We're alive, and we're safe for the moment. I shut my eyes and tried to listen for sounds over the crackling fire. Sike fed more wood to the flames. The scent of smoke and the reality of our situation washed over me.
Sike shifted on the other side of the fire. "Doesn't this remind you a bit of when we were all on the run?"
I opened my eyes to see him with a lopsided smile on the other side of the fire. He must have been referring to when we originally went on the run from the big bad Bureau, before everything got sorted out with the new board. I nodded, giving him a humoring smile even if my heart wasn't fully in it. He was right. This was like the time we’d spent hiding out in caves and an old ski resort, trying to do everything we could just to survive. An anxious twitch on his face betrayed his nostalgia. He's worried. Sike wasn't as skilled in fighting as the other vampires, but he could hold his own. I wanted him to know that.
"We've grown a lot since then," I told him with a nod. "We're going to be okay. We've been through worse. You’ve seen so much in your life already." My statement floated up with the smoke and seemed to ease the heavy air around us.
“Thanks for saying that.” Sike offered a small smile. “Sometimes I forget. I’m not like Dorian.”
“Nobody wants you to be,” I promised with a grin. “You’re Sike. Besides, I’m not letting Dorian near any human technology, but you? I’d be okay with it.” We chuckled. Sike gazed around the clearing and up at the trees, which looked particularly menacing with the shadows from the fire. The dancing flames cast odd shapes on their velvety trunks.
"Do you want first or second watch?" Sike asked. What a gentleman.
"First," I said. It was better for me to do it in the earlier hours, since the creatures got progressively worse through the night and I couldn’t sense them like he could. Sike accepted this without complaint and rolled out his bedroll on the other side of the firepit. He stilled for a moment as he rested on the ground.
"You're right. We'll be okay," he whispered. I hadn’t been alone with Sike much, but I was glad that we had ended up together, since Sike was calm and collected in his own way. He fell asleep quickly, and I settled in for the watch, leaning against my gear bag on the edge of our fire circle to better hear the night sounds of the forest. When the insects chirped here, it was a croaking one second and a buzz the next. I gnashed my teeth together to fight off the unsettling sensation of it. Just like the Immortal Plane, I would get used to the Leftovers.
The first half hour passed without anything happening. Not so much as a bird settling in for the night. I grabbed one of our scanners and messed around with the controls, checking the screen. I wasn't as good with the scanner as Cam or Sike, but I knew how to take a basic reading. Nothing registered on the screen for me, but I refused to let myself be lulled into a false sense of security. Whatever physics-defying properties this landscape had, I would never drop my guard.
Behind me, Sike muttered in his sleep, a strained mumble of words. I glanced back at him, concerned that he might be having a nightmare. Instead, I found him awake and sitting up on his bedroll. He was completely silent, with his lips pressed firmly together. Another murmur hit my ear. It wasn’t him talking at all.
An icy sensation of unsettledness spread through me as easily as the fire ate up the wood.
There were voices, and they weren't coming from either of us. I turned toward the forest and leaned forward, trying to still my heavy-beating heart from the rush of adrenaline so I could hear properly. The scanner remained blank for presences.
"They’re getting closer," Sike whispered. I cast him an urgent look, but he was already straining to listen. We quieted as the voices continued.
"Funny—" someone said, but it was cut off. I find it to be quite the opposite, actually. The whispers danced in and out of comprehensible words, but it sounded like more than one person speaking. Could it be Dorian?
"The voices might not be real," Sike said cautiously as he spotted my blank scanner. "I sense a few creatures around… but they're not big at all. They feel kind of weak. Let me check with my scanner." He pulled out his more sophisticated scanner, the one meant to detect barrier fluctuations. I slowly inched toward him, trying not to make noise so I could still listen to the voices. The sound had all the rhythm of a hushed conversation, but I still couldn't pick out the words. It was like trying to listen to someone talk over a bad cell phone connection.
Sike frowned at his screen and showed me what looked like a graph with various lines on it, rising and falling. The waves had spiked suddenly a few seconds ago. He pointed to the thin green lines displayed, which were peaking toward the top of the screen. "The barrier is having a fluctuation. It's getting thinner when the line climbs like this." The wave continued to spike randomly, but it had clearly had long stretches of being high. I looked back out to the forest, as if it could offer up some answers. What did that mean—if the barrier was thin, were we hearing someone from the Immortal Plane on the other side?
Sike was clearly thinking something similar. "It could be the Immortal Plane."
"So, the voices aren't technically here with us," I pointed out. "Do you think that could mean the barrier would get thin enough to act like a portal? If it can carry voices, it might be able to
