In Darkness Transformed

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  To Lauri—we couldn’t ask for a more perfect addition to our family. Thank you for making our son so happy!

  1

  Dying hurt.

  Especially when it was coupled with paralyzing fear and devastating grief. Sergeant Eli Yates learned that lesson the hard way when his world dissolved into nothingness at the exact second his heart coasted to a complete stop. His last vision was of the twisted tangle of arms and legs that belonged to his team, men he’d served with and loved like brothers. They’d all died within seconds of each other when their helicopter plummeted out of the sky and crash-landed on a tree-covered mountainside somewhere on the western slopes of the Cascades.

  Living hurt worse.

  Eli remained trapped in darkness as his heart suddenly began to beat again. The erratic rhythm pulsed inside his head while his limbs jerked and twitched, their movements sluggish and out of control. At the same time, his lungs struggled to fill with air that reeked of blood, death, and . . . smoke.

  What the hell? He couldn’t make sense of anything while his brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders. At least it was working well enough to sense the danger lurking nearby and that he needed to get the hell out of Dodge—though it might have been pure instinct. He kicked his legs free from whatever was holding them captive and rolled to the side. His eyes finally popped open, but they slammed shut again after one look into the fixed stare of Corporal Montez. The realization that his friend was dead ripped through his heart like one more piece of shrapnel.

  “Aw, damn, Miguel.”

  Eli turned his head and tried again, but the view wasn’t any better in that direction. Was he the only one still alive out of the nine men who’d boarded the helicopter that morning? That thought hurt like hell.

  “Is anyone there?”

  Nothing except for a faint crackling noise. Eli slowly put the pieces of his memories back together. The shouts from the cockpit. The worried comments from his friends as the helicopter began to lurch and then spin out of control. The impact with the ground that shredded the metal box surrounding them like paper. The shouts that morphed into screams and then whimpers before finally fading away into an awful silence—the loss of his friends’ voices for good between one heartbeat and the next.

  The crackling grew louder. Eli lifted his head to look around, but he couldn’t see through the thick fog. Blinking didn’t help, but a flash of red coming from what was left of the cockpit caught his attention. His addled brain finally recognized what he was seeing. It wasn’t fog after all; it was smoke, which meant the flickering light was fire. Those two things plus the smell of jet fuel added up to a single fact. If he didn’t haul ass out of there, an explosion would finish the job the crash had started.

  Panic gave him the strength to move but sent a stab of fresh pain ripping through his gut. He slid a hand across his stomach, only to find a jagged shard of metal sticking out of his abdomen. Now wasn’t the time to figure out what to do about it, not with the smoke getting thicker by the second.

  Begging his friends for forgiveness, he dragged himself across their bodies to reach the one spot of daylight he could see. He paused by each man to check for a pulse. Finding none, Eli kept crawling, pushing himself along on one hand and two knees, keeping his other hand wrapped around the piece of metal to keep it from snagging on anything as he fought his way free from the wreckage.

  It took only minutes to drag himself closer to the source of the fresh air, but it felt like hours. Each movement jarred the metal sticking out of his gut. Panting through the pain, he stopped to strip off his pack in order to fit through the opening in the side of the fuselage. Afterward, he reached back inside to drag it out after him. He’d need the supplies it contained to survive long enough for help to arrive.

  Outside, he coughed his lungs clear of the toxic fumes from inside the chopper. When his breathing improved enough, he resumed crawling toward a cluster of boulders some distance away and scooted in behind them to catch his breath. Leaning back against the biggest one, he prayed it would protect him once the fire finally hit the fuel tanks. As soon as the thought crossed his mind, a deep rumble rolled down across the mountainside, and a flash of fire and smoke roiled up into the sky. The shock wave hit him a second later. He screamed as the concussion from the explosion left him curled up in a ball and shaking uncontrollably.

  Debris rained down from above while the world gradually righted itself. Eli pushed himself back upright and took a quick inventory of his body parts. Good, all present and accounted for. He was alive, and except for the ringing in his ears, no worse off than he’d been a few seconds before. A peek around the edge of the boulder showed that the fire stayed contained to a small area, so he wasn’t at further risk for the moment.

  So what next? Grateful that thinking didn’t require a lot of energy, he stared around at the towering Douglas firs surrounding the small clearing and tried to formulate a plan of action. Maybe he should begin with a more thorough assessment of his injuries. Yeah, good idea. He started with his feet and worked his way upward from there. His left leg was fine, but the right leg of his pants was ripped open for the entire length of his thigh. He pushed the blood-soaked fabric aside long enough to discover that his leg was slashed down to the bone. Now that he was aware of the injury, it hurt like hell. But not nearly as much as a wound that size should. It was as if he was feeling it from a distance somehow. Maybe he was in shock or something.

  He watched in confused horror as two inches of the laceration closed up tight and the pale streak of bone disappeared beneath a layer of muscle. He closed his eyes and then reopened them slowly, hoping to clear his vision. When he looked again, a large blood vessel knitted back together right in front of his eyes while the wound continued to shrink.

  Telling himself he was imagining things, he closed the gap in his pants leg and continued his assessment. His back and ribs hurt. No surprise there. The bright sunlight gave him a much clearer view of the metal jutting out of his belly. The sight made him queasy. It obviously needed to come out, but he wasn’t sure what would happen if he were to yank on it. Deciding that should wait a while longer, he checked both arms and hands. No apparent damage. Although he couldn’t see his face, his fingers detected a slow trickle of blood seeping from a deep gash above his right ear. No wonder he’d passed out after the crash.

  A voice in the back of his mind, which sounded just like his crazy grandfather, murmured over and over again that Eli hadn’t just passed out. No, he’d died, same as his friends; the only difference was that he hadn’t stayed that way. Yeah, right. Obviously, he’d had his bell rung but good, because he couldn’t stop replaying the argument he’d had with the old man several years back when he’d driven up to Martin’s mountain cabin to tell him about his decision to enlist in the army.

  Grandpa Martin had been almost incoherent with rage. As he’d paced the length of the front porch, he’d alternated between telling Eli he was a damn fool for risking the truth coming out and muttering under his breath about “people like them”—people who died but didn’t always stay that way. It hadn’t made sense then; it still didn’t. At the time, Eli had chalked it up to more of his grandfather’s crazy behavior.

  But now his grandfather�
��s words kept echoing in his head as Eli leaned forward to take another look at his leg. The jagged gash had shrunk down to no more than a shallow cut. He fell back against the rock in shock. As he tried to make sense of what he had seen, things only got weirder. While he looked on in horror, the metal shard started shifting, like it was wiggling its way out of the wound all on its own. He started to tighten his grip to prevent it from moving, but then let his hand drop back down to his side. Hell, it wasn’t as if he wanted to shove the damn thing back in. On the other hand, he didn’t want to bleed to death, either. Who knew what kind of internal damage it had caused on its way in?

  When the shard finally popped all the way out, a warm ooze of blood poured onto his skin. He gingerly lifted the hem of his shirt, expecting the worst. Using his sleeve, he wiped the blood away. Just as with his leg wound, the hole was sealing shut by itself.

  “Son of a bitch, has the whole fucking world gone crazy?”

  Seriously, what the hell was happening here? And what came next? With all the noise inside the chopper, he had no idea if the pilots had time to issue a Mayday call. If headquarters had been tracking their flight through whatever kind of recorder there’d been on board, was that still happening now that everything had gone up in smoke?

  Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be found. How could he explain why he alone had survived the crash? At the rate his body was healing itself, he wouldn’t even have a scratch left to show the medics when they arrived. There was always a big investigation when an aircraft went down. He could just picture some idiot reporter getting wind of his freakish recovery and running with the story. And wouldn’t the army brass love seeing the face of a soldier smeared all over the tabloids?

  Panic made it difficult to think logically. Was he really going to wait for the authorities to arrive? The answer to that question was surprisingly easy—no, he wasn’t. In fact, hell no. He couldn’t stick around to see what happened. If he told the truth, that he’d died but come back from it, they’d lock him in a loony bin somewhere. He’d be shut away forever.

  Yeah, he could always lie, but what story could he tell that wouldn’t raise red flags? Maybe claim to have somehow been thrown clear of the helicopter before it crashed, but there was no way they’d buy that explanation, either. He would’ve still been hurt. Parachuting out before anything went wrong might be feasible, but what could he say when they asked to see the parachute or, better yet, how had he known that something bad was going to happen?

  That left him no choice but to make a run for it. He reached for the pack he’d dragged from the wreckage. First thing, he ate a couple of protein bars, then washed them down with one of the bottles of water he’d tucked inside before leaving the base. Feeling a little better, he stripped off his shirt and pants. Before donning the clean set from the pack, he used his T-shirt and another bottle of water to scrub away as much of the dried blood and dirt as he could, especially off his face.

  Time was running out, and he really needed to get moving. Before heading down the mountain, he would stop long enough to throw bits and pieces of his bloody uniform into the still-burning fire. He hoped the scraps would be enough to convince the investigators that he’d died there, too. In some ways, that was true. No way he could let himself be found, not once he left the crash site. Before leaving, he had one more thing to do. Walking back toward the helicopter, he spotted something on the ground and stopped to pick up Montez’s mirrored sunglasses. He paused for several seconds before continuing to the wreckage. There, not wanting to see what the explosion had done to his friends’ remains, he kept his gaze centered on the flames and tried to find some way to say good-bye to his team.

  His voice came out gravelly from shock and smoke; dark fumes still billowed off the wreckage.

  “Guys, how the hell did this happen? Doesn’t seem fair that we all survived so many tours in the worst hellholes this planet has to offer only to have things end like this. But as you always said, Montez, shit happens.”

  He stared at the bent and twisted sunglasses in his hand, picturing Montez’s familiar grin in his head. He’d give anything to see it one more time. “I love you all like the brothers I never has, and it’s been my honor to serve with each and every one of you. Rest in peace.”

  The buzz of an airplane overhead reminded him that this was no time to linger. He ran for cover under the firs, pausing just inside the tree line. Aching with grief, he came to attention, saluted the funeral pyre, and then walked down the mountain without once looking back.

  One month later

  ELI JERKED AWAKE, pulse pounding and his skin slippery with sweat. Yet another nightmare that forced him to relive the day that his life had literally come crashing down around him. Over the past few weeks he’d learned there was no use in trying to get back to sleep. Giving up on bed altogether, he pulled on yesterday’s clothes and headed for the front porch of the cabin he’d inherited from Grandpa Martin. On the way out, he snagged a broadsword off the wall. That wall shone with blades—it was where his grandfather had displayed his extensive weapon collection.

  There wasn’t a single gun in the bunch, but there was at least one example of every kind of bladed weapon imaginable. Some were plain and utilitarian, while others were more like works of art. Even as a kid, back before his parents died in a car accident, Eli had loved the old man’s collection. Some of his favorite memories from that time were of him and his father admiring Martin’s latest acquisition. Later, after he’d gone to live with his other grandparents, he’d missed those visits with Martin talking about swords and knives, which might be why he’d ended up on the fencing team in college.

  His skills had gotten rusty over the years, but working out with the various blades was one of the few things that brought him any sort of peace on these restless nights.

  Outside, he leaned against the porch railing and let the night air cool his fevered skin. Ever since taking refuge in the remote cabin high in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, he’d been trying to figure out a way to get some semblance of his old life back. Instead, his thoughts continued to spin in circles, and he was no closer to a solution now than he had been the day he’d crawled out of the wreckage.

  He glanced up at the stars. “Grandpa, I don’t know if you’re up there somewhere listening, but I wish you were here to answer some questions for me.” That safety deposit box Martin had filled with cash and the papers with Eli’s birth name on them had come in handy. Eli would have given anything to know how his grandpa knew Eli might need them.

  It wasn’t as if he’d ever known Martin all that well, especially in his later years. His grandparents on his mother’s side had never gotten along with Eli’s father, much less Martin. After the memorial service, they’d whisked Eli away to Spokane on the eastern edge of Washington State and changed his last name to theirs when the court had awarded them full custody.

  They’d also gotten the judge to forbid any unsupervised contact between Eli and Martin until Eli came of age and could make his own decisions. Considering how crazy the old man had acted on the day of the funeral services, Eli couldn’t much blame them. Martin had been agitated when he got there and then totally lost control. He had slammed Grandpa Yates against the wall while accusing him of killing Eli’s father a second time by cremating his body so soon. The police had been called, and the situation had only deteriorated from there.

  Looking back, Martin’s rantings had sounded insane at the time. But now, after everything that had happened to Eli, maybe the old man had known what he was talking about. Regardless, having his birth certificate with his original name of Eli D. Jervain would make establishing a new identity a lot easier. God knows, he’d never be able to go back to being Eli Yates without risking the army finding out that he’d survived the helicopter crash.

  That didn’t mean he wanted to spend the rest of his life parked on the side of this mountain alone and afraid to let anyone close. He’d served as part of close-knit team for too man
y years to want to go solo now.

  “None of this is getting me anywhere,” he said into the night air.

  He also hated that the only person he had to talk to was himself. Frustrated, he picked up the sword again and headed for the small clearing on the back side of the cabin. The soft glow from the kitchen windows didn’t do much to brighten the night, but he’d always had exceptional night vision. Holding up the sword as if saluting an opponent, he began a series of movements meant to strengthen his arms, especially his wrists. It didn’t take long to get lost in the routine, buying him a few minutes of peace.

  Starting off slowly, he focused on accuracy, and only gradually picked up speed. But as he raised the blade over his right shoulder, intending to swing it down hard and fast at an invisible target, a woman’s scream, high pitched and full of fear, echoed down off the mountainside. It was followed by a male voice bellowing in fury. The sounds brought Eli’s warrior instincts to full attention. He was running flat out by the time the woman screamed a second time.

  Gripping the sword with all his strength, he charged into the darkness.

  2

  Safara fought her cousin with every bit of skill she could muster. Tiel had her at a distinct disadvantage on several fronts, starting with the fact that he was half a foot taller and nearly sixty pounds heavier, most of it muscle. He was also out of his head crazy with the light disease that plagued the people from their homeworld. Right now, Tiel wouldn’t care if he killed her. In contrast, she wanted to shove him back to where he belonged on the other side of the shimmering barrier that separated the human world from Kalithia.

  As long as Safara could keep her blade between the two of them, she might stand a chance of surviving the night. As soon as that thought crossed her mind, her opponent hooked her sword with his and sent it flying off across the clearing. That left her sidearm as her only defense. Unfortunately, Tiel grabbed her right wrist before she could draw the gun.