The Wake Up (The Seers Book 1)

by Angela Panayotopulos

  She didn’t have something else to do today, now that classes were canceled. She could have visited her mother, but comatose patients never complained of tardy visitors. She had no inclination to visit her father, who had refused to speak to anyone since learning of Anastasia’s condition. She didn’t feel like driving an hour’s journey west to visit Pappou, either; he would be busy with Sophia, who would be busy with homework.

  So she smiled at Khalil. Her friend’s lips curved up in response. His smile came easily, radiating from his eyes and out of the pores of his face.

  That is the way of angels.

  . . .

  They walked together to the outskirts of campus, out into the field behind the tennis courts, a thin crust of snow crackling beneath their shoes. They crossed a straggly piece of no man’s land that the campus had failed to buy from its obstinate owner. She followed him over a fence, then through a grove of trees. They stopped before a derelict paint-peeling box of a building, punctuated by wooden planks nailed over the windows as if each such gap was a coffin, as if each plank worked to contain the ghosts within. The building lingered as one of the many abandoned warehouses of companies that chose to move their businesses offshore, where no rulings or regulations could touch them yet. Such buildings were said to be rat-infested at best, haunted at worst. Lexi had never felt a great inclination to visit and investigate.

  Lexi sighed. She tugged on Khalil’s hand. “Are you going to kill me?” she whispered, half serious.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he whispered back.

  She followed him around to the back of the building. He brushed aside a curtain of snow-fringed vines with his hand. Ice and ivy fell away to reveal a painted red door.

  “Shall we?” he said.

  He pushed at the door and Lexi followed him in, her heart pounding a mile a minute.

  She trusted Khalil more than she trusted most people she knew. A sense of foreboding lingered on her shoulders nonetheless, a heavy shawl woven of doubt and dread. Lexi had seen enough movies to know that such warehouses were where the non-protagonists came to die. Littered with dust and debris, with shafts of pale light flooding through the cracks between the boards that barred the windows, this dark and dank labyrinth of cracked columns and empty spaces was the perfect set for a horror flick.

  And then, in the heart of this, a few heartbeats’ walk away, really, though it felt like ages: a second red door.

  Khalil gave her a reassuring smile, turned the latch, and stepped back to let her walk through first. A shaft of light streamed out through the crack of the door, now ajar. A streak of dirt materialized in front of Lexi’s feet, glistening like stardust.

  She took a deep breath. One of her favorite quotes fleeted through her mind. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. It had been spoken by a brilliant man, written down by someone else in a book she’d once read. Lexi gazed at Khalil a moment, imagining the ephemeral glimpse of his wings. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

  She stepped through the door and into the light.

  11 / The Tzami

  “‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.

  ‘You must be,’ said the Cat,

  ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’”

  –Lewis Carroll

  Oasis.

  That was the first word that came to Lexi’s mind.

  Narnia was the second.

  Both words agreed with the place. As in deserts and in novels, things here were not as they seemed. Abandoned derelict warehouses, for example. That Steve Jobs knew what he’d been talking about.

  Pools of color patterned the stone floor, and Lexi glanced up to see an entire roof ceiling made of thick stained glass, possibly sourced by El Greco once upon a time, covered now by the thinnest layer of snow. Vibrant tapestries hung along the wood-paneled walls. A bar stretched along the far end of the room, the massive mirror behind it—Lexi automatically averted her face—taking up the entire wall. A cozy stone fireplace had been built in one corner, filled with lit candles that wouldn’t cause a smoke-belching chimney. The room was an oasis of potted olive trees and rosebushes, coffee tables, wicker chairs, thick rugs that covered honey-hued floorboards, and wooden bookcases brimming with books. An instrumental Middle Eastern melody floated out from the speakers.

  There were people, too. A dozen or so students, cradling their humming laptops, thick books, and coffee mugs the size of soup bowls. Some raised their heads to see the newcomers. Some looked familiar.

  “If you try to pinch me,” Lexi murmured, “I will snap off your fingers.”

  The Yemenite laughed.

  They walked through the one-room building, Khalil making introductions. Lexi followed her friend towards the bar, smiling back awkwardly at the curious stares she received. They reached the bar and pulled out two stools. Straddling one of them, Khalil leaned over to pull the black braid of an Indian girl who was studying with her book propped against the counter.

  “Think your horns could use a trim, gir,” he teased. Anyone who knew him longer than a day knew it was Khalil’s quirk to drop the “l” in girl. “They’re cutting off the view.”

  The “gir” turned, eyes narrowed. She jerked her braid out of his hand. “Your face is cutting off the view,” she retorted. “How ‘bout we trim that off?” She craned her head to peek around Khalil at Lexi. Her face lit up in a white-toothed smile, her cheeks dimpling. “I’m Sonya. Fresh blood?”

  Lexi didn’t realize she was gaping until Khalil reached over and tapped her jaw.

  “Best to keep that shut. There’s the occasional mosquito. A good source of protein, but—”

  “You can See,” Lexi sputtered.

  Sonya blinked. She glanced at Khalil worriedly.

  I could have sworn he said “horns.” Oh shit. Was it a metaphor? It was a metaphor. Now they think I’m crazy. It took all of Lexi’s willpower to keep from face-palming herself and bolting for the door. Nice.

  Khalil caught Lexi just as she slid off the stool.

  “You brought her here without telling her anything?” Sonya swiveled in her seat. She leaned her elbows back against the bar and glared at Khalil. “What are you, six?”

  He was too busy beaming at Lexi’s face to notice. “I knew it. I knew she could See. You just freaked her out.”

  Lexi took a deep breath. Everyone at the bar was staring over at them now. But Khalil’s hands on her shoulders felt comfortingly real. “How—you knew?—you mean, do all of you…?”

  “We can See,” Khalil confirmed. “With a capital ‘s’, if you prefer. You’re here because I knew you could, too. I sensed it.” He grinned as Lexi grimaced; clapping her back, he forced her to sit back on the stool. “I’ve also noticed you’re good at keeping your mouth shut. Am I right?”

  Lexi gulped.

  Khalil’s smile faded. “You’re still alive, so you’re doing something right. You realize how deadly it would be to share such a secret to someone who abides by Ruling 666. I brought you here because I trust you. The people here are family. Some of us have taken beatings for each other. We’d take bullets if we had to.”

  Lexi turned her head and studied the room more carefully. Twenty-odd faces stared back. She recognized two of them from her classes; she’d seen a handful of the others around campus, at the gym or in the library. She’d interacted with them, suspecting nothing. Here it was, then. The sanctuary she’d sought for so long, revealed mere months before graduation.

  “I won’t,” she promised. “I’ll never tell. Only my grandfather knew; he taught me to hide it and control myself. Yet you all See and you’re so glad of it.”

  “As you should be, too. You’re not crazy just because the real crazies say so.” Khalil reached over and wiped a traitorous tear from Lexi’s cheek. He shook her shoulder until she smiled, and she smiled all the more because this was something that Farhad used to do at El Greco. “And that�
�s something to toast to! What’ll it be? Ey, George! Still have any of that poison you people drink? Rake? Raccoon?”

  Lexi laughed and pushed Khalil away.

  “Ah, we’ve a fellow Greek in the house.” A slender man appeared behind the bar, cradling a crate of beers. He eased them onto the counter and looked over at his newest customer. Lexi stared back. Dark blond hair, bright brown eyes, and the hint of a familiar accent. “Raki, as we normal people call it. First round is on me if you tell me your name.”

  “Then you’re going to ask me which village I’m from,” Lexi added, catching on.

  “Yes.” George’s laugh rebounded from the walls as he poured the drinks. “Then I will ask you how many goats your grandfather kept and what church you attended growing up. Due to our joy at the congruence of our cultural heritage, we’ll dance some syrtaki and finish that by smashing a dozen plates on the floor I just finished cleaning. Because this is what Greeks do, eh Khalil?”

  “Not cool,” Sonya muttered. “He’s always out of raccoon when we ask for it.”

  Lexi grinned and accepted the shot glass from George. Khalil was nodding, unfazed by the sarcasm. “Cultural identity is important!”

  “For the love of Allah,” a new voice complained, “he puffs up faster than a puffer fish.” A pair of dark eyes peered over Khalil’s shoulder. “Introduce us, you peasant. Oh, never mind.” The newcomer’s square-jawed face relaxed in a smile as he stretched out a chocolaty arm over Khalil’s shoulder. “I’m Ibrahim. The cooler Yemenite.”

  “Gir, meet my cousin,” Khalil said. Lexi shook Ibrahim’s hand. The others accepted their glasses from George.

  “To truth and friendship,” Sonya offered. They clinked their glasses together. Lexi threw back her head and downed the burning liquor, glancing at the mirror behind the bar as she did so. From the corner of her eye, she saw them.

  Five angels drinking fire.

  12 / Dominic

  “‘You mustn’t be afraid of the dark.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Shadow. ‘I’m afraid of the people in the dark.’”

  –Neil Gaiman

  Lexi met Dominic in a hospital. That should have been telling, but she’d had a lot on her mind. For the past month, she’d cradled the secret of the Tzami within her ribcage. She kept it locked inside faithfully, telling no one. It pulsed and pounded against her bones, hating captivity. Its energy kept her warm; the warmth made her happy.

  Nova Hospital had changed since her mother’s admittance two and half years ago. Once reputed as the cleanest and brightest hospital in northern Virginia, Nova had become a labyrinth of cold walls, shadowy corners, and dull white lights. Dark plastic sheets had replaced the glass windows; they stretched out like flat black holes that swallowed sunlight and sanity. Though they were made of thick material, a few had already ripped. Given its dwindling budget, the hospital chose to invest in medicine rather than anti-reflective films. It was as if, by refusing to board up the windows, they still held on to a dream that Ruling 666 would be repealed.

  Supposing any members of Congress had hearts to begin with, the onset of cold weather seemed to freeze them completely. That January, as President Daimon hurled into his third year in office, the bombings had increased in number and intensity. They’d targeted a few houses that hadn’t filled or filmed their windows, a library that still used a glass photocopier, and a gym secretly (or not-so-secretly) prized for having the last wall-to-wall mirror. Congress’s lenience was waning. Lexi prayed everyone had been safely evacuated before the explosions. Congress seemed to care less and less about that, too.

  Lexi played hopscotch over the bodies in the halls. Nova, like so many hospitals across the nation, swarmed with casualties after each episode. Wounded nomads lined the walls with their blankets and backpacks, waiting for beds and drugs. Most doctors no longer had the heart or energy to turn them away. These days the place seemed more hostel than hospital.

  People raised their heads in the breeze of Lexi’s passing, smelling the snow on her scarf. A few faces looked up and greeted her. She smiled back.

  Regulars, like her.

  Lexi pulled her hooded crimson coat—her mother’s coat, to be fair, extracted from her mother’s closet; armor with an aroma of vanilla and cinnamon—closer around her body, crossing her arms over her chest. The corridors shrunk around her with each step. Something felt off. Something new prowled these floors, something that sucked the space into its lungs and pressed up against people’s eyeballs. Paranoia, perhaps. Or the night slipping through the ripped plastic sheets. She felt the darkness and told herself she could walk away from it, forgetting how difficult it is to run from that which you cannot see coming.

  Lexi swerved around corners and jostled her way up the stairs. She couldn’t have known the map to her mother’s room better if it had been tattooed on the back of her hand. It didn’t matter that most of the signs were gone, missing since the early days of the rioting. Most of them could be found on walls of the local college dorms. Apparently having CLINICAL DECISION UNIT and UROLOGY DEPARTMENT taped up above your bed could help get you laid.

  The next flight of stairs was crammed, people sitting in the stairwell because it was warmer than the halls. Lexi pushed her way to the staff-only elevator on the opposite side of the hall. Fewer people here, but the regular elevator would be in high demand. She decided to risk it and summoned the big elevator, the one used only to transport hospital beds. HOSPITAL PERSONNEL ONLY, the sign said. But it was already on her floor. Lexi slipped inside and pressed the floor number of her mother’s ward.

  “Hold up!” someone yelled.

  Cursing her luck, she punched the doors open button.

  A white-coated doctor wheeled a hospital bed into the elevator, hunched over so he could steer more effectively. He reminded Lexi, somehow, of a wolf guarding its slaughtered prey from other wolves. A big-bosomed brunette nurse jogged at his heels. Lexi knew the nurse—a decent woman who sometimes checked up on Anastasia—but didn’t recognize the doctor. She looked away, hoping they wouldn’t speak, and hardened her face. I belong here too. God knew she’d pulled at least as many sleepless shifts as they had. The least this God-forsaken place could do was give her access to her mother.

  The elevator doors hissed shut. There wasn’t much else to see in here, what with the mirrors extracted. It was a well-lit, claustrophobic, upright coffin. The quiet enveloped them, punctuated only by David Brubeck’s jazzy Take Five.

  The nurse pressed a floor number with a glance in Lexi’s direction. When she recognized her as Anastasia’s daughter, her scowl softened. The doctor shared no such sentiments. His eyes narrowed to slits as they scrutinized Lexi’s face, regarding her as if examining a faulty X-ray.

  Lexi bristled. See something you don’t like, Doc? An anomaly in the bone structure?

  The doctor’s hands tightened on the bed rails until his knuckles whitened. “She looks old enough to read. What do you think?” He didn’t even bother to address Lexi. Talking to her would give her importance; it would make her a person, so he snarled the words at the nurse. “Which part of Hospital Personnel Only do you think she found incomprehensible?”

  Well, this is only getting better. Lexi glanced at the elevator dial, moving at a snail’s pace. Three floors to go.

  The nurse scanned through the papers on the clipboard pinned to the patient’s bed. “Okay, so she accidentally took the wrong elevator. It won’t happen again. Stop snapping at people. You know it’s crazy enough around here as it is.”

  Lexi transferred her gaze to the patient. She sensed he was young, but sickness had tattered his skin into peels of wallpaper. The man’s bones gleamed through that paper-thin flesh. On his neck, below his ear, Lexi noticed a black tattoo in the shape of a swallow. A tattooed phrase circled the bird.

  Dum spiro spero, it said.

  The patient began to wheeze. His body convulsed, rattling against the iron railings that caged him. The bed quaked as if made of clashing tectonic p
lates; the bedsprings squeaked. The nurse yelled something as the doctor’s hands flurried over the man’s body. Lexi bit her fist to keep from screaming.

  The patient ceased shaking. His eyes rolled back in his head.

  “Damn it.” The doctor grabbed the patient’s wrist. “At the end of my shift, too.”

  “He’s going into shock,” the nurse confirmed. “We have to get him into Surgery immediately.”

  The elevator pinged as it reached the landing of the coma patient ward, delaying “immediately.” Lexi’s heart pounded. She felt numb and breathless, as if someone had doused her with a bucket of ice water. The doctor whirled to face her, his finger like an extended claw.

  “If you ever take this elevator again—”

  Shame blurred Lexi’s sight. The elevator doors slid open. She burst out as if the Devil himself reached for her.

  She crashed into Dominic instead.

  . . .

  Lexi had hurled out with her head lowered like a ram’s, blinded by her tears. Her skull came into contact with something solid, soft, and that smelled of cashmere kept in mothball closets. Before she could rebound from the impact, a pair of hands reached out and seized her shoulders. They steadied her.

  The grueling heartache, the pent-up frustrations, the motherless years, the shame that her impatience may have cost a man his life. They tumbled onto her shoulders and pushed into her lungs. All the things.

  Lexi gasped for air.

  The strange hands handled her as if someone had written delicate across her forehead with a sharpie. They wiped at her tears and pulled her forward until she smushed her face on someone’s shirt, her hands curled beneath her chin as she fought to stifle her sobs. For a few seconds, she let herself grieve in a manmade cocoon, protected.