The Nightwalkers Saga: Books 1 - 7

by Candace Wondrak

  Realizing she was not Cleo made me choke on my freshly taken sip of tea. “Who,” I began, once I recovered from the startling temperature of the tea on my tongue, “are you?”

  “Oh, my mistake.” Her wrinkled eyes returned to me. “I’m the substitute secretary, Mrs. Geneaux.”

  “And where’s Cleo?” My free hand was already in the process of digging through my oversized purse.

  Her plump shoulders shrugged under her floral dress. “If you mean the secretary, I couldn’t tell you. I only know that she didn’t show up for work yesterday, so they called me to fill in until things were sorted out. If I had to guess—” Mrs. Geneaux gently touched a small frame that housed a picture of Cleo and a feline. “—someone young and pretty like her decided she was better than this. Me, though, I love kids. I’d be happy working a job like this for the rest of my life—”

  “Thanks,” I interrupted, as I dug my cell out of my purse. “I have a call to make.” Running to my office, I shut the door and pulled the blinds. Within seconds I had Michael’s number dialed and waited anxiously for him to answer.

  Chapter Thirty-Two – Cleo

  I found it quite ridiculous that I had to drive to the post office to pick up the final package. Leave it to those idiot Egyptians to screw up the mailing process. Lugging the package, though, was completely and decidedly worse than having to drive.

  Honestly, I had no idea how a chest and her head could weigh this much.

  Laboring to fit my key into the lock while balancing the huge box was a struggle, but I managed to do with a smile on my face. Why? Because I knew that tonight was the night; the night that the lioness makes her grand return to wreak havoc on all those who would stand against her, and against the man who betrayed her in the first place.

  I set the box on the couch and gently closed the door while looking through my mail. The mail that was actually delivered to my apartment. Imagine that.

  After locking the door, I spun around and forced a thumb into the envelope’s top. I was just seconds away from yanking the paper out and reading it when I noticed my bedroom door was open.

  I knew I closed that door when I left.

  Dropping the envelope, I inched to the door. My face twisted in irritation when I saw the man cloaked in black staring at the collection of body parts. He must have been too busy staring at her unfinished beauty to hear me enter the apartment.

  What a fool.

  The vibration of his cell echoed through the small room. He hurried to pick it up, but the instant his hand pulled out the metal phone from his pocket, I whispered, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  The man turned in horror to face me. Michael. His finger lingered over the green button as he said not a word to explain himself.

  I held my open hand in the air and swatted it aside. Michael’s phone flew out of his hand and hit the wall, shattering into pieces. “I call upon the ancient sorcery; to protect her majesty, let him experience a drowning tragedy.” Rhyming spells wasn’t the easiest thing, but I managed.

  A single bead of water rolled from his nose.

  Stepping closer to the man, I smiled. “I thought I was doing a great job hiding this from the Council.” Michael coughed up a lungful of water and fell to his knees. “So imagine my surprise when I come home with the last piece of the mistress to find you trespassing in my home.”

  The veins in his eyes reddened and his skin became bluer.

  With a laugh, I left the room to retrieve a box cutter and the package that contained her precious head. I set the box beside the large puddle that seeped from the barely there Michael. Cutting the cardboard down like an expert, I opened the chest to glimpse at her exquisiteness.

  “Don’t worry, Michael,” I assured him as his eyes rolled back into his skull, “I’ll make sure your sacrifice won’t go to waste. Tonight, during the full moon, when I attach her head, I will pour my life energy into her…” I slowly tilted my head and glared down at the man. “…and once she awakens, she will need to feed.”

  I reached under my bed to retrieve a black bag. “And you, Michael—” Unzipping the bag, I lifted out an empty blood bag that was connected to a syringe with a thin line of tubing. “—are going to be the food.” The next thing out of the bag was the glass bottle of Vexillion blood.

  After all, Sephira would need the blood to sense and locate the cub that crossed her.

  Crixis.

  Chapter Thirty-Three – Kass

  “Kass!” The thunderous yell of Gabriel echoed down the stairs, accompanied with loud steps. There was urgency in his voice. Urgency or anger. Until I saw his face, I wouldn’t be sure which one it was.

  The furious pants coming from Gabriel’s mouth caused me to stare squarely at him and say, “What’s your problem?” The discordant ringing of the house phone cut him off, making me smile unintentionally. I went to answer it.

  The voice on the other end belonged to Liz. And she sounded frantic. “Is Michael there? Please tell me he is.” She gave me the impression that something bad was happening. Oh, how I wished that wasn’t normal for us.

  Gabriel shot me a what’s-going-on look, but I just looked at him while replying, “He left a little bit ago to go to Cleo’s.”

  “He brought backup, didn’t he?”

  It was a few seconds before I said, “No. He refused to have anyone go with him.”

  “No,” she whispered, “that can’t be true—but it is…I know it is. Michael’s always been the one to have brilliant ideas and do stupid things. Oh, dear.” Liz spoke not another word, leaving me to imagine the rest.

  And I didn’t like what I imagined. Not at all.

  “Cleo’s not there, at the school, is she?” As I verbalized the question, I saw Gabriel’s face change from fury to concern.

  “No, she isn’t. If I would have known.” Liz started to blame herself. “If I would have been here yesterday, I would have known that she didn’t show up for work. I should have made sure she was here before I let Michael go.” Her accent trembled, and she sounded as if she was on the verge of tears.

  “It’s all right,” I tried to assure her, though I knew it was pointless. “Michael can handle himself. He’s the reason Gabriel’s so good at fighting.”

  Upon hearing that, Gabriel grunted and said, “Right.”

  “He’s not answering his phone,” Liz added, “and now when I call, it goes straight to voicemail—”

  “Give me her address. We’ll go and—”

  Liz quickly silenced me. “No sodding way am I going to give you her address. If Michael ran into trouble, I don’t want any of you children jumping into the same boat.”

  Hoping I came up with the perfect retort, I said, “Raphael and Taiton will come too.”

  Liz kept talking, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say she ignored my comment completely. “I have a meeting with the superintendent in an hour. After that, I will come and pick Taiton and Raphael up. We will be the ones to go to Cleo’s, not you. I want you, Gabriel, and Max to stay put. Don’t leave the house, no matter what the reason.”

  I was stunned into absolute silence when she proceeded to hang up the phone.

  “What’s the deal?” Gabriel asked through a mouthful of an apple.

  Doing a quick double-take at the apple in his hand, I wondered, when he had time to get an apple. “First of all,” I said, “don’t try to make that your new catch phrase, because it doesn’t make sense.”

  Gabriel bit into the granny smith apple and muttered, “It makes plenty of sense.”

  Blinking, I stared at him with my mouth hanging open a bit. “Do you want to know what’s going on, or not?”

  “Let me guess.” Pulling out a chair, he spun it around and sat on it backwards. It was because he was freakishly tall, so his legs were abnormally long. Someone like me, with short legs, would never be able to sit like that in our kitchen chairs. “Cleo’s not at work today, she hasn’t showed up practically all week, and we’re just now finding
that out.”

  He switched his apple-holding hand and wiped the previous one on his knee, continuing, “Liz is blaming herself because she has the hots for the guy, and she’s going to come home after she finishes up there. She’s going to leave us here, to fend for ourselves, like everyone always does when the crap hits the fan, and take Raphael and Taiton to make sure Cleo didn’t off him with her magic and, if necessary, stop the resurrection of Sephira.”

  He said Sephira in quotations…I wasn’t sure why exactly he did that, and I was too wowed by his perfect guess to even bring it up aloud.

  “Ten out of ten?” He smirked, knowing he had nailed it spot on.

  Shaking my head, I placed the phone in its home and said, “How did you—”

  “Either I’m an incredibly amazing guesser, or my hearing is getting better.” From his sitting position, he basketball tossed the core into the trash can, making the shot like he was a pro. “By the way, I’m postponing the reason I stormed down here. We’ll pick it up later, when our Guardian is safe.”

  Those next few hours were excruciatingly tough to endure. All I could think about was Michael, and how we were wasting too much precious time. When Liz arrived, things just got worse. How did they get worse, you ask? They didn’t, but my awareness grew and that, in itself, made things feel worse.

  Liz’s light brown eyes were critical. “You three better not move a muscle. Whatever you do, don’t leave this house. Do you understand?” She threw her grave expression to each of us, starting with the leftmost kid on the couch, Max.

  Next it was my turn to receive the life-threatening glare.

  Then it was on Gabriel.

  “Yes” we muttered unanimously.

  “Good.” She tightened her jacket, and I immediately wondered why she felt the need to have a jacket, since we were in North Carolina and it was at least eighty degrees outside. “Make sure it stays that way. We’ll call if we run into trouble, or if…” Shaking her head, she walked to the front door and said, “We’ll call.”

  The moment she bent down to pick up a silver sword was the moment Gabriel stood and yelled, “Hey! What are you doing with that?”

  Liz spun the dragon sword in the air, replying, “I don’t know what we’ll encounter.”

  “I know, but why don’t you take Kass’s sword instead? Why do you have to take mine?”

  Sighing, she opened the door, replied “It’s a little too rosy for me,” and left. Raphael and Taiton were on her heel, sending a hasty glimpse at us before heading out and closing the door. And leaving us all alone.

  “So who’s up for a Lost marathon?” Looking around, Gabriel broke the strange silence and raised his hand in the air. Max and I just stared. “How about a Romero zombie movie marathon?” We continued to stare. “Okay, what about a Disney movie to lighten the mood?”

  We rose our hands.

  “Dweebs,” he muttered, flying to the DVD stand. Funny how he called us dweebs when he was the one who acted like a dweeb. “We got a choice between Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Hercules, or Pocahontas.”

  I weighed the pros and cons of each movie. Why did each one have death or sadness? Why couldn’t there be a movie that was happy through and through?

  Max moved to sit on his feet. He certainly didn’t look like a happy camper, though I guess none of us would be considered a happy camper. The danger Michael was in, let alone the whole world, the decision I made about working with Crixis, and the fact we couldn’t do anything to help only made things worse.

  “I’ve never seen Lion King,” Max said softly, hoping to go unnoticed.

  “What?” Gabriel shrieked, yanking out the orange DVD holder. “Our choice is made.”

  A voice seemed to come from nowhere, saying, “A fine tale of betrayal.” Crixis.

  While Gabriel glared at him and said “You would know all about betrayal,” I said as I narrowed my gaze to the evil Daywalker, wondering why he was still here. Since my mind could not grasp it, I decided to ask.

  “What are you doing here?” My voice came out tougher than I anticipated, both surprising me and making me proud.

  “Where else would I be?” Crixis smugly countered.

  An incredulous smirk crossed my face for a split-second before it disappeared into a detesting sneer. “Anywhere but here?” I suggested, finding it was the perfect proposal. If Crixis was anywhere but here, my level of happiness would increase at least two-fold.

  “If I wasn’t here, then who’d be the one to protect you if something ensues?” With a lifted eyebrow, Crixis paused as Gabriel coughed and pointed to himself.

  He had to know how contradictory that was, right? Crixis protecting me, protecting us.

  What a load of crap. Liz probably forgot all about the Daywalker in her fit about Michael. If anyone should’ve gone to see what was holding Michael up, it should’ve been Crixis. This was his mess, after all.

  Chapter Thirty-Four – Liz

  “Where are we headed?” Taiton spoke the first words since we left the house.

  I could barely formulate my answer, “Ninth floor, room three twenty-five.” Cleo had to live on the top floor of one of the highest buildings in town, it was Murphy’s Law. Just our bloody luck.

  My mind ran through all the possibilities of what we would encounter: a tortured Michael, an unconscious Michael, a…dead Michael. No. Michael couldn’t be gone. I refused to believe it. If Michael died, then I would end her, even if it was the last thing I ever did.

  Raphael glanced to the stairs, saying, “I’ll go on ahead. If something’s taking place, I’ll stop it.”

  Beginning to uncover the sword that was hidden beneath my jacket, I inquired, “Do you want the sword?” The look in his eyes told me exactly what I thought he would say: no. Why would a greater Vampire need a sword?

  It was awfully hard to think straight.

  After making sure no one was near to witness it, Raphael flickered out of view.

  “Come,” I said as my quaking legs took me to the elevator. The ever faithful Taiton was beside me in seconds and my finger harshly pressed the final number. The time passed slowly as we quietly stood in unsettled calmness.

  We barely passed the sixth level when a small tremor shook the elevator, causing the power to shut off completely.

  “No,” I muttered as another, stronger seism followed. Hitting the doors, I held back anger and fury. This couldn’t stop us. An unexpected power outage was not going to be the thing that stopped us…was it?

  No.

  Taiton shoved me aside and, using his almost unearthly strength, began to pry open the doors. Within seconds, the elevator doors were forced open, and he levered the floor’s door enough so that I could crawl through.

  “Go,” Taiton commanded, utilizing his supreme muscle to hold both doors open.

  I squirmed out of my jacket, knowing I’d need all the extra space I could get, and handed the sword to Taiton, saying, “Here.”

  He took the blade and helped to push me through, giving me the dragon sword shortly after. There was exigency in his dark eyes, as I assumed there was in mine, when he said, “Run. I will be right behind you.”

  I ran.

  I ran because the fate of Michael, and perhaps the entire world, depended on me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five – Raphael

  In truth, Michael should have just taken one of us with him. If he hadn’t insisted on going alone, there was a possibility we could have avoided this. Then again, maybe everything would have played out the same regardless.

  It was far too late now to wish I could change the past.

  I landed outside her apartment in mere seconds, and without delay I kicked open the wooden door, fracturing it. The easiness of smashing it down gave me slight pause. Though I had supernatural power, the door itself should have resisted a bit.

  It was as if the door wasn’t even locked. Something wasn’t right…

  A hasty look was thrown around the room and, sensing the presences behind th
e closed door, I flashed myself closer. My ears picked up a woman’s voice muttering an incantation of some sort.

  With a growl, I lifted my foot to kick this door down, like I had the first one. Coming into this, I truly had no idea what to expect, but I could certainly say that I wasn’t expecting to be paralyzed by a hex on the floor.

  My leg had made it only six inches in the air before I was frozen in place. Throwing a glance through the room, I found that the immobilization hex had engulfed the entire apartment floor. I must have triggered it by stepping into the home or breaking down the door, and it must have taken a few seconds to materialize…if I was human, I wouldn’t have made it this close to the second door.

  Luckily, though, Elizabeth and Taiton weren’t here to get paralyzed as well. It was a good thing I went on ahead, otherwise all would have been lost.

  The light of the room failed, and it would have left me in darkness if it weren’t for the green runic symbols on the floor.

  Once Cleo was dealt with, stopped or killed, the hex would disappear, and I’d be mobile. The only thing I could do now was pray that the two Council members would hurry and stop her. If Sephira was raised, and if she was indeed as cruel and wicked as I heard she was…Crixis would seem like an angel.

  Chapter Thirty-Six – Cleo

  I sensed the ancient magic the moment it entered my building. Liz Abby and her Agent Taiton must have brought someone with them. Or, as my magic told me, something. Stopping the power was only the first defense. That diversion, plus that paralyzing spell, which was a pain to cast, would give me enough time to summon her early, if it came to it.

  And the activation of my spell told me it was time to start the ritual.

  With a quick hand, I yanked the needle and tubing from Michael, who finally began to wake. His dazed eyes slowly opened. Once he realized he was skillfully tied to the bed, he shot his eyes to the fully assembled mistress.