The Nightwalkers Saga: Books 1 - 7

by Candace Wondrak

  Okay, I knew it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since it happened—more like six hours—but that didn’t stop my mind from jumping to conclusions like a gymnast.

  I had my house key in my pocket, and I struggled with the book as I got it out and unlocked the front door. The house was spotless and ultimately empty; no evidence of the death or the fights that took place in it over the last few months. Liz worked wonders. How did we get along without her?

  I went to my room, pausing for a few seconds as I stood near Gabriel’s open door. Even though I knew he was in the hospital, a part of me thought I’d find him lounging on his bed, his hair messed up and dimples on his cheeks.

  It was stupid.

  I sighed, pushing past my ajar door and walking into my room. I collapsed on the bed, staring at the ceiling for a minute. Eventually I grew tired of the boredom and worry, and sat to glance through the large tome. Its front cover creaked open, as if it weren’t used to being opened. Just how old was this thing, anyways?

  All the pages my fingers flipped to were chock full of words and scribbles—all in another language. Of course. It wouldn’t be in English. None of the so-called important books were ever in English.

  And there were no pictures.

  I grew upset, harshly closing the book and tossing it on the ground. I plopped under the covers, willing myself to sleep even though it wasn’t yet dark out nor had I eaten dinner. Frankly, I wasn’t hungry. A first, I knew, but lately my appetite just hasn’t been the same. No appetite, and no visions.

  I felt lost without Gabriel.

  Once dusk fell, I heard someone poke their head into my room. I was fully under the covers, shutting the entire world out, but that didn’t stop the intruder from saying softly, “The school is closed the rest of the week pending the investigation. Too many civilians saw it.” It was Liz. I felt her sit on the edge of my bed as she added softly, “Michael’s going to stay the night at the hospital. I brought Max here. We’ll make do until Gabriel wakes up.”

  “What about Max’s new Guardian?” I asked, talking to the comforter that was pulled over my head.

  “That can wait. Everything can wait until things get settled.”

  What if things never got settled?

  I couldn’t ask that question out loud, because it didn’t sound like me. None of this felt like me. I wasn’t acting like myself. I was…scared.

  “There was a message on the machine from your friend,” Liz went on. “She said she’s coming over here tomorrow. Is that all right, or do you want me to call her back and tell her you’d rather be alone?”

  Alone? I always was alone, it seemed.

  Still, Claire had gone through so much grief in her life—losing her family, having to move in with her uncle she didn’t even like that much…the girl knew about loss. If anyone could help me through this, it was her.

  “No, that’s fine,” I quickly said with a shrug under the blankets. I kept myself from saying I don’t really care.

  Liz patted me on the leg. She probably had no idea what she was patting as she said, “Good. Being with friends will help with the situation.” I heard her stand. “I’m trying to make spaghetti. I’ll do my best to keep everything in order while Michael’s…” Even she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  She was used to being behind a desk. Liz worked for the Council as one of their higher-ups. She never had a Purifier of her own to look after, not until she was unlucky enough to be called here when Crixis was our biggest threat. Who knew the psychotic, red-eyed Daywalker with a higher-level Demon inside of him wasn’t our biggest threat?

  Things changed so fast around here.

  The hours passed so slowly.

  We ate Liz’s spaghetti—though I did more playing with the noodles than eating them—and I stood in the shower for twenty minutes after that, trying to wash it all away, wash my worries down the drain. It didn’t happen, of course, so when I laid in bed that night, my mind raced. I think I got, maybe, three hours of sleep.

  And it was a dreamless, miserable sleep. The kind of sleep that was interrupted every few minutes by my mind waking itself up and glancing at the clock on the nightstand. The kind of sleep that made me wonder if I should’ve just stayed up.

  Where were the confusing visions when I needed them?

  Claire was over at nine the next day. She was over before I even got out of bed. So what if I was moping? Maybe that’s what I wanted to do. Maybe that was the only thing I could do.

  “Hey, Kass,” she said, sitting on the floor next to my bed. She glanced at the tome before shrugging it off. She knew better by now than to ask questions about what it was. “How are you feeling?” Her blue gaze was bright and lively, her short yellow hair behind a thick headband. Her legs were pulled to her chest, her arms hugging them.

  She knew how I felt. She just had to ask. It was like protocol in these types of situations.

  I slowly sat up in my bed. “Just peachy. How are you?”

  Claire gave me a stern look. “Max and Liz are getting ready to go to the hospital to visit Gabriel. They sent me up here to see if you wanted to go.”

  I wanted to go. I did. Really.

  But I wasn’t going to.

  I shook my head. “I think I’m going to stay home today, unless he’s miraculously woken up.”

  Claire nodded with me. “I’ll let them know.” She jumped up, using energy that made me wince, and disappeared from my sight. For some reason, I expected Liz and even Max to come up here and try to argue with me, try to force me to go, but I was pleasantly shocked when the only person who came back into my room was Claire. “I told them. They wanted to make you come, but I told them that wouldn’t be good. You have to go at your own pace, not at theirs.”

  She leaned against the wall, sitting once again. “Everyone expects something from you, even when you’re going through a ton of crap. They want you to cry, to be sad, to bargain…and, after hardly any time at all, they want you to accept it. If you don’t follow their strict beliefs, they think something’s wrong with you.” Claire looked at me. “I don’t think Liz and Max are like that, and from what I’ve seen, Michael’s nice.”

  I wasn’t sure where this talk was going, so all I did was nod along.

  “My point is, don’t force yourself to do something just because it’s what’s expected of you. If you’re not ready to spend hours in a hospital, don’t. If you don’t want to, don’t. Don’t let anyone try to tell you what to do.” Her gaze fell to her lap. “You decide what to do.”

  I pulled the comforter to my chest. I kind of understood what she was saying—a go-at-my-own-pace kind of thing. It was also nice to know that there was at least one person not judging me for not wanting to be at the hospital all day every day.

  Although, if he never woke up, I’d be forced to face the reality, anyway.

  Claire wasn’t done talking, apparently. “It’s never-ending with you guys, isn’t it? This is your life, all the time?”

  Meeting her gaze, I said, “Yeah. It’s loads of fun. Want to join the ranks of the Purifiers?”

  She smiled sadly. “I don’t think they’d take me.”

  Yes, only humans allowed. Or so they said. How could that be true, though, if Gabriel had those tattoos, his ability to sense and mindread me? How could that be true if I had unexplainable visions that, somehow, were always rooted in reality?

  Speaking of being visionless—there was something I could be doing. Something that used to be Michael’s job, something that, years ago, was Koath’s job. Raphael took it up for a time, but he was gone, and I had no one to rely on but myself.

  I swung my legs from the bed, standing. I wore baggy basketball shorts that may or may not belong to Gabriel and a loose tank top. Very underdressed when compared to the sporty-cute style of Claire. “Did you hear what happened at the school yesterday?”

  “Besides Gabriel?” Claire got to her feet. “Was there something else? Steven got a call saying the school was closed for the
rest of the week. I figured it was because they thought all the kids are doing drugs and want to make a program or something.”

  A program for an entire school on drugs?

  Completely wrong, but A-plus for creativity.

  “You didn’t hear what happened at the end of the day?” I was, in a word, shocked. “What was found?”

  She shook her head. No wonder this town had so many residents, even after all the crap that went down. Everyone was oblivious. Either that, or Liz’s cleanup crew was surprisingly efficient.

  “There was a body,” I told her.

  “A body,” she said, eyes widening. “A dead body. Who was it? Where was it? Why didn’t I hear about this? Why didn’t the call say anything—”

  “To avoid mass panic, probably. And I’m not sure who it was—I recognized him from our grade. I have sixth period with him.” I bit the inside of my cheek, wondering if I should really ask for her help. Maybe I was crossing a line. Technically, she should be purified, too. The Council didn’t want to let any non-humans live.

  Clearly, we didn’t listen to them too often.

  “It was in a locker,” I said, deciding to just go for it.

  “In a locker?” Claire sounded downright horrified, which she should be. “How? Those lockers are half the size they should be, there’s no way a…” Her confidence eroded as she judged my expression. “And it was real, for sure? Not a fake, not a joke, not—”

  “Max and I saw it, and some other kids who were walking by at the time. I’ve seen bodies before.” Images of Koath splash in my head, but I shook them off. “It looked too real to be a joke.”

  “Oh. Well, shit.”

  Despite myself, I smiled. Sounded like something I would say. I must have rubbed off on her.

  “We have a little library here. Do you want to help me look through some books to see if we can find what did it?” She nodded and muttered an affirmative, and I led us out of my room and through the house. It was a three-story house, so there were multiple rooms we didn’t often use. The library was one of them, at least for me.

  Wall-to-wall books, floor to ceiling, shelves jammed packed with books of all sizes and colors. The room smelled like old paper. A small table sat in the room’s center, along with a few leather chairs.

  “Wow.” Claire ran to the nearest bookshelf, drawing her fingers along multiple book spines. “This room is amazing. Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a library in your house?” Excitement oozed from her pours as she glanced to me.

  “I was a little busy trying not to die,” I told her dryly. I move to the corner of the room. “The Demon anthologies are over here.”

  Claire grabbed one. On its first page, she was already shaking her head. “It’s in another language.”

  “Yes, but the good thing about anthologies are the pictures,” I said. “If we can find a picture, we can…well, we’ll go from there, if we get that far.”

  “Okay. And what picture are we looking for? Don’t think I didn’t notice how you didn’t tell me what the body looked like. It must be bad if you can’t describe it.”

  I took a few books and sat on one of the leather chairs. Claire did the same. “Imagine your body was like a suit, and to switch suits, you had to cut a perfectly straight line from your forehead to your, uh, private parts. And you could just step out and leave the skin wherever you want.”

  Claire’s eyes closed at the disgusting imagery, but the point was across. “Okay. So we’re not looking for something that sheds.”

  Like a snake? “No,” I said slowly. “Max thinks something ate the kid, but it didn’t look like that to me. Either something came at the kid from the outside and cut him like that, and somehow emptied his entire inside—including his bones—or something was already inside of him and came out.” And folded the body like clothes and stuffed it in a locker.

  “That is beyond terrible.” Claire opened her first book. She sighed. “If Max had stayed home, I bet he’d be able to read all of this.”

  My eyes narrowed somewhat at her comment. I wanted to bring up Max and her, but now wasn’t the time. She had nearly died because of Max and mine’s status as a Purifier, so really, she shouldn’t even be helping. And yet, here she was. That either meant she really liked Max, or that she was my friend.

  Was this what having a friend felt like? Alyssa was gone too soon for me to spend much time with her, and Gabriel…

  No, I didn’t want to think about Gabriel right now.

  I only wanted him to wake up.

  Chapter Six – Gabriel

  What was happening to me?

  Where was I?

  Why did every muscle of mine feel like stone?

  I had lots more questions, but it was difficult for my mind to form them. It was like my brain didn’t want to work. I couldn’t open my eyes, couldn’t feel much, other than my inability to move. I couldn’t hear much, either.

  Everything was black. Were my eyes open, or were they closed and refused to open? I couldn’t tell. Was I asleep? Was this some kind of long, strange dream?

  Hello? I asked, at least I thought I did. Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?

  I didn’t hear my own voice. Maybe I just thought the questions.

  My head hurt, and suddenly a whole host of other things wandered into it.

  How did I get here? Why couldn’t I remember? Who was I? I didn’t know if these were important questions, because I had no one, nothing to give answers to me. I was alone, and even though I felt numb, I felt cold.

  So, so cold.

  I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to not remember. Memories were important, weren’t they? They were what made me, me. Without my memories, was I really me?

  Would I ever wake up? Would the darkness swallow me whole and never let me out? I didn’t want to die. There was someone…something I had to get back to. I wished I knew what it was, or who they were.

  But, try as I might, I couldn’t remember anything.

  I was empty.

  Chapter Seven – Liz

  At least I got Michael to change his clothes and eat something. It might’ve only been pudding and off-brand Sprite, but it was something. Better than nothing.

  I stood outside the room, watching Michael and Max. I did my best to comfort them both, but the harsh reality was that Gabriel might not wake up. I didn’t know whether his coma was due to some supernatural force, or simple a medical mystery. Either way, Michael had to keep going. He had to push through, for Kass.

  And Kass…

  I worried for her.

  She’d lost so much lately, gone through so much, miraculously lived through her neck being broken by an Original Vampire, and now this? No teenager should have to go through what she had, and yet, until she died, it would never stop. Being a Purifier wasn’t the most glamorous job. It was tough, hard, and deadly.

  My phone buzzed, and I slipped it from my pocket and saw that I had a new email. It was on the Council’s protected server, one that the FBI couldn’t crack or spy on. After what happened at the school yesterday, after seeing the boy’s body in the locker and watching the cleanup crew carefully tug him out and lay him on a black body bag, I had a nagging suspicion what caused it.

  And it would seem I was right.

  I scrolled through the attachments, finding sketched, ancient pictures of bodies with mirrored injuries and were similarly disposed of. I wanted to scream: Not now, not while Michael is distracted by Gabriel’s coma. Not while Kass and Max had their hands full. Couldn’t the blasted thing wait a bit before surfacing?

  No. It couldn’t, because it knew no patience. It did what it wanted when it wanted.

  The more frightening thing was that the Council had declared the particular Demon extinct. They wouldn’t accept my report to them for that very reason. They would demand another answer, another Demon responsible. But there wasn’t. Only one Demon in earth’s history had ever left bodies like that.

  Cutis Walker.

  A Sk
inwalker.

  Chapter Eight – Kass

  The day was mostly unproductive. Claire and I found some really weird pictures of Demons I hoped were long wiped out by now, but nothing showing any bodies cut like that. The anthology of flesh-eaters was a bust—a disgusting bust—and I couldn’t help but heave a sigh when I sent Claire home.

  She said she’d come back tomorrow to help look more. I didn’t tell her not to, because it was nice having someone there with me, someone who knew about my job as a Purifier, someone who knew the dangers and risks and didn’t run away, even if she should. Plus, Claire didn’t push about Gabriel.

  I figured I could have asked Michael or Liz about the body at the school. Liz did oversee the cleanup—and she did it well, apparently, if Claire’s cluelessness about it meant anything. Michael was at the hospital (who knew when he’d come home at this rate), and Liz was trapped in her own world when she and Max arrived, smelling freshly like hospitals always did. She went straight to cooking and doing laundry, like she was Michael’s doting wife and not his on-again, off-again girlfriend from England.

  Max was downtrodden when he saw that Claire wasn’t here, and I refrained from saying anything about it. Max and Claire…if they were going to date, they had to overcome their awkwardness when it came to each other and face the music.

  Hypocritical of me, you might say, to which I would respond: you bet.

  I did my nightly routine, minus Gabriel’s constant smirks and sarcasm, and stood in front of my mirror. My hair was wet, the bags under my eyes huge. I might actually get some sleep tonight, for every part of me shook with exhaustion. I was nothing without my partner.

  My fingers went to the thin chain around my neck, and I carefully undid the locket that held the diamond pendants that both my Gabriel and the other world’s Gabriel got me. One was a heart around a cross, and the other a wing. Both were about the same size, and I bet they cost the same amount of money. Not that the money mattered. It might’ve for Michael, but not me. He could’ve gotten me a ring from the twenty-five cent machines outside the grocery store, and I would’ve been happy.