As Darkness Falls by Riley Storm

Chapter Thirty-Six

It took several hours for us to realize that something was bothering the others. So much of our attention had been focused outward, looking for potential enemies, that we hadn’t given much thought to our pack. They were there, and nobody had ordered us to do anything differently, so we simply trotted along at their side, a watchful guardian.

Now, however, as our attention swung almost unwillingly to Vir for a few moments, we could see the tightness of his face. The way the whiskers on his wolf face twitched and flowed backward was a dead giveaway. Again, he’d not reverted to his human form yet, though he was back to human-size. But he wore his golden armor and bracers and carried the spear at his side, horizontal, always ready for action.

Aaron, too, we noticed, was uncomfortable. His eyes constantly darted around, but the frown that had creased his face was growing deeper, the lines on his forehead and cheeks intensifying.

Could they detect something we were missing? It wasn’t impossible. They were both far more well-traveled than we. This was only the third realm we’d been to in our life. No, the fourth, we corrected, remembering we’d been to the Direen as well. For a shifter, that seemed like a lot, but to these men, a god and a vampire more ancient than we likely knew, it was probably nothing.

“Dani.”

As if he could sense we’d been thinking about him, Vir said our name. We looked up at him. He wasn’t looking at us. His attention was still on the rocky landscape around us. We didn’t like that. We wanted him to look at us. To stare at us and appreciate the beauty before him.

“You should probably come back now,” Vir said.

We looked around as well, wondering what prompted him to say that, but we saw no change. The rusty red rocks jutting up around us blocked our view, and the only way was forward or back. Nothing moved, nothing lived around us, which we figured was fine. This was the land of the dead, after all.

Whining, we tried to get the point across that we liked being in wolf form. It felt good. Natural. We could be of more help like this.

“Now,” Vir commanded in a tone we’d never heard him use before.

The words washed over us like an Alpha’s power, and we struggled not to immediately obey them. We angrily growled at him, announcing our dislike.

“Now is not the time for this, Dani,” Aaron added.

That got our attention. The two of them banding together? If they both wanted us to let the human have free reign, then there was probably a good reason for it. It wasn’t often something brought them together in such a unified decision.

We sighed, and I tore myself free from the meld.

I’m sorry, I told my wolf. Once this is over, I’ll let you run free more often. No more waiting for the Wild Moons. We’ll run under every type of moon. I promise.

My wolf couldn’t reply in words, but she managed to make it clear through emotions that if I didn’t, I could expect a full-on return of the she-bitch-from-hell that had dominated my early days post-Soulshift. Given our current location, it seemed somewhat like a prophetic threat.

We changed back. I gritted my teeth against the pain. Sometimes, it wasn’t so bad, but other times, it was like having an iron spike hammered into my skull. This one was the latter. During the fight, I’d had to shift so fast I had tuned out any pain, but here, now, shifting so reluctantly, I couldn’t quite suppress a groan as my body realigned itself, bones cracking and shrinking, or growing, depending on the place.

It was over in seconds, even if those seconds had been near torturous agony, and then we were standing naked on the plains of the Underworld.

“Here,” Vir said, tossing me my outfit that he’d snagged from the battle site.

I only partially turned away from the others as I got dressed. At this point, it seemed fruitless to bother trying to hide my nudity from them. After all, the team had seen me naked so many times by now that I may as well be a porn star. What was one more glimpse, right?

Perhaps I should start charging.

Now there was a thought. I chuckled briefly at the image of asking Vir to pay me in treasure each time I had to get naked to shift around him. He probably wouldn’t take that well. So I made a mental note to do it.

I made a face at the feeling of the leather before swiftly pulling on my boots, which Vir had also thoughtfully collected. It all clung clammily to my skin, the already wet leather far from an enjoyable experience, but what choice did I have? I wasn’t going to walk naked through the Underworld.

Vir didn’t have enough treasure for that much of a show.

“Shall we?” I said, gesturing in front of us to continue.

Nobody moved.

“Okay? Anyone? Why are you all acting so weird?” I asked.

Everyone’s attention was on the land around us. None of it was on me. I wasn’t even sure if they were listening to me. Each of them had turned, facing out. Watching…nothing? I didn’t get it.

“It’s not us who is weird,” Vir said.

“Are you saying I am?” I asked somewhat crossly.

“No,” Aaron said quietly.

I looked at him. He wasn’t facing me, but that didn’t seem to stop him from somehow knowing I was watching him.

“It’s out there,” he said quietly. “This entire place. That’s what’s weird.”

Turning slowly to take it all in, I looked hard for any changes. For anything that might be out of place. Yet, as far as I could tell, it wasn’t.

“It looks the same as it has for hours, guys,” I said, growing tired of the lack of explanation. “Nothing has changed. Is this something only you immortals can see? Is that why I feel blind?”

“No,” Aaron said. “You can see it, too.”

Exasperated, I stormed back over to Vir. “What the fuck is he talking about, god-man? Can you please make some sense of this and stop being so damn cryptic about everything! I don’t follow. I’m new. Go easy. Please, I’m practically begging you. I don’t see anything!”

“Exactly, Dani,” Vir said with a slow nod.

I frowned, re-orienting my perspective on the Realm of the Dead. Everything around us was empty. So…

“What should I be seeing?” I asked, hoping that, for once, I was on the right track.

If I ever came across Amunlea after I died, I was going to make sure I gave her an earful for making Vir so damn mysterious. There was no way someone could be worse than this if they tried.

“Souls,” Fred said, speaking for the first time, his voice filled with reverence. “Many, many Souls.”

I opened my mouth, but Aaron spoke up.

“And the Guardian’s of those Souls,” he said quietly. “Escorting them to the Pits. This place is empty, Dani, but it shouldn’t be. It should be teeming with death. Yet, instead, we have this void. A place without death.”

I rubbed my chin, staring at the landscape with new eyes. They were right. We hadn’t seen a single sign of, well, anything. No lost souls, no angry guardians. No more demons, no fallen angels, nothing.

“The Realm of the Dead is…dead,” I muttered. “How ironic is that.”

Nobody responded.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked, my unease mirroring that of my comrades.

“I don’t know,” Aaron said stiffly. “I don’t know.”