Cam seemed like he was working hard to keep his fascination at bay, but I didn't mind. It was better than silence.
"What was training like?" he asked, looking through our peep hole and scanning.
I smirked. Warrior training seemed far away now, but I remembered the misery well enough. "Brutal. I remember the first time I tried to jump off a redbill’s back and my old trainer, your equivalent of a military drill sergeant, just shoved me off. I landed on my face in a heap of thorny bushes. The healers had fun trying to reconstruct my nose, but thankfully my speed of healing helped a lot."
Cam stared at me, as if searching for any hint that something like that had happened to my face. "Is it strange for you to fight among humans? I've heard stories that the humans had a hard time in the Immortal Plane.”
This young man is incredibly perceptive.
"It was hard for them," I explained. "The Immortal Plane can be a vicious place, but they adjusted. Your kind has an immense capacity for adaptation. I won't try to speak for Lyra, for example, but it's been impressive. I mean, obviously, I married her."
He smiled. It was the first easy expression I had seen on his face. "Yeah, that's true. It's fascinating for me to learn about the background of everyone involved in this mission."
I studied him, realizing I hadn't asked much about his own past. I trusted Bryce’s and Lyra’s judgment, so I’d never probed too deeply into the people they brought along in groups. Yet, I knew nothing of Cam besides his relation to Bryce.
"You have your own past, though," I said. "What was your training like?"
"I did two years of military service, but things changed when my mom became the face of the international fight to help vampires. I didn't know much about supernatural stuff back then," Cam said. He scratched the rodent in its furry spikes and the creature relaxed happily into his arms. "Things got a bit crazy. Some of my fellow soldiers took a strong stance against vampires, which I found to be frustrating after my mom told me about them. I don’t like feeling ignorant, but I was. That’s something that bothers me most—lacking knowledge. There's still a lot of ignorance about supernatural things, something I'm coming to realize after I figured out how little I knew. I decided to leave and get involved, but I wanted to do it on my own terms.”
A soldier setting out on his own terms was something I respected. I nodded. It was interesting to hear him talk. If I had been born human, perhaps I would've become a soldier like Lyra or him.
My bleary vision grew stronger as we chatted, trading stories from our times in training. I gave him some first-hand accounts of my crazier adventures since the fall of Vanim. He seemed especially fascinated by the way I’d just kidnapped Lyra at first sight.
"You just… took her?" Cam asked, aghast.
I smirked. "You know Lyra a bit. Back then, she hated vampires like the others. Kidnapping was my only option. All the Bureau, besides the ones secretly working with the Immortal Plane, hated vampires. She thought I was the enemy, and I had to gain her trust quickly." Talking about her made me miss her terribly. I hoped she was okay, wherever she was. Hopefully with the others. Since Cam and I managed to stay together, maybe they did too.
We went on like this for another hour before Cam started yawning. I told him to take a nap. My strength had slowly returned to a stable level during our discussion, the pleasantness of trading war stories distracting me from my fatigue. Now, I felt refreshed in a different way. As he slept, I glanced outside our barrier. It was still stupidly dark, but I could see the outline of the trees. Tiny creatures scurried nearby, but they were harmless and even smaller than the blue rodent, so I paid them no mind. I turned and stared at the brick wall in front of me, wondering where Lyra was sleeping tonight. Was she safe? I hoped she wasn't worrying. Cam and I could handle ourselves.
The creature from the aircraft was nowhere close to us, thankfully. I wondered why it had left our plane and then returned to attack us again. Something was missing from the puzzle, but I couldn't figure it out yet. Maybe I would ask Cam what he thought, when he returned to the land of the conscious. He was pretty crafty. For now, I wanted to let him sleep. He was smart to ask about the other humans’ experience and human limitations. Now, I sort of hoped Bryce and Lyra would go easy on him. Even the rodent was growing on me as it snored alongside Cam, curled up contentedly on the young man's stomach.
Time passed slowly but surely. I watched the forest. I tried to feel for the creature’s aura, but there was nothing. Cam snored in his sleep.
Surprise shook me when I finally heard the shrill cry of Cam's watch alarm. He’d set it for seven in the morning, but darkness still covered everything. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and seemed to be thinking the same thing as he stared out in confusion at the shadowy woods. Why was there no light? It should be daytime.
Something was wrong. I looked forward and
