AMANI: Reveal

by Marie, Lydhia

  “Amya, you have to tell them,” Deli moaned. “I c—can’t take it anymore…”

  I kept staring at her and shaking my head.

  Think of something, for God’s sake.

  On the one hand, I could not risk the Dimension of Amani’s safety and give the Rascals the exact location of the “door.” But on the other hand, I did not know the exact location and the only information I had gathered—guessed—was probably false, a myth. So telling the Rascals what I “knew” couldn’t be that harmful now, could it?”

  Resolute, I glared at Daniel and said the only word he needed to know. “Atlantis.”

  The Guardian of Chupa gasped, confirming my suspicion, and I bit my lower lip. Had that been a mistake?

  “Where is Atlantis?” Wyatt asked, leaning forward on his chair.

  I shrugged, now hating myself for having guessed correctly.

  “Oh, come on!” Delilah suddenly exclaimed, stepping away from me. “You’re going to let them hurt me again? Is that what you want?”

  “Deli,” Daniel warned.

  Deli? Since when did the eldest Rascal call my sister Deli?

  “Seriously,” she went on. “It’s ridiculous. I thought you’d care more about your sister than that.”

  Confused, I replied, “What do you mean? I do care! But I don’t know—”

  “No. You don’t.” She turned to Daniel. “She doesn’t, so let’s just move on to Plan B, shall we?”

  “Plan B?”

  “Oh, Amya,” my sister said before she let out a loud, sarcastic laugh that did not sound like her at all. “Do you really think I’m going to pretend forever? I’m bored.” She raised her hand to her face and rubbed her bruises… making them fade away as though they were makeup.

  “What…? How…?”

  My head spun as I tried to think of a plausible explanation. But none came out.

  “You don’t know me at all, do you?” she spat. “A victim? Me? Never!”

  “But you said Wyatt wanted to talk to you. You were scared that night at HQ. Then you were kidnapped—they took you!”

  “Not exactly. Actually, it was my idea. After my fake kidnapping, I really thought you’d be scared for me. Thought you’d do anything to get me back. But you went into hiding, which was very disappointing.”

  “I—the Protectors looked for you everywhere!” I cried. “But when they found you you’d already been taken away from England…” Her smile widened. “You were never taken, were you?”

  She ignored my question and continued. “When we found the Guardian of Chupa, I thought it best to play the victim some more, thinking you’d concede more easily if you believed I was in danger. But still you refuse to help us.”

  “Us…”

  “Yes, us. I, unlike you, chose to join the Rascals the first time Wyatt told me who he was. I told him you were regaining your strength when you were in a coma so he would come back and feed on you. Before you escaped the hospital, we planned on kidnapping you and taking you somewhere safe, where none of your friends would have any contact with you. This”—she gestured at the room—“is one of the places we thought of taking you: peaceful and quiet. And so we broke into Magda’s house as a diversion, but Samera and Xander did not bite. They stayed with you at the hospital, which is why you were able to escape.”

  Sam had told me my grandmother’s apartment had been robbed about a month ago, but they had never found the culprit. Had it only been a diversion to keep everyone away from me?

  A diversion orchestrated by my own sister!

  “Then,” Delilah continued, “it was my idea to get you drunk in order to take you from the HQ the next morning. But again, Samera stayed by your side, so I wasn’t able to drag you with me to the Rascals; hence the pretended kidnapping. It was our last option.”

  “No…”

  “Yup. Anyway. It was our last option until recently, when I discovered my new ability. Haven’t I mentioned, I’m a Rascal now too?” Her smile widened at the same time that the weight of her words became too heavy on my shoulders and I fell to my knees, shaking my head desperately. “In case you didn’t know, I was already half-Rascal—and so are you, since our father is one—so the process wasn’t as painful as it normally is.” She clapped her hands together. “Isn’t that great?”

  I looked at Wyatt, who bore no expression whatsoever; Daniel, who was ginning widely; and Julian, who seemed utterly bored. I waited for any of them to start laughing and tell me it was all a bad joke. Or that they’d drugged me and I was currently hallucinating my sister’s confession. But none of that happened.

  “Guess what I can do now,” Delilah said, clapping her hands excitedly. “I feed on people’s abilities! Sure, I can’t keep their powers forever, but it’s a good start, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

  I stared at her, speechless.

  “Just do it already,” Julian snapped.

  “You have one last chance, Amya,” my sister continued, as though she hadn’t heard. “One last chance to prove you’re not a lost cause, or I’ll have to do it myself.”

  Do what? Was my sister going to feed on my ability to Sojourn? I was about to say that the Guardian wasn’t going to tell her more than he had me, when I heard a low scrapping sound. Then it all happened so fast, I barely followed the scene.

  Several people wearing thick protection suits from head to toe barged in, holding weird-looking guns. Two of them started shooting at Julian and Wyatt, though they were not fast enough. The two Rascals ducked and charged at their attackers. Daniel spotted a third person with a gun and ran at him. The person under the suit stood paralyzed for a split second, and it was enough for Daniel to grab his gun and throw it away. But then, when Daniel was about to punch him, the suited man turned out to be equally fast. He blocked his blow and kicked Daniel in the stomach.

  Meanwhile, Julian and Wyatt were gaining ground on their opponents. I recognized Madame M.’s swift and agile combat techniques immediately. Next to her was probably Karl or Xander, fighting Wyatt.

  “Amya!” Karl’s voice came out from the suit. “Get—out! Take—your sister!”

  But I couldn’t move. Delilah heard him and immediately recovered her wits. She threw herself at me and started strangling me.

  “You’re not getting away this time,” she said through gritted teeth. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. I had seen Wyatt do this before. She was feeding on my ability, which she would use on the Guardian to get her answer.

  I struggled, feeling like my head was going to explode at any moment. But I couldn’t make myself hit her. I could only plead with my eyes and hope she’d take pity on me.

  “Please,” I mouthed. “Deli…”

  A wicked smile on her face told me she wasn’t going to let go, but she kept her eyes closed, still feeding.

  She pressed harder on my throat as she finally looked down at me, her pupils dilating, covering the brown of her eyes entirely. And still, I couldn’t do anything other than struggle against her grasp. Colorful stars filling my sight told me I was going to lose consciousness within seconds… But then Delilah cried out and let go of my neck.

  I rolled away from her, coughing, my face wet with tears.

  My sister was still screaming when I gazed in her direction. The Guardian of Chupa was on her, strangling her with his stumps this time. I managed to get up and push him, but he was too strong. He shook me away and pressed harder on Deli’s neck, burning her skin at the same time with his golden tattoos.

  A gun fired, echoing through the room, and the Guardian fell backward. The suited man fighting Daniel had shot the Guardian in the shoulder before shooting Daniel in the chest. The latter dropped to the ground, motionless. The suited man then removed his brown helmet, revealing his face.

  “Xander!” I cried in a raspy voice, as I made to run at him, but Delilah’s hand had grabbed my ankle, sending me back to the ground, where I hit my head.

  Next thing I knew, stinging little fingers were on my throat again
and a sharp pain shot through my arm. I opened my eyes to a blurred scene, and more gunshots resonated in my ears.

  Wishing to cover the piercing sound, I placed my hands to my buzzing ears and felt the delicate chain Madame M. had lent me.

  The golden chain!

  A new boost of energy exploded in me like a firework. I pulled hard on the chain and, as it tore away from my neck, stamped it in my sister’s face.

  She cried out, letting go of my neck for a split second, slapped the chain off my hand, and resumed her struggling position as though her face wasn’t covered in lacerating burns.

  I had just given up, my world slowly fading, my ears buzzing, and my limbs becoming too heavy to move, when I heard another gunshot. I looked up just as the pressure on my neck vanished.

  Trying to breath, the sound around me grew louder and my sight cleared slightly.

  Before I could make out what was going on, someone was pulling on my shirt, getting me to my feet. It was Xander. We followed three other people out of the house in haste. Two of them seemed hurt. At the other end of the tunnel, Xander pushed the rock back in place and then dragged me even further away from it.

  We had been running down the hill less than a minute when I heard a loud explosion behind us. I tripped on a protruding root and fell down. Xander and Karl were shouting at me to get up, but I couldn’t move. I had to know.

  Squinting at a tree next to me, I waited for my sight to clear. Scales on the trunk became gradually visible, as well as the snow littering the ground and melting under my legs.

  I looked up at the people surrounding me. They had all removed their helmets. There was Xander, looking pleadingly at me, Karl who seemed barely capable to stand on his two legs, and Madame M., half carrying the Guardian of Chupa, who was apparently fighting to stay conscious.

  “Delilah…”

  “Amya, she was one of them,” Karl said firmly.

  I shook my head in denial, hot tears filling my eyes.

  Xander kneeled next to me. “Amya. She tried to kill you.”

  I kept shaking my head.. “No…” Someone put their hand on my shoulder, but I shrieked, crying ever louder. “NO!” I repeated with a voice that wasn’t mine.

  It had been a dream. Surely my sister couldn’t be a Rascal. She couldn’t be working with Wyatt.

  “We have to leave now,” Madame M. said gently. “The bomb might not have killed them.”

  But Xander did not move. He swallowed hard, staring at me as though I were an injured animal he couldn’t help, while I gazed pleadingly into his pale blue eyes…

  “Oh, pour l’amour de Dieu,” Madame M. added before she pulled Xander to his feet, transferring the Guardian’s weight on his shoulder. She then walked behind me, slipped her hands under my arms and, with a jolt, yanked me up as easily as she would have one of her cats. “Let’s get going, now. Come on.”

  I reluctantly walked—very fast—with Madame M.’s help, until we reached the parking lot, where Samera, Mary, Adam, and Vivian were waiting for us. The former jumped on me the second she saw us approaching.

  “Amya, I thought you were…” she whispered, hugging me. When she realized I was crying, she stepped backwards. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head, but it was Mr. Jensen who answered. “Her sister was working with them. She was—”

  “—IS. SHE IS! She’s not dead!” I shouted, before I crumbled to the ground again. “She can’t be…”

  “She is a Rascal, then.”

  Samera, Mary and Vivian gasped.

  “Who’s he?” Vivian asked.

  As I raised my eyes to look at her, I saw she was pointing at the Guardian.

  Everyone’s gazes turned to me.

  “Guardian of Chupa,” I mumbled.

  At that moment, his eyelids closed as he slid over Xander’s shoulder. He would have collapsed on the ground next to me were it not for my friend’s fast reflexes.

  “He’s lost a lot of blood!” Mary intervened. “Let me heal him.”

  “No,” Karl said firmly. “I allowed you all to come, but none of you is getting involved in this.”

  I suddenly felt like I was standing right next to the sun. My entire body was shaking, sweat accumulating around my temples, my nose, and below my eyes. The floor seemed to be circling under my weight… Circling and spinning ever faster.

  “Amya?” I heard a woman’s voice say. “Amya are you okay?”

  My vision was shifting in and out of focus and I had to grab my head to make it stop hurting

  “No…” Samera whispered. “No way!”

  I could feel liquid down my arm as I kept my hands pressed on either side of my head. What was going on? A buzzing noise grew louder and louder, making the conversation around me almost inaudible. After a moment, I knew I was going to pass out. I opened my eyes and the last thing I saw was my best friend staring directly at me, her eyes wary. She mouthed:

  “You were bitten.”

  Chapter XXXVI

  Amya Priam

  I drifted in and out of consciousness, my body aching as though the blood in my veins had transformed into acid. I sometimes heard myself crying out loud for what seemed like hours until a warm, comforting hand held mine. Then the cries slowly diminished and vanished, only to come back again later.

  Other times, I heard whispers next to me, but I was incapable of making any sense of their words, which sounded miles away.

  At some point the pain faded and I could feel the sheets surrounding my body. They were soft and soothing under my arms and fingers.

  I opened my eyes.

  “Oy, she’s awake!” I heard my best friend cry. “Guys, she’s awake! Come on!”

  Samera was sitting on a leather chair next to my bed. She jumped into a standing position, clapping her hands to her mouth. Then came rushing Mr. Jensen and Mrs. Cohen, followed by Xander, Mary, Adam, Kristin, Emily, Patrick, Sine, and Vivian. They were all squeezing in beside each other, staring intently at me.

  “How are you feeling?” Mary said quietly, but she did not let me finish. “I tried to heal you, but it was too late. The venom had already infiltrated your blood…”

  “When Adam called me yesterday, I gathered everyone here,” Patrick added, gesturing around. “You’re in my house. You’re safe now.”

  In Patrick’s house? Why weren’t we back at Madame M.’s? Or HQ? How long had I been out?

  Mrs. Cohen stepped forward. “I came as soon as I could. Your parents are in another room. They will visit you when you are ready to see them, all right?”

  I nodded. I had so many questions, but somehow I couldn’t voice any of them.

  “Madame M. had to move out of her house after yesterday,” Sam said.

  “Amya,” Xander interrupted. “We thought that the Canadian Protectors were asleep, but they were dead. I think that the Rascals would have attacked us if we hadn’t gone to the party.”

  “Probably,” Samera continued. “And now Madame M.’s gathering all her belongings as we speak, in case the Rascals come back. We still haven’t heard from them since yesterday, but we can’t be too cautious. If they’re not dead…”

  Her voice trailed off, probably because I had shuddered at the word “dead.” My sister could be dead by now. Because of me…

  Or was it?

  With the benefit of hindsight, I could look at yesterday’s events from a new perspective. It was easier for me to see that my sister wasn’t the victim in the story. She had chosen to join the Rascals of her own will. She was responsible for calling Wyatt at the hospital—Wyatt, who had then bitten Xander and transformed him into one of them. She had planned a way to kidnap me and to manipulate me into telling them where the jar was…

  “The Guardian…” I whispered.

  “He is badly hurt,” Karl replied quietly. “Xander nearly missed his heart and we believe the bullet—um—melted in his body. We couldn’t find it.”

  “They were made of gold!” Sam continued excitedly. “My t
heory—and almost everyone agrees with me—is that the golden bullet somehow melted in his body and blended with his tattoos. But the wound won’t heal… He’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “Even I couldn’t heal him,” said a voice behind the hoard of people. Hibiscus rolled in my direction. “Hello, Amya,” she added, before she grabbed an object from her pocket and set it firmly on top of my arm.

  “ARRRG!” I cried, cringing away.

  Xander instantly pulled Hibiscus’ wheelchair away from my bed. “Are you completely insane? She’s just recovering from her transformation. Can’t you people let her rest?” he said, angrily, his irises darkening.

  “Just making sure she really is one.”

  “One what?” I snapped, looking sharply at Hibiscus, who was putting her glittering object back in her pocket.

  “Look at your arm, Amya,” was her answer.

  What had she done to my arm? I raised it parallel to my face and let out a small yelp. There was a circular red blotch where Hibiscus had touched me.

  Then it all came back in a rush. Delilah strangling me… a sharp pain in my arm… Samera’s last words to me before I passed out in the parking lot…

  I was a Rascal.

  I got up so fast, everyone recoiled away from me. Everyone except for Xander.

  Breathing deeply and loudly, I looked down at myself. I felt light yet strong. Powerful, yet vulnerable.

  “Amya,” Karl said, “Would you sit down? We need to know what happened to you.”

  Looking around at everyone’s fearful expressions, I sat and forced a smile on my face, which probably resembled more of a grimace.

  “Sorry,” I said. Then I told them everything. How Daniel and Delilah had manipulated me into leaving the party. The story Wyatt had told me about Reeshon and the “door” that could open to Hell. Delilah’s fake torture. How everything had been a ruse to make me Sojourn into the Guardian of Chupa’s head and reveal the location of Pandora’s Jar…