Alone in the Darkness

by W. J. May

  Simon blinked. Whatever she was going to say, he hadn’t been expecting that.

  She wiped a new set of tears coursing down her cheeks.

  “Jake?” he repeated, cocking his head curiously to the side. “What about Jake?”

  A look of panic flashed through her eyes, but it cooled quickly into an equally questioning stare. “You guys didn’t find him, right? I accidentally woke up Tristan—he told me. Jake’s still out there? You weren’t able to find anything?”

  Simon shook his head quickly, dropping his eyes to the frosty ground.

  Get it together, Simon! ‘What about Jake?’ Really?! Why the hell do you think she’s talking about Jake?!

  “No, we weren’t,” he said quietly. Her hands came up to her mouth and he was quick to reassure her, taking them in his own and kissing each finger. “But we will. Jason’s on the case now. It’s only a matter of time before he finds him.”

  Too true. Too true.

  Beth pulled in a shaky breath and forced herself to nod. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. If I was missing, I’d want Jason looking for me, too.”

  Simon smiled tightly and squeezed her hands.

  The tears had nearly stopped now, and she was breathing easier. It wasn’t until a second later that she seemed to notice the cold. “What’re you doing out here?” she asked with a shiver. “It’s freezing.”

  Simon blanked. “I was...”

  Through the trees, he imagined he could hear laughter. A deep laughter that echoed through his brain, reverberating off every bone in his body.

  His breath caught in his throat, but he forced himself to smile.

  “I was just clearing my head.” Before she could find fault with that, he put his arm around her again and started leading her back to the house. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

  ODDLY, SIMON HAD A hard time trying to get Beth to stay over that night. Usually, it was an automatic assumption that she would. Jennifer kept their apartment teeming with a constant stream of random men, and Beth had long ago decided that Simon’s house would be her refuge. He was more than happy to have her, and between all the nights she’d been there, and the rather illicit list of activities they’d used to fill those nights, it sometimes felt like the two of them were living together.

  At first she’d claimed to be too stressed out about work and Jacob, but in the end she’d curled up in his bed wearing one of his t-shirts as a nightgown. Simon had watched her sleep until the early hours of the morning, at which point he’d passed out himself.

  It wasn’t until he heard her creeping out the window the next morning that he remembered both he and Tristan were expecting company.

  “Hey,” he called softy, propping himself up against the headboard as she paused with one foot already in the tree outside, “you can use the door, you know.”

  She shook her head with a little smile. “Keene will be here any second. The last thing I want is for him to ask me what I was doing at your house at six-thirty in the morning.”

  “Oh, shit...Keene.” Simon ran his fingers down over his face. “I completely forgot.”

  She flashed him another smile and swung herself through the window. “Have fun. Tell him hello for me.”

  “Yeah,” Simon chuckled ironically. “I’ll be sure do to that.”

  “Love you, babe.”

  Simon was about to say ‘I love you’ back, but he called out to her softly instead. “Beth?”

  She poked her head back through the window. “Yeah? What? Did I forget something?”

  He gazed at her for a moment, flushed with color and backlit by the morning sun, and his face softened tenderly. “Are you sure you’re alright? After...after yesterday?”

  For a second, her skin went rather pale. The fits of tears had come and gone as the night progressed, but Simon hadn’t made much progress as to their cause besides the fact that she was worried about Jacob. It made perfect sense, of course. Jacob and Beth had grown almost as close as she and Tristan over the last few months, and it was natural she would be concerned.

  Then again, their circle of friends had a habit of putting themselves in constant danger. They had been through worse than this before...

  She faltered for only a second, then forced a bright smile. “Yeah, I’m fine.” There was the sound of a car door, and she glanced beneath here. “Keene’s here. Gotta run.”

  Before Simon could even tell her he loved her, she was gone.

  He lay in bed another moment, thinking everything over with a little frown, when there was a sudden banging on the other side of his door and he leapt with a start.

  “You’d better be up, Kerrigan,” Tristan called. “Keene’s here.”

  Simon’s eyes snapped shut with a grimace and he threw himself out of bed. “I’m coming, I’m coming...”

  Five minutes late, the obligatory morning coffee had been disbursed and the three of them were sitting around the kitchen table, looking down at an unopened file. It was a rather familiar scene. Keene was no replacement for Jason, of course, but over the last year he’d proven himself to be a worthy handler for the two boys. One who already bordered on being a friend.

  “The mission is simple,” he said directly, sliding the file across the table “The two of you are to track down a group of known dissenters and bring in their leader for questioning.”

  Simon caught the file, and passed it automatically to Tristan.

  “Any ink?”

  Keene nodded. “Yes. They’re all believed to have tatùs. That’s why the mission perimeters have you going in at night. With any luck, you can get it and grab the guy without anyone being the wiser until the morning.”

  “It’s close,” Tristan murmured, glancing quickly through the file.

  “Yes,” Keene replied. “Only an hour outside London. Apparently, the lot of them are staying in an old monastery. It’s where they have their meetings.”

  Close was good. In fact, close was perfect.

  Simon’s face lit up with excitement. “So this could be over in less than a day. We grab him and bring him back to headquarters? That’s it?”

  Keene chuckled quietly as Tristan continued reading. “Yes, Jason told me about your request for a little time off. Finish this assignment quickly, and I’ll make sure it’s at least a week until you have another.”

  A week! It was even better than Simon had hoped!

  “Did you hear that?” He turned to Tristan excitedly. “Seven days back in London. Seven days for us to...”

  He trailed off quickly at the look on Tristan’s face. Something was wrong. He wasn’t sure what it was or what it meant, but something was definitely wrong.

  “Is something wrong?” Keene had seen the look, too, and lowered his coffee with a concerned frown. He’d been around Tristan long enough now to read his expressions.

  Simon kicked Tristan under the table and he looked up with a start, clearing his face as best he could as he handed the file to Simon. With a feeling of great anticipation, Simon opened it up and flipped to the last page.

  Then his heart stopped beating.

  He knew that face. He knew that man. The last time he’d seen him had been that fateful night back in Munich. The night where his entire life had changed forever.

  Patrick Fodder.

  Chapter 10

  “WHY THE HELL DIDN’T you tell him?”

  As if Simon couldn’t tell he was angry just from his tone Tristan swept his arm across the kitchen counter, sending their empty coffee mugs crashing to the floor. Keene had left just a minute or two before. Tristan had kept it together until the second the door closed. But now that the two of them were alone, Tristan wanted answers. And he apparently wanted them now.

  “Why didn’t you tell him those were the men who attacked us in Munich?”

  Simon held up his hands peaceably, stepping casually to the side so that the counter in the middle of the room was a barrier between them. There had been other types of outbursts over the last few months as T
ristan confronted Simon on more and more things that he couldn’t bring himself to explain. The aftermath was getting more difficult as well.

  “Can you just calm down—”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down, Simon!” Tristan shot back. “Now I know the signal: tap twice on the side of the paper means to keep your mouth shut. I did that, alright? I didn’t say a thing. But now you have to tell me why. Why not tell him? What are you hiding?”

  Simon took a deep breath as he tried his best to come up with a rational argument.

  The man in question had crept into their apartment in the dead of night. Drugged them when they were already almost blacked out from blood loss. Passed them around a room and beat them. Threatened to cut Tristan’s throat unless Simon gave him whatever information they’d collected on the brainwashing device. Long story short, he could understand Tristan’s anger. It was justified.

  Then again...he could understand their side of it, too.

  “Tristan, you remember what Fodder said that night? He was never actually going to hurt us.” He backtracked quickly at the look of fury that darkened Tristan’s face. “Okay, okay! He was never actually going to kill us.”

  Tristan threw up his hands, pacing away in frustration. “Oh, my mistake. What a bloody saint.”

  “I’m just saying, he had a good reason to do what he did.”

  At this, Tristan turned around slowly. His blue eyes dilated dangerously as they pierced Simon with a critical stare. “He had good reason?”

  Every instinct warned Simon to pull back, but he pushed forward.

  “They wanted the device to rectify corruption within the Privy Council. They’re unsatisfied with the PC just like we are, Tris. No wonder they want him brought in and silenced so bad—”

  “Are you kidding me right now?!” Tristan exclaimed. “I don’t care how sympathetic to their cause you might feel, Simon. You work for THIS side. Start acting like it. I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation...” He walked away a few steps, trying to collect his thoughts. When he came back there was not an ounce of compromise on his face. “The man held a knife to my throat. Damn straight I’m going to bring him in to be held accountable.” His eyes leveled with Simon’s as a charged silence hung in the air. “Now are you going to have my back, or what?”

  A wall came up. Permanent. Unmovable. As plain as the eye could see.

  Both boys chose not to look.

  “Of course I am.” Simon bowed his head submissively. “Always.”

  Tristan measured his expression for another second before turning abruptly on his heel and going upstairs to pack. Simon stayed behind in the kitchen, feeling rather shaken. Thank bloody goodness the PC didn’t have their place bugged. Not that it mattered.

  As loud as they’d screamed at each other before, as many times as they’d actually come to blows, things had never gone this far. The pressure that had been slowly mounting for the last two years, the same pressure they both deliberately ignored, pressed suddenly heavy on Simon’s chest, making it hard to breathe.

  It wasn’t until Tristan had almost reached the landing that Simon called out to him once more. “We don’t keep secrets—you and I.”

  He didn’t know what made him say it. Perhaps it was some desperate grasp at normalcy. A belated attempt to salvage whatever he could—like a drowning man clutching a life preserver in the middle of a turgid sea. Whatever it was, it died in the air between them.

  “Right,” Tristan laughed darkly. “We don’t keep secrets.”

  Simon stayed down in the kitchen for a long time. Long enough to hear Tristan start and finish a phone call with Mary, explaining that he’d be home in just a day or two, asking that she kiss the baby. Long enough for all their unsuspecting neighbors to wake up, start their morning coffee, and stroll down their long driveways to collect the morning paper. So long that when Simon glanced up to see the clock was coming up on eleven, he jumped in shock.

  Stripped of Tristan’s tatù, he made much more noise than usual as he bounded up the stairs to begin getting ready himself. After Keene’s initial debriefing, he’d called in half a dozen or so men who stood in a line in front of Simon—each offering their ink. It was a pre-mission ritual that had been established some time in their second month. While not everyone had either the courage or the skill to go out in the field themselves, they did at least have the fortitude to offer for their ability to be used by those who could.

  Depending on where he and Tristan were going and what they were supposed to do, Simon had tried out a variety of different tatùs. Telekinesis, telepathy, temperature regulation, the ability to breathe underwater—which had been a particularly dark mission for Tristan, and one that both boys had agreed never to talk about.

  You name it, Simon had tried it. Today, he had gone for a basic strength tatù. Something powerful enough to overcome most any obstacle that came up against them.

  It was one that he’d used many times, and he enjoyed it very much. The only downside was that he no longer possessed Tristan’s enhanced agility and senses. Instead of hearing everything going on around him for five city blocks, he was now limited to the upstairs.

  Coincidentally, it was also the only time that Beth was able to sneak up on him.

  “Shit!” Simon clutched his chest as he fell back into the door. She was perched in the center of his bed, grimacing up at him apologetically. “You scared me.” The grimace turned into a quick grin.

  “Don’t have Tris’ ink?” she quipped.

  He chuckled softly as he peeled himself off the door to join her. “Nope. Super strength. Tatù of the day.”

  “Oh...” Her face lit up with a passing nostalgic smile. “I remember having a lot of fun with that one.”

  Simon bowed his head with a grinning blush. “Yeah, me too.” Then he looked up with a bit of a frown. “What are you doing back here so soon? I thought you had to train with Jen.”

  “I do,” she said quickly. Then she held up a bra with a blush of her own. “Turns out I forgot something after all.”

  He chuckled again as she got to her feet and headed towards the door. Without an impending visit from mission command, there was no longer a need to sneak out the window.

  But she paused suddenly on the way out, shoulders hunching indecisively as she debated whether or not to continue. After a second of deliberation, she turned back around.

  “Simon, I didn’t mean to, but... I heard what you said to Tristan.”

  Simon’s spine stiffened as he watched her carefully from the bed, his face not giving anything away as he searched her eyes for any detail, any clue as to what she was thinking.

  Much to his surprise, she seemed to be doing the exact same thing to him.

  “Tristan’s...not wrong, you know,” she continued carefully. “We always talk about making changes, things that we’d like to see happen. But that’s within the PC. Not outside of it.”

  The room fell into a heavy silence.

  After waiting nervously for a reaction that never came she tried again, bowing her head slightly to catch Simon’s eye. “Right, Simon?”

  He stared at her for a moment, and felt another wall come up. “Right.” His face melted into a reassuring smile, and he got to his feet to see her out. She tilted up her chin automatically as he joined her, and the two of them shared a long kiss. When they pulled away, he flashed her a teasing grin. “I just like giving Tris a hard time. It’s good for him.”

  She laughed breathlessly, more relieved than she was letting on. Then, after stretching up on her toes for another quick kiss, she bounded down the stairs, off to meet Jen in the Oratory.

  Simon stared after her for a moment before pressing the door firmly shut.

  So many questions. So many evasions. So many walls.

  At this point, he could only hope that he was on the side that was going to be the winning one. The right one, maybe? He shrugged. At this point he had no idea what the right one was.

  THE PLAN KEENE AN
D the Privy Council had laid out to catch Fodder was contingent upon the fact that none of the targets had any idea who Tristan and Simon were. Their band of renegades, Simon recalled Fodder calling them ‘like-minded friends’, apparently had an open door policy to those taking up the cause. Therefore, Simon and Tristan were to simply walk in through the front gates. Pretend to be Guilder students upset with the status quo. Sit through a few meetings and take as many mental notes as they could. That night, they were to break into Fodder’s room and kidnap him, smuggling him back out to the PC headquarters for interrogation.

  ...and who knows what else.

  There was just one little flaw with the plan. One that, thanks to Simon’s pointed silence, the PC could have no way of knowing.

  Fodder and his people knew exactly who Tristan and Simon were. After bashing in their faces for the better part of an hour, they’d recognize them anywhere. That meant, in order to get inside undetected, a little strategy was required.

  “We should go in tomorrow morning, just before dawn,” Tristan said. He was perched on the windowsill in their little bed and breakfast like a cat, chewing contemplatively on the end of a breadstick as he gazed down at the blueprints of the abbey.

  It had originally been designed as a monastery for a group of Catholic monks in the time of King Henry VIII. During the religious rebellions it had been emptied out and burned, the inhabitants rounded up and imprisoned for treason. A tragic ending, yes, but Fodder and his men had put the structure to good use. According to the intel gathered by the Privy Council they had renovated and fortified each and every wall, creating a miniature fortress in the sprawling English countryside near Surrey. It had been ironically zoned by the English government as land meant to be preserved for historical significance, so very little had been allowed to change.

  In a way, it was the perfect design for infiltration. Wide open courtyards, only a single guarded gate to keep away threats from the outside world. And while Simon and Tristan were sure there were other supernatural fortifications there as well, there were still too many open spots to cover all at once.