Staked!

by Candace Wondrak

  “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 Skinwalker.

  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.

  I wasn’t big on materialistic things. Not really. Not when I was fated to die an early death.

  I laid the necklace atop a pile of clothes on my dresser
. Somewhere beneath the stacks was a jewelry box, where the ring Alyssa gave me also sat after I’d finally taken it off after we beat Sephira, but I didn’t feel like digging for it. I didn’t feel like living through that part of my past again.

  Two parts of Gabriel. Was my Gabriel capable of all the things he was? I wondered as I remembered the tiredness in the other Gabriel’s eyes, the slight wrinkles on his face. I stopped myself from thinking something truly bad, something I’d never forgive myself for, and instead, as I laid down in bed, I thought of me.

  The other me.

  I was with Crixis. I was a Daywalker. I was dead, and I made a lot of questionable choices, if they were indeed choices at all. It was possible, though slight, that Crixis compelled me to stay with him, forcefully twisted my head so that I was as cruel as he was.

  But—and here’s the scary part—what if he didn’t? What if the other me was not compelled at all, and willfully did all those things? Willingly stayed with Crixis and betrayed everything she’d ever known?

  Suddenly, the question was not about Gabriel, not anymore.

  Was I capable of those things?

  I flexed my hands above the sheets, staring at the dark ceiling. I’d flown off the handle a few times in my life that I could remember. I was prone to rash decisions that some might call stupid. Going after Raphael after Crixis killed Koath was one of them. I swore to myself, in that moment, that I wouldn’t leave the church until one of us was dead.

  I was capable. I had to be, just like Gabriel was. Raphael had turned out to be a Daywalker in the other world, just like John was, and they were both like that here. Some realities were always self-evident. I liked to think I wasn’t like the other me, but maybe I was. Maybe I was just like her.

  Maybe all it would take for me to become her was to lose the one most important person left in my life…

  No.

  I couldn’t let those thoughts continue.

  By the time morning came, and I once again refused to visit Gabriel, Claire was already over and I was energized. I was ready to whip through the rest of the anthologies and discover what left the kid in the locker. Once I knew what it was, I could make a plan to fight it. Not just punch, kick, dodge and stab—no, I had a feeling the Demon was too powerful for that. It needed to be purified in a special way.

  Every Demon had its weaknesses, it just took some work to find out what they were.

  Whatever kind of Demon it was, it had to be powerful, to fly under the radar while leaving ghastly bodies like that.

  It was that night—or morning, depending on how you keep track of time—when I finally decided what I had to do. I wasn’t happy or thrilled about it. In fact, I was rather pissed off about it, but if sucking it up and pretending I was okay with it meant that the Demon leaving bodies in the school would fall to my sword, I’d do it. I was that big of a person.

  And if it meant I got to beat the Demon up, well, I’d just enjoy it more.

  I hopped out of bed before my clock hit four A.M., and I put on some jeans and a T-shirt. I threw my hair up in a messy bun and tiptoed down the stairs. Liz was asleep in Michael’s room, and Max was on the couch, even though there were other guest rooms he could use. The weirdo.

  I slipped out of the front door with no one the wiser, marched down the driveway and straight across the street. I went up to an equally as imposing and humongous house, my hands curled into fists. Lifting my right hand, I sighed before punching the doorbell.

  Almost instantly, almost as if he’d been standing there expecting me, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Crixis pulled open the door, gave me a deceiving smile, and said, “I’ve been waiting for you, Kass.”

  I breathed in slowly, meeting his handsome gaze, the same gaze that snickered at me over the corpse of my dad. The same green eyes that I watched turn from beloved warrior father to Sephira’s lapdog. He’s been behind so many plots in recent times, trying to kill me, wanting to watch me suffer just for the fun of it…and yet, still, in spite of it all, there was still something about him that I was drawn to.

  Maybe, deep down, way deep down, we were similar. The events in his life twisted him to become the monster that he was, while he played puppeteer to my life and did the same to me. I didn’t think I was a monster.

  But I could become one.

  I tried thinking of a comeback, of something witty to say, and my mind came up with nothing, so I said, “Hold still.” And then I punched him, right in the face, square on the nose, as hard and as fast as I could, given the time.

  Crixis took it like a man, his head rocking back with the impact. “I will give you that one, and that one alone. Next time you hit me…you better watch out.” He sniffed, refusing to let his nose bleed. “And, now that you’re here, I do have to mention that you shouldn’t go shouting and beating me up. You’ll wake Maurice.”

  “Maurice?” I repeated, confused.

  “Yes. You don’t think I started wearing these clothes for the fun of it?” He gestured to his ensemble of khakis and button-up shirt with the pattern of a palm tree. Even in the darkness of the early morning, it was a bright, ugly orange. “When I wear them, he believes I’m his son—who I’m reasonably certain died of cancer five years ago. Alzheimer’s. Helpful, for once.”

  One, I couldn’t believe he was joking about Alzheimer’s.

  Two, I couldn’t believe he didn’t kill the old man that lived in the house.

  Three…why did he care whether or not Maurice thought he was his son? Since when did the Demon care about anyone’s feelings?

  Four, he let Maurice live, but he had to kill Koath?

  My hands shook. Why did I think I could do this? Without another word, I walked away.

  Crixis and I weren’t alike. I’d never torture someone just for kicks.

  I wasn’t a monster, and as long as I had my sanity, I would never become one.

  Chapter Nine – Crixis

  Humans were always acting weird when abnormal things were happening to them. Big life changes—like death, moving, a new job, a new kid—those were the biggies. I couldn’t help but wonder what had Kass’s attitude twisted so much. I might’ve killed that irritating Koath, and meddled in her purifying job quite a lot, but to walk over here in the middle of the night like she owned the place and punch me?

  That took guts. Guts, and a reason.

  My eyes were glued to the window above the sink the next morning, watching. Michael’s car hadn’t been there in a few days. The Councilwoman was there, though, with that pathetic excuse for a Purifier. Was that what the Council trained these days? Short, squirrelly boys? I felt somewhat insulted that their group had outdone me on so many occasions.

  Either they were more than they appeared to be, or my plans were not nearly as well laid-out as they should’ve been.

  I heard the ding of the waffle maker, and went to take out the waffles, lathering low-fat butter on them. As I cut them into tiny, manageable bite-size squares, I watched the Councilwoman and the red-headed Purifier go into her car. It was too late for school; already nine o’clock. Where were they going without Kass? And where was Michael and the other one?

  As my inhuman hearing heard her car start up, I turned and set the plate on the table, in front of Maurice. An old man of over eighty, it was quite the coincidence that he had his own house still. But he could walk and walk; he was very physically able, though frail as he was. He liked to wear golfing polos and tan pants, though he never went golfing. He hardly ever left the house.

  His dentures nearly slipped from his mouth as he licked his lips in anticipation for the waffles. I was already at the front door, flinging it open, when he asked, “Where you going to in such a rush, David?”

  David. His son’s name.

  “I have an errand to run. I’ll be right back. Eat your breakfast.” And with that, I trailed the car throughout the city, moving faster than any human eye could comprehend. The Councilwoman’s vehicle led to a rather unexpected destination: the local hospital. It
wasn’t so much local as it was two town’s over, but it was the nearest one. It even had a helicopter.

  Now that was one thing I hadn’t tried in my very long life…

  The Councilwoman and the Purifier parked and entered the hospital through its main entrance. I was a shadow, a fly on the wall, moving through the halls, stalking their direction. They got on the elevator and went to the third floor. All the hallways looked the same; off-white, ugly pictures of flowers hanging every few feet. I hated hospitals. They could be a place for science, but the only thing I smelled was death and the chemicals the cleaners used to try to cover up the germs and stench.

  They met with Michael inside a room, and I mentally noted the room number before finding a nurse and pulling her aside. A pretty girl. Plain. No older than thirty. My kind of girl. The ones who were like models, the ones who could cause a traffic jam by walking across the street—they reminded me far too much of Sephira. There was beauty in mediocrity.

  My eyes locked on hers, and my voice flowed out, a tone no one could deny, “Who is in room 305-A?”

  The nurse struggled a bit, knowing she shouldn’t answer, but my compulsion won out in seconds, as it always did. She ran a hand through her brown hair as she said, “Gabriel Stanton.”

  Stanton? I did my best not to laugh.

  “And what is wrong with Mr. Stanton?” I said with a smirk.

  “Came in a few days ago unresponsive. He’s been in a coma since.”

  Ah.

  “Forget you saw me,” I commanded, and the nurse blinked, shook her head, and walked away without so much as another glance in my direction. I waited around, for nearly an hour until the Councilwoman and the Purifier—Max, I thought I heard them say—convince Michael to leave Gabriel’s side and go with them to the cafeteria.

  I hid around a corner as they left the room, peeking to see that Michael looked awful.