But Lu was used to keeping silent. And she hated bullies. She lifted her chin and said nothing.
The faintest hint of a smile curved his bloodless lips, there then gone. “Tell me, Fräulein Bohn,” he said, his tone conversational, “how old are you?”
Lu blinked. What an odd question. “Twenty-five, sir.”
He made a noise of interest. “Any health problems around your twenty-fifth birthday?”
Now Lu did more than blink. She did an outright double take. “Sir?”
The Grand Minister made a vague gesture with his skeletal hand. “Headaches, strange pains, sudden sickness, things along those lines. Anything out of the usual?”
Lu couldn’t help the look of incredulity on her face. This was what he was interested in? Her health? Where was the infamous assassin, the cruel tyrant of lore? It seemed innocent enough, but her senses prickled with the knowledge that this line of questioning was anything but innocent.
“No, sir. Nothing like that,” she insisted. “I never get sick.”
This piqued his interest, as evidenced by the lift of his brows. “Never? How lucky for you.”
Two of the guards shared a fleeting look. Lu’s sense that something was definitely wrong ratcheted a notch higher. “I mean . . . I . . . of course . . . the usual colds, that sort of thing, but nothing severe.”
This was a blatant lie. Lu had never been sick a day in her life. Not a headache, not a stomachache, not a single cavity. More than once, her father had insisted she take a “sick” day from work to hide that troublesome fact.
“I see,” said the Grand Minister, smiling now like the cat that has just devoured the canary. It was one of the most unnerving things Lu had ever seen in her life.
Her stomach began a slow, creeping slide toward her feet.
“And the date and city of your birth?”
There was an employee file open on the desk in front of him in which, Lu knew, all her information was held, including the date and place of her birth, but he ignored it as if it wasn’t there.
“September twelfth, twenty-twelve. Vienna. Old Vienna.”
He lifted the skeletal hand and stroked one finger slowly along the edge of her file, his thin lips pursed, his expression thoughtful. “So you would have been about . . . thirteen months old at the time of the Flash. An infant.”
He said the word infant as if it was bomb or plague or serial killer. Lu was mystified.
“Yes.”
“And your parents? Their occupations?”
What the hell was this? Why wasn’t he asking her about what happened with Cushing last night? What exactly was he getting at? “My father works in the grow light fields. My mother . . . my mother is dead.”
“Your father now works in the grow light fields,” the Grand Minister corrected, his voice as soft as silk. “But he didn’t always work there. Did he.”
The last part wasn’t a question. He was insinuating something, but Lu had no idea what. “Yes, sir, he’s always worked in the fields. As long as I can remember, anyway. Ever since I was—”
“An infant,” he finished quietly, his cold blue gaze meeting hers. Her spine crawled as if a cluster of tarantulas were crawling up it.
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t really know what—”
“Your father was a missionary before the Flash, traveling from country to country, trying to convert people to his faith. Were you aware of that?”
He stared at her accusingly. She stared back, utterly stumped. Her father had pointedly refused to speak of what he did before the Flash. It was one of his “stop asking so many questions, Lu,” “the past is just that, Lu” off-limits subjects.
“No. He never mentioned it.”
The Grand Minister’s brows arched. “Never once, in twenty-five years? Strange, don’t you think?”
“Strange,” concurred one of the guards flatly, and Lu stiffened.
“Yes, my sources tell me he was quite religious back in the day,” the Grand Minister said with a sniff of disdain, still fondling her file with an almost reverential touch. “I understand he felt personally called by God to spread the word, primarily to the poor and uneducated. In places”—he paused, looking musingly at the ceiling—“far off the beaten track.”
Her shock at hearing the forbidden word God on the Grand Minister’s lips was eclipsed by her shock of discovering her father had been a missionary before the Flash.
Or had he? Was this all part of the game?
Beneath the thin latex kitchen gloves she was still wearing, Lu’s palms began to sweat. Her fight or flight instincts were screaming FLEE! but she was rooted in place, unable to move.
The Grand Minister abruptly turned to one of his guards and said, “Scanner.”
From beneath his fitted jacket, the burly guard produced a thin, black device, wireless, about the size of the government-issued data pad on which Lu played IF-approved games, visited IF-approved websites, and read the IF-approved news. This device, however, had an outline of a hand with fingers spread on the display, and Lu sagged with relief.
Fingerprint scanner, not ocular.
The guard set the scanner on the desk in front of her, touched an invisible button to activate it, and stepped away as the screen glowed red.
Without a word, the Grand Minister motioned for Lu to put her hand on the screen.
Proud that her hand wasn’t shaking, she slowly peeled the glove from her right hand and laid it on the cool glass of the scanner. There came a soft glow, a line of light moved across the length and breadth of her hand, then a beep sounded, which to her ears seemed almost disappointed. The screen again went black, and Lu stepped away.
“Well, Fräulein Bohn, it appears you have fingerprints. And they match your mainframe profile. Congratulations.”
His tone wasn’t congratulatory. He and the guard who’d produced the scanner shared a loaded glance, and Lu was seized with the terrifying certainty that he already knew she was wearing synthetic, black market bonded prints to cover her lack of natural ones, and this entire thing was a ruse. A sadistic game, designed for his amusement, to see how long he could frighten her before she’d finally break.
She was already close to breaking. On the console behind him, a pencil skittered across the glass top and rolled off onto the floor, landing with a plunk as loud as gunfire in the silent room.
Everyone ignored it.
Slowly, carefully, Lu slid the latex glove into her coat pocket, then stood with both hands hanging loosely at her sides. The Grand Minister watched every movement with the avid attention of a crocodile contemplating a meal.
“Have you ever seen an Aberrant, Fräulein Bohn?” he asked quietly, studying her. “Up close and personal, I mean. In real life.”
Lu didn’t dare move.
“I must admit, for such vile creatures, they’re quite beautiful. Unnaturally so. Every single one of them I’ve ever encountered, male or female, has a certain . . . otherworldly appeal. It’s always puzzled me, how such beauty could conceal such evil.” His tone became contemplative. “But I suppose your father might remind me that Lucifer was the most beautiful of all the angels, before he was cast from heaven.” His gaze raked her face. After a moment, he said softly, “You’ve inherited your mother’s looks.”
Lu’s mother had been short and thick-waisted, an olive-skinned brunette. The two of them looked nothing alike.
All at once, Lu understood, and the world fell away beneath her feet.
This man had known her mother. Her real mother.
And he knew what Lu was.
Heat rushed to her face, burned hot across her cheekbones. A thrill ran through her body, high and pure and resonating, and with an awful, bellowing battle cry, the monster inside her leapt to its feet.
Lu took a single step backward. Each guard took a single step in. In a coordinated
move, they reached inside their jackets.
In a gentle voice, the Grand Minister said, “If you cooperate, you won’t be harmed. Your father won’t be harmed. The stories of the treatment of Aberrants are greatly exaggerated, urban myths. You’ll be kept with others of your kind, kept comfortably and well. You’ll never want for anything again.” His voice grew even more caressing. He looked at her pleadingly, with grandfatherly concern. “And you can meet your mother—you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To meet your birth mother? She’s missed you so much.”
Lies, all of them, spoken with such ease Lu had to admit that beneath her hatred for this man, she felt a twinge of jealousy. It cost him exactly nothing to produce these smooth untruths, to playact a role. She wished she’d been blessed with such an ability; it would have made her own mask-wearing life much easier.
The funny thing was, knowing she’d finally been discovered wasn’t the terrifying experience Lu had always assumed it would be. She felt instead as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Though her nerves were stretched taut and adrenaline coursed through her veins, all her fear fell away like a skin she was shedding, until finally there was nothing but acceptance, cold and solid as rock.
Life as she knew it was over.
So be it. If she was being honest with herself, she’d known it would come to this all along. The relief was almost dizzying.
The Schottentor gate, you know the one? We’ll get you out. Look for the white rabbit.
Lu reached out with her mind. It was like stretching a rubber band, pulling her awareness across empty space until she came up against a soft resistance. She pushed past it, and with the animal inside her sinking into a killing crouch, said silently into the Grand Minister’s head, I’m going to roast you for those lies, you smug son of a bitch.
He jerked back in his wheelchair, shock distorting his face, and Lu was suffused with a savage satisfaction.
A smile curved her lips, but she knew it wasn’t she who was smiling. It was the animal, eager to feed. Eager for blood. There was a noise in her head, a cry like a thousand roars in the wilderness, an unearthly chorus of gnashing teeth and snapping jaws and hissing. When she took another step back, it was with raised arms, her hands flexed open. A sudden crackle of static electricity sparked through the room, and all the downy hair atop the Grand Minister’s head lifted, haloing his face in a cloud of white.
His expression of shock turned to an extremely pleasing one of terror.
“Sorry,” Lu said aloud, her smile gone, “but I’m not really the cooperative type.”
FOUR
In the split second before the unearthly detonation shattered the quiet and a blast of heated air knocked him off his feet, the hunter on the roof across the street who’d watched Lumina Bohn enter the Hospice sucked in his breath sharply, frozen by the almost sexual pleasure from the burst of power that crackled over his skin. He closed his eyes on a blissful shudder.
Holy mother of God. She’s even stronger than—
An orange fireball erupted from the Hospice. It blew out all the windows and destroyed the roof in a fantastic, deafening display that glowed hellish bright against the dark night sky. The shockwave sent him tumbling back, but he quickly recovered, leaping to his feet in a lightning-fast move and steadying himself with a hand gripped around a satellite antennae.
Though this could only be an unmitigated disaster, he felt for a moment the insane urge to laugh. She was so strong. Her power, in spite of its terrible fury, was so refined.
The urge to laugh quickly fled as people began pouring from the building, screaming.
Some of them were on fire.
He ran with long, even strides across the peak of the roof, never losing his balance, his gaze narrowed on the rain gutter at the opposite end. It had detached, a long length drooping down toward the shorter building adjacent. He leapt on it without hesitation, using his weight and speed to propel him far enough over the alley below that he could drop to the roof of the lower building just as the metal gutter gave way with a groan and buckled. He let go, landed in a crouch, and was up and running again before the ruined length of gutter had even hit the ground.
Sirens screamed from far off in the night. He didn’t have much time.
The building he’d landed on was some kind of office complex. He sped over the roof, hurtling skylights and skirting air vents, until he reached the far edge. Looking down, he judged the distance—about one hundred feet from the ground—and, without hesitation, jumped.
He landed soundlessly, his legs accustomed to absorbing the shock of high falls. It only took a moment to reorient, then he was off and running again, darting down an alleyway that led directly to the street and the chaos beyond.
Just as he emerged from between the two buildings, Lumina Bohn flew out the front door of the Hospice, running so fast she was only a streak of painted light against the darkness.
Directly behind her, dodging debris on the ground and the burning chunks of wood and plastic still raining from the sky, a dozen men in black suits followed.
There could only be one place she was headed. The hunter muttered a curse, then set off in pursuit.
“Father!” Lu screamed, bursting through the front door with such force it came unhinged and tore away from the frame with a shriek of crumpling metal. “Father!”
She looked around for him wildly. Not downstairs, not in the kitchen, not in his chair near the front window. She bounded up the stairs, calling his name, knowing it was still a while before his shift in the fields, knowing he’d never go anywhere else. He had to be here. He had to be!
She could run faster than any human, but the Grand Minister’s men weren’t far behind. They only had minutes to get the bug-out bags and leave. Possibly less than minutes. Every second counted, every—
She skidded to a halt outside the doorway of her father’s bedroom. Her entire body began to shake, and bile rose in her throat. “No,” she whispered, choked and horrified. “No!”
He lay still on the floor in the middle of the room, staring at the ceiling, his beloved fedora knocked off his head and tipped over forlornly in the corner. One shoe had been knocked off, too, and even from where she stood she could see the swelling and bruising on his face.
Beneath him on the wood floor glistened a slowly widening pool of blood.
He turned his head, caught sight of her in the doorway, and smiled.
Lu cried out and ran to him, throwing herself to her knees. She embraced him, sobbing into his neck, her pain so great it felt as if her chest would explode from it.
This was her fault. This was all her fault. If only she’d been able to—
“Liebling,” her father whispered, passing a gentle hand over her hair. Lu looked up through her tears to find him gazing at her with tenderness shining in his eyes, that loving smile still on his face. His voice came very weak, punctuated with a raspy, rattling wheeze. “You mustn’t blame yourself. Your mother and I knew exactly what we were doing when we brought you home. We knew the risks.”
“No. No. No.” It was all she could say. Anguish clogged her throat, tightening around her heart like a vise. Every cell in her body was flush with a horror so profound it had heft, so that she felt weighted to the ground, gravity pulling at her harder than it had only moments before. Tears poured down her cheeks, dripping onto his chest, and for the first time she noticed the three perfect, dark holes in the center of his cardigan. Everything smelled of gun smoke and violence.
“I did so many things wrong, raising you. I should have found a way to teach you to hone your gifts, to grow them, instead of making you hide. I never meant to make you feel ashamed of what you are, liebling. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I was only afraid.” He faltered. When he spoke again, his voice was the barest of sounds, whispering thin. “That is my biggest regret: allowing my fear to rule me. Don’t let it rule you, child
. Do the thing you are most afraid of. Always ask yourself, ‘What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?’ And then do it. Don’t be a coward like I was. Don’t be like me.”
“Father, please, we need to get you some help, I’ll call Jakob—”
He coughed up a vivid spray of blood. Wracked with sobs, Lu clutched his hand and cried harder.
“Never forget, liebling,” he whispered, his eyelids fluttering closed, “you are one of God’s creatures, wondrous and rare. You deserve a place in this world, and so do all those like you. Find your people. Do the thing you are most afraid of. And never forget that I love you. Never . . . never forget . . .”
He fell quiet, and Lu sat in frozen, breathless, disbelieving silence as she watched her father die.
It didn’t take long. Mere seconds. His breathing slowed, then stopped. His hands fell slack. One moment he was in the room with her, his presence palpable. The next, she was alone with a corpse.
She rocked back on her heels, threw her head back, and let out a primal, anguished scream.
“Aww,” said a voice from the doorway, “is the wee creature upset? Sad to see daddy dearest expire like your water credits?”
She jumped to her feet and whirled to face the door in a single, smooth motion, catching a glimpse of the man who stood there just before she saw a flash of light and heard a thundering crack. The noise was accompanied by an odd, whistling burst of hot air. Something hit her in the chest with such force she was thrown back several feet, the wind knocked out of her lungs. She slammed against the wall, cracking her head so hard her teeth clattered and she saw stars, then slumped to the floor, boneless as a rag doll.
Stunned, she looked down. A spreading stain of red was moistening her jacket.
When she looked up again, the man in the doorway was staring at her in clinical curiosity with his head cocked and his lips pursed, as if examining an unusual specimen of bacteria under a laboratory microscope. He stepped into the room, holding a black semiautomatic handgun. With his free hand, he reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a shining silver chain with chunky, interlocking links.
Into Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 5
