Staked!

by Candace Wondrak

  “Could have?” I echoed. “Does that mean you don’t believe that?”

  “Honestly, I never thought about it. Maybe,” he said, his pair of brown eyes falling on Claire, “you’re asking the wrong person here.”

  I angled my head to Claire. She was busy acting like she wasn’t paying attention, messing with her short hair. “What do you think?”

  “Huh?” Her eyes seemed genuinely lost. “You mean the whole werewolf thing? I think there are some things that are just like us, only a little different. If we exist, what’s to say werewolves don’t? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not likely. But the possibility is present.”

  “I, for one, hope they don’t, because I’d rather not get into a fight with a freaking werewolf,” I said with hints of sarcasm and seriousness combined.

  “Let me get this straight,” Steven cut between Claire and I, “you’re afraid to fight a werewolf, something that isn’t real, but you’re fine fighting that…thing?” He lifted his hand and pointed. “How does that work?”

  “First of all, that was Crixis, a Daywalker,” I corrected his thing statement, “and I don’t have a choice with that one. But if I did…” My voice trailed off. If I had a choice, I’d still fight him. I had to, it was my God-given duty.

  It was my God-given duty to get myself killed as quickly as possible. At least, that’s what it seemed like.

  Chapter Fifteen – Gabriel

  There was some place that I needed to be, but I couldn’t find my way out of this field. When did I even get here? And where was this? I spun on my heel, seeking the nearest way out of the greenness.

  But there was none.

  Green as far as my eyes could see. A flat, grassy green landscape was always a good sign—wait a second, it never was a good sign.

  The tattoos on my arms swirled, moving for the first time in a while. As strange as that was, I needed to find Kass. She was in trouble; I could feel it.

  “Calm yourself.”

  My eyebrows lifted immediately as I reached a slightly trembling hand to my mouth. Did I just say that? It definitely sounded like my voice. This was getting weirder than it already was. Great.

  Ignoring the movement on my body, I frantically glanced around, for the millionth time. What if Kass got hurt while I was stuck here? What if…

  Pain surged through my arms and legs, making me bend my knees and fall to the ground. After I became used to the pain, I opened my wincing eyes to gaze at the skin on my arms, which were suddenly tattoo-free. That wasn’t natural. Tattoos didn’t just hop off whenever they felt like it.

  “For the moment, she is fine,” my voice said. But this time, it didn’t come from my mouth. It came from someone else.

  A light shone, bright to the point of temporary blindness. Good thing I was able to heal myself. As a precaution, I slowly brought my eyes upward, using a hand to shield them from the direct light.

  In seconds the light dimmed, and I was left on the grassy floor, alone and staring at myself. He, the other me, stood looking, if I could say so myself, pretty awesome in white metal armor.

  Wow, I thought as I stood and met my gaze. Did I normally look that badass? If so, sweet, and if not, I needed to work on it. It was now my goal to someday look that cool, minus the armor. Even if it was sweet, I wasn’t looking to sport a Lord of the Rings look, at least in public, when it wasn’t Halloween.

  “What’s going on?” I said, noticing how his hair was completely white. If my actual hair ever turned white, I’d forgo my anti-hair dying opinions and buy myself some dark blonde hair color. My hair already took two steps in that direction when it suddenly became ten shades blonder overnight a little while back. White hair was too…white.

  “I called you here.”

  “So, you’re saying I called myself to this,” I said as I motioned around me, “field? Why would I do that?”

  “You did no such thing. I did,” he righted me.

  “Dude,” I spoke slowly, “besides the hair and the debatable badass-ness, you are me.”

  His white head shook. “I am not.”

  Forgetting to control my temper, I yelled, “Then who are you?”

  The setting sun flowed off his (or my, I guessed) wide shoulders. “I am no one.”

  “What?”

  “Yet I am everyone.”

  “What the…”

  “I am nothing.”

  “…heck?”

  “Yet I am everything.”

  “I’m not making any sense. And I don’t mean me, I mean you.” I lifted my finger toward him. I was starting to have enough of this nonsense.

  “I am knowledge, experience, wisdom. I am your strengths and your weaknesses. I am your power and your vulnerability. Your supremacy, inferiority, defiance and humbleness. The fatal flaw and the winning hand. You are not yet me, but soon, you could be.”

  “What?” I rubbed my cheek, hand getting prickled by my stubble.

  “The truth is not a living thing, and yet it can act as thus,” he paused, staring at me with my own two, blue eyes, “it can be both kind and cruel, difficult and easy, simple and complex.”

  “Cut the crap,” I said, taking a belligerent stance. “What does all that mean?”

  “Trust no one. Believe in no one but yourself. You are the only one who can change our destiny.”

  The other me began to fade, making me say, “Wait, hold on. What does…” I stopped when I was alone in the field once more and my tattoos were safely back on my body.

  Chapter Sixteen – Kass

  Sitting on his overly large bed, I jiggled the sleeping boy and said, “Gabriel. Gabriel. Wake up.” I continued to shake him for the next minute, and he showed no signs of waking. That was a first.

  I sighed, giving up. I wasn’t about to waste the rest of my night by trying to wake his sorry butt up just to tell him that Claire and Steven were Morphers.

  My legs took me to my room and I welcomed the soft cushion to my aching back. Thank God Steven and Claire showed up, otherwise I…I didn’t want to think about it. They probably saved my life, and for that, I owed them so much more than I could ever repay.

  Though, Crixis didn’t seem like the giving-up type, so he was undoubtedly coming up with another way to find and kill me.

  I always was one to look on the bright side of things.

  Footsteps rushed into my room as Gabriel loudly whispered, “Kass. You’re okay.”

  Propping myself up, I was seconds away from saying something when he pulled me to him and wrapped me in a giant bear huge that I could not escape.

  “I had the strangest feeling,” he whispered into my ear, “and also the weirdest dream.”

  I chuckled. “I bet it’s not as interesting as my story.”

  Gabriel was instantly doubtful, saying, “No, I don’t think…wait a second.” He held me at arm’s length. “What happened to you?”

  “Long story.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Fine,” I gave in, “fine. I went to the graveyard, and before you ask, I don’t know why. It was like someone was forcing me to go. Crixis just happened to be there, we got in a fight, you know, the usual. Oh, and Steven, Claire’s uncle, is the white wolf.”

  Gabriel blinked, clearly not quite understanding what I meant by that.

  “The white wolf,” I said, taking my hands to his shoulders and shaking them. “Steven and Claire are Morphers. They can morph into animals.”

  “I knew there was something off about them—I felt it at her dad’s funeral. I knew it,” he repeated again and again. Gabriel loved to be right, and when he was, he tended to rub it in your face.

  “Yeah. Uh-huh. Sure you did.” I didn’t believe him. If I had no idea, how would he know? I knew these people more than he did.

  “Oh,” he paused, meeting eyes, “you don’t believe me? You are so mean, sometimes I wonder why I’m even nice to you.”

  I laughed. “Nice? Gabriel, you’re hardly nice to me. Ever. You’re the mean one here.”
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br />   He smiled broadly, because he knew it was true. He was a jerk to me and he wasn’t ashamed of it. How endearing. Not. “Awe,” Gabriel pinched my cheek like he was some grandmother who did that normally, saying, “grow up. I’m not mean to you; I just tease you. There’s a difference, believe me.”

  His hands pushed me down and I laid back, enjoying the softness of my fluffy pillow. “Why do you have to do it so much?” A yawn surfaced, a long, slow one. The sheets were old ones from years past, with lots of little balls attached to the fabric. They weren’t the softest around, but it was better than sleeping in a heap of blood.

  “Because, Kass, you make it so easy.” He winked at me and walked out of my room.

  I stared at the designs in my ceiling, trying to distract my thoughts. After a minute or so of the distraction, what thoughts I did have faded as sleep took me.

  The back room, where Claire tutored me in physics, looked extra clean and organized today. I narrowed it down to two options: Mr. Straum stayed at the school overnight to sort through the jumbled mess, or a janitor got tired of the cluttered room, figured it was a fire hazard, and threw a bunch of things away.

  Either one was plausible.

  I glanced to the clock. The tardy bell rung over a minute ago, meaning that Claire was late. That was a shock. She didn’t seem to be the type who was late or tardy ever.

  Boringness took over, so I fiddled with the number two pencil that was laying atop the beat-up physics book. You know that trick where you move it so fast the pencil looked like rubber? Yeah, I did that for at least thirty seconds. And that was thirty seconds too long.

  “Sorry I’m late,” an out-of-breath Claire apologized while jogging to her seat beside me. “I got caught behind this group of really slow freshmen, and then Mr. Burns wanted me to help him hang this poster.”

  “Who’s Mr. Burns?” Though I’d been here for a few weeks, I’d never heard of that name before.

  “The art teacher. A little on the weird side, but I like him,” Claire laughed, seeming, for the first time in a while, genuinely happy.

  I smiled.

  Her short fingernails created a rhythm on the textbook. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” I said quickly, nodding.

  “Could you find out if…” Her blue eyes dropped, breaking eye contact and appearing thoroughly ashamed. “…Max likes anyone? Namely, me?” The anticipation in Claire’s voice was eminent.

  My normal smile rapidly shifted to a sly one. “Why don’t you just ask him yourself?”

  “I’m not too good with talking to guys” was her excuse.

  I ignored my urge to say that Max was the same, except with girls. Max just seemed to be the type who never had the strength to ask a girl out. But maybe I could change that.

  “Okay,” I pretended to give in, “I’ll talk to him about it.”

  “Just don’t do it at lunch,” she was quick to say. “Make sure I’m not around when you do it, otherwise it’ll seem obvious, and I don’t want to be obvious…or, wait. Do I?” Claire was totally unsure of herself to the point where I wanted to burst out laughing.

  “Well, if I’m talking to him about girls and then about you, I think it’s going to be obvious no matter how I do it,” I deadpanned.

  “Oh, man. Maybe we should just forget all about this little conversation,” Claire tried laughing out, acting as though this meant nothing when in reality, it meant almost everything.

  “All right. Deal.”

  I neglected to mention that I was still going to have a talk with Max and I was still going to throw her name in it. They’d be cute together. Somebody around here deserved to be happy.

  My stomach growled, telling me that it was beyond ready to eat lunch. There was something truly sucky about having lunch this late. If it were up to me, I’d eat in every single class. No joke. As I opened my locker, I licked my lips in anticipation and began to plan out the order I would eat my lunch.

  Well, my sweet tooth was dry, so maybe I’d eat the chocolate chip cookies first. Skip the sandwich, for now, and go back to it later. It’s not like I hadn’t done that before. Next, I’d go for the…

  My brain thoughts stopped immediately. The locker had just faded into the wall, making the wall collapse onto the dirt ground and small villas take the school’s place. Huh. It must’ve been vision time.

  I scanned the area, searching for any signs of life, but found none. Great.

  The cracking of a stick behind me made me flip around to see what caused the disturbance in the almost unsettling peaceful environment.

  Crixis. His hair was still long and tied back into a loose ponytail, and he wore a ruffled shirt, clueing me into the fact that this must have taken place sometime near the other vision I had, the one with the woman Daywalker being burned alive.

  His handsome face tilted. “Come out.”

  A man flashed between Crixis and I; a man covered in a black cape and hood. This guy was the first Purifier. He wasn’t human…but he wasn’t Demon either.

  A devilish smile formed on Crixis’s face. “Good. I thought you weren’t going to show.”

  What did that mean? I took an unsteady step back. The first Purifier couldn’t be in cahoots with Crixis, could he?

  “Nice work back there,” Crixis paused, standing closer to the first Purifier, “though it was a little barbaric, I’ll admit. But I did find it very entertaining to watch. Leliana’s begging no doubt played a small role in that.”

  My mind’s eye showed me the burning cross, the saggy flesh, the woman scribbling in her diary. The man she loved was going to kill her, and he did that by fixing her to a cross and burning her alive. He probably did something else to her after that, but I couldn’t think about it.

  The first Purifier was the man she loved, and she turned him into a Demon. But if he wasn’t human to begin with, how was he sired into Demonhood? And why didn’t he realize what she was before she turned him? Why did he tie her to a cross and make her go through all that pain when he could have just taken her out with the magic that Helio implanted in his body?

  Disappointment flooded throughout me, to the point where I felt the waves wash over me. How could he do something like that? Why be friends with Crixis?

  Crixis motioned to his hood. “Do you always wear that, or is it something you took up after killing your maker?” His question was met with only silence. “Are you mute?” Under the hood, the Purifier shook his head no. “Then why aren’t you answering me?”

  Harsh whispers filled the air as the man started to glow a dark blue. He flashed to Crixis’s immediate front and placed his leather-clad hand over his heart, repeating the whispers at increased intensities.

  Crixis’s expression turned from shocked to jaded to angry in mere seconds. His dark green eyes took in the blue light that was stemming from the other man. He opened his mouth to speak, “You were not an ordinary human, were you?”

  The first Purifier screamed the ancient incantations, cutting off anything else Crixis was going to say.

  A pained appearance crossed Crixis’s face before he became normal and said, “I’m only being facetious. Is this blue light supposed to do something more than tingle my skin?”

  The man slowly drew his hand from his chest. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was surprised that his magic wasn’t working, because I was surprised, too. Just when I had given up all hope on this guy, he wowed me with his I’m-going-to-kill-you-with-my-blue-magic whispers, and it didn’t work.

  Crixis blinked, eyes becoming red. He shoved his fist into the man’s stomach, sending him flying almost fifty feet back. “Wait a moment.” He straightened himself out and flexed his fingers. “I know you.” He flashed closer to the man, who was in the process of standing up.

  I ran to their sides to hear the whole conversation.

  “I’ve heard some things, but I never believed I would actually meet the man himself.” A broad smile sat on the evil man’s face. “The Counc
il’s pet Purifier, turned into the thing he was created to hunt and kill. How ironic, truly, and what a shame it is, for you.”

  Even Crixis knew about the first Purifier. Somehow that didn’t surprise me.

  “I do have some enlightening information for you.” Crixis easily caught the man’s thrown punch. He twisted the black-covered arm, cracking it. “I am not a mere Vampire. Haven’t been for a long time.”

  That did make sense. Crixis did seem different from John and Rain. His eyes were red while theirs were pure black. His teeth came out separate from his eyes while theirs were linked, if one came out, so did the other. Combine that with the things Raphael told me, that there was something inside him that allowed him to gain power from those he killed and consumed…

  …you had one heck of a bad guy.

  “Neither you, nor any of the Council’s pathetic Agents can kill me,” he whispered to his face before kicking him violently across the street. He flashed, kneeling over him. “I am something the world hasn’t seen since the ice age, and if I wish it, I could end the world as we all know it. But,” he paused, flashing himself in a standing position, “I like it. I like where it’s going. And your…unique situation tugs at my curiosity. I’ll let you go, but rest assured, my friend, we will see each other again.”

  Crixis flashed away, leaving the first Purifier in the dirt and me back in the school.

  Chapter Seventeen – Kass

  Crixis was something so terrible the world hadn’t seen it since the last ice age?

  My fingers gripped the lock as they twirled it to the correct combination. To say I felt uneasy after that particular vision would be the year’s biggest understatement. I knew Crixis was something else, but the way he described himself made it sound much more frightening. I wasn’t scared, but I was intimidated.

  I grabbed my bagged lunch and made my way into the bustling cafeteria, wondering if the Council, or anyone for that matter, knew about what Crixis truly was. If they knew he was un-purifiable.