Page 14 of Into Darkness (Night Prowler 6)
All at once, Lu understood, and the world fell away beneath her feet.
This man had known her mother. Her real mother.
And he knew what Lu was.
Heat rushed to her face, burned hot across her cheekbones. A thrill ran through her body, high and pure and resonating, and with an awful, bellowing battle cry, the monster inside her leapt to its feet.
Lu took a single step backward. Each guard took a single step in. In a coordinated
move, they reached inside their jackets.
In a gentle voice, the Grand Minister said, “If you cooperate, you won’t be harmed. Your father won’t be harmed. The stories of the treatment of Aberrants are greatly exaggerated, urban myths. You’ll be kept with others of your kind, kept comfortably and well. You’ll never want for anything again.” His voice grew even more caressing. He looked at her pleadingly, with grandfatherly concern. “And you can meet your mother—you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To meet your birth mother? She’s missed you so much.”
Lies, all of them, spoken with such ease Lu had to admit that beneath her hatred for this man, she felt a twinge of jealousy. It cost him exactly nothing to produce these smooth untruths, to playact a role. She wished she’d been blessed with such an ability; it would have made her own mask-wearing life much easier.
The funny thing was, knowing she’d finally been discovered wasn’t the terrifying experience Lu had always assumed it would be. She felt instead as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Though her nerves were stretched taut and adrenaline coursed through her veins, all her fear fell away like a skin she was shedding, until finally there was nothing but acceptance, cold and solid as rock.
Life as she knew it was over.
So be it. If she was being honest with herself, she’d known it would come to this all along. The relief was almost dizzying.
The Schottentor gate, you know the one? We’ll get you out. Look for the white rabbit.
Lu reached out with her mind. It was like stretching a rubber band, pulling her awareness across empty space until she came up against a soft resistance. She pushed past it, and with the animal inside her sinking into a killing crouch, said silently into the Grand Minister’s head, I’m going to roast you for those lies, you smug son of a bitch.
He jerked back in his wheelchair, shock distorting his face, and Lu was suffused with a savage satisfaction.
A smile curved her lips, but she knew it wasn’t she who was smiling. It was the animal, eager to feed. Eager for blood. There was a noise in her head, a cry like a thousand roars in the wilderness, an unearthly chorus of gnashing teeth and snapping jaws and hissing. When she took another step back, it was with raised arms, her hands flexed open. A sudden crackle of static electricity sparked through the room, and all the downy hair atop the Grand Minister’s head lifted, haloing his face in a cloud of white.
His expression of shock turned to an extremely pleasing one of terror.
“Sorry,” Lu said aloud, her smile gone, “but I’m not really the cooperative type.”
FOUR
In the split second before the unearthly detonation shattered the quiet and a blast of heated air knocked him off his feet, the hunter on the roof across the street who’d watched Lumina Bohn enter the Hospice sucked in his breath sharply, frozen by the almost sexual pleasure from the burst of power that crackled over his skin. He closed his eyes on a blissful shudder.
Holy mother of God. She’s even stronger than—
An orange fireball erupted from the Hospice. It blew out all the windows and destroyed the roof in a fantastic, deafening display that glowed hellish bright against the dark night sky. The shockwave sent him tumbling back, but he quickly recovered, leaping to his feet in a lightning-fast move and steadying himself with a hand gripped around a satellite antennae.
Though this could only be an unmitigated disaster, he felt for a moment the insane urge to laugh. She was so strong. Her power, in spite of its terrible fury, was so refined.
The urge to laugh quickly fled as people began pouring from the building, screaming.
Some of them were on fire.
He ran with long, even strides across the peak of the roof, never losing his balance, his gaze narrowed on the rain gutter at the opposite end. It had detached, a long length drooping down toward the shorter building adjacent. He leapt on it without hesitation, using his weight and speed to propel him far enough over the alley below that he could drop to the roof of the lower building just as the metal gutter gave way with a groan and buckled. He let go, landed in a crouch, and was up and running again before the ruined length of gutter had even hit the ground.
Sirens screamed from far off in the night. He didn’t have much time.
The building he’d landed on was some kind of office complex. He sped over the roof, hurtling skylights and skirting air vents, until he reached the far edge. Looking down, he judged the distance—about one hundred feet from the ground—and, without hesitation, jumped.
He landed soundlessly, his legs accustomed to absorbing the shock of high falls. It only took a moment to reorient, then he was off and running again, darting down an alleyway that led directly to the street and the chaos beyond.
Just as he emerged from between the two buildings, Lumina Bohn flew out the front door of the Hospice, running so fast she was only a streak of painted light against the darkness.
Directly behind her, dodging debris on the ground and the burning chunks of wood and plastic still raining from the sky, a dozen men in black suits followed.
