Mortal

And then the sirens went off. A wail, low as a rumble at first, from the direction of the observation tower, lifting in pitch to an all-out shriek. Up, over the walls, ringing in the ears. Banks of lights on the corners of the compound flashed on, bright as an unnatural sun beneath the churning sky.

Jordin glanced up, squinting against the light. A clamor from the direction of the gate, shouts.

Only then did she see it, falling through the unforgiving electrical light: a powder as fine as ash. Horrified, she glanced down and saw the dusting on her tunic sleeve. The same pallid gray seemed to permeate everything in this place.

She recoiled and tried to brush it off, but there was too much.

“Hurry!” Jonathan.

She glanced up at him. The ash clung to his braids, his lashes. It was then that she saw the stricken face that peered from the nearest window beyond him.

The girl.

“Kaya,” she breathed.

Jonathan spun, saw the girl. He fumbled with the lock, got the key in the first try, and yanked the door open.

He rushed through just in time to catch Kaya as she threw herself into his arms. She sobbed into his shoulder. “I didn’t tell anyone. I’m scared. Jonathan, I don’t want to die!”

A low wail from farther in back of the building. Stifled sobbing nearby. And against it all, the backdrop of the siren.

“You won’t die. I’m here.” He held her away from him, shook her lightly, eyes intent on hers, tears choking his words. “You hear me? I found you. I found you and I won’t let you go…”

She clung to him, arms around his neck as he fumbled at the pocket of his coat. As soon as Jordin saw the stent, she knew what he meant to do.

“We don’t have time! We have to get out.”

He flashed her a tortured glance, face twisted in anguish and desperation. “She has to be Mortal… they’ll send her back. Open the dormitories. Set them free. Please!”

Tears were streaming down his face, leaving dirty gray tracks on his cheeks. Maker, he was beautiful. And yet his tears terrified her. His emotion for this one girl drew him into unfathomable danger. He would do the same for any one of them, she knew. Already, he was looking around him, at the faces crowded on the lowest bunk, the ten more sitting above them. The aging woman and the man with one arm missing. And she knew instantly his thoughts:

How many? How many could he save? How much time did he have?

But it wasn’t a matter of time. She knew he would stay and save as many of them as he could until they either hauled him away or killed him.

For a moment she stood rooted to the floor, afraid to leave him. Afraid he would give not only Kaya but the man behind her-and the woman behind him-and the girl behind her-his blood. Until it was gone. It took a pint to bring a Mortal to life. He would empty himself out without reserve or thought of his own life to save them.

And that frightened her most of all.

“Please!” He had his sleeve rolled up, was digging at the permanent stub in his vein.

With a glance at Kaya’s stricken face, Jordin tore herself away.

Panic flooded Rom’s veins at the sound of the siren. For an instant, he told himself that he had no way of knowing where it came from exactly. Perhaps it was a fire. An emergency on this side of the city.

And then the lights went on.

He raced around the last dock of the garbage center, making his way directly for the walled perimeter of the Authority of Passing.

He knew the place. Had known it always, been conscious of it since the first day Avra had asked for his help after her accident, so many years ago.

She had avoided the Authority, and for that she had been out of Order her entire life. Doomed, by any standard of Order’s Maker, to suffer Hades even now in the afterlife.

The stallion labored, neck lifting and dropping with the effort to run. It had had a short-lived new burst beneath Rom’s slightly lighter weight, but now each step came with more difficulty than the last, as though they traveled through tar.

He reached the far end of the concrete perimeter. Turned the horse down along the concrete wall past the ominous suns of Sirin’s halo in his peripheral vision.

Just before the northwest corner of the perimeter, he slid to the ground as the horse staggered to a stop on unsteady legs.

And then he ran.

Building Nine. Open. The inhabitants had huddled as far back from the door as possible. Several of them screamed as the full blast of the siren invaded the darkness.

Building Eight. Open.

She could hear the guards shouting outside the gate. Smell them, far more ripe than she expected in a sea of Corpses such as this. They were terrified to enter this place of death, unaccustomed to the disruption that had invaded their world.

Overhead, the sky flashed again. Thunder interrupted the wail of the siren as the first fat drops of rain pelted her scalp through her braids. Something in her mind whispered louder than the siren in her ears.

Maker’s Hand.

But the Maker’s Hand was superstition. It didn’t exist.

Seven. Open.

She raced toward the middle walk to see if the guards were approaching, but they were there still at the gate. Pointing. Waiting. It could mean only one thing: reinforcements.

Six buildings left. But what was the use? So few of the condemned had even come out of the buildings she’d opened, too afraid to leave the confines of their prisons.

But she knew now that Jonathan needed them as much as they needed him. This was his purpose, to save the dead from themselves.

She gauged the distance from the roofs of the buildings to the concrete wall. Too far to leap-and even if they did, it was covered in wire. One tangle, one slip, and Jonathan might be too injured to escape. The girl would never make the jump.

Movement to her right grabbed her attention, and she spun to see Jonathan, climbing up onto the roof of Kaya’s dormitory, wind raising the braids off his back, his pants plastered against his legs in the wind.

What was he doing?

“I’ve come to bring you life!” he shouted. His voice competed with the wail of the siren. The harsh light was in his braids, illuminating each one of them in stark and vivid clarity to her Mortal-enhanced eyes. His jacket was off, his one sleeve still rolled up. The veins in his neck stood out like cords from the open neck of his tunic.

“I give you life beyond any you have known. Life from my veins.” He thrust out his bared arm. “Life of my blood. All who take it will live!”

She stared, unable to tear her gaze away.

He’s magnificent.

And then: He’s mad.

A white-hot bolt of lightning blazed down through the clouds like a crooked finger to the far south corner’s bank of lights. They went out in a shower of sparks. Screams ripped through the compound.

“I’ve come to bring a new kingdom of life!” Jonathan was pointing at those who’d ventured out on shaking legs like dead emerging from tombs. But she knew they would not be freed. It didn’t matter that the doors were open. It wouldn’t matter if the twenty-foot walls fell to the ground. Their prisons did not exist in concrete or barbed wire.

A distant squeal. She knew that sound. The underground. Reinforcements.

The new scent hit her like a locomotive. It rushed through the compound, born on the gust of a rising storm.

She turned just in time to see them arrive at the gate.

Dark Bloods.