His dark stare rose above my own as he stood. “He came here to attack Claire? Why?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. My voice shook a bit, guilt overtaking me. “He came here for me, but Claire stepped in and…” I paused. “It all happened so fast.”
“I’m sure you did all you could,” Steven was hasty to say, though it didn’t sound as though he really believed it.
“This is my fault.”
“Don’t blame yourself. Those who want to hurt others always find a way.” He seemed to speak from experience. “You are her best friend, remember that.”
I winced.
I was her best friend. Yeah, right. If I was her best friend, I should have done something to save her.
“Kass.”
Hearing my name whispered creepily multiple times, I sat straight up. I blinked to get my eyes used to the absolute darkness in my bedroom. Truthfully I couldn’t see a thing. That was always a good sign, wasn’t it?
Panic overtook me, causing me to fly to the nearest lamp and twist the knob. The dim light created scary shadows that made my room appear like it was taken directly from a horror movie. With this terrible lighting condition, everything looked a thousand times more unsettling and disturbing.
I spun, hoping to find Taiton in his usual spot in the corner by my bed. But he wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. I didn’t know where Taiton was, and I didn’t know who was breathing out my name in the weirdest way.
“Kass.”
It was a man’s voice.
A loud creak broke the stillness of the room, making me skip to the wooden culprit. Seconds later the door was firmly closed and I was in the process of walking back to my bed when I noticed the window curtains flowing in the wind.
The wind that came in through my open window.
With haste I pulled the window down and locked it. It was like my room was possessed.
“Alone. Finally.”
The elongation of the last word was the last piece of the puzzle I needed. The voice in my room belonged to Crixis. I should have known. Who else would be this chillingly creepy?
As the moonlight hit my face, I couldn’t help but curse in my head. I tried moving my legs, but they refused to listen. Just like that time when I got the piss beat out of me all those weeks ago.
“No running—” I felt the tingle of his breath on the back of my neck. “—no interruptions—” He ran his index finger along my arm. “—no tricks.” With a harsh motion, he grabbed my arms and jerked me closer, so that my back was flat against his front.
His lips brushed my ear, “It’s just you and me now. I don’t know about you—” There was a pause as he bent his head down, giving his eyes the opportunity to stare down my shirt. “—but I like it.”
The stupid creep.
“Go to hell,” I managed to say, between my failed attempts to struggle and break free. I couldn’t move a muscle; it was like he controlled me, stopping me from doing any physical movement. It was tough to even talk.
Crixis laughed shortly, saying, “Don’t you have anything new to say to me? After all this time, I would have pegged you as a quick-witted, silver-tongued girl. So far, you’ve been a little disappointing.”
“Why don’t you let me go?” I said, mock seriousness, “And then we’ll see if I still disappoint.” I knew it was a long-shot, but sometimes those long-shots paid off.
“Ooh,” he whispered in my ear, his hot breath warm on my neck, “that is tempting, I’ll admit, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. I have all the power here, and I’m not keen on letting it go.”
“What have you done with Taiton?” I demanded, wishing furiously that the answer would be nothing to do with torture. I’d rather have a quick death, if I had a say.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Crixis was swift to say, “The pathetic assassin isn’t here. He never was.” I opened my mouth to say something, but he continued, “Because this isn’t real.”
“What do you mean?” I stuttered, mixing up my words. This was getting creepier by the minute, not to mention Twilight Zone-y.
“Kass,” he made my name last longer than it should have, “if I tell you, it’ll end our intimate moment. You have to figure it out on your own or disregard it entirely. Now, I didn’t bring you here just so we could trade threats.”
My eyebrows went together. How could he bring me here, in my own house? That made no sense.
Crixis softly moved my hair to my other shoulder, creating a hair-free space for his chin to rest on. “Heed my words very carefully: your Morpher friend is dying, and there’s only one thing you can do to save her from turning into a mindless lesser Vampire.”
With his gaze inflexibly locked on me, he slowly made his way to my front and stood, which put less than a centimeter between us. For some odd reason, I couldn’t look away from his bright green eyes that were far too vivid for this darkened room.
The images of his murdered wife and child flashed in my mind, and the vision of him falling to his knees came soon after.
For a split second, and before I realized what I was doing, I felt sorry for him. Then I remembered everything he’d done, and that he was the root of all trouble in my life, and that feeling rapidly subsided.
“What?” My question came out as a whisper.
Our faces were so close that his nose brushed mine. “I can save her…but only if you help me in return.”
The proximity of his lips near my own made it extremely hard to focus. What happened if he kissed me—or worse—and I couldn’t do anything to stop him? I’d rather die.
It took me a while to reply, “Help you with what?” If he could save her, if he wasn’t lying to me—would it be worth putting my hatred aside?
Not that I believed him, or anything he said. I trusted him about as far as I could throw him, and just because I had abnormal strength didn’t mean I was that strong.
“For the time being, we need to unite.”
“Unite?” I inhaled sharply, feeling his finger traveling up my arm and down my back.
“We have to unite against her.”
“Her?” I spoke the word faintly, softly.
“Your interruptions are forcing us to run out of time,” Crixis muttered, placing his hand on my lower back. Tingles shot through my spine, sending chills to my every nerve. “Think about it—” His hand drew me closer, the closest I could get to him without being inside him.
This wasn’t going as planned. My stupid hands wouldn’t even form fists. The only thing that wasn’t failing me was my mind. My body—apparently I couldn’t count on it.
“—but not for too long, because tomorrow night, she will die,” Crixis finished, “unless you do the right thing and agree to assist me.”
“If you step foot in the house, they’ll kill you.”
His eyes traveled downward once more. Talk about awkward. Before a little while ago, I had no inkling what it felt like to have an evil monster check me out. Oh, wait; wrong again. I had John.
“You have to give me more credit than that.” His emerald eyes returned to mine. “No one can kill me. I will give you until three. Be prepared to stick with your decision for the rest of your life.”
My mouth opened to say something about three, but he shushed me by saying “We’re out of time.”
The last thing I remembered was him smirking and lowering his lips to mine.
The cold. So, so cold.
I sat upright in my snug covers, jerking awake. Trembling fingers reached to my lips and tried wiping the memory away.
Taiton’s large figure was beside my bed in an instant, creating a giant shadow that engulfed nearly my whole bed. “What’s wrong?”
“Um,” I paused, glimpsing around, “nothing.” There was nothing eerie about my room anymore. Everything was normal, to a point. It still looked as if a bomb exploded, moved my furniture, and blasted my knick-knacks everywhere. “Nothing at all,” I repeated confidently when I realized that it was all a dream.
<
br /> It was a dream. Just a terrible, weird, awful dream that I never wanted to experience again.
Still…something wasn’t right here. The feeling of Crixis touching me was far too real to be just a dream. There had to be something else going on. There had to be.
I raced out of my sheets, left my room, and ran down the stairs. I turned into the living room to find Gabriel, Liz and Michael deep in conversation and Alyssa, Rain and John in their own. Gabriel and Max weren’t at school today, since, well, Gabriel was here and Max was probably with Claire. Did they sleep at all?
Tapping Gabriel’s shoulder and ignoring the eyes of Rain and John, I asked, “Where’s Raphael?”
Gabriel rattled off the answer without a second thought, “The library.” His insanely blue eyes glistened as I spun on my heel to walk back up the stairs. I heard him say “Wait. Why?” But I was too far gone to bother answering.
I had a twinge of guilt for Taiton, who followed me to the dime, but then remembered that he was beyond fit, so he was used to running up countless of flights of stairs all the time.
“Raphael,” I spoke after I entered the library’s doors. Glancing around, I found no one, so I repeated his name at a louder level, “Raphael?” A movement to my left caught my eye. The certain Daywalker/ex-priest-cloth-wearing man I was looking for walked toward me with a curious glint in his eyes.
The sight of him in his normal, everyday clothes was something I still wasn’t used to. It’s true that it’d only been a few days, but still. Raphael in a regular shirt was definitely a sight to behold.
“Good morning, Kass.” Raphael glanced at Taiton and nodded in his direction, which was his way of acknowledging his presence. “Is there something you wanted?”
Yes, because we weren’t friends or buddies. I only spoke to him when I wanted something from him.
Nodding, I came up with my reply, “I wanted to know if there’s a record that details the—” I lowered my voice so Taiton couldn’t hear me. “—types of Demons Crixis has consumed.”
Raphael took hold of my arm and dragged me away from Taiton, who stayed put, hopefully because we were still in the same room and he could still watch me like a hawk. “And why would you want to see something like that?” He posed a good question.
“Because,” I dragged the word out for a long as I possibly could, “I’m curious.”
Squinting his green eyes, he responded, “You are far too curious for your own good, you know that?”
A genuine, albeit small, smile formed on my face. “You’re not the first one to tell me that.”
“Somehow I’m not surprised.” Raphael’s light haired head motioned for me to follow him. “I actually think I know what it is you want to see.” As he made his way through the shelves and shelves of ancient books, I kept my eyes firmly glued to his back.
Raphael and I had a bipolar relationship lately.
“Ah.” Raphael stopped without a warning, causing me to walk straight into his back. “I do believe this is what you’re looking for.” Breaking eye contact, he put a finger on the binding of a leather-bound book, pulled it out, and handed it to me.
It was a smaller book, compared to the others it was surrounded by, covered with dust and cobwebs. Clearly no one had gone looking for this book in a while. The front cover was marked by two words, Demon Directory, in extremely fancy and hard to read writing.
After blowing the dust off, I wandered to a nearby couch and fell on it, not tearing my eyes from the first page. It said that this was the most complete, reliable source of ingested Demons, circa 1708.
That left over three hundred years unaccounted for. That sucked.
For the next hour I sat there, alone, for the most part, since Raphael was busy reading his own book, and read page after page. Taiton was there too, but he’d been with me twenty-four/seven for the past few days, so I considered myself alone even when he was with me.
There was a picture to go with every type of Demon Crixis had supposedly ingested, along with a detailed description of their powers. Hardened skin, venomous bite, increased strength. There were some real weird-looking Demons in here. Crixis must have been ballsy to eat these things.
I approached the end of the book, and was about to give up all hope, when I stumbled (or flipped) to a picture of a fat, bulgy Demon holding a webbed stick, I knew that this was what I was looking for.
It was called an Oobakah, but was commonly referred to as a Dreamweaver. These guys were only three feet tall and were thought to be extinct until sometime around the sixth century, when there were rumors of a King who could control his enemies’ dreams. A man whose description was similar to Crixis’s was seen traveling into the kingdom unaccompanied, and before long, the rumors ceased and the King was defeated by the enemy soldiers, whose dreams were once again their own.
There were a few uncertain entries, and this was one of them.
It had to be true, though.
I abruptly closed it, put the book back in its rightful place, and headed down the stairs.
The moment I set foot on the first floor was the moment it turned into a desert oasis.
Glancing behind me, I saw no stairs, no Taiton, no anything. I wasn’t in the house at all. I was one hundred percent in the hot desert. Fantastic.
A large, frivolous tent was the centerpiece of the desert haven. There were tanned, golden armor-wearing soldiers standing guard, sweat dripping down their foreheads and rolling onto their exposed chests.
I’d seen this before.
With great caution, my feet took me to the tent’s flap and I deliberately took my time in entering, fearing to see something that I did not want to see. I’d already had too many of those in this tent.
A woman with pitch black hair and snake-like eyes sat upon a throne, appearing as if she was bored beyond belief. Her ruby red lips curved into a serpent smile when two soldiers came into the tent behind me.
She tapped her jeweled fingers on the side of her throne, demanding of the two men, “What do you worms want?” Flipping her hair to her other shoulder, a harsh sigh escaped her. “Have you conquered the—”
The left man glanced at the right one, lowly cutting in, “The village is destroyed, just as you asked.”
With a Daywalker flash, the woman stood in front of the interrupter. The frightened look in his eyes made me wonder if he literally shook in his boots. A swift hand smacked his face, sending him flying ten foot back. “Do not interrupt.” Her dark eyes turned on the other man. “Now, why are you here?”
The man bowed his head, saying, “Forgive us, but we left one warrior alive.”
“What?” The woman’s teeth clenched together, creating a scary sight. “You failed in killing them all? You let one flee?” Crossing her arms, she somehow avoided smudging the paint on them. “Tell me why I shouldn’t tear your heart out.”
The standing man raised his eyes level with her malevolent glare. “He did not abscond. We captured him and brought him here, to you. He is outside.”
“And why,” her tone changed to a nicey-nice one, “would I want him?”
“He—” The man stuttered as she ran her finger along his cheekbone. “—he is different than the others.”
She dropped her fingers to his chest, whispering, “How so?”
“His skills as a warrior surpassed some of our own.”
The woman’s posture became immaculate once more as she commanded, “Bring him in.” Her black eyes watched as the man bowed, helped the other man up and walked out. Seconds later a struggling man was thrown into the tent.
He was bound by chains across his arms and chest, but that didn’t stop him from thrashing and resisting to the point where the chains rubbed his skin raw. Crixis used his green eyes to stare the woman down.
Walking around him like she was inspecting a new recruit, she smiled. “You still fight even when you have lost everything?”
Crixis bared his white teeth, acting like a rabid dog. A rabid dog that had just lost hi
s wife and child. “A true warrior fights until death.”
“That can be done.” The words slid off her tongue like velvet.
“You slaughtered my people,” Crixis snarled, “I will not let that go unpunished.”
“Of course.” The woman halted her circling, standing directly in front of him. She raised a hand to his forehead, moving his dirty black hair out of his face. “What are you?”
Stumbling back, he evaded her hands. “I am vengeful, ruthless and unforgiving. What are you?” His chest fell with a heavy, anger-filled breath. Despite the circumstances, Crixis looked more serious than I’d ever seen him.
She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. I watched in horror as her teeth elongated to the point where the tips were on her chin. As her two front teeth sharpened to end up more razor-like than her canines, her eyes closed and her fingernails grew.
Wait a damn second…fingernails?
Her bare feet grew in size, and her toenails grew up and out. The normal, human-like ears she used to have? Yeah, they weren’t normal anymore. They were pointed.
What was happening to her?
Crixis must have been wondering the same thing, because his face was similar to what I imagined mine was. Shocked, disgusted, and dumbfounded.
Opening her eyes, she revealed them to be completely blackened as she responded, “Fascinated.” A lion growl flowed from her lungs before she flashed, sinking her teeth into his neck.
Hearing the sound of her teeth ripping into Crixis’s skin made me want to turn away. This was almost too much. I almost felt bad for him.
Almost.
Minutes later, the woman dropped Crixis’s nearly lifeless body on the sand. Blood oozed from the wounds on his neck as she licked her lips, returned to normal, and repeated, “What are you?”
I didn’t hear the answer.
I got to know this particular spot on the wall pretty well, since that was what I stared at while I tried to put two and two together.
I was too lost in thought.
The Nightwalkers Saga: Books 1 - 7 Page 95