Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [139]
I wadded up the empty baggie and tossed it off the balcony.
Thus somewhat invigorated, I resumed my climb. It wasn’t the shot in the arm I wanted, but it was enough to let me man-haul myself up and over the balconies, one after another, straight up into the sky—well beyond the point at which I would’ve collapsed and given up if I hadn’t had any refreshments.
Finally my fingertips crossed over the very tippy-top of the building’s edge. I grunted, heaved, crawled, and hauled until I’d slung one leg up over the side and could flop onto the tar-covered surface.
But even through my exhaustion, I had to look. I had to see.
The sky above was swirling, very faintly but very distinctly—pitching to and fro as if it were being stirred. All the clouds swished like they’d been flushed, doing that lazy, sliding spin. My head was spinning, too. My eyes were closing from the pressure of it … not just the crushing psychic fog but from pure weariness the likes of which I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before.
I dragged myself to my knees, and then staggered up to my feet. It was dark there, darker than it should’ve been. I rubbed at my eyes in case that would clear them.
It didn’t.
Stepping forward, I immediately tripped and fell on my face—or rather, onto one cheek and one hand. The other hand got caught in the strap of my go-bag and the short version is, I tumbled over the obstacle with every bit as much dainty precision as I’d dropped myself onto the roof in the first place.
It was not an auspicious beginning.
As I pushed myself up I patted the obstacle. It was wearing wool pants and some kind of uniform. Something with a badge clipped onto a pocket. Didn’t matter. The obstacle was dead and posed no threat to yours truly, so I tried to ignore it and keep moving.
If only I could see … What was wrong with my eyes? What had happened to my superlative night vision and my winning stealth?
I could only see clearly when I looked at the sky, so I tipped my chin up and gazed at the immense funnel, hoping it could tell me something.
Hands out, I stumbled forward, feeling my way around.
I tripped again, dropped to my knees this time, and cried out because, hot damn, that hurt! The impact split my favorite black burgling pants and jammed my knees clear down to the bone.
My feeble whimper was answered by a shudder in the fog, something I couldn’t describe but could feel up and down my spine.
At this point, I figured I was screwed coming or going, so I hunkered beside what turned out to be yet another corpse and I whispered, because I couldn’t bring myself to shout. “Ian?” It came out in a squeak that hardly sounded like me at all. I wished I wasn’t so worn out; I wished I had fresh blood handy, and lots of it—but all the blood at my immediate disposal was cooling and pooling in the corpses, and corpses are notoriously bad bleeders. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but drinking from the already-dead requires a lot more patience and leisure time than I had right then.
The fog shuddered again and I shuddered with it.
“Ian, is that you? Are you up here?” I tried again.
The fog remained, but it thinned.
“Ian, I know you’re up here,” I lied. I only prayed he was up there. Because if this wasn’t his doing, I had no idea what I was dealing with and I was genuinely afraid. Hell, I was genuinely afraid regardless. I’d never seen anything like this before—from a vampire or any other immortal. “It’s me, Raylene.”
The story Ian had told me—his vague, reluctantly shared story about how he’d escaped Jordan Roe, and the weird power he’d somehow developed—was this what he’d meant?
Then I heard Ian’s voice, thick and wet. “They killed Cal.” He was somewhere in front of me, and to my left. I tried