Nightfall

by Elizabeth Hartwell

  So I’m shocked when instead of charging through the night, burning the electric motor for all it’s worth, we pull up to an old metal chain-link fence with huge gaps in the linkage. At first, I think it’s damage before I see the wire is simply worn through by rust and age.

  “We’re here,” one of the werewolves growls, shivering as the gate opens with a rusty squeal that belies its age. “Hate this fucking place.”

  I’d like to make a smartass comment. I’m sure at this point, Lance would have talked his way into being thrown out of the truck, but I’m bound and gagged in a very unique position. The werewolves must know something about my powers because they’ve tied my wrists just underneath my chin, palms facing my throat and head.

  The message is very clear. Go ahead, try and use whatever powers you’re developing. Your brain is going to be the first thing you’ll be pulverizing.

  Once the gate’s open, we pull through, pausing on the other side for the gate to be closed before continuing. I see two concrete pillars that look like they used to hold a sign between them, I’d guess wood or metal from the slots in the side that look just about the right size to hold a pretty decent placard. I can’t tell which, but it doesn’t matter. A minute later, the truck comes to a stop, and I see our destination . . . and my host.

  “Come now, you can take the gag off him,” Lucian Tsavo says as he emerges from the twin steel doors that rise out of the scrubby turf. It looks like the entrance to a storm shelter, the kind that I remember hiding in with Cerena, Lance, and Tym when we were making our way to Solace. Except these are thicker, so thick that I doubt anything but a werewolf, or maybe a pissed off Tym, could open them.

  Lucian looks me over, then smirks as he mockingly chides his men. “I’d understand it if you’d captured the Trickster, but Brandon’s one of us . . . sort of.”

  One of the werewolves with me reaches back and unties my gag, although nobody’s done a damn thing about my hands or feet. Still, it feels better to be able to breathe a little more freely. “I’m not one of you, fur face.”

  “Fur face? That’s an insult I haven’t heard before,” Lucian says, rolling his eyes. “You’ve been hanging out with those fools for too long, Brandon. Come on in, visit my . . . vacation home.”

  The werewolves lift me out of the truck, carrying me down a long flight of steps and into a bunker that’s obviously from before the war. Thick concrete and steel walls surround me on all sides of the wide corridor, which is deep underground.

  We pass what looks like living quarters, but there’s something about their design that tells me this isn’t the way they originally came. If I had to fathom a guess, I’d say that the rooms are converted offices with old wire-reinforced glass filling the frames, giving me a view of old wooden bunk beds that look out of place, stacked four or more per room.

  They carry me to a large room that obviously once held vehicles of some kind or another, setting me in a chair that’s chained to the floor before doing the same to me. Once I’m securely trussed, Lucian tosses his head and my ‘escorts’ turn, leaving the two of us alone.

  “I see that I sent out twenty and only five returned,” Lucian says, the false joviality dropping from his voice. “You and your friends put up a good fight. Those were twenty of my best. They’ve taken out entire vampire covens without even getting a scratch on them.”

  “What am I doing here, Lucian?” I ask, not willing to reveal that other than some memories of his men holding me in the hospital in Bane, I know very little of the man outside of what Cerena, Lance, and Tym have told me. “And what did you mean, vacation home?”

  Lucian stands up and walks in a large circle, spreading his arms and turning in a tight circle. “Welcome to the Depot, home of the United States Air Force Reserve’s 253rd Civil Supply Wing. I have no fucking clue what that means. By the time my ancestors left this hole, they’d burned most of the paperwork for warmth to survive the nuclear winter.”

  “This was a bomb shelter?” I ask, and Lucian barks a harsh laugh.

  “Shelter? Fuck, no. What do you think I am, one of those stuck up Selunian Hunters with their pricks in the air and no fucking clue in their heads? No, this hole was a storage area for what was then called Civil Defense, according to our Lord Bane. Just before the War, a group of twenty Air Force Reservists, led by a Major Justin Tsavo . . . deemed so unimportant that even the government didn’t require them for that last suicidal war, but somehow having the keys to this depot, decided to ride out the war as best they could here. By some stroke of missile defense, poor targeting, or just plain weird fucking luck, this particular area wasn’t turned into nuclear glass during the war, and after a few months, when certain supplies started to run low, they opened up. Of course, you can guess things weren’t all that nice.”

  “I suspect not.”

  Lucian laughs again, almost amused by my sarcasm. “No . . . what these twenty Reservists found was a desperate, blackened landscape. Poisoned land, dying plants and animals, the few survivors fighting for anything they could find, sick . . . it truly was hell on Earth.”

  “Oh, and things look so much better now?” I sneer. “And don’t tell me about hell, considering whom you serve.”

  Lucian shrugs, unconcerned with my judgment. “Tsavo and his reservists tried to help, brought in a few other survivors, machines, used what they had here to filter and hunker down, only going out in their chemical suits . . . but it didn’t matter. Two years after the bombs dropped, the first cases of cancer started, and those in here started dying. They couldn’t filter everything, you see. No matter how much they passed the water through the filtration systems they had, or their air, or used grow lights to try and produce hydroponic gardens, they couldn’t get everything. Instead, they had to watch as their friends, the people they’d taken in and come to love . . . died.”

  “It was hard all around,” I reply, unmoved by his story. It’s not that it’s not tragically heroic. It’s that I know everyone who is alive today can trace their roots back to some situation like this. Trying to tug at my heartstrings with his own story certainly isn’t going to sway me. Besides, look what he’s done with his story. “Apparently, that’s when the gods stepped in.”

  Lucian barks another laugh. “Ah, yes, the gods. Most of whom picked the pretty ones, the easy ones. What good was Sulis doing by fucking shelter dwellers buried a quarter-mile underground and living in sealed environments with billion-dollar systems, perfect recycling, and all the bells and whistles? No, Brandon, it was Bane who saved us. He appeared here, in this very room, and made an offer to the survivors. Life.”

  “Life . . . as half-human monsters,” I growl back. “Ones in serious need of a shave.”

  Lucian snorts, looking around the room as if he’s in a holy place. Maybe to him, he is. “You know nothing. Can you imagine the pain, the agony each of the men in the shelter felt? Because you see, Bane’s gift could only be passed in a . . . primal way. Take him as your master, and you would have his gift. For the women, of course, it was easy. They were built for it and carried his seed to the next generation, the first full generation of werewolves. But the men—”

  The realization hits me, and I can’t help it, I laugh hard at what he’s saying. “So you’re so proud over the fact that these men let a god literally make them his bitches? How have we been scared of you all this time?”

  Lucian growls, hair starting to grow on his face as his self-control slips and his animalistic side comes out. “Shut your mouth, you insolent pup. Justin’s diary was preserved and passed down from father to son, alpha to alpha. I have personally read the pain in his words, in his voice . . . and the pride he felt when our Lord put the trust of the pack in his hands. He bore the pain, took the mark, and now, that responsibility rests in my hands.”

  “Big fucking deal. You know, if you’re anything like your ancestor, you’d love to meet my new friend, Tym. He’s got a cock that’ll leave you on your knees and offering yourself to him in about two sec
onds flat,” I tease. “You’re just another generational prince, all trying to live up to some fucking image in your mind instead of making the most of your time on the planet to make the Scorched Earth a better place.”

  “I fought for my Alpha status,” Tsavo retorts. “What, you think my father had only one son? He had five, by three different women. Before I became Alpha, I tasted all their blood.”

  Great . . . as if this guy could get any more psycho. “So what the fuck do you want with me?”

  Lucian grabs another chair that’s against the wall and sits down, looking at me with a mix of contempt, anger, and wry amusement. “You know how many decades of planning you ruined by turning away from our Lord? How many lives you’ve affected? We watched over you, Brandon. Only the Alphas knew, but they made sure you were left untouched, ready to ripen and to give yourself over to our Lord the way we did, but even more so. To be given the greatest gift of any mortal . . . to become the creator of a living god.”

  “Yeah, real easy life you gave me. Oh, and I loved being held prisoner in the hospital. So I could what, become the burned-out husk? To be harvested, left for dead or a slave?”

  Lucian snorts sarcastically. “You know exactly what he promised. Oh, don’t look so surprised. He talks with me in my dreams, same as he does for you. And what our Lord promises me is great indeed. The left-hand seat when Bane ascends to the Earth again . . . and you’ve nearly ruined it.”

  “Nearly?” I ask, and Lucian smirks.

  “Nearly. But it doesn’t matter. You can still serve our Lord. Mindless perhaps, a mere automaton, but a servant, nonetheless. Once I’m done with you, Brandon, you won’t exist any longer. Only Bane will exist.”

  Lucian turns and starts to walk away, pausing at the door. “When the moon rises, we’ll begin. I’d use these hours to prepare yourself.”

  Chapter 13

  Tym

  “What the hell is that?”

  Lance hands me the binoculars, and I look through them down to the concrete building that we found out here in seemingly the middle of fucking nowhere. Following the truck that took Brandon wasn’t a very hard thing to do. The tracks through the dirt were clear for most of the trip, and they made only one turn onto an old road that seemed simultaneously well-maintained and abandoned.

  It was, in fact, that turn and subsequent bump that woke me up, and I’d cut my legs free before we came to a stop outside the old wire fence, hiding the truck as best we could in a clump of trees. Circling around, staying low, we’re now on a hill overlooking huge double steel doors about two hundred yards away, with three werewolves standing guard outside in their human form while two others start preparing something in the middle of the cleared space in front of the doors.

  “I don’t know,” I murmur, handing the binoculars to Cerena. “You?”

  Cerena watches the proceedings for a little bit, then hands the glasses back to Lance. Sliding down the small hillock we’re behind, she returns to the single bag that we’ve brought with us, waving me down with her. “Yes?”

  “It’s an old military bunker. I recognize the symbol welded on the door,” Cerena whispers, opening the bag and taking out her water bottle. She takes a sip and holds it out to me. I nod, swallowing a mouthful gratefully. Every time I go into berserk mode, I come out of it hungry and parched. I’ve already drained my water bottle and still could drink another gallon of water if it was available.

  But I make do and hand the bottle back to Cerena only mostly drained. “What’s the symbol?”

  “United States Air Force,” Cerena says, putting the bottle away. “I’m surprised it’s there, honestly. It must be a new addition, post-War or something, because if I remember what they taught me in the Hunter Academy properly, the Air Force would only paint doors like that. I don’t know what that means, if this is special to the werewolves or if it was someone else who put it up there.”

  “It’s been there awhile,” I reply, thinking back over what I saw. “The metal was maintained but worn down. I could see the edges of the welds, and they were smooth as glass. That doesn’t come without a lot of cleaning.”

  Cerena hums, smiling a little. “Didn’t know you had better eyes than me. Is Lance just as sharp?”

  “Sharper,” I whisper, glancing back over my shoulder up the hill at him. “Why do you think I let him play with the guns?”

  “I heard that,” Lance whispers back, grinning. “And I wouldn’t trust you with a rifle even if all we needed was to hit the broadside of a barn.”

  I flip him the bird and Lance grins, turning back around to keep his eyes on the clearing. Leaning in close to Cerena, I lower my voice some more. “What do you think they’re doing over there?”

  “I don’t know . . . but I don’t have a good feeling about it,” I admit. “This whole thing seems wrong.”

  “How?”

  I look around, then back at Cerena. “We’re still in Solace’s realm of influence, yes?”

  “Somewhat. They hauled ass toward Bane pretty hard, honestly. You could call this the no-man’s land between the two cities, honestly.”

  That’s what I thought. Still, the questions remain. “I know the Hunters send patrols through areas like this. And merchant caravans and more. Why is it that nobody knows about this place?”

  “Perhaps the werewolves don’t like talking about it?” Cerena asks.

  “Or it could be dark magic,” I murmur, shivering. “Then again, I haven’t had good feelings for most of the afternoon.”

  “How is it?” Cerena asks quietly, focusing on the immediate problem. “Your instincts?”

  “I’m scared,” I admit just as quietly. “I know I went berserk at the last attack. There’s a gap in my memory, and considering that Lance had to net me into the back of the truck, I had to have been pretty far out. And now we’re getting ready to assault a werewolf bunker.”

  “And you’re scared.”

  I nod, and Cerena takes my hands and kisses my forehead softly. “Cerena, I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can,” she says quietly. “You’re honest in being afraid. That’s better than three-quarters of the men I’ve met in my life, including the Hunters. Half the reason I wanted to go solo is that I couldn’t stand the preening prima donnas who would never admit to weakness or fear. Because that fear lives in all of us, Tym. Every beating heart, every soul that exists on this planet. The thing we have to ask is, what do we do with the fear?”

  “It causes me to lose control,” I answer, and Cerena smiles.

  “No, it turns you into a primal force that strikes fear into your enemies. Our enemies. What you need to do is trust me.”

  I see nothing but total surety in her eyes, and I reach up, cupping her face. “Cerena, nobody has ever trusted that side of me. I don’t even trust that side of me.”

  Cerena leans in and kisses my lips gently. “Well, I do. And if you don’t trust yourself, trust me. Because this isn’t some ambush, some out of nowhere scramble. Here, you’re going to be able to be on the attack, and it’s on me to deploy you, position you were you can inflict all the damage you need to without endangering me or Lance. We’ll make sure to stop you before you can hurt us.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Cerena nods. “I’m a hundred percent sure. Tym, you’ve never had a team. Well, this . . . this is a team. More than that, we’re family. And we’re going to go rescue Brandon.”

  “If this is a family, what role is Brandon?” I ask, and at the top of the short incline, Lance chuckles.

  “Pain in the ass emo one,” Lance murmurs. “Head up his ass with a serious case of it needing to be removed, forcibly, if need be.”

  “Whatever he is, he’s ours,” Cerena says. “All of you are important. And Tym, I trust you. I trust your soul, I trust your heart, and I know when things go down, you’ll be on point and under enough control. I trust the man, not some instinct.”

  I see the surety in her eyes, and I swallow, nodding. If she can believe in me, I
can believe in myself through her. Because I trust Cerena with everything. “Okay . . . let me prepare, and when it’s time to save Brandon, I’ll be there for you guys. No matter what.”

  “Good . . . now here’s the plan.”

  Chapter 14

  Cerena

  Even though there’s a plan, we have to move quickly. The longer we wait, the more I know we give up the advantage. While I’ve been trained my entire life to fight in the dark, the facts in this fight are simple.

  Humans . . . normal, everyday humans, that is, are sight dependent creatures. We evolved in a world where our sight was our primary means of self-defense. With our binocular sight, we were able to determine depth, distance . . . the things necessary to avoid a predator’s claw, or later on, to strike back ourselves. It’s that sight that allowed us to develop the ability to throw, to build upon the world in our own way.

  Every other sense, from hearing to smell to taste to touch, has been secondary to sight. They’ve all served their role in defending the fragile, hairless monkeys that we were and still are. But we’re not bats, and human hearing can be tricked more easily than sight.

  We’re not the big cats. Smell cannot tell us where an enemy is coming from.

  And touch . . . well, if your enemy can already touch you, you could very well be dead already.

  So night has always been our enemy. And while I might not be a hundred percent human any longer, and I’ve trained since I was six years old in low-light fighting tactics and conditions, the very first lesson ever taught to me in a night lesson is the one that has stuck with me the longest.

  The training ground seems different now, at night. I’ve exercised on this ground for years, even before I became a Youngling. I’ve sweated on the obstacle course, played ball on the grassy area, trained unarmed combat in the dusty area, and more.