Into Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel)

by J. T. Geissinger

  SEVENTEEN

  “Are you going to tell us what this is all about?” asked Beckett gently, looking over Lu’s shoulder as she drew in bold, broad strokes across the standing black chalkboard erected in a corner of his lab.

  She didn’t respond. Magnus watched, fascinated, from the back of the lab while she carried on with the drawing. Her slender arm moved ceaselessly, outlining the shape of a tall, wide cylinder, with a hollow core and identical levels, spaced evenly from top to bottom. On the three floors nearest the top, she drew a series of oblique shapes flaring out from the hollow center in a spoked pattern, like a spider’s web. The other levels she partitioned into dozens upon dozens of small squares. The lowest level she shaded all in red, holding the chalk on its side for greater coverage. When she finished, she stood staring at the object on the board with her hands propped on her hips, silent.

  Then she threw the chalk at the board so hard it shattered into dust.

  Magnus shared a weighted look with Christian and Xander, both of whom stood near the opposite wall. They were joined by Morgan, Demetrius, Jack, Hawk, and Ember, while Honor stood alone, arms crossed and silent, by Beckett’s collection of clocks stacked in crates.

  Lumina hadn’t spoken a word since they’d returned from topside. Magnus had watched her, pale and trembling, emerge from the wall of flame that had engulfed the helicopter, and had been momentarily surprised by the realization that she’d somehow retained all her clothing, unlike earlier with her encounter with Honor. But then she’d strode past him without even a glance, her eyes dark, pupils dilated. He’d sensed her fury like a thousand tiny pinpricks on his skin.

  After what she’d said to him just before going to the helicopter, Magnus had assumed her fury had been directed at him. Watching her now, he wasn’t quite so sure.

  “What is that you’ve drawn, Lumina?” he said into the hush.

  She unclenched her hands from her hair and turned slowly, looking around the group. “That’s the Imperial Federation’s international headquarters, which also functions as a maximum security prison.” She paused a beat. When she spoke again, her voice shook with fury. “Which is where they’re keeping my parents, and four thousand nine hundred eighty-seven others.”

  The gathering was stunned into silence. Then Honor said with hushed awe from her place alone by the clocks, “You took the pilot’s memory.”

  Lumina’s gaze cut to her sister, and Magnus had never before in his life felt someone exude such pure, unadulterated rage. “All those medicines the Phoenix Corporation makes? All those profits that support the IF, and that bastard Sebastian Thorne and his empire? They’re made from us. I’d heard all the rumors, but the reality is so much . . . what the IF does to them . . . it’s . . .”

  She broke off with a choked cry of rage. Magnus pushed away from the wall, propelled by an almost violent urge to take her into his arms and say or do anything to soothe her, to take that anguished expression from her face. He crossed the room in several long strides. “Lumina. Look at me.”

  She did, and Magnus watched as her face cleared, the pain in her eyes replaced by calm, at the exact rate his own calm was being replaced by sickening, overwhelming, vicious rage.

  “No!” Lumina stepped closer, understanding dawning in her eyes. “No, don’t you dare!” She reached out and shoved him in the chest.

  She was strong, and he was unprepared, and her push sent him staggering back a few paces before he recovered himself. She closed the few steps between them quickly until she stood mere inches away, staring up into his eyes, solemn and so beautiful it distracted him for a moment from the furor burning through his veins.

  “Give it back.”

  He’d been angry before many, many times in his life, but Magnus hadn’t felt this particular, rabid brand of rage. He felt as if the emotion he’d taken from Lumina was so blindingly hot and encompassing it was the equivalent of standing on the surface of the sun. He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking, or his nostrils flaring, or the way every one of his muscles had tensed.

  Her gaze still locked on his, Lumina said, “It’s not yours. It’s mine. Give it back.”

  Everyone else in the room was watching them, arrested by this little melodrama and momentarily distracted from the reason they were here in the first place.

  Magnus growled, “No.”

  She stepped even closer, and he had to restrain himself from recoiling. Not because he didn’t want her so near, or because he didn’t like the looks that were flying back and forth between the others, the obvious surprise that he’d allowed her to get so close, but because it was all he could do to resist the urge to reach out and grab her, and pull her hard against his chest.

  Desire for her pounded through him, so strong he could hardly breathe.

  “Magnus,” Lumina said solemnly, “thank you. I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it, I really do, but I need that feeling you took away because it’s going to help me get through this. It’s going to help me deal with what I have to do next. Without that anger, I’m just going to be so sad I’ll want to slit my wrists, so I’m asking you please to give it back.”

  Shaking with her fury and his own wretched desire, Magnus hoarsely said, “I can’t stand to see you suffer, Lumina. Not if there’s anything I can do about it. I’m sorry, but the answer is no.”

  She looked at him a long, silent moment. She released a quiet breath. Then she said softly, “All right. Have it your way. But just remember: You brought this on yourself.”

  Then she rose up on her toes and kissed him.

  It was exactly as he remembered from a thousand beautiful dreams. No—it was better. Her lips like velvet, the soft, languorous stroke of her tongue against his. The fever that crackled through him, burning, her scent flaming hot in his nose, the lush warmth of her body. All of it conspired to wipe every thought from his mind, every hesitation and the final shred of his will, so that he closed his eyes, crushed her against him, and kissed her back so hard he bent her back from the waist.

  The collective gasp from the gathered group barely registered in his consciousness. Because now Lumina wound her arms around his shoulders, moaning into his mouth. An erection charged to life between his legs.

  He had no idea how long the kiss lasted; time had lost all meaning. Then there was a change from one moment to the next, a loss of the warmth of her mouth, a withdrawal of her body heat, and he opened his eyes to find a roomful of shocked Ikati and one very pissed off Lumina.

  Wordlessly, she snapped, Now we’re even. With her thoughts echoing in his mind, Magnus realized with horror that she’d reclaimed more than just her own pain.

  She’d taken the one thing that kept him sane.

  She returned to the chalk drawing, leaving everyone gaping in her wake.

  “We need to find this structure. It’s massive, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Beckett, since you seem to be the resident computer genius, do you have any current maps of the IF?”

  Beckett looked exactly as electrocuted as Magnus felt. He stammered, “I . . . uh . . . that is . . .” He shook his head to clear it, then straightened his shoulders and continued on, a little more in control. “Let’s find out.”

  From his cluttered desk, he retrieved a small, handheld device and pointed it at the map Lumina had drawn. With a click and a sound like crickets chirping, a ray of translucent red light scanned the board from top to bottom, then disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Beckett plugged the device into a larger one, about the size and shape of a shoebox, and a three-dimensional rendering of Lumina’s drawing flickered to life, floating in the middle of the room like a disembodied spirit.

  “Specular holography imager,” Beckett explained, walking around the perimeter of the wavering image. It was rendered in a brilliant royal blue, except for the bottom layer, which pulsed vivid red, corresponding to the red in Lumina’s drawing. She dre
w closer to it, as if pulled by an invisible lure, her gaze trained on that pulsing band of red.

  “That son of a bitch,” she whispered. She glanced at Honor. Something unspoken passed between them, but Magnus caught a whisper of it, because Lumina had stripped him of the mental shield he’d worked so hard to develop over so many years.

  That’s where they keep her.

  Into a keyboard wired to the shoebox, Beckett typed something. He waited a moment, examining the rapidly scrolling text that appeared on an adjacent computer screen. “There’s nothing shaped like this on any of the system maps. Which, if it really is IF headquarters, makes sense: They wouldn’t want anyone to be able to access it.”

  “A hidden file, then,” said Christian, stepping forward to examine the image. “Or another closed system you can’t access.”

  Sounding insulted, Beckett said, “There isn’t a system I can’t access.”

  “Well, everything that’s built needs plans, blueprints,” interjected Xander, absently combing his fingers through Morgan’s long hair. They stood side by side on the opposite side of the cave, so close they looked fused together, and Magnus didn’t want to know where Morgan’s left hand was, her arm completely hidden behind Xander’s large back. Morgan caught Magnus’s eye, and sent him a wink, which he responded to with a glower. Which, naturally, made her smile.

  “Maybe it’s pre-Flash,” suggested Demetrius in his deep, gravelly voice.

  Beside him, Eliana nodded. “They could even have converted another existing facility. Something old . . .”

  “But there’s nothing this particular size or shape on the maps, and whether it was pre-Flash or not, it would show up—”

  “You know what it looks like to me?” interrupted Jack. She drew away from Hawk’s side, and came up to the image, examining it from top to bottom. “A silo. Like one of those towers you’d see across the Midwest in the disbanded United States, steel structures filled with grain or coal in the ag belt.”

  Magnus considered it. Then it hit him. “But not all silos in the US were above ground. And not all of them were agricultural.” Everyone looked at him. “Ever heard of the Atlas missile program?”

  “Shit,” breathed Beckett. “You’re right. It could be a bunker!”

  “Underground?” Honor stepped forward as everyone else was, coming to get a closer look. “You think this thing could be underground?”

  “That would definitely explain why it wouldn’t show up on the modeling maps,” said Beckett, nodding. “They’re all aerial based: topography, buildings, that sort of thing, built out from the pre-Flash earth-mapping computer programs. There’s an associated subprogram that identifies all the known underground structures, like sewers, subway systems, catacombs. But if, like Magnus suggests, this is a government-built structure constructed as part of a national defense plan, the blueprints would never have been made public.”

  “Or been catalogued electronically,” added Ember, beside Christian, her fingers threaded through his. “The Atlas missile program was decommissioned in the 1960s, long before the creation of the World Wide Web, or the rise of information technology. Those blueprints were most likely stored in hard copies deep inside some secret government vault.”

  “So we’re looking at the disbanded US, then?” Beckett was beginning to sound excited.

  “Not necessarily, son,” said Christian. “Many pre-Flash governments had missile programs. Russia, China, Iran, France, Germany . . . there were dozens. Maybe more.”

  “So it could be anywhere. We have no idea where to start looking,” said Morgan, sounding deflated.

  “Actually we do.” Everyone turned to look at Lumina. “The helicopter pilot was born in the same city he worked. He raised his . . .” she swallowed, pausing a moment to steady her voice. “He raised his family in the same place. The same place I believe this structure is located, although I couldn’t tell for sure from his memory . . . he died before . . .” She paused again. “I don’t know exactly where this thing is, but I think I know the city it’s in.”

  “Where?” said Magnus.

  Lumina looked at him, her expression registering fury, anguish, and, worst of all, self-recrimination. With a telling tremble in her voice, she asked him, “What’s the worst place in the world it could possibly be?”

  No one else understood her, but Magnus grasped her meaning instantly, even before she sent her thoughts directly into his mind.

  She was right there. My entire life, my mother was right there, and I didn’t know it. Her eyes filled with tears.

  With his heart aching for her, Magnus said into the hungry silence, “New Vienna.”

  Slowly, Lumina nodded, her eyes burning his. “I have to save her, Magnus. I have to go back.”

  His gaze never leaving hers, Magnus shook his head. “No.” He stepped forward, the space between them charged. “I have to go back. You’ll be recognized immediately—”

  “I’m not going to just sit here and wait—”

  “That’s exactly what you’re going to do—”

  “She’s my mother—”

  “It’s my responsibility!”

  They’d moved closer and closer while they spoke, drawn as if by an invisible magnet, eyes locked together. He felt all the other eyes on them, he felt the tension in the room, but all he could think about was Lumina, her anguished face and voice, what he could do to take away her pain.

  Finally they stood once again mere inches apart, staring each other down. Into the uncomfortable silence, someone in the room coughed.

  Always the hard way with you, she said into his head, examining his determined expression.

  Before he could form a reply, she said aloud, “Fine. We’ll go together.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Almost another full day passed before Lumina and Magnus set out on their journey back to New Vienna, and in that time he managed to avoid speaking directly to her, preferring instead to communicate his plans and directions in the presence of others so that she would overhear and be informed, deftly sidestepping the need for one-on-one conversation.

  It was as if her kiss had changed something between them. As if he’d erected defenses even higher and more fortified than those he’d had before. He wasn’t even looking at her.

  Though she knew she could communicate with him by speaking right into his mind, Lumina avoided doing it, sensing his need for privacy. She was well-practiced in blocking stray thoughts, so it was no great challenge, but the temptation was great.

  As was the temptation to kiss him again.

  If he smelled enticing, he’d tasted even better, and Lumina found her gaze straying over and over to his mouth. Those full, sensual lips became a sort of beacon, drawing her attention any time he came near. When he spoke, she was mesmerized, just watching them move, sometimes losing the shape of the words altogether so that she was left with a kind of muted pleasure, his teeth and lips and tongue moving silently while she lost herself in the memory of how he’d tasted. Of the way he’d reacted when she touched her mouth to his. Of the need she’d felt surge through him, into her, another memory she lingered on in her private moments, the ache of his unfulfilled desire.

  Her own desire for him was huge, real, and frightening.

  She’d promised herself she’d never get close again, she’d never again risk another person’s safety for her sake, and she’d meant it. But every moment she spent near him became a kind of torture, because no matter how hard she tried to block it out, the animal inside her knew what she really wanted, and was far less self-controlled.

  The animal inside her was greedy, a writhing, hissing beast that demanded satisfaction.

  Lu knew that kiss had been a touchstone. It had changed them both. For better or worse remained to be seen.

  “. . . approach through the southern Czech border,” Magnus was now saying to Demetrius and Hawk, both
of whom were intently studying the holographic map Beckett had projected above the center of the rectangular Assembly table. Beckett had been dismissed after setting it up, not only because the Assembly was always held in closed session, but also because Lu could tell he was getting on Magnus’s last nerve. Beckett had been shadowing him, dogged as a bloodhound, insisting he should accompany them on their trip, regaling Magnus with reason after reason why he’d be an asset in their quest to extract Lumina and Honor’s mother from the IF prison.

  Magnus, naturally, had flatly refused. Flatly meaning with a bite as friendly as a crocodile’s.

  “Why not go in the way you came out?” asked Hawk, frowning at the map.

  “I never take the same route twice. Too risky. Especially now: Enforcement’s offering a huge reward for any eyewitness information from Thornemas Day.”

  “Christmas Day,” Lu softly corrected from her seat at the far end of the table. Demetrius and Hawk looked at her. Magnus’s head angled in her direction, but he didn’t lift his gaze from the map. He wore the hooded black jacket again, so his face was cast in shadow, but she noted his shoulders, just slightly, tensed.

  You think there’s an old man with white hair in the sky looking down and making hash marks next to your name in a book?

  His words came back to haunt her. She wondered, looking at his stiffening posture, if they haunted him, too.

  She wondered, for the hundredth time, what had happened to him to make him so . . . him.

  He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I think we’ll have to leave the copter as soon as we cross the Channel and continue on foot; security will have been significantly stepped up. Patrols will be tighter, including air patrols. Beckett’s intel suggests that anywhere east of Antwerp and south of Amsterdam will be rough going.”

  “But that’s exactly where you’re headed!” protested Demetrius, drawing a line with his finger from the English Channel to New Vienna.