3. ENEMY TERRITORY

ENEMY TERRITORY

E arlier…

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 .

Christian had seen what looked like knots in the threads of all the souls. Perhaps this was one of those knots that Christian had to move through in order to get to where the Harrows were now. Christian shifted uneasily. This moment felt intimate somehow. He shouldn't be privy to this. But just as he thought to find a way out of here and back on his journey there was a soft knock on the door and both Christian and Jack turned towards the noise.

Joanna Harrow stood in the doorway in a pair of khaki pants and white tank top. Her hair was tied high on her head in a messy ponytail. She wore no makeup but she was breathtaking in Christian's perspective.

"Jack," she said simply. One of her hands was resting on her flat stomach, but something about the way she was almost cradling her belly told Christian she was pregnant.

Pregnant with Julian?

Immediately, the sensation that he was seeing something private came upon Christian again, but his feet seemed rooted in the ground. He had to see this in order to pass forward.

Jack's eyes lowered to her hand and he seemed to know, too, that she was pregnant. He dropped his feet from the desk to the ground and the book slipped from his fingers. There was this mixture of joy and dread on Jack Harrow's face that had Christian puzzling.

"Are we…" Jack began and stopped. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down wildly as he swallowed.

Joanna gave him a tremulous smile and a single tear ran down her cheek. "When that strange little girl prophesied that we would have a baby when the doctors had told me that we couldn't…" Joanna swallowed as if emotion clogged her throat and caught her words there for a moment. "As much as I told myself I didn't believe here, I did ."

Strange little girl? Sophia… could it be her? Telling them the future?

Jack got up and came over to her. He enfolded Joanna into his arms. He rocked her. "Listen to me--"

"She said we wouldn't be there for him, Jack," Joanna's voice was strung out with grief.

"Listen--"

"That he'll have to look to others to be his parents, his friends, his guides, everything," Joanna sobbed.

"But she also said that he would be happy , Joanna. After everything, he would find the person he was meant to be with and that--"

"That it would change the world," Joanna whispered. Tears still tracked down her cheeks as she held her husband close.

"Yes, change the world."

Suddenly, Joanna was shaking her head and pulling back from her husband. "No, Jack, no! We need to be there for him! The future isn't set! We should give up our explorations! We should just teach! Stay here and teach! Where it's safe and--"

Jack didn't say anything, just looked down at her and there was something in his expression that made her cry harder. Silent tears that had her shoulders shaking.

"We can't outrun fate, Joanna. You know that." Jack ran a hand up and down her spine. "Anything we do will lead us to the future we will not want."

"Then how do we protect our son?!" Joanna hit his chest with her fists.

"We teach him all we know. We surround him with people who will love and care for him. We make sure he has everything he needs," Jack stated emphatically.

Joanna closed her eyes, squeezing out a few more tears. "But he won't have us."

Christian's eyes itched with unshed tears of his own. His face felt hot. His hands were clenched into fists.

Don't worry , Christian thought. We're going to get you back.

The world blurred again and he was being wrenched forward on the "tow rope" once more. Christian believed now that the blurs were the Harrows' lives, not physical places he was passing through. These were things that had defined those lives, or times things perhaps he needed to see. He looked back on his memories of the Harrows now and realized that they had known that they were going to be taken from their son. Sophia had come to them.

Did they realize that they were going to die? Joanna begged Jack for them to just teach and stay away from adventuring. Sophia must have told them something definite. But the journals we found didn't mention this…

There was always this sense of this moment meaning everything. The Harrows had lived life to its fullest. They had acted like that moment could be the last moment. His parents and many others had remarked on that. Not that the Harrows were afraid of death, but just that they lived with a passion that few people could match. It was so much easier to sit back and watch television and tell yourself that you would do that thing tomorrow.

The Harrows didn't know how many tomorrows they would have. They did live up to their promises to prepare Julian for the life we led and finding Daemon.

The "tow rope" jolted to a halt once more but this time it was less jarring to Christian as he was expecting it. He was back in the Ever Dark again and, once more, in a place that he recognized. It was the main gate to Nightvallen.

He remembered Julian and him getting inside this amazing city. Christian felt that sense of wonder, the same as when he'd first seen it and couldn't quite believe it. Jack and Joanna were staring at the gates, their heads tilted back to see the tops of the towers and spires and domes above the huge pale stone walls.

"We've found it," Joanna's voice was hushed with reverence. "This is going to change everything , Jack. This place, Vampires, all of it will change the world."

Christian saw Jack's expression before Joanna did, before Jack could hide it. And though there was wonder on Jack's face, there was also grief .

He knows. He knows that discovering this will be the last thing they do. That their time is running out. How did the two of them keep so positive when they knew that doom was coming?

Christian knew that he would have tried to logic his way out of the fear of his own death. He would have told himself that worrying would have been pointless. Everyone who lived must die. At least, he'd thought that before knowing about Vampires.

No one knew when their end would come. It could happen by crossing the street at the wrong moment. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Catching a disease. Going down in a plane. There were simply so many ways one could die. But to have that shadow over him, knowing all that time that he would be leaving his young son to face life alone. Maybe that expression on Jack Harrow's face was caused by thinking all of this.

But by the time that Joanna had turned to face Jack though all traces of grief had gone and only wonder remained. He wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulders and kissed her nearest temple.

"You're right, Joanna, this is going to change the world," Jack breathed.

"Do you suppose there are any Vampires inside?" Joanna asked him, an almost impish delight in her eyes.

Jack grinned. "Let's go find out."

Time sped forward again, but for a shorter time. Christian found himself still in Nightvallen but not outside the gates, well inside them, but, again, in a place he remembered. It was Daemon's tomb.

Christian's chest seized. He lifted a hand to his throat where his life had been wrested from him by force. But Selene and Heath were not there. There were no other Vampires stalking the Harrows as he and Julian had been stalked. The two of them were circling Daemon's tomb.

"Do you suppose he is why the city is empty?" Joanna asked, pointing with the end of her pencil at Daemon's "stony" corpse. She was clearly sketching the shrine.

Jack stood still by Daemon's side, hands on his hips, peering down at the sleeping Vampire King. "This does look like a sarcophagus, doesn't it?"

Joanna nodded as she continued to draw. "It's like they couldn't bear to live here after he died. Do Vampires die? The Acolytes tell us that crucifixes, garlic, holy water and whatnot do nothing. And I see nothing here to tie this culture with Christianity."

"It is most definitely its own thing," Jack agreed.

"Perhaps he was a king of theirs?" Joanna continued on. "A great king. Just think about leaving a place like this to fade away with all the knowledge we know is here…"

She broke off and shook her head as if she couldn't imagine the waste of doing such a thing. Christian couldn't either.

"Maybe, they thought he would come back some day," Jack murmured.

"What?" Joanna sounded distracted. Her tongue was pushing out the side of her cheek as she erased a wrong line.

"He looks like he's sleeping," Jack continued softly. His eyes were fixed on Daemon's form. "I know its stone, but it is so real ."

"The skill to create such a thing would take centuries to learn. Maybe longer," Joanna said as she studied her own sketch.

"Yes. Hard to believe it is art."

Jack leaned over as he reached out and lightly touched the rose that Daemon held. He let out a soft "ah" as his thumb was cut by the rose's petals. A single bead of blood clung to those petals and then sank into the bloom.

"Jack?" Joanna was instantly alert the moment that her husband had let out that soft cry.

"I'm okay… I'm…" He stared at Daemon.

Christian found himself leaning forward too. Julian was destined to wake Daemon from his endless sleep, but he wondered if Jack hadn't kickstarted the process with that one drop of blood after millennia of nothing. Jack's eyes went distant and his mouth opened.

"Jack?!" Joanna's voice took on a note of concern and she rushed to her husband's side. She gripped his shoulders, shaking him. "Jack?!"

"Julian," Jack murmured. "I can see him…"

"What? Julian…" Joanna spun around, looking for their son who Christian guessed was 12 years old at the time.

Tears tracked down Jack's face suddenly, but they weren't tears of sadness, but of joy. "Oh, Joanna, he's grown! Oh, he's beautiful! Strong! He's… here?"

The last was almost a question. Jack suddenly was blinking and shaking his head as if to clear it. He focused on his wife's face. She was staring up at him with her lips parted and her eyes wide with worry.

"What happened, Jack?" Joanna asked.

He ran his uninjured hand through the hair on the side of her head. He was smiling. "I saw Julian, honey. No matter what happens to us, he's going to be okay. He's going to… come here."

"We were going to bring him here tomorrow," she said uncertainly.

"No, no, later. When he's older. He can't come here until…" Jack looked over at the still and silent and stony figure of Daemon. "Not until he's older."

That familiar pull occurred again and Christian figured the next thing he saw was some sweet encounter with Julian before the Harrows' deaths by Kaly and Caemorn's hands. He thought perhaps it would be good for him to witness that. He was finding himself liking Caemorn. But this man had ended the Harrows' lives, no matter that he was ordered to do it by a being he couldn't have resisted.

But it was not a moment in the Harrows' lives that he was brought. Instead, his journey crashed to a halt in complete blackness. The two glittering threads of the Harrows' lives hung before him in this blackness. And a figure stepped towards him, holding those threads in one delicate hand.

It was a boy of unnatural beauty. He was like an angel in a niche come to life. But the eyes were so cold and the mouth, though smiling, held absolutely no warmth. Christian didn't have to read minds to know who this was.

"Kaly," Christian said flatly.

The boy inclined his head. Curls flowing over a clear brow. Silver eyes alight with intelligence and malignancy. "Yes, and you are Christian. Our new Speaker to the Dead. I knew we would meet at some point. When I felt a tugging on the line, imagine my surprise."

Christian ground his teeth together. He had given them away! His inexperience, something, had caused Kaly to know that he was coming!

And now I need to get back--need to get away from him--and I still don't know where the Harrows are!

"Oh, no, don't go!" Kaly held up his other hand that wasn't clasping those golden strands and held it up towards Christian, freezing him in place. Dread spilled over him. "You can't go. I won't let you go."

Christian tried to speak, but he was unable to. Kaly let out a shushing sound as he walked towards Christian with that delicate fingered hand still raised. "I don't need to read your thoughts to know what you're thinking, Christian. You want to return to… oh, where are your friends? Ah! The Well of All Souls."

He let out a laugh that sounded like chimes. Kaly should not be so beautiful.

"Yes, I see. That was quite clever of Caemorn. But…" Kaly's eyes narrowed and his smile seemed more like a slash across that pale, perfect face. "But that place is mine ."

And Christian remembered that sense that the Well of All Souls was another's territory. This was why the other Kaly Vampires did not go there. It was Kaly's place and he did not share. He had only let Caemorn think it was something that was his too.

Only to choose a later date to show him how very much it wasn't. How there was nothing that Caemorn could have that Kaly could not take away, Christian realized. That date is now.

Kaly nodded happily. "Yes, that date is now, dear Christian." His hand was poised over Christian's cheek. "I'm afraid you won't see it though. You will be staying here."

Christian frowned and his eyes flickered to the darkness above them. It wasn't completely black. There were glittering lines that met at angles that created… facets . Horror bloomed in Christian's chest as the knowledge of where he was and what had happened to him filled him.

Kaly held up a black soul gem before two elegant fingers and nodded happy again. "Yes, Christian. I have you. And I will never let you go."