Cloak of Deceit: An Alex Moore Novel

by Gwen Mitchell

  Outside, the corridor was a chaos of people shoving and stumbling in a pack of drenched bodies as alarms blared and emergency lights flashed. To me, they seemed to be moving in slow motion. Every detail was stretched out. Watching them felt like observing an ant farm — an invisible plate of glass and a world of understanding between us. They were so oblivious. Like I had been forty-eight hours ago.

  Nothing could have made it clearer that I was different now. I felt it in every cell of my body. For one thing, I felt strong. Fit. I could probably do an Ironman without batting an eyelash. But I could also taste their fear in the air — a jolt of saltiness, like touching your tongue to a battery. I could smell each of them, from the pungent hungover stoners to the sweet innocent freshmen. I took them all in at once, but my brain catalogued every unique signature. A new part of my mind had opened up to discern and process this information. It was such an incredible high, I’ll admit I temporarily lost myself in the power trip.

  When fire truck sirens joined the fray outside, I made my way down the stairs and through the front door. The bulk of the students had gathered across the street on the lawn in front of the health building. I turned the opposite way, slipping into a narrow alley between our hall and the next.

  The murmur of the crowd filtered out of my hearing, and the alarm bells finally stopped. I walked down the alley feeling as though I was made of silk and shadow, invisible and walking on air — a part of the night. Moonlight caressed my skin in a soft, milky beam. It was the most incredible feeling I’d ever had in my life. I smiled at that thought — not my life, my death.

  I was an Undead. It had to be true — and it felt incredible! Like I had finally, truly awakened. Even the mice scurrying along the side of the brick building held a new wonder for me. I had no trouble seeing the fine details of the alley through the dark. I knew I didn’t have to breathe to live, but every lungful of air brought a cacophony of new information about the world around me. My appearance hadn’t changed, that I could tell, but I was more tuned-in to every part of my body, in precise control of each movement and aware of every molecule of my being.

  I wonder if I can leap off tall buildings like Kate Beckinsale.

  Still lost in the wonders of new world, I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until it was too late. I hadn’t heard a footstep or even a rustle of clothing, but I felt when the air shifted behind me. I whirled on my heel and threw my hands out, bracing for a body check that never came.

  Instead, I saw Julian’s surprised face for the blink of an eye before he flew backwards, as if yanked from behind by an invisible rope. He crashed into a fire escape with a loud clang and a grunt, and then fell ten feet to the cement with a wet slap.

  As he lifted himself to his knees, I ran to him.

  “What are you doing here?” I grabbed an arm and helped him lean against the wall. “Am I in trouble already? I just woke up!”

  He jerked out of my grasp and scowled at me.

  I eased away, hurt by the look of accusation on his face. But the rest of me, the newly blossoming Undead, felt a jolt of excitement at the sight of him. The smell was even more enticing now, if that was possible. Even the innate sense of him had me buzzing. He was kindred, like me. I knew instinctually.

  But what was really fascinating was the halo of soft golden energy that surrounded him. It melted on my skin like butter and invaded my palate with an infusion of vanilla and caramel. My mouth watered. Deeper parts of me pulsed with warmth.

  The look on his face slowly changed from anger to confusion to…astonishment?

  “You’re so beautiful.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this?”

  “I—” He stared at me for another second, then stood. His expression locked down into an unreadable mask. “I didn’t know.”

  I cocked my head, wondering what he meant, and reached out to take his hand.

  Julian grabbed the front of my shirt and swung me against the wall with a knife pinned at my throat. I looked into his deep brown eyes, now hard and cold. My jaw hung slack in surprise.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’re one of them?” he snarled. His face, suddenly fierce, was inches away from mine.

  “One of who?” I swallowed hard, my throat constricting with panic, acutely aware of the blade grazing my skin. There was nothing of the guy from my dorm room looking back at me. He was the definition of Stone Cold Killer.

  “A Grigoric Agent!” he yelled in my face, pulling me from the wall just to slam me into it again, harder. My head cracked against the bricks, and I bit my tongue. I whimpered, and tears welled in my eyes without my permission.

  “Is this some sort of trap?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I yelled back, enraged by his betrayal of my trust. Even admitting to myself that I had trusted him seemed so stupid. Exactly what got you killed in the first place! “Why are you doing this to me?”

  I closed my eyes to the ugly hatred twisting the face I’d already grown to like. I wanted to sink away from the sharp, flinty cloud his energy had shifted to. What I could only describe as tangible rage poured off of him in waves.

  My chest constricted with regret. I really was all alone.

  Julian studied my face, his eyes tracking the single tear that managed to escape. Slowly, he relaxed and lowered the blade from my throat. I wiped my cheek and sank down the bricks until I folded in on myself. I shivered in my soaked pajamas as the November air bit at my skin.

  “You really don’t know?” He sounded just as confused as I felt.

  “No!” I didn’t know anything anymore. I didn’t know who I was, what I was, or why he was so angry.

  Julian pushed off from the wall, cursed, and spun around, his black coat twirling in his wake. He paced in front of me, muttering to himself.

  All my joy of discovery faded as confusion and exhaustion settled in. I’d been used, and then thrown away. Abandoned into a world where nothing made sense, or worked like it should. No safe place. No one to turn to. If only I could disappear, or just wake up. Even the one person I wanted to count on to guide me was unreliable. Serves you right.

  “I don’t understand how this could happen.” Julian had finally stopped pacing. He stood a few feet away, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “I don’t understand any of this at all!” I raked my fingers through my wet hair. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be some sort of know-it-all enforcer!”

  “I know!” He whipped around and slapped his fists against the opposite wall, then leaned against it, his head sagging between his shoulders.

  “I didn’t ask for this.” I sniffed.

  “I know,” Julian repeated, calmer. He straightened up and faced me, apparently decided on something. He squatted to my level.

  I pulled myself into a tighter ball and leaned away.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” He was back to being friendly and reasonable. His mood swings were going to give me whiplash.

  “You said that before.”

  “And I meant it.” He held out his hand. I looked from his offered hand to his face, which I couldn’t read. But the light around him had settled to a faint golden halo, with the occasional flare of smoky grey. I had no idea why I believed him, or if it was the right thing to do, but I knew I would rather trust Julian than not. I would rather have one friend than no one at all. I didn’t have much choice. No one else would ever believe me. No one else could tell me what was going on. I took his hand.

  “We have to get you out of here.” He shucked his coat and placed it over my shoulders, then wrapped an arm around me and scanned the darkened alley in both directions.

  “Why?” I stumbled, but Julian righted me and nudged me along.

  “Because the Grigori will be looking for you now, but they kill Undead on sight.”

  “Oh.”

  Right — of course. Silly me.

  Chapter Four

  Julian drove a rusty old pick-up truck and lived about
forty minutes west of Forest Grove, closer to the coast. Most of the ride passed in an awkward silence. I welcomed it. I was still floundering in a sea of new emotions and instincts, too stunned to ask intelligent questions. And I could practically hear the thought processes churning in Julian’s head. Based off of the flickering red haze surrounding him and his tense frown, I was guessing they revolved around me and weren’t necessarily good.

  For a while I stole secret, casual glances but then I studied him more openly. He was much more interesting than the drab landscape out the window, and seemed unconcerned with my presence anyway.

  The truck’s headlights cut a sharp triangle through the dark two-lane highway. The shadows of the trees loomed over us on either side, reminders of my nightmare.

  I trembled, and then reached over and flipped on the radio and fidgeted with the old-style tuning knob. “I wonder if there’s anything about the earthquake.”

  “Earthquake?” Julian gave me a quizzical look.

  “Yeah, you know, when pressure builds up under the earth’s crust and is relieved by the shifting of its tectonic plates?” I wasn’t sure we were on good enough terms for sarcasm, but it’s my fall back in uncomfortable situations.

  He shifted his attention back to the road. “What are you talking about?”

  “The earth shook tonight, violently. Didn’t you feel it? My entire dorm evacuated.”

  “There was no earthquake.” He wrung his hands around the steering wheel.

  Was that anxiety, or frustration? I couldn’t tell. He seemed to run hot and cold, and switch between them quicker than I could track. It was frustrating, and yet—maddeningly—a little enticing. I shouldn’t have been thinking about it at a time like that, but I couldn’t deny that Julian encapsulated most of my girlish fantasies. His dark, sultry looks, and a body built for battle, or more nefarious activities. And he was a nine-point-seven on the brooding-mysterious scale. Which usually got me in shitloads of trouble, or, you know…dead.

  I sighed. “Well, there was on my planet. It woke me up out of a nightmare I was having — even with the drugs you gave me.”

  Julian’s head swiveled around slowly. He looked me up and down, then jerked his gaze back to the front. “What was the dream about?”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “But maybe you could answer some questions for me.”

  “All right.” Julian turned the radio off and relaxed back into his seat like he was getting settled for a long talk.

  Finally, I thought, wondering where to start. “Who are we running from?”

  “The Grigori are a collective of psychics. A hive-mind.” He didn’t offer more, just glanced over, waiting for my next question.

  A hive-mind? What if it wasn’t a dream? I sat up and pulled the leather coat tighter around me. The darkness outside the truck’s little bubble of light felt more foreboding than it had a minute before. “Why would they be after me?”

  “They can sense when you use your powers. It works like a homing beacon to them.” He turned down a narrow gravel road lined with tall pines. We stopped in front of a ten-foot tall steel gate. Julian rolled down his window to enter a code into the posted keypad. As the gate rattled shut behind us, he turned the headlights off, and we continued on through the dark.

  I wasn’t even aware of it, but I had turned in my seat and shifted closer to Julian, watching the shadows around us as if some giant beast would lunge out of them and snatch me up. I shook that thought from my head. “What powers?”

  Julian sighed, looking at me sideways. “It might be easier if we start at the beginning.”

  “I’m all ears.” My hand shot out to grip his thigh when a scratching sound raked along the side of the truck. It was just the bushes. I let him go with a mumbled apology, which he thankfully ignored.

  Easy, Alex. Breathe.

  Not that I needed to breathe, but it was still therapeutic.

  “The Undead are exactly that — undead. We need blood to survive, but our weaknesses are few. Cut off our blood supply or remove our head and we die. Along with that come certain abilities and senses. You could call them supernatural. Our governing body is called the Cloak. I’m a Knight of the Cloak.” Julian rushed through that information download like it was a long practiced lecture. I tried my best to pay attention and to not get lost as his voice wrapped around me in the intimate quarters of the old pickup.

  “A knight?” I couldn’t keep the skepticism out of my voice.

  Julian had the grace to look embarrassed. The look was out of place on him, but still cute. “The Cloak was formed over a thousand years ago, some of the titles are old. I’m an enforcer of the Code — the Undead Law. I observe, and when I have to, detain, question and-or punish members of the Undead who think that the Code doesn’t apply to them. I keep them in line. I also clean up the messes left behind. Secrecy is the most important of our rules.”

  “For obvious reasons,” I said. Most people wouldn’t react real well to the idea of vampires being real — even if everything else about them was bunk. I had to accept it as the truth, and I could still barely believe it. If vampires were real — why not psychics too? “And what about the…whatever-you-call-them?”

  “The Grigori.” His face took on a grim cast in the shadows. “Our sworn enemies. The war pre-dates the Cloak, and has been long and bloody.”

  “And you think I’m one of them?” I frowned to myself. That would at least explain his bi-polar behavior. But if I was supposed to be his sworn enemy, why was he helping me? Was he helping me?

  “Yes. You’re a telekinetic, what they call a Force Agent. The most dangerous kind. That’s the only explanation for what you did to me back in the alley, and for your little earthquake, which didn’t happen, by the way, except in your building.”

  “I did that?” I whispered. Even though, in some secret place, it made sense. I hadn’t confessed to Julian about my nightmare, but everything he’d told me seemed to fit. The idea of a collective consciousness made me shiver with recognition. They had to be the voices in my dream. I held my shaking hands out in front of me and turned them over. If Julian hadn’t been already dead, I could have killed him. Without even meaning to.

  The truck slowed as we pulled up to a small rambler with a yard of overgrown weeds and grasses. The tin roof shone silver in the moonlight. Julian killed the engine and turned to face me.

  “I’m not an expert, but I know psychic punch when I feel one. What you are — it’s not supposed to happen. It’s forbidden to turn a Grigori. It’s never happened before to my knowledge.” He shook his head, his hands clenching into fists. “We kill them, we don’t turn them. It just doesn’t happen. But somehow, you’re…both. You went through your transformation into an Undead, and it must have awakened your psychic powers somehow. It’s hereditary, Alex. You’ve always been one of them, you just didn’t know it.”

  “Now…there’s no telling what you’re capable of.” His voice had grown quieter now that only the stillness of the night and the pattering of rain surrounded us. His tone was almost apologetic — like how you would give someone your condolences. Despite his efforts to soften the news, the revelation filled me with a cold, hollow ache.

  How could I have that sort of power inside of me my whole life and not know it?

  I swallowed hard.

  His dark eyes glittered with apprehension as he stared back at me.

  “What will they do if they find me, the Grigori?”

  “The same thing they do to any Undead, I’m betting. Take off your head.”

  “Terrific.” I looked through my window to the small house beyond. “Why are you helping me then? Doesn’t being around me put you in danger too?”

  It sounded like I was screwed either way. On one side, I was a violation of the law, on the other, I was a walking bull’s eye. Talk about backing the underdog. Maybe Julian actually was a few cards shy of a full deck.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I’m help
ing you because I believe you’re an innocent in all of this and I feel partially responsible. If I had stopped Cody from turning you, you’d still be a normal human girl. The fact that you transformed successfully, even though you were a victim is rare. You’re strong. I think you deserve a fighting chance.” His lips curled up in the hint of an ironic smile as he opened his door. “And the danger doesn’t bother me.”

  I smiled back, though I didn’t really feel it on the inside. At least he’s not afraid of what you are. It didn’t thrill me to think he saw me as a victim, someone needing his help — even if it was true. I would rather have his respect than his pity, but the number of people I could trust was down to one—or maybe point five—and he was it. Regardless of the reason, Julian was willing to help me. That would have to be enough for now. I slid out of the truck and closed my door, then picked my way across the yard in my bare feet to stand beside him on the porch.

  Julian disengaged the alarm as I huddled in his coat. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

  “Please.” I rolled my eyes. It’s not like I had anywhere else to go. If it weren’t for him, I’d probably be lying headless in a dumpster somewhere right now. “I’m not company, I’m a refugee.”

  The Undead Knight's domicile definitely looked like a man’s house. It lacked any sort of décor, but felt comfortable and well lived-in. He went ahead of me, turning on lamps, illuminating the small living room furnished with two black leather couches, a low coffee table, a TV, and several bookcases. He disappeared around the corner, into what I assumed would be the kitchen. A deep breath revealed that it smelled like him: a warm, inviting sweetness that made my muscles relax. I tiptoed across the hardwood floor to read the titles on some of his bookcases. You can tell a lot about a person by what they read.

  The classics filled the shelves, along with several combat manuals and other odd titles like I’m Dead. Now What? — A Manual. I pulled it off of the shelf and thumbed through it. No publisher information. No copyright. Pretty straightforward. Chapter One—The Transformation.