by SGD Singh
Lexi looked up. “You know who she is, then?”
Asha shrugged. “I know she’s not who she says she is. That she’s running from something. Hiding? It’s fuzzy.”
“Fuzzy,” Lexi nodded. “And you told Uma what, exactly?”
“I told her I’m certain we need her.” Asha felt herself getting impatient. “Remember that when she saves your ass.”
Lexi burst into laughter. “She’s what, five one, ninety pounds? No training whatsoever.”
Asha sat down. “We have no idea what her training is.”
“Oh yeah?” Lexi smiled smugly. “Well, I happen to know who she is at least”
“Really? Hold that thought, Aquila’s here.” Asha jogged to the door and let Aquila and Nidhan in, announcing, “Lexi says she knows who Jax is.”
“I ran her prints after dinner,” Lexi said before anyone sat down. “And I took this pin off her jacket for you to do your voodoo thing.” Asha caught the pin Lexi threw at her and studied the tiny Ferris wheel. It had a gold star with a red stone at its center, and tiny antique cars and train engines surrounding it.
“Well?” Nidhan said, settling into a chair with an apple from the fruit table. “Who is she? And why did you drag her here if you don’t even know who she is?”
Asha waved a hand. “How many times do I have to explain that Seers are not all knowing? Let the woman speak.”
Lexi looked at them silently for a long moment before saying, “Jacqueline Beckett Covington.”
Nidhan and Aquila shrugged, but Asha knew the name. “Wait. The Jacqueline Beckett Covington? Daughter of Ava Madison and Konrad Alastair Covington the Third?”
“The very same,” Lexi said. “Missing for twelve years and presumed dead.”
Asha stared at Aquila as she tried to remember the tabloids she’d seen everywhere as a child, and Nidhan said, “Hello? I can’t hear what you’re saying when you do that.”
“I was just looking at him,” Asha said. It’s hard not to.
Aquila grinned.
“A ha! What was that?” Nidhan pointed a finger at them. “You were not just looking, either!”
“Focus, people,” said Lexi. “We happen to be housing America’s most famous missing person. Who has been missing since she was seven so—”
Asha smiled. “Who has avoided being found since she was seven. I told you she wasn’t entirely without training.”
“Yeah,” Lexi rolled her eyes. “When that Vampire was ripping her throat out, she looked real trained.”
Asha held Jax’s pin and closed her eyes. The room grew silent as she took a deep breath, feeling for the connection to the owner of the object. The only way she could explain Seeing was that it was like making a phone call or opening a website—a website with the ability to convey memories, feelings, and emotions.
“That Vampire, the blond one, the human was… her only family, at least in Jax’s mind. He… saved her life after she ran away, when she was still a child,” Asha felt a wave of Jax’s early fear wash over her. “From some really bad people. He doesn’t seem much older himself. Ten, maybe? Before seven, her memories are unclear, but there’s pain—misery.” Asha shook her head as a series of pictures flashed through her mind, recoiling at their twisted perversion. “Jax was never kidnapped. She ran away from a depraved father. And… mother?” Asha winced. No child, no living soul should have to endure this. “I think… both. Her mother and father were into some extremely sick shit, along with… friends of theirs.”
Lexi’s voice darkened dangerously. “And they seemed so upset at the time. The lying fucks.”
“Language,” Nidhan said.
“They were probably scared their… activities would become public,” said Asha, opening her eyes and trying to breathe through her rage and repulsion. “Having their abuse made public would have destroyed their reputations, their fortune, maybe even their lives if a good lawyer took the case against them. They would have gone to prison certainly.”
“With money like that?” Lexi made a noise of disgust. “Unlikely.”
Nidhan took out his phone and began texting the information to Uma and the rest of the Jodha. They would contact the FBI. Arresting Jax’s parents was a start, at least.
“So now what?” Aquila asked.
Asha looked pointedly at Lexi. “We offer Jax our friendship. Show her what we do. If I’m right, she’ll be interested in joining The Guard. After what they did to her brother, she’ll want to see Underworlders destroyed.”
Lexi stared. “Joining? What are we, a country club now?”
“Can random civilians even join?” Nidhan asked. “I thought that was, like, unprecedented.”
“It is,” said Aquila. “But so is Asha.”
And what’s this with Kelakha? You’re playing match-maker now?
Nidhan made an irritated noise. “You’re doing it again.”
Asha laughed. “I’m not playing match-maker. I asked him to help because ’Lakha happens to possess unpatronizing, genuine sympathy for those in pain, and the skill to keep her safe.”
“Okay,” Aquila smiled. “Whatever you say, Bachola.”
“I’m not!” Asha insisted. “Why?”
He offered her his room. In front of everyone.
Did he now? Asha was grinning before she could stop herself. Interesting.
Lexi waved an arm. “Moving on. So you told Uma Jax is here to stay and she was just… fine with that?”
“Fine is putting it strongly,” Asha conceded. “But Chakori backed me up. And Barindra agreed to give her three days until the other Seers arrive for graduation. I’m not worried.”
Lexi rose. “All right then. I’m gonna go get some sleep. You want me to start training her tomorrow?”
“Definitely not,” Asha pulled back in mock horror. “We want to befriend her, not make her wish she’d never been born.”
Chapter 8
Six hours later, Asha knocked on Jax’s door. When it opened she smiled, trying not to react to the civilian’s pale face, bloodshot eyes, and angry glare. She looked like a furious, trapped animal. “I hope you slept well,” Asha told her brightly.
“Fine, thanks,” Jax said. Hua Tseng’s clothes, although the smallest size of any of The Guard’s, were still a little loose on the small-framed girl.
“Before I give you a tour of the rest of the facility, can we talk?” Asha looked pointedly past Jax into the room.
Jax moved aside to let Asha in. Light shone behind curtains, and Asha hoped it gave the newcomer the impression of windows where there was only stone.
“Tell me who killed Lucas,” Jax demanded.
Asha leaned forward, prepared for this conversation. “Technically the Vampire inhabiting his corpse was the one who killed him. We destroyed him, and we think all other Vampires in Vegas, last night. There’s no way to be one hundred percent sure, though.”
“Explain how they exist,” Jax said.
“I will. But first,” Asha met her eyes, watching her reaction carefully. “I should tell you we know who you are… Jacqueline.”
Jax flinched as if Asha had hit her, and jumped up.
“Do not call me that,” she breathed. “Don’t ever call me that.”
Asha opened her hand to reveal Jax’s pin and the civilian snatched it out of Asha’s palm, turning to the wall.
“You’re an adult now. No one could ever make you go back,” Asha said softly. “Not that we would want to. I just wanted you to know that we know, is all.”
Jax whirled to face her, pointing the pin at her head. “I would die before I went back,” she said. “You can know that, too.”
They stared at each other for a long moment.
“Will you have breakfast with us?” Asha said finally. “Or if you want, Kelakha can bring food to you here…”
“And you’ll explain all this?” Jax waved an arm around.
Asha nodded. “Even better. I’ll show you.”
“All right.” Jax tossed her pi
n on the bed and walked to the door. “And tell your scary blonde friend to leave my shit alone.”
“You got it.” Asha stood, following her.
Lexi and Hua Tseng were waiting when Asha and Jax joined them in the near-empty mess hall.
Hua Tseng offered Jax her hand, smiling. “Nice to meet you Jax. I’m Hua Tseng. Are the clothes okay?”
Lexi said, “It’s just for a few hours, until your own wardrobe is ready.”
“You got my size from my pin, too?” Jax asked, glaring at Lexi, who ignored it.
“Cameras in the hangar,” said Lexi, as if it should be obvious. “You need something to wear for the graduation party.”
“Graduation?”
Asha smiled. “You haven’t wondered why we’re all here?”
Jax shrugged, and Asha continued, talking slowly between bites as she tried to summarize their complicated network. “Everyone you’ve seen so far, except the angry woman with white hair, is part of The Infernal Guard’s graduating class. Each of us has a Talent that helps us, as a group, keep the world safe. There are five Talents: Healers, Illusionists, Tvastars—they have a weird relationship with metal and are weapons creators—warrior Jodha, and Seers. When we turned seventeen our Talents began to emerge, and our training started. There are training centers all over the world. After training for sixteen months, the whole class of new Guards gathers here at Central Headquarters for two weeks of joint exercises, like what you saw last night, then graduation.”
Jax asked, “Where did you train?”
“Punjab, India. And then Hong Kong,” Asha said, pushing aside the still-painful memories of the Punjab Headquarter’s destruction. She decided to change the subject. “Hua Tseng is an Illusionist. Show her, Tseng.”
Hua Tseng smiled, spreading her hands wide over the table, and closed her eyes. A moment later Jax gasped, jumping up and stumbling back against the wall as the floor dissolved, leaving them all at the edge of a deep pool of green water, fed by numerous waterfalls. Rainbows shimmered in a fine mist. Asha watched Jax gaze around at colorful birds singing amongst the tangle of green trees as cascades of flowers bloomed between branches.
“How the hell…?”
The scene faded away.
“Pretty cool, right?” said Lexi, apparently beginning to enjoy explaining things to Jax and smacking Hua Tseng’s arm. “Do another one.”
Touching her glass of water, Hua Tseng giggled as Jax leaned forward to watch a volcano erupt inside the glass, melting tiny houses as it flowed down a miniature mountain. Jax reached a hand into the glass, then pulled it back quickly as heat touched her skin.
“That’s… pretty cool, yeah.” Jax laughed.
Asha saw the moment the civilian realized she was laughing, and grief clouded her features again. Asha fought the urge to reach out for Jax’s hand, but a moment later, the civilian shook her head once, back in control of her emotions.
“So it was an illusion covering the entrance to this place when we landed through the ground.” Jax nodded, as if she had found a piece of a puzzle. She turned to Lexi and Asha. “So what do you two do?”
“Well,” Asha said, “Lexi here just broke the all time record for Underworlder kills in twenty-four hours. She’s a lean, mean, monster-killing machine.”
Lexi hesitated, but explained. “Most of us are Jodha. That means we can shift into animal form, and have heightened senses for detecting Underworlders within our realm. The majority can only shift to one animal, but a few, like Kelakha and Ariella, have multiple animals. ’Lakha holds the record at twenty.”
Jax’s eyes widened. “Twenty. And does it hurt when you…?”
“Not at all,” Lexi was warming up to the subject. “It’s just like… like waking up. A little disorienting at times, but painless.”
“Show her,” said Asha, elbowing Lexi in the arm.
“You show her,” Lexi said. “What do I look like, a trained pigeon?”
“So you all have a bunch of different… Talents? Asha is obviously a Healer.” Jax tapped her forehead. “But she also knows more than she should, even without stealing pins from a person’s jacket. And you were reading Aquila’s mind last night, weren’t you? Is that Seeing?”
Lexi stared, and Asha thought she might be a little impressed. “She’s observant, I’ll give her that.”
The civilian’s concentration was intense. It was as if she had decided to soak up as much information as possible, and Asha suspected her goal was to fill her mind with so many facts there would be no more room for grief.
“A Seer’s Talents are the most diverse,” she explained. “We have variations of every psychic phenomenon known through history, in some capacity or another.”
“So, Illusionist, Jodha, Healer, Tvastar, and Seer.” Asha watched Jax file the information away in her mind for later. “You’re a Healer and a Seer.”
Hua Tseng said, “Asha is the only one who has more than one Talent. She’s a Seer, a Jodha, and a Healer. The mind-reading is just a thing between soulmates.”
“Aquila is your soulmate.”
Asha felt herself begin to blush.
“So you all have soulmates? Like birds that mate for life?” Jax’s laugh sounded hysterical and Asha worried they were trying to explain too much, too soon.
“Nope,” said Hua Tseng. “Just Asha. She’s also a Commander.”
“What’s a Commander? Like making people do things against their will?”
“Pretty much,” Lexi laughed as Asha glared at her. “No, it just means after graduation she’ll run her own unit. It means people love to take orders from her. Usually.”
Hua Tseng said, “It means she’s a natural leader.”
Jax nodded. “That’s how you were able to get me in here when no one wanted me to come with you.” Asha watched her think about this, studying each of their faces. “I’m the first civilian, non-Infernal Guard person to ever set foot in this place, aren’t I?” Jax waved her arms around. “This Area 51 or whatever… Central Headquarters.”
Lexi glowered. “It’s unprecedented.”
Jax turned all of her attention to Asha. “So why me?”
“Three days, Jax. Remember?” Asha said. “You’ll tell me yourself in three days.”
Jax looked at Asha as if to say, Seriously? That’s not an answer. It was an expression Asha and every other Seer that ever existed grew very used to.
Jax shook her head, resuming her meal. “Okay. So what the hell is an Underworlder?”
Clearly I don’t need to worry about too much, too soon.
“All right, it’s like this.” Asha began laying carrots and string beans on the table. “There are seven upper realms, or Lokas, and seven lower worlds.” She lined up the carrots. “The higher-realms are, Bhu, Bhuras, Svar, Mahas, Janas, Tapas, and Satya—that’s us. Then there are the Underworlds.” Asha laid the string beans below the carrots, her rings sparkling in the light beneath the mural of warriors. “Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Rasatala, Talatala, Mahatala, and lastly, Patala.”
“All right,” Jax said slowly. “Like dimensions. And an Underworlder is anything that comes from below, and I assume they’re all pretty nasty. So how do they get from their world to ours? How does it work?”
This time Lexi definitely looked impressed.
“There are a limited number of portals,” Hua Tseng explained. “We protect them, and mostly keep the baddies out. But Underworlders have ways of gathering power from the portals using Witches to create what we call ‘flash portals’.”
“Witches.”
“Yeah.” Lexi jumped in. “Witches. Enslaved girls stolen at birth and made to do Underworlders’ dirty work.”
Jax paled, but she only asked, “Why don’t you just destroy all the portals? Like strengthening your borders.”
“It’s extremely dangerous, first of all,” said Hua Tseng. “And second, it would probably mess up the balance of the worlds in horrible, unthinkable ways.”
“Destroying the portals wo
uld cut us off from the upper realms as well, which would be… regrettable,” Asha said. She met Jax’s eyes, deciding to tell the civilian the entire truth, knowing Lexi would disapprove, would feel Asha had gone too far.
“And anyway, right now I’m the only person in this realm who can do it.”
“Asha!” Lexi hissed. “What the fuck?”
Asha sighed. She knew Lexi would now see Jax as a person with a death sentence on her head, dangerously undertrained for the knowledge Asha was sharing. And Lexi tended to lose her temper when she felt she had a hand in causing a helpless civilian’s death. It would be a long time before Lexi spoke to Jax again after this.
“You can destroy portals?” Jax said.
Asha met her stare. “Yes.”
Nidhan chose that moment to approach their table. He studied Lexi’s furious expression with alarm. He jerked his chin at her when Lexi glanced at him but she shook her head.
“Kelakha put the books in her room,” he said to no one in particular.
Asha, turned back to Jax, who was still staring at her. “We have another exercise with the Cape Town class. The books will answer a lot of your initial questions, and we can talk more. Will you meet us for lunch in three hours?”
Jax shot a look at Lexi. “An exercise, like yesterday? Last night was some kind of test, wasn’t it?” Asha thought the civilian looked like she might throw up.
“Yep.” Lexi stood, taking Nidhan’s arm and glared down at Jax. “Aced it.”
Chapter 9
Jax spent the next two days in a whirlwind of reading books with titles like Underworlder Wars Through the Ages, and Protecting Satya Life: An Infernal Guard History. Filling her mind with the impossible hidden world of monsters and heroes helped keep her thoughts away from Lucas, which she knew would cause her mind to shatter into a million hopeless pieces.
When she wasn’t reading, Jax went to the training rooms to watch the graduates’ mind-boggling demonstrations. Illusionists recreated some of the terrifying creatures she’d read about, but could never have imagined in her worst nightmares. Black smoke-like Asura took the shapes of their opponents’ worst fears. Desire-morphing Wraiths and iridescent, writhing dark puddles called Revenants transformed to ghosts of each challenger’s most heart-wrenching loss. And then there were the Zombies, Witches, Goblins, and, worst of all for Jax to watch, the Vampires.