This place was a green land. Even in the night time darkness the eye could detect the lush vegetation all around, the air felt cool and moist to the touch beneath outstretch fingers. Forest giants stretched and twisted towards the sky each tree its own world teaming with busy life vying for the precious light and space with every neighbouring bough, every plant below. Here the city lights were left far behind. Here the world of concrete and metal had not yet encroached on this far older space. Here the stars and moon were free to highlight the landscape in the now familiar colours of the night time world.
But there was a tinge to the sky on the horizon. The first watery grey light of the dawn was creeping into the edges of the landscape bleaching where it touched and driving out the muted darkness. Another hour and morning would have come and the world would wake.
Against the stars something flew, barely noticeable unless you knew it was there, a blur moving at speed against the pin pricks of distant suns. Over the forest it began to descend, the single shape breaking into many as they came closer to the earth. They glided silently over the leafy domes of the trees for some time before dropping the final distance to the leaf litter below. The detritus on the forest floor barely stirred as they touched down. Three men and four women, one immediately breaking apart from the others. The unease between them was palpable as they searched the new surroundings.
"We rest here today." Fiske's voice was hard in the silent air. He did not look at Angel as she stood unable to take point with the men but unwilling to stand with the women. The tension in her bearing expressed her feelings better than any words could.
The group found spaces among the tree roots while Fiske and Bow walked in the wards that would protect them during the vulnerable daylight hours. Angel took time to find her spot beneath a particularly large oak as far as she dared from the main group. Fiske had said nothing about the vampire on their return to the others or her lapse of concentration but she could feel his tension towards her. The others had reacted to the old Carpathian's sudden coldness, eyes averted every time she dared to look up, only Vespera still smiled warmly towards her. She understood the others trepidation towards her now even though she did not enjoy it.
It did not take long to form their sleeping chambers now, moving the soil until there was a dry safe space for them beneath the earth. In turn each moved below the ground as the sun showed signs of finally breaking over the horizon. Fiske as usual was the last to seal himself in, checking the landscape for any sign of their movements before locking himself away for the day. It seemed like an age before he seemed satisfied with their surroundings and Angel felt the small tremors of his passage below ground. For a while Angel waited as the others fell asleep. Slowly, infinitely slowly she began adding to her usual mental barriers, each an infinitesimally small change upon infinitesimally small change. Slowly the block between her and the group grew, slowly she lost contact with each member until she could barely sense a trace of their minds in the background. When she was sure they could only just sense her, when both her location and her mood would be unclear she began to move upwards. Her body at first refused, the daylight hours making her feel as if her limbs were lead but slowly, carefully she forced herself to climb upwards, taking care not to move the soil around her enough to disturb the others.
The air on her fingers was a shock that nearly shattered her carefully barriers. It had been so long since she had felt daylight air on her fingers. The oak that covered her rest site had provided enough shade that the pain as she pulled herself upwards was negligible. The glade she had noted nearby she knew would be less forgiving, her eyes stung as she looked towards it the sunlight lighting the world up like fire. She knew it would hurt, she didn't care anymore. She forced her legs to move towards the light as every molecule in her body screaming at her to seek shelter beneath the soil again. She came to the protective barrier and as she moved through it she began to feel something stir with the others. Fiske was trying to wake, she could feel his mind start to seek hers through her mental blocks, trying to seek a way in. She tried to force herself to move faster to put up more blocks, she felt the pressure as he tried to move them aside. Then the pressure was gone.
For a moment she thought that Fiske had given up but then she felt the emptiness. Even the faint murmurings of the others she had felt every second for the past year had gone as if the links had been sliced with a knife. She was so close to the glade now she could feel the pain on her hands as the shade became more dappled ahead and the sunlight speared down in shafts towards the ground but she stopped and sought the source of the emptiness. The others were not quietened they were gone. Where they had been in her mind she felt another barrier not of her making, strong and unbreakable ahead. She pushed against it and found no give in it, no crack through which she could squeeze. What had caused this? What had cut her off so completely?
She heard the grunt to one side, leaves moved as something big moved among the trees. She stared for what seemed like an age as the bear moved in. She remembered them out of the old wildlife magazines her brother had once brought and shared with her. A grizzly big and shagged moved slowly into the treeline. It moved as if in pain its body swaying drunkenly in the half light of the trees. She froze unsure what to do. Angel did not see the bear as a threat but could she leave it in pain, what could she do to help it. A gust of wind shook to leaves above and sent arrows of sunlight down into the darkness of the canopy. She half screamed as one speared its way pass her cheek burning her skin light molten gold. She heard the bear ahead of her. It seemed impossible that the creature could have covered the distance between them so quickly but at once it was on her knocking her deeper into the trees away from the light. She expected teeth but there were none. Only the heavy presence of the creature above her. It felt somehow wrong, not like the other animals she had encountered in her new form as if mind and body where mismatched.
Angel looked up and saw the green eyes of the bear. They were weeping blood. It was the last thing she remembered before something hit her mind like a lead weight and she slip back into the darkness of sleep.