EPILOGUE
The sunset was the most spectacular one Lu had ever seen in her life. Which wasn’t saying much; it was only the third sunset she’d ever seen, after all.
“Why does the sky turn orange?” She watched in fascination as the blazing disc of the sun finally slipped below the black crags of the mountains on the far horizon. She’d never tire of seeing that sight, or the vivid sky left behind, painted an outrageous, jewel-tone array of sapphire, crimson, and gold.
With an air of authority, Beckett said, “Air molecules and airborne particles change the final color of the light beam you see as the sunlight travels through the atmosphere. The shorter blue and green components are removed, leaving the longer red and orange hues—”
“Magic,” interjected Honor, cutting Beckett off. When he pursed his lips, peeved, she rose on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “Magical molecules,” she amended, winding her arms around his shoulders. She grinned up at him, and Beckett’s peeved expression turned into one of dazed adoration.
Leaning back against Magnus’s chest, Lu smiled. Even more than seeing her sister so happy, she loved seeing a strong man brought to his knees with only a look from his woman.
You should be getting used to that by now, Magnus said silently, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing. Seeing as how you do the same thing to me every few minutes. He kissed the top of her head and she sighed, utterly content.
They stood together on the slope of the hill near the entrance to the caves. Birds sang in a stand of nearby trees. A cool, gentle wind stirred her hair around her face, swirled surrealist patterns in the long grass. Holding hands, her parents stood with them, silently staring into the distance with identical small smiles that looked to Lu both melancholy and mysterious, yet also glad.
All six of them were full of contradictory emotions, she knew. So much was behind them, yet so much still lay ahead. Lifetimes of adventures, still to be had.
Lifetimes spent in a new, strange, wonderful world.
“Did you see the news about that doctor from the hospital in New Vienna?” her mother asked quietly, looking out over the darkening valley. Sunset colors highlighting her long blonde hair in glinting gold, that scant, strange smile still on her lips, she turned her head to look at Honor and Lu.
Simultaneously, they asked, “No, what?”
Her mother’s smile deepened, becoming almost mischievous. “The medications the Phoenix Corporation made from us had some unexpected side effects in the people who took them.”
“What kind of side effects?” asked Beckett.
“Good ones.” Her father drew her mother against his side with his arm around her shoulder. She rested her head there, still looking at her daughters, still smiling. “Although hardly the result Thorne would have wanted, I’m sure.”
His laugh was low and wry, and Jenna angled her head to look up at him. “Funny how things have a way of working out in the end, isn’t it?” she whispered.
Nodding, Leander brushed the hair away from Jenna’s face, stroking a finger down her cheek. It was so strange to see them together, these two people she’d never even known existed a few weeks ago. Her parents. It was all still so hard to process.
Over the past few days since everyone had returned to the caves from the prison beneath St. Stephen’s, Lu had struggled with her emotions. One moment she was gleefully happy, the next, she was sitting stunned on a rock in some dark corner, trying to piece it all together. Magnus would always find her at those moments. He’d take her into his arms, hold her, let her cry or rant or whatever it was she needed, letting her draw on his strength until she found her footing again.
He was her anchor now. Her center. Without him, she’d be lost.
Those strong arms tightened even harder around her. I love you, too, angel.
If you’re going to keep eavesdropping on me, Lu thought, trying not to smile, I should warn you that I’ve been thinking about a few new positions we should try. I read the Kama Sutra once and I really liked this one thing called “The Perch.”
She sent him a mental picture, gratified when a low growl of desire rumbled through his chest. We’ve already done that, angel.
Not with a mirror!
He pressed a kiss to her neck, his husky laughter muffled against her skin.
“But what exactly does that mean?” Honor prompted, impatient with their father’s vague answer about the medicine.
With a look of triumph in his eyes, Leander said softly, “It means that our DNA, bioengineered to be compatible with the human body, solved a lot more problems for the patient than whatever the patient was taking the medication for. Have diabetes? Your eczema is cured, too. High blood pressure? Say good-bye to your lactose intolerance. Taking a pill for migraines? That hole you didn’t know you had in your heart is now healed, too.”
“Well,” said Honor after a while, sounding a little disgruntled. “Bully for them.”
“No, love. Bully for us.” Leander paused, his gaze taking in the group. “Because every person who took medication from the Phoenix Corporation for the last twenty-five years has had their DNA altered. And they’ve passed that altered DNA on to their children, and those children will pass the altered DNA on to their children. So now, basically . . . they are us. Or something like us.”
“Hybrids?” Beckett stared at Leander in disbelief. Everyone else stared at him that way, too.
Leander nodded. “Without knowing it, Thorne solved a problem that’s plagued the Ikati since the beginning of time. We could never mate with humans because our genes were incompatible. The half-Blood offspring would survive until the age of twenty-five, then either Shift for the first time, or die. Only a tiny percentage were ever able to survive the Transition—”
“So that’s what he meant!” exclaimed Lu, standing straighter.
“Who?” asked Honor, frowning.
“The Grand Minister! The day he found me at the Hospice he questioned me, asked if I’d ever had any health problems around my twenty-fifth birthday!”
Eyes shining, her mother reached out and touched Lu’s arm. “You’re only one-quarter human, and I knew how powerful you and your sister were, but I admit, the day of your twenty-fifth birthday was one of the worst I can remember. I just sat on the cot in my cell all day . . . waiting. I thought I would feel it . . . if . . .”
She swallowed, shaking her head. Leander murmured something into her ear, low and soft. Jenna cleared her throat, blinked her tears away. “But obviously I had nothing to worry about. Cliché as it sounds, we had the last laugh. The majority of people left on Earth are more like us than not. Even if they can’t Shift, they have our Blood, and that makes us related.”
A bird was singing somewhere out there in the twilight. High, sweet notes warbled and trilled, suspended for a long moment in the cooling air. Lark, Lu thought. She’ll be making her nest soon. Life goes on.
Life goes on.
Her mother’s hand was still on her arm, and Lu gripped it, overcome with emotion. Honor moved closer, and the three of them stepped together silently, embracing. Her father put his arms around them. When Lu looked up at him with tears in her eyes, he kissed her on the forehead, then kissed Honor the same way.
“We’re so proud of you,” he said, husky, his own eyes moist. “For everything you’ve done, for the women you’ve become, your mother and I are so proud of you both.”
Lu’s face was wet now; she didn’t care. She smiled up at Leander, squeezed Jenna’s hand, bumped her hip against Honor’s. Then she looked over at Magnus and Beckett, both of them wearing huge grins, and realized with her heart full to bursting that she finally had everything she’d ever wanted. Family. Love. Home.
There was only one thing missing.
“The people you left me with,” she said, looking back at Jenna and Leander. “The people I called my parents, before . . .”
Lu wasn’t sure how to say what she wanted to say, only that she needed to say something to make them understand. They hadn’t talked about her past yet, specifically her childhood, and at this moment it seemed important to honor the people who’d sacrificed so much for her. The people who’d taken her in as a baby, cared for her, in spite of the danger to them. In spite of how different she was. In spite of everything.
“They loved me,” she said simply. “And I loved them. I . . . I’ll always love them.” Her voice broke, and she swallowed, looking away.
Her mother’s voice was as soft as the hand she laid on her cheek. “Of course you will. They’re your parents, too. And I’ll always be grateful to them. Don’t ever feel like loving them takes anything away from us. Hearts are big enough to fit a lot of people inside; you don’t have to choose one over the other. We can all be in your heart together.”
“Thank you,” Lu whispered, overcome with gratitude that she understood.
Swiping at her eyes, Honor sniffled. “Okay, enough of this! My mascara’s gonna run.”
“You’re not wearing mascara,” Lu said.
Honor jabbed her in the ribs with her elbow. “Shut up.”
“You shut up!”
“No, you shut up!”
“Both of you shut up!” said Beckett and Magnus, and everyone laughed. And it felt so good Lu couldn’t stop for a long, long while.
“Speaking of that hospital in New Vienna,” said Lu to Honor on the slow walk back toward the caves, “you and I have a little unfinished business there.” She slid Honor a sideways, knowing glance, but her sister looked puzzled.
“What do you mean?”
Lu answered casually, “I mean . . . did you ever hear the old saying that if you die in your dreams, you die in real life?”
It was a moment before Honor grasped her meaning. When she did, a smile spread slowly over her face. “Oh, dear sister. And everyone thinks I’m the wicked one.”
“Witchy, I think you mean.”
“I’d rather be witchy than haggard,” Honor shot back, her brows raised haughtily.
“Here we go again,” said Magnus, holding Lu’s hand and rolling his eyes. Beckett pulled Honor against his side, clamped his arm around her shoulders, and dragged her away.
Lu called after them, “Love you, too, sis!” to which Honor responded with a distinctive, one-fingered salute.
Magnus chuckled. “You two are unbelievable.”
With a brilliant smile, Lu looked up at him. “I know.”
They walked through the hole in the grassy hillside, leaving the jewel-painted sky behind.
He was dreaming. He understood that. He didn’t rise to the position of Grand Minister of the Imperial Federation by being stupid, after all.
But the thing was . . . there was something wrong about this dream.
The scent, for instance.
He knew he’d never had a dream that incorporated smell before. He didn’t know how he knew, only that he did, and it disturbed him. The scent itself wasn’t disturbing—it was lovely, in fact. Lovely, dark, and deep, like an unexpected breath of springtime air in a dead winter woods. He knew this scent, but couldn’t place it, and the just-out-of-reach recognition was maddening.
Floral top notes, gardenias and freesia. Something earthy and indefinite, clean like ocean breezes but woodsy like moss and beds of dried leaves at the same time. Beneath it all, a musky, exotic heart of . . . cloves? Amber? Maybe even chocolate. Mouthwatering.
Aware that his body was fully operational, and all his limbs were intact in a way they could never be when he was awake, he felt loamy earth beneath his feet, saw slanting shafts of sunlight glimmering through towering, ancient trees. This was the woods behind his childhood home, the wild Black Forest he’d played in so long ago. It was all familiar, there was no visible threat, but that sense of wrongness permeated everything.
After a moment he realized it was because he wasn’t alone. There was someone—or something—behind him.
He turned with the sluggish drag of dream-speed, his body wanting to whirl about like a dragonfly, darting, but hindered by air that was thick, and time that moved like molasses. When finally he spun around and faced that dark, invisible entity, he almost laughed, relieved and ashamed by his certainty of danger.
A white rabbit wearing a fedora sat with pricked ears and twitching nose on the leaf-strewn ground, munching a carrot.
“Hello, little rabbit,” said the Grand Minister, his voice echoing eerily off the trees. “You gave me quite a start!”
The rabbit dropped the carrot, sat up on its haunches, and looked at him. Its eyes glowed hellish red. From behind a nearby tree hopped another rabbit, white as the first, eyes just as red, sans the hat but with a waistcoat and pair of front teeth that seemed unnaturally . . . long.
Long, and sharp.
From its waistcoat pocket, the second rabbit produced a watch on a fob and chain. It tapped the face of the watch three times, and said in a soft, feminine voice, “Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock.”
The Grand Minister took a step back. And another.
The rabbit in the hat mused, “I wonder . . . do you remember me?” It waited a beat, watching him, then seemed to shrug. “No? Well, maybe I’ll give you a little hint to jog your memory.”
It grew, stretching taller. Haunches gave way to legs, fur gave way to skin, whiskers and pink nose gave way to a face he would recognize anywhere. Even here, in his own dream, where it never should have been able to sneak in. The other rabbit grew as well, and then he was staring in horror at two identical faces, two identical women, beautiful and lethal, the most terrifying things he had seen in all his long, long years.
“You!” he hissed, skin crawling, heart pounding in his chest. “Lumina Bohn!”
The monster that had been the rabbit in the fedora laughed, advancing. Its twin merely smiled.
“No,” it said with infinite calm. “My name isn’t Lumina. That little mouse is gone. My name is Hope. And this is my sister, Honor.” She gestured to her identical twin, who gave a mocking bow. The two of them kept slowly advancing with those terrible smiles as he kept stumbling back, gasping for breath, the trees crowding in all around.
Hope said, “And in regard to that question in your mind, the answer is yes.”
“What?” the Grand Minister asked, breathless, choking on his own horror.
Hope smiled grimly. “This is going to hurt.”
Without further delay, they proceeded to prove it to him.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost I must thank my husband, Jay, for all his support through this incredible journey I’ve been on over the past four years while writing the Night Prowler saga. I never, never, would have accomplished this without you. You’re the bedrock of my life. The best decision I’ve ever made was saying, “I do,” on that hot July day in Vegas seventeen years ago, and I choose you again and again, every day, because you’re amazing, and my best friend. I love you.
Thank you to my family, to my parents, Jim and Jean, for their encouragement, to my friends for their enthusiasm. Thank you to Marlene Stringer, my agent, and Maria Gomez and Kelli Martin, my editors at Montlake. Big thanks also to the team at Montlake and Amazon publishing for listening to and answering all my questions patiently through the years. And a big hug of gratitude to Eleni Caminis for acquiring the series, and becoming a wonderful friend. Melody Guy has provided me with incredible editorial advice on every book in this series, and I thank her from the bottom of my heart for her kind words about my work, and her insightful suggestions on how to make it better.
To my Street Team, Geissinger’s Gang, thank you so much for sharing my work with your friends and being so wonderfully loyal, enthusiastic, and nice. You’ve become more
than just fans, you’ve become friends, and I’m so grateful to have your support as I continue writing. A shout-out to Gang member Erin Morgan Teuton for coming up with the name Sebastian Thorne!
Finally, thank you, dear reader. Books are magical things, entire worlds inside a few pages, and readers are the air of those worlds, the force that keeps books alive. I write for myself, but also for you. Thank you for living inside my world, if only for a little while. I hope you’ll join me again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J.T. Geissinger is an award-winning author of paranormal and contemporary romance featuring dark and twisted plots, kick-ass heroines, and alpha heroes whose hearts are even bigger than their muscles. Her debut fantasy romance, Shadow’s Edge, was a #1 bestseller on Amazon US and UK, and won a Prism Award for Best First Book. Her follow-up novel, Edge of Oblivion, was a RITA Award finalist for Paranormal Romance from the Romance Writers of America. She has been nominated for numerous other awards for her work. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband.
www.jtgeissinger.com
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Into Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 35