The Nightwalkers Saga: Books 1 - 7

by Candace Wondrak

  Yeah, I was bad. I’d say this world was rubbing off on me, but I’d always had a dark sense of humor. Twisted. It came with the territory and promise of dying young. Live while you can, right?

  That’s…what I did last night.

  With this world’s Gabriel. With the creature who had a thousand names.

  I had a feeling I was going to regret my decision to make out with him once I went back to my world. It was a good thing I still had some time to figure out how I was going to get out of explaining it to Gabriel, to stop the blonde boy from reading my mind and seeing that I kissed his older, evil doppelganger.

  Quite a lot, too.

  Raphael continued to smile as he greeted us. “Good morning. I hope you all had a good night. Alyssa’s waiting for us in the front barracks.” He hummed, beginning to walk, “Let us be on our way.”

  John didn’t look at anyone as we walked through the street, back to where we were first greeted by guns and swearwords. There was a one-story building off to the side, where Alyssa was waiting. Raphael was the first to enter. John stepped aside, letting Gabriel and I through. The two men shared a look, causing me to roll my eyes.

  We headed into an office, where Alyssa stood over a desk, a map splayed out, flat. Her kind gaze rose, a smile forming when she saw Raphael. If Raphael had a dopey expression, hers was borderline Hallmark channel, too cheesy to be real. If I ever had a lovey-dovey look like that, kill me. Seriously, just end it there. Permission: granted.

  “Morning,” Alyssa spoke, mostly to Raphael, who giggled.

  Yes, the man giggled.

  It was soft and it was gone the moment it came, but I heard it. We all heard it. The giggle. It was a sound that would haunt my nightmares for the foreseeable future.

  John paled, gagging slightly as he muttered, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  That made Alyssa quip, “Why? Because two people have found happiness in each other?”

  “You all have found…happiness in each other,” John said. “And that’s great. For you. But for me, it makes me want to vomit. So, can we get this over with?”

  At his reference to Gabriel and I, Alyssa’s eyebrows rose and she turned to me. All I could do was nonchalantly run my hands through my hair, admiring the split ends. I hoped I wasn’t turning cherry red.

  “I’m sure Kass can’t wait to go home,” John added, his dark expression all-too knowing for my tastes, his voice dripping sarcasm.

  Alyssa chose to ignore her brother’s last comment, saying, “I hope you’re all ready for what you’re going to face today.”

  “Let me guess,” I spoke dryly, crossing my arms, “the King has the staff.”

  “Unfortunately, you’re not wrong,” she said. “I’m afraid you will all have to face your fears to reach it.” Alyssa leaned on the table, and in that moment, it was so very difficult to remember her as the soft-spoken girl who became my only friend in school. Until Claire, but truthfully, I wasn’t sure if Claire was my friend or not. “I will not spare any of my men or women to help you, but as it is, the four of you are better than any small army I have. You’ll do fine if you’re vigilant.”

  Alyssa pointed to the map. “The building he chose as his castle was town hall. I have the blueprints. Top few floors are destroyed. He converted the basement offices to a jail of sorts. It is there the staff lies.” Her finger moved to the corner-most room. “Here. You can take the stairs right beside the elevator in the main hall. From what I can tell, they don’t have guards. They don’t need them. They will put up enough of a fight.”

  “They?” I echoed, cutting in. “You keep saying they. I thought it was just the King?”

  She frowned somewhat, looking to Raphael. “You haven’t told her?” Next to John, and then to Gabriel. “No, of course you wouldn’t.” Sighing, she addressed me, “The King has his Queen, and she is as slippery as a worm, but as vicious as a lioness.” Alyssa paused, noting, “You do not even know the King’s true identity, do you? None of the men who accompany you dare speak it, for various reasons.”

  “Who is he?” I asked, stepping forward. “Who killed me?” My mind rang back to what my mother had told me in my most recent vision. Whoever had killed this world’s me would also lead me to my downfall in mine.

  “He is an ancient being. He has seen the rise and fall of Rome, the conquering of the New World, the genocide of World War II. My people have dubbed him the King, but you might know him from his real name—Crixis.”

  Of course.

  Crixis. He was behind everything bad that had happened to me recently, so it really shouldn’t surprise me. I should’ve seen it coming.

  Once I recovered from hearing his name aloud, I was sluggish to ask about the Queen. “And the Queen? Who’s she?”

  Alyssa’s gaze fell, and for a while no one in the room spoke.

  “The Queen,” John eventually broke the silence, “she, uh…” But even he could not finish.

  “She’s you,” Gabriel whispered, watching my reaction.

  “Me?” I backed up, shaking my head in disbelief. “But you said I died.”

  Alyssa spoke next, agreeing, “You did die.”

  “But you did not remain dead for long,” Raphael added.

  “You were taken,” Gabriel said, moving to my side, gently touching my arm, drawing down it, similar to the way he touched me last night. “From me.”

  “From all of us,” John said, voice rising. His stance grew aggressive as he watched Gabriel touch me. “From the world. Gabriel wasn’t the only one who lost everything when you died.” He referred to Kirk, his now-dead older brother. “The world lost, and Hell gained a ruler.” He exchanged dirty glances with Gabriel.

  “You’re lucky Kass is here,” Gabriel growled, sounding like his eight-foot-tall, horned side. “Otherwise you’d be there now.”

  John smirked, chuckling lowly. “Yeah, I’m real lucky she whipped you good and fast, aren’t I?”

  “Oh,” Gabriel uttered, lifting his hand, red, fiery smoke appearing, shimmering off his flesh as if it were naturally there. He went for John. “I’ll—”

  Grinding my teeth, I moved between the two, still reeling after learning that my alter ego was the Queen beside Crixis. “Stop it,” I spoke through bared teeth, not wanting to deal with their egos right now. “Grow up. Right now, we’re working together.”

  “Right,” John said, bitter. “You think he’s going to let you go once we find the staff? You think he’s going to let you go after you spent the night together? You’re out of your mind if you think—” He stopped as my hand turned into a harsh point, one I held right below his chin.

  “I think,” I said, annoyed, “that Gabriel will do the right thing. And if he doesn’t…” I threw a glance at Gabriel. “…I won’t let that stop me from getting home.”

  Alyssa spoke, bored with the displays of masculinity, “Good. Now that this room is filled with nothing but tension and testosterone, I have something for you.” She bent, retrieving something long and wrapped in a cloth. Setting it atop the map, she gestured to me.

  Once I cooled down enough, I went for the object, slowly unwrapping it. Silver glimmered through, and as I fully tore away the cloth, I inhaled deeply. A smile formed as I effortlessly lifted the sword and twirled it in the air. The rose on the hilt, the petals crafted in the handle, the thorns growing down the sharp edges.

  My rose blade.

  As I tested its weight in my hands, for it was a while since I last held it back in my world, a light blue grew from the sword, reflecting more light than it should. This wasn’t my rose blade. At least, not entirely. There was something magical about it.

  “I enchanted that blade.”

  I met her eyes. “It’ll work on Crixis?”

  That made Alyssa smile. “It’ll do everything a normal sword can’t.”

  Remembering the night where I’d first met Crixis, a nameless, red-eyed Nightwalker who I staked in the heart, yet somehow the Demon survived, I managed to m
utter, “Good.” Maybe he wasn’t invincible after all.

  “Now go,” Alyssa said, standing straight. “And good luck.”

  I thanked her. Raphael went to kiss her goodbye, telling her that he’d return this time, he promised. Who knew the guy had it in him? He was such a know-it-all jerk in my world, though he had his moments. John and Gabriel left, and I was about to follow, but Alyssa called after me, gripping Raphael’s hand until their arms could no longer reach each other.

  “Wait,” she said. Alyssa let Raphael go, and once we were alone, she moved closer to me. “I need to ask you a favor, Kass.”

  “Anything,” I readily said.

  “When you return to your world, I need you to do something for me. It was only your death that brought us together, so I don’t know where I am in your world, otherwise, I hope I’d have enough sense to do it myself,” Alyssa explained, not quite clarifying what she wanted.

  Cocking my head, I asked, “What do you want me to do?”

  “Forgive him,” Alyssa whispered, “forgive Raphael.”

  The favor stumped me, confusing me totally. I tried to figure it out, yet for the life of me, I couldn’t. “Forgive him for what?”

  “For everything,” she said, hugging me. In my ear, she added, “And anything he does. His past haunts him, and it shouldn’t.” Alyssa pulled away from me, giving me a sad grin that fell off her face as she backed up to the desk. “He is a good man. Just…forgive him for me.”

  I gave a nod. “I will.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured, meeting my eyes. “Go catch up with them. I’m sure you’re dying to get back to your world. If we didn’t have this place, I think we would’ve forgotten what the world was like before.”

  As I left, I waved. “You did good here, Alyssa. Or should I call you the Prophet?”

  She laughed softly, reminding me of the Alyssa I knew. “Goodbye, Kass.”

  Goodbye. Somehow it always came down to goodbyes. It was how my world’s Alyssa left me. I missed her, but I didn’t blame her. She had to go with her brothers, she had to be there to help John, though I still didn’t know if we should’ve let him go. After everything he did, all those innocent civilians he murdered, he didn’t deserve to go. He deserved to be punished.

  Although, if he hadn’t done so, like I voiced when I talked with John yesterday, it would’ve been me killing, ending the world. And if there was a chance that my sanity could’ve been restored, I would’ve wanted mercy.

  Mercy.

  Mercy was always the one thing I had trouble with.

  In my opinion, if you did something, something with world-ending consequences, you did not deserve mercy. I was a Purifier, not God. I did the purifying, not the forgiving.

  Chapter Thirty – The King

  I stormed through the hall, finding her sitting on a chair we’d created from the bones of the humans we hunted down, locked up and bled one by one. She drank deeply from a wine glass, licking her lips that were covered in blood. She smiled at me from beneath her mask.

  “You look angry,” she mused, smiling.

  “I am,” I swiftly agreed, grabbing her by her arms, forcing her to stand. She dropped the wine glass, shattering it on the floor, the shards flying in every direction, the blood that remained scattering on the tile. “It’s been too long. Your pet should’ve returned by now. He failed.”

  She shook with laughter, enjoying my roughness and my rage, two things I was not accustomed to controlling. “I thought you hated my pet. It sounds like—”

  I threw her against the wall with my strength, her back crushing the brick. “It sounds like I should’ve gone myself. Never send an incompetent fool to do the job when you’re better suited to do it yourself.”

  My lover recoiled with ease, her skill top-notch, save for me. No one was better than me. “You,” she whispered, “are so full of it. I’m not even confident that whatever you sent him out there for is real.” She aimed a punch at my gut.

  “It is!” I shouted, blocking her blow. How was I supposed to explain the unexplainable feeling? It was impossible, yet I had to try. “The last time I felt it…was when you were human.”

  At that, our fighting stopped. Her voice quieted, “When I was human…you felt something?” She was incredulous. “From me?”

  I despised this coming-clean business. It’s why I never did it. Yet I found myself telling her one of the many things I never told her before, “Yes. Something that made me think you were more than human.” There was a pause as I sized her up. “But clearly, if you were, you wouldn’t have so easily become a Vampire.”

  She scoffed, “Don’t tell me that’s why you turned me.” When I opened my mouth, she held up a hand, interrupting, “I said don’t. Do you need me to get a dictionary so you can learn the definition of the word?”

  Her irreverence made me laugh. “No. I’ve had thousands of years to learn it.” I flashed before her, snaking my hand around her waist and pulling her in for a deep kiss. A deep, unnerving feeling grew inside me, causing me to pull away from her hungry lips and glance out the window.

  Lesser Vampires gathered in huge numbers outside our abode. They filled the city street en masse, a horde of unintelligent animals, mindlessly searching for flesh, their souls long gone. What reanimated their corpses was something supernatural. Their bite was venomous, their infection extremely catchy. One bite, one scratch from their teeth, and any poor human would soon die and become one of them.

  They were leagues different than I, even from my lover. What they needed we simply desired, lusted after. Blood, the delicious, warm life force of humanity, was a drug that tasted like no other.

  Beside me in an instant, she spoke as she gazed out of the window, lifting her mask so she could better see, “Nightwalkers. And a whole lot of them, too. What are they doing?”

  “It would seem,” I sluggishly said, “that not all of them followed your pet out of the city.”

  “That’s obvious,” she hissed. “But what are they doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She gasped. “There are people coming.” Her wide, green eyes turned to me as she said, “I bet they’re the ones who killed my pet.” Her fists clenched, her sharp nails drawing blood. “I’m going to tear them apart.”

  Though they were far away still, I saw how the lesser Vampires parted for them, how they didn’t move to attack. How one of the men stood behind, drawing the Demons in and allowing the rest to pass and eventually stop at our front door. “Do not be overzealous,” I whispered, not bothering to hide the amazement in my voice. The girl who was with them…how could it be?

  It was her.

  I creased my eyebrows, glancing at my lover beside me, at the girl I turned. The same very girl who was walking up to our home, sword in hand. Kass.

  The girl beside me must’ve been too upset about her pet to see her lookalike, for she already turned away, planning how she would destroy them. After all my years, I had a keen eye for detail. The Devil was in the details, pun or not. They were important, such as the detail about how a very alive, very human Kass was on our doorstep when in fact I’d turned Kass more than twenty years ago…the girl who fumed silently in same room as me.

  Though it was confusing, it made sense. She was the reason I felt the inexplicable draw. It was literally the exact same feeling I had twenty years ago, all those years of chase until I finally caught my prey…her.

  It was a few moments until I met my lover’s angry glare, saying, “Shall we greet our guests downstairs?”

  Her thin, muscular body trembled with rage as she lowered her mask. “Let’s give them a welcome they won’t soon forget.”

  While I admired her pluckiness, I was not as ambitious. In all my time, and I’d had a lot of it, I never encountered a doppelganger. Such things were in stories only, fairytales.

  This wasn’t a fairytale.

  Maybe in the beginning, but anything I touched turned into a bloody, violent, nightmare.

  Chapter
Thirty-One – Kass

  The walk through town was nothing short of terrifying. Even with the attack on the church, I’d never seen this many Nightwalkers together before. It was a startling and sad thought that each of the drooling, waddling, decaying things used to be human. Their flesh rotted, their fangs sharp. Each wore whatever they died or were buried in, fancy clothes and athletic gear alike.

  They wanted to lunge at us, at me, more specifically, and with their closeness I kept my rose blade ready, but they didn’t attack. They watched us, with their dead, droopy eyes, keeping their distance from the only thing they feared: the Devil himself.

  Just before we reached town hall, where Crixis and his Queen, AKA the other me, lived, Gabriel slowed to a halt, causing me to break away from John and Raphael, who both had their weapons drawn.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  He was pensive as he studied the Nightwalkers around him. “It’s time to do some balancing.” His blue eyes seared through me, peeking into my soul, the intensity of it almost too much. “Go on ahead. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I didn’t know exactly what he meant by that, but maybe he didn’t want to face the other me. Maybe he wasn’t quite ready. Either way, we had to keep going. I didn’t fight him, I knew I couldn’t. I simply nodded and met with John and Raphael, gripping my sword tighter as I reached for the door.

  “Do you think it’s unlocked?” I said, mostly joking. Yet when I turned the knob, it was indeed open. “Nuts. I was hoping it would be locked. It’s been too long since I kicked down a door.”

  John cursed under his breath. “Save your strength for the fight. You’ll need it.” He pulled back on his arrow, the first to enter the building whose roof had collapsed some years ago.

  “He is right,” Raphael agreed. “Even as a Purifier, greater Vampires are still stronger and faster than you.”

  “Trust me,” I said, pushing past him to get inside, “I know.”

  The ground floor of the building was dirty. Dim lights flickered. How the electricity was still on confused me. Perhaps Crixis saved some people to keep it up and running to a degree.