Nightfall (Nightfall Book 1)

Denise flinched as darkness flooded the entire corridor she had been walking through on her way to Arkemoz, only to collide with the wall as a tremor shook the ground, sending everyone around her either to the ground or scrambling to grab onto something. And in a corridor as crowded as this, that wasn’t easy.

“What now?” someone complained loudly, though it was almost unintelligible next to the sound of metal groaning all around them.

On instinct Denise threw her hands over her head, expecting something to fall on her, but after a while longer, it all stopped, and there was only silence. She looked around herself, squinting into the darkness all around her. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t see as well here as she did on Earth. Maybe it was the utter lack of any kind of light since apparently not even the red emergency lights were working anymore.

She could still see enough to know that there was no visible damage to anything, though. She supposed that was a good thing, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t come to that.

The brief silence was quickly replaced by outraged and confused voices asking questions that overlapped each other, creating so much noise Denise could barely think.

But she had the same questions and more. Just what the hell had just happened? Was this the rogue vampires meddling still, or was this something completely different? And were they in danger?

Actually, the answer to that last question was most likely. When were they not in danger?

But that wasn’t good enough. She wasn’t sure where to look for answers here, but she could do at least something right this moment—go check if there was more fighting.

And so she continued down the corridor, heading for the room with the warlocks to check if Ark was still in there. He would be the most logical target if something was up.

She did her best to push past all the vampires around her, most of who looked like they were about ready to jump at shadows. The fact that they couldn’t see well must have been unnerving them because if so, Denise felt the same way. It really was freaky, but at least it also meant that if there were enemy vamps still around, they would have the same disadvantage as them.

It wasn’t long way to the magic room-workplace-whatever, but with everyone suddenly moving from place to place, going God knew where, and with the darkness that didn’t let her see more than five feet ahead, it ended up taking way longer than originally.

Just as she was about to reach the room, the ground shook again, even more violently than last time. Denise grunted as she fell, only managing to catch herself with her hands a split second before she could land on her face.

She was about to get up, even though the floor was still shaking, but then her eyes widened as she felt the floor tilt.

Letting out a shocked yell, as did the people around her, Denise did her best to get up and keep her balance as the corridor started to stabilize, still shaking too hard to let her stand up without having to hold onto the wall. She didn’t let go until the ground stopped moving completely, breathing hard as she stared down at the floor.

Even in the darkness, she could tell immediately what was wrong now that it had stopped. The whole corridor was now turned on its side, forcing her to stand on what used to be the wall. She was actually leaning on the floor now, and she hadn’t noticed it at all until this moment.

Denise took a quick glance around, noting that no one seemed to be injured, and some of the vampires already standing were already helping the others get up. At least there was that, but this was trippy as hell.

Was the building skewed, or was the gravity bonkers? What was even outside of this place? Looking down and out the window that was right below her, into the deep, empty darkness, Denise felt some primal dread spread through her whole body.

She quickly looked away, deciding that never looking out there again was probably the best idea she’d ever had. Shaking her head, she took a step forward. The new floor wasn’t actually as level as it had seemed to be before she started walking, so moving right now was difficult, but thankfully her superhuman reflexes helped with that. She did her best to speed up, stumbling over fallen planters and other debris until she finally reached the warlocks’ room.

And she fell down as soon as she entered it. It took her a moment to figure out why she was currently lying on her stomach on the dark, surprisingly soft, red carpet that was everywhere in the headquarters. The gravity in this room was normal, unlike, Denise assumed, the rest of the whole place. And there was some light here, too, even though it was dim.

She let herself be pulled up by her arms to her feet, noting that it was Arkemoz helping her. She breathed out, looking him up and down. He seemed a little pale, but otherwise he looked fine. Good, so he hadn’t been attacked or taken. So this was either a different problem, or the traitors hadn’t gotten here just yet. Thank God.

Denise looked at the rest of the room, surprised that apparently none of the four warlocks in the room had noticed her arrival, too focused on whatever they were doing at the table with the bowl of…. Wait, was that Ark’s blood? She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“What’s going on?” Denise asked the demon quietly, still keeping her eyes on the magic people.

“Because the portal was closed, this entire dimension is in the process of closing,” Arkemoz replied in a completely neutral tone, as if that wasn’t absolutely horrifying news.

“What?!” Denise couldn’t even manage to feel embarrassed about raising her voice like that. This was so much worse than she’d thought. She had been assuming the power went out and the gravity was wonky because some machine was damaged or something. There was probably no gravity outside the headquarters, right? “Why would they build a base here if that’s all it takes to destroy it?”

“The portal was shut down abruptly and incorrectly, Miss Owens,” said Qironin, who had clearly been listening. He didn’t look up from the bowl of blood, though, and neither did any of the other three people. They were putting some ingredients into the blood, but she’d be damned if she could tell what it was. “That is the only reason any of this is happening.”

Denise just shook her head, massaging the bridge of her nose and not bothering to reply to that. What would be there to say, anyway? They might die soon, and this guy felt like taking the time to explain to her that this wasn’t some huge oversight by Aegis. As if that changed anything.

The ground shook again then, but somehow the earthquake was much weaker than before. Unfortunately, before Denise could assume that was somehow a good sign, Arkemoz explained.

“They put some kind of enchantment on this room, so they can try to open the portal again without this place being destroyed.”

Oh. Well, that was very disappointing. She felt like she should do something, but she couldn’t think of what. Until now, she hadn’t actually thought about what she would do after figuring out how Ark was doing, and if he was being kidnapped again or not.

Clearly Arkemoz wasn’t sure what to do either, judging by the unsure look he was now giving the warlocks, but he looked like he needed to rest for a whole year, so Denise couldn’t blame him. A flash of light drew her attention back to the bowl of blood, which was now glowing red and orange, constantly shifting and turning. Denise couldn’t tell if it was the actual blood moving, or if the lights were separate from it.

There was a collective sigh of relief from the warlocks.

“Good. It’s attuned,” said the guy in the ragged-looking cape. Come to think of it, almost all of their outfits were super strange, but Denise was a fan. She couldn’t help but appreciate anyone who wore cosplayer-style fashion. In fact, in comparison, Qironin looked like the weird one due to his super normal—or some, like Denise, might say boring—clothes.

“Right. Now how do we transport this without spilling it?” the dark-skinned woman asked, peering down into the glowing blood. Denise couldn’t help but feel a bit disgusted as she reminded herself what it actually was, but if this would help them get out of here, there would be no arguments from her.

As if on cue, the ground shook again. Not hard enough to make the blood spill, but the bowl was pretty full, and outside this room the earthquakes were way worse. They were going to need some fancy magic to get this to the portal room. At least Denise was assuming that would be the destination.

“We can use a shielding spell perhaps to contain—”

Qironin was interrupted by the deafening sound of screeching metal. Denise covered her ears, wincing at how horribly loud it was. It sounded like the whole building was being ripped apart. It actually made Denise feel a little dizzy hearing it. She tried to shake it off as the sound stopped, still feeling light-headed. Though her head cleared as soon as she heard a scream somewhere in the distance.

Without even really thinking about it she ran back into the hallway, barely managing to catch herself on what used to be the floor as the gravity changed once again. She wavered for a second, scowling into the dark to see if she could spot whoever had screamed.

Denise flinched when she heard someone jump down behind her with a thud but relaxed immediately when she saw it was Arkemoz. He still looked weary but also determined, probably tired of waiting around. From the short while Denise had known him, she was pretty sure he wasn’t the type to wait for other people to fix things, which was good. It would be nice to have backup.

Denise barely took a step forward when she smelled it—blood. Definitely belonging to a vampire, most likely someone who had hurt themselves during one of the earthquakes. She followed the scent of blood, taking careful steps as she once again was forced to traverse all the rubble that was now under her feet. It really made her wonder how Adley was managing with all of this going on.

After they managed to get around a few turns and corners, Denise finally spotted a woman holding her arm close to her chest. Even in the dark and from the distance, Denise could tell her arm was broken. With her hands raised up a bit to show she meant no harm, Denise made her way over to where the woman was sitting, her back leaning against what used to be the ceiling.

“I’m all right,” the woman said immediately, looking Denise right in the eye with clear pain on her face. “But my teammates aren’t.”

Denise frowned, waiting for her to elaborate on that. But she just coughed, shaking her head, which probably meant the teammates weren’t just injured. So the question was what had killed them. Or more likely what, given their current situation.

“What happened?” asked Arkemoz, sounding almost impatient, but the vampire didn’t seem to care about his tone.

“It was like….” She was now staring at the opposite wall—which used to be the floor—with a very blank look on her face. She was definitely in shock. “We were standing by the wall when the floor started to shake and then the wall…disappeared.”

Denise’s eyebrows flew up. “Disappeared? What do you mean?”

The other vampire shrugged helplessly, wincing as the movement had no doubt agitated her injured arm. “It shattered and fell into that void that’s outside of this place. That’s all there is now. Just a black wall of nothing.”

A shiver ran down Denise’s back at the haunted taunt of the woman. She seemed really disturbed by what she’d seen, and Denise imagined she would be too. Most metaphysical stuff like this creeped her out, and an all-consuming black void was definitely somewhere at the top of the list.

“Tia and Ren, they…fell into it when the ground shook. Rubble fell on my arm, which was the only thing that stopped me from sharing the same fate.”

Denise had to stop herself from grimacing. This all sounded really, really awful. It did mean that maybe those two vampires this person had mentioned weren’t dead, but somehow Denise really doubted that. If this dimension was shrinking and eating this building up, then it was probably similar to getting sucked into a black hole.

“Head back to the portal room,” Arkemoz told the woman, surprising Denise. “That should be destroyed last, but hopefully it won’t come to that.”

Denise blinked at him. How did he know that? Or was he just lying to give this vampire some hope? Denise didn’t think so because the guy didn’t seem to have a good grasp of what constituted convincing lies, but if he was, she was impressed. The woman just nodded, still staring forward. Denise quickly debated saying something else, but when Arkemoz walked around the vampire sitting on the floor and started heading in the direction she had presumably come from, Denise followed him, intrigued by what his goal was.

Even with the limited lighting, Denise could easily notice the cracked walls, and the wires, metal tubes, and rods sticking out of them in more and more places as they kept walking down the corridor, which was no easy task with all the debris there was in the way.

“How did you know that stuff?” Denise asked when she finally got tired of waiting for Arkemoz to explain it himself. The demon looked at her with surprise, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that it was strange he knew these things.

“Demons study and work with dimensions often,” he replied, squinting into the dark around them. Was it just Denise thinking that or was it somehow getting even darker? She could still see outlines, but that was about it. “The nature of Hell dimensions is very fluid.”

Was he trying to say that they could actually change their own dimension as they wanted? Because that was both cool and kind of disturbing. How did they even get around if everything kept changing?

“I can’t say I heard of anyone opening a pocket dimension like this, but I think I understand how it works because many demons researched this concept.” He gave Denise a look as he paused, though she could barely see him at this point. At least his eyes were very dimly glowing, so she could see those. Were they always so orange? “All dimensions tend to form around and spread out from a center, so if they start to close—”

“They close back towards the center,” Denise finished, nodding. This actually made enough sense to her to follow it. She had more questions, but they all left her brain when she noticed that they had almost reached the end of the corridor.

There was much more rubble here. The walls seemed to warp and bend, their bricks arranged in somewhat of a circle as they stuck out around the void at the end, the plastering cracked up and missing in large chunks. But Denise couldn’t stare at anything else but that void. It was so dark she couldn’t see anything at all. It didn’t even truly look dark, it looked empty and unnatural. Like some kind of negative space. Just looking at the thing made Denise want to run away.

But clearly Arkemoz didn’t feel the same as he approached the wall of nothingness way too casually. Denise froze as she watched him raise his hand up, as if to touch the wall. A second later he seemed to decide against it, though, letting Denise relax as much as she could right now.

“There you are!”

Denise jumped, swirling around to see Adley marching towards them, only really looking at Arkemoz. Of course he was. Denise shook her head with an amused snort as she watched James fuss over the demon again. Though the fact they were standing so close to that ominous darkness that threatened to gobble them all up was really concerning. They needed to leave. There was nothing to do here at this point.

She swallowed thickly when she realized that what had happened here had probably happened in all the corners of these headquarters. And that this corridor wasn’t at the very edge of the headquarters, either.

Denise gritted her teeth. She might not know anything about magic, or anything related to it, but she would be damned if she didn’t at least try to help someone who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the dimension was shrinking toward the portal room, then they needed to find everyone still alive in this place and get them there.

But before she could say anything to the other two, the ground shook again. She was on the floor before she knew it, too shocked to react in time as the gravity shifted again, forcing her to slide onto the carpet as the actual floor became the floor once more.

But she didn’t pay attention to any of that, though, only leaping forward to Arkemoz and James as best she could as she saw the black void move forward, making the walls shatter further as they were devoured brick by brick by the whatever-the-hell-it-was in front of them. Denise could see the void reach for them, stretching out to them despite James’ quick reflexes kicking in to pull the demon away enough not to be killed that very second.

As Denise got close enough to grasp both their arms, she grabbed them, stumbling as she pulled them back and falling down as another tremor shook the ground hard enough to make the walls around them crack and peel, the sickeningly loud sound of metal bending and being squished following. But Denise kept on staring into the black wall of nothingness, breathing hard even as it stopped moving.

The relief was short lived however because a second later she heard a loud crack from above her. Without even thinking about it she rolled away just as the ceiling started to fall apart above her head. All she could do was watch with wide eyes as the ceiling collapsed right in front of her, rubble almost falling on her feet as the whole hallway filled up with bricks, plastering, and a mass of metal tubes and wires. A tiny tremor followed, and then finally everything seemed to stabilize. For now, at least.

“Fucking hell!” James exclaimed in the most English accent Denise had heard him use so far as he finally climbed to his feet, giving Arkemoz a hand and pulling the demon up with him. Adley proceeded to clear his throat, looking almost offended instead of freaked out now. “Aegis has the best ideas, I swear.”

Now he sounded way too American. If they had the time, Denise would have teased him over it.

“Actually, creating a pocket dimension to hide a base like this and protect it from attacks isn’t a terrible idea,” Arkemoz said, though his voice was less self-assured than usual. James shook his head in an exaggerated way, running a hand through his hair while muttering something about nerds.

That was when Denise finally recovered enough to remember what they should be doing. “You two okay?”

Arkemoz gave one firm nod while James shook his head in exasperation again. “Yeah, for now. But who knows how long that will last with this damned place falling down on us?”

That was a fair point, but they didn’t have time to stand around and complain.

“Hopefully long enough for those warlocks to reopen the portal,” she replied, huffing. “Now come on, we gotta see if anyone needs help. And even if they don’t, Ark says the safest place right now is the portal room, so we need to get the word out.”

Surprisingly James didn’t argue at all, only giving a begrudging nod. So, clearly, he still had a lot of complains ready to go, but he understood the necessity of this. Good.

“Right, let’s get moving then. Before the whole ceiling collapses.”

As fast as they could in the impenetrable dark, they began to run back down the corridor which Denise had gotten here in the first place, telling everyone on the way to move towards the center of the base.

To Denise’s shock, no one argued with her or demanded an explanation, which was great news because they really didn’t have the time for it. A few even offered to go to the other side of the headquarters to warn the people there, which saved them the trip over there. Denise really didn’t want to imagine what that part of the base must have looked like, given how damaged this corner was becoming. She just hoped that void beyond the walls hadn’t swallowed up more people yet.

As they all made their way to the portal room, the entire headquarters continued to shake, but the tremors were noticeably less severe the farther they got. It seemed Arkemoz’s theory really had been correct. However, Denise couldn’t help but stumble as a particularly powerful tremor shook the building.

She could hear something breaking apart above them every time the ground shook. She wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but she did know one thing—the ceiling was going to fall sooner or later. And she was willing to bet it would happen before than that void outside swallowed them all up.

Those warlocks better hurry.

As they finally reached the portal room, Denise had to blink at the relatively bright light that assaulted her eyes, only to then realize it was coming from the room itself. A crowd of people had amassed in front of the door, all of them watching with bated breaths as the warlocks did their thing.

They seemed to be adding ingredients to the bowl of Arkemoz’s blood while chanting something, which would have been kind of creepy if not for the fact that they were all about to be erased from existence, and Denise had other concerns.

Denise had to stop herself from calling at the group to hurry up as yet another earthquake made the whole building shake. Somewhere to her right a window of an office broke, the sound of it shattering piercing. She was frankly surprised that there was still glass to break after all of this.

She looked back at the warlocks, noting that the bowl hadn’t spilled at all, and in fact now that she was looking for it, she could see a very subtle blue glow over the top of it. It sort of looked like a force field, or something. It would make sense that the warlocks have thought of this problem.

Denise looked over to the corridor on the left as a group of vampires arrived, looking just as confused, scared, and frustrated as everyone else as another tremor hit. But this one was much worse.

Denise almost fell to the ground immediately, but she managed to grab onto the wall before she fell. But there was suddenly complete darkness. Only then did she notice that the door to the portal room had closed shut. Her eyes wide, she swallowed thickly. She really hoped that that was just a precaution, and that the warlocks weren’t ditching them. Or that something wasn’t terribly wrong in general.

The sound of metal ripping apart filled the room before anyone could try to open the door again, another earthquake shaking the building. It felt like it was coming from all sides as Denise held on as much as she could.

She barely had enough time to check on James and Arkemoz, who were off to her right before she noticed a large crack in the ceiling above them as the building continued to shake. And then the ceiling caved in.

Denise leapt to the side just in time, crashing into someone as she did but managing to avoid most of the rubble. Something had fallen on her hand and foot, sending stabbing pain through her, but she didn’t even have the time to check on either as the ground shook even more. She couldn’t even think through all the noise of things breaking and falling, and people screaming.

There was a cracking above her, that part of the ceiling no doubt close to breaking as well, but there was nowhere to go. She was trapped in a corner by the rubble with maybe another ten people. She couldn’t see their faces, but she could practically smell their fear.

And she felt the same way. Getting crushed by debris wouldn’t kill her, but she sure as hell didn’t want to experience that kind of pain.

Denise gritted her teeth as the ground shook beneath them again, shielding her head with her arms where she was sitting in the corner as the ceiling above made another awful crack.

She squeezed her eyes shut. This was it.

But no bricks or metal came falling down on top of them. Instead, the ground stilled, and the awful noise of everything breaking apart came to an end. Denise opened her eyes, only to blink as light assaulted them.

Light? She looked up to see one remaining ceiling light shining with a slight flickering to it. Which meant electricity was back. Which meant….

Denise let out breath of relief, running her hands over her face as cheers erupted around her. The warlocks did it.