After regaling the ghouls with my tale, we headed to our room. That was a…restful night? I wasn’t so sure.

My conversation with Blair was emotionally draining, but it had been good, and so was our chat with the ghouls. Though, as we walked by that damn painting again, I felt those eyes searching for me, and Kendra’s words overlapped with Lee’s in my head.

“He’s out there, looking for people like you, hunting for the weak.”

It was an unsettling thought, but if I let myself worry about a monster potentially coming to eat me, I’d never get any sleep. And sleep I got, or maybe sleep got me, as the instant my head hit the pillow, I was out, yellow eyes and campfire tales vanishing like a snuffed candle.

~<>~<>~

We left before dawn as streamers of purple and pink were barely beginning to creep over the horizon.

Koehrsen, Kendra, and Gerald, the butler, met us at the door. Olivia wasn’t there, and I gave a silent thanks to whatever was looking out for me up above.

Blair and the Lord began to talk, but I ignored it as Kendra marched up to me, a determined look on her face. "You have to answer!" She demanded.

I blinked at the child, my slightly groggy thoughts turning over like a rusty engine. "Answer?"

She nodded furiously, her black hair swishing with the motion. "Yes! What’s your favorite animal?”

I laughed, the sound bursting out of me before I could restrain it. It was so loud that the others paused for a beat, Koehrsen giving me a complicated look before turning back to Blair.

Kendra glowered at me; it looked like she was on the verge of puffing out her cheeks. I smiled, crouching down to bring myself to her eye level. "Well, Kendra, as you get older, you realize that some things don’t have one answer. I couldn’t tell you my favorite book or food either, just a number that I really liked."

Her brows furrowed, and her fang caught the light as she chewed on her lip. "I don’t like that answer."

I laughed and patted her head, the touch as cold as any ghost. "Well, how about you get back to me in a few years, and we’ll see if your answer is still the same or if mine makes more sense?"

She gave the offer some serious thought, her eyes staring at the carpet as she continued to chew her lip. "If I still think your answer is cheating, you must pick a favorite!”

I nodded and managed to hide my amusement.

She still looked dissatisfied. "Well, okay. It can’t be too long, though. I don’t want to wait a century. Ten years! I’ll ask you again in ten years.”

Oh, to be young and immortal. "It’s a deal, Kendra, if I’m–“ I cut off. "If you still want me to pick a favorite, I will."

She stuck out her hand, her expression deathly serious, and I shook on it.

“Come on, Alder,” Blair called from the door. I rose, giving the little vampire one final wave while deliberately ignoring Koehrsen as I strode out the door. It was a little petty, but it made me smile nonetheless.

~<>~<>~

People in big cities tended to forget just how big the world was. It was understandable. Big cities were hard to grasp in their own right. But in the same way that someone from a small town who had never seen a true mass of humanity before struggled to comprehend what it was like to live in a place like New York or Tokyo, a city kid who had never stepped foot in a forest had trouble comprehending just how big a country like America was.

There was space between towns and cities. Some thought of it as empty space, but no one who’d seen the things I had would call it empty.

The further and further away you got from metropolises, there was a shift. As you drove into the mountains, the concept of cities and street lights became almost alien. The press of tree and root so overwhelming, so all encompassing it was hard to believe there was anything else in a place like this. Hard to believe that there could be anything else.

Roads became thin veins, a cracked and faded tether to civilization as we marched into something far older than paved streets and warm beds.

That familiar sensation of venturing into the deep wood settled over me a whole hour before we reached the turnoff to Ventray. We almost missed it, but as we made our way around a bend, the car’s tires thumping over the cracked road in a steady song, I felt that sense of ancient magic strengthen to our left.

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I pointed, and Blair slowed to a stop.

My eyes didn’t want to acknowledge the turnoff, but I could tell it was there. After a few seconds, my brain finally realized it was staring at an opening in the trees. My eyes flicked up to the sign beside the road. "Vintray, next left.” The mile indicator had been scratched out, leaving only vague smudges of white behind.

Past the sign and trees sat a tunnel, its dark mouth swallowing the road whole.

Those dense trees with their orange leaves and thick gnarled branches split as if they had decided to grow around the tunnel instead of being cut to gain access, but despite that, the tunnel looked brand new. The road leading to it was cracked, the asphalt faded with sun and time, but the moment it reached the tunnel opening, it switched, replaced with a clean, dark road that looked like it could have been finished that morning. It stretched as far as I could see, which wasn’t saying much. The tunnel sucked in the morning sun like it was desperate for it, leaving a wall of darkness to stare back at us.

Laurel made a displeased noise from the backseat as she leaned around Blair’s shoulder. "We are going to have to go through the spooky tunnel?"

Blair nodded silently.

Laurel sighed.

Bobby chuckled as we started to creep towards the tunnel. "Have any of us ever gotten a ‘no’ to a question like that? I’m having trouble imagining the day when we’re told the destination is actually through the safer, easier path that isn’t sinister at all."

Laurel’s only response was a louder sigh as our back tires crossed into the tunnel.

The moment we entered the tunnel, weight slammed down on us. I grunted, my shoulders stinging and side cramping.

The smells around us shifted, intensifying at random. The salt from this morning’s breakfast filled my nose before being replaced by cheap coffee and sugar.

The car's suspension groaned as the wheels made labored progress every inch, causing a ‘thump thump’ to echo through the tunnel.

I felt something brushing against my mind and swatted it away like a fly.

The pressure increased, causing the car to shudder and shake before the pressure broke around us, vanishing without a trace.

I glanced around quickly. "There was a mental component to that. Is everyone okay?”

I got a round of nods in response, though Blair was slow to answer. She loosened her grip on the steering wheel, and I could see it slightly contorted.

Well, the Northwoods could afford to replace a rental.

“Sense of wrongness, trespass, unwelcome,” she ground out before shaking her head like a dog.

“Well, that’s one hell of a first defense." I said with a low whistle." They had an attention ward or something on the entrance followed by whatever the hell that was.”

Laurel rubbed her face as she stared at the darkness all around. "They don’t call them Lords for nothing. You should expect them to be at least as well-guarded as a moderately powerful leader of the Pact. And Bartholomew is still supposed to be better guarded."

I tentatively reached out with my senses and almost flinched. Somebody did serious work here. Space was odd in the tunnel. I didn’t know how else to describe it. The magic flexed and tensed in seemingly random intervals. Strands of magic ran through the walls only to vanish and reappear on the opposite side of the tunnel, skipping the space in between.

I didn’t have the foggiest clue how that worked, but the threads of grey and black magic were beautiful.

“You can only enter Vintray from one direction.” Adela’s words carried a whole new weight to them now. She hadn’t said we shouldn’t or wouldn’t be able to get into Vintray from a different direction. She said ‘can’t,’ and I don’t think she excluded herself from that.

Impossible was a very nebulous concept to spooks like Adela. If she said something couldn’t be done, then chances were it really couldn’t be done.

The yellow glow of our headlights didn’t bounce off the walls. They shot straight ahead, carving a path through the darkness just wide enough to drive through. It was as if the tunnel was begrudgingly letting us pass. It was creepy yet beautiful. The warm glow and the entrancing display of magic led me into a trance.

I couldn’t say how long the tunnel went for. I was so lost in thought that by the time light appeared ahead of us, it could’ve been five minutes or two hours.

Everyone started shuffling, breaking from their heads as the tunnel mouth loomed large.

The tunnel opened into a forest just as old and heavy as the one we left. The light filtering through the leaves was shockingly bright, and by the time my eyes adjusted, we were cresting a hill, revealing a town in the distance.

It stretched up a hillside before stopping at the base of a larger mountain. Forest surrounded the town, and I could see a train chugging its way across some tracks near the middle.

A river ran beside the train before splitting down the hill, sending tendrils of blue stretching out.

Blair slowed, and my focus snapped from the town to the trees around us. Just before the hill dropped down sat a large brown sign, its front covered in gold lettering.

My eyes flicked from the sign to the figure sitting next to it. As we drew closer, I could see it was a woman, maybe five or six years older than me, with dark skin and dark golden eyes. Her booted feet were kicked up on a stool as she reclined in a rickety lawn chair. She wore a crimson coat that went down to her knees and held a beat-up paperback in one hand and a mug of something hot and steaming in the other.

Gold eyes the color of dark resin flicked up to greet us with a look of supreme disinterest. Then she looked back down at her book, tilting her head the barest amount towards the sign.

“Welcome to Vintray; the dead and different are welcome.”