“Apologies, leutnant,” Lu said smoothly, swallowing the acid taste of fear. She adopted a fake smile and a blank expression, a talent she’d cultivated to perfection. “How stupid of me. I was just thinking how wonderful Thornemas Day is; I wasn’t looking where I was going.” She added brightly, “Can’t wait for the fireworks tonight!”
Dieter Gerhardt smiled down at her from his considerable height. Lieutenant of the district’s ironically named Peace Guard, he was smug and skin crawlingly familiar, never missing the opportunity to stand a little too close, to stare a little too long. He’d always taken a particular interest in her, and she tried to avoid him at all costs. In spite of his enviable upper Second Form position that had some of the other Third Form girls clamoring for his attention, he scared Lu. She had the unsettling sense that he might at any moment crack open his jaw and eat her alive.
“Ja,” he said. Then because of course he would, he lifted his hand and slowly brushed his fingers over her chin, wiping away the coffee.
A flash of anger made her face flush. Lu lowered her lashes to hide the rage in her eyes. Still with her pasted-on smile, she turned her cheek and rubbed her face with her gloved hand. “I must look a mess. Thankfully I didn’t get any on you.”
Pig. Maggot. Arschloch!
“Too bad. Then you might have had to make it up to me.”
His trademark cutthroat grin appeared, accompanied by a carnivorous once-over. His gaze lingered on her hips, the swell of her breasts beneath her coat. Her flush deepened. A violent itch bloomed in the palms of her hands.
Her laugh was breezy. “Well, I’m off to work. Happy Thornemas to you.” She started to brush past him, but he caught her under her arm. Dieter pulled her closer, his breath sliding down her neck.
“I’ll walk with you.”
“Oh.” Scheisse! “Thank you, but you don’t have to bother—”
“It’s no bother,” Dieter said, a hint of hardness in his voice, “as I’m already going that way. And these streets are dangerous for a girl like you.”
A girl like me?
He must have sensed the sudden tension in her body, because he laughed, low and pleased, chucking a knuckle under her chin. “Don’t worry, vögelchen, with me by your side, no one will mess with you. No matter how pretty you are.” He gave her braid a firm tug to underscore the word pretty, and Lu had to fight hard to resist the urge to scratch his eyes out of his face.
Her smile was sweet, as was her murmur, “Danke,” though the word tasted bitter in her mouth. With his hand an unwanted presence on the small of her back, a command and a threat wrapped into one, Dieter moved her forward. As they walked side by side down the busy street, people scurried aside, their glances filled with trepidation before they ducked their heads and looked away. Even out of the UV protective over suits they wore during the daylight hours when they hunted, members of the Peace Guard had a certain “I’ll gut you” vibe that everyone understood was based entirely on fact.
The guns didn’t help, either.
Be calm. Smile. Breathe.
Dieter walked with the unhurried, cocksure stride of one who’s used to being obeyed. His hand found its way back under her arm, and his fingers tightened ever so slightly as they walked. He nodded to a few people, said hello to others, but never loosened his grip. Lu had the uncomfortable feeling she was being herded.
It was a silent, ten-minute walk through the tangled lanes of New Vienna to the Hospice. By the time they arrived, her nerves were wound bowstring tight. Her jaw ached with the effort of smiling.
The Hospice building was one of those awful, square brick institutional affairs guaranteed to evoke depression in whomever passed through its doors. Squat and ugly, it sat hulking atop the rise of a low hill, surrounded by brown grass and the occasional withered tree. Glazed windows like dead eyes and finials on the black courtyard gate lent it a sinister air, which today seemed amplified by a thousand thanks to her escort.
Still with that proprietary hand under her arm, Dieter said in an offhand tone, “I’m told the Grand Minister will be visiting tonight. Something about a disturbance. Must be important if the GM himself is coming to check it out.” His gaze slid sideways and down, fixing on her.
Dread unfurled in the pit of her stomach. Lu cleared her throat and pretended ignorance. “The Grand Minister? Really? Well, it doesn’t surprise me. There’ve been a few odd incidents over the past months. I hear he’s brilliant, though. I’m sure he’ll . . .” she cleared her throat again. “I’m sure he’ll get to the bottom of it.”
Dieter’s gaze intensified. He made a sound she might have taken for amusement, but for the total lack of humor in it. “Yes. He will. Nothing ever escapes him.” His fingers pressed harder into her arm. His voice lowered an octave. “Nothing.”
Lu’s heart began a thundering gallop so loud she was sure Dieter would be able to hear it. For a moment she simply stood silently, the foolish smile dying on her lips. She stared straight ahead at the Hospice, her mouth as dry as bone.
In a voice so low Lu nearly missed it over the chatter of a group of passing schoolgirls, Dieter said, “If they bring the ocular scan equipment, you’re done for. There’s something about the optic nerve that gives it away. They’ve only recently figured it out. Your contacts won’t conceal it.”
Lu’s heart stopped beating. Her blood froze to ice water inside her veins.
Her contacts were muddy brown, purchased on the black market at an insanely high price. They had no prescription, as her eyesight was beyond the human definition of perfect, but they hadn’t been bought to correct any problem with her vision. They’d been bought to conceal the electric, unnatural yellow-green of her irises. She’d worn them as long as she could remember.
Dieter knew. He knew.
Her hands began to shake so violently she dropped the empty coffee mug. It shattered at her feet with a sound like a bomb.
Dieter removed his hand from her arm and adopted one of those at ease soldier postures, legs spread shoulder width apart, hands clasped behind his waist. Looking up at the sky, he inhaled deeply the warm evening air. In a more normal tone, he said, “My colonel’s old enough to remember when the sky was blue, and winter was cold. Can you believe that? Cold. Says it used to snow on Thornemas Day, flakes as big as your thumb.” He shook his head, bemused, his attitude casual as if nothing at all had just happened. As if the world itself hadn’t just ceased to turn. “Can’t say I really believe him, though.” Dieter turned his head and looked directly into her eyes. “People make up all kinds of things. Sometimes if they’re really good at it, everybody believes them. A really great liar might even convince the entire world his kuhscheibe is the truth.”
The ground had turned liquid beneath her feet. Lu was poised to run, a scream trapped in her throat. Every nerve in her body hummed with fear, and an odd, animal excitement.
Would it be a relief? To let the mask drop and finally give in to the beast she knew lurked inside her? With a tremor of sick enjoyment, she enjoyed a brief vision of Dieter in flames. Of the entire city in flames, and herself standing in the middle of it all, laughing.
Then Dieter leaned close and brushed his lips against her cheek. He whispered into her ear, “The Schottentor gate at the east side of the city, behind the waste treatment plant—you know the one?”
She did. Old Vienna had been a fortress city, surrounded by medieval walls with bastions and gates that had been refortified and put into use to control access into and out of the city when New Vienna rose from the ashes after the Flash. But why would he mention it?
Dieter didn’t wait for her response. “If they figure it out, run. Get your father and go to the gate. Look for the white rabbit. There’s always someone on lookout; you can escape that way. Just stay alive. We’ll get you out. And whatever happens, don’t let them catch you.”
He straightened and said in a loud, furi
ous voice, “What a little tease you are, jungfrau! You think your shit doesn’t stink? Hell if I want a dirty little Third Former like you, anyway!”
Without another word or a glance in her direction, Dieter strode away, back straight, head high, rifle swinging from his shoulder. A pair of men passing by on the sidewalk smirked at her, then moved on.
And Lu was left alone with the shock of comprehension making her reel in disbelief. The world tilted left, slipping dangerously, and in the end it was only the gate of the Hospice that held her up, its iron bars gripped tightly in her fists.
From far, far away, Lumina heard the echo of angry shouting from behind the vast and icy wall she’d erected inside her head.
TWO
The hunter with the scarred face and penetrating dark eyes was perched high atop the street opposite the Hospice, on the crest of the sloped tiled roof of the Palais Hansen Kempinski, a former luxury hotel that now functioned as the IF’s media headquarters. Inside, the “news” was manufactured and distributed throughout the federation by a team of reporters on the company payroll, and through the soles of his feet he felt their scurried activity as scant vibrations, smelled their fear and fervor as comingled sour scents on the evening wind.
Some of them actually believed the propaganda they churned out. Most of them were simply too afraid to say they did not.
He watched the young woman leaning on the courtyard gate of the Hospice below with hawklike fixedness. Every sense hummed with the power of her. The elegant, electrical thrill of the energy she emanated was like nothing he’d ever felt. He’d hunted Aberrants for more than twenty of his thirty-six years, and not a single one of them had ever set his nerves alight like this one.
Looking at her, he felt stung. He felt slapped. He felt, for a moment, a jolt of terrifying elation, as if he’d flung himself from the roof and was free-falling through space toward his death.
This was the one he’d been seeking. He’d found her at last.
She pulled herself upright for the first time since her uniformed companion had walked away, and passed a trembling hand over her hair. Even from this distance he saw how hard it shook. He saw the effort it took for her to straighten her shoulders and lift her chin. He longed to see her face, but she had her back to him, and didn’t turn, even as she pushed through the gate and walked slowly up the cracked cement path to the Hospice entrance. She removed the glove from her right hand, placed her palm on the scanner beside the front door, then disappeared within the building as the door swung open and shut behind her. The chance to look at her face was lost.
No matter, he thought, rising from his crouch. He’d see her face soon enough. Besides, he already knew what she looked like. He knew everything there was to know about this imposter who called herself Lumina Bohn.
He’d made it his life’s mission to do so.
“You’re early.” Liesel straightened from the kitchen counter, her stout arms dusted in flour up to the elbow. Her expression was surprised, but pleased. The older woman liked her, even if most of the other Hospice workers didn’t; the two of them shared a love of silence the gossip-sharing others found off-putting at best, and suspicious at worst.
Round and red-cheeked, with strands of graying hair escaping from her haphazard bun, Liesel was the Hospice pastry cook. As she always did in the evening before first meal, she was preparing the dough for the apfelstrudel, the famous dessert the Hospice guests devoured in huge quantity. Dietary restrictions were nonexistent in this place, and the guests were allowed to eat and drink to their hearts’ content. Sweets and schnapps and fatty foods were served with every meal, and overindulging in all three was heartily encouraged, because no revolt was ever started by a bunch of fat drunkards with digestive trouble.
Also, if one of the guests died sooner than he otherwise might have due to clogged arteries and high cholesterol, so much the better. There was always another citizen who’d aged out ready to fill his bed.
“Need the extra credits,” said Lu, taking her place beside Liesel at the long stainless steel counter. She’d already hung her coat in her locker and changed into her white apron. And changed her gloves for a disposable latex pair, perfect for kitchen work but a trifle too thin for Lu’s comfort. No push had ever leaked through yet, but she wasn’t entirely convinced that would remain the case forever.
Especially today.
The thought caused a tickle in her palms. Lu began immediately to hum.
She and Liesel worked in companionable silence for a moment, rolling, kneading, dusting flour over the dough, until finally Liesel asked, “What’s that song you’re always humming? It sounds familiar.”
“Just something my father used to sing to me. It’s from an opera called Song to the Moon.”
Liesel made a gentle grunt that managed to convey she’d never heard of it. Her grunts were many and varied, one as distinguishable from the other as the notes of a song. She often used them in place of words.
“My mother had a terrible singing voice. Could stun the birds right out of the trees, make them fall dead to the sidewalk.”
Lu grimaced, imagining a woman walking along singing while the sky rained dead birds.
“She used to tell me stories instead. At that, she was talented. She was Romanian, my mother, a peasant who married a farmer and had eleven children in twelve years.” Liesel shook her head, producing a disbelieving grunt. “Those were the days you could have as many children as you wanted. Can you imagine? No permits? Just breed away like so many rabbits?”
Lu couldn’t imagine such a thing. Only two children per married couple were allowed under the IF’s birth regulations, and only if the couple could afford it. The wealthy First Form families had no problem paying the birth tax. Everyone else saved or bartered credits or wound up indebted to the government for the remainder of their lives, paying down the astronomical tax through a work program.
And Thorne forbid if you had an “accident.” Unplanned, unpermitted children disappeared almost as soon as they were born, raised in State orphanages and ultimately conscripted into the IF’s vast, unpaid labor force known as the Drones.
Needless to say, the abortion business thrived in New Vienna.
Liesel said, “Well, there you are. That’s how it was before . . .”
Her hesitation was filled with the unspoken terror of the Flash. Of everything it triggered, the wars and turmoil, the food and water shortages, the scorched sky and the barren earth and forever after the lurking stink of death. Though Lu had never known any other sort of life, Liesel was old enough to remember life before the Flash, and to mourn it.
“Anyway, my favorite story was called ‘The Hermit’s Foundling with the Golden Hair.’ It’s about, as you might guess, a man who finds a child in a basket on a stream when he goes to fetch some water. A golden-haired child. Just like you.”
In the sticky dough, Lumina’s hands stilled. The light in the room seemed suddenly too bright.
“It was a boy, in the story, though.” A derogatory grunt, as if the sex of the child offended her. Liesel worked the dough between her rough hands. “There was a note attached to the basket with the little baby boy. It said that the child was the illegitimate son of a princess, who’d sent the baby away for fear of her shame being discovered. That story always reminds me of you. Because of the name, I mean, not because your mother was a princess.” She laughed, as if the idea was profoundly funny. “Though his was the male version of the name, Lumino.”
Liesel brushed a wrist across her forehead to push away a strand of hair, leaving a damp smear of flour behind. “Was your mother Romanian?”
Lu didn’t answer. She couldn’t; her mouth was too dry. Liesel took her silence as a yes.
“Makes sense, I suppose. Naming you after the Romanian word for light.” Liesel’s friendly gaze flickered over her. “You’re so pale you probably glow in the dark when you take off all your
clothes, eh?” Another laugh, and Liesel flipped the dough, punching it down and smoothing more flour over the surface.
Filled with an odd, chilling premonition, Lu whispered, “What happened to the baby?”
“Oh, well, the story was a fairy tale, so of course there were talking lions and dragons and elves, and the boy had to face many trials as he grew, including his father’s death, and flight to a new land, and battles of wit and swords. But he was a strong one, that Lumino. He had royal blood, which gave him courage. He never gave up, not even when his enemies killed his—”
“Did you hear the news? The Grand Minister is coming today! Can you believe it? Today, of all the days! We didn’t get any of the supplies I ordered because the delivery truck was attacked by those verdammt Dissenters, and now there won’t be fresh vegetables or those special sausages I wanted! Scheisse!”
Lars, Hospice head chef, burst into the kitchen with the heated intensity of high noon. Though small and wiry, with the furtive, darting eyes of a rodent, he possessed the energy of ten men. And the ego of twenty. His diminutive frame was topped with a shock of flaming red hair, in which he took great pride and had a habit of running his fingers through when agitated. Which meant his hands were almost always clenched atop his head.
“I think the Grand Minister will be too busy sniffing out his prey to be worried about supper,” muttered Lu to the dough, irritated he’d burst in right when Liesel was getting to the best part of the story. She needed to know what happened to that boy. And who had been killed?
“My schnitzengruben is legendary, woman!” shrieked Lars, pulling at his hair. “Of course he’ll want to stay for supper!”
Beside her, Liesel kept her eyes on her work, unaffected by Lars’s outburst. “You could make sauerbraten. Your recipe for that is legendary, too. And the meat’s been marinating long enough; it’ll be perfect.”
Into Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 3