Touch of Darkness

by Christina Dodd

  "Yeah. I know you do." The lower corridors where the crew, the cars, and the luggage were stowed— they looked good, too.

  But Rurik bet on the deck. It was still raining and as night came on, the air grew chilly. No one was out there, and a smart Varinski could lurk until most of the passengers were either asleep or gambling. All he would have to do was find Rurik and Tasya alone, and the hits would be oh so easy.

  "So we'll do the plane," she said.

  He looked at her. If Rurik didn't catch the Varinski, they'd never get off the ferry. Right now, he was willing to fight for their lives; fighting with Tasya about how they traveled seemed less important. After all, he'd flown in the ultralight. Surely he could stand a flight across France. "Okay."

  "Okay." She watched him curiously. "What's up?" The ferry was under way, pulling out of the harbor and into the North Sea.

  "I'm going to stretch my legs." He stood. "You remain in your seat."

  "What if I have to pee?"

  "I'll take you now if you like, but after that, I'd like you to remain in your seat." She glanced around. "Are we in danger?"

  "I'm cautious."

  "I don't have to go." She pulled out her travel blanket and draped it over her shoulders. "I'll stay here."

  With the people close and the stewards cruising the aisles, she would be safe. He hoped.

  He opened the outside door, and the wind almost ripped it out of his hands. The mist had developed into a storm, and the clouds and the setting sun made the deck a shadowed, empty, rain-swept place. Stairways loomed; the lifeboats held corners where a Varinski could hide—especially a Varinski who kept himself in the animal state. Patches of light from the windows created weird shadows, and as Rurik softly trod the decks, he slipped his knife from the sheath around his waist.

  He reached the stern. Paused for a minute and looked across the choppy wake left by the ferry. Listened for movement—and heard something, the faintest flick of a feather.

  Only that split second of warning saved Rurik's eyes.

  The peregrine came right at his face, claws out.

  With his arm, he smacked the bird aside. A blinding pain sliced across his chest.

  In an instant, the peregrine changed, becoming a man, as tall as Rurik with arms half again as long and a lethal, intent gaze.

  Rurik didn't stop to stare. He charged, lunging with the knife—and the knife made contact, slicing into the flesh over the Varinski's throat.

  The guy reared back in surprise.

  Good. These bastards always underestimated Konstantine's sons.

  Rurik laughed. "Did they send only one of you?"

  The guy wiped his hand across the blood dripping down his throat. "Only one Varinski is needed." He caught Rurik's knife hand in his huge grip, and pounded his chest with the other fist. "The best one."

  The knife turned toward Rurik, headed toward his chest.

  Rurik concentrated, opened his fingers. The knife clattered to the floor. Rurik dropped to his knees, his weight throwing the Varinski off-balance. Coming up underneath the Varinski, he used his shoulder to pull the man's arm out of its socket.

  The Varinski roared in pain.

  Then he put crushing pressure on Rurik's hand.

  Apparently, pain made him mad.

  Rurik's bones begin to crack and separate. The pain was horrible; his vision began to fade.

  He was going to pass out.

  Faintly in the storage bank of his memory, he heard his father yelling at him to think. He heard his brothers mocking him for fainting, for being a girl.

  Against the Varinski gorilla, he had only one chance. He focused until he could work his other hand around and open the switchblade hidden in his sleeve—and he placed it between the Varinski's ribs.

  The Varinski hung there on the blade, his eyes wide, his grip unyielding. Then, in a gush of blood, he died.

  Rurik caught him as he fell. Checking his pulse, he found nothing. Without pausing, he dragged him to the side and hefted him over the rail.

  He didn't stop to listen for the splash. The bloody stain would disappear under the lash of the rain, but he couldn't depend on the passengers and crew not to have seen the fight. He needed to get cleaned up and out of sight before "someone came along.

  He broke the lock on one of the janitors' storage closets, and blotted himself with the paper towels. Removing his duster, he shook it out and examined it. It was wet, but not bloody.

  He frowned at his chest. The peregrine had opened an eight-inch slash across his shirt and over his right pec. It burned. His tattoo had jagged edges. But the skin would heal. The shirt wouldn't, and it left all too graphic evidence of his fight.

  With a shrug, he put the coat back on. Taking great care, he made a tour of the rest of the boat, pausing and listening, examining the other passengers. He stopped in the gift shop, bought himself a T-shirt that said Ferry Me Away, and changed in the men's room. Finally he made his way back to his seat.

  He would watch throughout the night, but he believed he and Tasya were safe.

  Tasya roused as he sat down, blinking at him. "Oh. It's you."

  "Yeah. It's me." And he remembered something that hadn't mattered before. He had agreed to fly with her to Lorraine.

  The missile was almost on them.

  Rurik drove the plane up and to the side.

  They weren't going to make it—

  "Did everything go okay?" she asked. "Are there any Varinskis on the ferry?"

  He stared blankly, then settled down. "You tell me. Have you felt the presence of any Varinskis?"

  He'd caught her half-asleep, all her barricades down. She bit her lower lip, glanced aside.

  "What?" Her obvious discomfort intrigued him. Satisfied him.

  She made him fly.

  He made her reveal herself.

  She'd already confessed to her premonitions. Why was she uneasy now?

  "I wouldn't feel a Varinski unless he was very close, because when I'm with you, I always feel a low-level sense of ... something." She put her hand on his arm as if to reassure him. "I think it's just that, in your own way, you're dangerous."

  "I see." He had wondered. Now he knew. Her instincts about him were good.

  Just not good enough.

  ***

  Boris Varinski sat in front of his computer, by the phone in his office, searching CNN.com for the news he wanted.

  Nothing. Not a word about the mysterious murders of Rurik Wilder and Tasya Hunnicutt.

  Why not?

  Duscha was one of Boris's sons, a skilled assassin blessed with long arms and an overwhelming muscle

  mass. He loved the kill, insisting he execute each and every assignment by hand.

  They—Boris and his brothers—had thought that Konstantine's weakness for the Gypsy woman must breed inferior sons.

  Yet Jasha Wilder had proved impossible to kill, and now, for every minute that went by without a phone call from Duscha, Boris's hopes failed a little more.

  The door banged open. One of the younger boys stuck his head in. "Hey, Uncle, want to play poker?"

  Boris loved to gamble, and lately, all too often, the family played without asking him to join in. Their disrespect was another sign that his status as their leader had slipped, and this was a good opportunity to reinforce his control over them.

  But if he left the office tonight, he might miss the call from Duscha.

  Worse, he might see Uncle Ivan.

  "I'm waiting for a call. Can't you see I'm waiting for a call?" he snapped.

  "Yeah. Sure. Wait for your call." The boy shut the door with a slam.

  While Boris stared at the phone.

  Chapter 16

  Rurik sat in the aisle row, staring at the door that stood between him and the pilot, and tried to penetrate the barrier with his mind, to figure out whether the pilot was sober, how many years of flying he had, whether he could change into a bird and soar on the wind currents. . . .

  Tasya caught his hand.
"You okay?"

  He rolled his head toward her. "I'm fine." "You didn't sleep a bit last night, did you?" She squeezed his fingers. "Why don't you take a nap?"

  "I can't sleep until we're off the ground."

  "Yeah, right." She wore this crooked smile. "You're about to drop off right now."

  "No. Really. I ... I'm afraid to fly." Okay, the biggest lie he'd ever told, but that girl on the plane from the States had believed it. Why shouldn't Tasya?

  Because she knew he'd been a pilot. "Oh, just shut your eyes."

  But with his eyes closed, he could listen to the sound of the plane as it joined the queue, analyze the sound of the engine, the noise the wing flaps made as they prepared for takeoff—

  In the air over Afghanistan

  Five years ago

  The XF-155 Blackshadow sliced the pale blue sky, leaving a white vapor trail. Below, at the edge of the Afghan plain, the earth buckled, rising abruptly from the flat brown plain into the soaring mountain heights. For four thousand years, the plain, and the mountains, and the heat and the cold and the drought and the enemy that slipped unseen into the caves and through the passes made Afghanistan a bitch of a country in which to make war.

  But that wasn't news. The U.S. Air Force had never bothered to station Captain Rurik "Hawk" Wilder anywhere but in the piss holes of the world.

  And he went, gladly, for the chance to fly airplanes like these—jets the Air Force didn't talk about, airplanes that didn't yet officially exist, airplanes that flew under the radar, both literally and figuratively, without raising so much as a ripple.

  From the copilot's seat behind him, the newbie asked, "Hey, Hawk, what are we looking for?"

  "I don't know." Rurik scanned the ground, looking for some . . . thing.

  "We've got no clues at all?"

  "I only know the brass are behaving like boys with their dick in a twist."

  "Worse than usual?"

  "Think about it, Jedi. We're flying a plane so secret, not a hint of her existence has leaked to the press. It's my third time in the pilot's seat, your first time as WISO, and you only got to come because I asked for you. And General Garcia calls from base, gives us coordinates, and says to reconnoiter?" Rurik whistled his contempt. "Please. Until they've run a dozen missions on this baby, they won't be convinced she can stay in the air." Hawk continued to scan the terrain below. "1 asked the general if there was any satellite intel he could pass on to us. You know what he said?" Hawk didn't wait for the reply; he continued. "He said that satellite intel was what caused the mission to be given to us. Their info wasn't conclusive, but it was good enough to cause us to get the nod for an eyeball rece. I'm here to tell you, jedi, there's some very, very serious shit coming down."

  "Is that the official U.S. Air Force terminology?" "Yeah—sort of like FNG."

  Jedi laughed.

  FNG loosely translated to "fine new guy," and Matt

  "Jedi" Clark was an FNG. He had finished his theater training with his instructor pilot. It was Jedi's ninth operational mission as a Weapons Information Systems Officer—WISO—in a hostile area with Hawk as the pilot, and the other WISOs thought he had it made. Rurik Wilder was the best pilot in the Air Force. Everyone knew it; everyone knew Jedi had been the lucky one because he had the best potential to take Rurik's place in the food chain.

  Jedi was good. Really good. Brave, strong, and true. That's why they called him Jedi. The kid was Luke Sky-walker without the whining.

  But Rurik was "the Hawk." At twenty-eight, he had spent a lot of time fending off challengers from his own country's services, as well as more than a few from other nations—some friendly and some definitely aggressors. So far, no one had come close to his abilities. None of these boys knew it, but no one ever could.

  He glanced up at the rearview mirror on the canopy bow.

  On the other hand, Jedi was prettier. He had brown eyes, red hair, a body toned by weight lifting, and that l'm-a-hot-shit swagger so many pilots had perfected.

  Rurik grinned.

  Girls loved Jedi.

  Women loved Rurik.

  Still, Jedi was swift and smart with a knack for flying. He'd go far.

  "Give me a view of the mountains," Jedi called.

  Rurik dipped the left wing.

  Below them, the plain shimmered in the summer heat, and Rurik didn't see a damned thing of interest. What could there be? The terrain was brown and fiat, then brown and sharp, rising rapidly toward the sky and shimmering so hard. . . . What the hell was happening down there?

  "Earthquake." Jedi's voice rose with excitement. "Earthquake!"

  Boulders tumbled down the mountain slope. The air shook as hard as the ground. And right there in the fold of the mountain, Rurik saw the ground rip open.

  No, not the ground.

  He pulled up the visor of his helmet and looked again.

  There was material ripping open—camouflage material. The something they were looking for was down there, a something exposed by a trick of nature.

  This was what the brass had sent him out to see. An enemy installation of some kind . . .

  "Son of a bitch," Rurik whispered.

  "What is it, Hawk?"

  "What do you think it is?" Rurik thought he knew. He also knew he had to be absolutely sure.

  "I think it's . . . 1 think it's some kind of military camp or . . ." Jedi sounded strained. "It needs to stop shaking, and I need to be closer. Can you get us closer?"

  "Can't. We don't want them to get a good look at this baby." The plane, he meant, the Air Force's new toy. Be-

  sides, Rurik had another option. He only hoped the FNG could hang on to his training under pressure. "I'm in front. I've got a view. You take the controls."

  "You want me to take the controls? Of the Black-shadow?"

  "Now."

  "Got it." jedi sounded steady as a rock as Hawk felt him wiggle the control stick.

  Good kid. Because Rurik knew even while he was flying, Jedi must be planning the whole scene—the bar, the pilots, the announcement that the Hawk had let him fly the new plane. . . .

  "Concentrate on flying. Keep her straight, keep her steady."

  "Okay, Hawk. I've got it."

  Still Rurik waited, watching Jedi in the rearview mirror.

  The kid really did have it. He was as good as he thought he was.

  Rurik took a long breath. For the merest second, he relaxed and closed his eyes.

  Deep inside, he felt it. The shift, the rush of exhilaration . . . the sense of superiority.

  It iiad been so long since he'd allowed himself to change, and he'd forgotten . . . forgotten about that silent, sibilant whisper in his brain, telling him he held the power. He could take a woman. He could help a child. He could crush a man.

  He was a god.

  Then, like a slap, a deeper, sterner voice superimposed itself in his mind.

  Not a god. A demon.

  Opening his eyes, he glanced again at Jedi.

  The kid had his head in the cockpit watching the gauges.

  So Rurik focused on the camp so far below. Closer and closer, picking out details he could never have seen with his normal sight.

  Trucks. Men.

  Shit.

  Taking another long breath, he sharpened his vision again.

  A nuclear installation. Enough warheads—How many? Count them. Enough to vaporize the Americans and the Pakistanis, and, from here, the whole Indian subcontinent. . . . Rage rose in him. Those stupid, petty little tyrants. They could kill everyone.

  Again, the small sibilant voice whispered in his mind.

  He had the power to finish them right now. . . . He wanted to finish them right now. . . .

  He heard a strangled noise from behind him, and that, even more than the memory of his father's deep, stern voice, dragged him back from the brink.

  Right. He had a job to do. Absolute power over life and death would have to wait.

  "Don't panic, Jedi. We caught them in time." He reached f
or the radio transmit button—and snapped to attention when he heard the click of the safety on Jedi's pistol.

  Glancing up into the mirror, he observed his own eyes— the red flash deep inside the long pupils, the sense of the Other.

  He met the kid's gaze.

  Jedi's eyes were human, so human, and fierce, angry . . . afraid.

  Jedi was first an Air Force pilot, then a WISO, exceptionally well trained to deal with every circumstance the military could imagine.

  The military just hadn't ever imagined anything like this.

  Jedi pointed his pistol at Rurik. "Put your hands on the canopy bow where I can see them."

  Rurik made his voice soothing, endeavoring to take command of an untenable situation. "Jedi... Jedi, fly the plane."

  "I am. And do what I told you."

  Slowly, Rurik did as instructed; he put his hands on the canopy bow while keeping his gaze steady on Jedi in the mirror.

  Jedi's cheeks turned a blotchy cherry.

  Trouble was, the kid didn't have enough experience to hold a gun on Rurik, keep complete control of the Blackshadow . . . and handle his fear. A fear that was rapidly turning to anger.

  Furiously, the kid asked, "What makes your eyes like that? What are you on?"

  Damn it. Rurik had told Jedi to concentrate on flying the plane. Hell of a time for him to not follow orders. "On?"

  "No wonder you're such a hoi shit. You're on some kind of—" Jedi pressed the mike button.

  Puffy—Major Jerry Jacobs—answered the call, and that more than anything told Rurik how seriously they took this flight and his observations. Puffy had security clearances so high that the fact that he had them was classified. "Go ahead, Blackshadow."

  "Captain Wilder is on drugs," Jedi blurted.

  Son of a bitch. They were in trouble now.

  "Newbie, do you know what you're saying?" Major Jacobs sounded wholly offended.

  "He's on some kind of designer drug. His eyes flared red. Like he was the—" Jedi stopped. Swallowed. "Red like a fire. Then his pupils changed size. It was a pronounced change."

  Jacobs's voice slid into a low, controlled burn. "Do you realize hozv serious this accusation is?"