Heat of the Night (2 page)

"I'll loop the vids so you're not recorded," the lieutenant said.

Wager stepped up and began to work, his posture straight and legs slightly parted, firmly entrenched in his assignment. With his long black hair restrained in a queue and stormy gray eyes, he had a renegade appearance to go along with his loose-cannon reputation. Because of his volatile nature, he'd been a second lieutenant for centuries longer than he should have been. Connor had recently promoted him to first lieutenant, for all the good that did him. They were insurgents, having left the sanctioned Elite Warrior regiments to commandeer the rebel faction.

Confident in Wager's ability to manage the database part of their search, Connor stationed two lookouts by the entrance and took two men with him to perform a physical search of the premises. Not long ago, he'd broken into the Temple with only Wager as backup. But the recent coup had forced the Elders to increase the number of guards, which in turn forced Connor to charge the complex with a dozen men. Six outside and six inside.

They moved with rapid strides further down the hallway, keeping their gazes averted from the rapidly swirling kaleidoscopic floor. Light poured in from the skylights above and a clear door at the end of the hall provided a sunlit view of the far edge of the meditation courtyard.

As they reached a doorway, Connor gestured one man inside. "Anything unusual."

The man nodded and stepped into the doorless room with glaive drawn and at the ready. Connor repeated the process with the second soldier until he was continuing on alone. He took the next room he came across.

It was a dark space, not unusual since it was unoccupied, but odd in that the lighting did not illuminate when he entered. It was only the light spilling in from the hallway that enabled him to see.

The center of the room was empty, but tiered metal carts on wheels lined the walls. There was a medicinal smell in the air and as he spotted a heavy bolted metal door in the wall, his hackles rose. There was a thick viewing window built into the upper part of the massive barrier, but whether that was for someone to see in or someone to see out, he didn't know. Either way, that door was a serious deterrent and meant that whatever it guarded was important.

"What the hell have you got in there?" he wondered aloud.

Connor stepped over to the small touchpad in the corner and began a rapid fire series of keystrokes. He needed to get the damn lights to turn on so he could see what the hell he was dealing with. He could use some leverage right now, and holding a valuable item for ransom would work nicely.

One of the many command overrides he inputted caused the panel to beep rapidly and then the room slowly brightened.

"Yes!" He grinned and turned around, surveying the small room with its stone floors and barren white walls.

The sharp hiss of releasing hydraulic pressure had him rocking back on the heels of his boots. Somehow he'd managed to get the door open, too, which made things all the easier.

What happened next would forever be ingrained on Connor's memory. There was a roar that sounded like fury mixed with fear, then the heavy door flew open with such explosive force that it embedded into the adjacent wall.

His glaive at the ready, Connor was prepared to fight. What he wasn't prepared for was the apparition that lunged at him, a body seemingly Guardian-like in appearance, yet possessed of pure black eyes with no sclera and teeth with wickedly sharp points.

Connor froze, horrified and confused. It was the gravest offense to kill another Guardian and to his knowledge murder hadn't been committed in centuries. That stayed his hand when he would have thrust, which left him open to the violent impact that knocked him to the floor. A feat never before accomplished because he was too damn big.

"Fuck!" he grunted as he crashed to the stone with bone-jarring force.

The thing was on top of him, a not-inconsiderable male filled with unexplained ferocity. It was snarling and grappling like a rabid beast. Connor jerked to the side, rolling to gain the upper hand. With one hand wrapped around his assailant's straining neck and the other fisting and descending in brutal punches, he should have knocked the man out cold. He felt the crack of a cheekbone beneath his knuckles and the shattering of a nose, but the injuries appeared to have no effect, neither did the deprivation of air to breathe.

Deep inside Conner, fear curled with insidious strength. Those black eyes where filled with a roiling madness and thick claws were ripping at the skin of his forearms. How did one defeat an enemy who had no mind?

"Captain!"

Connor didn't look up. He rolled onto his back again and extended his arm full-length, holding his attacker aloft by the throat. A glaive whistled through the air and sliced off the top of the man's skull. Gore splattered everywhere.

"What the fuck was that?" Trent cried, standing just above Connor's head with the killing blade in his hands.

"Hell if I know." Connor tossed the body off to the side. He looked down at himself in disgust, touching the gunk that coated him with a tentative finger. It was thick and black, resembling old blood and reeking like it, too. His gaze moved to the corpse whose face from the eyebrows down was still intact. Brown hair grew overly long around the man's ears and nape. The skin had an unhealthy pallor and the flesh was clinging to bones. The hands and feet were both capped with long, thick, reptilian claws. But it was the inky black, sightless eyes and gaping maw that were so frightening. They turned a gaunt, sickly looking man into a formidable predator.

It wore only loose white pants that were stained and torn. On the back of its hand was a seared brand—"HB-12." A quick look at the cell from which it escaped revealed a thick metal interior liberally gouged.

"Your room is definitely more interesting than mine," Trent said. The levity of his statement was ruined by the crack in his voice.

Connor's chest labored more from his anger than from his exertions. "It's exactly this sort of shit that forced the rebellion!"

Most everyone would say that leading a revolt went against his easygoing nature, and they'd be right. Hell, he still had trouble believing he'd taken this step. But there were too many goddamn questions and all the answers he had were lies. Yeah, he was a man who liked things painfully simple—
wine, women, and kicking ass
, as he used to say—but he had no qualms about stepping up to the plate and swinging when necessary.

It was his job to protect others, both Dreamers and the gentler Guardians. There were thousands of his people, all were divided into certain specialties. Each Guardian had their strengths. Some were tender and offered comfort to Dreamers who grieved. Others were playful and filled in dreams of sports heroes or baby showers. There were Sensuals and Healers, Nurturers and Challengers. Connor was an Elite. He killed Nightmares and guarded his people. If he had to protect them from the Elders, too, so be it.

"There's no way to pretend that the Temple wasn't breached now," the corporal pointed out.

"Nope," Connor agreed, "no way." And he didn't really care at this point. In fact, he wanted the Elders to know that their secrets weren't safe. He wanted them looking over their shoulders. He wanted them to feel as unsettled and wary as he did. They owed him that much, at least, after asking him to lay his life on the line for a fake cause.

Wager came running into the room with two more Elite directly behind him. "Whoa!" he said, skidding in the splatter before catching his footing. "What the hell is
that
?"

"Fuck if I know." Connor wrinkled his nose.

"Yeah," Wager agreed. "It stinks. It's also probably what set off that alarm on the console. My guess is reinforcements are on their way now, so we better get out of here."

"Did we get anything useful out of the database?" Connor asked, grabbing a towel off one of the push carts against the wall. He scrubbed at his torn skin and clothes to remove what he could of the blood-like substance clinging to him.

"I downloaded what I could. It would take eons to get all of it, but I tried to focus on files that sounded the most intriguing."

"That will have to suffice. Let's go."

They left with the same caution they'd used upon their arrival, their eyes scanning their surroundings carefully. Still, none of them saw the Elder whose dark gray robes blended so well with the shadows.

He stood silent and unnoticed. Smiling.

"Where's Lieutenant Wager?" Connor asked, glancing around the main underwater cavern, which served as headquarters for the rebel faction in the Twilight.

Above their heads, hundreds of tiny vid screens flashed various scenes like movies, glimpses into the open minds of thousands of "Mediums"—Dreamers brought here without sleep. They hovered in the Twilight, more awake than not, but lacking full comprehension.

The humans called the process of forcibly inducing subconscious thought "hypnosis." Whatever name one gave to it, the Mediums' destination was this cavern. Here the Elders had watched over them and prevented the Nightmares from hitchhiking on their stream of subconscious to reach the mortal plane. It was the only known way to travel to the world of the Dreamers and it was the route Aidan had taken when he'd left the Twilight to protect the Key.

"In the back, sir," replied the Elite warrior standing guard at the mouth of the pool, the only physical entrance or exit.

With a nod of acknowledgment, Connor turned on his heel and strode the length of the rock-lined hallway. Carved into the very heart of the mountain, it seemed to have no end and was disorienting with its matching arched doorways on either side. Thousands of them. All filled with glass tubes, which held Elders-in-training in stasis of some sort. His men had yet to discern who the occupants were, or why they were being kept in that manner.

Frankly, Connor thought the whole thing was creepy, and he was shaken by the realization that he'd lived centuries never knowing anything about his world or the Elders who ruled it. It made him sick to think of how stubborn he'd been when Aidan asked him to consider everything that was unexplained. He had refused to see the signs that bothered his friend for so long.

Connor's boot steps echoed rhythmically as he traversed the distance to his second-in-command with a rapid, agitated stride. Soon the sounds from the largest room faded into silence. Sadly, using "large" to describe the size was only possible when comparing the room to the others down here.

The space was actually pretty damn small, having been designed for the comfortable occupation of only three Elders-in-training. The main cavern was cramped by a half-moon console and the massive screen of rapidly flickering images. Depending on one's angle, a Guardian could see right through the display into the room beyond, a massive space filled with slipstreams—wide beams of moving light that represented streams of subconscious thought.

Snorting, Connor acknowledged for the millionth time that he still didn't quite grasp the whole concept of the
Twilight. Aidan had badgered their teacher at the Elite Academy with endless questions about where they'd come from and where they now were. The simplest explanation Connor had heard was that he should think of the Twilight like an apple. Abbreviated space is the hole bored through the center by a worm, or a "wormhole." Instead of coming out the other side though, the Elders found a way to suspend the Guardians inside. They called that pocket the Twilight. Connor called it confusing.