Forsaken: The World of Nightwalkers (26 page)

Grey produced a small electronic device about the size of a cellphone. It was a flat screen and it had two dots on it that were blinking. One blue, one red.

“It’s very straightforward. You are the red dot, the nik is the blue. Head straight for it and get out as soon as you can. I’ll be watching. The only way I can rescue you or get you out of there is if you exit the walls of the house. You must make your way free of them or I can’t help you.”

“Got it,” Leo said, tucking the device in his back pocket and quickly girding himself with the gear he’d been given.

After a moment Grey turned to Faith.

“Going with him is suicidal, you know.”

“I know. But he’ll be dealing with supernatural beings and will need my help. What I need is an outfit that covers me head to toe, wrist to wrist, and up my throat. Can you give me that?”

“One catsuit coming right up.”

Grey snapped his fingers and Faith found herself covered exactly as mentioned. She felt like the fabric was suffocating her, but it was better than leaving her skin bare to the touch of a Wraith. She was happy to see he had thought to give her gloves as well. The material was black and a light, thin spandex, so it wasn’t as bad as all that. It still allowed her to move freely.

She tugged at her gloves and the edges of her sleeves nervously, making certain they overlapped so none of her skin was exposed. The only part of her left bare was her face and the long white tail of her hair. She had worked it into a thick plait and it swung freely down her back.

She looked up and found Leo staring at her with a hard look. She looked at him askance.

“One wrong move and they could…”

“I won’t make a wrong move,” she promised him. “In fact, I plan on us getting in and out of there without seeing a single soul.”

“I can do that,” Leo said. But he was still not comforted. He was incredibly anxious about her coming and it was a risky distraction. But she was right. She was his ace in the hole if he came up against anything powerful. Her ability to deflect power back to the caster was invaluable.

“Okay, Grey. Get us out of here.”

The sun seemed almost garish as it beat down on them. To Leo it seemed strange to be moving clandestinely in daylight rather than night. The principal was the same, but it was sort of like wearing a swimsuit in the snow in his mind. He was used to navigating in the dark and in the shadows. He was used to sneaking around, using stealth, and dozens of tactics employed strictly in the dark in order to keep from being detected. He was used to slipping in like something cold and quiet, something unexpected and dangerous. But this was a whole new set of rules and he hoped he could adjust accordingly.

He hadn’t worked with a team since his Army Ranger days. And back then he had been completely well versed on what all of the other soldiers were capable of, seeing as how they had trained together so much that they knew one another like the backs of their hands. He only knew part of what Faith could do. Of course what he did know about her was pretty amazing, but he knew that was only the tip of the iceberg. He knew that there was so much more to her.

Well, he knew one thing about her for sure; he knew that she was a very passionate creature. In fact he had to make himself
not
think about what a passionate creature she was or he wouldn’t be focusing on the moment. And God knew he needed to very much be focused on the moment. But once he started to think about it, it was damn hard to stop. He could still remember the taste of her. The warm, delicious smell of her. The way she made little sounds and moans when he touched her at just the right spot.

And the more he thought about it, the more he began to realize that there were other things he could have done to give her the pleasure she had deserved. He had just been so out of his element, so off kilter ever since this whole journey begun. And he didn’t just mean the journey since they had left New Mexico searching for Grey; he meant the whole kit and caboodle, including his lovely vacation at the hands of Chatha.

Shaking his head he reminded himself of the danger that they were facing. He reminded himself that all it would take was one touch and Faith would be dead. And that was more than enough ice-cold water to keep him on task. Grey had cleverly planned their insertion by materializing them right at the front door or, rather, the back door. At least that’s what it looked like. It was hard to tell which part was the front of the house and which part was the back from their position.

They immediately backed up flush to the house and looked around to make sure that there were no human or daylight immune guards. Grey had said he could insert them at a prime moment and he would know if there were any guards in the immediate area and could protect them from a precipitous appearance in a guard’s path.

It looked pretty quiet but that did not mean that there were no technological observers, as well as whatever magical ones they were using to protect the stronghold. The sooner they got inside the better.

In his back pocket Leo had lock picks. It was actually a very nice set. But hey, you can get the best when you had a Djynn providing all of your equipment. But before Leo opened the lock pick pouch, he had to inspect the door very carefully.

Faith was no stranger to working in a clandestine manner. She did not exactly feel like a duck out of water. She did not feel frightened, although there was a heightened sense of nervousness. But who wouldn’t be nervous if they were about to enter a house full of an indeterminate amount of people who could use a mere touch to bring about the end of your life? But mostly her fear was all centered around Leo. He was only human. She didn’t care how skilled he thought he was. It would be nothing in the face of a race of people with extraordinary strength, amazing reflexes, and a really bad attitude. It was said that Wraiths despised humans. But then again it was said that Wraiths despised everybody.

The house that they appeared behind was a two or three story colonial; or so it seemed from the outside. Just like any other house you might see on any other street in any other suburb. But there were no streets. There were no neighbors, and for all they knew they were hell and gone from America. There was an enormous field as far as the eye could see in all directions. She could easily picture what it might look like in summertime, waist high wheat grasses or corn, no matter which way you turned it would be a wall of uniform vegetation.

Leading directly up to the house itself was a little footpath made of crooked bricks and oddball stones that curved and wobbled and wended as if it were an afterthought rather than a planned walkway.

“Hey, Faith,” Leo said softly, “get down low and wait for me right here. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait! Where are you going?” The last was said in a low hiss of a whisper, but she may as well have been talking to herself because he was already gone. If she wasn’t nervous before, she most certainly was when he just left her there to her own devices. For some reason, having him next to her had made her feel more secure. Safer. Protected. Wasn’t that funny? That she should feel safer because he was around when, in fact, she was the stronger of the two of them? At least physically speaking. She briefly thought about the scars on Leo’s chest and realized just how tough of a person he really had to have been in order to make it through something like that. She was pretty positive that she would not have made it out of that completely intact. But then again it was quite possible that Leo had not made it out of that without significant mental damage. In fact, his hatred of all things Nightwalker was very indicative of the damage path that had been torn through him.

There was a bush to the left of the door. It was a low scrappy little thing with barely any leaves on it and would provide absolutely no coverage, but she found herself crouching down behind it just the same. Her breath came nervously, her chest felt as though a length of fabric had been wrapped tightly around it and was being tied tighter and tighter and tighter, until there was no more room for breath. As she waited anxiously for him to return it was as though time began to crawl, limping along, and everything she did, every minuscule breath she took, was as loud as a scream.

Suddenly he was back beside her, touching her shoulder and shushing her when she gasped in surprise.

“My god, where did you go?”

“Just had to take care of a little alarm,” he said. He reached up to the doorknob and as if he were using a key in the lock rather than a couple of lock picks, he quickly unlatched it. The door swung in without a sound.

He ushered her in with a light touch on her back and she moved quickly ahead of him. It was throttling, the way her entire self tried to pull her back to the exit, back to the relative safety of daylight. Leo checked the area quickly, then looked back at her.

They had agreed that the best plan of action was to find a safe spot as soon as they entered the house and wait for her to resolve into her normal color and revert into a powerful state. Since it took time for her color to change it would be a dangerous few minutes. What was in their favor was that she had not been in the sun for very long and so she would revert more quickly.

They had entered into a small vestibule with a door opening a few feet up to the left, and hallway walls leading a good distance away. She couldn’t see what kind of room it was, and it didn’t matter to her. What mattered was the fear climbing over her. She was fighting it with every part of her spirit, wrestling with it so hard she broke into a cold sweat.

She watched Leo move forward a few inches and glance into the room. He shook his head hard, indicating that he wasn’t happy with what he saw.

“Kitchen,” he whispered on the barest push of sound.

The kitchen in any house was a central hub of traffic. The one thing everyone had in common was the need to eat. The second thing would be the need to eliminate so the bathrooms were guaranteed to be just as busy. He moved forward down the hall and she followed quickly, both of them moving in a low silent crouch. Her heart was pounding, the swish and flow of her blood noisy in her ears. A short way up the hall they found another doorway on the right. He glanced into this one too and must have liked what he saw because he gestured her in. The smell in the room, redolent with perfume and damp heat, would have told her it was the laundry room even if she hadn’t seen the washer and dryer within. As she moved in she felt his hand touch briefly along her spine, a seemingly innocent gesture that both soothed and added to the tension of the moment.

There was no door to the room, so all they could do was stay there, quietly crouched, studying her skin as it began to darken to a fair charcoal-gray color. She could hear the rush of her breath, panicking that it was too loud while at the same time marveling that she couldn’t hear his breath at all. In fact, he seemed calm enough to dig in and take a freaking nap! He reached out to her then, obviously reading her state of mind, and laid a hand on her neck, his thumb touching her on the only exposed skin she had, that of her face. He guided her to look straight into his eyes and she did. He didn’t speak a single word with his lips, but volumes with his eyes.

I’m here. I’m right here. I won’t let anything near you.

Finally her skin was black again and she could feel the energy of her wings at her back. The comfort it gave her was boundless, but it couldn’t touch the comfort she had gotten from Leo’s eyes.

He nodded when he realized she was ready and moved around to the door, keeping her safely at his back. Before she could catch her breath he was moving out of the room, forcing her to hurry after him or find herself alone and exposed without him. As they moved she was aware of Leo, aware of his strength and the catlike beauty of his movements as he took point, moving with confidence, and a perceived sense of fearlessness. Every so often he’d reach back with his left hand, touching her hip as if he were corralling her into place and the relative safety behind him.

She saw him glance at the electronic device Grey had given them, using it as a guide to move through the hallways. She followed him from one to the next, never knowing what they were going to see, never knowing what they were going to find around the next corner, but going just the same. It seemed like the most perfect act of insanity.

He stopped her and she found herself holding her breath again. She watched him reach for a hunting knife that he had in his flack jacket. He slipped the black blade out of its sheath with perfect silence. There wasn’t a single ray of light in the entire house, the windows obviously polarized just like most Nightwalkers would use in their private houses. She had no idea how he could move in so much blackness or how he could see. She had eyesight meant to see through the dark because she was meant to live in the night. But how did he manage to move and to know where next to step?

She could hear somebody coming. There was no doubt about it, no mistaking the sound. A live being was walking in their direction. A white-hot streak of terror went through her. She suddenly felt completely exposed and wanted to hide her face, the one place on her body where her skin was showing. She was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t move but she knew it was the worst thing she could possibly do.

The next thing she knew the coiled line of Leo’s body moved, sprang forward like an absurd little jack-in-the-box. There was the sound of contact and the sound of a knife moving through flesh and bone. She could hardly believe what she had seen as a now-lifeless body fell to the floor. Leo had thrust his knife up through his victim’s upper throat, through its mouth and the rear of the tongue and into the brain stem. The knife was just as quickly removed as it had been inserted, leaving the body to fall at her feet. Obviously she could not touch it to check and see if it were still alive, but why she would ever want to do that was completely out of the realm of considering. It lay at her feet way too close for comfort, and she could see its face. Its pallor was a complete gunmetal gray, the skin of it like a muted, matte finish. The hair was equally gray, done in a combination of short and long dreadlocks. It had no eyebrows, but his jaw and chin were lined with a short black stubble that accentuated its hollowed-out cheeks.