True Dark Read online

  Midnight looked up at her audience and darkness swirled out around her, rapidly filling the room. There were screams, though all she had done was kill the light. More shrieks followed as something in the general area of the doorway growled. ‘None of them get out of here alive,’ Midnight said. ‘Make your mother proud.’

  And then the screaming really started.

  New Millennium City, MD.

  House moving with Ultrahumans could be something of a surreal experience. Zoe’s possessions had been carried from her apartment to the street and placed in a small cargo container that Svetilo had borrowed from a shipping company at the docks. It was a standard 1D container, half the size of the regular kind, and it could hold over twenty-two thousand pounds of contents. Zoe was pretty sure she did not have that much stuff, but it was still impressive watching Cygnus lift the thing into the air on steel cables and fly off with it toward Uptown.

  Taking it fairly easy, Cygnus got to Svetilo’s apartment block in a little over six minutes, landed the container, and was waiting for the others to arrive. Svetilo was grinning as she got out of the little car Penny had bought because she thought it would be useful. ‘It is still remarkable to see you do things like that,’ the Russian said. ‘We go upstairs and have coffee before we unload, da?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no,’ Cygnus replied. ‘That… took some effort. I’m glad I didn’t have to fly it too far.’

  ‘Otlichno. You grab June. We’ll go in through balcony window.’

  June was smirking all the way up, but she allowed Cygnus to carry her to maintain the illusion. Svetilo let them in through the window, which had a biometric lock, and set off for the kitchen to make coffee.

  ‘June,’ she said as she filled the water reservoir.

  ‘Dom,’ June replied, giggling.

  ‘I should like for you to design me a costume. Should be close-fitting, da? So that my force field protects it. Also easy to clean. I become tired of destroying good dresses. Obviously, I pay. Quality work should have rewards.’

  ‘Uh, okay. Have you got a date you need it for?’

  ‘Net. When you can.’

  June frowned. ‘Well, I fired my agent last week, so an alternate form of income might be useful.’

  ‘You did? I get you contact details for my agency. They would be happy to have you.’

  June smiled. ‘Thanks, Dom.’ She looked around at Zoe. ‘So, big step, huh? I honestly never thought I’d see Dom settle down with someone.’

  Zoe cringed. ‘I know. I think I’ve domesticated her. I didn’t mean to. I mean, it just kind of happened.’

  ‘I think she was ready for it. Still, big step.’

  ‘Yeah. Really big. I don’t know how my first long-term relationship is with a woman.’

  ‘There’s a lot of it going around,’ Cygnus said. ‘I’d say it was some weird effect of Ultrahuman powers, but the roles are reversed.’

  ‘And I wanted you before you were you,’ June said, smirking.

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ Zoe said.

  ‘Da,’ Svetilo said, ‘it does. Once you have been through super-secret initiation by light of blood moon and sworn your soul to Ultrahuman gods, you might find out why.’

  ‘I don’t believe Ultras have different gods to everyone else. You just want to get me naked outdoors.’

  ‘Did I mention nudity?’

  ‘It was kind of a given.’

  ‘Okay, da, there would probably be nudity.’

  ‘We could get her down to Florida for the next wrap party,’ June suggested.

  ‘Oh, da. Good suggestion.’

  ‘I do not have the figure for that calendar,’ Zoe protested. ‘I mean, I am seriously lacking a quality all three of you have. Abundantly. Even Andrea’s bigger than me.’

  ‘Big boobs aren’t everything,’ June said. ‘However, the wrap party is mostly just us getting drunk on a beach.’

  ‘While largely naked,’ Cygnus added. ‘As far as I remember, there was no sex, but it would mean Dom got you naked outdoors.’

  ~~~

  ‘Oh! Watch that one,’ Zoe said as Cygnus handed a box to June. ‘That one’s got books in. It’s heavy.’

  They had decided that the easiest way to get the contents of the container into Svetilo’s apartment was for Svetilo and Cygnus to lift the boxes and such up the outside, handing them off to June and Zoe on the balcony. It was working quite well so far.

  June took the box, shrugged, and turned toward the open window. ‘Not that bad,’ she said. She could now deadlift a thousand pounds without much effort, so of course it was not that bad.

  Zoe pursed her lips, took a lighter box from Svetilo, and followed June into the apartment. ‘Um, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but have you always been an Ultra or is this new?’

  June glanced over her shoulder. ‘I don’t know what–’

  ‘You’re a bit bigger than me, sure, but I really made a mistake when I packed that box. I don’t have a whole lot of books, so I figured I’d put them all in one box. I could barely lift it. You aren’t even trying.’

  ‘But…’ June trailed off, annoyed with herself. ‘I really have to learn to hide it better. We think it happened when Naryan Tan’s ship exploded. Hang on.’ Depositing the box with the others they were carrying in, June walked back to the balcony, grabbed the box Svetilo was holding out and said, ‘Dom, would you come in here for a minute?’

  ‘Sure,’ the Russian said, frowning. ‘Something is wrong?’

  ‘No… No, nothing’s wrong. It’s just that Zoe noticed something and… Well, I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable with you not knowing anyway.’

  ‘That sounds… confusing.’

  June waited until she was inside, glanced at Cygnus who was now leaning against the window frame, and shrugged. ‘Not really,’ she said and then lifted eight or so inches off the carpet, hovering there.

  ‘Udivitel’no! When did this happen?’

  ‘We first noticed it on her birthday,’ Cygnus said. ‘It looks like she’s one of the people affected by the cosmic energy burst from Naryan Tan’s ships. Hugh’s been trying to work out exactly what happened and how, but it’s still a bit of a mystery.’

  ‘She’s strong too,’ Zoe said as June floated back to the floor.

  ‘Not quite as strong as you, Dom,’ June said, ‘but Zoe’s box of books was no trouble. I have to get better at acting weak and girly.’

  ‘Any other powers?’ Svetilo asked.

  ‘I can fly in space. I can project a protective shield, but we worked out that’s just in front of me. And I seem to have some sort of empathic sense, especially for guilt.’

  ‘Bozhe moi! That could be embarrassing.’

  ‘Yeah, when I was imagining getting Ultrahuman powers, any form of telepathy or whatever was not on my list of preferred ones. I’m going to call myself Astraea. Red suggested I register it soon. I’m not the only one who suddenly got powers recently. There’s a bit of a rush on names.’

  ‘Red knows?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘The Huntress can smell an Ultra at a hundred feet, myshka,’ Svetilo explained. ‘She would know June was different as soon as she walked into the room.’

  ‘She did,’ June agreed. ‘Anyway, that’s the big revelation out of the way. Shall we get on with moving boxes?’

  ‘Slave driver,’ Svetilo said, grinning.

  ‘Huh. As I recall, you’re the one who knows how to use a whip.’

  Hong Kong, China, 27th June.

  Lightning flared in the sky over Hong Kong, briefly turning light into day. The crash of thunder followed a few seconds later. Midnight watched it with a smile on her face. ‘Tonight’s the night, Billy,’ she said. ‘Get some sleep. In the morning, you’ll be handling the moving arrangements.’

  There was no reply. Billy was lying on his ratty sofa instead of the floor, but he was still quite securely tied and gagged. Midnight had gone shopping one night and returned with a bag of bondage gear including a
ball gag which tended to leave Billy’s jaw aching after it was removed. His chances of getting to sleep early were pretty slim.

  ‘Kuàng has a rather nice apartment,’ Midnight went on. ‘We’ll be moving there tomorrow after I’ve removed the current resident. I wonder how many of them I’ll have to kill before they give me what I want? Leung is going to be the key one. I think I’ll go see him first.’

  Turning, she stepped into the deeper shadow at the side of the window and just faded into it as though she was part of it made solid for a while. Billy had a strong suspicion that that was exactly what she was. She was the scariest woman he had ever met. She terrified him more than any man he had ever met too. The weird thing was that, if she could really pull off what she said she was going to do, Billy knew he would put all that aside and play his part in her scheme. Sure, she was buying his loyalty in a way, but in another way she was earning it. Midnight had selected Billy Hong to be her second-in-command and he was beginning to think that was the best thing to ever happen to him.

  ~~~

  Leung Gāng was, when it all came down to it, an accountant. Unlike many members of the 8G, Leung was a normal human. He had no special powers, unless you counted a talent for manipulating books. Leung was good at hiding money that was not supposed to be where it was. He knew where all the triad’s money was, every financial secret they had. Unfortunately, that made him something of a target. A lot of people wanted to get their hands on Leung Gāng.

  Still, doubling his guard had seemed a little excessive. He generally had two 49ers looking after him and making sure his apartment in Kowloon City was secure. Now there were four guards, one of them a Red Pole who was watching from the side of the room while Leung indulged himself with twin hookers. The girls were a present from the Dragon Head, to make up for the added security. This Leung was not going to complain about, but the audience… That was an irritation. He glanced over at the doorway and could not believe his eyes: the man was standing in the dark!

  Then the darkness around the door of Leung’s bedroom shifted and came alive. Midnight walked away from the corpse of the bodyguard and toward the bed where the two girls were entertaining Leung. She was holding a knife in her left hand and the guard’s throat had been slit.

  ‘Hello, Mister Leung,’ Midnight said. ‘You and I are going to have a little chat.’ One of the girls screamed, probably having seen the corpse by the door. ‘Girls, I suggest you both get out of here before I decide I can’t allow it.’

  ‘W-what do you want?’ Leung asked, scrabbling away across the bed. It was a fairly big room and a fairly big bed. Leung came to a stop as his back hit the headboard.

  Midnight wiped her dagger on the sheets, ignoring the two girls who were grabbing clothes and heading for the door as quickly as they could. ‘I want… all of it.’ Leung’s eyes widened as the shadows in the room began to coalesce around her, stretching out to crawl over the bed toward him. ‘Every account. Every deposit box. All of it.’

  ‘I’d never–’ The shadows surged forward, sinking Leung into darkness up to his neck. He tried to push himself higher up the wall at his back, but the shadows just followed him.

  ‘I really think you will,’ Midnight said, and the darkness swallowed him.

  New Millennium City, MD.

  Brian was excited and nervous and embarrassed, all at the same time. The embarrassment was because he had just been flown from a youth centre in Friendship down to Cygnus’s weird house in North Beach by the heroine herself, and then he had met another woman called Astraea who was not quite as attractive as Cygnus but certainly as pneumatic. He was a teenage boy!

  The excitement and nervousness both stemmed from where they would soon be going: the Union of Ultrahumans HQ in Antarctica. They were going to meet some of the Union’s members and train with them. This was what Twilight had promised him, except so much more. The only major downside to all this was that Twilight was not around to see it. He had not yet managed to get the nerve up to ask Cygnus if there was any news; Twilight scared the Hell out of him, but she had not just told him to get lost when he had started trying to fight crime. She had come up with a solution which, according to Cygnus, was about to be implemented on a worldwide basis. They were just waiting for one more person.

  ‘I can’t believe a speedster is going to be late,’ Astraea said. She was dressed in very tight exercise gear and wearing a mask. Not an especially big mask, but it did help to obscure her identity a little. Cygnus had given Brian one too. Astraea was a blonde. Not the way Cygnus was – Cygnus’s hair was almost white. Astraea had honey-blonde hair that fell to the upper slopes of her breasts and had quite a long, squared-off fringe which edged over the top of her mask. She looked a bit old for a youth programme. She also seemed to know Cygnus pretty well, though Brian did not think he had ever seen her on TV.

  ‘The house isn’t that easy to find,’ Cygnus said. ‘Anyway, she still has a few seconds before she’s actually–’

  There was a sudden blur of movement and a girl was standing there, grinning brightly. ‘I’m not late, am I?’ she asked.

  Cygnus gave her a smile. ‘Right on time, Fleet. This is Astraea and this young man is Zapf Bang! You can abbreviate that to Zap.’

  Brian should probably have been a little annoyed at Cygnus for giving such a thorough introduction, but he was self-aware enough to know that speaking just at that moment would have made him look like an idiot. Fleet was beautiful. Maybe not up to Cygnus’s or Astraea’s standards, but beautiful and about his age. She was a little shorter than Brian – he figured she was about five-foot-six to his five-seven – and slim, fit. Her thighs showed some obvious musculature, but she was not heavily muscled just… fit. Okay, so Brian’s vocabulary for describing girls was not that great. Her breasts, hidden under a halter top, were not huge, but they were a really nice shape, kind of pointed. Still, to Brian’s mild amazement, it was her face which drew his attention. It was a fairly young face, a little rounded with a pointed chin, and a small nose with a perky quality to it. Her lips were full, pouting, and a flicker of a fantasy of kissing them passed through Brian’s mind. Her hair was fairly straight and didn’t quite reach her shoulders and it was a shimmering sort of blonde. Her eyes… Her eyes had a hooded quality to them which made her look older and kind of sophisticated, and the colour was a rainbow of different shades which had to be part of her mutation. At her age, she almost had to be a mutant like Brian. Not that he would call her one. Not that he considered himself one, except privately.

  Brian did not consider himself a nerd, but he could get a little tongue-tied around attractive girls. Still, saying something seemed like a good idea. ‘Hi. You, uh, don’t need a mask?’

  ‘Not much point,’ Fleet replied. ‘I live in Bethesda. When I started being able to outrun cars, my parents had to register me or we’d’ve been kicked out of the reserve. The government knows all about me.’ The last came out rather sourly. Sore subject.

  ‘Shall we get going?’ Cygnus said. ‘Denny, please let Antarctica know we’re ready.’

  ‘Of course, Cygnus,’ said a female voice which seemed to come from the big, dome-like structure the car was parked beside. Kind of an ordinary-looking car for the city’s biggest hero.

  ‘Now, I should warn you,’ Cygnus said, ‘that going through a warp conduit isn’t pleasant. It’s quite safe, but not especially nice.’

  ‘It’s like getting sucked through a tube a lot smaller than you are,’ Astraea said. Brian figured that meant she had been through one before. ‘But it just feels like you probably lost some valuable appendages on the way.’

  There was a sound a bit like ripping fabric and something appeared in the space beside them. It looked just like one of those wormholes you saw in science fiction programmes, except this one was real and Brian was going to be going through it.

  ‘Astraea,’ Cygnus said, ‘would you show them how it’s done?’

  Astraea shrugged. ‘Somehow, I think they’ve both got the
hang of walking, but…’ She stepped forward, walking into the aperture of the wormhole and vanishing.

  ‘Cool!’ Fleet exclaimed and stepped forward. Then she thought better of it and looked back at Cygnus. Getting a nod, she bounced into the swirling energy and disappeared.

  ‘I’ll bring up the rear,’ Cygnus said. ‘It’s quite safe, Brian.’

  ‘Yeah. I mean, it must be.’ Taking a deep breath, Brian stepped forward. There was a vague sensation of sucking, and then he was gone.

  Union of Ultrahumans HQ, Antarctica.

  Cygnus stepped through into the portal room in the UoU base, did a quick inventory of body parts, and then checked on her charges.

  June was getting fairly used to warp travel and was standing near the door, chatting to Brightstar. Probably, they were discussing clothes. Maybe Alison wanted another gown.

  Fleet and Zap were looking a little less pleased with what had just happened to them. Fleet was looking a little wide-eyed, but she was standing over Zap as he stood there with his hands on his knees. The conduits could make you dizzy and it looked like that had happened to Zap; probably not the impression he wanted to make, but no one was going to hold it against him since everyone hated travelling that way.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Brightstar suggested. ‘Everyone else is here.’

  ‘Cassandra made it?’ June asked.

  ‘Yes, she did.’ Brightstar turned and headed out into the corridor. ‘Grumping a little about losing her Saturday evening, but she’s here.’

  Zap frowned and looked around at Cygnus. ‘But it’s only eleven. In the morning. Why is she missing her evening?’

  ‘Actually,’ Cygnus replied, ‘it’s midday here but Cassandra is English, so it’s four in the afternoon where she comes from. Time zones. I won’t say you get used to them, but you have to put up with them. We have people coming from other parts of Europe who are starting later, and from the West Coast who are effectively starting earlier.’