Dark Time: Mortal Path Read Online Free Page A

sunset on a late August evening in Iowa, the darkness beginning to gather, yet the temperature was ninety degrees and so was the humidity. Cornfields ran on either side of the road for miles, interrupted only by the occasional driveway marked by a mailbox. The air was saturated with the intense smell of ripening corn.
    In an hour, she’d be invisible under a thin slice of moon. Her clothing was black from head to toe, the silk fabric snug against her skin and as supple as she was. Her long, black hair was braided atop her head and her pale face concealed by black silk wound around it from the neck up, leaving a narrow gap for eyes as green as the fields around her. She wore skintight black leather gloves with padded palms, and a leather pack snuggled against the small of her back. It was her killing outfit.
    Running with her mind elsewhere, she retraced her path through Ledger’s home to the moment she’d frozen in front of the baby’s door. Her memories of Constanta were so strong that Susannah hadn’t been able to enter the baby’s room.
    Not in my killing outfit. Not with a knife at hand.
    A doe ventured out into the road ahead, followed by her spring-born fawn. Susannah maintained her speed, judged the moment, and launched herself into the air, arcing over the two deer. The larger one startled as Susannah’s foot lightly grazed the fur on her back.
    It was an exhilarating moment, one of the many Rabishu’s gifts afforded her.
    The gifts had been beyond her understanding at first, in the limited life she’d led in Massachusetts when it was an English colony. After that first time in the flames, she wasn’t impervious to fire. That was something Rabishu had conferred for a single purpose: recruiting her. But there were other things, like being able to move so fast that she appeared as a blur to the human eye. Her body healed from wounds that would be fatal to others. The irony wasn’t lost on her: Susannah the healer now healed only herself.
    She treasured her ability to see auras, reading emotional states by the colors in the radiance that 12 z 138
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    surrounded people. She’d been taught martial arts by a Chinese master, at Rabishu’s insistence, and over the years had picked up strikes, defenses, and weapons from various countries around the world. Her fighting had lost its original eloquence in favor of street techniques that served her well.
    She sized up the farmhouse where Ledger was held, guarded by F.B.I. agents. For the federal case against Tenaglia, it was important to keep Ledger alive to testify. She was here to make sure he didn’t testify. Rabishu favored keeping Tenaglia and his crime syndicate in business.
    Ledger was probably on the second floor, as far from the front door as possible. She settled a throwing star into the wood frame above a second-floor window and tossed a loop of slim rope over it.
    After tugging on the rope to make sure it would hold her weight, she scampered up it easily.
    A typical burglar would use a glass cutter at this point, for a silent entrance. For Susannah, that wasn’t necessary. This was going to be a quick assault, lacking in elegance but leaving the agents in the home disabled, and Ledger dead.
    She wanted to get her assignment finished. When Rabishu had given her the task, she’d toyed with the idea of turning it down. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she flatly refused to do Rabishu’s work, but she didn’t see him as the forgiving type. At the least, she’d no longer be one of the Ageless.
    What would it be like to be mortal again? Would I live out my life from now on, or would all my years catch up to me and I’d age in a flash? Here’s Susannah Layhem, a pile of bones—no, dust—on the floor. At least I would be dust that no longer had to kill.
    She pushed away from the wall of the house and came swinging in, her body bent, feet leading the way to break the window. Glass tumbled inward.
    The noise of her entrance drew an