Daemons in the Mist (The Marked Ones Trilogy: Book One)

by Vancil, Alicia Kat

Oh hell, I was so not under control yet. I needed to get something cold to drink and clear my head, or I was going to do something that would probably get me into a lot of trouble.

  In a slight panic I turned around and walked straight into Michael. I glared at him and he glared back. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

  “Were you following us?” I asked angrily.

  “No, I’m waiting for Penelope,” he answered, pointing to the bathroom.

  I didn’t believe him in the slightest until Penelope actually did come out of the restroom eyeing us all suspiciously.

  Michael looked us up and down a broad smirk spreading across his smug face. “She’s your problem now,” he said as he turned his back to us and walked away with Penelope.

  21

  Barely Contained

  Sunday, January 22nd

  PATRICK

  “We’re here,” Alex said as we stopped somewhere in the Financial District.

  I looked out the window at a building that looked a lot like every other building in the San Francisco Financial District. Pale gray stone, columns, and large glass windows on the first floor. A collection of flags jutted out from above the doors. They looked to be the flags of various countries. I would have thought nothing of it, but the longer I looked at them the more they seemed to change to flags I didn’t recognize.

  “What are you squinting at?” Nualla asked, looking out the window.

  “Those flags, they don’t look like the flags of countries, so what are they?”

  “Oh, they’re for the various Kalodaemon regions,” Nualla replied without really paying attention. Then she froze and whipped her head around to look at me. “Wait you can see them?”

  “Sure I can, they’re right there,” I answered as I gestured at the flags.

  “You’re not supposed to be able to see them; I mean as something—unusual,” Nualla said, furrowing her brow.

  “Really? That’s kinda weird.”

  “Yes, yes it is.” She continued to look at me in concern as the driver came around to open our door.

  “Maybe your weirdness is rubbing off on me,” I offered jokingly.

  “Ha ha, very funny,” she said, lightly pushing me.

  I held up my Blue Card and looked through it at the building, but it really didn’t do anything other than tint the building slightly bluish.

  Nualla stepped out of the car and turned to look at me in slight exasperation. “Patrick, what on earth are you doing? It’s not a magic looking glass, you know.”

  “Hey, it was worth a try,” I replied with a shrug as I stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  As I squinted up at the building again the design began to squiggle and change in an iridescent array of colors, like motor oil in a rain puddle, and just for a second I could see a very different building. Dull pale gray stone shimmering like a mirage until it became a slate blue-gray, like a rain cloud. The plain rigidly straight metal between the large glass window panes slipping into swirling shapes with a silvery patina to the metal that almost looked bluish-green. Even the stone pillars and walls took on a new form, carved with intricate sweeping edifices; a beautiful and breathtaking blend of ancient Egyptian and Art Nouveau.

  “Stop that, you’re going to give yourself a brain aneurysm. It’s cloaked, so you won’t be able to see it for what it is until we get inside,” Nualla said as she bumped me. And just like that, in a blink of the eye, it was gone becoming a plain uninspiring gray stone building again.

  “Here, take my hand, and close your eyes, it will be easier that way,” Nualla advised with a reassuring smile.

  As Alex led the way, I took Nualla’s hand and closed my eyes, but only part of the way. As we stepped closer and closer to the building, things swirled and spiraled out of kilter. We passed through the main doors into a small glass entry room. People moved out of the way like we were a ambulance flashing its lights and we quickly moved to the front of the line. Someone in a blackish uniform reached out and gently grabbed the Blue Card around my neck and examined it. I looked over at them, and then wished I hadn’t. His shape blurred in and out of focus in an even more nauseating way than the room.

  I swayed on my feet, and Nualla almost lost hold of me. Just before she did, someone else took my other arm, and we moved through an arch out of the glass room and into the lobby proper. The second I was on the other side of that arch everything settled, but not before I had to drop to my knees.

  I stared at the ground and panted until I stopped feeling like I was about to hurl.

  “I told you to close your eyes, silly,” Nualla chided as she crouched down next to me.

  Geez, how embarrassing.

  “Here Patrick, let me help you up.” Alex looked as if he was trying very hard not to laugh as he offered me his hand.

  I took hold of his hand and got back to my feet still a little dizzy. “Sorry, next time I’ll listen.”

  When I finally looked around, I almost fell back over again. People in various strange outfits walked past us through the building, as if it was totally commonplace. The clothing was a strange fusion of Japanese and something much harder to place, and it felt an awful lot like I was at an anime convention.

  I let my eyes pan around the rest of the room. The front part of The Embassy was hollow and rose up eight floors in height, ending with a intricate blue and white stained glass ceiling. There seemed to be a reception area off to the right of us which was bustling with activity. Two grand staircases lined either side of the front room, allowing you easy access to the second floor. Hallways lined either side of the upper seven floors with wrought iron railings that allowed you to look down to the ground floor. Three hundred or so feet away the railings turned and ended at a glass-front double elevator. It was all very impressive, but it was thing directly in front of us that made my breath catch. About a hundred feet beyond us stood a large beautiful fountain, a statue of the goddess Daenara at the center, the water spilling over her hands and raining down to the pool below.

  The decor of The Embassy was an interesting mix of ancient beauty and futuristic technology. Which was also a perfect description for daemons themselves, really; ancient creatures that were just a tad bit ahead of the times.

  “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” I said under my breath.

  “Excuse me?” Alex asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Oh, nothing,” I mumbled nervously as I looked back at the mass of people moving purposefully through The Embassy.

  A woman in what looked like a kimono approached us gracefully. Bowing slightly she spoke to Alex. “Chancellarius Galathea, may I speak with you?”

  “Yes Kikyo,” Alex said to her with a smile.

  She looked over at me briefly before adding, “It’s regarding the Kakodemoss, Chancellarius.”

  “Ah,” Alex said, frowning. “Nualla, honey, I have to go take care of this. Go find Natasha in my office; she will guide you through everything,” he said, turning toward his daughter.

  “Okay Dad, see you later,” Nualla said with a tight smile.

  “Patrick, try to calm down a bit if you can. I promise no harm will come to you while you are here,” Alex said with a reassuring smile.

  Did I really look that bad? Yeah…I probably did; nervousness and strange swirly motion illusions really didn’t mix well. “I’ll try,” I said with the best attempt at a smile I could manage.

  Alex and the lady named Kikyo disappeared into the crowd as they moved off across The Embassy having a hushed conversation. By the way people were treating Nualla’s father I was beginning to wonder what exactly a chancellarius was.

  “Ready to go, or do you want to stare a little longer?” Nualla asked as she twined her fingers through mine.

  “Can you really blame me?” I replied, looking at
her.

  “Not really; this place is pretty strange even if you are familiar with the world,” she admitted with a crooked smile.

  God she was gorgeous when she smiled; breathtaking, like a shooting star flashing across the night sky.

  “So…” Nualla said, swinging my hand slightly back and forth.

  “Yeah, we can go,” I said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

  As we moved through The Embassy in the same direction Alex and Kikyo had taken, people stopped to bow to us. Since I assumed it must be some daemon custom, I bowed back. But when they all started to give me really weird looks I stopped.

  Nualla and I moved past the bank of elevators into a portion of The Embassy that was no longer hollow. As we walked I glanced around at everything; rooms lined the hallway each with a placard in a language I couldn’t read—probably the same language that was on Nualla’s pendant; Daemotic.

  Eventually the hallway turned, and we reached a second set of elevators. These were far less crowded than the first set, but still a crowd stood in front of them.

  As we walked up to join the group waiting for the elevator, a tall male daemon in normal clothes inclined his head toward Nualla. “Arius Nualla.” I had absolutely no idea what arius could possibly mean, but Nualla was beginning to look nervous, and I got the feeling there was something she hadn’t told me yet.

  When we entered the elevator with a few others Nualla began to start rubbing her necklace, which I had learned was never a good sign. She was keeping something from me, and I really hoped it wasn’t anything too bad. I was about to ask her about it when the elevator dinged, and she pulled my hand. “Our stop.”

  The second we were out of the elevator she let the pendant drop. Maybe she wasn’t hiding something after all; maybe she just really hated elevators.

  “Hey Nualla—” She looked at me with wide eyes, and I decided to switch questions. “—what’s the Kakodemoss?”

  Her shoulders relaxed, and she grimaced a bit as she answered. “A sect of Kakodaemon terrorists.”

  I stopped walking. “Should I be worried?”

  “Not really, they don’t really attack anymore. They’re like the Bogeyman, something your parents tell you about to get you to do your homework and eat your veggies.”

  We walked down another long hallway before finally stopping in front of a set of large double doors. Nualla pushed the doors open without stopping and walked in. Once in the room, I immediately came to a dead stop. A woman with a long braid was whipping around a katana. She was dressed in a black kimono top and tight pants that disappeared into long black boots. A silver and blue emblem decorated the left side of her chest and black fingerless gloves covered her arms. The emblem was a rich vibrant lapis-blue and had eight silver spokes radiating out in a circle with each ending in what looked like an Egyptian lotus.

  “Are you a Jedi knight or something?” I blurted out. It was probably a dumb thing to say, but it was the first thing that came to mind and I couldn’t always stop those things from popping out of my mouth.

  The woman turned slowly and raised an eyebrow at us. She looked positively deadly and I immediately began to regret what I had just said. The woman sheathed her sword and smoothed her hair out of her face. “You must be Mr. Connolly,” she said in an authoritative voice.

  “Yeah, actually I am,” I answered nervously. “Who are you?”

  “Natasha Jordash, Chancellarius Galathea’s personal guard and captain of the Kalo Protectorate.”

  “Personal guard?” I didn’t take my eyes off her as I spoke to Nualla out of the side of my mouth. “Just what exactly does your dad do?”

  Natasha eyed me suspiciously. “He is the chancellarius of this region of the Kalodaemon Empire.” When it was clear that I had absolutely no idea what that meant she sighed. “He is the ruler of this region.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said in complete disbelief.

  Natasha looked slightly confused. “This is no joke.”

  I turned to Nualla and just gaped at her. “You could have mentioned this.”

  “Yeah, like when exactly? Should I have mentioned it before or after I told you that I wasn’t human?”

  I had no answer to that, so I turned back to Natasha. “So when you say region, you mean the Bay Area, right?”

  “Well yes, that is part of Chancellarius Galathea’s region.”

  “Part?” I squeaked.

  Oh, this is bad; this is really, really bad.

  “The region also includes all of California and the states of Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii.”

  I just stared at her, trying not to faint. Finally, I turned to look at Nualla. “Your dad’s ruler of the entire West Coast!”

  “Yeah…pretty much. I mean, each state has at least one embassy to take care of local affairs, but this is the central embassy for the region,” Nualla babled uneasily.

  “So you’re a—”

  “Princess? Yeah, basically. In the event of my dad’s death, my sister or I would then become the next chancellarius,” Nualla stated, avoiding my eyes. The past few minutes started to make more and more sense. The people we had passed had been bowing to her because of who she was, and not because it was just some daemon greeting.

  “I…I think I need to sit down,” I said as I all but fell into a nearby chair. I put my head in my hands, starting to hyperventilate. What exactly had I gotten myself into? This kind of stuff didn’t happen in real life; especially not to me.

  Nualla knelt down next to me. “Patrick, are you okay?”

  “Just—give me—a second, okay?” I answered breathlessly. I took a few more breaths, but it didn’t help; my heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to beat its way out of my chest.

  “I need some air,” I announced abruptly. As I stood, I knew instantly that it was the wrong thing to do. My body felt weightless and the ground started to rush up at me.

  Sometime later I opened my eyes. I looked over to the side and saw Nualla sitting on the floor next to me, flipping through stuff on her phone. “Hey,” I said in a weak voice.

  “Patrick!” Nualla dropped her phone and leaned over me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, highly embarrassed, but fine,” I replied with a wry smile.

  “Do you think you can sit up?” she asked with worried eyes. I nodded slowly, and she helped me sit up.

  I looked over at her warily, “Is there anything else you have neglected to tell me?”

  “Um…”

  There was a sound behind us, and I turned to see Natasha coming through the door. “Oh good, you’re awake.”

  Oh, ‘cause you sound super concerned.

  Natasha stopped looking at me and turned her attention to Nualla. “Arius Nualla, the Grand Council won’t be able to hear your case until after three.”

  “Fabulous,” Nualla said sounding less than thrilled. She turned to me with a half-smile. “Want to grab some food?”

  This time we had the elevator to ourselves, so I leaned against the elevator wall and asked, “Hey, Nualla?”

  “Yeah,” she answered without looking over at me; she was playing with her necklace again, looking a little flustered.

  “What does arius mean?”

  “What?” she said as she turned to look in my direction.

  “The man at the elevator earlier, he called you ‘Arius Nualla.’ So what does it mean?”

  “Oh! Um…basically like princess.”

  “Figures.” I looked over at her with a self-deprecating smile. “As if you needed another reason to be completely out of my league.”

  “Patrick, seriously—lighten up on yourself. I don’t know where you got the idea you weren’t cute but—” She looked into my eyes and stopped talking.

  “But
what?”

  She looked away shyly before saying the rest. “I’m not the only one with distracting eyes.”

  “You think I have distracting eyes?” I asked in disbelief.

  She moved a little closer and looked up at me through her lashes. “I think all of you is distracting, actually.”

  My heart was racing so fast it all but jumped out of my chest. Being with Nualla was like walking through a minefield of sexual tension; one of these days I just wasn’t going to make it through.

  I swallowed hard and the elevator door dinged and opened. We entered a crowded upscale cafeteria and headed for the food line. Why were there so many people here on a Sunday? I mean seriously, you would think they would be off doing something like going to a movie, or the park, or hell, even a mall. But no, they were milling around The Embassy like it was a normal weekday or something. Then something occurred to me: maybe for them this was a normal Sunday activity.

  As we moved through the line I really didn’t pay too much attention to what I was grabbing; I was way too distracted to really care. So when she made it to the end of the line I just followed her to one of the empty tables.

  After we had taken a few bites of lunch, Nualla looked up at me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my dad on Friday. I guess I thought telling you everything at once might—”

  “Fry my brain a little?”

  “Yeah,” Nualla admitted, slightly chagrined.

  “It’s okay, I understand why you did it.”

  “Really?” she asked skeptically, and I nodded. Nualla ran her teeth over her bottom lip and seemed to decide something. “Well, in the interest of not giving you an anxiety attack again, I’m giving you permission to ask me anything.”

  “You know that doesn’t really help if I don’t know what I should be asking,” I said wryly. Nualla looked at me innocently, and I sighed. “Fine, what happens if a human figures out what you are? Aren’t you afraid someone will expose you?”