Darkest Hours Novels & Stories

He delivered three words that shattered the morning silence like a gunshot: "Hawthorne's inside us." The hook hit the line with a cold, paralyzing weight. On the other end of the encrypted loop, inside the dark bedroom of the unlisted corporate apartment, Damien Blackwood sat up instantly. His silver-gray eyes went wide through the gloom, narrowing into a dangerous, lethal focus as the full scale of the catastrophe crystallized in his mind. The morning light was barely a gray smudge against the heavy drapes, but the atmosphere in the room changed instantly, freezing solid.

His big sword rang softly as he picked it up, sheathing it at his hip, his icy eyes swept over every lord and commander in the room, giving off undeniable power. He rested his large, gloved hand over Sarah's hand on the map table, his thumb lightly stroking her knuckles in a quiet, public show of total unity. "We strike at midnight," Damian declared. "Dismissed." --- By eleven o'clock, the storm had turned into a thick, low hanging mist that clung to the floor of the pine forest, swallowing the moon, the valley into pitch black darkness. Two miles east of the Old Iron Foundry, hidden deep within a rocky ravine, three dark gray vehicles sat idling with their lights totally blacked out.

It couldn’t be. The temperature changed. Almost as if the air conditioner itself knew the devil had returned and needed to make the room warmer. Her body went into alarm. The hairs on her skin rose. Her hands froze around the speaker. She didn’t want to turn around. She didn’t want to confirm it. But she had to. Slowly, Eliana looked toward the doorway. There he was. Standing in his perfect darkness. Like the dead had returned to life. Black upon black. Everything about him wrapped in shadows, like darkness itself had chosen a body. Cesare stood in the doorway.