Darkness Comes

DARKNESS COMES

by

A.C. Warneke

Smashwords Edition

*****

Published by

A.C. Warneke on Smashwords

Darkness Comes

Copyright 2012 by Andrea Warneke

ISBN: 978-1476251639

All rights reserved

Cover design: Alaina Warneke

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

*****

I am grateful for the love and support of my family, without which this book would not have been possible. Thank you for putting up with me when I was in another world, spending too much time with imaginary characters and giving them life. Thank you for listening to me when I was debating a plot point and, though you had no idea what I was talking about, you smiled and nodded your head, letting me work through my madness to find the perfect resolution. Thank you for being you – I love you guys!!

Also, infinite thanks to the men and women serving in the military: I am thankful for all that you do.

*****

DARKNESS COMES

*****

Prologue

“
You’re never going to survive the things I’m going to do to you but you’ll die with a smile on that beautiful face of yours.”

Malorie Hunter woke with a start, her heart hammering in her chest, her skin damp beneath her black uniform. Hastily, she looked around the room to see if anyone was paying attention to her and froze when she saw Jack Sinclair watching her. Did she make any sounds in her sleep? But, no, he was smiling at her, “Hey, sleepy head; patrol’s in fifteen and everyone else have gone on ahead.”

“Okay.” She wiped the sleep from her eyes, tendrils of her dream still pulling at her until she no longer knew her own body. It had become a foreign thing to her and she was having a difficult time shaking the images, the feelings,
he
had invoked.

Sitting up on the cot, scrubbing her fingers through her cropped, dark blond hair, the small room felt even more claustrophobic than usual. The bare bulbs flickered, barely lighting the dun covered walls and rugs while the wet stink of mildew permeated everything; the cold weather seeped in through all of the cracks and she shuddered. She sometimes wished that she was like other girls her age: getting dressed up to go to homecoming or prom, worrying about finals, hanging out with their friends. Usually, she didn’t have the time to wonder about what might have been but since she started dreaming about him….

She shuddered again, this time for a very different reason. Pressing her palms against her eyes until the black spots turned white, she tried to get his image out of her head but he refused to disappear. His carved face was inhumanely beautiful: high cheekbones and a harsh jaw, a straight, blade of a nose over sinfully decadent lips. His body was pure masculine perfection of bone and sinew: shoulders that were broad and beautiful, arms and thighs that rippled with lean muscles, a stomach that was taut and flat, he was, simply put, gorgeous. And he had the most incredible green eyes she had ever seen, brilliant and intense.

His words resonated in her head as she finished prepping her gear. He had done things to her that she had never even heard of before; things she was fairly certain were illegal in most states. And she had responded, burying her fingers in his thick black hair as he… and she….

“Ready, Mal?”

She looked up and saw Jack waiting for her, a kind smile on his face. He wore his pale blond hair short, like her father, but he had warm brown eyes and a sweet smile. Nodding her head, she stood up and started to head out the door.

Her father, Gustav, came and leaned against the door way, his features set in the familiar grim lines of a man twice his age. He was handsome, with the same gray eyes that Malorie had, but he rarely smiled. His gaze moved over Malorie, taking in the various weapons she had attached to her body and he nodded, “Keep your head in the game tonight, Malorie; I don’t want to see you hurt.”

She nodded, appreciating his gruff affection. “Yes, sir.”

Gus turned to Jack but he didn’t have to say anything; the two males had developed a strange form of communication lately but she didn’t care. Her thoughts were still lingering on the man from her dreams….

Chapter 1

Nine years later….

Malorie Sinclair sang at the top of her lungs as she drove to the mall for last minute gifts. Her long, honey blond hair was pulled up into a pony tail and her gray eyes sparkled with the merriment of the season, which she was enjoying for the first time in her twenty-five years of life. With all of the seasonal delights she had discovered in the last year or two, she found that she loved Christmas music; the tunes were catchy and she could sing along. Well, more or less. “Da da dada da dum, da dada da dum."

Faint smudges of color beneath her eyes conveyed the truth of her difficulty transitioning to a normal, civilian life, even though the war ended nearly six years before. She had always had difficulty sleeping; during the war one had to be prepared to fight at a moment’s notice which made it difficult to fall into a deep sleep. So one learned to make do with little sleep.

If it were only a matter of being able to get to sleep she might have soldiered through. It was her dreams that kept her awake now; with the life she had led, they were rarely pleasant. Except for the dreams featuring a green-eyed man, who had been starring in her more… interesting dreams since she was sixteen. Those were unsettling for entirely different reasons. She had thought that he would have gone away with the end of the war but if anything, he became even more intense.

Shaking her head to clear the thoughts away, she pulled into the left lane to turn into the mall parking lot and almost turned around. There were a gazillion cars already parked and another gazillion driving around looking for a parking spot up front, filling the air with the smell of exhaust. She would have skipped it but she still had a few gifts to buy and had wanted to make this Christmas extra special for Toby by getting his favorite cinnamon rolls for breakfast; and they only sold them at the mall. Which was crowded with an over-abundance of last-minute gift buyers and their cars. She’d be lucky to find a space within this hemisphere. “I should have come during lunch.”

Of course, that hadn’t been possible since a huge shipment of plants had arrived; she had to be at the nursery to sign for the delivery and take care of the new foliage. And then there were all of the last minute orders to fill: a few Holiday parties, two weddings, a sweet sixteen birthday. It had been crazy all day, which made the idea of having cinnamon rolls in the morning all the more appealing. Besides, she had faced much scarier adversaries than last minute Christmas shoppers; she could do this.

Girding her loins, she pulled into the very last spot of the very last row, grabbed her purse and got out of the car and smiled. Two years ago they had been living in Minnesota and the grounds had been covered in black slush and she had to trudge through the messy wet stuff wearing thick, rubber boots and a heavy jacket. This year, she was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a plain, white t-shirt with tennis shoes. Southern California definitely held the upper hand for weather, even if she did, on occasion, miss the snow.

Just not today.

Making her way to the mall, she pictured the layout of the mall in her head and made a plan of attack to get in and out as quickly as possible. It wasn’t like she was in a hurry; she just preferred to keep her skills honed; one never knew when….

With a deep breath, she put tactical thoughts out of her head, refusing to a think like a soldier any more. The wars had been over for nearly six years, she was a civilian now; hence the trip to the mall on Christmas Eve, braving the crowds in order to experience a normal Christmas with her father and son. It had taken years to cajole Gus into embracing a “normal” life, and while he would always be prepared for the worst, he did give a little. She just wanted Toby to have a peaceful childhood.

She smiled as she thought of her young son. He was growing up so fast it made her heart ache a little. At five, Toby was the center of her world; the reason she continued to struggle with normalcy when she didn’t have any idea what she was doing. She was determined that he was not going to grow up as she did, though she felt completely helpless in figuring out how to make that possible. And her father offered little help, insisting that it would be better to remain off the grid, hidden. He was still so protective of them even with the end of the wars; it was becoming a little… stifling.

But that was unfair; her father loved her and her son, she knew he did. She just wanted something… more for her child and she was going to figure it out no matter what it took. Even if it meant moving out on her own and leaving everything she knew behind. Leaving her father behind. And when she could truly believe the wars were over, that the enemy wasn’t just biding its time until unleashing its fury once more, she would.

Glancing at her watch, she figured she had a little less than three hours before the stores closed up and she was forced to navigate her way back to her car and out the parking lot. With a rush of excitement, she entered the artificially bright mall and was immediately assaulted with the mouthwatering, nose-seducing smell of cinnamon and cream cheese frosting.

Groaning softly as she pulled out her phone, she called Gustav Hunter, her over-protective father. Unfortunately, or maybe not so unfortunately, he didn’t answer, so she left a quick voice mail. “Hey, father, it’s Mal. Just wanted to let you know that I am at the mall and by the looks of it, it’s going to suck getting out of here tonight so I’ll probably be a bit late. Give Toby a great big hug from me. Love ya!”

Clicking her phone shut, she slid it back into her purse, feeling another alien rush of Seasonal cheer. She realized she loved the frenzy of a million shoppers trying to find the perfect gift when the perfect gifts had all been purchased weeks before. She hadn’t always celebrated Christmas – there hadn’t always been the luxury to indulge in celebration - but she found she loved the festive holiday. A small smile played at her full lips; in this world, she could almost believe that monsters didn’t exist, except, perhaps, in childhood dreams.

She hadn’t realized how many people would be out shopping on Christmas Eve. Had she known, she might have ordered a few things on line and not worry about last minute shopping traumas. But then she wouldn’t have this slightly terrifying, perfectly normal experience and they wouldn’t have cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. Of course, she could have tried her hand at making cinnamon rolls but growing up the way she did, she never really had the chance to learn how to cook, at least nothing edible. One would think that the ability to mix highly volatile chemicals into flash bombs and homemade napalm would translate into the ability to boil a pot of water – but it didn’t.

Her father had taught her everything she knew, from fighting and survival to chemistry and hacking to everything in between. By the time she was ten, she could build a bomb, hotwire a car, break into high security buildings; anything that was needed for her and her father to be able to fight another day. She was also an avid reader, devouring whatever reading material she came across, from literature to romance novels to instruction manuals. Because of the nature of her father’s work, and hers, she had several fake ID’s and knew how to navigate the world without leaving any evidence that she even existed. It was the things regular folks took for granted that she found difficult, like Christmas shopping. But she would learn, for Toby’s sake.