Three massive military-style SUVs idled nearby, steam rising from their hoods in ghostly ribbons. Matte black, broad and hulking, each had three rows of seats crammed in and not nearly enough room for everyone. Spence herded Emmy into the first one, and she ended up wedged into the second row pressed against Toby, with Felix in her lap, and Rhea in Toby’s.
It seemed the rules really are different up here.
They rumbled forward, the convoy lurching onto a snow-packed road bordered by guide poles. Emmy twisted to look through the rear window, watching the plane dwindle behind them. Beyond it, the dark slash of ocean. Before them, everything else.
The town rose slowly into view on the left, a scatter of squat buildings with metal roofs. No trees. No frills. Just function and frost.
Ahead, the land opened into a gentle rise of snow-covered ground leading to the gleaming dome she’d seen from above.
The Aurora Ballroom towered overhead now, breathtaking in its bright intensity. The sun lit it from low in the sky, so its glass skin glowed gold at the edges and silver in the center. Up close, it looked even more alien — a bubble in the snow, an outpost of some other world. They drove around to the side where a short, tunnel-like entry was lit with glowing poles lining the walkway.
“This place is surreal,” Emmy said.
Felix grinned. “Wait ‘til you see inside.”
The SUVs rolled to a stop outside the tunnel-like entrance, tires crunching over packed snow. As soon as the engines shut off, the silence of the vastness outside descended. Emmy stepped out after Felix, her boots hitting the ground with a satisfying crunch. The air here tasted different. Not just clean, butclear. Like it hadn’t passed through anyone else’s lungs in weeks.
The dome loomed over them magnificently, and sunlight scattered golden patches onto the snow around them.
Spence led them in.
The tunnel entrance was wider than it’d looked, and it led to a heavily reinforced door, through an airlock, and then another heavy door before they finally stepped inside the ballroom.
Under the dome, the air felt like another world. The literature said it’s kept in the forties or sometimes fifties for events, but it felt like heaven after being outside.
Light poured in through the glass above, bouncing off the polished floor. The space was even larger than it’d looked from above. Larger than a basketball court, with curved walls, steel beams, and a wide inner rim subtly marked as a running track. Twenty laps to the mile, she remembered from the handbook.
A few gently curved benches were tucked just inside the running track perimeter, but the inner portion was empty space.
Emmy tilted her head back to stare up at the sky. The low sun slanted through the dome’s curve, all cold brilliance and blue-white depth, like standing inside a glacier.
“This is the Aurora Ballroom,” Spence said, raising his voice just enough to be heard across the group. “While we have a couple hours of daylight over the next few weeks, shifters will often come up here to enjoy the sunshine. When the outside temperatures are above ten below, we keep it around forty-five degrees. It’s never below thirty-seven up here, no matter how cold it is outside.”
“We’ll have at least one event up here,” Spence continued. “Possibly more if the aurora cooperates.”
He walked to a plain steel door at the edge of the rounded wall, and keyed in a code. “Follow me. There’s a whole ‘nother world underground.”
Chapter 19
Emmy followed, boots scuffing slightly on the transition from polished floor to sealed utilitarian stair treads. This felt military again, with industrial lighting and reinforced concrete walls.
They descended one level, Spence input another code, held his hand to a scanner, and the door opened automatically.
“You’ll be assigned a code by security later today,” Spence told the group. “We already have palm and fingerprint data on file for everyone.”
It was warmer here. Emmy had unwrapped her scarf in the ballroom, and now she unzipped her parka and pulled her hood off.
When everyone was in what was clearly a security checkpoint, Spence told them, “This floor is primarily administration and security. You’ll rarely need to come hereunless you’re summoned, in trouble, have a scheduled session in the Lupanar, or are passing through on the way to the Aurora Ballroom.”
Security looked at each person as they passed through the narrow chokepoints, checked them off, and then Spence led them to a large set of arched double doors made from blackened oak and banded in iron, completely out of place in the industrial space. He pushed one of the huge doors open with a heavy creak.
“The Lupanar.”
They stepped inside, and Emmy’s breath caught.
The dungeon was dimly lit by wrought-iron sconces with low, flickering bulbs that mimicked torchlight. The floor appeared to be real stone, uneven in places, as if in some ancient castle. Iron rings were set into the stone walls and floors, some thick as her wrist. Chains dangled. Devices loomed in corners — St. Andrew’s crosses shaped to resemble medieval racks, benches that could’ve been altars, cages, wheels, pillories. All of it looked like it’d come from a sixteenth-century torture prison.
But the deeper she looked, the more she could see the modern touches: adjustable platforms disguised in gothic wood, cleverly hidden sanitation lines, gear with vampire-strength restraints dyed to look like rusted iron.
