A Kiss of Blood (Vamp City #2)(12)

Micah was the one who answered. “At the moment that we hit the Boundary Circle, the magic tries to embrace us. We can either push it away and remain in D.C. or allow it to pull us into Vamp City. There are some vamps who can’t push it away, they haven’t the ability, and are therefore always pulled in. They can only travel the parts of D.C. where the two worlds don’t overlap. Humans and weres can’t embrace the magic, so can never enter V.C. without an escort, except for those handful of humans who’ve been slipping in by accident through the sunbeams, and we have no idea why that’s happening. Traders can come and go as vampires can. Or as vampires could before the magic began to fail. They alone are not trapped by the failing magic.”

Quinn’s mind still struggled to wrap itself around the concept. “So how does that work for a car?”

Micah smiled. “You ask difficult questions, Quinn.”

“I’m a scientist.”

“Perhaps you need to think more like a sorceress. Magic is a far more potent force in Vamp City than science.”

As they reached the Kennedy Center, Quinn could see the Shimmers like a faint wall of water vapor sparkling in the moonlight across the grounds. She’d seen them all her life, nearly invisible walls in various parts of D.C. that were always in the same spots, never moving, never wavering. It wasn’t until recently that she’d realized what they were—the boundary of Vamp City. A boundary no other human, to her knowledge, could see.

The sight of it now made her pulse kick, sending a shiver of cold skating over her skin even as a flush of heat dampened the back of her neck. Because they were going in.

Arturo pulled into the Kennedy Center drive as if he were heading for the parking garage, a drive cut straight across by the Shimmer. As they neared it, she tensed. As they passed through it, the hair rose on her arms, the air prickling her skin in a cool, ticklish dance. But they were still in the real world, the Kennedy Center looming large beside her.

“What happened?” she asked.

Beside her, Zack moaned as he had every time he’d passed through a Shimmer since their escape a week and a half ago, which was another reason she suspected the magic of Vamp City was at least partially at fault for his illness.

“Nothing,” Arturo said, making a tight U-turn in the middle of the drive, and suddenly she understood. Her apartment was within the V.C. boundary. To enter Vamp City, they first had to leave it. Which they’d just done.

Now, they were going in.

Turning off his headlights, Arturo accelerated as he drove back toward the waiting Shimmer. As they hit it, the hair rose on Quinn’s arms a second time, and darkness swallowed her, the true dark of a night world without electricity. A shiver went through her that had a little to do with the air flowing in from the open front windows, air that turned instantly cooler by a good ten degrees, and far more to do with the primal fear of being back in Vamp City.

This time, Zack’s moan sounded less like pain and more like one of relief, as if the magic had finally quit strangling him. She prayed it was true.

The Jeep began to pitch and bounce over uneven ground, leaving the paved streets for an open, rutted field in the vampires’ 1870 version of her world. Thank goodness vampires had excellent night vision. Without headlights, she could see nothing but the dim glow of the vehicle’s instrument panel and its reflected light on Arturo’s profile. His jaw was set, tension radiating down his arms and shoulders. A tension her own body echoed though she hoped his meant he was worried about what would happen if they were caught and not that he was bracing for her reaction when she learned what he really had in mind.

She’d kill him if he betrayed her again, especially with Zack at risk, now, too. “Who does Cristoff think took me?” she asked, needing the sound of voices to drown out the pulsing silence.

“Ivan and his men,” Arturo replied.

“The ones who tried to stop us from leaving?”

“Yes.”

As they’d ridden for the Boundary Circle the day Arturo and Kassius set them free, one of Cristoff’s more vicious guards and his troop had ridden upon them, recognized her, and realized Arturo was trying to free the sorceress. A battle had ensued. Ivan and his troop were dead.

“Cristoff believes Ivan took you and escaped Vamp City.”

“And the rest of his troop?”

“He thinks that they either defected or, like Ivan, were not actually trapped by the magic. It has long been suspected that some who claim to be trapped here are not.”

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the ghostly, twisted shapes of dead trees began to appear, silhouetted against the moonlit night sky. Even as a thrill of dread crawled along her scalp, she admitted to herself a dark fascination with this night world. She’d always loved the dark. As a child it had been the only place she’d ever truly been able to hide from the stepmother who’d hated her.

“So how many vampires aren’t trapped? How many of you are there in the real world?”

Micah glanced back. “Before the magic began to fail, there were over three dozen of us that I knew of in D.C. alone, about half tied to the kovenas within V.C. Nearly a dozen of them got caught on the wrong side of the Boundary Circle when the magic began to fail, trapping them inside. They’d come in for the Kovena Cup, our annual vampire soccer match. Halfway through the semifinal game, the first sunbeam broke through just outside the coliseum. Several vampires died, and no one who was in Vamp City at that moment has been able to leave since. The magic’s failing was like a switch being flipped. The same switch Phineas Blackstone flipped in the 1870s when he attempted to make Vamp City a death trap.”