The dark we seek, p.1
The Dark We Seek, page 1
part #1 of Lost Light Book Two Series
The Dark We Seek
Copyright © 2022 by Kyla Stone All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Christian Bentulan
Book formatting by Vellum
First Printed in 2022
ISBN: 978-1-945410-91-8
Formatted with Vellum
CONTENTS
Foreword
1. Lena Easton
2. Eli Pope
3. Jackson Cross
4. Jackson Cross
5. Lena Easton
6. Lena Easton
7. Lena Easton
8. Jackson Cross
9. Jackson Cross
10. Shiloh Easton
11. Eli Pope
12. Jackson Cross
13. Shiloh Easton
14. Jackson Cross
15. Jackson Cross
16. Jackson Cross
17. Lena Easton
18. Eli Pope
19. Lena Easton
20. Jackson Cross
21. Jackson Cross
22. Shiloh Easton
23. Eli Pope
24. Eli Pope
25. Jackson Cross
26. Jackson Cross
27. Jackson Cross
28. Lena Easton
29. Shiloh Easton
30. Lena Easton
31. Shiloh Easton
32. Lena Easton
33. Lena Easton
34. Lena Easton
35. Eli Pope
36. Jackson Cross
37. Jackson Cross
38. Shiloh Easton
39. Eli Pope
40. Eli Pope
41. Jackson Cross
42. Eli Pope
43. Jackson Cross
44. Eli Pope
45. Eli Pope
46. Eli Pope
47. Eli Pope
48. Eli Pope
49. Eli Pope
50. Eli Pope
51. Shiloh Easton
52. Jackson Cross
53. Jackson Cross
54. Jackson Cross
55. Jackson Cross
56. Lena Easton
57. Lena Easton
58. Jackson Cross
59. Eli Pope
60. Jackson Cross
61. Jackson Cross
62. Shiloh Easton
63. Lena Easton
64. Jackson Cross
65. Eli Pope
66. Jackson Cross
67. Eli Pope
68. Jackson Cross
69. Eli Pope
70. Eli Pope
71. Eli Pope
72. Eli Pope
73. Jackson Cross
74. Jackson Cross
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Also by Kyla Stone
About the Author
The Hope We Keep
To David Kepford, the fictional identity of a real American hero. He probably would not consider himself a hero, but I do. Thank you to all who have served and sacrificed so much for the citizens of this country.
FOREWORD
This book takes place in Michigan’s spectacular Upper Peninsula. The towns and cities mentioned are real, though the author has taken a few liberties for the sake of the story. Thank you in advance for understanding a writer’s creative prerogative. If you get a chance to visit the UP, make sure you try a pasty!
“Light can devour the darkness but darkness cannot consume the light.”
― Ken Poirot
1
LENA EASTON
DAY TWENTY
Lena Easton stood at the bow of the emergency rescue boat, searching for Cody Easton’s body.
Tendrils of her long chestnut waves whipped against her face as she scanned the sandstone bluffs with her binoculars. A thousand coves, inlets, and watery caves lined a hundred miles of Lake Superior coastline.
The Alger County Undersheriff and her longtime friend, Jackson Cross, stood beside her, searching the water. The wind tousled his sandy hair as he anxiously rubbed the stubble along his square jaw.
Tall and handsome, Jackson had always drawn the eyes of the ladies, but he barely noticed. He was too dedicated to the job and still in love with the ghost of Lena’s dead sister.
Beneath the water, huge boulders and toppled timber were scattered like jackstraws on the lake bottom. On clear days, spears of sunlight penetrated the crystal-clear waters; you could see fifty feet straight to the bottom.
Beneath her spectacular beauty, Lake Superior held tight to her secrets. A corpse might be taken by the surf and deposited in a tangle of driftwood on a beach miles away or more likely, drawn down to the bottom of the lake hundreds of feet below the surface, never to be found.
“We’ve searched this area already,” said one of the two park rangers, a skinny redhead named Eddy Forester who was assisting them at the behest of the sheriff. “We didn’t find anything.”
“You didn’t search with Bear,” Lena said with confidence. “Bear can find him.”
The massive 150-pound Newfoundland perched at the bow, his big front paws on the gunwale as he leaned over the port side, the SAR vest he wore bright orange against his cinnamon fur.
He sniffed the water eagerly, searching for Cody’s scent from the T-shirt Lena kept in a brown paper bag in her pack. Bear resembled an oversized teddy bear—with teeth. He was also smart, loyal, goofy, and utterly dedicated to his duties as a certified search-and-rescue dog.
“How does it work?” Jackson asked. “He’s not even in the water.”
“Bear can detect the scent of human remains beneath ninety feet of water. He can also detect traces as small as a shard of bone or a drop of blood.”
The park ranger whistled. “How will we know he doesn’t smell a dead fish? Or say, a dead raccoon washed out by the tide?”
“The decomposition scent is unique to humans. When he alerts, it’ll be for a human corpse, not a raccoon.”
The ranger folded his arms across his chest as if unconvinced. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here, searching the great lake for another dead body.
Two days ago, they’d recovered the corpse of the victim that Walter Boone had thrown overboard, the crime Cody had witnessed that had led to Amos Easton’s murder and Cody’s death.
The boat scythed through the emerald water. Seagulls wheeled against the bright blue sky. They headed east, hugging the miles of rugged coastline between Amos’ home and South Bay in the small town of Munising, Michigan.
To their left, Grand Island rose like a great sleeping giant. Growing up, she’d spent weekends camping, hiking, and kayaking on the island.
Everything was painfully familiar and simultaneously different, both home and not.
Jackson stepped closer to Lena. He spoke quietly but loud enough to be heard over the wind and the rumble of the engine. “How are you doing?”
It was an almost impossible question to answer. Three weeks ago, half of the world had been plunged into darkness, thrusting the entire planet into chaos.
Brilliant auroras had lit up the heavens for almost two weeks as a series of powerful super-flares erupted from the surface of the sun, known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. A scientist on TV had called it a triple CME, each classified as X50, stronger by many magnitudes than Earth had experienced in modern times.
Clouds of scorching hot plasma had struck Earth, causing devastating geomagnetic storms. As the massive bursts of radiation struck the Earth’s magnetosphere, power grids were destroyed as transformers were overloaded and power lines burst into flames. Satellites in orbit were damaged when induced currents burned out their circuit boards, affecting GPS, telephone, internet, television, and high-frequency communication systems such as ground-to-air and shortwave radio.
Unlike an EMP, or electromagnetic pulse, the solar storms had significantly impacted long conductors such as power lines, internet cables, and magnetic gas lines, while small-scale electronics hadn’t been affected, like computers, cell phones, or microchips in vehicles.
Phones worked if you could charge them, but cell towers were down. Vehicles drove as usual, but gas stations were left without power to pump the fuel. Laptops switched on, but the internet had gone dark.
The world was in turmoil. Every supply system had been disrupted on a global scale. Grocery stores were gathering dust. Gas stations were low on fuel and rationing heavily if not outright empty. Hospitals were running out of critical care meds and supplies. Banks had closed. The stock market had been erased in a blink; worldwide financial systems were in utter disarray.
Then there was Shiloh’s kidnapping, Lena’s exhausting 1600-mile cross-country journey to the Upper Peninsula, and the capture and death of Walter Boone, a serial predator. The graveyard of bodies they’d discovered behind his derelict cabin held the key to her sister’s murder.
And then, of course, there was the unexpected return of Eli Pope.
“I’m taking each day as it comes,” Lena said.
“And Shiloh?”
“I don’t know,” she said ho nestly. “That girl is a hard nut to crack.”
“Is she still sleeping in the tent?”
“She refuses to come into the house.”
A week ago, Lena had moved back into her father’s house. Though Amos Easton had been murdered in the junk yard rather than the farmhouse, Shiloh wouldn’t step foot inside the doorway.
Instead, she’d set up a tent in the woods, a hundred yards from the house. Lena had tried to bribe her with treats, a Snickers bar and Pop-tarts, Shiloh’s favorites, but Shiloh had staunchly refused.
In the end, Lena hadn’t forced it. If the girl felt more at home among the trees, then who was Lena to stop her? Lena endured her share of nightmares, waking in a cold sweat, her pulse pounding, as her dead sister called out to her and she could not answer.
They shared the same grief, faced the same fears, knew the same devastating loss. And yet, they were essentially strangers. But she’d be damned if she would let her niece down again. The world might be coming apart at the seams, but Lena was bound and determined to be the mother Shiloh had never had.
Lena sighed. “I don’t blame her, not one bit.”
“She’s a survivor. She’ll figure it out.”
Lena nodded, then tugged up her windbreaker and checked her insulin pump, a habitual act she performed dozens of times a day. Her blood sugar numbers were running lower than normal. The constant stress made it difficult to assess her blood sugar and keep her Type I diabetes in check.
Jackson withdrew a small object from the bag at his feet and handed it to her. “This is the last one in my stash.”
Gratefully, she took the juice box, unwrapped the straw, and sipped the sweet apple juice. Jackson knew it was her favorite snack to raise her numbers. As kids, he’d always kept several juice boxes on hand in case she forgot—or more accurately, her perpetually drunken father forgot—to keep them stocked.
Now, she’d have to figure out how to make homemade apple juice or switch to something else, like the tubs of frosting she kept in her solar-powered mini-fridge along with her precious supply of insulin. Twenty-three months left.
And then what? It was a constant worry in the back of her mind, a disconcerting feeling that time was running out, sand dribbling through the hourglass with no way to stop it.
Lena shoved the dark thoughts from her mind and focused on Jackson, studying her friend’s careworn face. He’d aged half a decade since he’d realized that he had sent an innocent man to prison. “You haven’t been sleeping.”
“Like you should be talking.”
“Jackson.”
“I can’t sleep. There’s no time. There’s too much to do.”
“And the nightmares?”
He shrugged as if to say, of course.
Unlike Jackson and the rest of the town, she’d always believed that Eli was innocent of her sister’s death. All these years, the killer had continued to kill. He’d never stopped. He was out there, somewhere.
She lowered her voice. “You can’t save a ghost.”
He looked away. “I know that.”
“Be careful, Jackson.” Of what exactly, she couldn’t quite say. But she knew how driven he was, how merciless he could be, especially against himself. He was haunted by Lily’s death, consumed by what he’d done to Eli. Guilt drove him. Guilt could be a dangerous, reckless thing.
“I will,” he said, but she didn’t quite believe him.
At the bow of the boat, Bear’s body went rigid. He ducked, dropping his head low over the gunwale, his bushy tail standing straight out as he frantically sniffed the water. He barked, deep and loud.
Lena patted Bear’s back. “You found something. Good boy.”
Her bones felt heavy, her limbs like cement. She simultaneously longed to find Cody and dreaded it. Walter Boone had confessed that he’d chased the boy over the bluff, that he’d watched Cody fall, his body broken on the rocks.
And yet, until he was found, Lena grasped a slender thread of hope.
As she’d held out hope for every missing person she’d searched for, as days passed and faith dwindled, as despair settled into her mind and body.
In the end, it was hope that destroyed you.
“Bear just alerted,” Lena said. “We need to search here.”
Jackson waved at the captain. “Stop the boat!”
The boat slowed. One of the park rangers threw the anchor. Bear barked again, mournful now, his tail drooping. He’d done his job, but like Lena, he dreaded it.
With her heart in her throat, she knelt on the seat next to Bear and rubbed his favorite spot behind his floppy ears. “Good job, boy. You did good. So good.”
Jackson’s face was pale, drained of color, but he was determined to see this through, as she was. He touched her shoulder. “If he’s down there, we’ll find him.”
She nodded, emotion thick in her throat, unable to speak.
Jackson was cold-water scuba certified, as were the park rangers. Lena remained on the boat with the captain while the divers suited up in dry suits, wriggled into their buoyancy control device vests, checked their tanks and gear, and put on their regulators and masks.
They sat on the gunwale, toppled backward off the stern of the boat, and disappeared beneath the surface of the water.
At the end of May, temperatures in the Upper Peninsula hit the sixties in the afternoons. The water temperature was in the low forties, ice-cold and frigid. It was the freezing waters that kept bodies infamously preserved in Lake Superior.
Due to the unusually low temperatures of the water, the bacteria that typically caused a body to bloat, then float, were inhibited. The myth that Lake Superior never gave up her dead was both folklore and fact.
Lena moved to the stern of the boat and waited. Sensing her anxiety, Bear bounded off the seat and stayed close to her side.
She lifted her face, the sun on her cheeks, the breeze tugging at her hair. On either side of them, the great cliffs reared from the water, boulders the size of cars dotting the shoreline. The ball of the sun descended toward the horizon, the limestone bluffs tinged golden in the late afternoon light.
They’d reached Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Emerald waters reflected the dramatic cliffs tinted vibrant shades of browns and reds from iron, black from manganese, and greens and blues from copper, as if some great unseen hand had painted them.
The day was too lovely for the darkness that had invaded the world. Mother Nature didn’t care. She’d wreaked her devastation; now sated, she basked in beauty.
Lena shielded her eyes and watched the gulls soaring above the shoreline. A lighthouse perched on the hill just north of Munising. The white tower topped by a lantern room and red cupola roof stood at least eight stories tall. Built into the base of the tower was a single-story brick cottage, the light keeper’s home.
A splash came from the water as one of the divers surfaced. Jackson bobbed to the surface first. He appeared strangely alien in his dry suit with the regulator in his mouth, the mask obscuring his eyes. She couldn’t see his face or read his expression.
He handed her his fins and she helped him onto the stern of the boat. Bending forward with the weight of the tank, he sat on the bench, removed his regulator, and pushed the mask up onto his forehead. Water dripped down his face.
