Sunset Volume 2: High Noon

Flanders, Belgium.

“Here,” Noah called in a hushed tone, motioning to them with the bright spot of his flashlight. “This is how you find a Sanctuary.”

No one was happy. After they had stowed away on a train to the east coast of England, they had done nothing but walk long hours during the nights, quietly and with Noah on such high alert that Alex thought he would snap. They slept on the ferry and after that in a hotel during the day, when it was safe for Reeve to brainscrew the staff, and they basically didn’t sleep at all huddled under overpasses when it wasn’t. There sure as shit weren’t enough of the former to make up for the latter. Alex hated it, but he kept his mouth shut. Everyone did. They were loaded down with bags filled with everything they couldn’t part with (stowing the rest at Maggie’s), and the weight slowly took up all the space in Alex’s mind, pushing out any desire to talk. They were this silent trudging army in the dark, like ants hoping the asshole in the front had some idea where they were going.

The one clarion thought that rang through Alex’s mind over and over as Noah led them up the final street to his Sanctuary was this: we made it without running into any trouble. In hindsight (hell, in present-sight) it was probably not the most appropriate thing to celebrate while attempting to fit in with people who hunted them on purpose, but Alex figured he’d worry about that later.

Noah knelt and pointed to a twig that had been stuck into the dirt with the top few inches of it snapped and hanging to one side. It was well into the early morning hours. The houses were dark in the quiet Ghent suburb. Noah fingered the broken top and pointed them off in the direction it was hanging and smiled. At least he was starting to relax and Alex wanted badly for that to mean it was alright for him to stop peering into every shadow, waiting for it to move or spit out the undead. Silently, they followed him a few meters down the road to another stick with a bent top wedged into the ground. They gathered around it in a hush while Noah looked at them expectantly.

“Okay,” Reeve said softly, voice low from disuse, “but that could literally be from any five to eleven-year-old kid in a four block radius.”

Noah nodded, brow low. “You get to know the difference.”

“Really?” Hannah whispered harshly.

Noah cracked a smile. “Well, sometimes you get a bit lost.”

In the dark, all Alex could hear was slow, measured breathing and he wished someone would laugh.

Noah waved their silence off. “You’ll have a general area to look in and then you’ll know that when you start seeing these, you’re getting close. Come on.” He led them down the street, pointing out markers as they passed. He tapped the top of one stick, stopping. Unlike the others, this one was split down the middle an inch or so, like a Y. “This marks the last one in the line.”

Gareth pointed to the house that the marker was in front of. “So is this it?”

“No. There are two sets of signs. But this shows you that you’re very close and to start looking for the next set.”

“Don’t you own the damn house?” Hannah asked, her voice more sour than normal.

“Yes, I know which one it is—I’m doing this for you, right?”

Alex stared at Reeve, waiting for him to say something. He didn’t want to be the guy Noah didn’t like, but it kinda seemed like that ship had already sailed for him and Reeve. There was a tickling somewhere in his mind that itched just enough to be uncomfortable as Reeve looked at him, face blank.

“So what do we look for next?” Reeve asked Noah flatly.

He straightened, hefting his bag. “You’re going to want to find a door with a pile of shoes on the stoop. If you’re someplace where you can’t leave shoes outside, like an apartment building, there’ll be something more subtle, like a coin glued down to the floor.”

“Shoes?” Alex asked, clearing his throat. “There are a lot of those too.” Gareth motioned to a house across the street with a mat full of shoes. Noah nodded and they walked over.

“You’re looking for an odd number of shoes. If it’s a Sanctuary, there’ll be one missing. Or one extra. Kind of depends on your mood that day.” He chuckled to himself, tapping the odd sneaker out with his boot. He pulled open the storm door and ran his thumb over the small carvings of crosses, pentacles, stars of David, and a myriad other shapes Alex didn’t recognize, cut right into the wood of the door, barely visible but intricate. “And if you’re still not certain, the symbols of faith are a pretty sure measure.” He gave the group of them a look up and down and let out a deep breath while pulling a keychain out of his jacket. “And even if you’ve got a key, always, always knock. Ready?”

No one answered, so he knocked.

---

The door opened slowly to a broad man in his late fifties and a head of slightly thinning, blond-grey hair. He had one hand held out of view, extended behind the jamb. Even in the dim streetlight and backlit in red, Noah recognized the man immediately as someone who had been in the Church nearly as long as he had.

“Warren, may your God keep you,” Noah called, hoping he’d stick to English. The last thing he needed was this Icarus telepath barging into his skull because he didn’t speak the language.

The man at the door nodded and his arm relaxed. “Noah.” His voice was surprised. “I am yours in Christ,” he responded automatically with his thick Dutch accent, but his grey eyes were wary and they scanned the group. “Are you all brothers?”

“I’m training them,” Noah said and held up his keys.

“You pay the bills?”

“I do.”

“Thank you, brother.” He extended a hand with a small smile and Noah shook it, holding it between both of his.

Warren stepped back from the door and Noah stepped inside. “Thank you,” he nodded, “we’ve been traveling hard.” Noah motioned to the others to watch their step by the shotgun leaning up against the door frame. There were no lights on in the narrow entry hallway, but ahead of him he could see the low red glow of the kitchen. It had been easily six months since he’d been back to his house, but somehow the smell was still the same: dust and cigarettes, coffee and petrol. Behind him, he could hear the others stumbling and hissing to each other as they spilled out into his small kitchen space. He could already feel the muscles in his back and the ones keeping a vise grip all the way up to his temples beginning to ease.

“Your eyes will adjust,” he told them, dropping his bag to the ground and stretching. “The red bulbs save your night vision.”

Warren went to the fridge (which had no light at all) and pulled out some bottles of water, tossing one to Noah and offering them to the rest, which they accepted but didn’t open. Noah gulped his. Warren leaned against the counter. “So what’s the deal? Sol?”

Noah heard Reeve take a breath to respond but held it, waiting, so he turned around and clapped Reeve on the arm before he lost his delicate patience. He nodded to Warren. “Yeah, this one’s a close friend of a supporter. What’s the load on the house right now?”

“You’ll fit.”

“Anyone using the den?”

“No.”

“Great,” Noah turned to the group behind him, “that’ll be you. This way.” Without argument, they followed him, shuffling in the dark, through the kitchen and past several unlit doors until they got to the den. Feeling the wall, he switched on the overhead red bulb. It was just enough to see. The stack of cots was still leaning up against the far wall, but the couch had been moved to the other side of the room and a skinny young man with a bandaged arm was sitting there staring vacantly at the floor. The armchair was missing, but there was a coffee table he had never seen before and a desktop computer set up in one corner where he remembered there being a lamp. The area rug was different, but that was to be expected.

“There should be blankets and pillows in that closet. Go ahead and put your stuff down. Feel free to root around and set yourselves up. If you’re having trouble seeing, close your eyes and count to ten. It’ll help.” When no one answered him, he sighed. “What is it?”

After a beat, Reeve asked softly, “And we’re safe here?”

“Safer than you’ve been in a while. Why do you think I dragged your asses all the way here?”

Reeve’s voice snapped, “Don’t answer that.” Noah wondered which one of them was about to give him mouth and laughed.

Warren knocked on the door frame, making the others jump. “Are they hungry?” he asked. Noah turned back to look at the others. The pressure in his head built sharply and Noah flinched.

I don’t like this. Reeve’s presence beat the back of his eyes like a hammer. He doesn’t trust us.

Of course he doesn’t trust you, he thought as quickly as he could. Probably the last time he saw more than one Sol agent at a time, he was being shot at. And telepathy won’t help him trust you. Out loud he asked, “You want food?”

“I think we’ll get settled first,” Reeve responded then stammered a bit, sounding off balance. “But thanks. And we can fend for ourselves, you don’t need to cook.”

“It’s no trouble,” Warren said, ignoring Reeve’s uncomfortable tone.

“Is he okay?” Hannah asked, nodding to the man on the couch.

“Michael. He’s pretty new,” Warren explained, blandly. “Last night was the first time he’d been picked up and held by one. It does that to some people. It’s too wrong. Something breaks.”

Noah looked at the man, heart full of empathy. He remembered his first time touching a dog and wished he didn’t.

“I’ll shift Michael down here,” Warren went on. “Clear out a bedroom for...”

Right. It had been awhile since he’d taken on Icarus students and there were going to be a long list of things that seemed entirely unnecessary to be explained to any normal person that were bound to make Icarus twitchy. Noah clicked through his teeth. “Hannah,” he finished for Warren, gesturing. Her eyes bugged out and the others were visibly uneasy.

Warren pointed. “There’s a bathroom off this hall with a shower and a closet full of clothes if you want something clean. Take whatever you need.”

“Thank you,” Gareth called, and it was one of the first times he had heard him not sounding angry. Noah gave them a reassuring look, though it may have been lost on them in the dusky light. And anyway, the second Warren had left he wheeled on Noah, temper flaring.

“What was that?” Hannah hissed at a whisper.

Noah put up a reassuring hand. “It wouldn’t be right for you to sleep down here.”

“What?” she halfway to shrieked. Reeve’s presence was growing in his mind. If he got any more scared, Noah was going to be pressing an ice pack to his head for the next twelve hours.

“Women don’t share sleeping spaces with men,” he explained as calmly as he could.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“It really isn’t,” Noah said softly, hoping his lower volume would encourage her to stop yelling. “It’s entirely normal for almost anywhere else in the world besides Sol to separate sleeping quarters for men and women.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Alex whined, “don’t you all have bigger things to worry about than maybe accidentally seeing a boob?”

“When there isn’t room, we deal, but there are a lot of traditional thinkers around here. When we can make the allowance, we do, because it keeps the peace and doesn’t harm anyone.”

Hannah let her arms flop to her sides and shrugged sharply. “So, what? Men and women can’t sleep in the same room—no one in the Church is gay?”

Noah sighed, letting his eyes close briefly. Sol. “Listen,” he said, overly conscious of his curt tone and the dull ache of the telepath in his mind, “people of all faiths and belief systems come through here, and in order to live together, there are things that are not talked about.” He swallowed and softened his voice. “I get that isn’t what you’re used to, but you’re here now, and you need to at least outwardly square yourself with that.”

Reeve cleared his throat. “Give us a minute?”

“Sure, but, I need you to stop talking in my head, okay?” Noah went on. “In the Church, you never use your gift against another brother without express permission. You need to get into the habit of not reading people’s minds. It won’t make you any friends.”

Reeve was speechless for a second, but finally nodded. Trusting he’d done what he could, Noah headed into the kitchen. He was thankful for the reprieve, but it also occurred to him that perhaps it was partially due to the fact that the telepath knew he needed one, which he didn’t love. Either way, his temples were pounding. Noah checked the state of his liquor cabinet. Decent. He poured a shot of whiskey, drank it, took his boots and machete off, poured another shot, and sat down at the table with Warren.

“You can say it,” he told him after a long moment.

Warren shook his head. “Say what?”

Noah slumped a little lower in the chair. “That's a lot of Icarus.”

“It is,” he agreed noncommittally. “Do you have doubts?”

“I don’t, actually,” he replied, more surprised than he expected. “I don’t think they’ll ever fully join up, but they’ll fight for the cause while they’re here. And I get the sense that even if it would benefit them, they wouldn’t betray us unless we betrayed them first.”

Warren raised his eyebrows and peered around Noah toward the den. “Should we take this conversation elsewhere?”

Noah laughed and took a drink. “No, they’ve got a telepath still learning the ropes. And a Reader. They’ll know one way or another.” He looked around the room, taking in the smaller details he had missed before his eyes had adjusted. There were tacks sealing the curtains against the windows. He shook his head bringing himself back to the present.

Warren nodded, tapping out a cigarette. “You’re a howler, right?”

“Yeah. And you’re—”

“Telepath.”

Noah sighed inwardly. “That's what I thought.”

---

Sol LAHQ. Company Housing.

Mackenzie stretched on her hands and knees to grab the top paper of a stack just out of reach. Her knees complained, but it wasn't anything she wasn’t used to. She scanned the shorthand and swore. Nothing fit together enough to make sense of this feeling. It didn’t help that, as much as she tried, it was impossible to hold the many pieces in her brain at once to see the full picture. How much sand do you have to fit into your hands before it becomes a beach?

“Hey.”

She turned, jumping. Rafe was standing in the doorway, his long hands cupped around her favorite mug. She wanted to feel that moment, the care and thoughtfulness, all the love in the concern of his well-lined face, the sheer beauty of him, more handsome than when they’d met—but she couldn’t. Her study had been off limits for weeks.

She clucked her tongue reflexively. “I’ve told you,” she started, working to keep her voice gentle.

“Louis called,” he spoke over her evenly. “You missed a meeting with Legal.”

Shit. “What time is it?”

“Three. He covered for you but, Mack, you haven’t left this room in seven hours.”

She took her glasses off and massaged the bridge of her nose. That couldn’t be right. “Have you been playing hooky all day to stay home and time me?”

“It’s my day off.”

She felt a deep pang at the realization that she’d forgotten and at how gentle and patient his voice was. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it. “I got caught up and messed up the day for both of you.”

He took a step in to join her or pass her the tea, but she put up a hand. “You can’t.” Mackenzie got to her feet and went to him.

“I can’t make any sense of it,” he assured her and gave her the tea.

She lifted her head and kissed him lightly. “Neither can I.”

“Well, me much less than you.” The tea was too hot to drink, so she leaned into him. He put his arm around her and the warmth of it made her wish this was all they had to worry about doing. “Louis’ worried about you.”

Mackenzie cocked an eyebrow up at him. “Oh, it’s Louis who’s worried about me?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I am too,” he chided, “but Louis would trust you to go swimming in a volcano if you said you could, so if he says he’s worried, you better believe I am more than ever.”

“I’m just a little in the weeds.” She was and more.

“He says he doesn’t know what you’re researching.”

“Well, he’s the second best Saturn agent in Sol. Do you think he’d tell you if he did?”

“Yes, I do.”

She clicked her tongue again. He just might, too. “I can’t tell you or Louis because I really don’t know. There are small pieces I’ve found that don’t make sense, but it’s nothing that, as an individual thing, signifies any kind of problem. But there’s a sense of something bigger.”

She felt his chest rise and fall. “I want to understand. Can you put it another way?”

Mackenzie squinted, thinking hard. “It’s like, there’s a strong smell of lilacs so you start looking around and find a lilac bush. That, in itself, isn’t so wrong. But then you realize that lilacs can’t grow in this climate. So you look for and find more lilacs. That doesn’t tell you anything, except that something is off. A lilac bush can’t tell you why it’s there, but you know it shouldn’t be. I’m thinking that if I find enough lilacs, I’ll understand what’s happening.”

“I’m guessing this isn’t about flowers, though.”

“No.”

“I wish it were. Next time try setting yourself to solving some invasive species of vine, please.” Rafe kissed the top of her head. She smiled. A crisis in his daily life was a knack misfire or or a student finding yet another way to sneak contraband into the Academy. At worst, it was shouldering the onus of loving and caring for a sudden group of misplaced gens recently retrieved. And she loved that that was the world he lived in. She thought harder on it and realized that she and her knack were likely what constituted a crisis in his life more than anything. Careful of the tea, she held him against a feeling of guilt. “You should talk to Louis,” he said. “At least have someone to roll all this around with.”

“I’m not giving him half of a key to a door when I don’t know what’s behind it.”

“He can handle it. He’s the second best Saturn agent in Sol,” he reminded her of her own words.

“And I’m still the first.” He flashed her an unimpressed look, so she relented. “When I know more, I’ll bring in the people I need to bring in.” That gave her a seed of a thought, though. Not enough to articulate, but it was a sense of a growing idea. “I’m going to go into the office. I shouldn’t have left Louis like that.”

“Okay.” Rafe squeezed her one more time and let go. “But eat and drink something.”

“I will,” she promised. “If I don’t, apparently my own Second will inform on me.”

“What can I say?” Rafe spread his hands and smiled wide. “I’m the king of spies.”

Mackenzie laughed at that.

***