A Blood Seduction (Vamp City #1)(11)

"The streets are laid out the same."

"This can't be Washington. It's ancient." Her jaw dropped. "We did not time-travel."

" 'Course not. Look at this place. It's a ghost town. Even the trees are all dead."

He was right. Though only a few trees stood between the rows of buildings, they were gray and twisted, with few to no leaves. She saw no bushes, no grass. Nothing to alleviate the appearance of a desolate, ruined . . . lifeless . . . place. Except for that shout. And the fact that she'd seen a buggy in one of her visions. And, incongruously, that Jeep Wrangler. There were definitely people here somewhere.

"There's an easy way to find out if this is some weird version of the city," Zack said.

She knew exactly what he had in mind, and they might as well find out. They crossed the next two streets, reached the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, and turned onto it without hesitation. She wondered if this was a good idea, if the smarter option might be to try to find a place to hide. But hide from what? And for how long? If Lily was here, they needed to find her, though God only knew how. Sooner or later, they were going to need food. And water.

Side by side, they strode down Pennsylvania Avenue, or this empty doppelganger version. Two blocks, three. And then they saw it.

"Jesus Christ," Zack murmured beside her.

Quinn's jaw dropped as she stared at the White House . . . or what passed for it in this place. The once-beautiful president's mansion was as ruined as everything else she'd seen so far. The once-manicured lawns were nothing but dirt and puddles nearly the size of ponds, dead trees sprouting randomly from the swampy ground.

She frowned as she stared at the building. Something was off. It wasn't as big as the version she knew. "The East and West Wings are missing. It doesn't look like they were ever there." Even the east portico was gone although there appeared to be some kind of decrepit shell of a structure where the west portico should have been. The roof had partially collapsed on one side, and the white sandstone walls appeared gray in the near darkness, as if the sandstone had begun to melt and run.

Zack's shoulder brushed hers as they pressed together. "That's what the White House used to look like, back at the time of the Civil War. At least it's what the structure looked like. The East and West Wings were added later. My history professor had a print of it hanging on the wall."

"So we're in the D.C. of the past? But the past was alive, and this place is dead, and appears to have been for a long, long time."

"Maybe we're in an alternate universe."

"There's no such thing as an alternate universe." The words came out before she considered their absurdity in light of the current situation.

Zack grunted. "Do you have a better explanation?"

"Not a one."

"Lily's here. I know it. And we're going to find her. Then she and I are going to create the most kick-ass game ever invented because it's going to be based on a place that actually exists."

Quinn had to hand it to him. Even in the face of insanity, he was keeping his cool.

"Assuming we can find our way back out of here." What if returning the way they'd come didn't work? Somehow, she wasn't holding out much hope for clicking her heels, and whispering, "There's no place like home."

"We'll figure that out later."

Why worry about level seventeen when you've just entered the game? Except, this was no game.

In the distance, another scream slashed the unnatural silence, this one female.

Zack flinched. "Lily."

Quinn grabbed his arm. "No. The voice was too deep." But it was clear there were dangers in that place, dangers they didn't want to stumble upon. "I think we'd better find someplace to hide until we figure out what's going on."

She glanced at the crumbling White House. Was it stable enough to walk into if they dodged the puddles?

"Do you hear that?" Zack whispered.

Quinn stilled, stiffening at the sound of a horse and carriage. The one she'd seen from her apartment window? Perspiration broke out on the back of her neck. Maybe whoever was in that carriage would help them. Her gut instinct screamed hide, but the decision was taken out of her hands as the carriage drove into sight on the cross street a block up, and they were left standing squarely in the open. This conveyance was slightly larger than the one she'd seen in her vision, and even in the low light, she could tell that the couple driving it were dressed as if they'd stepped off the soundstage of Gone With the Wind.

Did this mean they were in the past, or some postapocalyptic version of it?

"Whoa." The carriage pulled up in the middle of the street half a block away.

"Should we run?" Zack asked.

"One of them is a woman. Maybe they'll help us." As Quinn watched, the couple alighted from the carriage with a strange ease, even the woman, as if all that voluminous material weighed nothing at all. And then, suddenly, they were gone.

"What the . . . ?" Zack exclaimed.

Quinn's heart missed a beat, then took off in a crazy flight, nearly stopping altogether when, seconds later, the pair materialized directly in front of them, not ten feet away. No way in hell had a woman in a full Scarlett O'Hara skirt run faster than the eye could follow down a dirt road.