Emergence (The Infernal Guard Book 1)

by SGD Singh

  Aquila grinned, his phone already out.

  † † †

  Twenty minutes later, Aquila was back in the hospital along with everyone from Asha's training group plus Kelakha, Ursala, Tzirga, Ariella, and Mia. They stood crowded around Asha's bed, with about thirty dead rose bushes piled behind them. With each plant, Asha had improved until she resembled Aquila's vision of her normal glowing beauty. A still, very much unconscious vision.

  Aquila opened his mouth to tell Lexi to get Stevens back on the phone when Asha suddenly made a gasping groan that sounded like a drowning ship, and he felt the blood drain from his face. Lexi and Nidhan, standing next to each other and across from him, exchanged a horrified look for one frozen moment, and then everyone surged forward, twenty-four hands reaching for Asha, all thought of self-preservation forgotten.

  As their hands almost touched her, Asha sat bolt upright, opening her eyes, and the crowd took a collective step back.

  Asha's eyes were glowing, giving her an eerie look as if a blue-green light shone from inside her skull, and as her gaze locked with Aquila's he almost wept with relief. A flush of embarrassment colored her cheeks, and she looked so beautiful that Aquila felt actual physical pain at being this far from her. At not touching her.

  Instead, it was Lexi who rushed forward, throwing her arms around Asha. “It's good to see your creepy eyes again,” she said just as Mia wrapped both of them in a crushing embrace, Nidhan gripping one of Asha's shoulders with his giant hand.

  “Air!” Asha squeaked, and they released her, laughing, and began piling pillows behind her back, straightening her blankets. Aquila stood against the wall.

  He watched Asha look around the room, at the crowd, at the dead plants, and he saw the moment of comprehension.

  Asha held her hands in front of her face. “Why are there casts on me? We don't use casts to heal. And why is the room filled with… ?”

  No one answered, and after a moment, Asha whispered. “How long have I been… ?”

  Aquila watched her friends fidget, not meeting her eyes.

  “Nidhan!” Asha snapped, and her cousin jumped. “How long?”

  “Three days,” Nidhan said.

  “Three…” Asha looked around, her eyes wild with panic. “So that's why you're all here? You thought I was dying?”

  Everyone started to protest, but Asha was shaking her head, casts held against her ears, and Nidhan herded the crowd out until only Lexi and Aquila remained.

  Lexi glared a warning at him, and left, closing the door behind her.

  Asha lay against the pillows with her eyes closed, her fingers trembling.

  “I guess you think this is pretty funny?” she spat, startling Aquila.

  “What? I—no!” he spluttered, wondering what she meant. Maybe Ursala's right about girls being crazy.

  Asha sat up, eyes blazing. Aquila tried to push back his grin. She was alive, and she was ferocious. Wow, it's gonna be so much fun to watch her give Underworlders something to fear.

  “You get off on tricking all the ‘innocent’ girls, is that it?” Asha's voice was low, like the thunder before a storm. “What is it? Some kind of sick contest? Have a laugh with your friends over the game ‘make the idiot fall for the bird?’” Asha's eyes widened, no doubt as she realized she had just admitted falling for a bird, and Aquila tried not to smile again.

  The tension of the last three days—the lack of sleep, of food, the crushing guilt over Asha nearly being killed because of his incompetence—he felt none of that. Asha was okay. She was better than okay. She was perfect. And she fell for you. She fell for you even when you were turned…

  But when tears began spilling down her cheeks, his smile disappeared and he rushed to her.

  “Don't!” Asha held up a cast-covered hand. “Get away from me. Now that I'm a… a Vampire, you can go fluff your feathers at the next gullible moron…”

  “A… what?”

  He couldn't help it. Aquila started to laugh. Asha was gaping at him—furious, gloriously furious—but the more Aquila tried to stop, the harder he laughed.

  A silver glass from her bedside table flew through the air, narrowly missing his head, and hit the wall with a resounding crash. Asha pulled her arm back, sending another sailing at him, and Aquila stepped sideways even as she reached for the next.

  “You're not a Vampire, Asha!” Aquila said through tears of laughter, catching the third glass. “Although, your Talent seems pretty formidable.”

  Asha paused in the middle of throwing the fourth glass. The tears turned into a smile so radiant it took all of Aquila's self-control not to cross the room, wrap her in his arms, and kiss her.

  “I'm not a… oh.”

  “No, you're not,” Aquila said, trying not to start laughing again. “Were you planning on throwing that pitcher when you ran out of glasses, Asha?”

  Asha. Asha. Aquila felt as if he could say her name all day, as if now that he was talking to her, laughing, smiling with her, he never wanted to stop. “Don't you ever study? Vampires would never need casts. They heal almost any injury within minutes. And it takes a while to become one. It's a whole… process. And then you wouldn't be, well, you wouldn't be you. You'd be just another reanimated, undead blood sucker—which would never… and anyway, Vampires can't get into Headquarters, even if they…” Aquila realized he was babbling and trailed off, studying his hands.

  “What did you mean formidable?”

  Aquila blinked. “What?”

  “What did you mean about my Talent?” Asha frowned down at her casts. “Aren't I a Healer?”

  Aquila sat in the chair next to her bed and looked up to meet her glowing eyes. “No one could heal you, Asha. You were in some kind of coma. Even touching you was impossible for the Healers.”

  Asha's gaze fell on the dried and twisted remains of the rose bushes.

  “But then this morning, when Prabhnoor touched a plant to you, you… healed yourself.” Aquila shrugged. “So then Lexi got Stevens…”

  Asha reached out and broke off a dead rose. It crumbled in her hand like ashes. “So, I'm like a… I have some kind of plant-killing Talent?” She looked up at the ceiling. “What use is that against Underworlders?”

  Aquila began to answer, but Asha jerked her head back to him. When she narrowed her eyes, their glow intensified. “Wait. Why am I even speaking to you? You—”

  Aquila held up a hand, ready to stop her from smashing the pitcher into his face. “Afzal told me to watch you. To make sure you were safe. Since the first day you came to India… and then—”

  “So you were just—following orders?” Asha's voice was barely a whisper. She wouldn't meet his eyes as she picked at her cast.

  Aquila shook his head. “I… at first. Then…” Then I knew.

  Asha's head snapped up, her eyes wide. “Wait. Do you understand Spanish?”

  Aquila tried not to, but her terror was so adorable that he smiled again. “Afzal sent me to Colombia for two years.”

  Asha covered her face with a groan, shaking her head. Her shoulders began to tremble, and for a second, Aquila thought she was crying again, until the sound of her laughter filled the room.

  Asha froze, peeking over her casts at him. “What happened when they tried to heal me? Did I kill someone?”

  Aquila reached a hand out to her, and she slapped it away, pointing a finger comically beneath her cast.

  “Asha, no.” He held his hands up. “Everyone's perfectly fine! They—”

  Prabhnoor burst into the room. “Yeah. Perfectly fine might be an overstatement,” he said. “I still feel a slight pain in the left side of my chest when I breathe too deeply around midnight and also at four-fifteen in the afternoon.” He winked at Asha. “You're looking well, Sandhu. Can't say the same for those plants, though.” He sat on the bed, and Aquila stood. “You gave us quite a scare for a couple days. How do your ribs feel? Any pain at all in your hands?”

  Asha inhaled, wiggling her fingers. “No.
I feel… perfectly fine.”

  “You had five broken bones in your wrists, and seven fractured ribs. Not to mention numerous bruises, cuts, and scrapes. Plus, for some reason we couldn't figure out, you were unconscious. So there was that. And we couldn't touch you without passing out ourselves.” He tapped her cast with his ring. “Had to resort to primitive methods.”

  Senya entered the room, followed closely by Lexi, Nidhan, and Himat. They sat in the chairs by the bed and Aquila moved back to the wall.

  Senya kept up a steady stream of talk while he removed Asha's casts and IV, twisting her arms around while he poked at her ribs. “Did you know that for thousands of years, roses were grown more for medicine and food than for beauty? Rabies, sore throats, colds, fevers, diarrhea, eye inflammations, burns. They're great for treating pain. The roots, boiled and crushed, reduce swelling. And did you know roses are good for practically everything? Antiseptic, antiviral, blood tonic, menstrual regulator…” Aquila watched Lexi and Asha roll their eyes at each other and smile, a joke passing silently between them. Senya was saying something about Napoleon's soldiers carrying pouches of rose petals, but no one was listening.

  No matter how hard he tried, Aquila couldn't look away from Asha, who was so beautiful it made his chest ache. And every time he looked at her, she was already looking at him.

  Senya, finished with the casts, stopped talking about roses, and looked around as if seeing the rest of them for the first time.

  “Okay, everybody out!” he said. “And take as many of those plants as you can carry.” He looked pointedly at Aquila and said under his breath, “Go. And eat something, for God's sake.”

  Chapter 17

  It took some convincing, but Prabhnoor let Asha leave the hospital in time for lunch. After enduring the applause that erupted when she entered the mess hall, Asha joined Lexi and the others in their regular booth, and together they went over everything Senya said about her healing Talent.

  “Awesome!” Lexi exclaimed, touching Asha's cheek and pulling her hand away with a dramatic gasp. “You're like Rogue!”

  Nidhan rolled his eyes.

  “Are you calling me a mutant?” Asha said in mock horror and Lexi raised her glass at her.

  Nidhan looked thoughtful between bites. “So, someone has to actually touch you to have the life sucked out of them? You can't do it from a distance?”

  “Apparently she also has to be unconscious,” said Himat.

  Asha felt Lexi kick him under the table.

  “Yes, but this is only the beginning,” said Mia, looking around at them. “She just turned seventeen. And no one has ever seen this Talent! Imagine what she'll be able to do when they figure it out enough to train her?”

  “Destroy whole forests with a mere thought?” said Asha.

  “Hey, people couldn't touch you,” said Lexi. “At least, not without passing out. It could mean that was the last time an Underworlder ever touches you.”

  “Don't remind me,” Asha groaned. She looked at her friends. “Lexi was like some fearless, extremely foul-mouthed Vampire slayer, and I just froze like a bug-eyed toad with severe constipation.”

  “Well, they would have been in for a surprise as soon as you were unconscious,” said Nidhan. “At least that's something, right?”

  “You don't know that her Talent works against Vampires,” said Himat.

  “Would you just shut up, Himat?” said Mia. “Asha, don't—”

  Prabhnoor was standing at the table. “We need you back in the hospital, Asha. I spoke too soon, and Senya wants you to stay two more days to make sure you're okay.”

  “Two days?” everyone said at once.

  “But she's completely healed!” Lexi said, pointing at Asha.

  Prabhnoor shrugged. “Doctor's orders. Come on, you can visit her during free time.”

  † † †

  Asha followed Prabhnoor back down to the hospital and stopped. When he opened the door to her room, she saw a very intimidating group waiting for her.

  Kelakha's mother, the beautiful Chakori, was speaking to Javin, whose scar stood out in the soft light. Garud leaned against the far wall and looked thoughtful; his straight hair falling over his massive chest. And sitting in a chair at the center of the room was the tall man with the grey crew cut. When he saw Asha, he motioned her to come in and sit on the bed. Chakori fell silent.

  “I am Barindra,” he said, his voice a deep gravely baritone. King of warriors.

  “So are you in charge?” Asha blurted before she could stop herself.

  They glanced at each other and smiled. There was something… predatory about their perfectly synchronized movements, and Asha felt the hairs on her neck stand up. She knew with chilling certainty that these were dangerous people.

  “I command the Jodha,” he said, inclining his head. “The Warriors. Now that you're recovered, we need you to tell us exactly what happened.” He fixed her with a steady gaze. “Everything you remember, from the beginning.”

  All eyes turned to Asha. Chakori's bright orange, Javin's black and abyss-like. Garud crossed his scarred arms and stood watching her from the shadows.

  Asha swallowed. “Uh, okay. Lexi…”

  “Will join us shortly. Desai as well,” said Chakori. She sounded like she was making an effort to be patient. Asha got the feeling that sitting wasn't something any of these people liked to do very often.

  Taking a deep breath, Asha told them about the night of the party. When she finished, they asked her to go over it again. And then again.

  At some point Lexi joined them, sitting with Asha, and they started from the beginning yet again. Chakori asked what seemed like hundreds of questions, in thousands of different ways, while Javin and Garud re-questioned every detail.

  When Aquila arrived, Garud crossed the room and whispered to him, and he nodded. He crossed to Barindra, leaning forward on one knee, his brown hair concealing his expression as they grasped each other's forearms. Barindra said something under his breath and slapped Aquila's shoulder, and he moved to stand by the wall next to Garud, answering everything he was asked without looking at Asha.

  Three hours after it started, the Jodha were finally silent, looking at each other.

  Chakori turned her piercing orange eyes on Asha. “What are you not telling us, Sandhu? They wanted you.”

  Aquila stepped forward. “It was my fault. I neglected my post. I—”

  His post? Asha was struck by how sick she felt, knowing that that was all she meant to him. An image of herself as a rusting telephone post popped into her head and she fought a sudden, mad urge to giggle.

  “If you want to blame someone, blame me,” Lexi said, glancing at Asha in alarm. “Asha wouldn't have left the building if it hadn't been for me…”

  “Bullshit,” said Garud. “The Vampires were there specifically for Asha. They were sent to capture her alive. Javin is right. There's something you're not telling us.”

  Everyone waited in silence for Asha to say something.

  Looking at their grim expressions, Asha felt her temper flare. “I didn't even know Vampires existed before last week!” Her voice came out like a whining, hysterical kid, and Asha took a deep breath. “Why don't you ask him?” She waved a hand at Aquila. “He's been at his post since I got here, right?”

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, Asha regretted them. Aquila paled and looked as if she'd slapped him.

  Asha sighed. “Maybe it has something to do with my grandfather. The Vampire that was salivating over Lexi said something about my grandmother.” She watched Aquila. He studied his shoes, looking miserable again, refusing to meet her gaze.

  “And the night I left Miami,” she added, “my grandfather was cryptic about his brother. Maybe Nidhan knows something.”

  Barindra made a strange waving motion with his right hand, and Aquila left the room.

  And there it is again. Asha shook her head, trying to ignore the hollow sensation that filled her the moment Aqui
la wasn't in the room. Trying to ignore the fact that everything seemed… dull.

  A few minutes later, Aquila returned, followed by a confused-looking Nidhan. As soon as Aquila entered the room, a horde of butterflies took flight in her chest. Asha smiled before she could think, then blushed, studying her hands.

  They went over the events of the reception again, adding questions about Nidhan's grandmother's reaction to Asha.

  Aquila looked sick as he stood with his arms crossed. When Lexi started to tell them about the third Vampire again, Aquila's head snapped up, the rage in his golden brown eyes sending a shiver up Asha's spine.

  “Describe him,” Aquila demanded, his voice hoarse.

  Lexi shrugged. “What's to describe? He looked like a blonde male super model. I don't know, a cross between a young Paul Newman and… hell. He just looked tall, blonde, smug. He wore all black. He had a chain—”

  Aquila took a step forward. “What kind of chain?”

  “With a big silver cross,” Asha said. “I remember wondering, 'cause it didn't burn his skin…”

  “With a big red stone on it,” added Lexi, nodding.

  Garud and Aquila looked at each other. “Viktor,” they said together.

  Everyone turned to Barindra.

  Although he stood still as a statue, Aquila seemed about to explode into motion. Asha could see he was controlling himself with obvious effort.

  Barindra nodded once, and Garud and Aquila left the room in one fluid movement.

  And there it is again…

  She looked at Lexi, who raised her eyebrows.

  Barindra, Chakori, and Javin rose. Javin looked at Asha and nodded once before following Barindra out. At the door, Chakori turned and fixed Asha with her orange eyes. “Think about telling us the truth, Sandhu,” she said and closed the door.

  Asha and Lexi looked at each other and shrugged.

  Senya poked his head in the door and ordered Asha to change back into hospital pajamas. Lexi and Nidhan waited for her, Lexi fussing over Asha's blankets the moment she was back in the bed, ignoring Asha's swatting at her.