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Authors: Erin M. Leaf

Dusk (14 page)

BOOK: Dusk
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“You are a lovely woman,” Solomon said, kissing her softly. “Never
think otherwise.”

“Ha,” she said, wrinkling her nose at him. “I need to lose twenty
pounds and no one can convince me I don’t.”

He kissed her again. “Do not even think about dieting. You are
perfect, just the way you are.”

Lucy ducked her head, embarrassed. “I can tell you mean that.”

Solomon shook his head at her. “Stop it.” He cupped her cheek. “I
love you.”

She stared at him. Even in the midst of disaster, he had the
courage to say how he felt. “I love you too,” she whispered.

He smiled, and then drew her right hand up to his lips and kissed
the ring he’d given her. While she watched, he lowered her hand and ran a
finger over the metal, concentrating. A pulse of his energy flowed through her
and settled in the ring. “There. It is recharged, which should help keep you
safe.”

“Thank you,” she said tremulously. “What do we do now?”

He stepped back. “We clean up.” He glanced outside. “And we take
care of the shield.”

 

A half hour later, Lucy sat along the windows of Solomon’s
workroom, sipping coffee. He’d made her breakfast while she’d taken a quick
shower. She felt better. More balanced.
Not so overwhelmed, thank God,
she thought, remembering what it had been like in New York. Her senses were
still sharp, but since they were alone here, the only person she sensed with
her empathy was Solomon.
Which is more than enough,
she mused, tasting
his worry over the task ahead of them.

“Is it time?” she asked him. He stood at the pillar, scrolling
through countless displays filled with incomprehensible jargon. He held the
wand he’d used on her earlier in his left hand. Every time she caught sight of
it, she blushed.

He glanced at her and nodded. “Yes.”

Lucy put her coffee down. “Okay, how can I help?”

Solomon tapped a display and scrolled through lines of symbols
until he found what he wanted. He made a few changes, then turned to her,
putting the wand down. “We’ll need to mentally interface with the Stronghold
net.”

She frowned. “Will it be like when we transported?”

“Yes and no.” He shrugged. “You will be able to see the framework,
but we won’t be going anywhere.” He walked over to her and crouched down at her
knees.

He does that a lot,
she thought, smiling at him.

He didn’t smile back. “Are you certain you wish to help? It will
take a lot of energy.”

“Yes, I’m certain,” she said, kicking her leg to bump his knee. “If
I don’t help, I’ll be here alone, worrying about you. I’d rather help.”

He caught her foot. “All right.” He sat next to her and drew her
feet onto his lap. “Relax. Think about something soothing.”

Lucy made a face. “Like meditating?”

He nodded. “Exactly like that.”

“This is not how Eva debugs code when she’s working on a website.”
Lucy didn’t understand how mentally relaxing was going to help Solomon reboot
the shield.

He ran a hand over her ankles. “Much of our technology functions
through our energy as Sentries. It’s half organic, half synthetic. I have
created an outline of a gateway into the Stronghold net, and we will use that
to reset the camouflage shield.” He shook his head. “It will be easier to
understand once we’re in the net.”

Lucy chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Okay.”

He smiled. “Trust me. Close your eyes.” He took her hand. “Imagine
you are flying in darkness.”

“Hmm,” she said, trying to do as he asked. She didn’t feel or see
anything.
Am I doing it right?

Solomon moved closer. “The dark has a framework of light. I am
standing in the midst of it, waiting for you,” he murmured.

Lucy jerked, startled, when a star bloomed in the middle of her
eyelids. “What—?”

“Relax. I am here,” Solomon said as the light zoomed closer.

She frowned.
How the heck did that light get inside my mind?
she thought, nearly panicking, and then she realized that the light was
him.
Solomon. She relaxed and the light surrounded her. Suddenly, the dark stretched
out and she could see the tracery of lines he’d described. They weren’t exactly
the same as what she’d seen in the transporter; they were darker. Almost as if
what she saw of the net while traveling was the outside and now they were on
the inside of a complex machine.
And isn’t that where we are?

Solomon’s presence was solid and she followed him as he flashed
along the tracery. She wished she could ask him where they were going, but the
dark pushed everything else away. She could only follow. He slowed, then
stopped, and she looked down. The tracery extended like a net below them, as
far as she could see, like a three-dimensional webbing. Solomon’s energy
changed, flattening until he was a spear instead of a star. Lucy suddenly
understood that the webbing was the camouflage shield, and he had to recharge
it.
The way he charged the ring,
she thought, extending her energy to
help him. Another tendril of light appeared and merged with Solomon.

Lucy tried to call to him, but there was no sound in this place.
Her energy merged with his, and she felt his love and his concentration on the
webbing. He changed some of the pattern here and there, discarding bits that
seemed darker to her. Jagged. She saw more of those pieces and pointed them out
to him. Together, they began to reweave the webbing, flashing through the
tendrils faster and faster. As they moved, their energy lit the strands until
Lucy thought she’d burst with the strange buzz of it. When Solomon finally
slowed, floating up into the larger net over and around the webbing, she
followed him. He touched the shield one last time, and light flared, knocking
her out of the Stronghold.

She fell off the bench, firmly back in the physical world. “Shit,”
she muttered, eyes still tightly closed. She wasn’t part of the network
anymore. She forced open her eyes, groaning. Solomon was on the floor beside
her, out cold.

“Solomon!” Rolling over hurriedly, she touched his face. He was
still breathing, thank God.
What just happened?
she thought, confused
and aching. She looked out the window. The thinnest tracery of energy lit the
sky and she knew the shield was back up, but she didn’t understand why the
energy had flared like that at the end. She cupped his cheek.

“Solomon, can you hear me?”

He didn’t respond. Lucy shook him. “Solomon!” His head lolled. “Dammit,”
she cried, blinking back tears. “What now?” She rubbed her face, thinking hard.
We smoothed out all of the webbing. Absorbed the broken pieces the Spiders
left behind. So what happened?

Lucy stared at the pillar, wishing her heart would stop pounding.
The stone column sat there, inert and stone-like. She wanted to kick it.

“Something went wrong. That energy pulse at the end…” she
muttered, trailing off.
It felt weird. It shouldn’t have flared like that.
The energy backlash must have knocked Solomon out. Lucy stood up and walked to
the pillar, then slapped a hand on it and focused her energy. It pulsed under
her palm and she sensed the Stronghold tech flowing through the matrix.

What. The. Hell. Suddenly I understand Solomon’s tech?
She looked back at him, then took
a deep breath and closed her eyes. She sank back into the net, not touching
anything, just observing. A bright green cloud hovered in the distance,
undulating like smoke over a fire.

That can’t be anything good,
she thought, moving closer and watching it. The green pulsed
slightly, in a steady rhythm. To her senses, it felt like some sort of virus.
Definitely
not good,
she thought, drifting a little closer. She followed it up,
straining to sense where it went and discovered small tendrils floating off
into the darkness.
Those look like Spider silk threads.
Abruptly she
backed off and dropped back into the real world, breathing heavily.

“It’s a virus,” she muttered, terrified of what it meant. She
chewed on her lip, ignoring the pain as she tried to think of what to do. “Call
for help,” she finally decided, putting her hand back on the pillar. She didn’t
close her eyes this time. Instead, she concentrated on sending a short burst of
entreaty through the Stronghold net to the other pillars. She could sort of
sense them like blank obelisks in the framework. She pinged them, impressing
the signal with a sense of emergency, then stepped back.

That’s all I can do for now,
she thought, hurrying back over to Solomon. “Wake up, please.”
She stroked his face. “Solomon!”

He groaned.

“Oh, thank God,” she said, cupping his cheeks. “Solomon, you have
to wake up.”

“Lucinda?” he murmured, eyes still closed.

She frowned, then concentrated and sent a small pulse of energy to
him through her palms. His color improved, so she did it again. He grabbed her
hand.

“Solomon, can you hear me?”

He nodded and finally opened his eyes. “I am all right,” he said
roughly.

“No, you’re not,” Lucy replied. She scrubbed impatiently at her
wet cheeks.

He frowned, then sat up and rubbed his forehead. “The Stronghold
net shouldn’t have surged like that. I have safeguards in place against
fluctuations.”

“I went back in to see what happened,” Lucy said, cutting him off.

He dropped his hand. “What?”

Lucy sensed his fear for her. “I’m okay. I didn’t do anything. I
just went in to look. There’s something that looks like a virus. It looks like
green smoke and it’s putting out threads that go up into the dark.”

Solomon’s worry for her turned to horror. Lucy flinched as the
intensity of his emotions washed through her.

“We need to call the others,” he said, struggling to his feet. “The
green means the Spiders did something to damage the Stronghold net.” He paused.
“Or the shield.”

Lucy helped him up. “I already called for help. I sent a call
through the pillar.”

He stared at her, clearly astonished, then smiled. “You are
amazing.” He drew her close and hugged her tightly.

“Well, it’s not like I have their cell phone numbers.” Lucy let
herself sink into his solid strength. “When you wouldn’t wake up, I had to do
something. The Spiders did something to the shield. We need help.”

He nodded against her hair. “We will fix this. I promise.”

She hoped so. The fate of the world depended on them.

****

A short time later, Solomon stood with his senses half in, half
out of the Stronghold net. He planned to examine the shield very carefully,
hopefully not alerting the Spiders to his presence. “It’s a booby trap,” he
said, zooming around the green smoke so he could see it from every angle. “They’ve
somehow corrupted the shield’s structure and they’re siphoning energy from it
to power their trap.”

“A trap,” Lucy said, disturbed. “Well, it worked, didn’t it? I
called for help.” She twisted the silver ring on her finger around and around. “Maybe
we should tell them not to come. What if transporting through the Stronghold
net triggers the trap?”

“Too late,” Solomon said, stepping back from the pillar. The stone
wavered, then Bruno stepped into Solomon’s tower. He glanced around, then
touched the corner of his eye.

“Brother,” he said, stepping forward. “The others are right behind
me.”

Solomon returned Bruno’s gesture, touching the corner of his eye
as well. “We do not have much time.”

Lucy took a deep breath. Somehow, ever since she’d helped Solomon
retrace the energy lines of the shield, she could feel the net with her senses.
Bruno’s travel hadn’t quite destabilized it, but it had definitely strummed the
framework of the shield. It leeched flickers of static into the Stronghold net.
She glanced at Solomon. “Did you feel that?”

He nodded grimly. “I fear this trap is more extensive than I’d
realized.”

“It’s linked to the Stronghold net,” she said, putting her hand on
the pillar again. Touch seemed to boost her sensitivity, but it also made the
arm that the Spiders had injured all those months ago ache. She focused past
the pain. The smoke was more spread out. “It’s changing.”

Solomon pushed her hand down and pulled her away. “The others are
coming,” he said.

Lucy took a deep breath and calmed herself. Solomon’s worry for
her washed over her. “You can’t protect me from everything,” she murmured so
only he would hear. Bruno was at the windows, looking out into a surprisingly
clear day. When they’d woken up, the valleys around the mountain had been
foggy, but now the sun burned through the glass like a painful omen.

“I can try,” Solomon replied, kissing her head.

Lucy turned to him and hugged him, wishing she could go back to
the moment when they’d woken up together. She’d been warm and safe and happy.
Behind him, the pillar wavered again. Isaac, Greyson, and Eva stepped through.
Lucy stepped out of Solomon’s arms.

BOOK: Dusk
3.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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