Out of the Shadows: Book One of the Velieri Uprising

by Tessa Van Wade

  Arek aims out the back and shoots, but only when Kilon barrages the open air with his Uzi do I jam my palms to my ears.

  “There!” Sassi yells.

  I pull up to the seat and look out, just as one of the cars behind us clips the bumper of another and flips three times across the street, landing against a light post.

  “The bridge,” Arek warns Sassi.

  Sassi’s face changes as her eyes grow wide, “What are they doing?”

  Just ahead a large van swerves in front of us, barely missing several cars, and we watch carefully until the back doors open. Two men with large weapons over their shoulders lock aim with no hesitation. The only sound I can hear in my ear is Arek’s panic as he throws his arms around me just before the explosion.

  A brutally scorched throat brings me back to life with a jolt. There is nothing I can do to keep from coughing and every bark from my chest hurts when the incinerated skin along my esophagus is being chewed up all the way down to my chest. Yet the billowing black smoke surrounding me sucks in and out with every breath forcing me to convulse in a fit. The crunch and crackle of fire is near and the flames lick at my feet. I rip my shoulder from the oil covered, hot black top and look around. My left leg is covered with heavy metal.

  “Arek?” I call out, but my eyes survey the devastation, and no one is there. My hands are covered in black soot as is my shirt that has nearly been ripped from my body and a piece of it lays beneath the mangled car. A stabbing pain shoots through my shin as I try to move, and that’s when I see two sharp shards of metal digging into my leg.

  “Help!” I yell, my voice sounding deep as though I’ve smoked for years, but everyone on the street is yelling. The flames come closer then retreat with the wind only to continue this cycle, and they melt my shoes slowly.

  I see a man move through the night like a slick and determined shadow, one arm carrying a large gun and the other carrying one very small shiny knife as he glides across the wreckage as light as a ghost. His hat is low over his face, exposing only his chin. Who is he? My heart races and I claw at my leg until the sharp metal digs deeper, sending more blood onto the street. I yell as my shoulders hit the ground with a thud.

  The man with the hat shows his flawless agility as his boots lightly fly from one part of the wreckage to the next. He comes closer.

  “Help!” I yell again. However, something deep within tells me that this man who’s moving stealthily like there is prey nearby, is just that . . . a hunter.

  Once again, as he lifts his head just enough to look me in the eye, I recognize the hard and calloused glare. Navin has come back to finish what he started. His tall body steps on the piece of wreckage, pushing the clamp heavier around my leg until I cry out when the metal seems to hit bone.

  “You’re not Remy.” He smiles. “Not yet anyway.”

  The pain subsides when he steps off and kneels in front of me. He runs his hand along my forehead and down my cheek. My eyebrows furrow after a moment of watching him look me over.

  I have seen that look before and my heart sticks between my blackened lungs and broken ribs. Ian’s eyes once told me the same thing . . . the night that I knew he loved me. Long ago Mak’s eyes betrayed him, warning me of his unsaid feelings.

  Navin takes his time, allowing a vulnerable moment as his finger caresses my cheek. Finally, his deep voice just a slight key above Arek’s, he whispers, “It could have been ours. We could have changed everything.”

  “Change what?”

  “You never left me a choice.”

  “Navin,” I begin, but when I say his name, he closes his eyes to accept the sound with pleasure. “A choice for what?”

  He reaches out and grabs my hair, forcing my head to twist at an uncomfortable angle, and with a fast hand he places the tip of the blade to the back of my ear.

  “Please,” I whisper.

  He presses his cheek to mine with his hand still ripping at my hair on the other side, yet the raging battle within him tells me nearly everything and I know he hates this. “All I wanted was you on my side.”

  “Please,” I whisper again.

  His knife slowly presses harder into my skull and I cry out, “Navin!”

  From the shadows, Arek suddenly jumps out, sending both himself and Navin rolling across the hot pavement. No one in the Epheme world can fight like them. They move with a technique that leaves no room for error and at a rate of speed and precision that Ephemes will never match.

  “Willow!” Sassi is suddenly there at my right and before long she calls to Kilon. With a deep yell, Kilon pulls the metal apart until it releases from my leg. I scramble to my feet and even though we are beat up from the accident, we run—leaving the wreckage and Arek behind.

  “This way!” Sassi yells as we pass a crowd that has gathered. A dark alley is nearby, and we rush to where an ambulance waits.

  “How?” I ask about the waiting vehicle.

  “Get in!” Sassi commands and together we jump into the back, quickly closing the double doors. Sassi yells to the driver in the front, “Five minutes!”

  The driver looks into the rearview mirror. His paramedic’s hat is perfectly clean and creased in the middle—which is when Geo’s kind, but serious eyes become noticeable. “No more than five.”

  Just then Peter peers around the passenger seat, his smart phone in his hands. “The wreck’s exploded on social media . . .”

  Kilon grumbles, his eyes rolling. “There is no control with that element. Navin has everything because of it.”

  Sassi nods and then we sit—our eyes fixate on the only entrance and exit of the alley, however Sassi and Kilon seem to be in sync as they check the time every thirty seconds. Three minutes pass, then four, and when the countdown turns to ten seconds, Sassi anxiously tells Kilon, “We can’t wait. You know that. If we wait the more chance something goes wrong.”

  “Everything’s already gone wrong,” he grumbles, and Sassi doesn’t argue.

  My eyes are glued to the entrance and my heart sinks when the ten seconds fall one at a time reminding me of the old clicking train station numbers when you see that your train has already left. Arek never shows. Geo starts the engine, checks one more time with Sassi, and then roars out of the alley.

  Nearly every civilian on the street is taking video of the inferno with their phones. Through the thick black smoke Arek backs away from several men, their guns aimed toward him. They open fire. His body jerks from the barrage of bullets.

  “No!” I yell.

  Kilon starts to open the door, but Sassi stops him, “No! He’s on his own. I promised him.”

  Kilon’s veins pulse in his muscles when his fist pounds against the door. The medical equipment falls to the floor and he yells at the top of his lungs. Geo clenches his jaw but still drives away.

  Somewhere between the crash site and the airport Sassi has coordinated an exchange of the ambulance for an SUV. It takes just thirty seconds to pass the keys and jump in to the new leather seats. There is empty space beside me, and I reach out with a shaking hand to touch the seat belt where Arek would be. Smoke and oil are embedded in our clothes so we keep the windows open to air out the smell, even though this makes Kilon uncomfortable.

  “He can take care of himself?” I ask. I peer through the rearview mirror at Sassi. “That’s why he’s second in command. Right?”

  After several moments, she clears her throat. “That’s right.”

  However, Geo interjects, “There is only one who can equal him.” I look up at Geo, who is still wearing the paramedic’s hat. “When Arek was young, a man named Alfonzo Geretzima, leader of the Umbramanes—”

  Sassi interrupts while staring through the dark window, her voice a deep rumble. “Umbramanes means the Shadow Ghosts. They’ll take your life before you know they’re there.”

  Geo continues, “Just like Gyre saw something in me that he could refine, Alfonzo has spent his life searching for those Velieri who can join the Umbramanes. Every Velieri begi
ns training when they’re young—beyond their school studies and just like football players are drafted, Velieri can be chosen for something specific if they exhibit certain characteristics. At one time Alfonzo found two who he knew were destined to be a part of the Ghosts. He didn’t like the idea that they were siblings, too many things could go wrong there, but he decided to take Arek and Navin anyway. Yet both would be a disappointment. One would eventually be excommunicated, and the other . . . the other chose a woman.”

  Peter, who kept silent much of the time, his face black from soot, said, “The Umbramanes aren’t allowed to live normal lives. They are to live like ghosts . . . invisible to the world around them. And Arek is one of the best, Willow. Alfonzo made sure of that.”

  The lights of the airport are getting closer through my window. “He left Alfonzo for me?”

  Kilon grins, “From a man’s perspective, there isn’t any other choice.”

  Several minutes later, the stairs descend from the jet. Briston and Mak are the first to reach us, while I can see Beckah searching the group. When she is close, she is the first to ask, “Arek?”

  “Left behind,” Sassi says with resolve, just before she disappears in the jet clearly upset by her necessary choice.

  It’s been several days since Arek has been gone. It feels wrong to stop at a hotel while he is still missing, but Sassi and Briston decide it best to hide within the safety of a Velieri hotel. We have traveled so long and far that I don’t know what city we are in.

  A chubby, balding doorman with a kind smile steps aside, pulling the heavy glass open. “Welcome back Mr. and Mrs. Pierne.” The man with chubby cheeks and a bulbous nose then notices me between them, and his eyes grow wide. “Welcome back, Mrs. Rykor.” I didn’t know what to say to his obvious familiarity. How many times had Remy heard that in her life . . . Mrs. Rykor?

  “Thanks, Joe,” Kilon says as we step into the grand foyer of the hotel.

  Large swooping scallops have been carved out of the ceiling, reminding me of cardboard egg crates, however these are in a natural wood with walls that are charcoal gray.

  “Only Velieri stay in the upper levels. The facade is that of a regular hotel, but Velieri own it and run it. It’s like a safe house,” Sassi explains.

  “Do Velieri only shop at Louis Vuitton and Cartier?” I ask when noticing people’s bags and suitcases.

  “Most can certainly afford it,” Sassi grins.

  We pass a Michael Kors boutique in the lobby. “Michael Kors belongs here?”

  “Michael’s been reinventing his style for eight hundred years and becomes a name in every century. Most of us change what we do all the time, but that man . . . that man truly just loves clothes. I was so grateful when he got us away from Elizabethan collars.”

  I notice the posture of everyone in the foyer straightens and their eyes turn inquisitively when we enter. Several people hurry to us, taking our bags from our hands and ushering us through the crowd. “It’s so good to have you back. Briston already told us you would be here soon,” the young man with curly red hair and a face full of zits says as he tries to throw a heavy bag over his shoulder, yet it slides off several times. Finally, Kilon reaches over and takes it back. “The others are waiting for you. Here’s the key.”

  “Of course, thank you,” Sassi answers as she takes the key.

  Suddenly we are interrupted by a loud woman with a pink diamond studded suitcase rolling behind her. “My boyfriend told me the rumor that you were back . . . and you end up in the same V hotel as me. It’s unbelievable.”

  Kilon quickly blocks her from coming closer and she looks at him with irritation.

  “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Can I just get one selfie?”

  “You are not serious?” Sassi asks.

  “It’s just so amazing!”

  Kilon and Sassi deny her quickly and lead me away.

  “People have lost their minds,” Sassi whispers as we enter the elevator.

  The sheets shift beneath me. There have been many times in my life when sleep has been difficult, but in the last two days since Arek’s been gone, the hours tick by so slowly that I beg for sunlight. The cars on the street outside my window are a strange uncomfortable drum that I can’t shut off.

  At two in the morning, the air in the room changes and shivers jump down one vertebra at a time. There are no unusual sounds in my room, only a grave awareness that I’m not alone. The unnerving idea of the supernatural isn’t new and even now after all of this has happened, it is truly easier to believe. The unchained rocking of my heart won’t settle as my eyes wait for something in the shadows to move.

  A breath rushes past my ear when I hear the whisper, “He’s here.”

  I wait, cemented to the weak covers of my bed as though they will be able to protect me, until I hear the words again, “He’s here.”

  My puckering skin continues along my body as I slowly melt out from under the blankets and my feet stretch on the carpet. The air is unusually thick as I guardedly walk toward the door. I’ve never experienced this . . . I think.

  For a moment I hesitate in the darkness, yet something strange happens like the energy in the room swells, even the walls creak from the pressure. My head swings around, checking every corner, but I know, even though the room is empty there is something there with me. My temperature rises and my heart races.

  “What’s happening?” I whisper to the room, hoping that it won’t talk back. My mother’s influence on me is obviously strong.

  That’s when the door to the room, despite its weight and size, opens just an inch. The urge to run the opposite direction and bid this unexpected ghost good-bye is intense, yet the power behind me pushes my bare feet along the ground until I must lift them or risk rug burn. Slowly and carefully I open the door and peer into the hall.

  No one is there.

  Still the supernatural rubs their hand along my skin until the bumps stay permanently. Just as I am about to turn back, something at the end of the hall catches my eye. Clean but bruised and cut fingers slowly emerge around the wall. Paralyzed and catching my breath, like a sailor before an ominous sky, I wait.

  Despite the light above flickering and the smell of newly shampooed carpet wafting through the hall, nothing can afford my attention more than the large figure in clean jeans and a black T-shirt, scraping the wall to stay upright. I step forward, waiting for him to look at me; my knuckles are white with tension.

  Slowly, Arek’s sick green eyes look up as sweat drips down his forehead, his face the color of the Swiss Alps in winter.

  “Arek!” I rush forward, wrapping my arms around him, but it is then that he gives up the fight. His body drops to the ground, and that is when I see the blood seeping through his clean shirt.

  “Kilon!” I yell. Beneath Arek’s shirt is a body riddled with bullets, some seeping and some fighting to heal.

  Kilon bursts out of his room just next to mine with his gun ready and pointed.

  “Kilon! It’s Arek!” I yell.

  It takes just seconds before Kilon slides across the ground on his knees, ending just at Arek’s side.

  “How did he find us?” I ask Kilon.

  “Our group has a tracker for things like this—one that no one else can connect to,” Kilon explains as he rips open Arek’s shirt to reveal multiple gunshot wounds.

  Soon, everyone is there, and the men carry Arek into a dark hotel room as Sassi calls for a Velieri doctor. He is lifeless as they lay him on a bed.

  “Why hasn’t he healed?!” I ask over my father’s shoulder.

  Geo doesn’t look at me but speaks while he pulls off Arek’s clothing. “It doesn’t work like that. The bullets will continue to kill unless they’re removed. It might be too far already. Any Epheme would have been dead immediately.”

  It takes ten minutes for the doctor to arrive. With my back up against the wall, I watch as they pull the bullets from deep holes or cut into him to remove those that lie within the swollen and deterio
rating tissues. For three hours his naked body doesn’t move as the doctor works. He doesn’t groan and his arm hangs lifeless off the bed.

  “He has one in his head. I don’t know what it has done,” the doctor says, quiet and controlled. Just then the heart monitors start to alarm, causing everyone to rush. Geo jumps on the bed and starts compressions until they must pull Arek to the floor for a harder surface.

  “What’s happening?!” I call out.

  Yet Beckah grabs my arm and pulls me from the room.

  When I was a child, my mom took me on one of her business trips where we stayed at a hotel that was the nicest I had ever been to. Every morning, we woke early and would walk the empty halls, take the elevator, and end up in the restaurant downstairs to devour breakfast. There is something about the hotel when no one is up—not even the sun—that gives me a peaceful feeling . . . hopeful for what is to come. My mother’s short-lived job had provided us a memory to cherish. The lower light of the early dawn cast a calm glow on everything, and holding her hand as I walked through the halls was all the comfort I needed in the world.

  Now, in the early hours as I stare out the window of the Velieri Hotel to the quiet street below, this memory runs through my mind, yet it seems slightly tainted. Had we known the truth, or what would become of my mother, or what would become of this life, would she have treated me differently? What is now abundantly clear is that I never truly belonged to her. Obviously, there is so much more to the universe than I can ever claim to understand. My mother’s beautiful face smiling at my reaction to the elevator, the grandness, or the moment to be alone with just her, flashes in my mind and there is no doubt . . . it happened. She and I had done this.