Page 52 of Into Darkness (Night Prowler 6)
“Control, this is Tango Aztec two-niner-six-four Alpha, over.”
“Go ahead, Tango.”
“We’re experiencing severe weather conditions en route to target. Request permission to land until flight conditions are more favorable, over.”
A crackle of static. “Describe your situation, Tango. Control is getting interference with your readouts.”
Interference? The helicopter pilot and his
copilot shared a glance.
“Tail wind at twenty-eight knots, low visibility due to heavy fog, temperature currently at—” No. That couldn’t be right. The pilot frowned at the digital readout; according to his instrument, the outside temperature had dropped thirty degrees in the last minute.
“Tango, repeat your last transmission, please, we’re having trouble with your signal.”
The pilot knew the temperature gauge was malfunctioning. It had to be, because at the rate it was dropping, the fuel lines would ice up—
Bam! Bam! Bam! The pilot started in his seat, shocked by the enormous white balls raining down on the windshield.
On the console, a red warning light blinked on at the same time an alarm shrilly sounded. There immediately followed a grinding, hollow groan from the rotors, and a violent shudder shook the cabin.
“Oh, shit!” shouted the copilot.
Control called over the com again, but the words were garbled, lost beneath the howling of the wind and the blinding crackle of a jagged fork of lightning that exploded in the dark sky not ten meters in front of the aircraft.
Now truly panicked, the pilot engaged the anti-ice system, but his instrument panel lit up like a Thornemas tree with a barrage of warning lights, madly blinking red and yellow. The gyroscope spun wildly, the vertical speed indicator lurched, the torque meter went off the charts.
The rotors stalled. The copilot screamed, louder even than the wind. Then with a jolt that flattened the pilot’s stomach up under his lungs, the helicopter dropped like a rock from the sky.
“This one’s dead, too.” Lumina covered her mouth with the back of her hand. She turned away from the mangled body of the man who had been thrown clear from the smoking wreckage of one of the helicopters, and stood with her eyes closed, dragging fresh air into her lungs, her lips pressed together, blood quickly draining from her face.
As it had drained from the man’s body to stain his frayed uniform, and darken the grass.
“Wreck shit,” Honor had said, and that is precisely what had happened. All three of the IF helicopters had gone down in the storm, and everyone on board was killed.
Lu had felt such a thrill of power to stand there beside her sister, to wield such awful force. Especially on her enemies, the same group who’d murdered her father, the same bunch of mindless disciples of Thorne who wanted nothing more than to see her caged, or dead. It had made her blood sing. It had made her nearly dizzy with wicked glee.
But then, oh then in the quiet aftermath, witnessing the carnage she had wrought . . . what intense disgust she’d felt. What black, encompassing revulsion.
At herself.
Lu knew people died in war. It was a simple, incontrovertible fact that lives ended when battles began. But a thing known in theory is much different when experienced firsthand. Believing in an eye for an eye is all well and good, until you’re forced to stand in front of your enemy’s face and pluck that offending eye out of its socket with your own fingers. Then revenge loses some of its charm.
“It had to be done,” Magnus said.
Lu opened her eyes to find him standing just a few feet away, watching her with strain clear in his face, his posture. She hated to see that worry on him, but even worse than his worry was a new thing lurking beneath, a thing that hooded his eyes and curved his lips and shoved an icy splinter of panic into her heart: admiration.
She didn’t want to be admired for this . . . butchery.
“Let’s get back to the caves,” said Honor. “We need to make a plan for what we’re going to do next.” She seemed utterly unaffected by the sight of dead bodies, or that she’d helped make them that way, and Lu wasn’t sure if she was envious, or disappointed. How could Honor feel nothing, witnessing this? How could she stand there dusting off her hands like nothing had just happened?
Her thoughts were interrupted when a low, wretched moan came from the only helicopter they hadn’t inspected yet, lying on its flank about thirty meters away in a shallow depression between a stand of trees and several large boulders.
Lu whirled around and stared at it in horror. “Someone’s still alive!”
Grimly, Magnus said, “Apparently so.” From within his jacket, he withdrew a knife with a long, curved blade that gathered the light into a sinister sheen along its edge.
“No—God! Magnus, just . . . don’t.” He’d been about to head in the direction of the moan, but Lu stepped in front of him, blocking his path.
