The Darkness Beyond Ch 08

Hannah blinked sleepily as her mind detangled itself from a fluffy, hazy nothingness. The gray sky was still there, and she could feel the rocks digging into her back, but her head was comfortably propped up. She saw Cian's face looming over her and blinked sleepily, trying to make sense of this. When she finally remembered bits and pieces, her hand shot up to her neck, but she couldn't find a wound.

"You healed," Cian told her, his voice strangely shaky. Hannah looked up at him again, not understanding just exactly what had happened between them. She could feel his thumbs stroking her shoulders reassuringly.

"You should probably drink something," Cian told her. "And take some iron supplements when we get back to Earth. Here..."

He helped her sit up slowly, and Hannah felt a sickening lurch of her stomach. When the nausea had passed, Cian handed her one of the metal bottles, and she started to drink. She finished half the bottle in quite a short time, aware that there was a lot of liquid she needed to replace.

"I know there probably isn't a really good time to ask this," Cian said, "but I was wondering who you dreamed about?"

Hannah shuddered when she remembered. "That sadistic kid. The one with the silver hair."

"Adrian." Cian exhaled audibly. "If we hurry, we might be able to save Aurai."

Hannah looked at him. "What do you mean?"

Noor told me who is doing it," he explained to her. "Lizanne, our matriarch. She is possibly getting help from Coram, they have been lovers for a long time. Aurai is still alive, everyone else has died." He shook his head. "I still don't quite understand it."

"Why she is doing it?" Hannah asked.

Cian shrugged. "Power. All my kind strives for, really. Noor told me some things. She... she used to be one of us. Lizanne sent her here by accident when she was experimenting. Apparently she's been trying to rob us of our essences for a long time, and you finally gave her a way." Cian rubbed his temples. "She must have been overjoyed when I told her how you did it."

"So they slept with Adrian and the others?" Hannah asked. "Is that... customary?"

"That's the thing," Cian said, staring blankly. "I think they used us for that."

"What?" Hannah frowned. "How in the world do you figure that?"

"Because Meraja told me that she missed me," he said. "I was in my own body, it wasn't Coran or Lizanne that she was sleeping with. It was me, and she knew that. When I killed her..." He paused, and Hannah lay her hand on his arm reassuringly.

"I felt like I betrayed her," he sighed. "She looked at me like... in this way that she would never look at Coran, or anyone else."

"I'm sorry," Hannah said. This obviously was painful for him, and she wasn't sure how to react. She touched his shoulder comfortingly, but after several seconds pulled her hand away.

"Cian?" she whispered. "What the hell is happening here?"

He shrugged, disconcerted by her show of affection. "I don't know," he said, sighing. "I just don't know."

**********

Noor had found a portal stone shortly after Hannah had woken up and Cian had told her what he'd discovered. Now, she was busy preparing for the ritual, making circles with a dark powder that smelled of decay, and polishing the stone she had found with the rag she was wearing. Hannah sat a few feet away, watching her.

"Why didn't you tell us right from the start?" she finally asked. "Why didn't you say who was behind it right when you found us?"

"Would you have believed?" Noor asked back without looking up.

"I don't know," Hannah answered truthfully. "Cian probably wouldn't have. Not before he had the dreams."

Noor nodded. "I know he wouldn't have. I could feel what was inside him. I did not want to believe her treachery either, right up until the point where I was sucked in by her portal."

"So she does remember how to call portals?" Hannah asked. "Then why didn't she come over here to kill you?"

"Because she is deadly afraid of the Lost City," Noor answered, once again sounding perfectly rational. "All of us are. Look what it did to me. It changes you within a few hours of being here. And she did not have any more crystals." She raised the black stone, and probably because of her polishing effort, Hannah could now see a tiny pinprick of red light emanate from the heart of the crystal.

"They are rare, and they exist only in the Lost City. You cannot find them on Earth. She used the last one they had to experiment on, and she pierced me with a dagger, set me on fire, and pushed me in." Noor paused, looking at the ground. "Just by luck, she didn't quite manage to kill me."

"Set you on fire?" Hannah whispered. "Why?"

"She studied the texts a lot, those left by the early vampires, so she could figure out how to rob others of their essence. One of them talked of fire, and a dagger through the heart. I assume I was not her first experiment. We had a series of mysterious deaths of brothers and sisters, many of them burned. Their essences always returned though, ready to be used by another host. There is no way for her to use those essences. The portal was just another factor that she was experimenting with."

Hannah shuddered. Just thinking of such a fate was horrible.

"Why didn't you come back?" she asked. "Why didn't you call a portal?"

"I was very much injured when I arrived here," Noor replied. "Just by luck, I was not killed. I spent much time just laying there and healing my entire body. I was burned all over. But when I finished..."

She paused, looking at her bluish hands.

"When I finished, the city had done something to me. Transformed me. Being here will always change you on the inside. But it changed me on the outside too. When I healed, I did not grow my old skin back, but I grew new, different skin. I could not use my fangs any more. I'm no longer a vampire at all. I'm something... something unique. But I also could no longer enter the portals I created."

Something else occurred to Hannah. "Did you create the portal that brought us here?"

Noor's face broke into the horrid smile that wasn't one. "Yes," she said. "I dreamed of that moment. I wanted to foil her, make less essences available to her. Get revenge for what she did to me."

Hannah looked the woman over. Her bluish skin did set her apart, and Hannah wondered whether it had helped her survive, or whether this was just a randomness the Lost City had cooked up. She supposed that it did help Noor to blend in with the surrounding, gray buildings.

Hannah wrapped her arms around herself and thought about the situation some more.

"If the city changes you within a few hours of being there," she asked, "why haven't Cian and I changed?"

"You haven't?" Noor asked, looking over to Cian, who was rolling up the blankets by the river. He had not yet taken the time to put his clothes back on, apparently very comfortable being naked in front of Hannah and Noor. Hannah paled as it dawned on her what Noor was implying.

"I suppose it doesn't make too much sense that I care for him after he tortured and abducted me?"

"No," Noor agreed almost cheerfully, and kept polishing the stone. It was glowing more now, and Hannah hoped that the portal would soon be ready. She really needed to get out of this place.

Cian approached with the bundles of blankets a few minutes later. Noor would still need them, so he had packed them for her to carry back. He gave Hannah a concerned look and pressed another water bottle into her hands.

"The portal is almost ready," Noor announced to them. "Have you decided what you are going to do once you are back on Earth?"

"Crawl into my bed and decide that this was all just a dream," Hannah mumbled. Cian grinned at that, and sighed in response to the question.

"I need to find Aurai. If I tell her what's going on, and we join forces, we may be able to stop Lizanne from killing the two of us as well."

"It's still going to be dangerous," Hannah noted. "She'll have quite a few

essences

by now." She splashed some of the water into her face, then stood up to refill the bottle. A wave of dizziness hit her, and Cian caught her just before she crumbled to the ground. He eased her down into a sitting position, letting her lean against him. Hannah fought the urge to kiss him, and she noticed he seemed to be doing the same. They both looked away, and Hannah took a deep breath, trying to clear her head.

"You'll have to get away from me," he remarked. "As soon as we're back. All this... might go away. I can't guarantee your survival then."

"Or you will have to get away from her," Noor remarked and threw the gun into Hannah's lap.

Cian's eyes widened when he saw it. "Oh, shit."

Hannah's lips trembled at the thought of putting a bullet into Cian's chest. But she controlled the emotion that showed on her face, desperately fighting for some sanity. This city was driving her crazy and wreaking havoc on her feelings.

"Shooting you wouldn't make much sense," she said, fingering the weapon. "But I don't know if Lizanne will come after me too once she knows I'm back. I do still have an essence, and she wants it."

Cian nodded, then frowned. "Is this damn portal ready yet? Time is really in quite short supply right now."

As if his words had been a cue, Noor walked back onto the scene. She had finished polishing the stone now and knelt down a few yards away from them, setting the stone down within the circle. Hannah and Cian watched as she paced around the circle over and over again, then finally looked up to them.

"Get ready," she told them.

Cian handed Hannah her pajama pants and slipped back into his own pants as well. Just as Hannah was wondering how she would fix her top whose buttons Cian had torn, he handed her his own shirt. She smiled weakly at him and slipped it on, the black making her look even paler than she already was.

"You told me she'd use incense," she said accusingly, looking at Noor.

Cian shrugged unapologetically.

"Ready," he told Noor, and as if on cue, the portal formed in the empty air above the stone. It was the same odd-looking vortex Hannah had seen the last time, bending reality. Noor stepped back and gesticulated at them to walk through the portal, all the while still pacing and making a circle motion with her finger. Hannah waved at her, not sure if there was a good way to say goodbye. She knew she wouldn't see the woman again.

"Thanks, I suppose," Cian said next to her. Hannah cradled the gun in her lap, just as Cian bent down and scooped her into his arms. She clung to his neck, aware that going through the portal again would take its toll on both her and Cian. Noor never ceased her hand motion until they had stepped through the portal. Hannah could once again feel the pulling, as if reality itself had decided to pull all of her limbs into different directions. Because of her weakened condition, the slip into consciousness was suddenly easy.

**********

Hannah had the worst headache of her entire life when she opened her eyes. It was even worse that the one she had had after Cian had struck her temple to incapacitate her. She groaned, tried to orient herself and felt the gun in her hands. As she grasped it, she felt motion next to her and saw Cian roll away from her in one fluent motion. She reacted fast, clicking the safety off and pointing the gun at him, hands shaking.

Cian had come up a few feet away from her, and was now looking at her with widened eyes. She could tell that his breath was accelerated, he was ready to react to whatever she decided to do, and that told her all she needed to know.

She reluctantly clicked the safety back on, and lowered the gun.

Cian exhaled, and relaxed visibly. There was tension between them, but they didn't mean to kill each other. Leaving the Lost City hadn't changed whatever there was between them.

"Where the fuck are we at?" Cian asked, and Hannah took a look around for the first time. She instantly knew where Noor's portal had transported them.

"This is my apartment building," she said. "My floor too."

Cian frowned, then nodded as he apparently recognized it too. Hannah slowly got up, clenching her teeth and trying not to pass out again. It worked, although she was not what one would call steady on her feet.

"I don't suppose you, ah, took my key with you when you abducted me?" she asked.

Cian pulled a key that looked suspiciously like hers out of his pocket, and handed it to her.

"Handy," mumbled Hannah. She unlocked her door, wobbling while she did, and finally entered her apartment. It was night outside, and Hannah briefly wondered for how many days they had been gone, or if any time at all had even passed. She turned and looked at Cian, who was still outside.

"I suppose you can come in," she told him. The vampire entered her apartment reluctantly. Hannah sat down in the armchair that her parents had given to her when she had moved in here, and looked around. Nothing had changed while she had been gone, even the bullet holes and Cian's blood were still on the wall. The vampire stared at the blood with an unreadable expression on his face.

"I should go to bed," Hannah said. "Cian... " She bit her lip when she said his name. She didn't want him to leave, but she didn't want to let him stay either. This whole situation was getting increasingly awkward. Logically, she could acknowledge that her feelings weren't real, but that didn't keep her heart from aching at the thought of never seeing him again. The vampire only nodded, then approached her.

"Come on," he said, sounding resigned. "I'll get you to bed."

She let him lift her off the chair and carry her to the next room. Her bed was invitingly warm and cozy, and she sighed when he put her down into it. He made sure her head was on the pillow, took her shoes off and put the blanket over her. It was strange to witness him being so caring. Contently, she closer her eyes and sighed. She felt him linger for just a moment too long.

"This isn't going away, is it?" he whispered.

Her eyes slowly opened again, and she stared right into his mesmerizing green ones. She lifter her head and kissed him then, feeling his weight as he eased himself on top of her, never breaking the kiss. He rolled further until he was laying on the far side of her bed, with her still in his arms. When they finally did part, they just lay there and looked at each other.

"I'm scared to death, Cian," Hannah finally whispered.

His eyes bore into hers. She could see his concern there, and his confusion about the feelings he had. He finally pulled her closer and held her tightly. "I know," he told her, stroking her hair. "Sleep."