Nightfall

by Elizabeth Hartwell

  “What’s your guess?” I ask, hoping that it isn’t an injury. We don’t have the materials to treat a bleed in the brain or a serious concussion right now. “The magic?”

  “Possibly,” Lance muses. “I remember the first time I discovered my ability to stop time. I pushed myself so hard I passed out for a whole day afterward.”

  Intrigued, I ask him, “What did you stop time to see?”

  “Snuck in the back of the Sinporium,” Lance admits with a grin. “Saw things that changed my life . . . or at least until I could afford the price of entry.”

  What a Lance answer and undoubtedly, totally true. Shaking my head, I leave Lance behind, following Cerena. She’s not hard to track, her boots clomping through the decayed building and outside, where I find her leaning against the cinderblock side, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “You need something?” she asks when she hears me approach.

  “Yes. How is your back?” I ask. “You were injured in the fight.”

  “I know that . . . and I’m fine,” she says, her eyes still burning with anger. “Just a scratch. You fought hard today. Thank you.”

  “Yet you’re not happy,” I note. “You should be.”

  “Why?” Cerena hisses, pushing off the building and looking up at me. “The whole drive, I kept replaying it in my head. I had him, Tym. I had him, the motherfucker who killed my parents, and he got away.”

  “We took down most of his pack, and he’s severely injured. Lance says you limbed him? That’s not something that grows back. And he got hit by a truck. That’s gotta leave a mark and put him down for awhile.”

  “Who cares?” Cerena says, her anger overflowing as she shoves me. “Like you can understand—”

  “That you faced the demons inside you, conquered them, but they’re still there?” I reply, feeling a touch of anger myself. “Pretty condescending of you, considering what I did today.”

  “I already kissed your ass over it. What, you want a blowjob too?” Cerena growls. “Not gonna happen, Tym. Not with Lucian still out there.”

  She goes to try and shoulder her way past me, but I’m six inches taller and twice her weight. She bounces back, her eyes flaring again in anger. I know that she’s pissed at herself, at her perceived failure for not killing Lucian. But she did the right thing, and she needs to release her feelings.

  “You wanna let it out . . . let it out on me,” I whisper, sliding my left foot back. “Trust me, Huntress, you’ll find I’m still quite the challenge even without my hammers.”

  Cerena goes to throw a punch, but I grab her wrist, pulling her to me and kissing her hard. “What are you—”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to fight,” I growl in her ear as my other hand finds her ass and squeezes hard. “I said you can let it out on me.”

  Chapter 16

  Lance

  “Whoo, I couldn’t believe the wind storm last night,” I comment as I divvy out the rations for the morning. “Did you guys hear it?”

  “What wind storm?” Cerena asks as she swallows water, rubbing at her neck where a fresh bruise is starting to form. I’d be upset except for the fact that she’s smiling gently as she rubs at it. Well, that and Tym’s sporting a shiner himself.

  “How could you guys have missed it?” I ask, pretending I’m shocked. “There was all this clanging and banging, and the wind moaned constantly for what had to be a good half hour. Hey, Tym, you were outside when it was going on. You sure you didn’t feel anything?”

  Tym, bless him, blushes a little but says nothing as he starts eating his breakfast. Cerena glances at him, then laughs quietly before picking up her first ration pellet and popping it in her mouth. “I guess we were a little loud. Did we keep you up?”

  “Sweet cheeks, listening to you in that mood had me up for hours,” I joke, making Cerena laugh a little. “But I could tell by the way you were acting that I wasn’t the one to handle things. That’s why I sent tall, dark, and punching bag out instead while I got a good night’s sleep . . . well, except for Brandon snoring half the night. Seriously, did you know he sounds like a nest of bees when he’s lying on his back?”

  “I’ve never noticed,” Cerena says, shaking her head. She finishes her second ration pellet and stands up, palming the third. “Come on, we may have gotten away once, but we still need to find Sienna White. Edward might get to the girl before we do.”

  “And Sleeping Beauty?” I ask, pointing to Brandon. He’s still out, and it’s at the point that I’m concerned that his injuries are the driving source of his debilitation. “What do we do with him?”

  “Let him rest. One of you, stay in the back with him to keep an eye on him,” Cerena says. “Okay, so priorities . . . find the girl. Get me some weapons. Brandon’s spear isn’t my favorite. Get Lance some ammo. I want Gauss weapons on our side.”

  “And food . . . I could really go for a nice roast leg of beef,” I quip, grabbing two of the bags. Tym gives me a raised eyebrow, and I grin, shrugging. “What? I burn calories too, you know.”

  We head out, not at top speed in the truck, but still chewing up the miles. The problem is that we have to use the small solar panels built into the truck’s roof and hood to keep the batteries charged but also to keep Cerena’s computer juiced up too.

  That’d be easy. Cerena’s computer uses barely any energy at all, and the system’s designed to produce an excess of electricity during sunny days. So no strain at all, except that I cracked two of the solar panels yesterday when I ran the truck into Lucian Tsavo’s big werewolf ass.

  I’d do it again in a minute, but we’re restricted to about twenty miles an hour in order to provide enough energy to the system. It sucks, because that means the werewolves can move just as fast as we can even if we’ve taken away their vehicle, and it slows us down. If there’s any good side to it, the slower speed makes for a much smoother ride than the bouncing, careening escape we did yesterday.

  Still, sitting in the back and making sure Brandon doesn’t get jolted around too much isn’t very comfortable, especially as we leave the broken road and start traveling cross-country.

  “My ass is going to be so bruised when we stop for lunch,” I gripe as Cerena bounces us over a small rock while avoiding a larger one. “You’d think we could smooth all this out.”

  “Before the war, a lot of areas were smoothed out,” Cerena says. “We studied some pre-War history in the Academy. Did you know there were nearly four million miles of roads in the old United States?”

  “Four million?” I ask, impressed. “Could have gotten anywhere in style.”

  “Yeah, well, a lot of Americans didn’t like it,” Cerena tosses over her shoulder. “They thought it was wrecking nature and that the planet couldn’t recover.”

  Looking at the Scorched Earth around us, I can’t help but laugh. “I think excessive roads were the least of their problems.”

  “I’m sure that—” Tym says, but I never hear the rest of his sentence.

  “My boy.”

  In a flash, I’m back in the field with the huge tree, Loki sitting in the same place he was before. He looks different, though, his casual dark green clothing replaced with a breast plate and armor that covers most of his upper body and shoulders. His pants are covered in small plates of armor as well, and if I can think it possible, his face is streaked with dust and a little bit of blood.

  Somehow, it’s the blood that makes this feel so real. “I thought gods couldn’t bleed?”

  Loki reaches up and wipes at his cheekbone with a thumb before chuckling. “We all must do things we’re not used to right now. As for me, I’ve taken a page from your book and have been cooperating with Tyr. His little retinue of honorable warriors has been teaching me some things. This came from Musashi.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind,” Loki says, waving it off as he sits up. “I called to you to warn you. Edward will be coming for you soon. You need to hurry.”

  “We’re pushing the truck as
fast as we can.”

  Loki nods, pursing his lips. “I watched last night’s battle. You fought well, my grandson. Next time, back into a werewolf. That’s what bumpers are for.”

  I can’t help it, I laugh. “You try driving a fucking truck for the first time. I count it a miracle I didn’t crash the thing.”

  “Technically, you did,” Loki reminds me with a chuckle, but the laughter doesn’t touch his eyes. “Lance, I cannot influence within Solace. I have no other offspring there. But I can view things, and I can tell you that a special team of the best and deadliest Hunters is already assembled, ready for his order. I can’t be sure . . . but I think they’re also reinforced with dark powers.”

  “Fuck me . . . was Cerena just that oblivious to the corruption within her own organization?” I ask, and Loki shrugs. He doesn’t know, and I bet Cerena doesn’t know either. “What can you do?”

  “I can keep an eye out,” Loki says simply, “but I can’t do much more than that. A word of advice, though. Cerena may not know, because Bane knew about her lineage. I’d suspect that he, through Edward, isolated Cerena on purpose. Not just in having her parents killed and placing her under Edward’s sphere of influence, but in other ways too. It made her easier to manipulate. Outcasts are less likely to garner allies.”

  “Yeah, well, you and I know that being a bit of an outcast doesn’t always work out the way people plan.”

  Loki grins and claps me on the shoulder. “You have no idea.”

  The world flashes again, and I see an image. The room’s so high-tech that I have no clue what ninety-nine percent of it is for, but the glass-covered beds make it pretty clear this is a cryogenic chamber. One’s empty, another with a sleeping man inside it, and the third . . . has a man inside who looks awake but isn’t really moving.

  There’s another person in the room, too. I her recognize from the canyon, Lily Highmoon. The man in the cryogenic chamber is of distinguished appearance, his hair just starting to gray at the temples. Regardless of his age or apparent age, his body’s lean and athletic, obviously in phenomenal shape, and there’s no way for him to hide it, either. Other than a pair of black briefs that cover his groin, he’s naked in the glass-covered bed. Honestly, he looks like he’d be a hard fight even for me or Tym.

  I can only assume this is Edward.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this, Edward.”

  Within the capsule, Edward shakes his head slowly, unconcerned. “Lily, I’m doing what is best for our people. For humanity.”

  “By betraying Sulis?” Lily asks, lifting an eyebrow. “Edward, I was shaken enough when I was briefed on all this gods and goddesses stuff by Elizabeth. But to learn that you, the Elder I respect the most . . . you’ve been in concert not only with the god most opposed to our own benefactor, but with his city!”

  “I never betrayed anyone,” Edward says. “Sulis never required our obedience.”

  “You betrayed her trust in us! I’ve read the files. She wanted us to remain as purely human as possible!” Lily exclaims. “I hated those damn laws, but there was a reason behind them!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Edward says, unworried. “Sulis helped us, yes. But Bane will do more for the Academy, and for me, than anything my mother could do.”

  “More for you . . . that more than anything tells me how much you’ve lied to everyone for decades.” Lily shakes her head and walks over to a set of buttons at the end of the bed. “Sorry, Edward, but I can’t allow that.”

  She pushes a button on the end of the bed, but nothing happens, and Lily looks confused as she jabs the button again and again. Edward looks amused and suddenly reaches up, waving his hand. The cover to his bed retracts and he sits up, smirking while Lily looks aghast.

  “How did you—”

  “Did you really think I’d give you idiots true control over putting me to sleep?” Edward asks. “And if you think Bane gave Crassus power . . . wait’ll you get a load of me.”

  Lily doesn’t give him a chance to expound on his promise, flinging herself at him barehanded. But she doesn’t get even halfway there before she freezes in midair. Shock spreads over her face as Edward climbs out of bed, his head tilting to the side as he studies her expression.

  “The funny thing is, this isn’t even one of Bane’s powers. This is from dear ol’ Mom,” Edward says. He jerks his chin to the side, and Lily goes flying across the room to crash into the empty bed. Her body shatters the cover on what I guess was Elizabeth’s bed before flopping to the floor, blood already flowing from a half-dozen deep wounds.

  “Too bad, Lily,” Edward says as he looks at her bleeding body. “You could have been one of my best generals.”

  Lily struggles to get to her knees, but Edward flings his hand toward her, a blast of dark magic hitting her and driving her across the room again. She tries to get up again but fails, slumping to the ground. Edward snorts in derision before turning and walking away, leaving the chamber and sealing the chamber behind him.

  I want to call out, but I don’t have a voice, only a view. Still, minutes later, Lily stirs, her blood trickling out of her mouth and nose, every movement painful as she starts to move.

  She’s dying. I can see that even from my vantage point from across the room.

  But somehow, some reservoir of strength inside her compels her to keep moving, slowly making her way over to the other bed. Her arms shake, the blood sheeting off her as something inside ruptures and she coughs blood all over the floor. With the last of her strength, she pushes herself up, finding the controls on the end of the bed and twisting a control knob before collapsing to the floor. This time, she’s dead, but as my vision fades, I see a green light start to blink slowly.

  It feels like it takes a few minutes before I find myself back in the truck, being bumped along. Tym’s driving now, and we’ve found a dirt track that’s carving its way through the Scorched Earth.

  “Have a nice nap?” Cerena asks over her shoulder. I sit up with a start, blinking and rubbing at my eyes. “I figured we’d let you sleep. Things have been quiet for the past hour or so.”

  “You need to push the pace,” I reply, grabbing my water bottle and taking a deep swig. “I just had a visit from Loki. Things have gotten bad. Very bad.”

  “What do you mean?” Cerena asks.

  I reach through the open back of the truck, putting a hand on Cerena’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Cerena. Lily’s dead. Edward killed her.”

  Chapter 17

  Cerena

  Ten minutes later, Tym finds a stream, and I ask him to stop, refilling our water bottles and scouting for food while I talk with Lance. He doesn’t argue, knowing he’ll get the skinny from us as soon as he gets back. Instead, he collects up all of our bottles and gives us our space while Lance and I stand next to the truck.

  I need it. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut as Lance tells me about his vision. “The last thing I saw was the blinking green light.”

  “That was probably Thomas,” I reply, setting my forehead on the edge of the truck, breathing deeply. I want to puke, I want to cry, I want to scream. I’m so overwhelmed by what I’m being told. “And Loki showed this to you?”

  Lance nods, running a gentle hand over my shoulders. “He said he’ll keep an eye out us, but he can’t do anything within Solace. Nobody of his bloodline lives there right now.”

  I nod, blinking slowly. I don’t doubt Lance’s words, although I quietly wonder if Loki’s telling the whole truth. There has to be something else Loki’s hiding that he’s not showing us.

  Why else give us just bad news?

  I could have predicted what Edward would do. Well, at least knowing he’d betrayed Solace, I could have. I knew he’d have a team of high-level Hunters. I’m surprised that Lily was even able to get out into the mountains with a team that didn’t shoot first and ask questions later the first time. Still, it doesn’t change anything about the mission Lily’s given us.

  Edward is coming, or will be com
ing, for Sienna White. And when he catches up with her, he’s going to have the baddest group of Hunters ever assembled watching his back.

  “Okay . . . take a minute and tell Tym what you saw. When I get back, we’ll get moving,” I finally say. I need some time to myself, so I turn and walk away. About fifty yards away is a tree, and I sit down, letting myself remember.

  “Lily?”

  The apartment’s big, a lot bigger than my dorm room at the Academy, but I’m used to that by now. After all, it’s not like I can live in Edward’s quarters when he’s asleep, so I stay in the dorms all the time, except when I’m invited to someone’s home.

  Which is what brings me here tonight. I was in my last academic class when a messenger brought my instructor a slip of paper, passed along to me. Now, with my duties completed and darkness upon us, I enter Lily’s quarters, dressed in a fresh athletic uniform. Officially, I’m supposed to be wearing a class uniform, but Lily doesn’t care. She prefers that I arrive relaxed.

  “Lily?” I repeat, but the apartment’s silent. I’m not surprised. Most of Lily’s children are on Hunter teams, and her husband is on Wall Guard duty while recovering from shoulder surgery.

  “On the balcony,” a quiet voice says, and I head through the living room onto one of the rare luxuries that Lily’s family enjoys, a balcony. Being that their apartment is on the top floor of their building, it’s nearly half the width of their living room, deep enough that it serves as more than just a place to hang your laundry.

  I emerge through the door to find Lily standing against the railing, a glass of ale in her hand. Before I can say anything, she points toward the small table on the balcony and I see another glass for me. I’m not supposed to drink ale yet. I’m too young, but Lily indulges me from time to time. She says it’s worth risking the trouble to allow me to understand what ale does to people firsthand.