help of vampires. That way, we could easily move back and forth between the Mortal and Immortal Plane. This would help us to case the place without a lot of travel to faraway gates or trips to resupply. Regular Bureau soldiers had been chased away by the strange environment and fearsome creatures, but we could handle it.
Finally, I could focus on my ultimate goal: finding my parents. They’d wanted to be useful to the Bureau before the mess with the meld happened, but the last phone call I’d had with them during the merging of planes had been disconnected by the unstable dark energy. Last I knew, my father had reported the area as swampy and glowing, but now, if there had been any water here, it had dried out and left these bizarre trees in its wake. Maybe that was responsible for the humidity, unusual for this arid part of the Southwest.
I steeled myself with the knowledge that, several hundred yards away in a clearing, our carrier plane and pilot sat locked up with plenty of supplies. Since it was just outside the radius of the Leftovers, Bryce had agreed that it was safe to leave them there for the moment. Thankfully, the weirdness left behind hadn’t expanded beyond its current borders after the meld’s end. As far as we knew, there was nobody in this area but us and any misplaced immortal creatures in these strange parts. I had seen the occasional Mortal Plane squirrel here and there, but they avoided the edge of this place like the plague. It was like they could sense how wrong this area was.
Sike, our last team member, sucked in a breath as he yanked his foot away from something. He was in a spot of lush grass that swept against his pant leg, a bright, unnatural green against the slate gray of our new uniforms.
"Something fast just ran over my foot," he muttered with a quick grimace. "It wasn't the vines. I heard squeaking." I trusted Sike’s vampire senses. He and Dorian both had superior hearing to humans—well, that and just about every other sense. I frowned, straining to pick up the noise, and then it came all at once, with a wave of rustling grass.
A swarm of dark, scurrying blue forms rippled the grass next to Sike. He jerked out of the way with a curse as the creatures, slightly larger than rats with spikes like rogue, mutant hedgehogs, darted past him, every so often bounding several feet into the air, at a height that should've been impossible for rodents.
We barely had time to react as the swarm went squeaking off into the forest. I shot a curious look at Dorian. He looked baffled.
"Our woodland pests don't do that," he explained. “At least, not near Vanim.” His handsome face turned to study the surrounding area of the Bureau office, his glacial eyes keenly calculating. "They appear to be fleeing something." Fleeing away from where we need to go, how comforting.
They disappeared into the forest and their fleeing steps echoed bizarrely back to us, almost like we were in a cave instead of near trees.
I took a step forward to join Bryce near the entrance of the largest building, taking care not to let the trailing vines touch my hair. Somewhere, I hoped, my parents were surviving in this area. I had felt their souls when I’d briefly died during the fixing of the meld, and they’d still been living; I had to believe they were still out here.
Dorian's brows furrowed with concern and stayed that way. He was listening along with Sike, while Cam watched them, seeming to note their every move. When he caught my look, he turned away, going a bit pink. It was Cam's first official mission with vampires, so he was naturally curious.
Bryce cleared his throat irritably. "Cam. Scanner?" The young man stiffened at Bryce's tone, which dripped with the unspoken question, why aren't you already announcing this? It had been a long time since I’d heard that particular gruffness, but I remembered it. Bryce was always hard on newcomers when he was training my old teammates and me for the Bureau. Now, our client was the US government, and Bryce wouldn’t go easy on Cam just because they were family. If anything, I suspected Bryce might be even worse to his nephew.
"I'm getting some signatures that suggest living creatures. They're certainly organic, but..."—his eyes roved across the black hand-held device that he gripped—"it's like it