“The Scottish ogre is calling us in at 4 AM,” Zach said, stretching his arms toward the ceiling.
“Special summons in D.C., apparently,” I added, rising from the couch.
My mother sighed. “It’s always something these days.”
“Get plenty of rest, you two,” Uncle Alan said.
I smiled again—entirely for my parents’ sake this time. They suddenly looked fragile… older than I’d ever seen them, and so much smaller than they did when addressing soldiers and coworkers at the Bureau.
I steadily lumbered down the hall to my bedroom. The mere sight of my bed was pure bliss. The weight of the day had finally taken over. I was thankful that the ache from my leg had started to quiet.
Too exhausted to change, I slid into bed in my uniform fleeces. I’d had to sleep in much less comfortable uniforms, that was for sure.
But I didn’t sleep. All I could manage was staring at the ceiling, counting the circles of my ceiling fan and listening to the nighttime hums of our residence. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the redbill’s claws wrapped around my body, saw the dark feathers looming as I tilted my head back… and all I could hear was my mother’s protest. Papers and signatures aren’t more important than human lives…
I didn’t know exactly what I’d overheard in the living room, but something didn’t feel right.
Darklight Chapter 3
Our seats vibrated as the chopper carried us over the still-sleeping territory below. The tiny window behind my head offered only dimly lit veins of highways and the deep violet and bronze of sunrise.
We’d transferred off the Bureau plane outside of D.C. and would only be in the chopper for a few more minutes. The team was in our usual circle, though somewhat cramped in the smaller aircraft, listening silently as Captain Bryce gave us the rundown. His tone was sharp—even at six o’clock in the morning.
“We’ll split into three teams once we reach our destination,” Bryce barked. “All three teams will be on the ground; Teams A and B will enter the site, and Team C will be posted outside the church. Team C—Sarah, Grayson, that’s you. If anything comes in or out of that church, it’s your problem.”
I glanced around, finding most eyes glued tensely to the chopper’s floor. Grayson’s knee was bouncing.
“Team B. Zach, Colin, Roxy, Louise, Greta. You will split into groups, enter the church from the west windows and main door, and cover the first floor.” Bryce pulled on his gloves as he walked around the circle. “You will not leave that floor unless I tell you to. Only necessary use of comms inside the site. I shouldn’t hear more than a mouse fart in my earpiece. I’ll be on the floor with you, so any chitter-chatter will answer to me—and I promise you’d prefer the redbill.”
We rarely had the captain on the ground with us. Sweat dampened my palms, and I hadn’t even heard my station’s details yet.
“Team A.” Bryce paused to clear his throat, his icy eyes glancing down momentarily. “Gina, Lyra. You two will enter through the east wall’s window. The site has multiple levels, and you will be the first to head up. Silence is golden, lassies.”
I nodded, holding Bryce’s gaze. Gina sat to my left, and I watched her hands clench.
“The main floor is somewhere around thirty-thousand square feet,” our captain continued. “We haven’t placed the target yet, so step lightly. Redbills’ sense of hearing isn’t nearly as sharp as their eyesight, which is why I’m permitting an airdrop. But don’t take anything for granted once we’re in a closed space.”
The head pilot’s voice came through our earpieces. “Three minutes to site.”
“Three minutes and fifteen seconds to drop,” Bryce replied into his comm.
Zach cracked his knuckles from across the circle.
“Once we locate our target, you know what to do.” Bryce tightened his artillery belt. “Safeties off when your little feet hit the ground. Understood?”
“Yes, Captain,” the entire crew resounded loudly.
Bryce moved to the cockpit. Our comms were silent. He’d turned them off, but I could see his lips moving rapidly as he gesticulated to the pilots.
For the short time until the drop, our eyes remained locked on the tips of our boots. No one said a word. The droning of the chopper intensified, and my stomach lurched as the craft descended. I closed my eyes. Breathe. At least my thigh was feeling much better than last night. The rest had done it a lot of good.
I glanced up briefly in the silence and caught Zach looking at me. His mouth formed a small smile. He winked.
“Line up, children,” Bryce snapped, returning from the cockpit. “Look alive, why don’t ya?”
The group bolted from their seats, the sound of our steps blending with the chopper’s hum. Gina and I locked eyes, then shoulders. We made our way to the open door. The tops of trees became clearer in the now-pale-violet morning light.
The church came into view from the doorway, just to the north. Its spire had shattered; what remained was a spike of pale gray wood pointing at the sky. The shingles were scattered about the roof, some stacked together like forgotten piles of papers. The air battered my cheeks. The thrumming of the blades above battered my eardrums.
“Thirty seconds to drop!” Bryce’s voice bit through my earpiece.
I looked over my shoulder. The teams were paired and lined up behind us, facing the exits. I braced my weapon tightly against my side.
“Ten seconds!” the captain shouted behind me.
The main doors of the church were visible below, and the chopper now hovered in place just behind the trees encircling the building. Someone dropped the two lines on each side of the doorway, and they slithered down toward the ground.
Gina reached over and gripped my arm for a split second.
“Drop, teams!”
Sucking in a breath, I crouched alongside Gina, gripping my line, and the chopper floor disappeared from beneath my feet. Weightlessness overtook me. The rushing air blurred my sight, and the friction of the line whizzing through my gloves warmed their damp fabric.
Treetops surged closer, then branches, trunks—ground—
Gina and I hit the soil in tandem. We dropped our lines and stepped away silently, unlocking the safeties on our guns and moving into position. My peripheral vision showed the other teams landing behind us and filing toward the church. The building’s walls may have been painted once, but all that remained were thin streaks of gray on the rotting wooden boards. It was taller than I’d expected, its roof reaching far above us amongst the treetops.
Gina led the way. The back window—our entrance—was at shoulder level. Pinecones crunched under my boots, so I lightened my steps.
We reached the window. Gina eyed the windowsill—no glass left, totally busted out—and swiftly lifted herself up and through the flaking wooden frame. I waited three beats and followed suit, heaving myself inside.
I landed quietly on the old floorboards. In front of me, Gina scanned the room, gun butt against her chest. The edges of the main sanctuary were entirely dark. The altar’s giant cross loomed above us from the back wall. The window we’d entered was one of two lighting the room—crisscrossed boards covered the others, save the one Zach and Roxy were crawling through on the west wall. Dust floated through the few beams of light we had.
Must and earthy mildew filled my nose. The now-distant and barely audible murmur of the chopper was the only thing I could hear besides my clipped breathing. Most of the pews were in scattered pieces, and old hymnals were strewn between them.
I followed Gina as she crept toward the altar. We knelt on either side of it, squinting through the haze. One, two, three, four… I counted my teammates as they shifted through the darkness, covering the perimeter of the sanctuary. Everyone was accounted for. Bryce’s behemoth frame stood beside one of the massive, cracked pillars. I couldn’t see his mouth moving, but I heard the gravel of his whisper in my comm: “Team B, say the word when all four corners are covered. Team A, stationary.”
Zach and Roxy scouted the west wall, and I could see Colin and Greta securing the darkness framing the main door. I glanced above, mentally repeating my next orders. You will be the first to head up.
The vaulted ceiling was so tall I couldn’t tell where the walls ended and it began.
“Team A, have you located the stairs?” Captain growled.
“Stairs near corner of altar and west wall, confirmed,” Gina whispered. My eyes darted to the narrow staircase.
“Ground floor secure,” Zach said softly in my ear.
“Right. Team A, visually secure the stairs. Then head up. If I’ve got your bearings right, there should be a balcony beyond that,” Bryce instructed.
There wasn’t much visibility up the staircase, but the next landing was clearly far up. Some of the slatted steps were cracked… some not there at all. Gina’s gaze caught mine, and she nodded to reassure me.
“Stairs clear. Light steps, Lyra,” Gina breathed over the comm, holding my eyes with hers.
“Team A, move up,” our captain grunted.
Gina instantly responded, stepping delicately as she ascended. I left several steps between us as we climbed. My eyes bounced between her feet and the steps emerging from the dark above us.
A step groaned under Gina’s left foot, and we instantly froze. She looked back at me, a warning to be careful. I nodded. Despite my care, the same step creaked under my weight, but it held.
Cobwebs latticed between the railing and the steps. I glanced at them for just a second, and I heard a step whine and then snap—crack—Gina’s right foot was falling, and she was going down with it.
I snatched the back of her belt and threw my weight back as hers pulled me forward, my muscles straining. The broken wooden step clattered on the floor below, echoing off the east wall.
“Freeze!” Bryce hissed in my ear.
Gina’s sharpened breaths were the only sounds that followed. I held on tightly to her belt; she gripped the railing, taking most of her weight off me. Her eyes closed in relief, but only briefly. She flashed a thanks to me with a glance. All remained still.
“Team A. Secure?” It was Zach.
“Secure,” Gina replied.
“Continue,” Bryce ordered.
Gina exhaled and turned back up the staircase. Shaking just slightly, I found my breath and followed her.
We covered a few more steps, accompanied by one or two more creaks but no more collapses, and found ourselves entering what looked like an attic—not a balcony. There were scattered wooden pillars, piles of old furniture, and a window in the wall far ahead. Another glowed behind us. The windows’ light haloed above us from the opposite ends of the room, relieving the gloom just a little. We moved off the stairs and carefully tested the wooden floor with our feet.
“Next floor confirmed, Captain,” Gina said quietly on her comm. “Not exactly a balcony. It’s an attic. Moving forward.”
Something pale moved in the corner of my eye, and I jumped. The tip of Gina’s gun darted toward it. We halted. It didn’t move again. I squinted, making out a sheet draped on an old table. Inches of dust covered every surface. It fluttered again in some unseen draft.
I nodded to Gina to move forward. False alarm.
We silently passed other tables and chairs, all enveloped in cobwebs. The attic was dead quiet. We peered around, our forms casting even more shadows in the extending darkness.
“Western stairwell visually confirmed,” Zach whispered.
“Zach, Roxy, take the stairs. Hopefully you can confirm a balcony,” Bryce said.
Gina and I planted our feet and held steady. The room was motionless, soundless. If there was a redbill here, it was the quietest I’d ever encountered, that was for sure.
Our eyes continued scanning the dark. I reached up and slowly picked a spiderweb off my chin.
“Balcony confirmed,” Zach murmured over the comm. “No movement.”
Gina stepped forward, and I looked behind us for any stirring. Still nothing.
She signaled me with her hand, and I followed her deeper into the thick beams and abandoned furniture.
Thwap, thwap.
The sound tore through the silence. Gina and I spun toward it. I planted my heels to secure my stance, the slick metal of the trigger under my finger.
A sudden, bright thrashing and whirling engulfed Gina’s head. I jerked back and adjusted my aim, trying to get a bead on the cloud flailing above Gina’s shoulders—until I heard a quick, flustered cooing.
“Pigeon,” Gina gasped. She swatted at the bird, and it tumbled down to the wooden floor then bobbed off, its feathers mussed, vanishing into the gloom.
I pulled the tip of my weapon back up and away from my teammate, my hand instinctively pressing against my breastbone. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. Holy hell…
The two of us stayed there for a moment, catching our breath. In the resumed quiet, we peered around for any other movement.
Zach spoke again. “Moving to western balcony.”
After scouting the rest of the room, Gina gestured toward the staircase. “Attic clear,” she whispered into her comm.
I watched my feet as I followed her, to avoid kicking a table leg or brushing any dust-choked sheets. I glanced around in search of the staircase we’d come up, when Gina stopped abruptly. I nearly walked into her and quickly side-stepped. Then I saw why she’d stopped.
A figure stood directly before the staircase, blocking our only way out.
As I stared, I realized I could barely call it a figure—it was more a blanket of obscurity. No clear shape to the body. An empty space of jet black, only finding form against the slightly subtler grays of the room it stood in.
My eyes strained to trace the outlines of the figure’s shadowed face.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice reverberating through the attic, seeming to fill every jagged crack and crevice.
Silence. Stillness.
That was the only response from the living shadow in front of us.
The hair on the back of my neck rose as I felt a chill, thick and contagious. It spread down my spine, gliding through my extremities with a frigid wake. Still, I gave a small wave, beckoning Gina to follow me forward.
Thoughts tumbled through my mind. It’s not a redbill. That much is obvious. And we’re highly trained. If it’s a squatter, or some psycho, we can defend ourselves.
Not to mention, this was our only way out.
Gina stayed two steps behind me as our boots crept closer to the figure and our exit point. A few feet away, I saw a face begin to take shape amidst the darkness of its boundaries. His boundaries, I realized. And his eyes… My heart froze in my chest. Something about his eyes was so familiar, yet so foreign, that I felt my brow furrow, my mind scrambling to understand. I couldn’t make out their color from here, but there was… something about them.
I felt my body tense suddenly—some primordial instinct that somehow pieced the puzzle together and hardened before my brain had a chance to do the same.
Then his hands were on me.
And despite his impossible speed, I felt it happen in slow motion. Like an almost-lucid dream, one where I was a full participant but couldn’t respond fast enough. My gun clattered to the ground, the sound echoing off the thick, wood-slatted floor. My comm was ripped from my ear and my body was heaved over his shoulder.
In the time it took me to gasp, he crossed the room. So light and fast it felt like we were floating, then, without warning, angling upward. I saw it in a blur—the window. He was scaling the wall to the window. I regained my voice, shrieking frantically into the attic space, and heard Gina’s voice yelling back. A gunshot rang out, but the man didn’t falter. My screams grew stronger as Gina’s grew farther away, and I was plunged into empty space with only the body beneath me to cling to.
We were freefalling. As we plunged toward the ground, he made a sound—a sharp, guttural growl—and a huge shape appeared out of nowhere.
Broad w
ings and thin, dangling legs. An extended beak that had featured in my nightmares a few hours before. A redbill.
It swooped under us, catching us with a heavy shudder as the man straddled it.
What is happening?
I didn’t have time to ask myself anything beyond that. To think. To wonder. I barely even had time to breathe. Because a moment later, the redbill accelerated to cut through the air like a torpedo. I knew redbills could fly fast. But this—this was beyond comprehension.
The world screamed by in a blur, too fast and jumbled to be anything but a mix of faint colors and the meshing of space and time. My helmet flew off my head, and I gasped, choking on the wind. I felt the skin on my face being pulled backward. My eyes burned. And I clutched his cloak with everything I had.
Until, at some point, I realized we’d slowed. We weren’t clipping through space anymore. I blinked, willing my dry eyes to moisten enough to function. To figure out where we were and what was happening. The surrounding shapes took form just as the redbill landed with a brain-rattling jolt.
Cliff, I grasped. We’re on a cliff. My senses darted in every direction, trying to take everything in. Gray skies splayed out in front of me. Clouds rolled and tumbled in the sky, churning—matching how my stomach felt, tossing and twisting inside me. I heard the roaring of waves as they crashed into the cliff, salt spray cutting up into the air.
The man slid gracefully off the bird. The wind billowed through his dark cloak, causing it to flare behind him. He turned to me, and I remembered what I’d pieced together before he’d grabbed me. Before the power and momentum and speed swept all thoughts from my brain. My eyes flew to his face. To his eyes. Wondering if what my instincts had jumped to in the milliseconds before he snatched me could possibly be correct.
The wind swept through his dark hair, and strands of it skated across the pale, yet strangely shadowed flesh of his forehead. I gasped as my gaze caught his once more. I could see his eyes better now that we were free from the dimness of the church attic. Yes, they were blue. But not just blue. They were an icy, crystalline blue that seemed to shift and melt in his very irises, tinges of silver and gray surfacing with them. Like glacial waters, haunting and bottomless.
A Shade of Vampire 79: A Game of Death Page 31