“What?” he said, affronted.
“I saw a tomato once before. In a book.”
“I have them flown in from Sardinia. I love this heirloom variety; they’re so perky.”
Lu stared at him. “Sardinia. Flown in from Sardinia.”
He nodded.
“But the only flights allowed anywhere are military!”
“You think that soldier at the gate is the only man who ever took a bribe?” Gregor answered, brows quirked. “Everyone has somethin’ they want, lass. And, even better for me, everyone has a price they’ll pay to get it. Now eat your sandwich.”
Lu picked up the sandwich, and took a huge bite. It was delicious. She swallowed, took another bite, said around a mouthful, “But . . . tomatoes?”
It was his turn to shrug now. “It’s a little venture of mine. The grow light fields are adequate, but you need real sunlight for real taste. The IF doesn’t keep the isotope clouds over any of the major islands of Europe anymore, or watch ’em now that they’re deserted for that matter, so on Sardinia I’ve got a bloody great biome project with all my favorite—”
“Wait,” Lu interrupted, shocked once again. “You know about the isotope clouds?”
“Of course,” he answered, sitting across from her, calm as the Buddha. “I told you before; tisn’t anything I don’t know.”
“No, what you said was there wasn’t anything you didn’t know about Magnus and me,” Lu replied tartly. That made him laugh. She’d devoured half the sandwich by the time he stopped.
“Ach, how I love a woman with a memory like a steel trap! Eliana’s the exact same way.” His eyes grew wistful, his lips pursed. “What I wouldn’a give to see that one again,” he mused, shaking his head. He sobered after a moment, fixing her in his shrewd gaze. “But you’re exactly right, lass. That is what I said. And it’s the ever-lovin’ truth: I know everything there is to know about you and that man of yours. Far more than you know yourself.”
He dangled it out there like a dare, and his eyes dared her, too, the offer an obvious lure. She liked Gregor, but she didn’t altogether trust him, so she hesitated a long, long while before finally giving in to her curiosity.
What she said to him was a dare in its own way, too. A test. Because she didn’t believe he would know, and he’d be exposed as all bluster and bullshit.
She really should have known better by now.
“All right, Gregor, if you’re so smart, tell me where I was born.”
“That’s an easy one, lass,” he scoffed quietly, holding her gaze. “Hampshire, southern England, a fancy manor house called Sommerley. Town named after it, too, hidden deep in the New Forest, surrounded by stone walls three times the height of a man.” He paused, gauging her astonishment. “But you didn’t stay there long.”
An itch began in Lu’s palms. She’d taken the gloves off for her bath, and now her hands were dangerously bare. She put down the half-eaten sandwich and slowly, slowly, slid her hands into her lap.
“You travelled by boat to another place hidden deep in a forest, the Amazon jungle just outside Manaus, Brazil. Your stay there was even shorter: less than a week, as a matter of fact. Then came the Flash. Your Flash. Instigated by the jealousy and total ignorance of Man, intent on wipin’ out what we didn’t understand.”
Lu held herself perfectly still, though all her nerves screamed for action. For something. The animal always slumbering in her veins cracked open yellow, slitted eyes, lifting its head.
“Your next trip wasn’t by water. This time it was by air.” His voice was growing quieter and quieter, his attention never wavering from her face. “The flight was short, but by the end of it, you had a new home. New parents. A new life. And those new parents—missionaries they were, dedicated to spreading the word of their God—decided their foundling child should be as far away from the jungle as she could possibly get. Especially since every hunter on Earth now had her in their sights. And so that foundling child wound up in an adopted city with adopted parents who could never really figure out if she was a gift or a curse, but who loved her anyway.” His voice dropped even lower. “And died for it.”
A flare of anger, huge and bright, erupted in her chest. How dare he! “You don’t know anything! My mother died of cancer!”
He was apologetic, at least. “That’s what your father told you. But you were six years old, Lumina. He couldn’t tell you that your mother, convinced you were a demon sent straight from hell after you lit your bed on fire the first time, opened her wrists with a straight razor.”
Lu bolted to her feet, cocked back her arm, and slapped Gregor MacGregor so hard across the face he rocked back, his head jerking to the side.
She shouted, “That’s a lie!”
He exhaled a hard breath, working his jaw where she’d hit him. His gaze flashed to hers. “I lie to keep myself out of trouble or make money, and make no apologies about it. But I’m not lyin’ now, lass, no matter how hard you hit me. And if you want to hear more, you’d better brace yourself. That’s hardly the worst of it.”
Lu stared at him, her heart pounding, a burn working its way up from her palms to her arms. She was so furious she thought her entire body might ignite. “Even if I believed you—which I don’t—how would you know, anyway? And how do you know all that other stuff about me?”
“You think a man like me would let a dangerous fugitive stay in his home without knowin’ all there is to know about her?” He shook his head, answering his own question. “Eliana filled me in where she could, the rest I found out on my own. A lot of people in this world owe me favors, lass. I called in a few.”
Lu began to pace in front of the table, her hands fisted at her sides. He had to be lying. He had to be! Only . . . he didn’t smell or look like he was. There were no telling twitches, no sour scent of deception. And what did he mean by “That’s hardly the worst of it”?
She swung around and demanded, “What else? What about Magnus—what do you know about him?”
His expression guarded, he sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll not tell you if you’re gonna burn down my house, after. Promise me you’ll keep your temper under control.”
That sounded bad. She gave him a curt nod, and resumed her pacing. Unsettled, her stomach lurched and twisted.
Gregor paused a moment, then, looking at the table, asked quietly, “Has he told you how he got all those scars?”
Lu stopped dead in her tracks, turning to look at him. She answered with a shake of her head.
“He’s a strong one, your man, I have to give it to him. I’ve seen pretty much the worst the world has to offer and I’m still standin’, but if I had to walk a mile in that lad’s shoes . . .” Gregor met her eyes, and what she saw there chilled her. “Well, let’s just say I don’t think I could.”
“What do you mean?” Hands shaking, Lu sank down into the chair across the table from him.
Gregor, twisting his pinky ring around with his thumb, asked, “How many people would you have to watch die, before you’d give up a secret? Ten? Twenty? One hundred?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Lu’s skin crawled. She waited, silent, watching his face.
“How about two hundred? How about if they were all your friends? Everyone you loved, grew up with, everyone you knew?” His voice darkened. “And not one of them over the age of fifteen?”
Lu put a hand over her mouth, her stomach lurching violently.
“They thought they could break him,” he said, admiration in his voice. “But they never did. Even when they poured acid on him. Even when they cut him. Even when they tortured and killed each and every one of the children they’d captured that day. He was captured, too, you see, the day of the Flash. Both his parents were killed. All the children were separated from the adults, taken to a different prison in Bolivia. By pure dumb luck, Magnus had heard Morgan screa
ming in the chaos to get everyone to the caves of Ogof Ffynnon Ddu in Wales, and he made the fatal mistake of telling one of the other children he knew where to go, if only they could all escape. Word spread: Magnus knew. And that was why they targeted him.”
Gregor paused, looked down at his pinky ring. “That . . . and one other thing.” He looked up at her again. “He’d seen the direction the great white dragon had flown, carrying its child to safety. He wouldn’t tell them that, either.”
Lu closed her eyes, sick. He’d saved her. He’d saved the new colony, and countless lives. And in trade, he’d sacrificed two hundred children. Two hundred of his friends.
Dear God.
“They brutalized him for three years in that prison, long after everyone else was dead. Then he came of age. His Gifts manifested. He slaughtered every one of the guards, and walked out breathing, but not really alive. He found his way to Wales. He began to search for other survivors, bringing them back one by one to the colony. And then he found you.”
Lu opened her eyes and stared in mute horror at Gregor. She couldn’t speak. There weren’t any words to convey the depths of her despair, her wretchedness. Her overwhelming, paralyzing heartbreak.
Magnus. Beautiful, ruined Magnus. No wonder he was so broken. It was a miracle he’d survived at all.
Gregor asked softly, “He’s saved your life twice now, lass. Don’t you think you should repay the favor?”
“What do you mean?” Lu whispered, shaking.
“I mean that if he stays with you, it’ll cost him his life. And he’s more than willin’ to pay.”
The automatic No! died on her lips, because with awful clarity the words Demetrius had spoken came flooding back, burned like a brand into her mind.
Cogs in the machine, Seeker, all of us. You know it as well as I.
And Magnus’s expression of recognition, of resignation, his fleeting look in her direction that was so foreboding she’d felt certain it was something terrible, equally certain he’d never tell her what.
Now she knew, down to the marrow of her bones. Demetrius had Dreamt of Magnus’s death. He’d known it, coming here with her. He’d known it, making love to her. He’d known it all along, and had accepted it willingly.
Gratefully?
Her brain exploded into chaos. She leapt from the chair, hands gripping her head, adrenaline flooding through her veins, making her heart hammer. She couldn’t let it happen. She couldn’t let him die.
“What do I do?” she cried, turning to Gregor. “How can I stop it?”
His face took on an odd, calculating cast. He leaned forward over the table, intent. “You need to find what you came lookin’ for alone, lass. Let him sit this one out. That’s the only way you can save him.”
“But I don’t even know where to start looking! And I could never convince him not to come with me!” She felt dizzy. Nauseated. Heat flashed over her, and she broke out in a sweat.
Gregor stood, rising slowly, pulling himself to his full height to look at her with calm, unblinking eyes. “I told you I’d set up a meetin’ with someone who might know where that prison is you’re lookin’ for, yes?”
Black spots danced in front of Lu’s eyes, and she thought she might throw up. “Yes, yes, but Magnus will be awake any time, he’ll insist on coming to the—”
“He can’t insist if he’s still sleepin’. And as the meetin’ is right now, I think he’ll just have to miss it.”
Lu looked at Gregor, confused. The room wavered in her peripheral vision, and she swayed, gripped by a jolt of vertigo.
From his pocket, he removed a small cell phone. He dialed a number, waited a beat, then said, “All right then, lads. She’s all yours.”
Behind her, a door crashed open. Lu turned, and, as if in slow motion, saw six men running toward her from the opposite end of the large kitchen. They wore white hazmat suits with face shields, gloves, and boots, rifles slung over their backs.
Peace Guards.
Lu whipped her head around, looked at the half-eaten sandwich on the table, stared up at the man who’d fed it to her. Dazed, she breathed, “Gregor MacGregor, you son of a bitch!”
He lifted his shoulders in casual apology or agreement, but his eyes were fierce. As footsteps pounded closer, he said, barely audibly, “D’ya know why a knife needs a sheath, lass? Because the real power of a knife isn’t in the sharpness of its blade, it’s in concealment. Remember that. And gie it laldy.”
Then the men in white suits smashed into her and grabbed her, just as the room slipped sideways, her field of vision narrowing to a swiftly closing circle of black.
THIRTY-TWO
When Magnus awoke alone, he knew with instant, bloodcurdling certainty something was terribly wrong. Lumina wasn’t beside him, but there was more to it than that. He felt her absence as a raw, hollow space inside his chest, as if an organ had been cut out while he’d been sleeping.
On a small table beside the bed lay her golden dragon pendant, its red eye winking in the light.
Magnus dressed, panicked, calling out for her even though he knew she wouldn’t answer, and flew out of the room, the pendant in his shirt pocket.
He searched the entire mansion in minutes. She’d disappeared.
So had Gregor MacGregor.
He stood in the middle of the vast, echoing foyer where they’d first come in, eyes closed, concentrating, trying in vain to still his mind even as his body clamored violently for action. He called for her with his mind, too, but was once more met only with silence.
When he opened his eyes again, Magnus was gone. In his place was a ravaged, monstrous thing born long ago, a thing made of blood and death and darkness that knew it could survive any horror, because it already had.
It was that thing that wrenched open the front door of the deserted mansion, stepping out into the blistering red fury of noon, determined to find the angel that had shown it the way back from hell.
Lu was being carried; by whom she couldn’t see. She couldn’t see because her eyes wouldn’t open. They felt stitched shut.
There was more than one pair of hands carrying her, though. More than one set of arms. More than one voice murmuring in hushed excitement as warm bodies jostled around her, bumping and shoving, reckless in their eagerness to deliver her wherever it was they were headed.
At least they’re not groping my ass.
She smelled cloistered air, heard the shuffle of a dozen boots over dusty stone, tasted an unpleasant, metallic tang on her tongue. With Herculean effort, she cracked open one eye, then closed it again because what she saw made no sense.
An enormous golden crucifix, suspended over an altar. A checkerboard marble floor. Soaring arches and recessed chapels and medieval paintings glowing with gilt.
Drugged. Hallucinating. Screwed.
Lu silently pronounced judgment on her situation, then sank back into darkness.
The Queen of the Ikati dreamt of a comet, soaring high in the icy thin atmosphere, its tail a long, sparking flare of red, shedding a bloody glow over everything on the earth beneath.
She’d dreamt of this particular comet before. Always, it was a harbinger of disaster.
Torn from sleep, Jenna jerked upright in her cot, a strangled scream caught in her throat. It was light, always light in her cell, but something dark lurked in the corners. Something awful rang in her brain, echoing. Calling.
She raised her nose, scenting the air, then froze in disbelief. In recognition. A cry of anguish slipped from her lips. “No,” she whispered. “No!”
Jenna leapt from her cot, stood in the middle of her cell, and began to scream.
Sebastian Thorne’s mind tended to run on a hamster wheel when he lay down to try to sleep, so he’d developed chronic insomnia. It was stubbornly resistant to the drugs he’d developed to combat it, though they worked like a charm on every other person
suffering from sleepless nights. If he’d been a superstitious man, he might have found some unease in that, but he wasn’t superstitious, ascribing that kind of whimsy to those of lesser intellect.
So he was awake during the middle of the day when the rest of the world was at rest. At the moment the call came, he was standing in front of his bathroom mirror, considering his reflection, pleased with how well the new drug to combat hair loss was working.
The green light on the phone on the wall began to blink, indicating an incoming call. He pressed the answer button.
“Yes.”
“Sir! It’s Three!”
Thorne frowned at the phone. Three sounded unusually breathless. Excited, even. “Yes, Three, what is it?”
There was a moment of heavy breathing, then the wet sound of gulping. “Sir . . . sir . . .”
Thorne was beginning to lose patience. For goodness’ sake, didn’t the man realize it was the middle of the day? Honestly, it had been over two decades since he’d first installed the isotope clouds in the atmosphere, making daylight poisonous and effectively turning the human population nocturnal. Why wasn’t Three with the program yet? “You have five seconds to explain why you’ve disturbed me at such a late hour, and your explanation better be satisfactory. Speak.”
There was a pause in which Thorne imagined Three’s eyes rolling this way and that in his head, trying to decide which way to focus. Then he spoke.
“Lumina Bohn. She’s been captured, sir. The Peace Guard have brought her into the facility. She’s here!”
Though Thorne hardly believed it, Three’s explanation was, indeed, satisfactory.
A slow, delighted smile spread over Thorne’s face. “I’ll be right in.”
When she awoke, Lumina was nude, blindfolded, and strapped down to a hard metal surface that had been tilted at a forty-five degree angle, so she was neither upright nor lying down.
The better to see you with, my dear, she thought groggily, understanding immediately that she was on display.
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