Lu felt as if she were having an out of body experience as she slowly wrapped her arms around Morgan’s waist. She closed her eyes, rested her head on Morgan’s shoulder, and marveled at the insanity of life. One minute you’re being chased by assassins, the next you’re trading hugs with your new fairy godmother.
It was a testament to the sheer strength of the survival instinct that more people didn’t eat a bullet for breakfast.
She said, “Hopefully you’ll like it more than he did.”
“Oh, he liked it well enough.” Morgan pulled away and smiled, smoothing a stray hair away from Lu’s forehead with a motherly touch. “He stabbed the last poor bastard who tried to hug him, so barking and running away with his tail between his legs is a big improvement.”
“Stabbed?” Lu repeated, incredulous. Even to someone with a lifelong no-touching policy, that seemed a little much.
Morgan’s smile turned wry. “He isn’t exactly what you’d call touchy-feely.”
No kidding.
Lu took a deep, calming breath. “I’m sorry I said I’d kill you. I mean I guess I would have, but . . . now that I know you’re my godmother, it seems a little . . . aggressive.”
Morgan waved it off, saying, “Oh, pet, if I had fivepence for every time someone’s threatened my life, I’d be a bloody billionaire.”
Pence: another unknown word. Were they like credits? Uncomfortable, Lu shifted her weight from foot to foot. She’d never felt stupid before, but coming up against the obvious limitations of her knowledge made her feel exactly that.
Examining her expression, Morgan said softly, “There’s a lot of people who are really eager to meet you. But there’s no rush; you can stay here and rest for as long as you like, get your bearings. Get cleaned up, have a bath. I’ll send some fresh clothes and food in—”
“No,” said Lu abruptly, filled with an eagerness and hope she hadn’t felt in years. “I want to meet everyone. I want to know everything. I want to do it now.”
Morgan’s face did that softening thing again. She shook her head, swallowing. “Well, then,” she said, her voice catching, a little tremble in her lower lip, “onward and upward!”
And she took Lu by the arm and led her out of the room.
Across the vast, echoing space that comprised the main cavern of the caves the last surviving Ikati called their home, Magnus watched as Morgan led her new charge from the chamber she’d awoken in toward the low passageway that connected the private living areas to the community and meeting areas.
He’d lingered in the shadows of a massive flowstone formation after he’d left her room, hoping to catch his breath before heading to the Assembly. But try as he might he couldn’t get his heart to stop drumming against his ribs, or ease the trembling in his hands. Every inhalation was a ragged echo in the darkness.
She’d wrecked him. She’d left him totally undone, and all it had taken was the momentary press of her fully clothed body against his.
He flexed his hands open and leaned against the cool stone, hanging his head, closing his eyes against the memory of her face just before she’d whispered his name. Relief had shone in her eyes, huge and real and so sweet it stunned him.
No one looked at him like that. Ever. Hardly anyone but a few of the Assembly dared to even look him straight in the eye.
Not that he blamed them. His temper was as ugly as his face. As ugly as the memory of the things that made him unable to bear the touch of another living being.
But if he was being totally honest with himself, he’d have to admit what had really done him in was the absence of something. Something he would’ve recognized from his fevered dreams, dreams that had taunted him and tempted him and driven him to night-sweat agony for years.
Dreams that had fueled an obsession, in which a golden-haired temptress was always the star.
Desire.
Hope, siren of his dreams, looked at him with eyes so burning with desire he could hardly breathe. They were so real, those dreams, so lucid and tantalizing he always awoke with a groan, the sheets drenched, his hand sticky with his seed, his body still shuddering from his release.
Lumina Bohn looked at him the way a homeless animal looks at someone who’s just given it a bed and a snack, and withheld an expected kick: with gratitude.
“Can’t blame her either,” he whispered to no one and nothing, eyes squeezed shut in the dark. In fact it was he who should be grateful to her for deigning to look upon him at all. If his face made him sick to his stomach, it had to be a thousand times worse for someone used to gazing at only perfection in the mirror.
Magnus shoved away from the wall and stood still for a moment in the dark. Then, determined there would be no more slips of control, he squared his shoulders, turned, and followed the faint, familiar and oh-so-torturous scent of his own personal demon through the twisting stone corridors of the caves that he called home.
“Before the Flash this place was a national park,” Morgan explained, seeing Lu’s questioning glances at the rusted iron handrails that lined the pathway on which they walked. There were railings like it bolted to many of the tunnel walls that branched off into darkness, and other evidence the caves and passageways weren’t merely the work of nature came in the form of stairways carved into stone, old electrical lines strung with cobwebs that snaked between dark bulbs, main corridors that were paved, and the occasional crumbling bit of scaffolding. The ancient scent of humans still lingered here, too, and a spike of pain shot through Lu’s stomach.
Father.
She swallowed, blinking away tears, forcing her voice to sound normal. “How well protected are you here? Is there a nearby town? Can you be sure it’s safe?”
Morgan made a noise that was both proud and somehow sad. “Nothing can get at us here. The old entrance is now underwater, and we blocked all other access except a small portal that was never mapped by them.”
Them equaled humans. It was the first time in her life Lu had been on the other side of that slightly derogatory pronoun.
“As for nearby settlements, well, pretty much the entire United Kingdom is a ghost town. The British government refused to cooperate with the Phoenix Corporation when it began taking everything over—Queen Elizabeth never did fancy Americans, you know—and the islands were basically cut off. Thorne gave a thirty-day evacuation order, and anyone who didn’t cooperate . . . well, they were just left to starve. No food or supplies were allowed in, the electricity was shut off, the entire population was plunged right back into the middle ages. Virtually no one had survival skills, and that was when Thorne still had the isotope clouds here so nothing could be grown, so,” she shrugged, “it was total chaos. After a few years, pretty much all the humans had fled, been starved out, or killed in the rioting—”
“Isotope clouds?”
Morgan gave her a look. “Sorry. I forgot you’ve been living in an alternate reality your entire life. Those red clouds you’re so used to seeing lurking over New Vienna?”
Lu nodded.
“They’re manufactured.”
Lu stopped dead in her tracks. “Manufactured!” she repeated in disbelief. The word echoed off the cave walls and faded to silence. “Why? How is that possible?”
Morgan shrugged again, a move heavy with pathos. “Science. Humans engineered powered flight, created nuclear technology, and sent unmanned craft into deep space, you think a few poisonous clouds circling the planet would be a challenge? They’re not exactly stupid, in spite of all their stupidity. As for why, well, population control requires creativity. You can’t achieve world domination and shape general opinion with some leaflets and a few dazzling speeches. You need really heavy-hitting propaganda, the kind people can’t argue with. The more in-your-face and damaging to your opponent, the better. Tangible stuff. Visible stuff.” Her voice soured. “Like clouds the color of blood that change life-supporting beams of sun
shine into burning rays of death.”
Lu felt choked with hatred. All her life, she’d heard what vile bioterrorists Aberrants were, what dangerous traitors, what evil. And the truth was that the supposed proof of their evil was manufactured by the very people crying the loudest for their heads?
“So the Flash must have been them, too,” Lu said, anger quickening her blood. “The destruction of the rainforest in Brazil, the unexplained lights in the sky, the earthquake, the fire . . . that had to be them, too! That was all part of Thorne’s plan for world domination, wasn’t it?”
Morgan’s expression changed to one that looked suspiciously close to pity. She pursed her lips as if carefully choosing her words, then with a one-shouldered shrug that seemed to imply what the hell, she’ll find out sooner or later, said quietly, “No, pet, that wasn’t them. That was all you.”
Lu froze in openmouthed horror. “Me?”
“That’s not entirely accurate,” purred a voice from the shadows behind her. Lu whirled around, searching the darkness, her senses stinging and surging with a weird recognition.
From behind the curve of a giant boulder several paces away, a woman appeared. Dressed in head-to-toe pristine white, she was blonde, pale, and utterly feral. She eased onto the path with a catlike silence, her movements deliberate, her large, luminous eyes shining eerily bright.
Lu exhaled a breath that felt like fire.
Looking at this stranger was like looking in a mirror. The long, wavy hair, the slightly pointed chin, the forehead tipped with a widow’s peak, the tiny mole above the arch of the left brow.
The idea she’d been cloned sidled up and lingered beside her, unspeakably uncanny.
The woman smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes. She said, “You had a little help, didn’t you, sis?”
There was an awkward pause. Then Morgan, sounding irritated, said, “Hope, this is Honor. Your twin sister.”
Honor. The Girl in her dreams. The Girl who was always so angry. Whom she’d managed, almost completely, to block. Her twin. Lu couldn’t think of a single coherent response. She said numbly, “My name isn’t Hope.”
A voice inside her head replied, Actually, flamethrower, it is.
Honor’s cold smile grew wider.
NINE
Before Lu had a chance to process anything beyond her own shock, Honor’s gaze honed in on the collar around her neck.
“Honor,” warned Morgan, just as the metal around Lu’s throat began to freeze.
It happened so fast. As cold became frost became ice, the collar crackled . . . and shrunk. Lu felt a stabbing pain against her carotid artery, and instinct kicked in.
She lifted her arms and flexed open her palms, aiming at Honor.
When the ball of fire cleared, with a roar and the acrid smell of burning fabric, Morgan was crouched on the ground with her arms flung over her head, coughing, the sleeves of her tunic singed and smoking. Honor was standing with her hands on her hips, glaring at Lu with those predatory eyes, completely unscathed.
“Overreact much?” she snapped.
The collar popped off with a muted tink! and fell in one solid, frozen chunk to the ground at Lu’s feet, where it promptly shattered to pieces.
Lu stumbled back, hands clutching her throat. “Did you just try to strangle me?” she shouted, livid.
Honor’s response was a roll of her eyes and an exaggerated sigh. “And they say I’m melodramatic.”
“What the hell is going on here?”
The growled question came from Magnus, who’d appeared as if from nowhere. He helped Morgan to her feet. Lu noticed he didn’t take her hands, but grasped her under the arms, stepping away as soon as she was standing.
Honor lifted her chin, examining Lu with a disapproving curl of her lip that managed to make her appear even more menacing. “Someone apparently has some trust problems.”
“Honor took Hope by surprise, that’s all,” said Morgan before Lu could spit a retort.
Honor said coldly, “I had to get that thing off of her—”
“By shrinking it?” Lu hissed.
“Metal contracts when it freezes—”
“You might have taken that into consideration, seeing as how it was around my throat—”
“I wouldn’t have hurt you!”
“Easy to say now!”
“Stop!” Magnus thundered, stepping between them.
Lu and Honor fell silent. Vibrating anger, Magnus looked back and forth between them, his dark eyes flashing fire. He was quiet a moment, controlling himself, then he said in a low voice, “Honor. She doesn’t know you. She doesn’t know your Gifts. She doesn’t know any of us.” His burning gaze cut to Lu. A muscle in his jaw began to flex, over and over.
Expressionless, Honor sent Magnus a long, searching look. The temperature of the air dropped sharply, sending a creeping frost that bloomed white down the mossed stone walls. She looked back at Lu.
With the icy weightlessness and silence of falling snow, Honor’s voice whispered inside Lu’s head, the words meant for her alone.
I wouldn’t have hurt you, flamethrower. Obviously you can’t say the same for me.
Damn. This close, keeping Honor out of her head was proving to be nearly impossible.
They stared at one another, bristling, until Honor turned and vanished back into the shadows. The darkness engulfed her as if she’d been swallowed.
After a tense moment, Morgan said to Magnus, “She won’t like it.”
Magnus ran a hand through his hair, exhaling hard. “I’m not taking sides.”
“Really? Because that’s exactly what it looked like you were doing. At least she’ll think it was.”
“I’m just trying to keep the peace,” said Magnus between gritted teeth.
“Ha!” Morgan inspected her singed tunic sleeves. “That’s like trying to stop a volcano from erupting and a tornado from chewing up a trailer park. Where the girls are concerned, I think it’s a much safer bet to just find shelter and wait out the storm.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lu said, ashamed and unsettled by the whole encounter. “It’s just . . . the shock. Of everything. Are you all right?”
Morgan, ever aplomb as Lu was quickly finding out, waved off her concern. “Right as rain. I hated this jacket anyway. And you being a bit out of sorts is certainly understandable, pet, under the circumstances. Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you all right?” Magnus, quiet but still intense, directed this to Lu. Their eyes met, and she had to look away because she felt naked under his gaze. She knelt and picked up a broken piece of the collar. It was coldest thing she’d ever held in her hands.
“So Honor can freeze things?” Lu flipped the frosted metal from one palm to another because to keep it in one spot too long would have caused an ice burn. Hairline cracks covered the metal in webs; the silver had blackened in spots.
Morgan chuckled softly, then sobered. Lu looked up to find Morgan staring at her with that little furrow between her brows. “Just out of curiosity, pet . . . how much have you been able to explore your Gifts?”
Lu looked from Morgan to Magnus. His eyes were dark, unreadable. She stood.
“I haven’t. I couldn’t. My entire life I’ve been trying to pretend I don’t have any. I was just trying to be unnoticed. Trying to fit in. To be normal . . . like humans.”
With a small shake of his head, Magnus murmured, “Pearls before swine.”
Heat crept across Lu’s cheeks.
Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
It was a verse from that most infamous of banned books: the human Bible. The book her father so loved, and spent hours reading, the curtains drawn, his face rapt, his lips moving soundlessly over the words.
“
Oh,” said Morgan, sounding more than a little mysterious, her lips curved to a Mona Lisa smile, “this is going to be so much fun.”
She and Magnus shared a look. If she didn’t already know Magnus was about as unsmiling as anyone could get, Lu would have sworn she saw a small, upward curve to his lips, there then instantly gone.
He said, “We can get started tomorrow. Right now there are a dozen Assembly members fidgeting in their chairs waiting for me.”
“Us,” Morgan corrected, but without rancor. He sent her a sidelong look. She said, “Oh, I know, they can’t start without you, but I’m sure everyone is much more interested in meeting the guest of honor today.” She waved him on. “We’re right behind.”
“Ladies first.” His tone was calm, but tension tightened his shoulders. He didn’t seem to appreciate Morgan’s breezy dismissal, but she shrugged that off, too, leaving Lu to wonder if there was anyone this formidable woman feared. Even Lu already had a healthy respect for the temper she could see, barely leashed, simmering under Magnus’s careful control.
Morgan raised her brows at Magnus. She turned to Lu. “I’m sorry, do you see any ladies present? Because all I see are a couple of badass birds who could really use a—”
“Morgan!” Magnus’s shout echoed off the stone.
Morgan sent Lu a wicked smile, then said to him, “You do make for easy pickings, ducky. You know I can’t resist.”
Along with flared nostrils and hands that had curled to fists, that muscle began to flex in Magnus’s jaw. He said slowly, “Do not. Make me tell your husband. You’re being incendiary. Again.”
Morgan pressed her lips together. Lu saw it was because she was trying to bite back a smile. “Moi?” She pointed at Lu and said innocently, “I’m not the incendiary one.” Then without waiting for an answer, she knelt, gingerly scooped up the broken remains of the collar and announced, “I’ll take this over to Beckett. See you at the Assembly in two shakes.”
And she was off.
Into Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 8
