A Blood Seduction (Vamp City #1)(10)

Real.

How in the hell did this happen?

She turned, her gaze fighting to spear the darkness that surrounded them on every other side. Looking up, she squinted into the sun. Okay, not a spotlight. Sunlight. But how . . . ? The sun shone in this spot - and nowhere else.

Thoughts and questions collided against one another in her head, crashing and tangling as she met Zack's wide-eyed gaze.

"Where'd everyone go?" he asked.

"I don't know." The people, the traffic. Her apartment building. All gone. She was starting to shake. Weird stuff was a normal part of her life, but nothing ever like this. God, had she done this? Had she somehow brought them here . . . wherever here was?

Did I make the whole of Washington, D.C. disappear? Or is it Zack and I who disappeared? Just like the others.

Just like Lily.

Without warning, the spotlight . . . sunlight . . . went out as if an angel had turned off the sun with a flick of a switch, throwing them into darkness.

The bottom of Quinn's stomach fell out. She reached for Zack as he reached for her, their arms colliding, their hands finding and gripping one another's.

"I don't think we're in D.C. anymore," Zack whispered, as if the darkness were a living thing around them.

"Then where are we?" The air swirled strangely, with currents both sun-heated and moist-cool, and smelled of mildew and mold and something more pleasant - an exotic spiciness she couldn't place.

"I don't know. How can the sun just be gone like that?"

"How could it just shine in one spot?" she countered.

"We must be inside something with a roof. They must have closed the roof." His words sounded logical, but his voice was beginning to quaver. "Do you think this is where Lily went?"

"Maybe." She'd dropped her pen in this exact spot. At least, the exact spot where they'd been standing in front of Quinn's apartment. "But where are we?"

Slowly, her eyes began to adjust to the darkness. A darkness that wasn't quite complete, she realized with bone-melting relief. It was only dusk at the moment, not yet full night. But as her vision cleared, and she could see beyond, she felt no relief. All sign of the world they'd left behind was gone - the people, the cars, the city noises. The only thing familiar was the layout of the streets, the way they intersected, their width. But these roads were dirt, not paved. Buildings lined the roads, though nothing like the modern apartment and office buildings of her own neighborhood. These buildings were old-fashioned-looking and crumbling, as if they hadn't been occupied in decades.

Across the street . . . what the hell? Her brows drew down as she stared at the same strip of abandoned row houses she'd seen over and over again from her living-room window. So this was it. This was the place she'd been seeing.

Somehow, they'd walked right into that world. Which meant there were people here. Horses, buggies, yellow Jeep Wranglers. A frisson of excitement leaped within her, warring with a bone-deep need to escape. She'd love to explore this place, to find out what it was. Where it was. But her need to keep her brother out of danger overrode her natural curiosity. And her instincts told her there was danger here.

"We've got to get out of here." The question was, how? But she thought she knew. The column had pulled them in. If it reappeared - in the form of light, apparently - why couldn't they escape the same way?

"We can't leave without Lily." Zack's hand spasmed around hers, then let go. "Lily!" His voice echoed over the ruined landscape.

"Zack, shh! There are people here."

He gazed around with quick, jerky movements. "Where?"

"I don't see them, yet. I just . . . I think they're here."

As if to prove her point, a shout sounded in the distance, a man's shout. Of warning? Of fear? She shivered. Yeah, definitely danger. She needed to get them home. Now. Her stomach was cramping, her chest aching because she kept forgetting to breathe.

The shout died, and no sound followed. No horses, no car engines, no voices. Not even a bird. Silence blanketed everything.

"Come on." Zack motioned her with his head. "We need to find Lily."

"We don't even know if she's here."

"It makes sense, doesn't it? People keep disappearing. Lily disappeared. We've disappeared, now, too. And I know that was her pen. She stood in that exact spot not thirty minutes before us."

Thirty minutes was a long time for the vision to linger, in her experience. Though she'd once watched one out her window for nearly twenty. And she couldn't argue with the evidence.

Quinn swallowed. "We don't even know where we are."

"It doesn't matter. We'll find Lily, then figure it out."

She really wanted to argue for staying put until the column of light appeared again. But she knew Zack too well. If he thought there was a chance of finding Lily, she wasn't going to keep him here. And, honestly, a part of her was dying to explore.

"All right."

Zack started off, his long strides eating up the sidewalk as she hurried to keep up with him. "You act like you know where you're going."

"I want to walk down Penn."

She looked at him askance. "Pennsylvania Avenue?" Penn crossed at an angle just two blocks from their apartment. And, yes, it would be in this direction if they were home. But . . . "We're not in D.C., Zack."