Staked!

by Candace Wondrak

  Raphael grinned for a short moment at my newly-hatched enthusiasm for the fight. I couldn’t get used to the way he smiled at me. It was such a switch from the first few weeks I’d known him. He acted like he hated me.

  He came at me and the sound of our colliding staffs entered into my ears once more. The clash of wood on wood wasn’t a sound I was partial to. It was too many irritating smacks right after the other.

  Somehow, Raphael miraculously got the upper hand again. What a shocker. No. Not a shocker at all really, because we were both expecting that to happen.

  Using his staff to unarm me, Raphael got behind me and lightly placed it across my neck. Typically, this would be the time he gloated about winning, but for a long time he was silent.

  A slow breath escaped my lungs as I closed my eyes.

  And when I opened them, I regretted it right away. Maybe if I would have kept them closed a little longer, I wouldn’t be caught in a vision. These visions were getting more frequent as the days went by…and also scarier.

  Emphasis on the scary part. And I wasn’t the type to get scared, either.

  I was standing in a room that was coated in blood. The floor. The walls. The ceiling. All of it dripped the red stuff. Body parts strewn about on the floor, flesh and bones alike. Hanging on thick metal chains were cages that contained…people.

  Some were dead, others were barely alive. The ones that were alive cowered, covering their naked bodies.

  Oh, God. This was terrible. I held my nose, for the smell started to get to me. The stench of this room was the worst thing I ever had smelled. Maybe that’s because I never smelled decaying dead bodies, smelly dying people, and gallons of blood all at once before.

  Not that I’d smelled them before anyway. At least, not this much. A few Nightwalkers at once didn’t make this much of a stink.

  My eyes scanned the room and landed on a chair. Still holding my nose, I slowly walked up to it and realized that it wasn’t just a chair. It was a throne. A gory, bone-filled throne.

  Gagging, I wished myself away from here. But it didn’t work, much to my frustration.

  I began to turn away from the throne, but a silver glint caught my eye. I turned back and reached for it, hoping that it wasn’t something gross, like a flesh-spattered weapon. As soon as my fingers held it up to my face, I dropped it.

  The metal mask thumped on the ground as I gasped and brought my hand to my face. The mask sizzled with heat. Even though I only held it for a split-second, my fingers were burnt, blisters forming.

  I watched in horror as the mask began to evaporate the blood surrounding it, creating red steam. I saw that mask before…only, it was on someone. No, I took that back. Not someone, something. A Daywalker.

  A short puff of a breath flowed from my mouth as I felt heat behind me. My legs were frozen, I couldn’t move to see what was directly behind me. I had a feeling that it was not something human.

  Just a little feeling.

  A powerful arm wrapped around my neck, taking a lungful of air with it. My mouth dropped open, as if that would help me breathe. I heard an animalistic growl in my ear. I heard this growl before, so the question was: who did that growl belong to?

  My hair was moved off my neck, and there was nothing I could do but wait for it to be over. I felt lips traveling from my upper neck to my lower neck. Teeth erupted from the lips, Daywalker teeth, and dug into my skin.

  Grimacing, my eyes closed once more.

  The staff was in front of me. Raphael was behind me. My legs were mush below me. Completely forgetting the fact that I was in a battle with him, I felt my legs buckle and they took me to the grassy ground.

  Raphael knelt by me in an instant. His green eyes were filled with worry. “What is it?”

  Shaking my head, I responded, “Nothing. It was nothing…”

  “Don’t bother trying to lie to me, Kassandra,” Raphael said, setting the staff down and focusing intently on me. “You saw something, didn’t you? Another vision. Was it…about Crixis?”

  “No,” I replied quickly. “I mean, I don’t think so. It was…hard to tell.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I turned to look at him, noting the seriousness in his voice. He was concerned about me, about what I saw. But if I told him, would he just go and tell everyone else? That was something I did not want to happen. And besides, I liked keeping these things to myself because I wasn’t good at discussing them.

  I didn’t have a problem fighting my problems. It was talking about them that I had difficulty with.

  “No,” I said lightly, “no…let’s just—” I stopped. His gaze was so deep that I totally lost my train of thought. Neither one of us spoke. We were locked in a staring contest that neither of us would win.

  Someone else’s voice entered the conversation. “Kass, you’re still here. Fantastic.” Rapidly I conceded the staring contest and glanced to Koath, who was on his way to us. The sun made his graying goatee appear even grayer.

  “Koath,” Raphael stood, gripping the wooden staff. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Likewise. Am I interrupting your lesson?” Koath noticed the weapon lying in his hands.

  Raphael said, “No. We were just about done.”

  A small laugh emanated from Koath. “I could see that. Well, I am glad to see that you are training them to be versatile. Never know when a skill like that might come in handy.”

  Sneaking a ha-I-told-you-so glance at me, Raphael smiled. “Exactly.”

  Creasing my eyebrows at him, I turned to Koath. “Why are you here?”

  “I was hoping to steal you away for a bit. We haven’t had much time together since I’ve arrived, and much of the time we did have was filled with a young Shifter trying to kill me,” Koath said, beaming down at me.

  I chuckled softly. He was talking about Vincent. The Shifter that thought Koath had killed his parents when in actuality it was Crixis. Crixis was the root of all our problems, it seemed. “Sure,” I said as I handed Raphael my staff, “let’s go.”

  “If that is all right with you, that is,” Koath directed at Raphael.

  Raphael looked from him to me. He was slow to answer. “Of course. Have fun.”

  Koath thanked him and started walking away. I was right behind him after I snuck another look at Raphael, who stood there silent, leaning on the wooden staff, watching us leave.

  Watching me.

  “Vanilla is still your favorite?”

  “Yep,” I responded to his question quickly. Vanilla had and will always be my favorite. I watched Koath order two ice cream cones, one with a scoop of vanilla and one with chocolate. After paying the man, Koath handed the vanilla one to me. “Thanks.” I cocked my head at his cone. “Since when do you like chocolate? I thought you were always a Neapolitan fan.”

  He grimaced at the thought of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla all in one. That’s what I’d been saying. One flavor for me was sometimes more than enough, so I didn’t see how people could eat three.

  The lake in the center of the city was large and beautiful. There were ducks and geese floating in the center, like they belonged there naturally even though this lake was man-made. We began to walk the path that surrounded it as we hurried to eat our ice cream. Here’s a tip for the future: ice cream plus ninety-degree weather equaled milk in a cone in about one minute.

  “Lately I’ve been sticking to just chocolate,” Koath finally answered me after taking a huge lick and getting some of it on his goatee.

  I stifled a laugh and said, “That’s not like you.”

  He shrugged, and I wondered how he could walk around in the Carolinian heat wearing a dressy shirt and pants. “For some reason I’ve begun to hate the strawberry flavor terribly.”

  “Why? That used to be your favorite.” I reminded him, because a few years ago, before he left, that would be the first flavor to go when he bought a carton of Neapolitan ice cream.

  “Too much of a good thing can be a ba
d thing, at least that’s how the saying goes,” Koath paused as he licked a drip on his hand. “Though that’s not entirely true about everything, mind you.”

  “I know what you mean.” I bit into the cone.

  We rounded the corner, making and I remembered the time I came here running and ran into a tall, handsome man named Vincent, who just happened to be the Shifter who was after Koath. Coincidence? An almost unbelievable one. I was too busy looking at these two, adorable little chipmunks to notice where I was going. Silly me.

  “So,” Koath began as he finished his ice cream cone. “How is living with Gabriel and Michael? They don’t give you trouble, do they?”

  I squinted my eyes. “Is this a trick question?” Koath told me no, so I continued, “Not that much trouble. No trouble at all, really. It was all good before we moved here. The only thing that sucks about this place is that I have to share a bathroom with Gabriel.”

  “What?” Koath was incredulous, and I didn’t blame him. “You have to share a bathroom with Gabriel?” He repeated me, as if he wasn’t sure that he heard me correctly. But he did.

  Nodding, I told him, “Yeah. It sucks because he’s a bathroom hog.”

  Koath rubbed his chin, thinking. “You know, I would have guessed that it was the other way around. You are the girl, after all.”

  “Gabriel takes the longest showers, he spends forever doing his hair,” I commenced to whine about Gabriel, “and sometimes he just stands there and does nothing because he knows I’m right outside waiting for him to get out.”

  “That does sound like him,” Koath nodded in approval. “Does he dye his hair now? Last time I saw him, I recall it being a darker blonde, not—”

  “Platinum?” I cut in, smiling. “He doesn’t do anything to it…” Truthfully, he just woke up one morning with lighter hair than he went to sleep with. How or why that happened, we still didn’t know. And trying to explain that to Koath seemed like too much work.

  “Then why is it so light?” Koath just couldn’t get over it.

  “The sun?” I said the most reasonable explanation.

  Koath laughed. “Right. And…how are you? I know we talked a bit in the office the other day, but we didn’t get into much detail. I heard about John…I imagine it was very hard for you, doing what you did.”

  My eyes fell to the concrete pathway, taking in the few pebbles that were scattered everywhere. “It was hard. But I had to do it. I wouldn’t have felt so bad if I would have known…”

  Koath’s voice was quiet, “That he was a Vampire?” My head bobbed. “Kass, you did what you had to do. If you wouldn’t have done it, things probably would have been much worse.”

  That was most likely the truth. If I hadn’t pushed my rose blade through his heart after Osiris’s evil light entered him, he might have gone crazy and killed more people.

  “Yeah, I know. That’s what everyone told me.” I gazed out onto the lake’s surface. The setting sun was creating a shimmering pink and orange reflection.

  “As soon as I heard what happened,” Koath carried on, “and that the Council was sending someone to take the principal’s place to oversee things, I went to them and begged for the position.”

  That was news to me. “And,” I asked, “they let you?”

  “Well, I may have put an ultimatum in there. Needless to say,” Koath said, smiling at me, “they didn’t want to lose me.”

  “I’m glad you’re back,” I told him cheerfully.

  “So am I, Kass.” He turned to glance at the sunset one more time before we began heading home. “So am I.”

  “Pizza? Pizza?” Gabriel was taken aback. “Pizza? You are aware that I can eat almost a whole box myself?” He had a good point. The boy could eat a lot. “When I’m full,” he righted himself, “I can eat almost a whole box when I’m full.”

  “What are you yelling at me for?” Michael fixed his glasses. “I brought home four boxes. I’m sure that will be more than enough, plus leftovers.”

  “We’ll see about that, won’t we?” Gabriel spitefully grabbed the top box and headed into the living room.

  We both stared at him, unbelieving that he was complaining about the number of large pizzas. “That boy drives me insane,” Michael whispered to me as he got a plate down. “Do you want one?”

  I shook my head. “I eat out of the box, too.”

  “Right. I should have known,” Michael said, mostly to himself as he retrieved two pepperoni slices. “I do not understand how we can both live with him and that he’s not strangled on a daily basis.”

  Gabriel appeared in the doorway, looking normal. “You know you both love me. You—” He pointed to Michael. “—as a family member and you—” He moved his finger in my direction. “—as a future husband.”

  “My God,” Michael whispered, mostly to himself once again.

  “So, I’ve finally decided that I’m going to buy you a promise ring. Which would you prefer,” Gabriel paused, blue eyes staring straight into mine, “a candy ring or one of those twenty-five cent ones you get from—”

  I tilted my head at him. “We are not getting married.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  I leaned back, “You can’t force me to marry you, Gabriel.”

  “Hey, who said anything about force? Soon enough you’ll realize you’re crazy about me.” Gabriel laughed at me, which made me a little mad.

  “That settles it,” I shot a quick glance to Michael, confirming his previous statement. “You are clinically insane.”

  I grabbed a pizza box and went into the living room. Gabriel was on my heel, pizza slice in hand. “That’s why you love me,” he chimed, moving his head at an angle and smiling like an idiot.

  For a moment I was quiet as I stared at him. He was slowly inching closer, like he thought I was too unaware to see it, which I wasn’t. I was a Purifier, after all. My senses were as sharp as they could possibly be.

  Taking a deep breath, I said, “Stop it or I will shove this pizza slice—”

  Gabriel cut in, “In your mouth?”

  “No.”

  “In your closet?”

  “No.”

  “In a whale’s blowhole?”

  “No.”

  “…In your mouth?”

  Teeth clenching, I gripped the slice I was holding tighter, getting some sauce on me in the process. “Up your—” I was about to chuck my half-eaten pizza at him when Michael came into the room and gestured to the front door. We followed his hand to see Koath and Max standing there, looking slightly awkward, as if they were intruding on someone’s dinner.

  Which they were.

  Gabriel spoke first. “What are they doing here?”

  “They are here to take you both around the town,” Michael crossed his arms. “You will go romping about like worthless teenagers and have too much fun.”

  Gabriel threw down his pizza, saying, “Does this mean what I think it means?”

  “He lied. Michael lied.” Gabriel kicked the grass. “I knew there would be no laser tagging involved in this. No frozen yogurt, no getting more tattoos…please tell me that we are at least going to get some Starbucks?”

  Koath laughed and shook his head.

  Gabriel glared at Max. “This is all your fault.”

  “What?” Max was bewildered.

  “Oh,” he mocked, “don’t act so innocent over there, Max. I can see through this act. You purposefully asked Koath if us four could go roaming the cemetery in search for some Demons to purify. It’s your fault the rest of my dinner will have to wait.”

  “Gabriel,” Koath slowed his pace and glanced at the whining boy, “you already ate an entire large pizza. And besides, this was my idea. I wanted to see how well you three work together as a team.”

  “And what if we don’t find anything, huh? What then?” Gabriel stomped his foot.

  “Then I’m sorry that you had to miss out on your second box of pizza.”

  “You. Are. A. Jerk,” Gabriel pouted, crossi
ng his arms and glaring down at me. Great. Now his sights were set on me. “And you,” his voice was low, “I ran upstairs and got it before we left. Here. Think of it as a pre-promise ring bracelet.” He rolled the green band off his wrist and placed it in my palm.

  One of those rubber band bracelets. Of course. And not just a normal one, either. It was engraved with an iconic line from Toy Story.

  Max busted out laughing. “You two,” he said as he got himself under control, “are cards.”

  “Cards?” Gabriel and I spoke in unison, which happened more than you think.

  “Yeah, isn’t that—” He fixed his huge glasses. “—the right expression?”

  “Not any expression I ever heard of,” I said, putting the rubber band on my wrist, figuring that Gabriel would kill me if I didn’t. Our eyes met, which was my indication that I wasn’t wrong.

  Max looked to the darkened sky and started twirling in circles. Gabriel’s signature look (one eyebrow up, one down) appeared instantly as he glanced from Max to me, wondering the same thing I was: what was he doing?

  In a few seconds, Max’s head came down and he said, “Two forty-seven.”

  As Koath glimpsed all around us, Gabriel placed a hand on the small boy’s shoulder and said, “You’re not too good at telling star-time, are you?”

  “Gabriel,” Koath said as he planted his feet firmly on the grassy ground between two gravestones, “that is not what Max meant. Look.” His finger lifted.

  “Oh,” Gabriel whispered as he saw the group of five Nightwalkers that were slowly approaching us, “in that case you should have said six o’clock, buddy.”

  “But your six is my three and her—” Max started rambling off how he came up with the number two forty-seven. But Gabriel quickly shut him up.

  “Get ready, guys,” Koath spoke as he took a few steps backward.

  “Wait. You’re going to watch?” Gabriel was disbelieving.

  Koath responded, “Yes, and I’m taking mental notes that I’ll relay to Raphael, so I suggest you make use of each other’s strengths and protect each other’s weaknesses.”