black Tide

  The Black Tide

  Keri Arthur

  Copyright © 2017 by Keri Arthur

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  With thanks to the Miriam, The Lulus, The Central Vic Writers, and my gorgeous girl, Kasey.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Keri Arthur

  Chapter One

  Sunshine.

  Bright, fierce sunshine.

  It bathed my body, burned into my closed eyelids, and had sweat trickling down the side of my face. Only that sweat felt as warm as the sunlight and oddly sluggish.

  I frowned and tried to open my eyes. Couldn’t.

  Panic stirred, along with an odd sense of urgency. I raised a hand, but the movement was not only as slow as that trickle, it hurt like hell.

  I carefully touched my eyes; something sticky glued my lashes together. Further probing revealed a barely healed wound that slashed my forehead, and one I couldn’t remember getting. In fact, the last thing I remembered was looking back at Jonas—a cat shifter who was, like me, a surviving relic from the war that had ended 103 years ago—as I’d stepped through the smaller of the two rifts we’d found at Winter Halo, a now-defunct Central City pharmaceutical company. It had played a key part in the mad scheme to give both vampires and the creatures we knew as wraiths immunity to light, and the scientists there had not only dissected the brains of women with latent psychic skills, but had been testing unapproved drugs and pathogens on children they’d stolen from Central City. We’d put a stop to the dissection, rescued seven of those children, and had now killed two of the three people behind the insidious plot. One of those had been Samuel Cohen—the man who’d assumed the identity of Rath Winter, the person in charge of Winter Halo, and whose death had, in my opinion, been far too quick given the pain he’d caused so many others. The other death was Sal’s—a man who’d been a déchet like me, and someone I’d once considered my closest friend.

  But two out of three was not good enough. We still had to stop Ciara Dream—the very elusive final member of that unholy trinity—before she managed to give either the vamps or wraiths full immunity.

  Light—be it sunlight or the UV light that was cast from the huge towers that surrounded all cities, banishing both shadows and night—was currently the only thing protecting both human and shifter alike from the relentless attacks of either monster.

  I scrubbed the muck away from my eyes and then opened them. The sky was an endless sea of blue. There were no clouds, no birds, no sign or sound of life.

  I tried to sit upright, but pain surged and a hiss escaped through my clenched teeth. My entire body ached—even my damn hair felt like it was on fire.

  Which I guess wasn’t really surprising, given the rift I’d come through was one of the biggest I’d dared enter so far.

  True rifts had come into being 103 years ago—after the shifters had unleashed the bombs that ended their five-year war against humanity. But such was the force of those bombs that they’d not only leveled entire cities, but had also torn drifting holes in the very fabric of our world. While a few of these were doorways between our world and another, most of them simply mauled the essence of anything and anyone unlucky enough to be caught in their path. For most, being ensnared in such a rift meant death. Those of us who survived were forever altered by the magic and the energy that were part and parcel of the rifts, though the consequences of Jonas’s and my recent encounter with one had yet to be fully revealed.

  But the two we’d found at Winter Halo weren’t a result of the bombs. They were what we called false rifts, and had been created by the people behind the immunity scheme as a means of transportation from one point to another on this world.

  It was my task to uncover where the damn things led to, simply because I—thanks to my rather unique DNA makeup—had the unfortunate luck of being the only other person outside those behind their creation able to both see and use them.

  But doing so came at a cost—at least for someone like me, who wasn’t “tuned” into them. The false rifts worked by breaking your body down to atoms before transporting you to the other end, where you were reformed and released. They did at least spit me out in one piece, but my state was very definitely bloody and worse for wear.

  But why would this one dump me in the middle of nowhere? Every other false rift had at least led into a building of some kind; landing in the middle of a desert was definitely outside the norm.

  I took a deep breath and rolled onto my stomach. Once again various bits of my body protested rather vigorously—something that wasn’t helped by the grittiness that rubbed into the sorer spots. My clothes obviously hadn’t come through the rift intact this time.

  When the pain had eased again, I pushed up onto my hands and knees and studied my surroundings. There wasn’t much to see—just a long flat plain of yellow sand. I had no idea where I was; as far as I knew, there were no deserts anywhere near Central City or its surrounds. But my knowledge of the world was somewhat limited to the areas I’d been assigned to during the war. I certainly hadn’t traveled far after it. In fact, I’d basically spent the century since living in the remains of old military bunker outside Central, along with the ghosts of all those who’d been murdered there.

  As a déchet—a lab-designed humanoid created by humans before the war as a means to combat the superior strength and speed of the shifters—I’d had little other choice. While the war might be a century past, the hatred and fear of déchet remained, even though I was now—at least as far as I knew—the sole survivor. Everyone else had been erased at the war’s end.

  I twisted around to check out what lay behind me. Twinges ran through my shoulders and torso, but it was nowhere near as bad as it had been only moments ago. My body seemed to be healing at a far faster rate than was normal for me, and I’d been genetically designed to recover quicker than either humans or shifters.

  The false rift sat about forty feet away, a dark orb of oily energy that gently turned on its axis. There was no sign of the jagged strips of lightning that ran across its surface when active, but that really wasn’t surprising. I wasn’t close enough for it to recognize my presence, and I seriously doubted Dream would risk using it when Winter Halo’s activities were currently under full investigation by both the corps and the council.

  I pushed back onto my heels and took stock. The rift’s whips had indeed shredded my uniform, but the two automatics and the spare magazines were still clipped to the remains of my pants. Both my backpack and the slender machine rifle—which I'd adapted to fire small, sharpened stakes rather than bullets—were missing. After another look around, I spotted the pack half buried in the sand about fifteen feet away. Relief stirred, and not just because that pack still had the rifle attached to it, but also because it held—amongst many other things—a small geo-locating device. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to record my current location or where the base—or whatever else this rift had lead me to—was. Both were important, given my main mission here today was simply one of discovery. The
task of dealing with the base—and whatever evils it might hold—would fall to Jonas, his mercenary partner and human witch Nuri, and whatever government forces they were working with. Not that they’d ever actually admitted to working with the government on this particular case.

  Of course, I was also well equipped to deal with a worst-case scenario—such as the discovery that they were far further along the road of making wraith or vampire life forms immune to light than we’d hoped or feared.

  I crawled over to the pack and pulled out the geo-locator. After inspecting it to ensure there was no damage, I pressed the switch to log my position and then grabbed the water bottle and quickly swished the metallic bitterness from my mouth.

  A sound invaded the stillness. It was little more than a soft whine, but it was coming toward me at some speed. I turned around. A plume of dust was now visible on the horizon, though I couldn’t yet see the vehicle causing it. Which was good, because if I couldn’t see them, they more than likely wouldn’t be able to see me.

  And I needed to be sure it remained that way.

  I stoppered the water bottle then raised my face and let the sunlight caress my skin. While the bits of vampire DNA in my makeup meant I was genetically adapted to night and shadows, there was still a part of me that needed the heat and life of the sun. It was that part that enabled me to disappear behind a shield of light. It wasn’t magic, but rather a psychic talent, one that had been enhanced in the lab during my creation. And it wasn’t the only talent they’d given me. Shifters might have hated and feared déchet soldiers, but we lures were far more deadly. Soldiers had strength and speed; we'd been built not only for seduction but with a veritable arsenal of both psychic and shifting skill sets at our command.

  I took a deep breath then called to day’s brightness, drawing it deep into my body in much the same manner as I could draw in darkness. Heat flowed into every muscle, every fiber until my entire being burned with the force of it. I imagined that force wrapping around me, forming a shield none would see past. Energy stirred as motes of light danced both through and around me, joining and growing until they'd formed the barrier I was imagining. To the outside world, I no longer existed. The light playing through me acted like a one-way mirror, reflecting all that was around me while hiding my presence.

  I pushed to my feet and retreated as that plume of dust drew closer and the vehicle became visible. It was a hover, and military in design, but much older than anything I’d ever seen in Central City. For some reason, the blast shields at the front of the vehicle were up, which possibly meant they were relying on radar to guide them. If that was the case, then my light shield might be next to useless. I unlatched one of the automatics and held it at the ready.

  The vehicle came to a halt twenty feet away, blasting me with dust and hot air as its skirts lost shape and it settled onto the sand.

  There was no immediate indication that they’d seen me.

  A door on the left side of the vehicle opened and a woman got out. She wore a combat uniform that was obviously designed for desert use, as the camouflage swirls were gray and gold rather than the black and gray of mine. A rather old-fashioned electro pulse rifle was strapped to her waist and an odd strip of thick black plastic wrapped around her head, completely covering her eyes.

  My fingers twitched against the automatic, but I didn't move. I had no idea who these people were or how sensitive this woman's hearing might be. She smelled human, but that didn't mean anything when we were dealing with people who had the technology and the determination to alter DNA.

  The woman took several steps away from the hover then stopped, one hand on the pulse rifle. Her banded gaze did a long sweep of the area, sliding past me without any indication she'd sensed my presence, and then returned to the rift.

  Could she see it?

  “Anything?” the man still inside the vehicle said.

  “No.” The woman's voice was curt. “If this is another false alarm, I'm going to be pissed.”

  The man snorted. “And? It's not like you'll say anything—not given how complaints are handled. Check the other side of the thing.”

  The woman grunted and obeyed. I quickly moved around the rift, making sure I kept enough distance between it and me to prevent activating the energy whips.

  The woman reappeared and walked toward me. Her scent was unpleasant and acidic, but she nevertheless registered as human to my senses. If she were anything else, she surely would have smelled me by now. Or, at least, smelled the drying blood on my clothes.

  But if she was human, then that also presented a problem. The scientists who'd designed us had made damn sure we could neither attack nor kill a human. I’d never actually tested that particular restriction before—it had never occurred to me to do so during the war, and there'd been no need in the 103 years after it.

  She walked past me. I glanced at the rift; I couldn’t see the hover, which meant that even if her partner had raised the blast shields, he wouldn’t be able to see us. I flexed my fingers and then stepped up behind her. Though I’d been specifically designed to infiltrate shifter camps and seduce those in charge in order to gain and pass on all information relating to the war and their plans, I was no stranger to killing. Very few of the shifters I'd lain with had survived to tell the tale, but it was never something I'd done by choice—not until recently, at any rate.

  But assuming this woman’s identity was possibly the only way of uncovering what was going on in this desert with any sort of speed, and merely knocking her out wasn’t really an option. I simply couldn’t risk her coming to and raising the alarm.

  I guess I was about to discover if old programming still held sway.

  In one smooth motion, I covered her mouth with one hand and forced her head up and back with the other, shattering her neck and taking her life between one heartbeat and another.

  And felt neither restriction nor remorse at doing so.

  How could I, after what had been done to the children and the horrendous dissections that had happened at Winter Halo? Everyone involved in the mad scheme to provide light immunity to the vamps and the wraiths deserved nothing more than death.

  Everyone.

  I lowered her body to the ground then released the light shield and quickly stripped her. Once I'd exchanged clothes, I shoved my two guns, the tracker, and the ammo into the backpack, and then strapped on her pulse rifle.

  With that done, I bent down and studied the woman's face, fixing her sharp, thin features, lank yellow hair, and pale brown eyes in my mind. Her body shape was close enough to mine that I didn't have to do a full shift, but her features were so different that a facial change was necessary.

  Once I had a firm grasp of the look I needed to attain, I reached for the part of my soul that made shifting possible. The force of the change swept through me like a gale, making my muscles tremble as my face restructured, and my skin, hair, and eyes changed. It was a process that was usually very painful, but this time, there was barely a flicker of protest from the nerve endings and bone structures being rerouted in the process.

  “Banks?” the driver said. “Everything all right back there?”

  “Yeah.” Even though my vocal chords had been altered and I now sounded like the woman, I hadn't heard her speak enough to catch the rhythm of her words, and that meant keeping my replies short.

  After a quick check to ensure there were no comm devices attached to the woman, I dug the Radio Frequency Identity chip out of her right arm and wiped it clean on the discarded remnants of my shirt. It was law these days that everyone, be they human or shifter, have RFIDs inserted into their arms at birth. They held everything from medical records, work history, and credit information, but could also be programmed for use as a key in areas that required secure access. I currently had two of them—one inserted into each arm—thanks to Nuri and the fact I'd assumed two very different identities in Central.

  I grabbed the small tin of false skin out of the pack, positioned the chip over t
he one in my right arm, and then sprayed it into place. Jonas had assured me it would be undetectable and, after a few seconds, it was indeed hard to tell where my skin ended and the false skin began.

  Finally, I unlatched her eye device and put it on. The world became nothing but a strange blur. I fiddled with the dial on the right side of the visor; turning it one way sharpened focus, allowing me to see the terrain but not the rift. Turning it the other made the rift jump into focus but threw everything else into an odd sort of darkness.

  That was the reason she'd seen the rift, but not me.

  “Banks, stop fucking about and get back here,” the driver said. “That sandstorm we spotted is getting far too close for comfort. We need to get out of here.”

  “Give me a minute—I’ve got to dig the thing out.”

  I set the eye device to normal vision, quickly shoved enough sand over the woman’s body to cover her, and then grabbed the pack and headed for the hover.

  “Is that it?” The driver—a thin, wiry looking man with dark skin and a shock of coarse yellow-white hair—pointed with his chin at the backpack. “That hardly seems worth the time and effort to retrieve it.”

  “Yeah.” I dumped the pack into the foot well then climbed into the vehicle.

  “Did you open it?”

  “You can. I’m not.”

  He grunted and returned his attention to the craft. “Better hand it to Martin. He's paid to deal with the shit that comes through that rift, not us.”

  Meaning if I wanted to find out exactly what they were using this rift for, Martin needed to be my next target.

  The hover's engines kicked into gear and her skirts began to fill and lift. I grabbed the seat belt and pulled it across my body, brushing my fingers against the driver's arm as I did so. Seeking was a psychic skill all lures had, and one that had made us very successful at uncovering information during the war. It wasn't exactly telepathy—shifters tended to be sensitive to that sort of mental intrusion—but rather the ability to see various memories as images. And while my seeking skills had been honed for use during sex, I could still snatch information from a brief touch if I went in with a simple question that needed answering.