Page 6 of Into Darkness (Night Prowler 6)
“If I run, the first one they’ll punish is you! I’m not going anywhere without you!”
It wouldn’t be mere punishment, Lu knew. Her father would be made an example of. His death for high treason would be protracted, gruesome, and televised for all the world to see. In the Federation, harboring an Aberrant was a capital crime.
Her father drew a long, labored breath and dropped his gaze to the table. His grip on her wrist loosened. He patted her hand. “If you won’t go, the only choice is to try and fool them. But the Grand Minister won’t be so easily fooled.” His eyes, now full of warning, flashed up to hers. “He knows what to look for. He knows all the signs. Jakob says the man is clever as the devil himself.”
Jakob was the leader of the underground church, a man her father admired and trusted. Lu trusted him far less—all zealots struck her as unhinged, whether they were religious, members of the Elimination Campaign, or their Aberrant-loving opponents, the Dissenters—but she had a hunch on this the wild-eyed Jakob was right. The Grand Minister’s prowess at sniffing out a hidden Aberrant was legendary. Some said he had a sixth sense for it.
A cold sweat broke out beneath her armpits. “Do I wear my gloves?”
“If you don’t, it will look suspicious.”
“If I do, it will look suspicious!”
Her father nodded sadly. “You have little choice but to try and behave as normally as possible, as if you know nothing. As if you’re just like everyone else.”
They stared at each other. Lu had been trying to be just like everyone else her entire life. Trying and failing. A thought arrested her. “Why did the Prefect call to warn you?”
A thin smile curved her father’s lips. “Not everything is as it seems, liebling. The face we show the world isn’t always the face we see in the mirror. You of all people should know that.”
The revelation hit her like a punch in the gut: The Prefect was a Dissenter. Shocked, she lifted a hand to cover her mouth. Cold and clammy, a flood of guilt for what she’d done all those years ago to Annika at the market flashed over her.
“You’re going to be all right,” her father assured her, gently patting her arm again. “You’re smart, child. Just control your temper, keep your head down, and everything will be all right.”
She would keep her head down. But what if the monster inside her wouldn’t?
Walking to work, with a second cup of coffee in hand, through the winding, cobblestone streets swamped with pedestrians and bicyclists and the occasional horse-drawn carriage—people thronged the streets immediately after Curfew was lifted as if they’d been spat out of the buildings—Lu tried
to calm herself by humming. A habit she’d learned as a child when she’d awoken from a nightmare, she hummed the song her father used to sing to coax her to sleep.
Svetlo tve daleko vidi,
Po svete bloudis sirokem,
Divas se v pribytky lidi . . .
It was from a Czech opera called Song to the Moon, about the daughter of a water-goblin who desperately wants to become human after she falls in love with a hunter/prince who frequents the lake in which she lives. She asks the moon to reveal her love to the prince, to awaken him from his dreams so he will come and be with her.
Lu had never seen the moon. Or the stars. Or been in love. All of them existed in the same fairy-tale place as the water-goblin’s daughter, imaginary and utterly out of reach.
She glanced up at the sullen sky above, glowering with its usual load of impenetrable oxblood clouds. Hard to believe there was blue somewhere far above, blue like a wide-open eye with a yellow sun hung in the middle of it, blindingly bright. She’d seen pictures in IF-issued history books—look what was taken from us, look what those Aberrant bioterrorists did!—and imagined for a moment what that blazing sun might feel like on her face.
Blistering, that’s what. Her lips skewed to a wry pucker.
Even through the thick layer of clouds, the sun up in that blue sky beyond was vicious enough to kill during daylight hours. The few Third Formers desperate enough to break Curfew in search of food or water inevitably found that out. Even if they escaped the Peace Guard, the sun showed no mercy. Only after twilight was it safe.
Safe being a relative term.
Still looking at the sky, Lu bumped into something hard. Coffee sloshed from the mug and splattered her face, trickling down her chin and neck.
“Scheisse,” she muttered, at the same moment someone said, “Aufpassen!”
Attention. The word was as hard as a slap against her cheek. When she jerked her head up and looked into the eyes of the person who’d said it, her heart dropped into her stomach.
He was tall, broad, and hawk-nosed, with a cutthroat smile and eyes that never blinked, in the way of a snake. His uniform was crisp, the brass medals on his chest gleamed in the light from the streetlamp. The automatic weapon slung over his shoulder gleamed, too.
“Apologies, leutnant,” Lu said smoothly, swallowing the acid taste of fear. She adopted a fake smile and a blank expression, a talent she’d cultivated to perfection. “How stupid of me. I was just thinking how wonderful Thornemas Day is; I wasn’t looking where I was going.” She added brightly, “Can’t wait for the fireworks tonight!”
Dieter Gerhardt smiled down at her from his considerable height. Lieutenant of the district’s ironically named Peace Guard, he was smug and skin crawlingly familiar, never missing the opportunity to stand a little too close, to stare a little too long. He’d always taken a particular interest in her, and she tried to avoid him at all costs. In spite of his enviable upper Second Form position that had some of the other Third Form girls clamoring for his attention, he scared Lu. She had the unsettling sense that he might at any moment crack open his jaw and eat her alive.
