Into Darkness

16

Everyone ignored it.

Slowly, carefully, Lu slid the latex glove into her coat pocket, then stood with both hands hanging loosely at her sides. The Grand Minister watched every movement with the avid attention of a crocodile contemplating a meal.

“Have you ever seen an Aberrant, Fräulein Bohn?” he asked quietly, studying her. “Up close and personal, I mean. In real life.”

Lu didn’t dare move.

“I must admit, for such vile creatures, they’re quite beautiful. Unnaturally so. Every single one of them I’ve ever encountered, male or female, has a certain . . . otherworldly appeal. It’s always puzzled me, how such beauty could conceal such evil.” His tone became contemplative. “But I suppose your father might remind me that Lucifer was the most beautiful of all the angels, before he was cast from heaven.” His gaze raked her face. After a moment, he said softly, “You’ve inherited your mother’s looks.”

Lu’s mother had been short and thick-waisted, an olive-skinned brunette. The two of them looked nothing alike.

All at once, Lu understood, and the world fell away beneath her feet.

This man had known her mother. Her real mother.

And he knew what Lu was.

Heat rushed to her face, burned hot across her cheekbones. A thrill ran through her body, high and pure and resonating, and with an awful, bellowing battle cry, the monster inside her leapt to its feet.

Lu took a single step backward. Each guard took a single step in. In a coordinated move, they reached inside their jackets.

In a gentle voice, the Grand Minister said, “If you cooperate, you won’t be harmed. Your father won’t be harmed. The stories of the treatment of Aberrants are greatly exaggerated, urban myths. You’ll be kept with others of your kind, kept comfortably and well. You’ll never want for anything again.” His voice grew even more caressing. He looked at her pleadingly, with grandfatherly concern. “And you can meet your mother—you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To meet your birth mother? She’s missed you so much.”

Lies, all of them, spoken with such ease Lu had to admit that beneath her hatred for this man, she felt a twinge of jealousy. It cost him exactly nothing to produce these smooth untruths, to playact a role. She wished she’d been blessed with such an ability; it would have made her own mask-wearing life much easier.

The funny thing was, knowing she’d finally been discovered wasn’t the terrifying experience Lu had always assumed it would be. She felt instead as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Though her nerves were stretched taut and adrenaline coursed through her veins, all her fear fell away like a skin she was shedding, until finally there was nothing but acceptance, cold and solid as rock.

Life as she knew it was over.

So be it. If she was being honest with herself, she’d known it would come to this all along. The relief was almost dizzying.

The Schottentor gate, you know the one? We’ll get you out. Look for the white rabbit.

Lu reached out with her mind. It was like stretching a rubber band, pulling her awareness across empty space until she came up against a soft resistance. She pushed past it, and with the animal inside her sinking into a killing crouch, said silently into the Grand Minister’s head, I’m going to roast you for those lies, you smug son of a b***h.

He jerked back in his wheelchair, shock distorting his face, and Lu was suffused with a savage satisfaction.

A smile curved her lips, but she knew it wasn’t she who was smiling. It was the animal, eager to feed. Eager for blood. There was a noise in her head, a cry like a thousand roars in the wilderness, an unearthly chorus of gnashing teeth and snapping jaws and hissing. When she took another step back, it was with raised arms, her hands flexed open. A sudden crackle of static electricity sparked through the room, and all the downy hair atop the Grand Minister’s head lifted, haloing his face in a cloud of white.

His expression of shock turned to an extremely pleasing one of terror.

“Sorry,” Lu said aloud, her smile gone, “but I’m not really the cooperative type.”