Nora Walker, a psychic vampire, is conscripted into a task-force of supernatural legends that care more for themselves than the cataclysmic threat they face...
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We exited the corridor cache in a turn that seemed no different from the last. One moment we were walking, a singed wallet clasped to my breast and questions glued to the roof of my mouth. The next moment we were stationary, surveying early morning foot-traffic from an unremarkable corner of Federation Square. I blinked at the sudden transition, rendered stupid by the bleak colours on display. Even the yellow bricks of Flinders Station looked drab in comparison to the yellow-brick road from whence we came. It baffled me that this dimension was technically more authentic than the corridor cache.
Ours was a minute silence, smothered by the sounds of the city. Ruben's eyes roved over the square in search of something specific, but he didn't offer any explanation as to what that might be. I was a little more indiscriminate in my search, looking for anything that might distract me from the ever-apparent weight of the wallet in my hands. A one-legged seagull looked promising, until it secured a scrap of some poor sucker's sandwich and revealed that it was only pretending to be lame to garner sympathy.
I sighed heavily. The distraction would have to be of my own making. "Can I suggest we visit the liquor store next?" I asked, elbowing Ruben in the side.
"You can suggest it," he replied absently.
"Ah, but can we actually go there?"
His dark eyes flicked over to me, testing. "We have legs and the means to use them."
"That's a no, isn't it?" I made a show of pouting, even though alcohol was the last thing I wanted to be putting in my body right now. I already felt queasy from skipping a meal... and from spilling someone's guts. "People only use technicalities when they're trying to validate or excuse something."
"You're astute this morning," he remarked, looking out across the square again. "Looks like that near-death experience woke you up a bit."
"Shut up," I snapped, but the hot flash of anger was quick to dissipate, leaving only anxious tremors behind. I clenched my fingers into fists to disguise their weakness. God, I was pathetic!
Or am I merely inexperienced? I wondered on the tail of that dismissive thought, taking into consideration the lengths I'd previously gone to in pursuit of a harvest. Over time, I'd come to learn that carefully cultivated psychological distress yielded the most potent negative emotions. By manipulating a range of small variables — spreading rumours, planting seeds of doubt, frustrating coping methods and blackmailing people into doing things that contradicted their moral compass — I could successfully create long-lasting, well-bodied negativity in practically any human host.
Perhaps that was why I'd never paused to consider more extreme methods of farming distress, like murder or torture. Sure, I'd caused a few injuries here and there, and took no issue with reaping the rewards of others' violence. But I'd never actively set out to inflict an agonising or life-threatening wound on someone before.
