The Nightwalkers Saga: Books 1 - 7

by Candace Wondrak

Kass’s presence, though, seemed to ease him. She seemed to make him act like a normal teenager. How infuriating.

  As I was led to his room, I met with a doctor wearing nothing but white. “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m Michael, Gabriel’s guardian. What’s going on?” From here, all I could see was the curtain divider in the room just past him. Gabriel was out of sight.

  If I ended up killing Gabriel…

  I would prefer not to think of that scenario. It wouldn’t be fun for me. Not at all.

  The doctor’s bald head shone in the bright fluorescent lights. “It seems he collapsed during lunch. We’re running a few tests based on what his symptoms were described as from the principal. We don’t have much to go on, I’m afraid.”

  “Can I see him?” I hesitated to ask, fearing the worst.

  He nodded once. “Sure.” The doctor led him to the room, allowing him to walk in first.

  Gabriel laid on a white bed, sheets tucked neatly around him. A tube was hooked up to his arm, monitors of all shapes and colors beeping behind him. His eyes were closed. His skin beyond pale. The great and mighty Gabriel looked awful.

  Why wasn’t he healing himself?

  “He certainly has a lot of tattoos. Do you know how old they are, so we can rule out any infections?”

  I stared at the boy. That’s what he was now, somehow, even with that darkness in him. Just a boy. A boy who never really had a chance at a normal life. I muttered something about the tattoos being over a year old. A lie, for most of them, save for the Celtic cross on his chest. That one, I signed off on when he turned sixteen.

  Out of all the Order members who were assigned a Purifier—I was the one who actually got him. I was the one who had to watch over him as he grew. If I would’ve known sooner, if he would’ve awoken when Kass fell into that coma three years ago, all of this could’ve been avoided.

  A shame, really.

  “Has he regained consciousness?” I asked, glancing at the doctor.

  The doctor sighed. “No, he’s been out since collapsing at the school. By all accounts, he should be awake.”

  Everything turned into a blur. I parted ways with the doctor, sat in the waiting room, staring at my knees. I’d have to report this, obviously, but I didn’t want to report it until after he woke. I wasn’t a fan of the Order’s ideas of punishment.

  A feminine hand suddenly interfered with my field of vision. Liz was beside me, her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She wore a suit with heels, her normal clothing. “Do they know what happened?” Her English accent was thick, and a lot better than mine, because hers was real.

  Mine had always been fake.

  “He collapsed in school. That’s all they know. He’s unconscious. The doctor said he should be awake.” I paused, adding, “But he’s not.” My voice trembled as I turned to her, “What if he never wakes up?”

  Liz engulfed me in a warm embrace, and I buried my face into her neck. She smelled like honey. “He will, Michael. Gabriel’s strong. He’ll wake up.” Her comforting words meant hardly anything to me, because all I could think about was: what if he didn’t?

  What if I just screwed up the plan the Order had put into motion since they were formed in the Middle Ages?

  Chapter Four – Kass

  They wouldn’t let me ride in the ambulance. I was a minor, unrelated to Gabriel, and, truthfully, I didn’t feel like arguing, because I was tired. Worried, anxious, panicked—and so, so tired. My life didn’t know when to take a break.

  I sat in the rest of my classes that afternoon, listening to the kids gossiping about what happened during the first period of lunch. The whispers were irritating.

  “You know that kid, Gabriel? I heard he overdosed during lunch today.”

  “The cops lined everyone up and had them write statements.”

  Lies. I did my best to tune everyone out, to pointedly ignore the ones who came up to me, asking about it. Some people thought Gabriel and I were dating—yuck, right? Other people thought we were siblings or cousins. Some wondered why I wasn’t at the hospital with him. I would be, soon enough.

  The periods passed, feeling more like eternity than hours. Why didn’t the link between Gabriel and I go both ways? Why couldn’t I feel him like he could magically feel me when I was in trouble?

  The final bell for the day rang, and I walked to my locker in a haze. It took me five tries to open it. Same old me, just another day. I had a hand in my locker, putting the textbooks away when a short boy came to my side.

  “Liz is outside. We’re going to visit him in the hospital,” Max stated. He had no backpack. He just carried his books like a savage. He did have the muscle, somewhere, beneath his wiry frame.

  I only nodded once. There was nothing to say.

  Until a series of screams rang out in the hall, fifty feet away. My head snapped to attention, as did Max’s, and together we pushed through the crowd of students to see what the fuss was all about.

  It was, without a doubt, the worst thing I’d ever seen in my life.

  Max had his cell phone (God, I could use one of those…) in his hand, dialing Liz. Other kids were already turning away, pale, holding in their lunches and afternoon snacks by squeezing their eyes shut and turning away. A few of them were calling nine-one-one, while at least two took off running to the main office.

  I could not tear my eyes away.

  It was…horrific. More horrific than when I came home to find Koath dead. His throat was cut, torn apart by Crixis. That was a scene I couldn’t look away from. There was so much blood, everywhere, oozing from his neck.

  But here?

  Here, there was no blood, save for around the cut line.

  And boy, was there a cut line.

  A naked body sat, stuffed into a locker, folded like a jacket. From what I could see, there was a straight line from the hairline, down the face and chest, all the way to the groin. A human flesh suit, with none of the bones or innards.

  My stomach flipped when I recognized the kid’s face. I saw him, in sixth period. An hour and a half ago. The body was still warm, probably.

  How had no one seen this, and why…why didn’t I have a vision of it?

  I stumbled back, the image burned in my brain. I had to look away. This was clearly a murder from some supernatural creature. No human killer could carve out a body like that and put it in a school’s locker while school was in session. It just didn’t happen like that.

  No. Whatever did that had to be purified by none other than a Purifier like me.

  By the time I reached the car in the back lot, Liz was already getting off the phone. Max was looking worried beside her. Her dark eyes locked in on me. “Max said there was a body in a locker, and it looked like something ate it.”

  I shot a quick look at the red-headed boy. His definition of eaten and mine were completely separate. “Something like that. Definitely wasn’t normal.” I got into the car in the backseat.

  Liz and Max got in. She said, “I’ll drop you guys off at the hospital, then I have to come back here to supervise the clean-up.” After adjusting the rear-view mirror, she asked, “Did you know him?”

  “No,” I whispered, as if that made it okay.

  It didn’t.

  No one deserved to die like that.

  The ride to the hospital was silent, though I was sure Liz was full of questions. I was also positive that she was counting down the days until she could return to the Council over the pond, and leave us to Michael and whoever was going to be Max’s new Guardian. She wouldn’t stay. We weren’t her responsibility.

  Liz walked us through the hospital, brought us to Michael, who sat, slouched, in one of the building’s many waiting rooms. She said, “Something happened at the school. I have to go back. I’ll fill you in later. Maybe it’s connected to what happened to Gabriel.” She kissed him on his cheek and ran off.

  Michael could hardly look at us. He didn’t even ask about what happened at the school. He simply whispered, “Do you want to s
ee him?”

  “Of course,” Max said as I spoke, “Yes.”

  My Guardian got up and led the way, bringing us past a group of nurses and numerous other hospital rooms with their doors and curtains drawn. He stopped in front of an open door and motioned for us to go inside.

  I went in first, practically pushing Max out of the way.

  Gabriel.

  He…didn’t resemble the Gabriel I knew, laying there in that bed, eyes closed, unresponsive. I couldn’t take it.

  “Gabriel,” I whispered, grabbing the hand that wasn’t connected to any tube or wire. The large hand in mine only moved with my help. No fingers squeezed me, no dimples appeared on his face, no sparkles in those azure eyes.

  Max was quiet, but Michael said, “The doctor doesn’t know why he’s not waking up. They’ve been taking him for tests all afternoon. They don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

  I tuned out most of what Michael said. I got the gist when he said the words doctor-doesn’t-know. If they didn’t know what was wrong with him, how would they be able to fix him? What if he didn’t wake up on his own? What if…

  What if I survived my death, only to live the rest of my life without my best friend?

  The mere thought of living without Gabriel made my mood plummet to an all-time low. I stared at his pale, expressionless face for the longest time, not quite believing what I was seeing. Was this a dream? Did I walk into a long vision when I wasn’t paying attention?

  This couldn’t be real.

  This…this couldn’t be real, could it?

  “What happened at the school?” Michael’s tone was sympathetic and downtrodden. Gabriel had been his charge, his first and only charge, until Koath dropped me on him. Normally, Guardians just had one Purifier to look after, to train and help, and eventually to replace when we died.

  Because we did die. We died all the time. Gabriel and I had, somehow, managed to avoid death (or staying dead), maybe until now.

  Death was the one inevitable thing about our jobs.

  My lips formed a thin line as I pulled away from Gabriel. “Liz will fill you in. I…have to go.” And then I took off, running out of the room, not listening to either Michael or Max’s cries to stop me. I didn’t tell them where I was going, because I wasn’t so sure myself. All I knew was that I had to get out of there.

  I had to run.

  So I did. I ran as far and as fast as my lungs would take me. I ran across intersections, dodged traffic, jaywalked half a dozen times. I ran for twenty minutes straight, stopping only when I came across the familiar, dilapidated church that Gabriel and I used to spend a lot of time in.

  My feet slowed the second I realized that the door hung wide open.

  Someone was inside, and it wasn’t Raphael. That man, that liar, that Daywalker…he was long gone by now. He wouldn’t have stayed and risked the wrath of Gabriel—although, now, Gabriel didn’t have too much wrath to give.

  I cautiously entered, picking up a piece of a broken pew—my back had slammed against it, not too long ago, when I came here looking for a fight after I found Koath dead. I spun the wood so that the jagged edge was pointed out, and my eyes scanned the dim church. I made it halfway down the main aisle when I heard papers being scattered in the back room, where Raphael had slept and kept most of his private collection.

  Was I rash, for running out of the hospital so fast? If I were the one in some kind of coma, like I was in the past, Gabriel would never leave my side. I guessed that made him a better person than me, didn’t it?

  I stepped into the back room to find the person who was going through the abandoned items, and, of course, it was the one Demon I never wanted to lay eyes on again: Crixis.

  His wide frame wore a hideous shirt—a mixture of Hawaiian and coastal print. So unlike him. And…shorts? The Daywalker who had tormented me, the bastard who was the root of almost all of my problems stood before me looking like Joey Gladstone from Full House. Minus the stone-cutting coldness of his chiseled face.

  “There you are,” Crixis said, eyes flicking to me. “I heard your approach from miles away and was wondering how long it would take for you to get back here.” He had an old tome in his hands, closing it abruptly at my appearance. “You look terrible.”

  I made a dramatic gesture of checking him out. The print on his shirt burned my eyes a little. “So do you.” I kept the stake ready, not that it would do much, but it made me feel better.

  “Excuse you,” his tone was serious, and yet he went on to say, “I am comfortable. And these clothes were free. The owner didn’t need them anymore.” As if he cared about free. He’d sooner set fire to a store and burn everyone inside of it before admitting he cared about a price tag.

  Or having any hint of remorse.

  “What are you doing here, Crixis?” I growled his name. Someday, I would find a way to end him for good. Today—today was not that day.

  “I came to look and see if there was anything of importance that my good buddy Raphael might’ve left. I didn’t find anything that I want, but I did find this.” Crixis stepped closer, and I reflexively took a matching step back. The guy had kicked my butt and killed too many people for me to act otherwise. “Oh, please. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”

  Well, it was true that he’d tried to kill me many times, and someone had always been there to back me up—or he’d been the one to back down. Crixis enjoyed the fight, the chase, far too much. He was no man anymore. He was a predator in human skin.

  “Though, you might not stay dead, apparently,” he added snidely. “The only thing I’ve ever seen coming back from the dead was Jesus of Nazareth, and let me tell you, there’s some misconceptions—”

  “I don’t care,” I hiss.

  “Fine. All jokes aside, for now, I’m done trying to torture and kill you.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “And why should I believe anything you say?” He’d had thousands of years to master the art of the lie, as well as master the art of murder and mayhem. Those were things he was good at. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to tell me he was done torturing my life.

  Crixis smirked. “I was there, in case you already forgot. Sephira came for me, and you guys pulled through. I figure I owe you. You and your fellow Purifier did something that I could never do. Plus, I saw your boy when he watched her snap your neck. Your precious boy turned into something terrible to kill Sephira.”

  Though I wasn’t there, I could remember the Gabriel from the other world, and his powers. Still, it was too much to believe my Gabriel was capable of anything similar.

  He went on, “Why would I want to go against someone as powerful as a god? I figure, try to make nice, get on his good side.” Crixis made a big show of looking behind me at the wall. “Where is your pretty boy, anyway? You’re always together.”

  My grip on the wood tightens. “Not always. And it’s none of your business.”

  “Trouble in your lovers’ paradise?”

  Oh, God. He was asking for a stake in the eye.

  “See previous: none of your business.” I wasn’t even going to waste my breath arguing with him about not being—ick—lovers. Who said that word nowadays, anyway? Gross.

  “If you say so, but I have a feeling whatever is going on between you and your Gabriel is, in fact, the world’s business.” Crixis cocked his head, thoughtful. “If he lost you, truly lost you, and you didn’t come back to life like you did last time, he just might destroy it.”

  Destroy it? As in…destroy the world?

  I didn’t—I had no idea what to think of that.

  On one hand, it was Gabriel. I knew he’d never do anything so evil. But on the other hand, I did meet another Gabriel who had let the world fall into chaos after he lost that world’s me. It was possible, I supposed, but it wasn’t like…it wasn’t like he was in love with me. It wasn’t like we were fated for each other since the day we were born. How cliched would that be?

  “But,” he said, shrugging, “that�
��s just my two cents. Now I’m a fan of the world, believe it or not. Without the world, there’d be no you, no me, no innocent meals walking down the street, ready to bare their necks when I ask. I don’t want it to end, so, from here on out, I plan on being the best neighbor you’ve ever had. Also, coincidentally, the replacement Raphael. No one can train you harder than me.”

  “If this is your way of giving me your resume, maybe you shouldn’t have started by killing my family.”

  “I killed Koath, not your mother, regardless of what you might think.”

  It took every ounce of my willpower to stare into that deep, green gaze as I say, “Why would I want to stare into the eyes of my father’s killer when I train?” Maybe I was done training. Maybe—

  “Read this, and you’ll have your answer.” Crixis dropped the large, ancient book into my hands, and I lost grip on the stake as he did so. The wooden piece fell to the floor as I blankly looked at the tome. “You know where I live, and I know where you live. I might not be welcome at your house, but you are free to come to mine anytime and take me up on my offer—or do other things with me.” With a cruel grin, he flashed away, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

  I bared my teeth—pretty much to myself—and glanced at the book.

  No title, not even a word on its leather face in another language. It was at least six inches thick, and heavier than a sack of bricks. This was probably Crixis’s way of getting to me, since he didn’t want to incur Gabriel’s so-called wrath.

  Hmm…but what if the book was important?

  I let out a sigh, loud and explosive. I took the thing home with me. What else was I going to do? Think about Gabriel in the hospital?

  No. Call me a horrible person, but I’d rather do anything else but that.

  Chapter Five – Kass

  I felt responsible. Like whatever was happening with Gabriel was my fault. Whether it was due to my tendency to self-blame, or it was pure happenstance…it didn’t matter. I went home, the huge tome pressed against me, wondering what happened.

  Wondering how long it would last.

  Wondering…wondering if he’d ever wake up.