Hidden Darkness

by May, W. J.

  She frowned, thrown off balance. “What?”

  “When I first joined up with the PC and was in training, they made me train with a new recruit. She got me.” He shuddered as he remembered. “I could handle it better then because I knew counting down the freeze time would set me free. The new recruit was cute; that helped as well.” He smiled briefly at their shared memory in the Oratory and then frowned. “But I hated it. I don’t know if it hit me so hard because I have a tatù based on movement, or what, but today I felt like the longer I stayed trapped there, the more a part of me just died.” He bowed his head.

  Although Rae was pretty damn sure that the two of them were in a fight, she reached over and rubbed his back, comfortingly. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I felt like that, too. Angel’s ink is—”

  “It had nothing to do with Angel’s ink,” he interrupted, turning to look at her full on. “It had everything do to with you.”

  She shook her head blankly, mentally forbidding herself to use Carter’s power to find out what the hell was going on inside his head. “Devon, I don’t understand what you—”

  “Why did you touch her?” he suddenly exclaimed. “A girl who just seconds before was dialing the man who wants to take you away from me! Why did you let Julian cut her loose when you couldn’t be one hundred percent sure she wouldn’t change her mind? Why is it that whenever someone dangerous comes after you, you head straight for them? Why do you always have to run into every dangerous room first?”

  “I’m just protecting you.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me! That’s my job!” His head dropped down into his hands as his shoulders fell with a tired sigh. “I’m doing everything I can to keep you, Rae. Fighting on all fronts. But you just go tearing right into it. It’s like you don’t care if we have a future—”

  “Devon… I have nothing but future.” She didn’t want to have this talk. Not now and now ever. Certainly not yet. But it seemed the moment was upon them. There was no holding it back any longer. “What exactly are you fighting for?” she asked harshly, her words hissing in the air between them. “Do you realize that we’ll never grow old together? Never grow up? If we ever had a kid—its name would go onto a list like the one we’ve been chasing. Hell, I probably can’t have kids, that’s how messed up my life is!” She shook her head, her hair swinging. “My life? It will be anything but sweet. We’ll spend the next seventy years together as you get to experience life and I just bide the time. You’ll count the seconds we have together, and I’ll be counting the seconds until we’re apart and I’m alone.”

  He opened his mouth, but she wouldn’t let him talk.

  “How’s it going to be? In forty years, you’ll be all grey, married to a teenager—hiding out in Texas. You’d have to start telling people you were my father! Then my grandfather!” Her voice sped up the longer she talked, winding her up into a panic. “Do you get all that? Do you get that we can’t have a future together when only one of us has a future?”

  He let her speak, let her give her little speech, but it didn’t seem to matter to him in the slightest. When she was finished, he simply took her hand and held it tightly in his own. “We’re going to figure it out.”

  She shot him an exasperated sigh. “Devon, how can you be so—?”

  “What, Rae? So stupid? So optimistic? So incredibly naïve?” He knelt on the floor in front of the bed, leaning his arms on top of her legs. “Rae, you are the most powerful person I’ve ever met in my life. Maybe even the most powerful person who’s ever walked the planet. Do you really think there’s a problem out there that you and I can’t fix?”

  “Not when that problem is the fact that I won’t die!”

  In a rage that bordered on hysteria, she strode over to the desk and reached inside until she found a letter opener. Ignoring the look on Devon’s face, she slashed it across her skin in a wide gash. For a second, it bled. For just a second, she was a just like everyone else. Then, with an efficiency that was almost disturbing, it started to close shut. Charles’ tatù. Except she knew, even if she didn’t have that ink, she would still heal.

  The next second, she let herself fall on the floor, weeping.

  Devon gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, keeping a steady pressure on her arm even though it had already healed. He rocked her gently back and forth as she wept against his chest, staining his shirt with her tears.

  “I just found you,” she gasped, closing her eyes and holding him tighter. “I just found you and now you’re getting taken away. And there’s nothing either one of us can do about it.”

  “Just calm down, Rae; I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered into her hair. “Just calm down and breathe.”

  But she couldn’t stop. All the dark thoughts this month-long road-trip had kept at bay came tumbling out, snowballing into something big enough that she was crushed beneath it.

  “Lanford, Kraigan, Jennifer, your father, my uncle, the Privy Council itself; everyone has always been against us, Devon, and it hasn’t mattered. But this? What can we do about this?”

  “I don’t know,” he said softly.

  She pulled away and stared at him. Despite the uncertainty of the words, he didn’t seem completely devastated like she was. He wasn’t falling apart at the seams. Instead, he was still staring at her with that calm, open smile. Holding her hand like it was the simplest thing in the world.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said steadily. “I can’t know the future. I can only know where we’ve been. Rae, you’ve said it yourself: Two people have never accomplished so much, never jumped through as many hurdles as we have just to stay together. Our love has survived in the face of unspeakable odds. Held up against attacks from all sides—good and evil.”

  With a calm assuredness that threatened to break through her panic, he leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips.

  “When I say ‘we’re going to get through this,’ I’m not putting you off. I mean it with all my heart. We’re going to figure this out, Rae. If anyone in the world can do it, it’s us. You just have to trust in that.” He kissed the tip of her nose with a playful smile. “Can you do that for me?”

  She pulled in a shaky breath and nodded, curling up into him. “I can do that. I want to do that.”

  “Rae…” he murmured, lifting her up and sliding them both into bed.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you also take it easy with the letter opener?”

  * * *

  When Rae woke up the next day, feeling slightly groggy but immensely relieved to have gotten the whole ‘immortality’ thing out with Devon, she woke up alone. She felt along the indented sheets, only to have her fingers stumble upon a wrinkled note.

  Up early working at the library

  Come and get me before the flight

  Love you…

  “What?” she mumbled. Today was the day they were supposed to head back to England in chains. What the hell was Devon doing at the public library?

  Shrugging it off as one of the mysteries of her already-mysterious boyfriend, Rae conjured a toothbrush and a straightening iron, and headed to the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, she emerged. Her dark hair, already long while curled, hung down to her waist—swinging back and forth in a shiny wave as she walked. She hardly ever wore it this way, but today was a special occasion.

  Today was the day she was going to have to convince her mother, Carter, Devon’s father, and whatever other angry adults were waiting for them back in England that she and her friends were more helpful alive and fighting than just following orders all the time. They were grown-ups now, for bloody sake.

  To do this, she was going to have to look the part.

  A frantic knock at her door made her think that maybe Molly was thinking the same thing.

  “Molls? That you?”

  “Clothing emergency!”

  “Yeah, I hear you.”

  She opened the door and let her panicked friend ins
ide. Molly had already gotten through a full-length rant on the merits of Prada versus Gucci before she stopped and noticed Rae’s hair.

  “Ooh, this is cute! What made you straighten it?”

  “We need to look responsible,” Rae answered, leading to stand in front of the bed. “We need to make it look like we didn’t just take off on a whim, but that we were doing the right thing. That we can be trusted. Remind them how that trust was earned.”

  Molly nodded, biting her lip. “And really hope that they don’t put us back on probation.”

  “Yes,” Rae agreed hastily. “That, too. So, what do you think?”

  Focusing all her concentration on a single design, she waved her hand rhythmically over the bed, and a simple lavender dress appeared. It was modest, falling to just below the knees with a high neckline, but stylish, too. The sleeves were cut in the Grecian style, and there was a little dip in the front that tied up with soft ribbons. Rae was pretty sure she’d seen something like it in one of Molly’s magazines, but she was perfectly willing to take credit for it herself.

  “Oh, Rae, that’s perfect!” Molly held it up against her best friend and leaned back appraisingly. “Yeah, it’s going to look even better with your hair like this.” She jumped up and down in sudden glee. “Do you know that this means? Do you realize that, with this new tatù, we can literally do this every day back in England? It’s like playing dress-up the way I always wanted to as a child!”

  “With super-powers?” Rae asked doubtfully.

  “Actually, yes.”

  Rae grinned. “So what about you?”

  Molly was suddenly all business. “Okay, I’m glad you asked. I actually have something very specific in mind…”

  Twenty minutes later, both girls headed down the stairs to meet up with the others in the lobby. Molly had opted for the preppy look, going with a black pleated skirt, black stockings, a white silk blouse, and a stylish women’s tie. For a while, she had toyed around with the idea of a beret, but Rae had fortunately talked her out of it.

  Julian waved hello when they got down to the lobby, looking rather dapper himself in newly- pressed clothes, and Luke jumped to his feet to pull out their chairs.

  “Well, look at you ladies. All dressed up.”

  He kissed Molly swiftly on the cheek before handing both girls a coffee.

  “What’s this?” Molly asked in surprise.

  He shrugged. “We didn’t want Rae to think we were taking advantage of her new conjuring power, so we decided to buy it ourselves. You know, not take it for granted and stuff.”

  Molly and Rae exchanged a quick guilty look before turning away with identical grins.

  “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to take advantage…” Molly murmured into her cup.

  “Where’s Devon?” Julian asked, setting down the paper and coming over to join them.

  Rae shook her head. “I was actually hoping he’d already be down here with you. I got a note from him this morning saying he was working at the library. No idea what that means…”

  Julian rolled his eyes and slipped on his coat. “Devon’s a freak. He gets an idea into his head and it has to be done right then. Doesn’t matter if it’s four in the morning.”

  Rae grinned and jumped up to ruffle his hair. “You speaking from experience?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s made being partnered with him a real blast, let me tell you.” He tried to ruffle her hair back, but Molly’s hand shot out of nowhere and shocked him away.

  “We don’t touch the hair,” she thundered, blowing the smoke off her fingers. “It’s a rule.”

  Julian grimaced, flexing his fingers to regain feeling. “But she just—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Molly said solemnly. “Not ever.”

  He and Rae shared a muted grin before laughing out loud as they headed outside and down the street towards the library. “You’re lucky your boyfriend is here, Molls,” Julian said with a smile.

  She jutted up her chin. “Oh yeah, and why’s that?”

  “Because if he weren’t, I would pick you up and dump you right into that fountain.”

  Molly walked on the other side of Luke from then on.

  When Devon had said he was at the library, Rae had pictured some small, childhood approximation. Either that, or the library at Guilder—a long, rectangular building full of endless cherry-wood tables and rows after rows of shelves. She had never once imagined something like the San Francisco Public Library.

  Her eyes widened in awe as they stepped under the high, domed ceilings. Walls of sparkling white circled around and around, stacked what looked to be fifty feet high with books. Small groups of hushed people scurried past, each one darting to and fro as if their lives depended on it, and in the center of it all, a woman who looked strongly reminiscent of Madame Elpis hissed for quiet.

  Strangely enough, it reminded her a bit of the Oratory back at Guilder. She absentmindedly wondered what it would be like to dangle from those rafters.

  Using Elpis’ own tatù, she spotted Devon on the fourth floor, and led her friends quickly up the stairs to meet him.

  “Great time for you to decide you want a library card,” she teased gently as they made their way around the curb. “Seriously, Dev, our flight’s in like—”

  She cut off quickly when she saw that he was actually in deep discussion with a white-haired, spindly-looking man with thick, horn-rimmed glasses. The man was pointing down to one of the many books Devon had scattered on the table around him, and Devon was hanging on every word with a thoughtful frown.

  When he spotted his friends standing a short way behind, he clapped the old man on the shoulder and thanked him gratefully for his time. The man smiled, seemingly delighted to have had such an in-depth discussion. He waved farewell and headed off down the hall as Rae and her friends approached the table with care.

  “You’ve certainly been,” she let one of the weighty books drop with a thud, “busy.”

  They were stacked eight- or nine-high, threatening the very stability of the table. Julian picked one of them up with a frown. “Advanced redox reactions?” He dropped it as well. “You’re studying chemistry?”

  Devon sat down in the center, completely undaunted by their skepticism. “That man who just left? He’s a world-renowned chemist from Oxford. I saw a poster taped up next to the hotel, that he’d be giving a lecture here last this morning, so I got up early to see it. Then, I started doing a little reading…”

  Molly pursed her lips and perched upon the mountain of books. “A little. Sure.”

  Devon’s eyes were wide and dilated, running fast on fumes as he continued. “You remember what Angel told us? That Cromfield was mixing bits of hybrid DNA with a combination of ethanol, midazolam, and sodium pentothal? Well, I was talking to the professor about it—leaving out the whole hybrid bit, of course—and he showed me a couple possible combinations of reactions.”

  Almost clumsy in his rush, he pulled out several hand-drawn formulas from a piece of paper half buried beneath a book about equilibria.

  “Here! Look at this.”

  He thrust the paper in front of them, and their eyes glazed over as they scanned down the page. It was a bunch of gibberish, nothing more. With Devon’s eager face waiting in front of them, Molly elbowed Rae automatically in the ribs.

  “This better be good, Devon,” she said, switching into Ellie’s tatù. “Our flight leaves in three hours…”

  But as her skin adjusted to the new ability with a warm buzz, her mouth fell open in shock as she looked again at the page. It wasn’t just gibberish to her now, a random assortment of numbers and letters; it was a beautifully balanced equation. A formula of some sort, and by the way it was delicately arranged, she could tell it must have taken countless tries to get right.

  “He’s not making the serum to give to anyone other than himself,” she breathed, studying the list of chemicals as she scanned down the page.

  Devon shook his head firmly. �
�It’s a mimic. A massive DNA absorption and balancing act, mixed in with a good number of neural inhibitors to fade after the initial transition.”

  “A mimic?” Molly asked in surprise. “What do you mean the serum’s a mimic? Like Rae?”

  Rae leaned back on her heels. “He’s mimicking my copy-cat ability. Trying to recreate it by adding little bits of everyone he’s come across. He can’t absorb people’s tatùs just by touch like I can, but, if he gets this right—and it looks like maybe he already has—he’ll be able to permanently absorb their powers by getting a simple DNA sample.”

  Julian’s face paled as he considered the possibilities. “So we’re not just talking about another psychic with some outstanding longevity here…”

  “…we’re talking about another me.”

  Not another Kieran, or her father, but another full-fledged, full-tatù-abilitied copycat.

  The group fell silent as the enormity of this discovery slowly took hold. On the one hand, it was almost a relief. No longer did they have to worry about the lives of the hybrids on the list. From this century on, there would be no more barbaric experiments, no more grisly deaths in rooms buried far beneath the earth. Aside from losing a piece of hair, people could go on living just as they had before, with their abilities safely intact.

  On the other hand, Cromfield would have them as well. Who knew how many he’d already acquired, Rae thought with a fright. He’d been collecting bits and pieces of people since the time of Henry VIII. By now, he could be virtually unstoppable—as if his immortality hadn’t already rendered that a moot point.

  “So, then, why the breeding?” Luke asked quietly. The others turned to him in confusion, and he elaborated. “The pictures we saw in the catacombs. All those mothers, people forced to have children against their will, the mixing of tatùs. What was the point?”

  Rae smiled wryly. “The point is that single tatùs tend to repeat over the generations. Molly has her dad’s, Devon has his dad’s, and his grandma’s before that. There’s a limited variety of ‘standard’ ink. By forcing people to breed hybrids, especially people with especially volatile tatùs, he was increasing his list to choose from. Making himself the ultimate power.”