At the moment those fathomless eyes, electric yellow-green and impossibly large, were trained on her daughter.
Thorne gestured to one of the guards to release Lumina from the handcuffs. His order was promptly followed. Then the two women stared at one another in a silence that grew and stretched, becoming uncomfortably long.
Why is nothing happening? he thought, frowning. Perhaps this was their way, this stoicism? He shook that thought off because he’d seen Jenna collapse in an emotional heap when showed the video of Leander. So what was this?
Just as he was about to clear his throat and suggest that it was enough visiting for one day, Lumina ran to her mother, closing the distance between them in a bolt of blurred motion. She threw her arms around her mother’s neck. They stood like that, silent, clutching one another, so similar in looks it was eerie, like seeing the older and younger version of the same person at once.
“Well,” said Thorne into the hush, “I’ll give you two a moment. Lumina, when you’re finished here, I’m afraid there are a few things we’ll have to discuss.”
He turned away, leaving, but Lumina’s voice stopped him.
“May I ask you a question?”
When he turned back to look at them, Lumina and her mother were holding hands. Staring at him with faint, ferocious smiles on their faces. Thorne’s chest tightened with a disturbing premonition that he was no longer predator, but prey.
“Do you happen to know what ‘gie it laldy’ means?”
“What?” he asked, confused, irritated, struggling to push aside the growing certainty that something was terribly wrong.
Lumina said, “I heard it recently, and I didn’t know what it meant. Do you?”
His response was curt and cold. “No.” He turned to leave again, but Three spoke up.
“It’s old Scottish slang, sir. It means, ‘give it loudly.’ Give it one hundred percent. Pull out all the stops, so to speak.”
Lumina Bohn threw back her head and laughed, deep and throaty. It was chilling in its exuberance. Then she looked at him, smiling widely, her eyes gleaming animal bright.
Just as the hair atop his head began to lift with the first, sparking crackles of electricity, Lumina said, “Such great advice.”
To his horror, the fused metal collars around both women’s necks popped off simultaneously, falling with a clatter to the floor. Then Lumina waved at him, a tiny motion of her fingers that wasn’t a hello.
And the world exploded into flame.
Sleeping fitfully in his hospital bed, the Grand Minister was abruptly awoken by an earthquake.
He thought it was a dream at first. The clattering windows, the jumping floor, the building groaning and shaking in a way no stationary object ever should. His eyes flew open and he stared around the room in disbelief, not comprehending what his eyes were seeing.
Screaming from the nurse’s station. The overhead fluorescents flickered off and on. The data screen wrenched from the wall opposite the bed, crashing to the floor and shattering. A flare of light from the window, searingly bright. Heavy blackout shades were drawn against the hellish heat of day, but one push on the proper button on the universal remote attached to the metal rail on his hospital bed remedied that, and the shades slid silently back.
The Grand Minister was on the sixth floor of the hospital, which provided him an unobstructed view of the surrounding city through the tinted glass. Dead center of the view was St. Stephen’s Cathedral, a kilometer away.
The flare of light wasn’t really light after all. It was fire. A churning, orange inferno had swallowed St. Stephen’s whole, leaving only the megascreen atop the highest tower visible. It still displayed the rotating picture of Lumina Bohn.
With his mouth hanging open, the Grand Minister watched as the megascreen listed sideways, then toppled, breaking away from the tower in a colossal spray of stone and glass, falling down to be consumed in an instant by the flames below. Then the tower itself disintegrated, and he was left staring at a writhing ball of flame, spreading out in the shape of a mushroom.
He’d seen that shape before. He’d seen that hellish mass of flame before. He’d felt the earth shake in just the same way, heard the same thundering boom of explosion.
He knew exactly what it all meant.
Magnus was in the central nave of St. Stephen’s when it erupted into flame. He knew what it meant, too, because he’d seen it all before, too.
“Lumina,” he whispered, sinking to his knees.
The flames swallowed him. Heat and smoke and howling wind, eddies of glowing ashes. He closed his eyes and let the fire test him, let it snap and bay at him like a pack of rabid dogs. It was hellishly hot and every breath singed his lungs, but it quickly turned cool and caressing, the flames gently licking his skin like a lover’s caress.
Lumina’s fire recognized him. It let him go.
He staggered to his feet. Surrounded by fire that didn’t burn, Magnus pushed through walls of flame, buffeted by the wind that fire produces but not harmed. At least not by that. He called out her name again, louder, certain she was here because he’d recognized the images she’d sent, but uncertain how to get below, where he’d find her.
It made sick sense to him now. The religious oppression. The ban on the word “God.” It was genius in its own way. When you wanted to establish yourself as the de facto ruler of the universe, you had to eliminate any and all competition. And if you could use the infrastructure of the enemy to your own advantage, so much the better. Almost all cathedrals had mazes of catacombs and crypts, tunnels and tombs, areas perfectly suited for hiding things. For keeping things away from the outside world.
Things like prisoners.
Thorne had constructed his headquarters and containment center for his enemies right under one of the most famous cathedrals in Europe. And Lumina had grown up within sight of the prison that held her mother.
The earth continuing to shake beneath his feet, Magnus called out to Lumina with his mind; he was answered with silence. Focused, fury pushing him forward, he didn’t notice the cadre of white-suited Peace Guards that had breached the rear doors of the cathedral, pouring into the nave like a swarm of locusts.
THIRTY-FOUR
The electricity was short-circuited by the fire. The lights were extinguished; everything was plunged into darkness. The backup generators, heated beyond operational capabilities, failed. The only system that worked was the sprinklers. Inside the prison, it began to rain.
Still holding hands, Lumina and Jenna stood in the melting doorway of the suite Thorne had built, watching the fire consume him, Three, and all the other guards he’d brought with him. They screamed and writhed, trying to run, but none of them got very far, in spite of the sprinklers.
Throughout the prison, cell doors popped open. Collars dropped from prisoner’s necks. The structure shook and rumbled. Cracks appeared in walls.
Humans died.
Not a single Ikati was harmed. Those that could Shift to Vapor did so, surging into air ducts and slipping through cracks, heading up. Those that couldn’t Shift used their legs to run, preternaturally fast, for exits. Without her collar, their Queen could See them all like stars against a midnight sky. Holding hands with her daughter, she could speak to them all, as well.
Wales! Ogof Ffynnon Ddu! Go!
There was one voice that answered, and that voice Jenna had heard only once in the past twenty-five years. She jerked her head up with a cry, then looked at her daughter with eyes full of love, victory, and anguish. “Your father’s waiting,” she whispered.
Above the howl of the firestorm, Lumina heard the words. But she heard something else, too. Another voice. The voice she loved more than anything else in the world, calling her name.
Weakly.
A rush of terror, sharp as knife blades scraped over her nerves. Her heart like a stone in her chest. Dread marrie
d reluctance, and Lumina found herself unable to move.
Magnus! Magnus, where are you?
There was no answer.
Jenna said, “The nave—he’s near St. Valentine’s Chapel! He’s directly above us! He’s . . . he’s . . .”
Her mother looked at her, falling silent, and Lumina saw what she feared most in that look: death.
“No! No!”
Lumina Shifted to Vapor, and was gone.
A single heartbeat later, Jenna followed.
THIRTY-FIVE
It would have been a fair fight, the Peace Guard’s dozens against his one, but for the shields on their helmets. Magnus couldn’t see their faces, their eyes. Worst of all, because he’d been so badly burned by the noonday sun on his way to the cathedral in search of Lumina, he could no longer Shift to Vapor, or cloak himself in shadows to become invisible.
All he had was his strength and his speed against a hail of toxin-laced bullets.
The first spray of bullets missed Magnus entirely, whizzing by his head and blasting through a sculpted marble pulpit beside him instead. He spun away as the carving of dead-eyed angels and pious saints erupted into a blizzard of jagged shards, glinting white. The flames had begun to recede in the main part of the cathedral so he was able to clearly see the flood of Ikati rising up with unnatural speed from the floor just in front of the main altar, where an enormous panel of marble had been shoved back to reveal a twist of stairs leading to total darkness below. The escaping prisoners were joined by glittering plumes of mist, slithering through floor vents and surging up stone walls to hang in suspension far above, some darting toward the stained glass windows only to shrink back when they felt the heat and fury of the sun beating through.
There would be no escape for them until the sun had set. They’d been set free from their cells below, but all were now trapped inside an enormous stone cage, beset by enemies all around.
Above the roar of flames, he heard helicopter blades. Enforcement had wasted no time in showing up for the party.
Another volley of gunfire rang out, and Magnus was hit in the shoulder. Snarling, he flitted from column to column in the arcade that flanked the main nave, then charged the shooter, crashing headlong into the man and sending them both tumbling to the ground. The other Peace Guards scattered like buckshot.
His injured arm didn’t prevent Magnus from breaking the man’s neck with one sharp twist of his hands.
He looked up just in time to see a group of enormous black animals, roaring, leap on a group of Peace Guards huddled in a side chapel. Gunfire rang out. Several panthers slumped to the ground, shot, but others surged forward to take their place. Soon the white hazmat suits were ripped to shreds, and so were the men inside them.
He took down four more, taking aim at the group near the altar. Then pain, searing, blinding white, flared through his body. For a moment, everything went black.
He opened his eyes to find himself on his back, staring at the vaulted ceiling far above. He couldn’t feel anything in his lower body, his sense of smell wasn’t operational, and he couldn’t hear much either. The world had taken on a dreamy, slow quality—the flames arching and rolling gracefully in the periphery of his vision, Ikati and Peace Guards running in slow motion, even the new spray of bullets streaking by, inches above his face, did so at a lazy speed, so he saw each bullet turn and wink in the light. He lifted his head and looked down. There beneath his body was a spreading stain of red. His own blood, quickly leaking from his body.
No. Not without seeing her. Not like this.
Lumina!
Magnus! Magnus, where are you?
He was just about to answer when into his field of vision stepped a large figure, clothed in white. There could be no mistaking the Peace Guard’s intent; his rifle was trained on Magnus’s chest. His finger was on the trigger.
A shot rang out, then another, then even more. He lost count. His body twitched with every impact, every muscle spasmed and screamed in misery. The pain was a living thing, ripping through him with a strength that left him breathless, washing over him in waves. He’d known physical pain before, though, pain far, far worse than this. And he’d known the gut-wrenching, soul-eating agony of having the blood of innocents on his hands. Those were terrible things, things that stained and warped him in innumerable ways.
But now Magnus knew true anguish, because he understood with a wrenching flare of clarity that he would never again set eyes on the woman who’d saved him from himself, who’d resurrected him from a living death, and shown him the way back to the light. He’d go into eternal oblivion without a final look at his love, his beautiful angel of fire.
He always knew he’d die alone. It was what he deserved, and right. But to do it without being able to tell Lumina that she was his touchstone, his true north, the only thing of beauty he’d ever known, seemed a fate too cruel to comprehend. He’d meant to tell her how much he loved her; why hadn’t he? There hadn’t been time, not nearly enough time, and now there never would be.
The last thing Magnus saw was his own face, reflected in the glass of the Peace Guard’s mask. Then he closed his eyes to block out that terrible vision, and surrendered his soul to the hungry darkness that had been waiting to claim him for years.
Lumina felt it the instant Magnus died.
Her heart clenched. Gravity lurched then disappeared altogether, like a planet pulled out of orbit, everything spinning and wobbling and just wrong. She’d flown up into the cathedral through the main elevator shafts of the prison, moving so fast she was a streaked blur, and she’d taken human form again after slipping through a gap in the floor. The moment she stepped forward into the small marble chapel, with the first beat of her heart, she knew.
Then she saw him.
Ignoring her nudity and the war zone around her, the chaos of shouting and gunfire, flames and fighting, the stream of Peace Guards pushing into the cathedral through all the side doors and the huge, muscular animals running to meet them, she flew across the checkerboard floor and was at his side in seconds. She threw herself to her knees in a howl of banshee grief, and took his head in her hands.
All the exposed skin on his face, arms, and hands was blistered and weeping, burned by the poisonous rays of the sun. He was covered in blood, his own and others’, a pool of it under his body, slick, still warm beneath her knees. There was no trace of heartbeat, no respiration, no life left in him at all.
In the inhalation that came before her scream, time stopped. Profound silence, a split second of weightlessness . . . and then the scream.
It was expulsive. There was a thundering, bass boom! that shook the walls and floor, the earth itself. A violent jolt rocked the cathedral to its foundations. The entire roof was ripped away as a powerful pulse of energy exploded upward, destroying in a gust of light and pressure the colorful mosaics, toppling the bell tower. The sky flared with color. Pulled with a sudden drag of winds, the red clouds were set into motion, blurring to streaks then tearing apart, dissolving. Every electrical circuit in a hundred-mile radius overloaded and shorted out, sparking and smoking. Every light was extinguished. Every Enforcement helicopter circling the cathedral dropped like a stone from the sky.
Lumina’s heart was like a stone, too, hurtling through space. It collided against the reality that Magnus was dead, and shattered. She was empty. She crumpled to his chest, transfigured by misery from a person to a hollow, sobbing shell, cast adrift on an ocean of hopelessness, hopelessness like sewage, raw and rotting and utterly foul.
Blackness tugged at her, coaxing, and Lumina realized she wanted to die, too.
She didn’t want to exist in a world without him. She couldn’t.
Cradling his ruined face in her hands, dripping tears onto his cheeks, Lumina whispered hoarsely, “I can’t live without you, Magnus! I can’t breathe without you! You’re my lungs and my heart and all the life I ever had! P
lease! Please don’t leave me! Please . . . you have to live . . .”
Gasping, her body wracked with tremors that seized her, shook her, Lumina laid her cheek on Magnus’s chest, sobbing.
In the stillness and silence that rose up all around, everyone, in and out of the cathedral, stared at the sky.
It was blue. A blue so vivid it was almost blinding. And right in the middle of it, hanging there like a golden, glimmering eye, was the sun. A sight not seen in a lifetime.
Lumina heard a voice, soft and caring.
“Hope.”
She looked up into her mother’s face. Pale and solemn, Jenna gazed down at her, beautiful as a medieval Madonna, her eyes endless, her nudity covered by a long strip of faded, dusty purple silk she’d torn from an altar in an alcove and wrapped around herself. A look passed between them, and she grasped the depth of Lumina’s despair without a word spoken. All there was to know was right there in her eyes, in the tears streaming silently down her cheeks. Jenna sank to her knees beside Lumina, pulling her into a gentle embrace.
I’m so sorry. Sweetheart, I’m so, so sorry.
Closing her eyes, Lumina made a sound like an animal in pain.
Another pair of arms encircled her, strong and sure. Lumina smelled spice and smoke and that wild, nighttime scent she’d come to love so much on Magnus. When she opened her eyes again, it was to gaze into a pair that were almost identical to her own, and her mother’s.
“Are you hurt?” her father asked.
Automatically, she shook her head, but then caught herself. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Can you Shift?”
Now she simply nodded.
“We have to go, love,” Jenna said. “All of us. Now. Your father and I will help the others—”
“I’m not leaving him!” It came out as a growl as she turned to crouch over Magnus’s body, fiercely protective of him, even now.
“Bring him with you. Back to the caves. We’ll take care of him there.”
Into Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 33