Raphael was strangely silent, disappearing in the back room. With a slightly miffed frown, I walked through the pews and headed for the giant doors.
The second I stepped foot on the green grass, I walked into a vision. A short one that lasted less than five seconds, but it was still a vision. And it replayed over and over, repeating and overlapping until I was able to make it out.
My mother looking at me and saying, “Remember.”
“What?” I said aloud, wanting to know what I had to remember.
But she said nothing else. Nothing to clue me in to whatever riddle I was supposed to figure out. These visions, I’d had it with them. I was so tired of them not making a lick of sense until it was too late. What good were they if they couldn’t help me out once in a while?
I hurried through the cemetery and down my street, and during that time I couldn’t stop wondering about the vision, and about how weird Raphael became at the end. So weird, he couldn’t even look me in the eyes. He didn’t even say goodbye.
Was it going to happen? Was I going to die?
I wondered these two things as we turned on my driveway.
Well, I could have sworn I was going to die when I met Crixis in the graveyard a few nights ago, and I didn’t. Did that mean that today was the day? It was sooner than I hoped (obviously) and later than I thought it was going to be.
No, I decided as I placed my foot on the first step of the front porch, nothing was going to happen. I was going to get changed and go to the football game. I was going to get Claire and Max together, and if I was lucky, maybe find that cute boy from school. It was as simple as that.
As I headed up the stairs to the front door, I paused, a wave of anxiety settling over me.
Something was wrong. So very, very wrong.
It was then that I was swallowed by a vision, yet again.
My straight brown hair was long enough that it could double as a mustache, and that’s what I wanted to show mom before she left. I knew I wasn’t supposed to see her, but I had to show her because it was so cool. I skipped to her favorite room, the one with the huge painted window, and held my hair above my lip.
Maybe she wouldn’t even recognize me with my hair like this. I giggled at the thought of being mistaken for a boy.
Smiling, I reached my tiny fingers to the metal door. My hand touched the knob as I heard her favorite song playing.
I accidentally bit my tongue when I pushed open the door and walked into the room. My mom’s song was playing. Some old, boring song. Not like the ones on the radio. I hated it.
The setting sun shone through the glass, making it hard for my eyes to see. I put a small hand over them and saw my mom standing before the window, a vacant expression in her eyes. A man was near her, studying her intently.
“Mommy?” My voice came out like a squeak, causing the man to look at me.
His eyes weren’t normal…they were red. I froze in fear.
The man tilted his head as he slowly walked towards me. I didn’t move. All I did was watch as he knelt in front of me, putting his face close to mine. His eyes stared into me as I stuttered, “W-what did you d-do to…mommy?”
He wiped some of his black hair out of his face, looked back at my mom, who wasn’t moving, and gazed more at me. “I didn’t do anything,” his voice was slow and soothing, making me believe him instantly, “your mommy just…” His hand demonstrated. “…went away in lots of light.”
“She…went away?” I squeaked again.
He nodded slowly. “That’s right. Poof. You’re imagining that body there.” As he spoke, mommy’s standing form disappeared. I was alone with the stranger. “What’s your name, little girl?”
“Kassie,” I said while sucking my thumb.
“Kassie?” He echoed. “Is that short for Kassandra?” He smiled when I shook my head. “Did you know that in ancient Greece there was a woman who had the exact same name, and she was able to see the future?” A chuckle came from his lungs. “Maybe you’ll be just like her someday.”
I kept quiet, not knowing what to say to the man.
“Kassie…” His red eyes fell to my feet. “…you’re just like your mother, aren’t you?”
“W-what?” I bit my thumb.
“What could you possibly be?” The man paused as his red eyes flicked to the door. Someone else was coming. “Kassie, listen to me.” He grabbed my face in his hands and forced me to stare even deeper in his red eyes. “Forget all of this. Don’t remember anything before now. Forget all of it. Every, single detail of your life. Don’t remember…”
My mind went completely blank.
The man stood, looked from me to the door and said, “I know I’ll be seeing you again, Kassie.” In a flash of wind, he was gone.
I was suddenly back in reality. How much of that was real? Did Crixis…murder my mother, make me forget it? And if he wanted to kill me so badly now, why didn’t he do it when I was younger, when I was just an innocent little girl?
I’d never get answers.
Shaking my head, I my hand lifted toward the door knob, but I hesitated. Which was odd, because I never hesitated. I was always gung-ho, totally diving in everything head-first.
I knew something was wrong. I felt it in my bones. A gut feeling, intuition, instinct, whatever you wanted to call it. There was something so ungodly wrong, and I was seconds from finding out what it was.
I stood at the front door to our house, and for a quick moment, I stared up at its height. In this particular moment, it didn’t feel like home. It felt like a foreign place. My stomach twisted as I barged through the door.
The same low, old tune danced through my ears, and I ran to the living room, finding Michael’s laptop open and on YouTube, the source of the familiar song. I quickly hit the pause button, but the relief I felt by stopping the song evaporated the instant I noticed Michael laying on the floor, facedown.
Without a word I was at his side, feeling for a pulse.
Still alive. Thank God.
He was unconscious, though, so I went for the house phone in the kitchen. We had a big kitchen. Wide, open spaces. For once, I didn’t use my Purifier training. I didn’t examine my surroundings.
I should have.
My hand was outstretched to the phone hanging on the wall, but before I could get to it, my feet slipped. I was so shaken, so caught off-guard that my reflexes, which were usually pristine, didn’t stop my fall. I fell backwards, landing hard on my butt. Almost immediately, something soaked through my shorts. I brought my hand to my face. Blood covered my palm.
My heart nearly stopped when I finally realized that I wasn’t alone in the kitchen.
Crixis sat at the kitchen table, thumbing through one of Michael’s cooking books, looking utterly unconcerned. He didn’t even glance up at me, didn’t even meet my gaze, probably because he knew I wasn’t looking at him anymore.
I stared at the body on the floor, at his garish neck wound, at the pints of dark red blood that coated nearly the entire kitchen floor. His usually kind eyes remained open, his head turned unnaturally in my direction, so that I was staring into the dead eyes of the man who raised me, the man who taught me everything I knew, what it meant to be a Purifier, what it meant to help others, to save innocent lives.
Koath.
“No” my voice was a bare whisper. I frantically crawled to him, slipping on his blood numerous times. Never in my life had I been so inept, so…sad. “No,” I said again, kneeling beside him, holding his neck. But the blood had already stopped flowing, which meant his heart wasn’t beating. His skin was pale. His eyes glossy. The thing that I was hysterically trying to fix was just his body.
Koath was dead.
I couldn’t even cry. I couldn’t even breathe. My old Guardian, my friend, the man who was like a father to me…was gone. Everything that could’ve been, won’t be. Everything that was, would never be again. I wanted to weep, I wanted to scream, but I was motionless, caught in the web of reality.
&
nbsp; Reality was never this awful.
“I don’t suppose it’s any consolation to know that his last words were of you,” Crixis spoke from his position on the wooden chair. He flipped a page, adding, “As much as it pains me to say the dreaded L-word, he loved you.”
The words felt like a slap in the face. Before I even knew what I was doing, I lunged for him. By the time I reached his chair, he flashed to the opposite side of the table. Smug. He was too smug for what he just did. Without thinking, I kicked the nearest chair, breaking it into pieces. With a broken leg in my grip, I jumped onto the table, about to lunge at him when he spoke again.
“Ah-ah-ah. Remember the last time you fought me? There’s no one here to save you now. You sure you really want to do this?”
The only thing I did was glare at him. I’d never been so certain in my whole life. Purifying wasn’t what I wanted to do to him. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to be in as much pain as I was in. I wanted him dead. Revenge. I never understood the concept until now.
“Before you say anything you might regret, let me call attention to the other man in the room.” He motioned to the edge of the counter and cabinets, where the garbage can sat. “Well, if you could call him a man, considering.” With a smirk, he vanished in thin air, leaving me staring hard at the man cowering by the trash.
He sat with his legs drawn to his stomach, holding his bloodied hands out before him. His light head was bent, his eyes squeezed shut. His priest uniform, similar to my clothes, was covered in Koath’s blood.
“I tried,” was what he attempted to say.
I leapt off the table, inept no longer, grabbing his throat with my empty hand and lifting him to stand. My other hand held onto the makeshift stake tightly. I couldn’t speak. What was there to say?
He was slow to open his green eyes to me, saying, “I…am so sorry. I tried to stop him, but I—”
“You what?” I shouted in his face, regaining my voice. “You couldn’t? Or you didn’t want to?”
Raphael glanced to the stake, then back at me. “I am sorry, more than you could ever know.” Before I could say anything in return, a shimmering blue portal opened up behind him, and he stepped backwards. The portal closed around him, leaving my hand against the wall.
When I withdrew it, there was a perfectly shaped handprint of blood.
I was too shocked to really think about what I just saw. Instead of thinking about Raphael and his lying face, I turned back to the mess, to the blood, to the body. My eyes were dry as I calmly walked through the puddles of blood and reached for the phone, still holding the stake.
I speed-dialed one. As soon as I heard someone answer, I stated in a very mechanical tone, “This is Kassandra Niles. I’d like to report an attack. Demon. Crixis. One fatality. My
Guardian—” There was a pause as I came to the conclusion that Koath would never be my, or Max’s, Guardian again. “—has been injured. We need cleanup and medical attention.”
I quieted as the woman on the other line gave me instructions.
“Thank you,” I said, not bothering to hang the phone up. I let it drop onto the floor, in the blood, and it shattered. I was in a haze as I went to the bottom of the stairwell, sitting on the first step, facing the front door.
I slowly looked into the living room on my left, seeing Michael’s feet on the floor. I then looked into the kitchen on my right, at the blood on the tile. My face twitched, like I knew I should cry. But nothing came out.
This was the worst day of my life.
Chapter Thirty-One – Gabriel
Our team made a touchdown, causing everyone in the stands to jump, cheer and applaud, including Max and Claire. I had no idea if either of the nerds made a move on each other, and frankly I was too worried. And not about Claire’s decision to hold off on telling Max what she was.
There was something much worse happening, only I had no idea what that was. I felt it; deep down I felt something was wrong.
Claire sighed when she sat back down. “That was an amazing play, don’t you think?”
Max sipped his soda and nodded in agreement. “Who would have thought that would actually work? The chances of that play succeeding was less than fifteen percent. Unpredictable.”
If I’d been in my right mind, I would’ve said something snarky and sarcastic, probably made fun at Max’s choice of words, but something told me that I needed to be elsewhere.
I got to my feet and stumbled over Max and Claire’s legs, not bothering to apologize. I needed all the time I could get. I had to get home as quickly as possible. Something was happening there, I felt it.
I’d felt something similar before when Kass was in deep trouble, and as I hurried through the crowd, I prayed that she wasn’t hurt. The least she could do was wait for me before getting into trouble, right?
“Gabriel, wait,” Max called after me. But I didn’t stop. He ran after me, chasing me down to ask what was wrong, but I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going.
I had to keep going for Kass’s sake.
I burst through the front door, not knowing what to expect. Through some bizarre bond I had with Kass, I knew when she was in distress. So far, it’d only happened a few times: when John first got possessed by Osiris in our driveway, when John went crazy, and now.
Couldn’t Kass have picked literally anyone else as her first experimental crush? She didn’t have to follow in my footsteps when it came to my first girlfriend, if you could call her that.
I was a confident dude, and when it came to Kass I was the most confident…but my confidence wavered when I entered our house and immediately saw her sitting on the bottom step, covered in bright red blood. Beneath the red, she was abnormally pale, her skin ashen. Her usually joyous green eyes didn’t even rise to meet me.
“Kass,” I spoke, skidding to my knees before her. My hands were on her shoulders, gripping her to make sure she wasn’t going to disappear on me. The metal twinge of blood filled the air, and with my peripheral vision, I spotted a lot more blood in the kitchen. Was it Michael’s? “What happened?”
“He’s dead,” she muttered, emotionless. She sluggishly lifted her gaze, adding, “Crixis killed him.”
There was an ache in my heart. This blood was Michael’s. Michael was dead. Why would Crixis kill him? I couldn’t focus on the heart-breaking news. Right now, all I could think of was Kass. “I’ll kill that son of a—” I swore, more serious than ever. “For Michael.”
My assurance did nothing for her. In fact, she looked slightly confused. “Michael?” The way she spoke his name was disconcerting, like it was a foreign, alien name she’d never heard of before. It was then she shook her head once. “No, not Michael.”
For the shortest second, relief washed over me. Michael wasn’t dead. My Guardian, the man who’d attempted (and failed) to raise me into a couth young man, was alive. Thank God.
And then, stupid, stupid me, I realized that only one Guardian meant more to her than Michael. If it was Michael, maybe she’d cry. No, only one death could terrify her to the point where she’d be too shocked to cry.
I was a horrible person to be happy that it wasn’t Michael. So selfish.
“Koath,” I stated his name in a whisper. Before I was finished saying his name, I wrapped Kass in my arms, hugging her tightly. I didn’t care about the blood on her clothes. It didn’t even cross my mind that if Koath was in the kitchen, dead, where was Michael? All I knew at that very moment was that she wasn’t hugging me back. “I’m so sorry, Kass.”
Talking to her was like talking to a wooden doll.
I slowly pulled away, gently wiping the hair from her eyes and tucking it behind her ears. Kass looked at me, but she stared through me. I was going to kill Crixis for doing this to her. I was going to find him and somehow end that Demon for good.
Standing, I went towards the kitchen. The pool of blood only became larger and larger. How could that much blood come from one person? I went for the phone, seeking to avoid glancing at
Koath on the floor, but I heard a crack beneath my foot. The phone was in pieces.
“I already called. They’re on their way,” Kass spoke from her spot on the bottom step. “Michael’s in the living room.”
Brows furrowed, I headed into the other room, past Kass and her freaky emotionless face. Just as she said, Michael was in the living room. On the floor, face-down. My Guardian was unconscious, but at least he wasn’t dead.
“Michael,” I spoke his name lightly, laying a hand on his back. Something odd rose, just beneath the surface of my skin. My tattoos? It was hard to tell, since they were covered up with makeup. I had the urge to heal him, to fix him somehow. It was a ridiculous urge.
Wait a moment.
Closing my eyes, I pushed the fact that Koath was dead away. I ignored everything, even Kass, putting all my effort and focus on helping Michael. What would I do if something happened to him? What would I do? I couldn’t think of the answer and that…that was scary. I wasn’t one to get scared.
If I lost Kass…well, I knew exactly what I’d do.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I hissed, when it felt as though hours had passed and nothing happened. I was only a Purifier, after all. Nothing special, cool dream Gabriel or not. Healing abilities or not.
Michael didn’t move.
The doorbell rang.
Feeling, for the second time in my life, helpless, I stood and went for the front door. There’d be an entourage of Council workers, I knew. But, as I tossed a quick glimpse at Kass, who still sat on the bottom step, I realized I couldn’t care less about how many idiots came stomping through our house. Why? Oh, the little, teensy-weensy fact that I couldn’t do anything. I was so helpless, it hurt.
The only other time I was this helpless was when Kass was in a coma. That was the worst time of my life. This was a close second.
Chapter Thirty-Two – Kass
The Nightwalkers Saga: Books 1 - 7 Page 83
