The boy wiped the tears out of his eyes as he shook his head.
The mother continued, no longer paying any attention to me, “He would stand and keep his honor. He would die gloriously.” Then she looked to me. “Remember, glory is important, but above all else, strive for honor, for glory is worthless without honor. Please, help this city reclaim its honor.”
The sun’s rays poked through my dark curtains, landing on my face and waking me from a dream that I really wanted to get to the bottom of. What did the mother and child want help with? Were they asking me to settle an ancient battle that had raged on since they died, and would continue to do so until Crixis was purified?
I wished the sun wouldn’t have woken me up, because maybe then I could have asked them. Stupid sun. Why’d it have to be so freaking bright at—I glanced to my clock—ten in the morning?
Wait. Ten?
I sat straight up in a flash. Not a Daywalker flash, a normal, human flash. I tore the sheets off my legs and stood, slowly drawing my tired eyes to meet Taiton’s.
Oh, right. No school.
“Whoops.” I rubbed my head. “Forgot what was going on for a few seconds there.” Trying to shake off my sleepiness, I motioned to the book in his lap. “How’s your book?” I mentally smiled at the thought of the giant Taiton reading a romantic book. Who knew his favorite genre was romance?
Not me. Definitely not me.
After a few minutes of silence, I said, “Good.” Even though Taiton didn’t respond, but I still felt like I had to say something else, so we didn’t end things on a question. Hearing Taiton’s footsteps in synch with mine was something I was never going to get used to.
Michael greeted me at the foot of the stairs. “You slept in quite long, Kass. Are you getting sick?”
He began to lift his hand up to my forehead, but I swiftly avoided it, saying, “No. I was just tired, that’s all.” I rose my eyebrows, throwing him an are-you-happy-with-that-answer look. I hoped so, because that’s the best he’d get. I wasn’t anywhere near close to telling him about the mother and child.
“All right.” Michael cautiously sipped his tea. “Well, get yourself ready, because we were supposed to meet Elizabeth at the house twenty-five minutes ago.”
My eyes fell to my body, studying the outfit I wore. “Why can’t we just leave now?” There was nothing wrong with my extra small tank top and my teeny, tiny shorts, besides the fact they were a tad on the small side.
“You want to go with bedhead—” I felt my crazy hair. “—and smelly armpits?” I sniffed my pits. “You’ll do what you want, I know that. I just hope that you take in consideration everyone else’s safety and well-being.” Michael shrugged as if my wild hair and putrid morning smell wasn’t worth much of a thought. “I’ll be waiting for you and Taiton in the car.”
I fumed as I stormed up the stairs, stomping as loudly as I could.
How dare that Michael insinuate that I needed to brush my hair before venturing outside. I’d give him the stinky armpits, because I could use those babies to knock anyone in a short range out. But still, it should have gone without saying. So what if I happened to walk right past the bathroom, where my deodorant sat, because it was the last thing on my mind?
And my hair. Come on. How bad could it be? Bedhead was a socially acceptable style.
I stared in the mirror, at my wild hair. Okay, Michael was right.
It was bad. It was really, really bad. Even the bedheads at the high school would find my hair unattractive right now, and that’s saying a lot, since I was pretty sure none of them owned a brush.
My eyes studied the inside of Koath’s house. It was so strange, being in this house for the first time. Sure, it may have only been his house for a few weeks, but it still felt like him. A weird thing to say, but it was true.
Besides big pieces of furniture, the house was largely empty. There were no knick-knacks, no pictures, no bits and pieces that recalled a man’s well-loved life.
The silence of the vacant house was palpable, until Liz spoke, “I’ll say, there’s not an abundance of things to go through. He didn’t keep much. Come.” Her small head motioned up the stairs. “What’s here is in his room.”
Michael, Taiton and I followed her heeled feet up the creaky stairs and turned shortly to enter Koath’s room. As the men disbursed through the room, I stood at the door, clutching the doorframe for dear life.
This was Koath’s room. This was where he lived, where he slept.
I wished I would’ve known before…
No. No more of that.
The curtains were drawn, but a single line of light tore through the center of the dark drapes, illuminating the room. His bed lay untouched, with the sheets ruffled and clumped.
I winced when Michael dragged the curtains open, letting the sun light up the dust-filled room in seconds. Normally, this situation would tear anyone up, but this was easy, considering I came home to find his body torn open. I would rather do this a hundred times.
Liz’s brown eyes broke my drifting thoughts. “If this is too hard for you, I understand. If you want to, you can wait—”
“No,” I interrupted, “I’m fine.” For the moment. Smiling a forced smile at her, I listlessly walked around, farther into the room. My mind imagined a slow, sad melody playing in the background.
While Michael and Liz tore out his clothes and stuffed them in black garbage bags, I set my hand on the edge of his bed and knelt beside it. As far as I could tell, there was nothing in the room in addition to the clothes and furniture.
Thinking that maybe something’s in the nightstand, I reached out a hand and pulled the lone drawer open. My eyes spotted something brown. Once I lifted it up, I held in a gasp.
A picture. A picture of a young Koath and my mom. Together, they held a small infant. Me. That baby must be me.
After I made sure there was nothing else in the drawer, I slid it shut and sat on the wooden floor. With my back against the metal part of the bed, I stared at the picture. It didn’t move. It didn’t change. Nothing happened.
“Did Koath,” Michael paused as he aired out another trash bag, “not have any personal belongings, other than his clothes?”
Sliding so that my back was now flat against the floor, I held the photograph to my chest and responded, “Why have anything when your life’s always been in a suitcase?” I could picture the way Michael reacted to my statement. A heartrending head shake.
So what if I was blunt and to the point? It was the truth that Koath’s life was always in a suitcase. If the Council needed him in England, he left. Even if you needed him too, he still left.
When no one answered me, I spun my head to gaze under his bed, just in case there was something there that no one bothered to look for. And to my surprise, there was something.
A laptop.
Chapter Eleven – Cleo
The Egyptian sun was smoldering; it was as if I were immediately drenched in hot sweat. I could not wait until I was back in my air-conditioned apartment. If there was one thing I could hardly deal with, it was heat so strong it baked skin.
A small, dirt-caked boy ran up to me, saying “We found it! We found it!” in his native Egyptian tongue. His dark eyes were happy, making me roll my eyes. If only he knew just what they had found.
“Where is it?” I spoke perfect Egyptian back at the boy, startling him somewhat.
Instead of answering me, he responded by waving. I supposed it was his way of telling me to follow him. He led me around the scaffolds and diggers to the base of a recently uncovered statue.
I took a moment to look at the twenty-foot tall statue. Even though there was still much sand on it, I recognized it right away. Anpu.
Figured that the cub would bury her here, at the feet of Anubis, in hopes that the lioness would never awaken, but if she did, she would wake to the glowering stare of an ancient Egyptian form of Vexillion.
Vexillion’s been around for ages; millennia, even. The Egyptians were no
t the first to proclaim it god of the dead and give it another name. Sure, it was later replaced by Osiris…but Osiris, the real Osiris, was a higher-level Demon, at best.
Vexillion, Anubis, Anpu, whatever you wanted to call it, was something much more.
Tearing my concentrated stare away from the statue of the cub, I walked near the boy, who stood by a locked box. Three other men were on the ancient box, using toothbrushes, or something like them, to get the remaining sand off.
But none of that mattered now.
“Stop!” I commanded them. “We do not have time for this. Send it. Now.” When the words were uttered, the men froze and looked at each other. “I said, send it now!” After I was sure the box was being readied to be shipped, I muttered the incantations and opened my eyes in my living room.
Even though I had never left my seventy-two-degree air-conditioning, I still felt as if I were covered in sweat. Disgusting.
A melody of knocks interrupted my disgust, causing me to walk as calmly as I could to the door. I opened it and eyed the mailman and the large cardboard box he carried.
Without a word, he handed me his pad. I signed it and, not wanting him to set foot in my apartment, took the box from him. We exchanged quick goodbyes as I used my foot to close the door.
Walking to my bedroom, I struggled with the weight. Once the box was safely on my bed, I reached for the pair of scissors that was on my dresser. With haste the cardboard was soon tossed aside and I stood staring at the box.
I lifted the ancient, waterlogged chest and carried it to the center of the life-sized holder that faced my mattress. Throwing open the lock, I took a few steps back to marvel at her beauty. Her arms and legs were not attached to the torso, not yet, and she still sent tingles through my body.
As I stared at the five open and properly arranged chests, I smiled.
The time neared.
Chapter Twelve – Michael
Elizabeth held my hand as we meandered to the front door. We were home now, and Kass was safe and sound in the living room with Taiton. Everything was all right, as of the moment. We left Koath’s clothes at a second-hand store and brought home the two possessions Kass found: a picture and a laptop.
Sadly, Elizabeth couldn’t stay with us; she had to go to work. She was the principal at Kass and Gabriel’s school temporarily, and I understood that she had other responsibilities. But she was already four hours late. Why bother showing up halfway through the day?
“Are you sure you have to go?” My tone portrayed what I was feeling: unhappiness and longing. If she could tell I desperately wanted her to stay, then she was choosing to leave me here, alone.
Alone with Kass and Taiton…but alone, nevertheless.
“I will be back tonight.” Elizabeth stroked my cheek, and for the next few moments, I marveled in her soft touch. “There is much to be done at the school. Grief counseling, meeting the staff members, and learning how it all works. I promise I’ll be back in a flash with the two boys.” She winked as she stood on her tiptoes and pecked my lips.
When her lips left mine, I said “Excellent” and watched her walk down my driveway and into her small car, all the while marveling at my stroke of good fortune. The years were certainly kind to her. I wished I could say the same about all of us.
Gently closing the door, I turned to see Kass holding the picture to her side. There was a sense of urgency in her green eyes. Ignoring the imposing man behind her, I said, “What is it?”
“The laptop,” she replied swiftly. “There’s nothing on it. I think…I think it’s been wiped.”
“Wiped?” I could feel my eyebrows furrowing together as I tried to think of a reason why Koath would wipe his own computer. Perhaps Koath was not the one who wiped it. “Are you sure?”
“When I turned it on, it was like I was booting it up for the first time. Do you think you could take a look at it?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
Kass smiled halfheartedly. I couldn’t blame her for her lack of caring. She’d been a trooper through all this, which was very commendable. “I’ll be upstairs.” The smile faded as she disappeared from my view.
Shoving my hands in my pockets, I headed for the living room, where the laptop in question rested on the coffee table. With a skilled hand, I snatched the tiny laptop and sat in my usual chair.
I hadn’t often had the time to play around with technology since moving here. I was, let’s just say, adept with technology. I checked the computer, finding that Kass was right. Everything on this computer had been deleted, but why?
Perhaps there was a way to retrieve some of the saved files on the computer.
It was a fortunate thing that Kass and Gabriel were not the only ones with years of training under their belt, though I haven’t seen much use lately.
Chapter Thirteen – Kass
I wished I could’ve gotten to know my mother before she was murdered, that I could’ve gotten to know Koath as my father before he was killed. I kept thinking these thoughts as I placed the frame next to the necklace, my parents’ wedding rings.
The centerpiece of my dresser was a picture of us as a family beside their wedding bands. Somehow, it all seemed fitting.
I was seconds away from asking Taiton a question when I noticed Koath’s golden ring capturing the light in the strangest way. It was strange because the reflected light kept getting bigger and bigger until I couldn’t see anything.
When the light subsided, I was left standing in a desert field below a steep cliff with a drop-off that would make anyone nauseous by just looking at it.
Behind me, a male’s voice uttered the phrase “You have made a grave mistake” slowly, angrily, and violently. Only one Daywalker could sound like that: Crixis.
I spun to face Crixis clashing with a group of five armored men. The sun shone off their golden armor, similar to how Koath’s wedding ring did in my room. More bodies, freshly dead ones, littered the nearby landscape.
With his dual-wielded swords, Crixis easily cut the leftover men down; giving them the same courtesy he gave to the previous dead men. When he straightened himself out, I noticed the sweat beads rolling down his tanned forehead.
Just as Crixis glanced upwards, to something behind me, I was brought back to my room.
Why weren’t the visions longer? Why was I never shown it all at once?
I gripped the wooden edge of the dresser. The mirror on it reflected my face perfectly. The truthfulness of it was something I could always count on. If I looked like crap, it showed. If I was angry, it showed. If my teeth had food between them, it showed.
But all it showed today was a normal, un-freaked face that appeared as if it didn’t own a care in the world.
This seemed to be my permanent expression lately, I’d admit. An expression that said I’d seen a lot of horrible stuff and I was immune to it, now.
My fingers softly touched the rings as I wondered what life would have been like if we had been a normal family. I would have grown up with a mother and a father. I would have gone to a high school for all four years…I might even have had a boyfriend. We would have eaten a feast for Thanksgiving, gone trick-or-treating for Halloween, and had egg hunts for Easter.
I’d missed all those things. Holidays were something we didn’t often do. Birthdays were another story. Congratulations on living through another year. Here’s a shiny new weapon.
Turning to Taiton, I asked, “Did you know your parents?”
He looked up from his Nicholas Sparks novel. “No.”
“No?” I repeated, sounding unsure and full of questions. “You never knew your parents?”
He shook his masculine head.
“That sucks.” My eyes left his, or I should say his eyes left mine, and returned to his book.
Taiton seemed like an intimidating guy, and there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he could get scary, but there was also something about him that made me think of him as a big teddy bear. A big teddy bear that could kick butt whe
n needed.
“So were you always an Agent?” I tapped the edge of the dresser, taking in the smoothness and the overall vintage-ness of the whole thing.
Slight aggravation took hold; I could tell by the way he faintly sighed. Taiton adjusted his legs in the chair before saying, “I was instructed on how to be an Agent since I was born. This has always been my life.”
I nodded, completely understanding what he meant. He’d always been an Agent, and I’d always been a Purifier. Was I always destined to become a Purifier, or was that something Koath decided after my mother died?
After talking for a few more minutes, Taiton stood and leaned down to stare out the window. “I am surprised that Crixis has not made his presence known to us yet. I’ve read all the Council has about him, and he is not acting accordingly.”
Leaving my dresser’s side for the first time in fifteen minutes, I walked to my windowsill and leaned on it. With my head stretched at an obscenely aching angle, I looked up to Taiton as I asked, “What do you mean?”
“The Council has very few accounts of him, since the first library was burned to the ground four hundred years ago, but the ones they do have say he’s extremely violent, overwhelmingly compelling, and immensely intelligent. He does not wait to strike unless it is pertinent to what he wants.”
My eyes met with a squirrel on the tree that was near my window. It looked soft and cuddly. This was the most Taiton’s ever spoken, to me or anyone.
“You’re saying that...” My voice trailed off when I realized I had no clue what Taiton was saying. I tried to finish his thoughts and failed.
“I am saying that Crixis either knows I am here and is waiting for the perfect moment to strike—” There was a long pause in Taiton’s sentence, and I wasn’t sure if he was hesitant or if he was taking the time to word it correctly. “—or he is preoccupied with something that matters more to him than you.”
“And which do you think is true?” Either way, he’d come, so it didn’t really matter.
Taiton opened his mouth to respond, but he was cut off by the ring of the house phone.
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