There was a bush to the left of the door. It was a low scrappy little thing with barely any leaves on it and would provide absolutely no coverage, but she found herself crouching down behind it just the same. Her breath came nervously, her chest felt as though a length of fabric had been wrapped tightly around it and was being tied tighter and tighter and tighter, until there was no more room for breath. As she waited anxiously for him to return it was as though time began to crawl, limping along, and everything she did, every minuscule breath she took, was as loud as a scream.

Suddenly he was back beside her, touching her shoulder and shushing her when she gasped in surprise.

“My god, where did you go?”

“Just had to take care of a little alarm,” he said. He reached up to the doorknob and as if he were using a key in the lock rather than a couple of lock picks, he quickly unlatched it. The door swung in without a sound.

He ushered her in with a light touch on her back and she moved quickly ahead of him. It was throttling, the way her entire self tried to pull her back to the exit, back to the relative safety of daylight. Leo checked the area quickly, then looked back at her.

They had agreed that the best plan of action was to find a safe spot as soon as they entered the house and wait for her to resolve into her normal color and revert into a powerful state. Since it took time for her color to change it would be a dangerous few minutes. What was in their favor was that she had not been in the sun for very long and so she would revert more quickly.

They had entered into a small vestibule with a door opening a few feet up to the left, and hallway walls leading a good distance away. She couldn’t see what kind of room it was, and it didn’t matter to her. What mattered was the fear climbing over her. She was fighting it with every part of her spirit, wrestling with it so hard she broke into a cold sweat.

She watched Leo move forward a few inches and glance into the room. He shook his head hard, indicating that he wasn’t happy with what he saw.

“Kitchen,” he whispered on the barest push of sound.

The kitchen in any house was a central hub of traffic. The one thing everyone had in common was the need to eat. The second thing would be the need to eliminate so the bathrooms were guaranteed to be just as busy. He moved forward down the hall and she followed quickly, both of them moving in a low silent crouch. Her heart was pounding, the swish and flow of her blood noisy in her ears. A short way up the hall they found another doorway on the right. He glanced into this one too and must have liked what he saw because he gestured her in. The smell in the room, redolent with perfume and damp heat, would have told her it was the laundry room even if she hadn’t seen the washer and dryer within. As she moved in she felt his hand touch briefly along her spine, a seemingly innocent gesture that both soothed and added to the tension of the moment.

There was no door to the room, so all they could do was stay there, quietly crouched, studying her skin as it began to darken to a fair charcoal-gray color. She could hear the rush of her breath, panicking that it was too loud while at the same time marveling that she couldn’t hear his breath at all. In fact, he seemed calm enough to dig in and take a freaking nap! He reached out to her then, obviously reading her state of mind, and laid a hand on her neck, his thumb touching her on the only exposed skin she had, that of her face. He guided her to look straight into his eyes and she did. He didn’t speak a single word with his lips, but volumes with his eyes.

I’m here. I’m right here. I won’t let anything near you.

Finally her skin was black again and she could feel the energy of her wings at her back. The comfort it gave her was boundless, but it couldn’t touch the comfort she had gotten from Leo’s eyes.

He nodded when he realized she was ready and moved around to the door, keeping her safely at his back. Before she could catch her breath he was moving out of the room, forcing her to hurry after him or find herself alone and exposed without him. As they moved she was aware of Leo, aware of his strength and the catlike beauty of his movements as he took point, moving with confidence, and a perceived sense of fearlessness. Every so often he’d reach back with his left hand, touching her hip as if he were corralling her into place and the relative safety behind him.

She saw him glance at the electronic device Grey had given them, using it as a guide to move through the hallways. She followed him from one to the next, never knowing what they were going to see, never knowing what they were going to find around the next corner, but going just the same. It seemed like the most perfect act of insanity.

He stopped her and she found herself holding her breath again. She watched him reach for a hunting knife that he had in his flack jacket. He slipped the black blade out of its sheath with perfect silence. There wasn’t a single ray of light in the entire house, the windows obviously polarized just like most Nightwalkers would use in their private houses. She had no idea how he could move in so much blackness or how he could see. She had eyesight meant to see through the dark because she was meant to live in the night. But how did he manage to move and to know where next to step?

She could hear somebody coming. There was no doubt about it, no mistaking the sound. A live being was walking in their direction. A white-hot streak of terror went through her. She suddenly felt completely exposed and wanted to hide her face, the one place on her body where her skin was showing. She was paralyzed with fear and couldn’t move but she knew it was the worst thing she could possibly do.

The next thing she knew the coiled line of Leo’s body moved, sprang forward like an absurd little jack-in-the-box. There was the sound of contact and the sound of a knife moving through flesh and bone. She could hardly believe what she had seen as a now-lifeless body fell to the floor. Leo had thrust his knife up through his victim’s upper throat, through its mouth and the rear of the tongue and into the brain stem. The knife was just as quickly removed as it had been inserted, leaving the body to fall at her feet. Obviously she could not touch it to check and see if it were still alive, but why she would ever want to do that was completely out of the realm of considering. It lay at her feet way too close for comfort, and she could see its face. Its pallor was a complete gunmetal gray, the skin of it like a muted, matte finish. The hair was equally gray, done in a combination of short and long dreadlocks. It had no eyebrows, but his jaw and chin were lined with a short black stubble that accentuated its hollowed-out cheeks.

She had never seen a Wraith before, and she didn’t even think she knew anyone who had. She wondered if her father, who had been alive for eight hundred and twenty-two years, had ever crossed paths with one. It was said, however, that witnesses were few and far between strictly because they never lived to tell the tale. It was rail thin, as if it had some sort of wasting sickness. And the smell…the smell of it was the foulest thing she’d ever known.

She covered her mouth and nose, gagging from the stench and from the fear that it was going to reach out and touch her, even though she knew it was dead, that it couldn’t possibly have survived.

Suddenly she felt Leo reaching down for her hands, the strength of his fingers wrapping around hers, giving her comfort and reassurance. Once again it was a support that she needed more than anything in that instant. And it meant something to her that he was giving it to her in the middle of all this deadly madness.

He pulled her close to his back. Close enough that she could feel his warmth. She suddenly felt the urge to cuddle up to him, just so she could feel the vigor of him. It was a ridiculous impulse to have at the most ridiculous time.

They went past several more doorways and went down several more hallways. They seemed to go on and on, and it felt like they weren’t getting any closer to their goal. Faith’s heart was beating like a drum, every once in a while missing a beat when she thought she heard something over the clamor of it and her breathing. Why oh why do I have to be so loud? Can they hear me? Are they able to sense me? She had no idea what their skills or weaknesses were, had no way of preparing against them if she could.

As for Leo, it was as though he were taking a walk in the park; every step was made with ease, every move was succinct and sure.

“We’re close,” he told her in that nearly airless whisper. “I think what we’re looking for is either through this door, or the other one off the hallway parallel to this one. Stay very close.”

As if he had to remind her. Leo knew she was scared because every time he touched her to bring her closer in he could feel her whole body shaking. But he was much more relaxed now that he knew he could kill them using the methods he was most comfortable with. Guns were good and all of that, but nothing beat a good, dependable knife when it came to moving through a place in stealth. The maneuver he’d used to take out the Wraith was one he had practiced hundreds of times and utilized more times than he could count. It allowed for a quick death and prevented an opportunity for the target to raise up a vocal alarm.

Leo gently tested the knob to the door. He began to doubt this was the right room the minute it turned easily in his hand. If this was such a powerful nik, why wasn’t it being guarded with more than a juvenile alarm system and carelessly unlocked doors? The tongue of the doorknob slid out of the latch with the smallest of clicks. With a single finger he gave the door a small push, letting it swing open by several inches. The room was as black as pitch, just like all the others before it. Grey had offered him night vision goggles, but he had declined. The fewer encumbrances he had the better off he was. Besides, they cut off his peripheral vision and he needed eyes in the back of his head for this mission. He signaled Faith to stay with another gentle touch of his fingers, and moving as silently and lightly as was possible he slid through the door and did a fast sweep of all corners of the room as best he could in the dark. But for Leo, it had never been about just what he could see. It had been about instinct. The instinct to sense when there was another body in the room. He wouldn’t have been able to explain it to an outsider. There was just a different feel to a space when something living was in it.

As far as human bodies were concerned, that is. He had no idea what he was up against in this setting. Like Faith, he would be the first to admit this was a poorly prepared plan. Not knowing everything about their enemy was the largest deficit. The second deficit, he realized, was that Grey hadn’t told them what the nikki looked like. He’d only said “You’ll know it when you see it.”

He hated cryptic bullshit like that, but when Leo had pressed him Grey had refused to respond. And since Grey was the one with all of the power in the situation, he’d had very little choice open to him. They had to do this. So it had just been about gritting his teeth and hoping for the best.

The room was not very large, but he knew right away that there was nothing of import in it. Nikkis were alive. They would move or breathe or something to that effect. He pulled his gun, flipped on the laser sight and quickly ran it around the room. It was only a thin red beam of light, not meant to be a flashlight, but he could see what the light looked like as it hit the target of the wall and it helped him make out the molding and indentation of another door.

And then, suddenly he felt it. Knew something was there. He jolted to the right just as something hit him with a screeching growl. It plowed into him, sending him crashing down into the floor. He felt the impact clawing across every one of the partially healed wounds in his chest and he couldn’t help the low, gravelly sound that escaped him. The gun went skidding across the floor, the knife did not.

The thing was incredibly strong, no doubt about that, he admitted as he was jerked up and then slammed back into the ground. His head struck and a numb ring echoed throughout his skull. It was the last free shot this thing was going to get. He went to go for its neck when he felt it jerk away from him. To his shocked witness, he watched Faith pull something that had to weigh at least 225 by the feel of it right off its feet, flinging it into the wall. But instead of hitting the wall it went right through it, phasing completely through as though the wall wasn’t even there. Then before Leo could fully regain his feet the Wraith came barreling back through the wall with another rasping screech of anger. But instead of a physical attack, this time a cylinder of yellow energy whipped around it before barreling toward them. Again, Faith stepped up, throwing herself between the energy blast and Leo, the power she harbored deflecting the attack right back onto the attacker. Like a nuclear blast, the thing was struck and became an instant, momentary pile of burning ash in the shape of a man…before collapsing into a heap of disintegrated cinders.

“Okay, no more skulking. That thing was screeching loud enough to wake the whole damn house,” Leo said, not having the time to be utterly impressed by Faith…or utterly terrified by the power these things were wielding.

He crashed into the next door, knowing that it was going to be locked. He didn’t bother checking for forms of life because if they all could phase through walls like that, then it was a waste of time.