CHAPTER THIRTEEN
~ Kimber ~
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Atlantic Coast
Buenos Aireswasnot a village as I had imagined.
It wasn’t even the size of S’Kir.
The only word that came to mind wasmassive.
The scale of everything was ten times or more than that of my city. Buildings of gray and red stone decorated and detailed as our own at home, but they were, well, thick. The elegant architecture of our domes and glass was nowhere to be found here.
These buildings were built to withstandeverything—fire, floods, bombs, guns, time itself.
There were frighteningly tall buildings, apartments where the humans lived.
We had apartments, of course. Not everyone wanted to live in a house or out of the cities. It was common for younger people to live in apartments. Even some of the higher apartments in my old building were large and spacious for those who wanted to be nearer to people.
These were enormous—tall monstrosities that added nothing to the world. They were utilitarian, nothing butstablesfor human families.
Slick glass buildings rose in one-quarter of the city, proclaiming wealth, business, no-nonsense. There were small cities of the dead within the limits of the city, parks, pedestrians, roads filled with cars, and monuments to movements and wars.
I stared at the city ahead of me. It was both beautiful and dreadful at the same time.
There was no way to exact my revenge on this place. There were too many innocents, too many people just living and going about life. There were too many humans for one hybrid druid vampire to take on.
The overwhelming size of this world started to crash down on me. The distance I had covered from the stronghold to this place was the entire distance of S’Kir from Summer Landing to Cold Bay. And there was so much more to go. S’Kir was a world of water and islands, and this was a world of land and more land. The stronghold sat in the mountains at the edge of an ocean, and this city sat on the edge of another ocean. There were plains and plateaus and…
It was too much. Far too much.
I abandoned the vehicle where there were other abandoned vehicles on the side of the road. I didn’t want to take the chance that someone would take it if I wanted it back, so I pulled the keys out.
With no direction in mind, I headed for the most obvious thing I had seen while in the vehicle—a massive obelisk in the middle of one of the widest roads I had ever seen. Humans were everywhere, and I had the feeling they wouldn’t have welcomed my weapons. Thankfully, it was the cool season here, so my coat was not out of place.
My crash was coming.
I had murdered thousands of people on my trek here. All of them guilty of the same crime. My grief was deep, but my reason ran deeper.
I was not my blooded father.
I clearly wasn’t my blooded mother, either, at this point.
Like most things in my life, it seemed I was a perverse mix of the two.
The thought did nothing for me.
Stuffing my hands in the pockets of my coat, I walked down the wide street. A sign told me the road's name wasAvenida 9 de Julio, and there were stores. Not stores like I knew with small displays, and the goods were made to order.
No, these stores were huge, with glass facades and packed with goods and clothes. One had an entire stock of small containers that declared they were good for skin or wrinkles or dark spots. Was that really a concern? Something so vain as worrying about a dark spot on the skin or that your eyes looked tired. A good night’s sleep would solve that.
I didn’t understand it.
I didn’t understand any of this world.
Was this how Gwen had felt in our world? Distant and removed, uncomfortable with everything that went on around her and Belshazzar?
