Night Beckons

by Colleen Gleason

  Night Beckons

  The Heroes of New Vegas

  Colleen Gleason

  Avid Press

  Contents

  Prelude

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  The Heroes of Envy continue

  About the Author

  Also by Colleen Gleason

  Prelude

  They called her the miracle baby.

  There might have been others who were born during the devastating events that annihilated most of the earth in June 2010, but she was the one of legend.

  She was born in a concrete block garage in the midst of raving earthquakes and horrific storms. Three days later, her mother simply passed away, as did nearly all of the other survivors. They had thought they’d made it through the worst. But even after the sun finally rose on a silent world, frosting it with a hopeful, golden glow, they learned the destruction wasn’t over.

  People dropped to the ground, dead, by the hundreds. Thousands. For no apparent reason.

  Yet the pretty baby girl stubbornly lived through it all.

  And with the miracle of her birth and survival was also given a burden and a blessing.

  Prologue

  When they brought him to Selena, he was already breathing the death rattle.

  “Pigment found him covered by a pile of brush,” Sam told her. “Sniffed him right out like he was a little rabbit. He doesn’t look too good, but…I thought at least you could make him more comfortable. Help him along.”

  She looked at Sam, looked at his young, sad eyes and sighed inwardly. She might be used to the constant face of death, to the “helping along,” but he shouldn’t be. The brittleness that seemed to settle over her lately felt sharper. What kind of life was she giving her son?

  “Well, thanks to Pigment,” she said, concentrating on a gentle smile. “I hope you gave him a treat.”

  “I’m going to give him a rib bone right now, but we wanted to bring him to you first.”

  “He was alone?” she asked, thinking about the man’s family. Surely they’d come along and find him. They’d want to be with him.

  Sam nodded. “No one else around. Looked like someone either buried him, thinking he was dead, or hid him. We looked,” he added with an earnest gaze.

  “All right, then. Thanks, guys,” she said, her gratitude encompassing the two other sixteen-year-old boys. “I’ll do what I can to make it easier for him.”

  Selena turned to the man who lay sprawled on one of the beds, having been deposited there gently, albeit awkwardly, with the enthusiasm of three teenagers. The familiar gray haze of death shimmered around him, but the afternoon sun pouring through the window sent waves of lavender filtering through it. What should have been dull motes of dust sparkled silver and purple in the light.

  She frowned and stared, stepping closer, drawing her fingers gently through the mist, disturbing the glittery dust. Selena had never seen it do that before…and she’d been seeing the death cloud, as she privately called it, for as long as she could remember.

  Yet she never found the gray miasma frightening; it was like a soft cloud enveloping the body, cloaking it as if to soften its passage into the next world. It never sparkled, nor had she ever seen it manifest in any other hue but gray to blue.

  A quick glance around the room told her that everything else remained the same: Jules lay in the corner section, his breathing shallow and quick. Rattling faintly, but not as deeply as this new arrival. The haze around the forty-eight-year-old man had morphed from gray to blue, indicating that he’d be gone soon. Most likely within the next hours. His heavenly guides, visible only to her and Jules, of course, sat vigil next to him, waiting for him to relinquish his last hold on life. One of them was his daughter, who’d died three years ago in this very space. His wife, who was still living, had left an hour ago to tend to their cows and should be back soon.

  On the other side of the room, cloistered by the blanket screening off her section, Maryanna’s breathing was nearly silent. The gray vapor around the young woman wavered, but rose tall and strong, readying itself to buffer her during the change. Her husband rested next to her, exhausted and ashen-skinned, waiting for the inevitable. She looked more peaceful than he did, as he held her small, blue-veined hand in his large one.

  Selena’s heart squeezed and that edge of emptiness poked her. She pushed it away—for now. She had Sam. And Vonnie. And even Frank.

  Later, she would grieve for all of them. But now, she had work to do.

  Turning, she checked on little Clara, the sole survivor of a zombie attack in her settlement two years ago. She’d survived that horror only to succumb to a different one. The tumor that distended her belly made her look as if she had an extra pillow under her blankets. She was bathed in the same gentle gray mist as Maryanna and Jules. Though her death cloud had blued as well, she was conscious, her eyes open, watching Selena from across the room.

  “Are you in pain?” Selena asked. “Can I get you some water? A little puff?”

  Where the hell is Jen? She should have been back by now. I’ve got to see if there’s any hope for this guy.

  But she already knew there wasn’t. Once the gray haze came, that was the beginning of the inevitable. Maybe fifty years ago before the Change, when everything was different, there might have been hope.

  “No,” Clara replied. “I’m just looking at him. His cloud is so pretty. All the sparkles.”

  Selena smiled at the simplicity and accuracy of the eight-year-old. She wasn’t surprised that the girl could see the death cloud. After decades of experience, nothing about the dying surprised her anymore. They were the only ones who really understood.

  And yes indeed, the new arrival was pretty, all covered in faint sparkling lavender and silvery-gray. But what did it mean?

  She turned her full attention to him. Sam and his friends had tried to be gentle, but they weren’t used to carrying and moving the dead weight of full-grown men, especially ones as solid and muscled as this one, and he’d been deposited clumsily, half on his side.

  Blood stained his shirt, dried and crusted in places, yet damp and oozing directly over his chest. Already, it colored the blanket beneath him, seeping into an irregularly-shaped spot. One arm, bared by a sleeveless shirt and streaked with blood and grime, had a long red dragon tattooed on it.

  Selena glanced at it but she didn’t have time to look closely, for if there was anything to be done for him she’d need to call for Cath over in Yellow Mountain. Usually by the time they got to Selena, Cath had already seen them and done what she could.

  His breathing shifted, the rattle deepening as though fluid filled the lungs. The fluid was probably blood, and that meant nothing good. Selena looked at his face, which appeared to be drawn with pain and fatigue. He couldn’t be more than thirty.

  Young pup.

  And a handsome one at that, with shiny black hair cropped short and falling every which way in ragged spikes. Long sideburns framed a face with high cheekbones and more than a bit of Asian in the eyes and skin tone. Full lips, smashed into an almost pucker as he lay on his side. Nice, rounded muscles on his arms and beneath the hiked-up leg of his jeans.

  If I were twenty years younger….Oh, and if he weren’t dying…


  Smiling wryly to herself—because, after all if she didn’t have a sense of humor in a life like this, she’d be even more screwed up than she was—Selena washed her hands with the lemon-infused soap and reached for his uppermost hip, ready to shift him onto his back. At the last minute, she decided to remove his shirt first. At least she could clean him up, see the injury, and put him in a fresh tunic.

  Something fresh in which to die.

  She frowned. Humor was all good and well, but lately, her thoughts had trailed into unpleasantness more often than not. She needed a change. Or at least some way to find relief and ease from the sadness of her work.

  As she removed the grimy, sodden clothing, she saw that he had another dragon tattoo curling down his muscular back. This one was blue, and its single visible eye sparkled down near his hip.

  Sparkled?

  Selena knelt next to him to get a closer look, unable to help noticing the beginning curve of his butt just below sagging jeans. Hmm. It was more like a glint than a sparkle. What in the crazy world was that?

  Gingerly, she reached to touch it with her finger.

  A fiery, painful jolt shot through her, and she jerked her hand away. “What the hell!”

  Selena stared down at him, listening to the ragged, guttural breathing that portended no good, but went inexorably on and on. She could see the glint of something metal right there, as if it were embedded in his skin.

  Or as if his skin was merely a covering over something metal.

  Was he some kind of Klingon? A robot?

  An Elite?

  Heart pounding, she sat back on her haunches, still crouched next to the bed. Could that explain the odd-colored sparkles in his death cloud?

  She’d never had an Elite brought to her here—which was no surprise, since, duh, Elites were immortal because of the crystals embedded in their bodies. They didn’t die, so they didn’t need the Death Lady.

  But….this guy had metal under his skin. Maybe he wasn’t even a man after all.

  But then why did he have the death cloud? The haze?

  He felt warm, he felt human. He breathed. He obviously bled. His heart tried to pump, but it was weak and erratic. He was definitely a man.

  “Use the crystal.”

  Selena stiffened so sharply she nearly lost her balance, catching herself with a palm on the rug. She turned. “What did you say?”

  Clara had somehow shifted to sit up in her bed. Her eyes in their youthful face were full of wisdom and clarity. “They told me to tell you to use your crystal.”

  Heart pounding, Selena rose slowly to her feet. No one knew about the crystal except Vonnie. “Who?”

  Clara smiled and made a sharp, jerky gesture to the corner near her bed. Where her guides, or angels, as she preferred to call them, usually appeared. They weren’t there, or at least weren’t visible to Selena at that moment. “You know,” the girl told her. Her smile grew broader, almost beatific. The blue cloud billowed.

  Then, suddenly, the light in her eyes faded as if a cloud slid in front of the sun. A pang of fear stabbed Selena in the gut and she ran.

  She got to Clara’s side in time to touch her hand. “Clara.” No, oh no.

  It was hard enough watching life ease from the eyes of any person, but it was the most difficult with children. Yet, they were always so brave, so clear-eyed about it. The death haze had deepened and, as she sat there next to the little girl, Selena felt herself enveloped by the blue cloud. Clara’s parents were there in the fog, waiting to help her, and her aunt as well, their images wavering in the distance. Selena closed her hands over each of the smaller ones and felt the warmth ease from the girl’s fingers, her throat dry.

  At least she would be with her parents now.

  As the life slipped away and Clara’s muscles relaxed, her wave of memories came. Images, visions, feelings, in short, jerky vignettes and dream-like moments, flooding Selena’s mind, prickling like a million pin-needles as she absorbed them. She fought back tears and accepted them. This part of her calling was the most intimate, the most difficult…and yet, the most beautiful.

  At last, the little girl’s hands went soft and limp. Her breathing stopped. Her little heart rested.

  The blue haze disintegrated.

  And Selena closed the young, wise eyes with two gentle thumbs, then wiped her own.

  She didn’t know how long she sat there, looking down at the serene little face with its wispy hair brushed back from the temples, doing her private grieving, her prayers and memorials, but it wasn’t until a sudden gasp from the corner pulled her out of her moment of silence.

  Selena was up and away from the small body in a flash, but by then it was too late. The dragon man gave a violent shudder, his eyes closed as if in pain, and a last desperate breath. And then…nothing.

  She bent, tucking her ear to his chest. Silence. No heartbeat. No faint heave from the lungs. The haze disintegrated, leaving nothing but a few last sparkling dust motes in the air.

  He was dead.

  And she didn’t know who he was or where he belonged.

  Chapter One

  “What the hell do you mean, you lost Theo?” Lou Waxnicki heard his own voice rise and crack, not with age but with fear and disbelief. He looked up at the massive man looming over him. For once, Fence didn’t have that devil-may-care glint in his eyes.

  In fact, the guy looked downright miserable, and the misery had nothing to do with the streaked blood dried on his coffee-colored face or the way he cradled his left arm. Lou saw the red and swelling flesh on his chin and arms and knew it would turn purple and green with bruising by the next day. He’d been in some hellacious fight, but the real misery was in his eyes, bloodshot and dull with pain.

  “And Quent? Where the hell is he?” Lou demanded, but in a marginally lower voice. “Did he find his father?”

  Theo was Lou’s twin brother, and he and Fence had insisted on going with Quent on that suicidal mission—to find his father, who was one of the leaders of the immortal Elite.

  Sage had risen from her computer chair and placed her cool hands on his shoulders, a thumb brushing the edge of his silvery gray ponytail. “What happened?” she asked, squeezing gently in a silent suggestion of patience. Her fingers, strong from working on the keyboards day after day, were firm and sure.

  And how frail he felt, even to himself, under those slim fingers. How old and frail. Lou and Theo were both seventy-eight years old, but through a crazy twist of fate, Theo had been affected physically so that he’d hardly aged in the last fifty years. He still looked the same as he had when the cataclysmic events of the Change had occurred, leaving Lou to seem more like his grandfather than his twin.

  “We were captured by one of the bounty hunters and Theo was shot. Bad. In the chest,” Fence said, looking at Lou steadily. “The only hope was to get him back here to see if Elliott could save—uh, fix him, ’cause there wasn’t anything else to be done. Quent went on to find Fielding while I brought Theo back here to Envy. He was bad off, and I was goin’ so fast when I—”

  A little tone from the computer in the corner had Lou and Sage both glancing over. The chime played the first few bars of the Mission Impossible theme—one of Theo’s little jokes since he knew how much his twin hated the Tom Cruise movie—but even from where he sat, Lou could see that the email wasn’t from Theo. It was an automated update from one of the thirty network access points that had been secretly installed within a fifty-mile radius of Envy.

  His sharp peal of hope ebbed.

  “Long story short, I had to put Theo down and hide him.” Fence continued as if nothing had interrupted the conversation. But then, he probably wasn’t attuned to every single sound the dozen PCs and Macs made like Lou and Sage were. “I was fixing to come back for him right away, but then I did a number through the floor of the building. Banged my head pretty good. When I woke up, I had to climb my ass out of there, and when I got back to where I left him, Theo was gone.”

  “No clue wh
ere he went?”

  “He sure as shit didn’t get up and walk away, Lou. And it wasn’t an animal that got him, or a zombie, ’cause they’d have left evidence.” Fence’s temper, which truthfully, seemed more aimed at himself than Lou, seemed to ebb as he smoothed a hand over his bald head. “I looked everywhere but couldn’t find hide nor hair of him. He disappeared good.”

  “But he was shot,” Lou said, taking care with his words. Because the reality was starting to sink in. “He wouldn’t last long without medical treatment.”

  “No.” Fence’s voice was a barely audible whisper. “I can’t see him making it without Elliott’s help.”

  Which was the big guy’s way of saying he was dead. Theo was dead.

  No.

  Theo was indestructible. He had more lives than a cat.

  No.

  Lou pulled to his feet, feeling every seventy-eight year-old joint creak in protest. Some days he felt as young as his brother looked—which was to say, thirtyish. But on a day like today, he felt older than God.

  “I’ll get Jade and Elliott,” Sage said, already starting toward the exit of their secret, subterranean computer room. “Simon will want to go too, and Wyatt. To look for him.” She glanced at Fence.

  He nodded, his dark face weary but his eyes sharp. “Yeah. It’s a day trip from here.”

  “I’m coming this time,” Lou said, his voice flat. “I’m not staying back here again.”

  Sage opened her mouth to argue, but Lou wasn’t about to listen to her. “I’m fucking going. End of story.”

  And then he closed his eyes for a moment and felt. Reached out for that tangible thread that connected him and Theo—that same thread that had told him his twin had survived the Change too. The thread that had drawn him closer and closer to his brother until he found him.

  For the first time, he felt nothing. The thread was broken.

  Lou opened his eyes and realized that he was alone.