Spies in the Dark (The Nightcrafters Book 2)

by Ramsey Isler

  “All true,” Cecil said. “I admit I have a fondness for trying to kill two birds with one stone. Perhaps it is becoming a weakness.”

  “So you were trying to kill me,” I said.

  “No, I was trying to kill Madison and Kellar. I hate to tell you this, but you were expendable. I treated you like any other soldier fighting in a war. Sometimes there are casualties that can’t be avoided. If you were collateral damage in killing Mater’s last student and the greatest nightcrafter who ever lived, well so be it. But I see no reason to hurt you now. Like I told you before, I actually like you. We have similar vision, you and I. I wish I had been like you when I was your age. Maybe this whole matter would’ve been resolved long ago. If it’s any consolation, and I do mean this sincerely, I am sorry I put you in harm’s way. It was not personal.”

  “Well then,” I said, “that makes me feel sooo much better about all this.”

  Cecil laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “I see you still have your sense of humor. That’s good. But now we must put joviality behind us for a moment. I need an answer. Will you join me? Will you help me finally put an end to all this madness?”

  For a second, I had trouble figuring out which madness he was referring to. Between the pain, the drugs messing with my brain, and the sense of utter exhaustion I was starting to feel from too much nightcrafting, my head was hardly in a state to ponder the nuances of what Cecil was proposing. He was right about a lot of things. I had to admit that to myself. But he had been wrong too. He had lied and manipulated to get what he wanted. As devious as Kellar had been, he’d never lied to me.

  But Kellar had also refused to help me end the nightcrafter threat. Cecil at least would have just as much passion for the project as I did. Probably more. But both Kellar and Cecil had put me in harm’s way. Both had been willing to sacrifice me for what they saw was the greater good. But at least Cecil wanted me at his side. I couldn’t be sure what Kellar wanted, or if he even really wanted me alive.

  Cecil leaned in close and said, “What’s it going to be, Kal?”

  Just as I opened my mouth to give him his answer, a terrifying BANG echoed through the chamber. I flinched hard, causing my poor splintered ribs to hurt more. Cecil side-stepped just in time to dodge a chunk of flying metal wreckage — the front door I’d walked through just a few minutes ago. Someone had busted in. A second later, I knew who it was.

  There was a huge presence in the Rift now. As it barreled down the corridor that led to the chamber, pulses of incredible power overwhelmed my Rift-sense. Wind blasted in with hurricane force. If Cecil’s presence in the Rift was like a ten ton truck dropped into a pond, this was like a tsunami. There was only one man in all the world who could make an impression like that, and Cecil greeted him with glee.

  “Kellar!” he screamed, his voice wild with delight. “It’s been ages! What brings you to my little place?”

  “You set some traps,” Kellar said darkly. “I set a few of my own.”

  Kellar and Cecil faced each other, completely ignoring me. The ground trembled. The air filled with an electric charge that set my hair standing on end. The crisscross made my brain interpret all this magic as a flurry of orange-red embers swirling through the chamber. It was like someone had set off a big bonfire in the middle of a tornado. And that fire was growing into a raging inferno.

  I realized that I was about to witness two master nightcrafters fight. The idea terrified me, but it also thrilled some juvenile part of my brain. I had no doubt I was going to die here, but at least my last memory would be something awesome.

  What actually happened was much stranger than I could have ever imagined.

  Kellar and Cecil didn’t fight so much as they warped reality around each other. I had no idea if what I was experiencing was real or just a by-product of the synesthesia, but I decided it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have been able to make sense of it regardless.

  The world around me seemed to melt in the heat of magical fire. Strands of sticky matter oozed out of thin air like maple syrup being poured out of an unseen bottle. The swirling, flaming embers filling the chamber transformed into winged demons with orange claws and eyes like pools of oil.

  The demons attacked Kellar, but they never made it within five feet of him. They just morphed into wisps of black smoke, which in turn reconstituted into black bat-like creatures that flew back towards Cecil before he summoned a furious vortex of wind that shredded the shadowy creatures into bits.

  Cecil yelled something that might have been a word in some ancient, arcane language. As he screamed at the top of his lungs, the word took physical form. The sound coalesced into matter, and a blob of sparkling green gel materialized in mid-air. It landed on the tiled floor with a meaty thump, and the floor sizzled as if acid had just been poured on it. The amoeba-like blob moved toward Kellar and lashed out with a gooey tentacle that sprouted from its body.

  Kellar simply disappeared.

  The blob, even though it had no face or other features, seemed confused for a moment. Then there was a voice in the air — a whisper that resounded with the force of a church bell. It was Kellar’s voice, but unlike anything I’d ever heard from him before. The giant amoeba-blob stopped for just a moment, then it headed towards Cecil.

  I can’t be sure that I heard this right. Maybe I was just imagining it. But I swore I heard Cecil quietly mutter, “Shit.”

  An icy fog filled the chamber. It clouded all my senses, including my Rift-sense. I could no longer detect Cecil, but I had a sense that he was still somewhere in the room. So was the amoeba-blob. I could hear the floor sizzling wherever it went as it left behind a deadly acidic snail trail. But something had changed in it. It was moving faster, like a determined predator closing in on rare prey.

  A soft hand covered my mouth. I would have screamed but I recognized the voice that spoke into my ear just loud enough to be heard over the chaos. It said, “Listen to me or we’re both dead, dumb-ass. Got it?”

  I nodded. Madison removed her hand and helped me stand up.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Cecil has traps set up on the other side of the Rift so we can’t phase out of here,” Madison said. “And the doorway is blocked by Cecil and the blob, so we’re going to have to make our own new door.”

  “We’re leaving?”

  “Hell yes we are,” Madison said.

  “Why?” I asked. My voice had a tinge of disappointment that surprised even me.

  “Because you’re half dead and I’m not strong enough to join the fight,” Madison said. “We’re both liabilities here so let Kellar handle this.”

  “And what exactly is . . . this?”

  “Unfinished business.”

  Madison summoned a black spike that emerged out of the Rift and shot up through the ceiling like it was made of paper. Then I felt the floor rise beneath us, pushing us through the hole.

  The last thing I heard from that underground chamber was Cecil screaming.

  EPILOGUE

  Today is the first official day of summer. It’s also my last day as unofficial head of our department. I only have one meeting on my schedule today, but it’s going to be the most important of my life. After spending the last month filing paperwork and repeatedly explaining the events surrounding Cecil’s disappearance, I was finally going to get a conference call with the PDs — the “plausible deniers” who ran this show from the proverbial shadows while I did the real work in the actual shadows.

  For the past few weeks, I’ve been mostly holed up in secret locations all around the state of New York. None of them were as cool or comfortable as my little triangular house on top of a high-rise. I missed that place. But everyone advised me not to go back there. Cecil’s treachery was exposed and he’d been disposed of, but there was no telling how many of his “friends” knew about that location.

  There was one location I couldn’t really avoid going back to — United Nations HQ. It’s where my meeting would take place,
and I hadn’t been back here since my very first meeting with Cecil.

  I entered the building and showed my credentials to the guards at the entrance before I went through the security scanners that pored over my body. I closed my eyes when instructed, and lamps sent intense light and warmth washing over me. I have to admit that the people running the show had gotten a lot more thorough in recent times. I’d even gotten an email about new alarm systems put in place that were based on Newton’s magic detectors. I still wasn’t sure they had fully secured the place against people like me, but they were getting close.

  Once I’d passed through the scanners I was free to take the elevator down one floor to a place with no windows, no cellular network access, and no Wi-Fi. If you wanted an Internet connection here, you had to go old-school and plug in a cable. I went into a little room off the main hallway, and there was a simple setup of one HD camera, a plastic desk and matching chair, and a large computer monitor. A bare-bones voice chat application was already on-screen with five user names showing in the chat window. They were all codenames I’d unfortunately become familiar with recently — Cobalt, Fable, Echelon, Polymer, and Redux. My own codename, Shadow, was added to the session as I sat down. They could see me, but I couldn’t see them. That made me quite uncomfortable, but there was nothing I could do about it at the moment.

  “You’re late,” Fable, a feminine voice, said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “We have better things to do than wait for you,” said Cobalt. From his snide voice, I imagined him to be a portly man in his fifties with a perpetual sneer on his face. The kind of guy that gets uglier every time you see him.

  “Don’t worry about your schedule, Cobalt,” I said. “I’ll be brief. I only have three things to say, actually.”

  Cobalt snorted. “Get started then.”

  I held up my index finger, making sure the camera got it in frame. “Number one: You guys don’t know what the hell you’re doing. I’m not sure if you ever did, not when it comes to nightcrafters at least. I’ve been looking through the few official records we have of Cecil’s activities, and it’s clear to me that he fed you a load of tripe about nightcrafters and you all eagerly ate it up without question. Granted, Cecil hid his nightcrafter status from me too. But if I had known half the shit that you knew was going on, I would have figured out what he was long ago.”

  I waited a moment for any objections from my mysterious audience. Nobody spoke up.

  “Number two,” I said. “I get veto power on all staffing decisions. No more bringing people in without me doing my own evaluation of them. That’s not a request, that’s a demand. Non-negotiable.”

  “You are in no position to make demands of us,” Cobalt said. I could practically hear a vein on his forehead pulsing.

  “And you,” I said, “are in no position to appoint staff to handle magic. You’ve proven that. There’s only one person here who understands magic and the people who use it, and that’s me. Cutting me out of the decision process isn’t just a waste, it’s stupid and reckless.”

  I waited for Cobalt’s furious reply, but nothing came. I looked at the chat screen and noticed that there was a new icon next to his name. Someone had muted him.

  The next voice I heard belonged to Echelon. It was a smooth, gentlemanly voice with just a touch of a German accent. “Your terms so far are agreeable. You said you had three things to say. What’s the third?”

  “Well that’s the easiest of all,” I said, smiling. “I want my old boss back.”

  * * *

  Dominique was back in her old office before the week was out.

  She hadn’t been gone long, but it felt like she had already changed in that time span. She’d lost a little weight, and changed her hair a bit. She seemed a little more tired in general, but I guess we all looked haggard. I was a lot skinnier, too. Still, nothing about her appearance dampened the excitement I felt when I saw her staring at her computer screen like nothing had ever happened.

  “It’s good to see you in that chair again,” I said to her.

  Dominique gave me a tiny smile, all lips and no teeth. “It’s good to be back in it. I’ve been told I have you to thank for that.”

  “Wellllll, I might have pulled some strings here and there. Subtle threats, quiet intimidation, that kind of thing.”

  “I taught you well.”

  I nodded. “Indeed.”

  “It’s been some time since we last spoke,” Dominique said. “I’m sure you have questions.”

  “Many,” I said as I closed her office door and took a seat. “It would be so kind of you to answer them.”

  “I suppose it’s the least I could do, seeing as how you saved the day and all that.”

  “So where were you?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Dominique said. “Classified.”

  “I know,” I said. “Tell me anyway.”

  “All I can say is that not everyone has confidence that you will succeed in eliminating the threat of the nightcrafters. So there are certain . . . backup plans.”

  “And you came up with those plans,” I said.

  Dominique shook her head. “I did not. But I was charged with making them more than just plans.”

  “Speaking of backup plans,” I said, “You had my parents record those video messages to me.”

  “I did. Your mom and dad wanted to be sure you knew what was going on with them, and I couldn’t deny them that. Those little videos helped them get through the isolation and the separation from you.”

  “But there was more to it than that,” I said. It wasn’t a question, since I already knew the answer.

  Dominique gave me a curt nod. “I also figured you might need them one day.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “To bring you back home if you lost your way in the dark,” Dominique said. “But, as you seem to have deduced, that was just a backup plan.”

  “And what was the primary plan in that scenario? What was supposed to bring me back to the light?”

  “Newton.”

  She said it fast. No hesitation. I wasn’t prepared for that. But it did make sense. Newton had been my guide several times on this journey. He’d been more than that too.

  “I guess that was a smart call on your part,” I said. “I’ve been agreeing with him that our feelings would ruin what we’re trying to achieve. But that’s not really the truth. What we have together . . . what we are together . . . that’s what makes the difference. I am so much more with him than I am without him. Honestly I don’t know exactly how I feel about him, but I know th—”

  “No,” Dominique said, holding up a hand. “Don’t tell me. Tell him.”

  “In due time,” I said.

  “Your call. Anything else?”

  “Yes, actually. The million dollar question that no one else has been able to answer. Where are my parents?”

  “Hawaii,” Dominique said. “Oahu to be exact. Where else would I put them?”

  “What?” I said, louder than I meant to. This seemed incredibly stupid. “But they lived there for years.”

  Dominique just stared at me with a disappointed look on her face. She waited for me to put the pieces together myself. After a few seconds, I caught on to her plan.

  “That’s exactly why nobody would think they would hide there,” I said. “Too obvious. But most of their friends and family moved from that island ages ago, so no one in the neighborhood could have identified them. And, of course, it’s about as far away from the Rift as you can get.”

  “Exactly,” Dominique said. “But it was no simple feat keeping them hidden. It required all sorts of tricks to keep people with certain codenames from finding out where they really were.”

  I took a moment to absorb it all. Then I said the only thing that seemed appropriate for the moment. “Thank you.”

  Dominique gave me a curt nod. “You should go visit them. Take the time off. You deserve it.”

  “What about our m
ission?”

  “It can wait a few days,” Dominique said. “The Rift will still be here when you get back.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be monitoring Rift activity very closely. The nightcrafters have been pretty inactive recently. Your buddy Kellar might have something to do with that.”

  “He might,” I said.

  “It’s a lull we should all take advantage of,” Dominique said. “Go enjoy the islands. Enjoy time with your family. When you get back, the real work begins.”

  * * *

  I had a flight booked for Hawaii before I even left the building. Luckily the next flight was mostly empty and I had my pick of seats. I even bought an extra seat just to make sure nobody would sit next to me on that long ass trip halfway across the world. In about three hours I’d be on a flight from JFK airport to Honolulu. I wasn’t going to pack anything because I didn’t have much, and what I did have was still at the triangle house that I missed dearly but wasn’t sure was safe anymore. I decided I’d just grab some cash from an ATM and buy whatever I needed in Hawaii. In the middle of rushing to figure it all out, I thought about trying to fit in a visit to see Newton before I left.

  I hadn’t seen him in person since I left to get myself caught in Cecil’s traps. Our communication since then had been limited to cryptic emails and friendly but brief phone calls. I can’t even really explain how things ended up that way. Everything moved so fast and I was hopping between so many secret locations and reporting to so many people I didn’t have time to realize I hadn’t seen him. When I did finally have a chance to think about it, I immediately realized something else. I missed him terribly.

  He was the first person I’d called after that insane night in Philadelphia. He had been amazed and excited and frustrated. He was stoked that his theories with the crisscross worked, but he was also angry at me for going into that dangerous situation alone without telling him. Even over the phone, I could tell he was struggling to keep his emotions in check. Maybe that was a large reason why I’d weaseled out of seeing him for weeks after that. It was all too complicated and difficult. I had far too many other things to focus on before I could be in the right frame of mind to deal with the beautifully terrifying thing developing between us.