“The flood?”
“Ever hear of the arc Noah built? It wasn’t to punish humanity…Noah made a deal with God to wipe out the Watchers and save humanity, before the Watchers killed them all…there was a war that was getting messy. Not all of us were killed, though, and no mortal means can kill one of the fallen, so they kept procreating. God sometimes agrees to prayer without mentioning that his miracles don’t always stick,” Daniel said.
“Ohhhhh…right,” I said, trying hard to believe the ridiculousness of what he had just said. “So, Marcus might be thinking about taking out the nine?” I asked, focusing on the part of the story that made sense. Death and mayhem was easier than epic floods targeting Watchers.
“It would be suicide,” Daniel said. “Utter stupidity.”
“He has lots of people at his disposal,” I said. “A lot of people he can send on suicide missions. He wouldn’t even have to get out of bed.”
Reaper started shifting nervously; his eyes turned distant. It was obvious he was holding something back.
“What?” Daniel asked.
Reaper fixed his expression and said slowly. “What if he kidnapped your parents to make them devise this drug, without having to resort to a suicide mission?”
Daniel’s eyes were worried. “That makes a lot of sense,” Daniel said.
As I thought of the kidnapping, I realized something for the first time. I felt my stomach sink, wondering why I hadn’t thought of it before. I reached out and took Daniel’s hand, not even bothering to hide the fact that I was purposefully leaving Reaper out of the conversation. My panic went above the need to appear polite.
I gave your parents my blood…right before we left. They had samples for testing. They had my blood given willingly, Daniel! Willingly! Do you know what that means?
Daniel worked hard to control my panic. Yes. But I trust Han and Beatrice. They wouldn’t have given that blood up, not even if it meant their lives. They know its importance.
What if Marcus is making an army of Nightstalkers as we speak? I asked.
Then we will face that when the time comes, he replied. Let’s talk about this later.
Reaper was watching us, obviously aware we were having a discussion. During our talk, he had decided the conversation could wait until we had a more private place to talk. Clearing the air of the serious things, he stepped closer to Margaret and Jackson’s room.
“Do you need anything?” he asked Jackson.
Jackson had been in the process of stuffing a long, silver sword under his mattress – a sword I recognized in an instant. It was the one I had taken from Anna in New Orleans; the reason she had tracked me down and ultimately kidnapped me. Jackson turned at Reaper’s words.
“No, not unless you have some dirt bikes or ATVs. It’s been a while since I’ve had any fun,” Jackson said with his typical mocking smile.
“We have a few in the garage, you’re welcome to help yourself,” Reaper said.
“I might just do that,” Jackson replied.
Reaper hadn’t missed seeing the sword. “I would make sure you keep an eye on that. It’s very valuable…people here might get the wrong idea. We do tend to attract people who like to...borrow things.”
Jackson nodded, hiding the sword the rest of the way. I knew he would find another home for it soon.
“If you’ll excuse me, I have some things I need to see to. Daniel, come by my room later tonight, and we’ll finish catching up,” Reaper said.
“I will,” Daniel said.
Reaper nodded, and left us alone again.
“You kept it?” I asked avoiding looking at the place I knew the sword was hidden.
“I asked Jackson to hold on to it for me,” Daniel replied. “I thought it might be safer.”
“Safer?” I questioned, not understanding.
Everyone avoided looking at everyone else. Daniel’s face was guilty and uncomfortable. I stared at him, wondering what he was keeping from me. We had made a promise to each other to keep the lies out of our relationship. It was a promise I didn’t want him backing out on so soon.
“What happened while I was gone?” I asked him.
Daniel pulled me out of the room, so we could talk privately. We went to my room, where all my stuff was piled next to the bed. The book I had found in my house was stuffed under the bed, hidden, but I knew I would have to look at it soon. Having my things made the room feel more like it was mine.
Daniel carefully shut and locked the door, then made me sit on the bed. His serious expression freaked me out. It went beyond his normal seriousness. It was as if the demons he always fought were no longer as hidden as he would have liked.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Daniel’s green eyes were full of dark emotion, but he kept them on me as he took my hands, wanting me to understand what he was saying.
“When I was in the nest, Damian made me take this drug. He gave it to us all. He said if we stopped taking it, it would kill us from the inside out. He made us watch as this happened to one of our own. It was obviously a lie – a trick designed to ensure loyalty. But what it does do is make the anger uncontrollable. It makes you go berserk… I went berserk for a while. It was all they could do to stop me killing people, when I was in that sewer. They had to knock me out. Then, I went through the withdrawal. I thought I was dying. I’ve never felt the darkness so strongly. I wanted to kill everyone. I wanted to revel in the blood and kill until I had killed everyone in the world…” His voice was laced with the power of the memory. It was hard for him to back down from the emotion. “…and coming down off the drug…oh, God. It was like coming down off the highest peak in the world and falling flat into the lowest valley. The darkness is still with me.”
His words felt so familiar, so alive. It was like I had been there…I had to know if I had really seen the truth.
“Show me,” I said.
He started to protest, his eyes lost in his fear and self-loathing.
“Daniel, I have to see it. I have to understand what you went through,” I interrupted him.
I urged him with my eyes to see how much it meant to me.
“I was going to ask you to show me what really happened in that pit, for the same reason,” he admitted slowly.
“Let’s trade. Pain for pain,” I suggested.
“There’s no coming back from it,” he said slowly. “Are you sure?”
I was certain. “Yes.”
I thought if I knew his pain, I could start to get handle on mine. I could start to face the demons because it was proof I wasn’t facing them alone. Daniel played with my fingers for a moment, trying to come to a decision about my decision. Finally, knowing he wanted the truth as much as I did, he linked our hands together.
“Don’t leave anything out,” he warned me.
“Dido,” I said.
The pressure of his thoughts swarmed mine. I shut my eyes at the familiar feeling. The pressure shifted, and, for the first time since our first kiss, I felt a vision I couldn’t back away from. It was as if something compelled me to stay and watch.
I saw him in the sewers of New Orleans again, my perspective different this time. He had just gotten the last of the prisoners out of the cell, when two men came around the corner. One was the man who had taken the sword from Anna; the other was one of Damian’s bodyguards. Behind them were Damian and Nguyen. When Daniel saw Damian, he rushed forward to attack.
A strong surge of power knocked Daniel to the ground as the man with the sword saw Daniel and reacted with his talent. Dazed, it took a moment for Daniel to find his senses again. But by then, it was too late. Damian stood over Daniel for a moment, promising him they would torture me, torture the others – gloating over his victory.
Between one obscene threat and the next, Daniel’s eyes switched to black. Daniel kicked Damian in the knee and jumped to his feet. His hands clenched, and his muscles rippled with the violence his body was containing. The two bodyguards rushed forward to protect Da
mian.
Daniel took the first bodyguard down with a quick snap of the man’s neck. Then, he fought the second. Daniel was cut on the arm as the second man, the one with the sword, tried to slash at him. Ignoring the pain and the blood, Daniel managed to take the sword from the man and stab him through the throat. There was no hesitation – no regret.
Full of vicious fury, his newly acquired sword in hand, Daniel turned his attention to Damian. Showing their true natures, Damian and Nguyen turned tail and ran. Daniel heard them call out to the guards in the hall, raising the alarm to his presence. The lights switched from white to red, and the hall filled with enemies. Daniel set his stance and gripped his sword, as an army of Seekers approached him from the direction Damian had fled.
The next few minutes were a blur of slash! hack! slash! rip! as Daniel took down everyone in his path. Mercy was beyond him – if someone attacked, he killed. He waded in a sea of blood and broken bodies.
An explosion destroyed the hall, and he felt it rock the sewers. He knew someone behind him had been thrown back in the blast, but, at the time, he hadn’t realized it was Spider. Then, I appeared again, Alex in tow. He heard my yell that Alex was a friend, and went back to the fight. When he heard my yell, it was only a dim spark in a mind consumed by hatred. He didn’t register what the words meant or that I was in danger.
He just kept killing.
The next thing he knew, Serenity was in front of him. Her eyes were worried as he glared at her. She said words to him, words he didn’t hear. He growled at her, daring her to come closer and enter his field of death. She took a step back and said something to somebody behind Daniel. The next thing Daniel knew was pain and darkness as he was knocked unconscious.
He woke up in a silver room without ornamentation. He rolled to his feet and immediately went to the door. It was locked. He pounded on the door, the darkness still in his eyes. If there was anyone on the other side of the door, they ignored him, leaving him to come down off the drug alone. What I witnessed next was the original pain I had seen once in a dream, only it was amplified now, because I felt every single moment of the searing, tearing, awful pain. It hurt every inch of his body. It was worse than the change he had faced on his seventeenth birthday.
Time that felt like an eternity passed as he faced the unending pain. But even as he faced the pain, something comforted him. He knew he wasn’t alone. He had felt me. It was the only thing that kept him sane and fighting for the future.
Finally, the pain ended. His body returned to normal. His first breath after the pain was the first breath in a new life. It was the first time he had felt normal since he had joined the Seeker’s nest. He was weak, but alive.
The door opened as he sat up, and Serenity looked down at him. She held out the sword he had claimed in the sewers, and told Daniel she had found Jackson and Margaret. Then, she had left, promising they would see each other again.
Waiting for him beyond the door was Alex. She was pale and dressed in clothes too big for her. Her face full of fear, she told him I had been taken.
His anger at hearing I had been abducted was startling. He threw things, cursing more than I had ever heard him curse, and I felt him feel the urge to use the sword again. He left before he did, carefully placing the sword on Serenity’s antique desk, before doing something he regretted. It was dusk when he let himself out of Serenity’s club, but he didn’t notice the sinking sun around his fury. When his anger had been spent in the darkness of the city, he had come back to the club, changed, closed-off, but determined to find me.
I saw his search for me, his reunion with Jackson and Margaret, and his quiet decline into darkness; every day I wasn’t found was a day he lost a little more hope. Once, I even saw him cry a silver tear, his emotion moving him into the darkest depths of pain.
When he wasn’t searching for me, he searched for Nightstalkers and Watchers doing harm, channeling his frustration there. The deaths were empty; they were nothing more than a distraction.
Jackson worked hard to reach out to his friend, to bring him laughter around the darkness, but it was useless. They fought, and Daniel almost used the sword on him. The only thing that kept him from following through on the act was Alex, who stumbled in on the pair and had begged Daniel to think about what he was doing. Seeing what he had become – disgusted he had come so close to killing his friend – Daniel forced Jackson to keep the sword, to promise not to let him have it.
A rift had formed in their friendship, though – one Daniel was afraid was permanent.
Afraid he would lose control again, Daniel shut himself away from the others. He spent hours in front of Marcus’ building, wondering if he was only a wall’s width away from me. His frustration went beyond words.
I saw it all, up until the moment we had been reunited. His emotions at realizing I was there and not a dream were overwhelmingly sweet. I bathed in the return of light to his body, aware of how close he had been to losing it.
I opened my eyes, when he dropped my hand. Tears were falling down my face. Daniel was in a similar state of emotional turmoil. He put his hands on either side of my face and looked at me for a long moment. He didn’t seem to know what to say.
I put my forehead against his.
“I dreamed some of your memories,” I told Daniel. “I saw it like I was there. When Master Limp came to beat me and the pain was too much, I always found you. You were the only light I had.”
“I started to think I saw you sometimes,” he admitted. “It’s why I thought you were an illusion when I first saw you.”
“Maybe you did see me,” I suggested.
“Could be.” he said. “The visions of you kept me alive.” He pulled away from me, so he could look me in the eyes again. He brushed a finger over my lips. “You are so beautiful.”
“So are you,” I said.
His boyish smile was the dawn of healing. It was the dawn of having someone who truly understood every second of my pain looking me in the eyes. The smile reached his eyes, making his whole face changed with the emotion.
“Flirt,” he teased.
“When you’re around,” I agreed, joining him in his smile.
He moved in closer and the smile changed into a more serious emotion; an emotion that left butterflies in my stomach and an arc of electricity spanning between us. The room, the air felt alive with his look. My heart started to beat harder with the movement.
Softly, and as if it were the first kiss we had ever shared, he pressed his lips to mine. As he did, he wrapped me tight in his arms. Our passion filling our senses, we got lost in the feel of each other’s lips, our breathing the only sense of time in a world where time felt frozen. It was a way of being kissed I hadn’t experienced in a very long time – it made my body feel alive, my senses aware of everything and nothing at the same time.
The feeling linking us changed as our intensity changed. A mutual understanding of desire created a new electrical spark between us; it was a spark of longing and belief that the longing had a cure.
He pulled away from my kiss at the change, uncertain if his desire was the same as mine. I smiled and pulled him back to me, working his shirt over his muscled chest. He was much more careful with my shirt, raising it slowly, purposefully, as if he thought this moment was the beginning of forever.
His hands were gentle on my body, like lace, as they avoided my gun shot and caressed my skin. He took a moment, celebrating my body with his touch, his eyes full of warm emotion. It was the warmest I had ever seen his cool, green eyes. Then, he kissed me again. His lips were certain and sure, his doubt having been replaced by overwhelming desire. My body caved in to every shift in his, trusting him more than I had ever trusted anybody in my entire life.
There was no sense of being apart, as our emotions connected us through our touch. We were one person. One being. The barriers that separated most people were down; we were aware of every want, every desire. It was a perfect time of perfect peace, a time where the only thing in
the world was the present.
I never wanted it to end.
Chapter 11
I woke to darkness so complete I felt as if I were in a world where time, and light, had ceased to have meaning. Night had fallen on the school.
Our time together had left me exhausted, the feeling of being so close to him urging my body to drown in relaxed peace. I had succumbed to the dark peace eagerly. My dreams had been full of him. My room, however, was inexplicably not.
I sat up at the realization, wondering where he had gone. It was unlike him to leave me alone after such an important moment. Figuring an empty room would offer me no answers, I started to get dressed. A smile crept over my face as I dressed. I felt goofy and full of excited happiness, despite not knowing where Daniel was. A warm feeling of contended bliss and understanding of a world I had been missing settled in my stomach. The question of where Daniel had gone was not strong enough to push away the feeling.
The happiness was too hard to ignore.
Headed for the door, humming quietly around the smile on my lips, I paused when I heard Daniel’s laugh in the air. It was the loudest thing against my alert ears, and I was immediately drawn to the sound, like a moth to flame. I focused, searching for his location from the sound, and realized he was in Reaper’s room. Daniel must have followed through on his promise to talk with Reaper. I was about to walk out my room, to join them, when I heard Reaper say something around Daniel’s laughter. Daniel’s response had me eavesdropping – a habit I hated, but one I couldn’t resist under the circumstances.
“Whatever did happen to Isra?” Reaper asked around his laughter. “I lost track of him.”
There was a long pause in which something about Daniel’s expression gave his emotions away.
“What?” Reaper asked.
“I found him when I was searching for you,” Daniel said. “He converted from Islam to Catholicism and joined the church.”
“Isra converted?” Reaper asked with a laugh. “I find that difficult to believe.”
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