A Fork of Paths Read online

  River

  I was pulled unceremoniously from sleep by a lurch of the submarine. It came so suddenly, I almost rolled off the bed. I sat up slowly, opening my eyes and rubbing my face with my bound hands.

  The residue of a dream still remained in my head. It’d been one of the most vivid dreams I’d ever had. It had started with a reunion of family and old friends. Even my father had been present, having been let out of jail early. He’d sat near my mother at the table and they had been talking and actually getting along. He swore that he’d given up his addiction, and was willing to undergo routine medical checks to prove it to us. He said that he’d already found a new job and he wanted to move back in with us. To care and provide for us. To be the father that he’d rarely ever been.

  Then Ben had entered the room. Suddenly, I felt a weight around my ring finger and remembered… Ben and I were engaged. He had asked me some time ago—although the memory was foggy. My fiancé’s entrance caused the dinner to become so much more than a family reunion. This meal would now also mark the announcement of Ben’s and my engagement. Of course, I’d been keeping it a secret until now. I had wanted to keep it a surprise for when Ben returned from his long journey.

  I could barely contain my excitement as he walked over to me, and I made room for him to take a seat. As I announced the news to my parents, family and friends, my heart swelled. I reveled in the look of happiness on their faces, the acceptance and approval in their eyes as they looked Ben over. It was almost as though they already knew him to be the right man for me, even though, other than my mother and siblings, nobody else in the room had ever met Ben before.

  Then my younger sister asked me when the wedding was and… I blanked. Strangely, Ben and I had never discussed a wedding. And he looked… so uncomfortable when I glanced at him. Then he vanished completely, leaving me standing alone, my left hand still raised in midair to show my ring, but with no fiancé to introduce beside me.

  Everyone else around the table looked confused, no doubt wondering why he had vanished or where he had gone. Perhaps they were even worrying on my behalf and pitying me. I found myself digging my ring finger back into the folds of my dress and pulling up a chair to sit back down. I cleared my throat and tried to steer the conversation to another subject. Tried to forget that Ben had ever appeared in the first place.

  Then, toward the end of the meal, the ring itself vanished from my finger. And even the memory of his arrival began to fade, and it began to feel as though Ben’s appearance had been nothing but a dream within a dream.

  But why do I keep dreaming of Ben?

  And where is he now?

  It killed me that I didn’t even know if he was still alive. I hadn’t yet managed to find out from Derek and Sofia how their journey to the realm of the jinn had gone. Were the jinn still protecting him? Is he still fleeing from the Elder?

  My anxiety over Ben was soon interrupted, however, as it felt like the submarine shuddered to a complete stop. Loud footsteps sounded all around me—above me, in the corridor outside, and also below me. It sounded like they were all heading in one direction. Then the lock of my door clicked open, and in stepped a hunter.

  Not the tall, wiry man who’d come to see me before. This time, it was a woman—although she looked stronger and bulkier than most men I’d ever laid eyes on and she was incredibly tall. I would estimate six feet in height. If it hadn’t been for the curve of her breasts and hips, she might’ve even been mistaken for a man. Her face was certainly gruff enough, and she had short hair that spiked upward in bristles. She wore a black top and pants just like the rest of the hunters, and she was carrying a gun in her hand, similar to the small silver one the man had entered with earlier.

  She took my arm none too gently and pulled me off the bed. My feet being bound, I almost tripped as they hit the floor.

  “I’m going to free your legs, all right?” she said, furrowing her bushy brows. “Though I warn you not to try anything.”

  She pressed the end of her gun against my stomach as she knelt down on the floor. Withdrawing a small key from her pocket with her other hand, she freed my feet. Only once the cuffs were released did I realize just how sore my ankles had become. The metal was rough and they hadn’t left enough room between the restraints and my flesh. Red raw marks now marred my ankles, but I was grateful that at least I could walk normally again.

  The hunter resumed her hold on my arm and led me out of the room. When we emerged in the corridor, I saw I’d been right in my observation that everybody was heading in the same direction. She led me past cabin after cabin until we reached a staircase. We hurried up it and emerged on the uppermost level of the submarine. A hatch was open in the roof, and a blinding light spilled down from it. Sunshine. Yet I didn’t feel even the slightest bit of warmth. An icy draught leaked through the hatch, causing a painful chill to sweep through me.

  Hunters were lining up to climb out of the exit, and my female escort was already putting us in the line. As we reached the stairs, she motioned for me to begin climbing up first. I felt the barrel of her gun against my back as I mounted the stairs. Poking my head out of the hatch, I was momentarily blinded by the brightness.

  Surrounding the submarine was a rough sea, or was it an ocean? The vessel floated by an icy jetty, beyond which was a world of sprawling, virgin-white mountains. It was snowing now, even as I cast my eyes around, chilly flakes settling on my nose and cheeks. My body began to shiver more strongly.

  “What are you waiting for?” the female hunter beneath me called. “You’re holding everyone up.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to apologize. My fingers numb, I gripped the ice-cold metal railing and pulled myself onto the roof. The chill of the metal beneath the soles of my bare feet came like an electric shock.

  I couldn’t handle this. I was going to die of hypothermia. What are these hunters thinking? The female hunter emerged quickly after me, wearing a puffer jacket. She resumed her hold on my arm and pulled me down to the ground.

  I yelped as my feet sank into what felt like four inches of snow.

  “I can’t do this,” I breathed. “I’m going to die of cold.” My wrists being bound together, I couldn’t even wrap my arms around myself.

  The hunter paused, then frowned. “Curious,” she murmured. As her eyes trailed the crowd of hunters now trudging away from the submarine, I hoped that she was going to ask if anybody had some spare boots and a coat. Instead, she called out to a man at the front of the group. “Mark. Come take a look at this.”

  Mark, as he turned around to face us, was the same tall, lithe man who had drawn blood from me. Now his black uniform was cloaked in a long gray coat, his hands covered by black leather gloves. He wore a light gray scarf wrapped around his neck and a moleskin hat. He left the hunter he had been in the middle of a conversation with and filtered through the crowd toward us.

  “She’s cold,” the female hunter said, still eyeing me with surprise.

  You got that right. Now just hand me a coat.

  “I am a half-blood,” I said through gritted teeth, fighting to maintain a semblance of patience. “That means that I feel the cold more than a human. I need boots and a coat. Now.”

  Mark removed one of his gloves and brushed his fingers gently over my right hand, like he was gauging my temperature.

  “Cold enough?” I asked bitterly, mimicking one of his short, fake smiles.

  “And you have felt the cold like this since the day you were… half-turned?” he asked, ignoring my snide remark. He studied my face intensely.

  I nodded vigorously. I could barely even talk now between my chattering teeth.

  Still, he remained eyeing me until finally, he raised his gaze to the female hunter. “Beatrice, go fetch some spare clothes from the sub before Charlie locks it. You should find something suitable in the galley, by the coat hangers.”

  Beatrice obeyed Mark’s command and returned to the submarine. She returned quickly with a puffer jacket—similar
to her own—and a pair of invitingly fluffy boots. She removed my handcuffs so that I could pull on both items. Although my bones would take a while to warm again, I heaved a sigh of relief.

  “And is that better?” Mark asked, clearly out of biological curiosity rather than actual care for my comfort.

  I nodded.

  “Let’s continue,” Mark said.

  Beatrice replaced the handcuffs and the three of us moved forward swiftly to catch up with the others. They all stopped and gathered in a spot about twenty feet ahead of us. As Beatrice, Mark and I neared, I caught sight of grey concrete and realized that we’d arrived at a helipad.

  My ears soon picked up on the sound of a helicopter slicing through the air above us. A large black chopper was approaching. Touching down on the strip, it caused a mini-snowstorm. The door to the aircraft opened, and a ramp descended. Hunters began hurrying into the chopper. Beatrice, Mark and I were the last to enter. The aircraft looked even bigger from the inside, almost the size of a commercial airplane. One of the rows nearest to the front was empty, containing five seats in total.

  Beatrice pushed me down in the window seat while she sat next to me. Gazing out at the frosty landscape, I wondered where in the world we were. Somewhere in the United States? Canada? I wasn’t sure if we had been traveling long enough to have ventured to somewhere in Europe.

  Beatrice removed restraints from her puffy coat and bent down to my ankles. She was about to bind me again when Mark stopped her.

  “I don’t think there’s a need for that,” he said, as he settled in his own seat next to Beatrice. I couldn’t miss the bulge in the pocket of his coat—no doubt a gun. “I suspect she won’t try anything foolish.”

  She. It occurred to me that not one of them had even asked what my name was yet.

  I gazed around at the other hunters in the packed aircraft. It certainly would be insane to try anything now. I slumped back in my chair, resuming my focus out of the window. I was glad that I’d gotten the window seat. Though, as the chopper launched into the air, I wasn’t exactly able to gain any better idea as to where we were. All I got was confirmation that I was in the middle of an icy nowhere.

  I kept hoping that I would spy a small village, or maybe even a town tucked away somewhere in the mountains. But there was no sign of human settlement… until, hours into the flight, the helicopter tilted in a change of direction, and I caught sight of a scattering of buildings perched among the peaks. They were all identical in size and design. Rectangular buildings, their exteriors appeared to be constructed out of tinted glass—glass that glaringly reflected the harsh sunshine. They were perhaps ten stories in height. Then I spotted a helipad—much larger than the one near the jetty. Dozens of helicopters were parked around it, all of them large and black like the one we were traveling in. A little further along from the strip was a parking lot, jam-packed with shiny SUVs.

  “Would you tell me where we are?” I asked Beatrice, irritably.

  To my annoyance, she acted as though she hadn’t heard me. I looked along to the next seat where Mark sat. He’d donned a pair of headphones.

  Beyond frustrated, I twisted in my seat to face the rest of the aircraft behind me. I cleared my throat and asked loudly, “Would someone be so kind as to tell me where we are?”

  I had irritated Beatrice enough for her to stop ignoring me. “It doesn’t matter where we are,” she answered gruffly. “It doesn’t make any difference to you. You’ll be kept with us as long as you’re needed.” She grabbed my arm and tugged on me to face forward again.

  “How long will that be?” I asked, my hopes lifting a little. Beatrice’s phrasing indicated that perhaps there would come a time when they were actually finished with me. Hopefully they would let me go and not kill me.

  Mark replied this time, having removed his headphones at the commotion I was causing. His eyes dug into me. “As I told you before, the more you cooperate with us, the better it will be for you.”

  He and Beatrice fell silent after that, and so did I. I didn’t think it wise to annoy these hunters too much, considering that any one of them could pull out a gun and shoot me at any moment.

  I pursed my lips and glanced out of the window again, watching the buildings as the helicopter positioned itself above the landing strip and began descending. It landed on the concrete with a shudder and the hunters immediately rose to their feet. The door opened, and everyone began piling out, keeping their heads low beneath the rotors. I didn’t wait for Beatrice to grab my arm. I stood up and followed the crowd obediently, she and Mark close behind me.

  Climbing down the ramp, I was once again assaulted by the cold. Though, thankfully not for long. Mark and Beatrice led me straight into one of the glass buildings. I gazed around as we stepped into what appeared to be a reception area. Aside from a long desk in one corner where four women sat—I wasn’t surprised to see them also dressed in black—the furnishings were minimal. The floors were made of a kind of white granite that resembled the blanket of snow outside. It was like the reception area of an exceptionally swanky business center, although the starkness of the place gave it a clinical feel, more like an exclusive private hospital.

  “You can head off now, Beatrice,” Mark said. “I’ll handle things from here.”

  She nodded and, eyeing me briefly once more, took off toward a line of elevators on the opposite side of the room.

  Mark led me to the reception desk.

  “I need a room in the east wing,” he said to one of the receptionists.

  She eyed me briefly before consulting a computer. “56A is unoccupied,” she replied.

  “That’ll do fine,” Mark said.

  The woman walked to a cabinet and withdrew a key. She handed it to Mark, who then led me toward the elevators. By now all of the other hunters had cleared off, and as the elevator arrived and we stepped inside, I was left standing awkwardly, alone with this stranger.

  He pushed the button for the third floor. On arrival, the doors dinged open and we emerged in a wide corridor which was mostly empty except for the odd hunter moving in and out of rooms. There was a line of large, beechwood doors to our right, while to our left was nothing but glass, granting us a view out onto the snowy terrain. My stomach was too tense for me to admire how beautiful it was.

  We reached the end of the corridor and arrived at the entrance of a glass tunnel. It was a walkway, connecting this building to the neighboring one on the opposite mountain peak. It reminded me a little of the glass walkways that connected some of the treehouses in the Residences back in The Shade. As we moved through the transparent tunnel, to my discomfort, the floor was also made of glass—allowing a more than generous view of the steep drop below.

  I began to lose track of where he was taking me after that. We wound around more corridors, stepped into more elevators, and passed along more transparent walkways from one building to another.

  All the while, I wished that Mark would stop being so tight-lipped and just put me out of my misery. He already knew that I was helpless. Just knowing my location wouldn’t make it any easier for me to escape. I was certain that they’d already searched me thoroughly for any kind of communication device. I had no way of communicating with the outside world.

  Eventually, as I’d just about had enough of all the walking, we arrived inside a huge enclosed courtyard. Its dome ceiling was—no surprise—made of glass, allowing sunshine to stream through and illuminate the place. As he began leading me along one of the wide verandas, I found myself peering through full-glass doors into… prison cells? To my shock, they appeared to be filled with supernaturals—grotesque birdlike creatures that resembled harpies I’d read about in fairytales, ogres in some of the larger cells, and other strange creatures that I wasn’t yet knowledgeable enough to even put a name to. He kept walking, leading me deeper into the courtyard until I spotted a large tank of water filled with merfolk. There must have been at least thirty in there, men and women alike.

  Where did the
y get them all from? Perhaps that was a dumb question. I guessed that the supernaturals must have ventured into the human realm and gotten themselves caught. Strangely, I couldn’t spot a single vampire. The fact that the hunters had been intending to kill Derek, Sofia and Aiden on that cluster of rocks, coupled with the lack of vampires here, made me think that perhaps the hunters weren’t that interested in them anymore. Perhaps the hunters had learnt all they wished to know over the years, and now simply saw vampires as a pest to be exterminated.

  Mark led me closer to the tank of merfolk. Their unpleasant faces were livid as we approached, and they began pounding their fists against the glass container so violently I feared they’d smash it. I could only wonder how the hunters had managed to make the glass so strong as to withstand the strength of all these supernaturals. Finally, Mark stopped outside a glass door, directly opposite to the merfolk tank. He opened it with a key and pushed it wide open for me to step inside.

  “This will be your room while you’re here,” he said, entering after me and glancing briefly around the room.

  While you’re here. Again, his choice of words gave me hope that perhaps there was light at the end of the tunnel. I just wished that I knew how long this tunnel was.

  To my surprise, Mark reached for my wrists and freed me of the restraints. Then he swept across the room and out of the door, locking it behind him. I listened to the sound of his resounding footsteps disappearing down the veranda.

  I gazed around the empty room. There were lots of things I could fault the hunters for, but cleanliness certainly wasn’t one of them. If anything, this room appeared to be even cleaner than the cabin they’d given me in the submarine. The bed also had a softer, deeper mattress and two perky pillows. The floor was sparkling clean, cleaner than many a restaurant plate I’d eaten from in the past. Rubbing my sore wrists together, I checked out the basic bathroom furnishings before taking a seat on the bed, testing its softness. There was a small bedside table with a lamp, and what appeared to be a fresh set of clothes—plain black clothes, a top and pants—just like those the hunters wore.