Page 112 of Into Darkness (Night Prowler 6)
Faces. So many faces. Every one familiar, even through the blinding haze of light. Weightlessness, the heady scent of wildflowers, a feeling of wonder. Warmth. Music.
Peace.
It was so beautiful here, wherever here was. So tranquil. He never wanted to leave.
He moved toward the light, toward the faces, happy now, at ease. Effortless motion, gliding without resistance, formless yet whole. He raised his hands in front of his eyes, and they were made of the same light as everything else, incandescent, pulsating right through his skin. He laughed, and it was music. Plashing fountains and birdsong and all that dazzling, glimmering light . . . all of it so exquisitely beautiful. So real.
A whisper made him pause. It was a voice . . . a woman’s voice. Lovely, yet ineffably sad. The voice was familiar, but not. The name it called was familiar, but not. A puzzle. It bothered him, a little at first, then more and more as he perceived the raw note of anguish reverberating through that voice, the endless, aching pain. The pain was out of place in all this loveliness.
Looking around, he wanted to find the source. He wanted to comfort the owner of that voice. He wanted to offer solace to such unutterable longing . . .
Suddenly he wanted that more than anything else in this new, magnificent world.
He turned away from the light, and a solid resistance arose inside him as he did. It hurt to turn away, but that voice hurt him even more. It called to him, urgent, pain like a hot welter over the center of his chest. A shocking kaleidoscope of images hit with breath-stealing intensity: the dim gleam of pale skin, the curve of a bare hip. The elegant arch of a neck, lit by candlelight. Hair like spun gold, lucent eyes fringed in a curve of black lashes. Laughter like the pealing of bells, from a mouth he wanted, needed, to kiss.
A face. That face, even more lovely than all the ethereal beauty around him.
Fire.
Hope.
It left his lips soundlessly, but the lovely voice that had been calling out in such longing, such wretched pain, fell silent when he thought the word. Carnivorous hunger arose in him, a need to see that face, a face he loved more than anything else in the whole of his existence. A need to hear that name she’d been calling out with such depth of sorrow . . . Magnus.
His name.
With the force of a wrecking ball, it all came back to him. His past, his life, the endless labyrinth of searching for something he’d finally, finally found, only to have it ripped away from his hands.
Lumina. Hope. Two names that meant the same thing to him: love. She was his home and his home was her, not this dazzling place. It was empty without her. It was nothing without her.
He was nothing without her. He would not—not—give her up.
As soon as the certainty of it solidified within him, the world tilted and spun, flashing lights and falling stars and a sense of falling down, down, into nothing. Into darkness.
An eternity of darkness. And then . . .
Light again, but different this time. Diffuse. A sly, sliding flicker glimpsed through a blurry screen. Music again, too, but also different. Not instrumental, but natural. What was it? It was so familiar, he’d heard it before . . . water. Yes, flowing water, murmuring, sighing, splashing over rocky streambeds, dripping down stone walls, thundering over sheer cliffs to fall into deep, clear pools below.
He felt the same sense of peace, though. The same wonderful feeling of wholeness had followed him from wherever he’d been. It almost made up for the unholy hardness of the thing at his back. That discomfort, along with a creeping chill that accompanied it, was what finally convinced him to sit up.
When he did, Magnus was met with a scene of such impossible absurdity, his first impulse was to laugh. It was a good thing he didn’t; by the look of horror and shock on everyone’s faces, that would have been a bad move.
Row upon row of chairs, filled with silent people dressed in black, in a dim, rock chamber, illuminated only by candlelight. Vases overflowing with flowers, their scent perfuming the air. A burning cone of incense in a silver thurible near his feet, exhaling a sinuous fume of smoke along with spicy notes of bergamot and sandalwood. Beneath him a long, rectangular outcropping of rock, elevated a few feet above the stone floor. And on his lap, the black shroud that had covered his face and body, rucked to folds around his waist as he’d sat up.
Holy hell. He’d just interrupted his own funeral.
Into the astonished hush, he said in a voice thick and scratchy, “Well. I always knew I had good timing, but this is ridiculous.”
A sound below him caught his attention. He looked down, and there knelt his love at the base of the altar upon which he sat. She stared up at him with wide open eyes, her face pale as stone, trembling hands over her mouth. She made the sound again—a high, small whine of heartbroken disbelief—and it shattered him.
Magnus reached down, dragged Lumina to her feet, and crushed her against his chest.
“How? How?” Her voice was a rasp. She shook violently in his arms.
Magnus took her face in his hands and looked deep into her eyes, smiling. “Did you think a silly thing like me dying could keep us apart?” His smile faded, and his voice became a low, vehement whisper. “Nothing could ever keep me from you, Lumina. Nothing. Not even death itself.”
She burst into tears.
Then, chaos. Everyone jumped from their chairs. Cries of joy and disbelief echoed off the cave walls. They were swarmed. Xander and Morgan, Demetrius and Eliana, Christian and Ember, Hawk and Jack, Honor and Beckett and everyone else, the entire tribe, jostling and shoving, shouting and reaching out to touch him. The Seeker, returned from the dead.
