Aidan stepped aside. I raised my hands and put them up to the box, pushing my power into it. The electric snap of connection hit, and I started searching through the past on this object. Images of the ferals popped into my mind, leaping from their cages but in reverse like I was rewinding a film, making them look like they were happily hopping backward to be locked up. I willed myself to see the face of whoever threw the release mechanism, but it wasn’t happening. The spot itself was surrounded by a soft white glow, but there was no way to tell who or what the figure at the controls was. I pushed myself even harder into the spot but that only increased the white light and still I couldn’t make out the figure. Frustrated, I thrust all my power at it, only to find my head screaming with pain to the point where I felt myself blacking out. My last conscious thought was wondering if I’d wake up with a hell of a headache or if I’d wake up at all, what with the whole being-surrounded-by-vampires thing.

21

When I came to, I was thrilled to see I was alive, although I did discreetly check for bite marks. In the meantime, Connor and Beatriz had arrived. Beatriz was off talking with Aidan and Brandon, but Connor was watching over me. When they saw I was coming to, they walked over to us.

“Jesus, kid, are you okay?” Connor asked, offering me his hand. I took it and forced myself to stand back up, as uneasy on my feet as I was. My head was spinning and my body was shaken.

“I’m fine,” I said, feeling my head and neck. “I think… unless one of these guys bit me while I was out…?”

Aidan was the first one over. “Sorry,” Aidan said. “Not my type. Also, I hear you’re not a particularly good vintage.”

“Aidan,” Brandon said, with warning thick in his voice.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding a little humbled. “Did you get a good look?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t see anything. The harder I tried, the more I was blocked.”

“You didn’t catch a face?” Connor asked. “Maybe an outfit or a detail? Something…”

I fished around in my pocket for a roll of Life Savers and popped them into my mouth one by one. “Something very specifically forced me out. Someone didn’t want me to see that they did this.” I looked at Brandon. “I don’t think life here at Castle Bran is as idyllic as you think. First, the letter to Connor. Now someone is specifically blocking my powers. As a matter of fact, when Jane contacted me from within the machine world of this building, she said she felt like someone had purposefully pulled her into the machine.”

Brandon looked angry and sheepish all at the same time. It was clear he was not used to mutiny in his ranks. “I’ll have Nicholas check the security tapes,” Brandon said.

“We’ll see if they caught anything.”

Aidan stood there, his arm around Beatriz’s waist. Beatriz spoke up. “I doubt he’s going to find anything.”

“Oh?” Brandon said, turning to look at her.

Beatriz nodded. “Think about it. Someone who took the time to safeguard the control panel like this isn’t going to let a security camera catch them.”

Brandon pursed his lips. “I see your point. Still, we’ll comb through it all.”

“So much for policing your own,” Connor said.

My blood sugar started returning to normal and I felt a bit more myself than I had moments before. “You know,” I said to Connor, “I have felt that same pushed-out sensation before.”

“Really?” Brandon asked. “When?”

“A few months back,” I said. “When I tried to use my psychometry on that letter Connor received. That same type of energy blocked me from reading it.”

A commotion came from the far end of the room and Nicholas Vanbrugh came into view. He blurred into action and was standing by us in half a second.

“Sorry I’m so late to the party,” he said, looking over at the way Aidan and Beatriz were draped on each other. He tore his eyes away from them and tried to focus. “I just heard about what was happening outside the castle walls.”

Brandon went over to him. “I’ll need you to review whatever footage your security systems caught of what transpired down here this evening. We need to see who’s behind this.”

Nicholas looked nervous. “Of course,” he said.

“Do I detect a problem?” Brandon asked.

“N-no,” Nicholas said. “It’s just that…”

Aidan rolled his eyes. “Just spit it out, will you? Jesus.”

Nicholas glared at him, and then turned with a stoic face back to Brandon. “It’s just that our systems are acting a little wonky right now. Specifically, because of the problem I’m helping Mr. Canderous with. Because we’re taking down certain data sectors and sweeping them manually, it’s making general surveillance and such a little difficult for us right now. That and… it looks like the ferals have escaped into the city. They’re all gone.”

Aidan let out a sigh and Brandon stiffened.

“Not all,” Aidan said. “There’s one more.”

“One more what?” I asked.

“One more of those creatures in captivity,” he said.

“Where?” I asked.

“Come,” Brandon said. “Let us take you to him.”

Our whole group headed back out the broken door of the prison level and headed even deeper to another door. This one, unlike the previous, was still intact with a biohazard symbol etched into it. Brandon pushed it open, leading us into another deserted subway stop. This one was a lab with medical equipment from the past fifty years spread out across a good portion of the space.

Brandon led us to another row of cages along the right-hand side of the room. This time there were no clear walls reinforcing the bars, only the bars themselves. Only one of the cells was occupied, and it was in a more pronounced stage of rot and decay to him.

“So you just keep this one caged like this?” I said, examining the creature behind the bars. “He can’t just, you know, go all poof and mist his way out of there?”

Brandon shook his head. “We were wondering the same thing when the problem first arose. We weren’t sure how we were going to contain any of them. I had Nicholas working on a new containment system immediately, but apparently we don’t need one in the later stages of their transformation. Whatever’s happened to them, they seem to have lost some of their abilities. They can’t change form.”

“Well,” I said, tapping the bars, “I still think you may need a better containment system. After all, I wasn’t attacking myself in your forest.” I turned back to the cage. Under the harsh fluorescent lights, it was easier to examine this one than when I had been out in the forest fighting them. The skin looked like raw meat and the teeth stuck out of its mouth at more severe angles than I had thought, all of them yellowed with age and coated with blood and bits of something I didn’t want to figure out. “Ugly little thing, isn’t it?”

Aidan blurred into action as he rushed toward me. I braced for an impact, but Brandon headed him off, slamming into him.

“What the hell?” Aidan cried out.

“Easy,” Brandon said. He turned to me while keeping Aidan at bay, holding him by the back of his hoodie. “Please bear in mind… all of these creatures were once part of my family, our family. Some of us are more sensitive than others about the issue.”

“Sorry,” I said, looking at Aidan.

Aidan relaxed and Brandon let go of him.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said. “I guess I’m just sensitive, too, since they tried to eviscerate me.”

“Let’s just all take it easy,” Connor suggested. “We’re all a little wound tight, given everything that’s going on.”

I looked back in the cage. The creature had stopped its predatory pacing and was watching us. I stepped back toward it.

“So this is Patient Zero, eh?”

“As far as we can tell,” Aidan said, starting to lose some of the anger in his voice. “Perry went missing a while back, then suddenly showed up again one day.”