Into Light (Shadow and Light Book 2)

by T. D. Shields

  Shadows stretching across the floor from behind the half-wall told me that several people stood near the lantern. Theirs were the voices I had noticed earlier in my haze. As if noticing the voices had completed the last connection in my brain, the indistinct sounds resolved themselves into comprehensible words.

  “… the fragging cat? What use is that? Imbecile.” The last word was muttered as the man turned away and began to pace, based on the motion of his shadow. I recognized the voice instantly and my blood ran cold. It was Cruz. How had this happened? How had he found me?

  “Look, you said to bring Poppy and her companion. The fragging cat goes everywhere with her; it’s a companion.” Hearing Mateo speak brought back my memory of the ambush. Mateo had survived the fall and now he was somehow working with Cruz and had delivered us here.

  “Cha … it’s just a cat,” Cruz scoffed. His shadow prodded at something with its foot. “It’s practically dead anyway. The gas was probably too much for it.” The shadow turned away to resume pacing. “Someone get rid of it.”

  Another shadow crouched and stood again with a grunt. “Heavy freaking cat,” the man muttered. He walked into sight from behind the barrier of the half-wall, and I drew on my training to evaluate him as a threat. The most immediate hazard was the military-grade shock-blaster slung across his back. In that position, he’d be able to reach it and fire in seconds. He was also tall, heavily muscled, and moved with a smooth grace that spoke of years of training. His biceps flexed with the effort of carrying the heavy cat until the bulging muscles stressed the fabric of his shirt sleeves. I immediately christened him Biceps.

  Roomie’s large body hung limply from the man’s hands, and I had to bite back a sob for my loyal friend. Biceps disappeared into the shadows as he left the circle of lantern light. I heard the thunk of the door opening and then a startled, pained yelp.

  The door clunked closed again, and Biceps was briefly visible in the slice of lantern light as he crossed back to the main group. He was limping just a little and sucking on two of his fingers the way you do when you’re trying to soothe a minor injury.

  “Stupid cat was just stunned,” he grunted. “Went nuts when I started to drop it and bit my hand and scratched my leg.” If he was hoping for sympathy of any kind, he was disappointed since his companions only made fun of him for whining about a little cat scratch.

  Though I was still terrified to learn what was in store for me and Sharra, I was relieved to know that at least Roomie would be all right. The cat was smarter than a lot of people I knew; he would have no trouble surviving here. Any city had populations of stray cats; Roomie would probably set himself up as a leader within days.

  “Are our guests awake yet?” Cruz demanded. Biceps left off studying his injured fingers and turned to catch me watching him. Seeing that I was awake, he mumbled something to his buddies and walked toward us. An enormous man whose round cue-ball of a head appeared to sit directly atop his overly muscled shoulders lumbered a step behind: I dubbed him No-Neck.

  Biceps grabbed me by the arm and hauled me gracelessly to my feet. No-Neck lifted Sharra from the floor with a similar lack of courtesy. Forced into a shaky walk, we stumbled to the light on numbed feet and legs.

  Biceps shoved me forward but held on to my upper arm. No-Neck simply dropped Sharra, leaving her sprawled at my feet. I would have tried to help her if I hadn’t been desperately trying to get my hands on Cruz.

  I lunged at him, forgetting for a moment that my hands weren’t free. I was brought up short by Biceps’ punishingly tight grip on my arm as he held me back. Cruz just laughed.

  “Why, Poppy,” he said, his voice mocking. “I’m starting to feel like you aren’t happy to see me.”

  I growled behind my gag. If my words had been audible, they would have blistered his ears. He obviously caught the intention anyway, but he was only amused by my rage.

  “Now, now, let’s try to be civilized, shall we?” He raised a condescending eyebrow and motioned to Biceps that he should remove the gag. I continued my tirade the moment my mouth was free.

  “I’ll show you civilized, you piece of dreck,” I shouted hoarsely. “I’ll be just as civilized as you were when you had my father killed. Murdering, back-stabbing scum!” I continued lunging toward him, though I knew I wouldn’t easily break Biceps’ hold.

  What looked like mindless rage had an underlying purpose. Each time I lurched forward, I yanked fiercely at the bindings around my wrists. Something I’d learned in my self-defense training was that small hands like mine were hard to secure. If I was willing to put myself through some pain, it was very possible that I could work a hand free.

  Wrenching against the straps broke the skin, and I could feel blood trickling down my wrists and over my hands. I did my best to ignore my pain and use the blood as a lubricant to work a hand free. The straps had finally started to slip when Cruz stepped forward and slapped me sharply across the face.

  “Pull yourself together,” he commanded. Startled into silence, I froze and glared up at him. He nodded and stepped away again. “Much better.”

  He walked to a chair sitting near the wall and dropped into it with casual self-confidence. “Have a seat,” he told me with a nod toward the chair across from him. It was currently occupied by Mateo, who hurriedly moved out of the way as Biceps shoved me across the room and pushed me into the chair.

  I cast a look back at Sharra, still lying at No-Neck’s feet. Looking to my left, I glared at Mateo. “I always knew you were scum, but I never believed you would stoop as low as you have. Do you even care how many people were killed in that explosion?”

  “Not really,” he said with a shrug. “I was just following orders. The explosion occurred exactly as President Rodriguez had requested. It was good luck that you arrived when you did, though. I had given up on you.”

  That one threw me. I turned back to Cruz. “You ordered the explosion?”

  Cruz leaned back in his chair, his fingers forming a steeple the way he did when he wanted to appear very thoughtful and intelligent. He’d been using that mannerism since I was a kid. I’d never told him that it made him look like a comic book villain, but I saw no reason to hold back anymore.

  “You look like an idiot when you do that,” I informed him. “Like some cartoonish gangster.”

  He glared at me but dropped the pretentious pose. “Yes,” he snarled. “Your friend here has been working for me for months. He came to me and told me he knew where to find you and would deliver you for the right price. As you can see, he delivered.”

  I caught a hint of motion from the corner of my eye and realized that Sharra was squirming slowly out of the lighted circle an inch at a time. I acted quickly to keep everyone’s eyes and attention on me so her movements wouldn’t be noticed.

  I spat at Mateo. I was surprised and a little impressed by myself when the glob of saliva actually flew across the intervening space to strike him on the chin. Mateo launched himself at me, and I jumped up to meet him. Everyone was busy holding us apart for a few precious moments until Biceps shoved me back into my chair while No-Neck hovered over us. He was trying to intimidate us all with his sheer size, I supposed.

  A quick sidelong glance revealed that Sharra was now completely out of sight. With a quiet sigh of relief, I turned back to the conversation. If I could keep everyone occupied, maybe Sharra could come up with some sort of plan.

  “Why the elaborate plan to bring me here instead of just telling your good buddy where to go find me?” I asked Mateo.

  “I do not like you,” Mateo said stiffly, “but there was no reason to endanger anyone else. I am loyal to the packs. Our city was fine before you arrived. Now that you’re gone, it will be fine again.”

  “He refused to tell me where you were hiding.” Cruz admitted. “I considered torturing the information out of him but eventually decided to find another way. His plan was to spread the rumor that he was going to do something to endanger the city, and your do-gooder instinct
s would compel you to step in. Obviously, he was correct. A few stories planted about the supposed theft of the explosives, and you came flying out of hiding to interfere.”

  I was genuinely confused by that. “Supposed theft?” I echoed. “The story of you stealing the explosives—”

  “Oh, completely false,” Mateo assured me cheerfully. “Trying to transport those canisters would have been a suicide mission. I didn’t even leave the city of Goodland. I only contacted Jessie to tell her of the plan, and she cleverly hid the canisters and reported it as theft. Just as we expected, you came running.”

  His smile widened. “Jessie really does not like you. She was very anxious to help me if it meant separating you from Lucas.”

  “She was willing to let innocent people die because she wants to steal my boyfriend?” I asked incredulously.

  “To be fair, she did not think there would truly be an explosion,” Mateo clarified. “It was only meant to be a ruse to draw you out.”

  “I was inspired by the plan and decided to make it a reality,” Cruz explained. “I’ve been wanting to clear those blasted tunnels for years, and the explosion provided a perfect excuse. Two birds with one stone, you might say. I provided the explosives, your friend here found the right spot for them, and voila … a reason to empty the Warren.”

  “Why do you even need an excuse?” I wondered aloud. “Can’t you pretty much do whatever you want at this point?”

  He made a sound of disgust. “I should be able to do whatever I want, but we’re being too closely monitored by other governments. In spite of the non-interference treaties in place, they keep sending thinly-veiled threats in the guise of ‘concern’ about our human-rights standings. Of course, if it were only the mewling from abroad that I had to contend with, I could smooth it over easily enough.”

  He stood and began pacing restlessly again, getting more agitated as he recited each grievance. “But instead I must also face betrayal from my own advisors; they constantly question my decisions and countermand my orders. That bleeding-heart Madelaine Carlson is always making waves about things, and of course, her doddering fool of a husband just follows along. They won’t stop squawking. ‘This isn’t what we signed on for. I didn’t think it would be like this.’”

  He imitated their words in a whiny, child-like voice to show his disdain for their opinions as he paced alongside a stack of old crates, pausing for a moment to deliver a vicious kick to one of the boxes.

  “Gutierrez and Nexen wander through the Oval Office like they own it,” he fumed. “Always telling me that I should do this or I’d better do that … Interfering with my control of the police and military … Acting like they’re doing me a fragging favor by ‘letting’ me be the president.

  “And Louisa!” He whirled on me and demanded, “How did you stand that foul woman? She issues orders as if I were a child and thinks that I will simply obey her?”

  “Yes,” I agreed carefully. “That’s pretty much the way she operates.”

  “Well, it’s at an end! It’s over!” He yanked something from his belt, and I recognized it as one of the banned guns from his weapons collection. He waved it in the air in agitation as he shouted, “They’ll learn who is really in charge.”

  His wild-eyed ranting had us all nervous now. He acted so unhinged that I simply froze in place and tried to avoid attracting his attention until he calmed down. No-Neck and Biceps seemed to have the same strategy, not moving so much as a muscle as their boss stomped around brandishing a deadly weapon.

  Mateo apparently had no such sense of self-preservation and made the mistake of trying to talk. “They will learn,” he agreed soothingly. “I am sure that they will regret their disrespect.”

  “Disrespect?” Cruz roared, the veins in his temples throbbing an angry purple. “You dare to speak to me of disrespect? You worthless fool … refusing to tell me where to find her … trying to tell me what I should or should not …” His rage reduced him to sputtering incoherence, his black eyes fixed on Mateo.

  Abruptly he leveled the gun at Mateo and pulled the trigger. The bright muzzle flash assaulted my eyes an instant before the sharp crack of the gunshot reverberated against the walls. The lingering sound vibrated painfully in my ears as I watched the bullet enter Mateo’s head almost directly between his eyes and then explode out the back in a disgusting spray of blood, bone, and gray matter.

  Shooting Mateo seemed to have completely erased Cruz’s towering fury. Mateo’s body was still twitching on the floor when Cruz turned back to me with his usual charming smile firmly in place.

  My ears rang and my nostrils stung with the sharp scent of burning gunpowder. I stared at Cruz in frozen horror as he held the gun out toward me, displaying it like a proud parent. “Beautiful weapon, isn’t it?” he asked calmly. “It’s a GLOCK nine millimeter pistol firing polymer bullets. It’s from the late twenty-first century, but even after all these years, it’s completely reliable and accurate. I have more valuable weapons, and there are more high-tech weapons in my collection, but this is still my favorite. Easily concealable and devastatingly effective.”

  He smiled fondly and tucked the gun back into the holster clipped to the inside of his waistband. He smoothed his shirt over the slight bulge and rubbed his hands together in a moment of gleeful satisfaction.

  “Now!” he said in a cheerful voice. “What to do with you, my dear?”

  24

  In another of those lightning mood swings, Cruz now looked regretful. It was hard to keep up. He’d always been volatile and prone to quick fits of anger or excitement, but I’d never seen this level of crazy from him before.

  “You won’t believe me, Bug, but I never wanted it to come to this.”

  I was stung by the use of my childhood nickname. “Don’t call me that. You don’t get to call me that anymore.”

  He gave me a look of reproach, as if I should feel bad about rejecting him. He heaved a deep sigh, his brow wrinkled. “I didn’t get into this whole mess because I wanted to be some ruthless dictator, you know. Your father and I didn’t see eye to eye about how to keep the country safe, and he refused to listen to me.

  “But if we’re not the strongest, we’re sitting ducks. Do you think Russia and China will just sit quietly forever? They still need more land and more resources, and eventually they’re going to try again. All the non-aggression pacts will mean nothing. We have to be prepared, and if that means a few civil liberties need to be redefined in order to make the country safe, so be it.”

  His face twisted with remembered anguish, and his eyes had a watery shine in the yellow lamplight. “I tried! I tried to talk to him about this, but he just wouldn’t listen. When Louisa came to me and told me that there were others who understood how I felt, who wanted to help me …” His voice trailed off into silence, and he seemed lost in memory.

  My chest ached with suppressed sobs, and I couldn’t help the tears that trickled down my cheeks. This man had been my beloved friend, protector, and confidant for most of my life, and with all my heart I wished I could go back to that time. But he was responsible for the death of my father. And no matter how noble his proclaimed purpose might be, he was also responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocents that I knew of and almost certainly more that were still a secret. He had subverted the ideals of our nation and destabilized the country until it was on the brink of revolt.

  Cruz stepped closer and cupped my face in his left hand, using his thumb to wipe away my tears. “Help me, Poppy. Help me get things back on track. Come back to the White House with me and act as my First Lady just as you did for your father. We’ll get rid of Louisa and Raymond and the rest of those backstabbers, and you and I will keep this country safe and strong.”

  I leaned into the comfort of his strong hand. My heart hurt. I wanted to accept his offer, to try and go back to the way things had been before my perfect world had shattered around me. I was so tempted to go with him; maybe I could convince him to set things right and undo
the damage he’d done. I stared into his pleading eyes and wished that things were different.

  But no matter how much I loved the man he had been, I could not ally myself with the man he had become. I turned my head away with a choked sob. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Uncle Cruz. I can’t.”

  Cruz nodded in resignation. “I know. I’m sorry, too.”

  He pulled out his gun again, raised it in his right hand and gently pressed the cool metal against my forehead. “Goodbye, Poppy.”

  My heart pounded in fear, but I looked him directly in the eyes. He stared back at me, both of us frozen in the moment of decision. Even Biceps and No-Neck seemed to hold their breath, afraid to interrupt as Cruz gathered his resolve. Cruz swallowed hard and from the corner of my eye, I could just barely see the movement of his hand as his finger began to tighten on the trigger.

  Our motionless tableau was shattered when a lithe figure hurtled out of the shadows and slammed into Cruz, sending him staggering back a few steps. Sharra had managed to free herself from her bonds, and now she slammed her arm against Cruz’s right hand, loosening his grip on the gun and sending it skittering across the concrete floor. It slid to a halt at the edge of the circle of light, and Sharra, Cruz, and the goons all dove for it.

  I frantically yanked at the ties binding my hands, trying to get loose. The ties were already slick with my blood from my earlier attempts and a hard yank finally ripped my left hand free. I could feel more blood running down my hand to drip on the floor, but there was no time to worry about it now. I leapt into the fight to help Sharra.

  Cruz had managed to recover the gun, and now he stepped back and shouted orders as Sharra and I tried to hold our own against Biceps and No-Neck. We were quick, strong, and skilled fighters, but these men were professionals. They had more training, experience, and sheer muscle mass to work with.

  The struggle was over in an embarrassingly short time. Sharra and I were kneeling in front of Cruz. Biceps stood behind me with my right arm wrenched behind my back and pulled so high that the tiniest movement sent white-hot shocks of pain through my shoulder and chest. No-Neck held Sharra in a similar pose.