The Nightwalkers Saga: Books 1 - 7

by Candace Wondrak

  A sigh escaped him before he said anything. “That’s because it’s not a Demon as you’re accustomed to. It’s much worse. Ancient. Primordial. One of the worst Demons to ever exist, actually.”

  “Primordial?” My gaze fell to the concrete below my feet.

  “Yes. Bigger, more powerful, much stronger than the Demons you purify today.” Koath paused and looked at me. His eyes weren’t worried, which to me, was a little strange due to the content of our conversation. “There are many different types of Demons, but for each Primordial, there’s only one. One Vexillion.”

  “And this Vexillion is like a werewolf?” I clarified.

  “No. Vexillion is evil and has no natural weaknesses. It’s nothing like a werewolf, but it’s the closest thing to it,” Koath corrected me as we reached my front door. “But you have nothing to worry about. Vexillion has been locked away for millennia, and I’m sure that we will soon learn what the white wolf truly is.”

  My hand touched the knob and I turned to smile at him. He had no freaking idea.

  It was two-thirty in the morning. Everyone was sound asleep. And since it was two-thirty in the morning and everyone was sound asleep, that meant I was finally able to sneak down the stairs, past Michael’s room, and into his personal library to look for the diary.

  I tossed the sheets off and slowly crept out of my room and down the hallway to reach the stairwell. I tip-toed down the steps, fearing that dreadful movie moment where the person who’s trying to sneak somewhere steps on the creaky stair, rubber ducky, or anything else that made lots of noise.

  Luckily, all was quiet. Michael’s door was the first one on the right. His bathroom was the second one and the library was the third. The entire left side of the floor was the sparing room, fitted with anything and everything you could think of. Too bad we hardly ever used it.

  When I reached the library’s wooden door, I caught my breath and opened it.

  Using my back to close the door quietly, I flicked the light switch and caused temporary blindness to myself. My eyes became accustomed to the light quicker than I thought they would. But that was good. I needed to hurry this up before I woke Michael up.

  I started at the bottom of the right wall, going up and over as quickly as I could without missing a binding. I had to be sure that I wasn’t overlooking it, but at the same time I didn’t want this adventure to last all night. I was a human being; I needed some sleep.

  Thirty minutes passed, and to my surprise, I had already made it through more than half of the library. Unconsciously, I skipped over a shelf because it was filled with books that had blue binding.

  But something caught my eye. I brought my eyes back to the shelf to see what that something was. And that something wasn’t there—a small, empty space stood between two books that caved in on each other.

  My expression turned into confusion while I outstretched a tentative hand and touched the dusty barrenness. Images of Raphael lecturing us in the library flashed through my mind, and I strained to see what had laid here before now.

  Brown leather. Torn binding.

  This was it. I gasped and tore my hand off of the shelf, staring at it quizzically. This was it, but it wasn’t here. Why not? If it wasn’t here, then where was it, who took it and why?

  Still…it was here before. Michael had the Daywalker woman’s diary. How did he get it? Just another mystery to add to the countless of others. It sucked that I got no answers from this venture.

  I couldn’t stop my shoulders from falling as I spun on my heel and walked to the door. I turned off the lights before twisting the handle and walking out. Dejectedness took over while I slowly headed for the stairs.

  I was never going to put together the puzzle, was I? Things just weren’t working out this time, and I had no clue why.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – Kass

  I rolled my eyes at the girl sitting next to me, who fidgeted and agonized over how she was going to tell Max that she was a Morpher, and a cougar at that. It did explain her athletic build, so it wasn’t like Max would refute it.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she whined, picking at the eraser on her mechanical pencil. “I don’t know what I’m going to say. Why does this have to be so hard?”

  My shoulders shrugged as I responded, “Because everything in life is hard?”

  “I guess so,” she mumbled, setting her head down gently on the physics book.

  “It’ll be okay,” I assured her, “just be happy that it’ll soon be over and then you won’t have to worry about it.”

  Claire’s head lifted, and it looked like she was going to say something, but a voice behind me spoke, “Kass?”

  My eyes met with a pair of bright blue ones that were hidden under shaggy light brown hair. His cheekbones were high and pronounced, and his jaw was square and defined. Judging from my seated position, the boy was around six feet, maybe a little less.

  Whoever this guy was, he was hot.

  I mentally snapped out of it, remembering how badly John turned out. Not good. Hormones or not, I had to keep myself in check. “Yeah?”

  A small smile formed on his face as he said, “Mr. Elsin wants to see you.”

  “Mr. Elsin?” I said aloud, my mind drawing a blank. Who was Mr. Elsin?

  Behind me, Claire laughed at my apparent foolishness. “The principal?” She offered when her laughter died down somewhat.

  “Oh, right,” I shrugged my mistake off. Maybe if I didn’t know Koath so well out of school, I would have remembered what his last name was. I looked back to the good-looking boy. “Now?”

  He nodded.

  I sighed and stood, looking back to Claire only once before following the kid out of the science room. All the while I wondered why Koath wanted to see me. What reason could he have to call me down during school that couldn’t wait until later?

  “You’re, uh…new this year, aren’t you?” The boy walked next to me, twisting his head to get a better look.

  I swallowed. Hard. “Yep.”

  “I’m glad I finally met you,” he spoke genuinely, “I’ve actually wanted to talk to you for a while now, but I figured you were with John, and then he transferred.”

  My voice was a little too quick to respond, “I’m not with John.”

  “Oh.” He blinked back in what I guessed was confusion. “So you’re not his girlfriend?” The second I shook my head no, he continued, “That’s great. I mean, I think it’s great. Good. That’s good.” He handled the other paper slips in his hand. “I, uh, better go deliver these…and also stop making a fool of myself in front of you. I’ll catch you later.”

  I said “Okay” as I watched him walk backwards down the hall. This guy was nice and cute and, since I had no idea who he was, he didn’t have a reputation as being a player. John had two out of those three.

  A broad smile swept across his chiseled face and he asked, “You going to the game tonight?”

  “Yeah,” I breathed out the word, not believing this was happening. Was this kid asking me out or something?

  “I’ll see you tonight.”

  I smiled my own awkward smile as I turned and walked to the office doors. That so didn’t just happen, did it? It did. It did really just happen. I was shocked. Flabbergasted. Astounded. Amazed. Astonished.

  Wait a second.

  I didn’t know the kid’s name.

  Cleo, the school’s secretary and also a Council lackey, glanced up from whatever she was typing. Her eyes were covered by her newly-trimmed bangs, but I could still tell she was looking at me. She fixed her baby doll shirt before saying, “Hello, Kass. He’s ready for you in his office.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled at her because I didn’t know what else to do and walked around her desk and into the principal’s room.

  Koath stood with his back to me. His gaze was fixated on something outside.

  I cleared my throat to signal that I was here, and also wondering why I was here.

  He flipped around, say
ing, “Oh. I didn’t hear you come in. Please.” Koath pointed to the door.

  I followed his instructions and closed the door, all the while thinking that this talk couldn’t be a good one if he made me close the door for it. I sat cautiously in an old leather chair that was opposite his after he motioned to it.

  “Don’t worry,” Koath said after taking in my freaked facial expression, “you’re not in trouble, or anything like that. I wanted to discuss something a little more personal that’s been on my mind a lot as of late.”

  My eyes flicked to the door.

  “No one can hear us, I made sure of that,” he answered my questioning eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” I could think of no other way to put it.

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Koath rubbed his tired eyes. “I want to tell you the truth.”

  “The truth?” I repeated. “The truth about what?”

  His voice was distant, along with his eyes, “The truth about why I left you three years ago.” Koath sat in his chair, leaning back and folding his hands across his lap.

  “The Council called you away.”

  He was quick to cut in, “The Council did call me away, but not because they needed me over there. The old chairman, Xavier, died and the line of succession was blurry. Once it was all sorted out…” Koath’s voice trailed off, leaving me clueless.

  I kept silent, figuring that was the best thing to do. Sooner or later he’d start talking again, because that’s what Koath did.

  “The new chairman heard of me and my situation, and forced me to undergo tests and interrogations, and once she thought I was well enough, more training. Eventually she assigned me a new Purifier, Max, and I was lucky enough that at that exact moment, they needed someone here to fill this position.”

  My mind tried piecing it all together, and it was surprisingly easy, except there was one, huge piece missing. “What was your situation?” I inquired slowly, fearing that if I said it too fast I’d have to repeat the question and that was something I didn’t want to do for the life of me.

  Koath sighed, replying, “My background isn’t perfect. There’s a lot of empty places, and normal Guardians don’t have that. Guardians are supposed to be flawless citizens of immaculate moral character with no bounty or criminal record. And most are.”

  My posture straightened out. “What does that mean? You…do?”

  “Believe it or not, I did have a run-in with the law many years back.”

  “What did you do?” Gosh, was I quick to jump to conclusions, or what?

  Koath’s eyebrows furrowed, saying, “I didn’t do anything. The police suspected me of a murder.”

  “Who?”

  “My wife.” His eyes fell to his lap. This must be hard for him, coming out and telling me all of this, after all this time. I never even knew Koath was married. He never spoke of his life before all this. “They thought I was the one who killed her, when in reality it was a Demon. I couldn’t defend myself properly, because Demon’s don’t legally exist, but Xavier pulled some strings and got me out of there. I owed that man my life. The new Chairman read my file and obviously thought that I wasn’t fit to take care of you.”

  “And she made you go back to England?” An unbelieving chuckle left me. “What a—”

  “Now,” Koath held a hand up, “don’t badmouth her. She was only doing her job, even though it wasn’t handled as it should have been.”

  “Okay,” I said, eyes scanning the cleaned room. No more school newspapers or yearbooks cluttering the room like they did when the other principal was alive, well, and working. Too bad John went psycho and changed all that.

  Biting my lip, I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Why wait all this time?”

  “I was ordered to keep it a secret. Technically, I’m still not supposed to tell anyone, even you. The Council doesn’t want stories like this getting out,” Koath added the last sentence as an afterthought; at least that’s what it seemed like.

  “Then why tell me now?” It was a legitimate question, seeing as how he’d been keeping tons of things from me.

  The bell rang as he shrugged. “I don’t know. Why does anyone do anything?” Koath smiled at my confused face before saying, “Now, I don’t want to make you late for your next class, so I’ll let you go.”

  “How does this look?” I hurriedly asked Raphael, who was busy sitting in a pew and reading one of his ancient books that I cleaned off. My hand rested on the broken altar that I fixed up. It was pretty nice.

  In my opinion, anyway.

  “How do you think it looks?” was the answer he gave without looking up.

  “How do I…no, I asked you first.” I wiped my sweaty forehead with the back of my hand and stomped the floor for an added effect.

  “And my answer to that was how do you think it looks.” Raphael’s green eyes broke contact with the book to stare at me.

  “I think it looks amazing. Wonderful, even. The best altar I’ve seen in my life,” I exaggerated. Truth be told, the altar was still a bit broken in the back, but I hoped he would look over that for now since I had a football game to get to and a good-looking boy to maybe meet.

  “This is a punishment, Kass, so I will not let you off easy just because you have places to go and people to see,” Raphael told me sternly. “The only way that will happen is if you finally tell me the truth about the staff. That is all it takes for this to end. The truth.”

  “But, Raphael,” I whined his name, probably pissing him off more by doing so, “you don’t understand, I’m needed at that football game. Really, I am.”

  Raphael appeared as if he didn’t give a flying ca-hoot about my problem, but he still said, “And why is that?”

  A) Claire was going to tell Max that she was a cougar Morpher, B) the sexy boy wanted to see me, and C) everyone needed my moral support for things to go right. Okay, so I might have made C up, but hopefully it was close to the truth.

  Instead of telling him all my reasons, I angrily sat back down and got to work on the altar. As I lifted up a screwdriver, I noticed my outfit.

  There was no way I could go to go to the football game dressed like this, covered in sawdust. That only meant that I had to go home before heading to the school’s field, which added about thirty more minutes to my snooze fest and subtracted the same time from my gorgeous boy time.

  If that thought didn’t make me work harder, I didn’t know what would.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine - Koath

  Max and Gabriel looked like two, normal teenagers who were going out on a Friday night to be with their friends. Nothing could have made me or Michael prouder, except if Kass was with them and not busy being put to work by Raphael. Purifiers masquerading as normal teenagers. They weren’t perfect at it, but they were good enough.

  I watched them leave Michael’s house and slam the door like the angst-ridden kids they were. I chuckled and leaned on the kitchen wall, staring squarely at Michael. “Isn’t it amazing?”

  Michael’s eye met mine. He pushed up his glasses, saying, “Isn’t what amazing?”

  “They’re growing up,” I answered curtly. “They’re becoming members of the society. It’s what all of us Guardians want, right?” Smiling, I sipped the tea Michael had been so kind to make me. Immediately, I held back a grimace. The tea was far too strong for my tastes.

  “Now that you mention it, it is bloody amazing,” Michael stated, walking into the living to fetch something.

  With a mouthful of tea, I smiled as much as I could while he left the kitchen. Once he was out, I made a quick dash to the sink and spat out the awful substance. Something just wasn’t right with that tea, or maybe it was the whole thing. There was always something about tea that I didn’t like.

  After all this time, I finally realized that maybe it’s the tea itself that I didn’t like.

  I wished I would have come to that conclusion sooner, for my sake.

  I set the cup down quietly when I became aware of the absolute silence th
at surrounded me. There was not a single sound coming from any direction. Where was Michael? If he was getting the paper from the other room, he should have been back by now.

  My gut told me to go to the living room, so I did.

  I found Michael. He layed on the floor, eyes closed.

  “Michael,” I anxiously said his name while falling to my knees beside him. I checked his pulse. He was still alive, only unconscious. My eyes saw red behind his collar, so my hand pulled it down to reveal choke marks.

  Son of a—

  Standing, I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the house phone. My fingers were quick to dial the emergency number as I started to walk out of the kitchen and back into the living room.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” A female’s voice said on the other line.

  “The address is…” My voice stopped the moment I noticed Michael’s laptop was suddenly on the coffee table, playing an oh-too familiar song. I dropped the phone in shock, but before it fell to the floor to break, someone caught it with inhuman reflexes. His eyes burned a hideously strange red. “Crixis,” I muttered, watching as he hung up the phone.

  Chapter Thirty – Kass

  “Raphael,” I paused, glaring into his emerald eyes, “that is as good as that fricking altar is going to get. I’m not doing any more of it tonight. If you want, I can be here all weekend to make it better. But not today. Not now.” I squinted my eyes to show him I was beyond serious.

  Raphael unexpectedly stood and closed his book, his gaze distant. His brows furrowed, and I saw him swallow. He looked more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him, which was saying something. “I think you should head straight to the game. Perhaps I can escort you to the field.”

  “No,” I exclaimed, hissing out the word like I was a boy in the sixth grade. “I don’t want my few friends to see me with you. Plus, I can’t go looking like a carpenter in the middle of a wood shop, can I? I have to swing home first.” I studied him further, slowly saying, “And I really don’t need you to escort me anywhere.”