Vision of Darkness (D.I.E. Squadron Book 1)

by Tonya Burrows

  From the backseat, Triton bumped his head into her shoulder. She patted his nose and reassured herself that Nick was right. He’d explained all about the group of fanatics hunting down people like Alex and his friends, which shone a disturbing light on Jones’s crazed ramblings. She understood the need for caution—especially after the news that Theo had disappeared without a trace the day after Sully, Nick, Kai and several of their other friends sneaked Alex out of the hospital’s ICU in Portland. Sully suspected the Sierra Group hoped to get info on Alex’s whereabouts from Theo. They were going to be sorely disappointed when they discovered he didn’t know anything, and that boded badly for Theo’s health.

  Better to keep Alex safe and hidden while he recovered. Still, having him out of a hospital, miles away from lifesaving equipment and medical professionals, gave her a serious case of the jitters.

  Nick hit a button on the control clipped to his overhead visor and the garage door slid up without a sound, revealing a room big enough for twenty vehicles. There were only three inside: a low-slung sports car, a Hummer, and a subdued but expensive sedan. Nick guided his beat-up Silverado next to the sedan and jabbed the button again. The garage door slid shut behind them.

  After parking, he turned to her. “You understand that you won’t have contact with your friends and family from now until this is over.”

  Pru thought of Grandma Mae’s dismayed expression when she said she was going away for a while. It had cut straight to her soul. She had no intention of leaving her grandmother, and planned to go head-to-head about it with Sullivan Nathanson as soon as the opportunity presented itself. But now was not the time to argue. She’d had a hard enough time talking him into letting her see Alex. She needed to see Alex.

  “I understand,” she said.

  “All right. Let’s get you inside.” Nick got out of the truck and hurried around the hood to open her door before she could do it herself.

  With a running commentary of the building’s security attributes, he led her to an elevator on the far wall of the garage, up one floor into a white and blue tiled hallway that looked like a hospital corridor. A handful of doors stretched the length of the hall. As they passed, she peeked inside each room. X-ray machine, cat scan, and other state-of-the-art equipment, plus exam rooms and what looked to be a stainless steel surgical suite.

  “Wow. You weren’t kidding about the fully functional medical center.”

  Nick grinned. “What can I say? We’re an accident prone group obsessed with secrecy.”

  Her nerves settled a bit. She’d known Alex’s friends wouldn’t put him in harm’s way by taking him out of the hospital if they weren’t capable of caring for him themselves. Even so, until now, she hadn’t fully believed they were capable.

  At the end of the hall, the corridor T-ed. Nick took her left, and she spotted two men deep in conversation. Kai and Malcolm—“D.I.E. Squadron’s medicine men,” Nick had called them since Mal had a medical degree and Kai was apparently a psychic healer. Kai was frowning, which he didn’t do often, Mal was shaking his head, and for a moment she forgot how to breathe.

  “Is Alex okay?”

  Kai looked her way and his frown morphed back into his usual grin. “Hiya, Pru. He’s fine. Actually, he’s awake and asking for you.”

  Her knees wobbled, but she didn’t realize it until Nick’s hand reached out to steady her. “He’s awake?”

  “For a couple days now,” Mal said.

  “Awake, hungry, and grumpy as a wet cat.” Kai motioned to the closed door he and Mal stood in front of. “Go in and see for yourself. Maybe you can improve his mood.”

  That got her legs working again. She shot forward and turned the knob, but Mal caught her arm before she entered.

  “Just…don’t mention anything about Theo. We haven’t told him yet. Why torture him with it when he can’t do anything about it right now? It’ll drive him crazy with worry and he doesn’t need that.”

  She swallowed and nodded, then pushed open the door. The room looked like it belonged in an upscale hotel. Warm, cream colored walls. Subdued, recessed lighting. A huge flat-screen, mounted on the wall, flipped through channels at lightning speed. Alex lay in the queen-sized bed with the remote, a scowl lining his pale face.

  He was awake. After a long three weeks, he was awake.

  Her knees threatened to pull their gelatin routine again. She braced herself on the door frame and just stared, drinking him in with her eyes. He looked a billion times better than the last time she’d seen him in the ICU a week and a half ago.

  After his brush with death on the lighthouse’s catwalk, he’d flatlined a second time on the way to the hospital. The paramedics restarted his heart with a portable defibrillator, but a respirator had breathed for him ever since and his doctors hadn’t been hopeful.

  Now the tube was gone. He’d lost weight and muscle mass, and the angles of his face looked sharper, the flesh hollowed out underneath his bloodshot eyes. A cast encased his left leg and someone—probably Kai, being the goofball that he was—had drawn hearts, flowers, and cartoon stick figures on the white plaster.

  Pru suddenly wanted to hear his voice more than anything else in the world. “Alex?”

  The channels stopped changing. He looked over at her and his scowl faded. Emotions battled over his features for a moment before he got them under control and gave a little smile. “Hi, baby.”

  His accent, the velvet tone raw with feeling as he uttered those two beautiful words—that was all it took. She flew to his bed and snuggled in beside him, hugging him as tightly as she dared, afraid of hurting him.

  Oh God, he’d lost so much weight he felt like nothing in her arms. Her tears soaked the blue hospital gown draping his thin body. The smell of sterilizers and antibiotics masked his natural spice and underlined how close he’d been to death. “I thought I lost you.”

  “No way.” He squeezed her tight and, burying his face in her hair, let out a shuddering breath. “I love you. I want to be with you and nothing’s gonna keep me away.” His lips dropped hard to hers as if he wanted to devour her taste.

  “Why?” she sobbed against the seam of his mouth. “I shot you. Almost killed you!”

  “Oh, baby, that wasn’t you. It was Lovie.”

  She blinked in surprise. “You believe that?”

  “I know it.” His grin was cocky and deliberate and slightly crooked—Silas True’s grin. “Marry me, Pru.”

  Oh, how she wanted to say yes. It was on the tip of her tongue, begging her to open her mouth and let it out. But…something stopped her. Something she had to know first.

  “I’m not Olivia,” she blurted, then dragged her lower lip through her teeth. “I know I look like her, but—I’m not. You need to realize that.”

  Framing her face with his hands, he thumbed away her tears. “And I’m not Silas. I may have been—” He paused. “Ah, hell. We both know I was him at one time. But not now, in this life. I’m Alexander William Brennan now and I want you, Pru, to be Mrs. Brennan.”

  She savored the words, the sound of his real name. Alexander William Brennan. Nothing he said would ever sound more beautiful. She nodded. “And I want to be Mrs. Brennan.”

  Outside in the hallway, Kai let out a whoop. “Hah. Told you they were gonna get hitched. Mal, you owe me twenty!” He stuck his head in the room, gave them a grin and two thumbs up, then disappeared down the hall, calling, “Hey, guys, break into the liqueur cabinet. We got a bachelor party to plan!”

  Pru laughed. “Someone needs to teach your friends eavesdropping is impolite.”

  “Oh, babe,” he sighed and squeezed her hand. “You have much to learn about my friends. Teaching Kai manners is telling a zebra to change its stripes. But, as annoying as he is, he’s family. They all are and marrying me is a package deal. I’ll give you one chance to back out.”

  “And I won’t take it.” She leaned in to kiss him, but he placed a palm over her mouth, creating a barrier between their lips. She pulled b
ack and frowned. “What?”

  “I do have two conditions, though.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “You’re not really in the position to be adding conditions, pal. I could just walk out that door and—”

  “You won’t.”

  The arrogant jerk. She was half-tempted to walk out, but took one long look into his storm cloud eyes. Still the same shape and the same color, although a little bloodshot, there was something different about them now. Then it dawned on her: there was no darkness left in them, none of that old remoteness. All she saw there as he gazed up at her was love, and knew she’d never be able to walk away from him. Not even to prove him wrong.

  She held up two fingers. “Two conditions. That’s it.”

  “Okay. Number one,” he said and ticked her nose with the tip of his finger. “We move far, far away from that lighthouse.”

  She nodded. “I’ve already put it up for sale. Like you said, sometimes it’s best to let sleeping ghosts lie.”

  Alex let out his breath in an explosion. “Thank God. That places gives me the creeps.”

  Pru smiled and pressed her lips to his. She meant it only as a quick kiss but it turned into something more as he angled his head, slid a hand into her hair, and rubbed his tongue along her bottom lip. Long, slow, and drugging, the kiss had her nerve endings singing when she pulled away. She felt his erection prod her hip through the thin fabric of his hospital gown, looking for attention, and reached between them to give him a light stroke. He was still too injured for sex, but as soon as he healed up a bit more, she planned to lock him in her room and let her wildcat libido have her way with him—this time, with no ghostly audience to break mirrors or inflict scratches.

  “You said two conditions,” she prompted. She watched him blink and try to wrangle his thoughts back to the conversation even as she continued to stroke him.

  “Right.” His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. “Number two’s the most important.”

  “All ears.”

  Alex removed her hand from his erection and gripped it in both of his. Stared into her eyes like a man begging forgiveness. “Please, please, please make me something to eat before Kai’s cooking gives me food poisoning.”

  Pru laughed. “How about some pie? We’re in Montana, but I bet I still make the best in the county.”

  “Hey, I’m not gonna say no. It’s an addiction.” Grinning, he lifted his mouth to hers again. “And so are you.”

  EPILOGUE

  Cold water splashed over Theo’s head, jolting him awake. The muscles in his arms burned from inactivity and his mouth tasted like day-old vomit. For a long, frightening moment, coherent thought struggled to penetrate the fog in his mind.

  Shards of sound pounded into his skull like glass nails. Water dripping off his nose onto the floor by his bare feet. A persistent hum, like a bee in his ear. A train’s keening wail, muffled by distance. Squeaky faucet and the spurt of water into a metal basin. Footsteps walking away then moving closer again….

  He heard fragments of incoherent conversation from the low thrum of a male voice to the higher, wispy sounds of the Guides babbling inside his head.

  Slivers of images flitted in front of his half-cracked eyelids. A concrete block wall. A bare bulb. Strips of green paint peeled up from a concrete floor.

  Definitely not in Kansas anymore.

  Impossible. Our Lady was as inescapable as Hell. He had to be in the rubber room, still zonked out on his meds.

  Great. That meant he had visual hallucinations to go with the auditory. He’d finally, really, cracked up. Gone over the bend. Lost his mind. The thought sent a hot jolt of panic through his body, jump-starting his sluggish brain.

  No, he wasn’t insane. At least no more than he had been before. But he was in a shitload of trouble.

  Theo’s body shuddered so hard his teeth clinked together. It wasn’t from the icy water dripping down his nose. A fever, hot as sin, raged under his skin. With a groan, he rolled his head up to lean against the hard-backed chair where he was—tied? No, handcuffed. Steel bracelets cut into his wrists behind his back.

  Water, hot this time, splashed his face again. He gagged and gasped, his voice too raw to form a scream. He jerked in the chair and pain lanced through his shoulders, pins and needles pricking his fingers. He’d been in this position for a while. Hours, days, or weeks, he didn’t know.

  How much time had this latest blackout cost him?

  Theo struggled to come up with the answer. The last thing he remembered was Alex’s visit. He’d warned his brother away from the lighthouse, but the stubborn bastard refused to listen. Was Alex dead?

  Theo’s eyes burned with tears as he managed to crack his heavy lids open a little more. The room was concrete with a line of bare light bulbs running the length of the wood beams on the ceiling. A noisy generator, tucked into the corner of the room, supplied power to those bulbs and accounted for that annoying busy-bee hum.

  A basement. No hallucinations, thank God. He was in a cellar and it wasn’t the hospital’s. He’d been to the hospital’s basement enough times looking for a way out—a drab, clinical place that constantly stank of the food prepared in the kitchen down there. This basement was more like the one in the trashy apartment building where he’d grown up with Alex and their drug-addled mother. The raw stench of must, mildew, vomit, rot and blood made his nose itch and brought back too many memories he’d rather forget.

  The room spun and his stomach heaved. Theo groaned and clamped his eyes shut, willed the tilt-a-whirl feeling to stop.

  “That’s the thing about psychotropic drugs, ya know?” a male voice said in amusement. “Going cold turkey really fucks with the body.”

  Gulping in a lungful of air, Theo searched for the source of the voice and found a man leaning against the nearest support post. At least it wasn’t in his head this time. “Who are you?”

  “Not your concern.” He pushed away from the post and walked forward into the light. His eyes were such a pale, unnatural blue they sent a chill of dread down Theo’s spine.

  Wolf eyes.

  Oh, fuck.

  “Where is your brother?” Wolf Eyes asked casually, as if he was inquiring about the weather.

  Don’t answer!

  Yeah, thanks. He didn’t need the Guides to figure that one out. He leaned back again and struggled to control the bone-rattling shivers. “Not your concern.”

  “Funny. Didn’t expect you to be a funny man.” Wolf Eyes backhanded him, the large ring on his index finger gouging a line across Theo’s cheekbone. “Then again, you’re not really a man, are you? You’re a freak, just like your brother and his friends. A disgusting freak of nature that needs to be exterminated.”

  The room tilt-a-whirled again. He just barely managed to swallow back a surge of vomit. “And, lemme guess, you’re the exterminator?”

  Wolf Eyes backed up a step, lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “We all have a calling.”

  “Hah. You’re crazier than they say I am.”

  “Oh, you’re not crazy.”

  Theo snorted and tasted the copper twang of blood as it drizzled down the back of his throat from his nose. His own brother didn’t believe he was sane, and this guy, of all people, did. Go figure. “Mind telling Dr. Romano that?”

  “Mm, he knows. How do you think you got here?”

  “I’m a little fuzzy on those details.” He coughed, choking on the blood. “Care filling me in?”

  Wolf Eyes walked over to a table just beyond Theo’s line of sight. “You made a mistake bringing up the doc’s dearly departed wife. He knew then what you were. An Unnatural.”

  Theo struggled to see what the maniac was doing over there by the table, but the pain in his immobile arms and shoulders and the spinning in his head made it impossible to turn.

  “Romano—” He had to keep the conversation going, had to keep Wolf Eyes talking and distracted, give himself time to think. But, goddammit, thinking through the pain and fog was hard. “Ro
mano killed his wife. The Guides said he made it look like she overdosed on pills because she knew his secrets and wanted a divorce.”

  “That he did.” Wolf Eyes didn’t seem all that concerned about it. “And only three people knew about how she died. Me, because I told him how to handle the situation. Him, because he did it. And her. Obviously, she’s not talking—to a Normal.” He sliced a glance toward Theo, cold as an arctic front. “Which is how Romano knew you were one of them. He keeps an eye out for freaks like you and sends them my way for disposal when he can’t do it himself.”

  A switch clicked. A saw buzzed. Metal screeched, the sound piercing Theo’s skull like a fire-hot poker. He sucked in a breath through his teeth, biting back the cry of pain he knew the bastard wanted to hear. Wolf Eyes laughed. The sound stopped and he reappeared, blowing the fine shavings off a freshly sharpened knife.

  You have to get out! the Guides wailed.

  “Thanks for the news flash,” Theo said.

  The humor faded from Wolf Eyes’ expression. In one quick move, he surged forward and dug the tip of the blade under Theo’s chin. “Who are you talking to?”

  If his mouth wasn’t so dry, he’d spit in the guy’s face. He bared his teeth instead. “The voices in my head. I’m loony tunes, ya know?”

  “You’re evil.”

  He managed a thin laugh. “That’s why you’re going to kill me? ’Cause I’m evil.”

  “You’re not fucking human.” Wolf Eyes sucked in a breath through his nose and let it out, visibly reining in his temper before backing away. He dragged the knife downward and drew a circle on Theo’s bare chest over his pounding heart. “I’m going to cut out your black heart and burn it. It’s the only way to kill things like you and make sure you stay dead.” He leaned on the knife, just enough to draw a drop of blood that slid down Theo’s stomach like a hot tear.

  “But that has to wait until I get your brother’s location out of you. He’s the one I really want. I’ve been looking for him for a long, long time. I had him, too, in that little town in Maine where he shacked up with the pretty lighthouse keeper. He killed my worthless idiot of an operator—but at least I knew his location. Then he went and got himself shot.”