Embrace The Night (2 page)

It was rather miraculous, really.

She glanced up from an Elizabeth Peters novel about a mummy case and found Theo looking down at her. There was an expression in his eyes that she’d never noticed before, and it made her feel hot and cold at the same time.

She glanced away, feeling a slow heat explode over her face, glad for the lowering sun and lengthening shadows to hide it…and noticed that Simon had gone.

Now why would the fact that she and Theo were alone suddenly make her heart start pounding? She wasn’t afraid of him of course, but the way he was looking at her made her wonder how she
did
feel about him.

They’d known each other for more than fifteen years, ever since she’d come to live in Envy as a shy, withdrawn girl of twelve. Witnessing the murder of her mother tended to do that to a girl, no matter how confident she might have been before. Not that Sage had been. Confident.

Which was why her palms sprung dampness as she felt the weight of his gaze on her. Something was changing. And change always seemed to bring…unrest. Discomfort. Upheaval.

Theo’d always been older than Sage, but because of what had happened to him during the Change—of which he was one of the survivors—he’d stopped aging for a long time.

He looked as if he were no more than thirty, but he had been alive for seventy-seven years. Only in the last few years had his hair begun to start growing again, his beard and nails. And the few gray hairs he’d bragged about indicated that his body had begun to age at a normal rate.

“Sage,” he said.

She looked up and his head bent…and the next thing she knew, his mouth descended and it brushed over hers. His hands had moved to the tops of her shoulders, and before she could quite assimilate the fact that Theo
had kissed her
, he did it again. Longer this time, the gentle fitting of lip to lip, barely touching, really…as if he, too, were afraid she was skittish as a cat.

When he lifted his face to look down at her, Sage couldn’t read his expression, or what was in his eyes.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he said softly. Then he set her away from him, stepping back as if to give her space. As if he could tell she needed it, needed to contemplate and examine what had just happened.

Because that was what Sage did. She analyzed, dissected, weighed.

And she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about this…strange, crazy, unexpected event. She smiled up at Theo, not offended or put off by the fact that he’d kissed her. No woman in her right mind would be, really, once she thought about it.

But she wasn’t certain how she felt about it.

He was handsome and strong, brilliant…and unique. Very special. And the kiss had been very tender. Warming. Unexpected. It had been a long time since she’d been kissed. She’d forgotten how nice it could be.

“It was nice,” she told him, resting her hand gently against his chest where a strong heart pounded beneath her fingers.

“Nice,” he said, and she could tell, even in the dusk of twilight, that he was smiling. “That’s good.”

She looked at him for a moment, feeling a little confused, and a little odd. She’d never really thought about him as more than a friend. What should she do now?

But Theo answered that question for her. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes,” she said. “I told Lou I’d meet him for dinner.”

“All right, then I can give both of you the update while we eat,” Theo said, seeming to be in a particularly expansive mood. “And then you can get to work on testing out the network.”

That was good. Work was something Sage understood very well.

“Finding Remington Truth isn’t going to be easy,” Lou Waxnicki was saying. He took a big sip of his wine and set the glass down carelessly enough to slop over its edges as Simon chose a seat next to him.

Since they were in one of Envy’s communal restaurants, Lou kept his voice low and his head bent toward the others. The casino resort hotel rooms Envyites lived in didn’t have kitchens, so most people took their meals in one of the three eateries and everyone took their turn with KP duty.

Although he was Theo’s twin, Lou’s appearance was nothing like that of his youthful-looking brother. The older man wore his silvery white hair in a ponytail at the back of his head. He also wore a pair of dark-framed, rectangular glasses that had been at the height of trend in 2010 and sported a neatly trimmed gray goatee.

“No bloody shite,” replied Quent Fielding, with a bit of British in his voice. He was one of the men with whom Simon had emerged from the caves a little more than six months ago. Simon knew he’d lived some of his youth in England before moving to Boston. “It’s going to be damned impossible.”

“But we’re going to try,” Simon said, his attention drawn to the splash of cabernet on the table. It looked like a pool of shiny, dark blood. Soon it would roll to the edge and drip off.
Drip, drip, drip.

Simon yanked his attention away, focusing on the conversation, ignoring the flash of memories. He couldn’t do anything about his nightmares, but now, during the day, yes…it was easier to remind himself that the past was past—completely, miraculously erased. And that he would never allow himself to return to it.

“If the Strangers are so intent on finding Truth that they’ve been sending their
gangas
searching for him for years, he must be important,” he said calmly, using a cloth napkin to wipe up the splash of wine.

Paper towels? Nonexistent in this post-manufactured society.

Lou nodded, oblivious to the mess he’d made and the ugly memories he’d churned up in Simon. “And if it’s important to the Strangers, it’s even more important to us. If we can find the man first…”

Simon knew the name Remington Truth. Most Americans who’d been alive in the early 2000s would, for Truth had been the head of National Security for the second Bush administration. Because of 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, you’d have to live under a rock not to know the name…and even though some of those years had been a dark blur to Simon, he hadn’t been completely submerged in his misery.

Although there were times he wished he had been.

“But are we certain it’s
the
Remington Truth we’re looking for?” Simon asked. “And not some other symbol or object? After all, the
gangas
have been looking for him for fifty years. As dumb as they are, they should have found him by now.”

“Since I’m pretty certain he was a member of the Cult of Atlantis, and we’re damned sure that they were the ones who caused the Change, I think it’s a good assumption it’s the actual Remington Truth,” Quent replied, his voice flat. “He and my wanked-off father, and a whole bloody cult of rich and powerful people who decided to annihilate the damned world. Even their own countrymen. And their goddamn families.”

Loathing burned in Quent’s blue eyes, and Simon couldn’t blame him. When Quent had seen a picture of the Stranger leaders and recognized his father, Quentin Parris Brummell Fielding, Jr., as one of them, the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place. In the photo, Fielding had looked exactly the same as he had fifty years earlier.

The man had not aged, and he had somehow become one of the immortal Strangers, who wore glowing crystals in their skin. Quent’s recognition of his father had been the confirmation of what the Waxnicki brothers had suspected for half a century: the Change had been not only man-made, but premeditated.

That was why they were intent on destroying the Strangers.

If Simon had been unconvinced as to the Strangers’ threat to humans and chalked it up to Lou Waxnicki’s paranoia (as was the case with most Envyites), that hesitation had been put to rest two weeks ago, when he and his friends had helped to free a group of teenagers from the Strangers. They’d been abducted and would have been sold into slavery.

Slavery. Beholden to, owned and abused by another.

Sometimes life could be worse than death.

“Building our network and identifying trusted contacts will help,” Lou said, taking another drink. “When Theo gets back, we should have a fifty-mile circumference of network points in place.”

“He’s back,” Simon told him. “I just saw him awhile ago.”

Lou looked surprised, and Simon could understand why. One would think that his brother, and partner, would be the first person he would see on his return…at least, if one didn’t know he was in love with Sage and would, of course, seek her out first.

“Speak of the devil,” Lou said, looking toward the door.

But Simon, who never sat without a view of all entrances and exits, and with his back protected by the wall, had already seen Sage and Theo walk in.

He hoped it didn’t show in his face, the way his chest squeezed when he saw her, but Holy Mother of God, she was beautiful.

Simon, who had run with and met, and even slept with, a variety of gorgeous women in L.A.—the stock of starlet wannabes who would do anything to get ahead—could hardly breathe when he looked at Sage Corrigan.

Part of it was that what he saw was what God had given her. There was no plastic surgery, no makeup, no hair dye and highlights, no orthodontics in this world. So he knew that the impossible color of her long, curling hair—the color of a shiny new penny with a rosy tinge—was natural. And the unusual blue eyes, pale and vivid, weren’t helped by tinted contacts. Ivory skin, fair and luminous as if she glowed from inside.

She wore her hair loosely tied back, with little tendrils curling around her face, and a casual off-white dress that fell in a single line from shoulder nearly to the floor. Sage carried the books Theo had given her, and as they walked across the room toward them, Simon noticed the way the other patrons turned, watching her.

Not men staring at her with lust or appreciation in their eyes, or women with envy or even admiration. Not curiously or with interest.

No. The room took on a sort of tension. Unease.

Revulsion.

The sort of thing that would happen when Mancusi entered a place like Nobu or Sunset Tower. Though the other patrons and staff knew who and what he was, they dared not express their opinion of him…but the expression in the eyes, the physical distancing, the little hush of silence…told it all.

Sage noticed it too. Simon could see by the way she moved a bit closer to Theo, almost behind him. He didn’t recognize fear or anger in her face. Yet, she kept her eyes focused straight ahead, toward Lou, resignation in her demeanor.

Simon’s eyes narrowed, and he straightened, primed and ready for anything. His hand slid automatically to the shoulder holster under his jacket before he realized not only did he not wear a jacket, but he had long given up the holster and its weapon.

And the life it represented.

When Sage reached the table, which was tucked into a dim corner, she sat with her back to the room. Theo settled next to her. And Simon continued to observe the other diners, waiting to see what…if anything…would transpire.

Hell, if this was what happened when she ventured into public, no wonder she remained cloistered in that computer lab.

Simon’s attention remained split between the conversation between Theo and Lou and the rest of the room, a simple habit for him to fall back into. After a moment, that odd tension eased a bit, likely because Sage was now out of sight of the others. Still, he continued to scan the room.

“I’ve already begun my search on Remington Truth,” Sage announced, glancing at Quent. “Once you’d mentioned that he was a close friend of your father, and a member of the Cult of Atlantis, I dug deeper. And since the Strangers are looking for him too, I’ve been focusing on that.” She shrugged and spread her hands. “There’s a lot of data, and I’m not sure what to look for.”

Simon remained silent. Not because he didn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation—as a matter of fact, he did—but because he preferred to remain unnoticed, nonparticipatory, under the radar, so to speak. That was part of the reason Mancusi had called him a shadow. Silent, smooth…deadly.

He’d share his information after pursuing it himself, if there was anything worthwhile to share.

“But doesn’t it seem odd that they’ve been looking for fifty years and haven’t found him?” Sage asked, voicing Simon’s own question from earlier. “And if he was a Stranger, wouldn’t he be with them anyway?”

“How do we know they’ve been looking for him for that long?” asked Quent.

Lou adjusted his glasses and set down his
wineglass,
which was empty. “Because the
gangas
came on the scene about seven or eight months after the Change. From the first time we saw and heard them, we thought they were saying ‘Ruth’ over and over again.”

“But when Jade was captured by Preston, she figured it out and realized they were saying ‘Remington Truth,’” Sage added unnecessarily. Simon had noticed she liked to spout information whenever the chance arose. “She mentioned that he seemed almost afraid when she asked him about Truth.”

Jade was a friend of Sage’s, and a member of the Resistance. When the teenagers had been abducted, she’d also been captured by Preston—a Stranger who’d once enslaved her after murdering her husband.

“I made her write it down for me, exactly what he told her,” Lou said, pulling a worn little notebook from his shirt pocket. “My memory’s not as good as it used to be.” He flipped through a few dog-eared pages, then read, “The only one who knows about everything is Remington Truth. And until we find him, Fielding has no power over me or anyone else.”

“That’s basically what he said,” Theo agreed, resting his elbow on the table in a display of his muscular, dragon-tattooed arm. “Sounds like they’re desperate to find him…maybe to put him out of commission or at least under their control.”

“Well, if he’s alive, he should look the same as he did before the Change,” Sage said. “That’s assuming, as a member of the Cult of Atlantis, that he has the same immortality as the rest of them and that he wears a crystal.”

“Did you find a picture of him?” Simon asked. He knew she did her research through a sort of cobbled-together Internet that the Waxnicki brothers had been building for the last half-century.