Into Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel)

by J. T. Geissinger

  Not a single light shone from a single window. Nothing stirred but the fog.

  She looked closer into those unmoving streets, and saw the remains of burned-out cars, heaping piles of garbage, red double-decker buses overturned at intersections to block a way in or out. Windows were broken everywhere. Storefronts were boarded. Abandoned vehicles littered every lane and boulevard and bridge, haphazard as toys left over from children’s playtime. London was no longer a city; it was a graveyard.

  Anger blossomed inside her again, ugly and huge.

  “How they must have suffered,” Lu whispered to the glass. “How horrible it must have been.”

  “No more than what you’ve suffered. Or I.”

  Startled out of her reverie, Lu looked at Magnus. He didn’t meet her eyes, but judging by the expression on his face he already regretted speaking. She turned away, pretending not to feel his relief when she did. Pretending not to wonder exactly what it was that he’d suffered.

  She’d asked Morgan about it, just before she’d hugged her good-bye, and hadn’t gotten a satisfactory answer.

  “I have something I need to ask you.”

  Morgan’s manicured brows arched. “Which is?”

  “Magnus. What happened to him?”

  “His face, you mean,” Morgan said. “The scars.”

  “No, I . . . I mean yes, I guess so, but not specifically. More like, what happened to make him so . . .”

  “Moody? Surly? Unapproachable?”

  Lu nodded, biting her lip, and Morgan, being Morgan, instantly guessed the meaning behind this line of questioning.

  “Oh, dear, does someone have a soft spot for her gallant rescuer?”

  “Maybe,” answered Lu softly, looking at the ground. “But it’s less like a soft spot and more like . . .”

  “A painful ache?”

  When Lu glanced up, Morgan was staring back at her with affection, and clear understanding, in her eyes.

  Lu nodded again, equally embarrassed and relieved. “And I can’t figure out what I should do about that, if anything. He seems like he just wants to be left alone. Like he can’t stand the company of others. And I know how much he hates to be touched. He’s like a feral animal. He’s so . . . rough.”

  Morgan chuckled, then smoothed a hand over Lu’s hair, a twinkle in her emerald eyes.

  “A diamond in the rough is still a diamond, pet. One just has to know how to handle it to bring out all the facets of its beauty. Only with a pair of gentle, loving hands can it be polished to perfection. Men are the exact same way.”

  That was it. Morgan hadn’t told her what had happened to Magnus to make him so feral. To scar his face and body. She’d simply smiled a Mona Lisa smile and suggested that Lu treat Magnus the same way she’d treat a cornered animal: gently, and with extreme care.

  Gently. She looked again at her bare hands, then from the pocket of her jacket—courtesy of Honor’s closet—Lu withdrew one of the pairs of gloves Magnus had given her, and pulled them on.

  They touched down in the wilderness between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer in France. It was an old-growth forest, dense with towering trees that were perfect for concealment, and far enough away from civilization to be safe from the Peace Guard, Enforcement, or electronic surveillance. They’d encounter those problems soon enough, but for now Magnus was satisfied of their safety.

  Safety being a relative term; he was as much in danger of losing himself completely as he always was around Lumina.

  She was quiet and careful, following his lead without speaking as he jumped out of the helicopter, hoisted his small pack onto his back, and began to head north toward the rendezvous point where Jack had indicated her people would pick them up. They’d be staying their first night in one of dozens of safe houses the Dissenters operated in France, but they’d have to hurry to make it through the forest in time; the people who were meeting them would wait only fifteen minutes, no more. If Magnus missed this first pickup, he and Lu would be spending the night walking.

  And when daybreak came, they’d have to find shelter or die. Already the thin clouds overhead were tainted that ominous, poisonous red. Farther inland, the clouds grew thicker, the color more opaque.

  He needn’t have worried. Lumina was as swift as she was silent, and had no trouble keeping up with him as he navigated through the dark forest toward the access road. The road used to function as the initial route from the ports of the seafront to the interior cities, but now was as abandoned as London had been. There was no more international commerce, no shipping or exports, no trade between nations at all. There were only large, self-supporting cities existing like dystopian oases in the middle of the vast desert of the remains of the world, and the Phoenix Corporation controlled them, as they did everything else.

  Even the clouds.

  They broke through the tree line and the road was there, two lanes of cracked asphalt just beyond a shallow ditch choked with brambles and weeds. On the other side of the road, a deer stood frozen—nose twitching, ears pricked forward, black eyes shining in terror. A second passed, then she bounded off into the woods, her tail a flash of white against the darkness.

  “Oh,” breathed Lu, amazed, watching it go. “I’ve never seen one of those before. Only in books.”

  Magnus had grown up in the Amazon. He’d seen every kind of bird and reptile and mammal—had, in fact, eaten all of them—and couldn’t imagine growing up as she had, confined to a city with no access to the natural world. She was an animal, as were they all, and she needed animal outlets.

  He was arrested by that thought. She’d said she’d never had a chance to practice her Gifts, spending all her energy on trying to be “normal,” and had only just yesterday Shifted for the first time . . .

  “Do you know what the Ikati actually are, Lumina?”

  She didn’t turn to look at him, and really, could he blame her? He knew he’d been acting on the far side of sullen and testy, but keeping her at a safe arm’s length had become of paramount importance to him. After that kiss, after everything that itched and throbbed between them, after the revelation about his own, imminent demise . . . Magnus was taking no chances.

  He was going to die. Soon. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—be so selfish as to take what he wanted from her, which was much, much more than just another kiss.

  “What do you mean?” Her brows pulled together in confusion.

  “You, Honor, and your mother are the only living Ikati who can Shift to something else than our original form . . . you know that, right?”

  Now she did look at him, and that familiar snap of connection made his blood sizzle in his veins.

  “Original form?”

  He couldn’t help it. His own hand betrayed him. Before he could think, he reached out and lightly touched a lock of her hair. It was like silk between his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was husky. “This body is a clever disguise. We learned to look human millennia ago as a survival mechanism, but this isn’t what we are.”

  Her hand lifted, then stilled in the air, just inches from his, as if she’d been about to touch him but stopped herself. “What are we then? Will you show me?”

  Her voice was lowered to match his own, the softest throaty purr, and it was all he could do not to take her into his arms and give in to all the wild thrashing inside him, the burning and the need. Instead, he only gave a curt, wordless nod, dropped his hand and turned away.

  After a moment, she turned away, too. Then, mercifully, from off in the distance came the low, electric drone of engines. Together they waited for Jack’s friends in silence, the space between them raw.

  Inola Hart was not at all what Magnus had been expecting.

  She was about Jack and Morgan’s age, elegant and severe with her dark hair pulled to a tight chignon at the nape of her neck, which served perfectly to highlight the angular attractiveness of
her face. Sloe-eyed, tall, with nut-brown skin and a commanding air that suggested she was used to ordering people around, Nola, as she’d instructed they call her, seemed the kind of woman who’d be equally at home in a ballroom or on a battlefield.

  Magnus decided he liked her immediately.

  The young man she introduced as her nephew, James, however, Magnus disliked immediately, primarily due to the way he couldn’t stop ogling Lumina.

  Magnus grudgingly admitted that James tried to be circumspect about it, but from the first moment he’d pulled off his motorcycle helmet, his eyes had gone straight to Lumina’s face, and stayed glued there. When they weren’t blinking in admiration at her body, that is, which was on spectacular display in one of the tight-fitting warrior chick costumes Honor favored. She’d dyed it black, at least, so she didn’t stick out like a spotlight, but the stretchy, figure-molding material left little to the imagination.

  “Good for ease of movement,” Honor had said breezily in response to his bug-eyed look when Lumina first emerged from the caves to meet him at the helicopter, and if he hadn’t known better, he’d almost have thought Honor was smirking.

  “James, take Lumina. I’ll take Magnus,” Nola said, about to don her helmet.

  “No,” Magnus said firmly, stepping forward. He stared at James. “I’ll take Lumina. You and James can ride together, Nola.”

  James held his hands up in a surrendering gesture. “Whatever works for you, man. I’m easy.” He dismounted the bike—sleek and black, one of the newest electric models—and ambled over to Nola, who was watching this exchange closely.

  Her gaze flicked between him and Lumina. “We’ve got about an hour’s ride ahead of us. If either of you need to take care of business, do it now. Unless it’s a dire emergency, we won’t stop again until we get home.”

  “I’d rather get started now,” said Lumina.

  Magnus agreed. He mounted the bike, handed Lu the helmet from the peg on the back seat, then donned the extra one Nola handed over. He slid his small shoulder pack around to the front, giving Lumina room, and she swung her leg over the seat and climbed on.

  Her arms slid around his waist. Her chest pressed against his back. The weight of her settled against him, firm and plush and agonizing. And, as Magnus depressed the ignition button and felt the bike hum to life beneath them, he said a prayer for strength to a god he knew did not exist, because he’d never answered a single prayer before.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The safe house was in a small town near the Belgian border. The house itself was distinctly European, with a steep mansard roofline and charming shutters, but beyond that, the planned community offered zero in the way of diversity or interest. The town might have been anywhere. Like London, it was entirely devoid of life.

  Except for the pair of black motorcycles that had traversed its roads.

  Surprisingly well-preserved roads they were, too, except for the occasional ragged crack or pothole. The bigger problem was the rotting husks of abandoned cars, but the motorcycles had maneuvered around them handily, and Magnus was again impressed with Nola. From what Jack had told him, he gathered that Nola was the person Jack trusted most in the world, aside from Hawk. She and Nola had been best friends in their lives before the Flash—Jack, a reporter for the New York Times and Nola, an attorney for the United Nations—and Nola had proven herself unwaveringly loyal. When Jack had founded the Dissenter movement, Nola was the first one on board.

  Travelling through an unlit, uninhabited town at night was always eerie, but Magnus was accustomed to it. By the time they reached the safe house he should have been feeling more relaxed. They’d landed easily, made the rendezvous, made good time over the highway without encountering any trouble. Only he didn’t feel relaxed. With Lu’s body so tightly fused to his, her thighs around his hips, her arms clinging to his waist, Magnus felt like he might explode in frustration.

  Not for one second, however, did he regret not letting her ride with James.

  They cut the engines, dismounted, pulled off their helmets. Nola led them around the side of the darkened house, through a wooden gate that groaned open on rusted hinges. Magnus expected a normal suburban backyard, but instead found himself looking at a small, shed-like building on a slab of concrete, surrounded by nothing but a wide expanse of dirt. Nola led them to the shed, and lifted a hinged door, revealing an empty interior.

  “Bring the bike in,” she instructed over her shoulder. “There’s just room enough for the four of us.”

  He did as he was told, eyeing Nola speculatively, but she simply shut the hinged door behind them, looked to make sure no one was within a few inches of the walls, then pulled a cord hanging from the ceiling.

  With a jolt, the cement floor below their feet began slowly to descend.

  Lu jumped, but Magnus had to chuckle. “You’re full of all kinds of surprises, aren’t you, Nola?”

  Lu flashed him a look he couldn’t decipher, quickly recovering to adopt a bored expression. Nola shrugged, smiling. “Every woman is full of surprises, much to man’s great horror or delight. A woman only has to surprise a man once to find out what he’s made of.” Her smile deepened. “And whether or not he’s worth her while.”

  “What about you, Lumina?” prompted James. “I’ll bet you’re full of surprises.”

  Lu sent him a sideways, penetrating stare. “You have no idea.”

  The way they looked at each other made Magnus’s chest tighten. He had to curl his hands to fists to stop them from curling around James’s throat.

  After a short descent during which James stared at Lu, Lu stared at Nola, and Nola stared at the walls crawling upward, the platform came to rest at the end of a short, dark tunnel. At the far end a pair of lanterns flanked a closed door.

  “Leave the bikes here.” Nola rolled her motorcycle a few feet into the tunnel, kicking down the stand. Magnus parked his bike behind hers, and the four of them proceeded to the door.

  It was steel, reinforced with rebar through the concrete on either side. Magnus noted the small black eye of a camera mounted to the ceiling. “How do you have electricity so far from the cities?”

  Nola waved impatiently to the camera. “We siphon it from the grid, but we have a few generators for emergencies, too.”

  “Siphon it from the grid? And the IF doesn’t notice that?”

  Nola looked at him over her shoulder, her expression amused. “If they did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, now would we?”

  Full of surprises, indeed, he thought admiringly. Lumina stiffened. He glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at him, focusing instead on the door, which had opened.

  In the doorway stood an ancient man, the oldest living person Magnus had seen in many years. He had to be close to one hundred, if not beyond. His hair was long and white, braided in two plaits that fell below his shoulders. He was olive-skinned, like Nola and James, but his was papery as parchment, and deeply lined. Also like Nola and James, he had dark, almond-shaped eyes, pronounced cheekbones, and a proud stoicism that hinted at Indian ancestry.

  Though elderly, his posture was straight and sure, his gaze clear. And his voice, when he spoke, was strong and commanding.

  “Ulihelsidi. Osadatsu?”

  Nola squeezed the old man’s arm. “All good, Grandfather. Ositsu. No problems.”

  He nodded, eyeing each of the group in turn, then moved aside to let them in. Like James, he paid particular attention to Lumina, and Magnus had to swallow the growl rising in his throat.

  The old man looked at him, his eyes sharp and assessing. Then his face creased into a smile. He said something to Nola in that language of theirs, and she laughed.

  “What?” snapped Magnus.

  “Grandfather says your lion roars so loud the moon can even hear it.”

  Well, thought Magnus, relaxing, at least he got the genus right. “I’ll
take that as a compliment.”

  “Oh, believe me, it is. If he didn’t like you, he would have called you a dung beetle. Or worse.”

  “Grandfather can tell everything about a person as soon as he meets him,” explained James to Lumina as they proceeded down a short corridor, then a flight of stairs. “He has the Spirit Eye.”

  “Spirit Eye?” Lumina repeated, looking with interest at James.

  Following behind the two of them, Magnus had to resist the violent urge to trip James and send him sprawling to the floor, and scolded himself for being so petty and ridiculous. He noticed Nola’s grandfather was looking more and more pleased.

  “It’s a Native American—”

  The old man interrupted James with a sharp correction in his language.

  “Sorry, Grandfather. It’s a First Nation belief. The Spirit Eye lets you see into a person’s soul.”

  “Sounds like an amazing Gift,” murmured Lu. The old man replied, and as Nola led the group through another door into a small antechamber that opened to a large, tri-level living area, she translated.

  “He says it’s almost as good as Dreamwalking.”

  Magnus sucked in his breath. Lu stopped dead in her tracks. Nola and James proceeded forward, James to a bank of monitors and computer equipment glowing blue and green along one wall, Nola toward a kitchen on the opposite side of the floor. The old man moved past them, smiling like the Sphinx.

  Lu kept her gaze fixed on the old man as he joined Nola in the kitchen and lowered himself into a chair around a square wooden table. He picked up a book—real paper, real pages, a cracked, gilt-lettered spine—and began to read, ignoring everyone.

  Lu glanced at Magnus, her expression fraught, but neither one of them spoke.

  “You must be hungry,” called Nola from the kitchen. “The bedrooms are on the second floor; yours is last on the left. When you’ve settled in, come get something to eat, and then we’ll talk.”

  She began to bustle around the kitchen, making preparations for a meal, while Magnus stood looking at her in dawning horror, realizing he’d never asked Jack about sleeping arrangements.