Staked!

by Candace Wondrak

  I moved to the lone window in the attic, staring out at the street, at her house across the way.

  “I also had a vision where I came into a room full of blood, and you were there. You told me she poofed away.”

  I smiled to myself, for I didn’t recall it happening quite like that.

  She stood at the window, a full-length, floor-to-ceiling window that she could see her entire backyard from. It was a sunny day outside, rare, for a New England spring day. She wore a sundress, no shoes, her hair wrapped in a swirling braid on her head, a flower sticking out of its brown tresses.

  The husband was at work—for the Council, no less, finding more children they could use as Purifiers, while his daughter played downstairs.

  She was beautiful. She wasn’t a model, but there was an air about her that drew me in. Something that radiated from her, made me curious, made me want to tear into her.

  She moved a hand to the window, and even though I made no noise, she whispered, “I knew you’d come.” She turned her head to me, giving me a smile, and I froze momentarily, stunned as to how she knew I’d come, and why she smiled in the face of death.

  For that’s what I was: death on two legs.

  “I know why you’re here. It’s time.”

  I cocked my head. Behind me, the door was closed. No one would interrupt us. After I finished her, I’d finish the girl downstairs. And when the Councilman came home, I’d kill him, too. “You seem to know a lot of things.”

  Her light green eyes studied me, as if she were sizing me up. “I know many things. What was, what is, and what will be. It’s why I prepared them for this day. It’s one of my gifts.”

  Smirking, I asked, “And what other gifts do you have?”

  She gave me another smile. Unlike mine, hers held no ill-will, no contempt. “You’re about to see for yourself. They’re coming back.”

  I had no idea just what she was talking about.

  She took her hand from the window, gazing at the sunspots dotting her pale flesh. Flesh that I would so easily and so very soon tear into. “Miraculous what this world does to the body.”

  “I wouldn’t know. My body stays the same.”

  “Yes, and it will for a while, yet.” Almost instantly, the woman buckled, tensing up. “If you repent, He will forgive you,” she spoke through the pain of…what? What was happening to her?

  “I do not seek repentance. I do not care for forgiveness.” Venom dripped from my words, their strength making her grimace.

  Through whatever was happening to her, she moved closer. A light shone around her, startling me, dazing me. She reached out, confident, gently touching my cheek. A gesture no one had made in…I couldn’t even recall. “You have done terrible things. You will do more before your heart changes.”

  “My heart will never change,” I spat, unable to move from her hand. So soft, so…unearthly.

  “It will.” The woman’s hand slid off my cheek as she collapsed on the floor. She crawled to the window, wanting to see the sun once more. “She’ll…” Her voice halted, and various sounds of bones cracking took its place. A swirl of light engulfed the woman, and in a blast, a wave of invisible energy, blood splattered all over the room, even on me.

  What was this?

  I covered my eyes until the light dimmed, until I saw a floating being before me, her skin without moles or wrinkles or sunspots. Her hair floated, too, moving as if it were in water, the strands swaying together, no longer in a braid. She wore a white gown, something bright above her head.

  “Goodbye, Crixis. Do not forget His healing light—”

  As she spoke, I flashed to her…or, rather, through her. By the time I got there, she was gone, and I stood, hands against the window, the floor below me covered with blood, her old dress, and her wedding ring.

  I didn’t know how long I stood there, fuming, hating that she somehow got the better of me, wondering just what she was. Nothing I’d ever seen before, and I’d seen a lot. The way the light shone around her, her magnetism, the pure radiance…

  The sound of a door creaking open caused me to whirl around, eyes red, teeth bare. It was the girl from downstairs. She was excited to show her mother something, but she stopped the moment she saw me.

  This girl…was she like her mother?

  Big, innocent hazel eyes, fluffy brown hair, chubby face that hadn’t quite yet matured. It was a stretch.

  “Mommy,” she cried, tearing up as she saw the blood.

  I flashed before her, startling her, grabbing her shoulders so she would not run. “Your mother is fine,” I compelled the child, “she had to leave.”

  “Will she come back?”

  I shook my head solemnly, saying, “No. She won’t come back. It’s just you now. Forget your mother. Forget your father. Forget it all.” Her eyes, wide and pliant, nodded along in her head. I smelled her. “Don’t remember.”

  Just like her mother.

  I smiled. Oh, yes. I’d be back for her. I’d wait a few years until she grew up—it was always more fun when they were older. Plus, I was never a fan of killing children. Something about it didn’t sit right with me.

  I flashed outside, far enough that the husband and father wouldn’t see me, but close enough that I’d hear what went on in the house after he got home. It was a little after five when he arrived. When he stepped into the house and found his wife wasn’t waiting for him, found the toys left in the living room floor, he ran up the stairs, shouting for them.

  Oh, the sounds he made when he came upon the room and the blood, when he hugged his daughter close and asked if she was all right. Kassie, her name was. I couldn’t stop the laughter from coming when she pulled away from him and asked, “Who are you?”

  Yes, there was nothing better. I wished I could’ve been in the room to see his face.

  The plans I had for her. I’d wait, and then I’d come back and do to her what I wanted to do to her mother.

  Devour her.

  That was the plan.

  Now that I was here, I realized that things hadn’t quite gone according to plan at all. Every attempt on Kass’s life had been met by the pathetic squad, and she’d somehow been spared. At first, I was just having fun. And then, then I needed to kill her. I wanted her to pay for escaping me. That’s why I killed Koath.

  Seemed like a stupid reason, now.

  I wanted to kill her, and then feed on her. I wanted to gain whatever powers she had, whatever strengths and skills she had inherited from her mother. To use Vexillion’s powers of assimilation, I had to drink more than a drop. I needed all of it.

  And then, somehow, Sephira killed her, I learned that Gabriel was no mere boy, and Kass…the alluring quality of her mother was amplified in her. It drew lesser and greater Demons alike to her. She was a calling card for them, a beacon in a rough, stormy sea.

  What was she?

  “More or less, that’s what happened,” I eventually told her, not wanting to rehash the details, especially since she was still upset about Koath. I couldn’t blame her for it. His death was not something I was proud of, but it was there.

  “More or less?” Kass echoed, shooting me a dirty look. “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it means.” I sighed. “Your mother was…not human. I was—” I shook my head, incredulous at myself for admitting it to her. “—hunting her, for a while.”

  “Hunting?” Kass stood, finished with her water bottle. “You were hunting my mother?”

  “I could feel her presence from miles away, and I’m sure other Demons did, too. She was more than human. She had to be. I wanted to—”

  “Trust me,” she cut in, “I know what you wanted to do.”

  “But I didn’t. She beat me to it. She knew I was coming, and by the time I found her, she started…” I trailed off, unsure how to explain it. “She started to change.”

  Kass stared at me for a while before asking, “Change into what?”

  “Into her true form. When I found her, she
had freckles and sunspots and a few wrinkles around her eyes. After she changed, she didn’t have any of that. It was like she was born anew. She floated, had this shining light around her, like…like she was a—”

  We both must realize it at once.

  I stared at her, wondering if that was the reason I was so drawn to her, why Gabriel needed her, why she smelled like candy to Demonkind. She met my curious stare with wide eyes—an older version of her childhood self, naive and innocent all the same. Was it the reason Raphael compelled Michael and Koath to let him train her? Did his Demonic side seek absolution?

  Instead of saying it aloud, we were silent. That was, until Kass shook her head. “No,” she muttered. “No. It’s not—it can’t be. That’s impossible. I’m not—I’m just a Purifier. And a bad one at that.”

  “If Gabriel is—”

  She waved a hand in the air. “No.” And then, in typical Kass fashion, she stormed away.

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Kass

  I spent the rest of the day in denial. I didn’t even realize Max and Claire had a date until Claire’s car horn honked in the driveway, and Max hesitated at the front door. Liz told him he’d do fine, while Michael dozed off in his arm chair in the living room.

  Michael. The poor man never looked so haggard, so beaten and exhausted. I was reasonably sure that Gabriel was his first Purifier. Not that I expected Gabriel to die. If he was what Crixis said he was, if he was anything like the other world’s Gabriel, he’d wake up, soon enough.

  He wouldn’t die. A soul like his was too old, too powerful to just die.

  Me, on the other hand? Apparently my soul was just too angelic to stay dead.

  Trying to keep my mind off the conversation I had with Crixis, I watched Liz come back from wishing Max luck. “Did I hear right? Someone has a date?” I was rooting for those two for a while now, and I was happy for them, provided it went well.

  If it didn’t go well…then it’d just make things awkward, wouldn’t it?

  “If you were here today, you would’ve heard it, too,” Liz quipped as she sat on the opposite end of the couch from me, closest to Michael. “Though, if you’d been here, maybe Max never would’ve gotten the nerve.” She grabbed her mug on the coffee table and took a sip of her green tea.

  I couldn’t help but be shocked. Max was the one who asked her out? The kid’s got more balls than I gave him credit for. And, okay, I might not have ever given him credit for anything, but that’s because he’d kind of been the weird one of the group. Granted, he came in right after the Osiris/John ordeal, which was just a huge mess, so the odds were stacked against him from the start.

  “I can’t believe Max asked her out,” I muttered, mostly to myself. I plucked at the fuzzy blanket on my legs, incredulous and, strangely, sad. Max and Claire as a couple had been something Gabriel and I talked a lot about. Now that it happened, Gabriel wasn’t here to witness it. I was no good with sarcastic one-liners without him.

  Liz sighed into her tea. “I can. The boy’s practically been drooling over her since I’ve known him.” She gave me a warm smile, but to me, it felt empty. Everything was empty without my best friend.

  The time crawled by.

  The TV was on to some rerun of a nameless sitcom with a laugh track whose jokes weren’t even that funny. Nothing was ever on Saturdays. It was a long while after we ate a tiny dinner (I mostly played around with the food on my plate), when I broke the silence again.

  “Do you believe in Angels?” I questioned.

  Neither one of the adults in the room answered me.

  “To anyone who’s listening, do you?” I said again, frowning to myself. I got more out of Crixis than these two.

  Michael mumbled something that sounded like a no, and before I could ask him on it, Liz spoke up, “Of course I do. I think we each have our own personal Guardian Angel.” She smiled at the thought. “What do you think, Kass?”

  Was that a trick question?

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you guys.”

  Michael mumbled into the chair, without bothering to turn and look at me, “I think you’re old enough to have your own opinions.” He carried on, “And I think that if Guardian Angels were real, then Gabriel would be here with us, and none of the blasted stuff that’s happened to us would’ve happened.”

  Liz inched closer to me, whispering, “Ignore him. I think they help us be exactly where we’re meant to be.” She wrapped an arm around me, and for the first few moments, I blinked, thinking how weird it was, but after a while, I got used to the heat from her arm, to the gentle side-hug she gave me. “Everything will be okay. Gabriel’s strong. He’ll make it out of that coma, and things’ll start to settle down around here.”

  A lie, but a nice one. I tried to take it as merely comforting words and nothing more. Not a promise of a good future. Not a promise of anything.

  It would never settle down. Even if he did wake, we were Purifiers, regardless of the state of his soul, and whatever I was. Things for Purifiers never settled down. It was go, go, go. Run and fight until you’re dead. And even then, even after we gave our lives for the mission of purifying evil and saving the world, what did the Council do for us? Did we get headstones? Did we get a memorial? Or were we just put in the incinerator and forgotten as the next crop of young’uns took over?

  “Thank you,” I whispered, “for lying to me.”

  Liz looked at me, then, like I said something totally off-base. As if she truly believed what she told me. As if she didn’t look at me, Gabriel, and Max as soldiers in an endless war, like we weren’t expendable.

  “Have you found out anything about the body in the school?”

  She glanced to Michael’s chair, waiting to hear his snoring before answering, “I know what type of Demon it is. It’s one the Council claims to be extinct, but there’s no other possible culprit. It’s a Skinwalker, and we have to be careful come Monday. It could be anyone.”

  “A Skinwalker?” I spoke its name, figuring it fit.

  “The last one was thought to have been purified in Central America over seventy years ago. A dangerous breed of Demon. The Council added it to their extinct directory fifty years ago, even though there has been some evidence that they are not quite as extinct as they say.”

  I held in a disbelieving chuckle. “Clearly.”

  The Skinwalker could be anyone?

  That’s a frightening thought, and I wasn’t the type to scare easy.

  I was more like the kind of girl who laughed in the face of danger.

  “So, I’m assuming they wear bodies like suits. What do they look under it all? And how can I tell a Skinwalker from a civilian?”

  Liz shifted in her seat, taking her arm from me. After sipping her tea, she answered, “You can’t, unless you’ve known the person for a while. They have the same voice, the same muscle memory. Same memories in general. Hopefully there’ll be a sign, something in its mannerisms that’ll clue us in.” Her eyes were heavy on me as she added: “It’s why we must be careful on Monday. It could be anyone. If you notice anything suspicious, head to the office straight away.”

  “What if the Skinwalker’s the principal?” It was a fairly reasonable question, considering how past principals had a way of not lasting long around here.

  “Let us hope that’s not the case,” she said simply. She said no more, turning her gaze to the television.

  Once I shook off the nagging feeling that the Skinwalker would end up being someone I knew, I looked her in the eyes and said, “Thank you for telling me the truth.”

  Liz gave me a soft smile. “Like the grumpy one said, you’re old enough. You can handle the truth.”

  The truth.

  If only she knew how wrong she was. I ran from the truth. I’d rather be spoon-fed lies if it meant that I could go on thinking Gabriel was just Gabriel and I was just me. I didn’t want to face the truth. Truth and I, we weren’t buddies like me and danger (and bad decisions).

  The truth
?

  The truth could hurt worse than danger.

  Me. The daughter of an Angel. It wasn’t possible, was it?

  Chapter Twenty-Three – Gabriel

  A playroom surrounded us, full of blocks and toy vehicles and foam puzzle pieces. Its walls were a bright yellow, the ugliest color I’d ever seen. Well, the ugliest color I remembered seeing.

  Maybe the other me thought that seeing all this stuff would bring my memories back. Or, more likely, since the other me was kind of mean, he didn’t care either way. He was just showing me what he had to show me before I made my choice. Whatever that meant.

  What choice did I have to make? A choice to wake up from this never-ending nightmare? A choice to run away from the other me, screaming and raving about his lunacy? Eh. I’d settle for waking up.

  “Well, this is a nice empty room,” I remarked, shooting the scowling me a glance. “Are we here for playtime? It’s been a while since I’ve played with building blocks, but it’s got to be like riding a bike. I’ll figure it out, and it’ll be like I never stopped.”

  His blue eyes burned into me, narrowing. “Your glibness does you no credit.”

  “Neither does your weird way of talking.”

  He held in a sigh, motioning to the room.

  Even though I was certain we were alone, when I glanced back to the space of toys, I saw a little girl sitting amongst them, driving around a plastic fire truck. She giggled to herself when she hit the toy police car, as if the imaginary crash was the funniest thing she’d seen.

  That laugh—so sweet. So pure and innocent.

  As I thought it, the girl with the hazel eyes suddenly looked upward, scanning the room, as if she could see us. Her eyes stopped on me, and I felt my heart nearly stop. Just when I was about to ask the other me why she was staring at me, I felt someone whoosh through me, realizing that a man had entered the room. He was what she stared at, not me.