Death Before Daylight

by Shannon A. Thompson

  Urte. Luthicer. Eu. Only they had known. It was a secret. My mother was the bloodline. It was never my father. I had inherited everything from someone I barely remembered.

  “The Light,” he struggled to continue his speech, “they must have had a spy among us.”

  The other elders—the ones I had never met—had died long before I was born. Each generation had ten. There were only three left, and Luthicer had actually replaced one of the originals. Out of the eight originals that were gone, one had been an enemy. One had told the Light about my mother’s bloodline, but out of everyone who knew, it was my enemy who had told me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I repeated.

  My father stared back, but he didn’t look like my father. His softened eyes weren’t the ones I remembered from my childhood. “What else did Darthon tell you?”

  “Answer my question first—”

  “I’m trying,” he promised, “but I need you to answer me first.”

  My neck burned, but not from Darthon’s spell. It was from my own hesitations. I didn’t want to speak anymore. I had done it on a whim, and the sudden actions didn’t have a plan behind them. I kept my mouth shut.

  “She was young when I first met her,” he began. “She was fourteen, just starting high school, and her father called on me to be her guard.” His throat moved as he coughed into his hand. “I had dropped out of college. It wasn’t for me. I was only really good at one thing—”

  “A guard?” I interrupted him. My father had always been a leader, not a protector. Imagining him in Urte’s spot was unfathomable. Guards didn’t have guards. It was unheard of, but my father nodded.

  “The ancient ones knew the bloodline had returned because our powers had grown stronger, and they told the elders she was the carrier,” he explained, “but she was a child, and I was their best fighter.”

  “So, they asked you to protect her?”

  He shook his head. “Your grandfather—her father—asked me to take her place.” When he leaned back, he folded his hands in his lap. “My powers were strong enough that the Dark knew the other shades would believe it, and your grandfather didn’t want his daughter to be in danger,” he said. “That’s when the lies began.”

  My insides twisted. “And they continued until now?”

  He didn’t have to nod. “It was for her protection,” he said. “It was for your protection,” he added. “If the Light figured out who I was, and they killed me, the bloodline could continue.” He was a fake target. “I gladly accepted. At the time, it was an honor. It was everything I was raised for. It was—”

  “I don’t understand,” I stopped him. “You never lied about me, and I’m the descendant.”

  “I know.”

  I gripped the table. “That makes no sense.”

  “Eric,” his voice was sharp. “Things changed when she died.”

  “When she killed herself,” I corrected, “after she lost her powers.”

  My dad’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Darthon told me that, too.” And he was right about it all. My enemy knew my life better than I did. I hit the table. “Start talking more. Tell me everything—”

  “I will when you calm down,” he snapped.

  “I don’t have time to calm down,” I said back, but my voice dropped. “If I’m going to kill him, I need to know why she died. I need to know who I am. I need to know why you had me anyway, why you did this—” A gasp escaped me, but my words kept tumbling out, “Why would she have me if she knew who I would be?”

  My heartbeat was the loudest echo I heard.

  “Why would she kill herself if she knew I got my powers from her?” I rambled. “I know it was me. I know—”

  “She wasn’t going to kill herself, Eric.”

  His words made me stop.

  I blinked at my father, but he was the clearest image I saw. His lips bent into a frown, but they shook. “Do you remember that night? The night she took you out to the forest?”

  The bats. It was the only time I could see her eyes.

  “She was going to kill you.”

  I couldn’t breathe, but my chest moved up and down. My blood coursed through my veins. My mind remained in the eternal race it had always been in. The memories were clearing. She had the gun with her. I remembered seeing its silhouette against the sky, how it was black like the bats.

  I leapt to my feet, but my father stayed in his seat. As he looked up at me, he croaked, “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  My mother—the woman who had given me life—had almost taken mine, and I had left the light on for her. Back at my bedroom, my nightlight was probably on.

  “She loved you, Eric, but—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Eric.” My father stood. “Please.” He gestured to my seat. “You need to hear everything. All of it. You’re old enough now—”

  “I’m eighteen,” I spat.

  “And I was eighteen when I met your mother,” he said it like it meant something, “and she had problems, even back then, and I protected her anyway just like I tried to protect you.”

  “Protect?” I growled.

  “She was only trying to protect you, too.” He nodded as if he could ignore my tone and his words at the same time. “She didn’t want you to go through the same pain she went through. She—”

  “She had me,” I pointed out. “That was a choice.”

  “You weren’t planned.”

  My legs collapsed beneath me, and I fell into my seat. My knees bounced up and down, and my hands shook on top of them. “This is just getting better,” I muttered and gripped my hair.

  My father’s chair squeaked when he sat down. He was her guard, someone who was supposed to protect the bloodline, yet he had been with her. It didn’t make sense.

  “Are you even my father?” I managed.

  “Of course I am.” His voice was calm, but it wasn’t emotionless. He sounded nothing like the man I used to know. “But we shouldn’t have dated. I know that. That was my fault.”

  Guards were forbidden from dating their warriors. It was a strict rule, as strict as keeping our identities a secret. My father had broken it.

  “We didn’t date immediately,” he added after a moment. “It happened over time. We both fought it, and then, we hid it.”

  “Until you couldn’t,” I guessed.

  “We used protection.” The information was almost too much. “But fate had other things in mind.”

  My fingers squeezed into fists, but nothing stopped the shaking motion.

  “That’s why she was sure you would be Shoman,” his voice sounded far away, but I listened to every word. “She only kept you because I asked her to.”

  I covered my ears, and they burned beneath my grasp. My breath had to come and go for minutes before I could remove my hold. “Why?” I asked. “Why keep me?”

  “There was no guarantee you would be Shoman.”

  I glanced up. “Is that how you convinced her?”

  “Yes,” he spoke without hesitation, “and we were very happy for a while.”

  I tried to imagine what they were like—sneaking away to have alone time, laughing at one another’s jokes, training together for the future—but I could only see the bats. Nothing before that. Nothing after that. I didn’t even recall if she took me into the forest where she killed herself, or how she gave me her rings, or if she had cried. I barely heard her voice, but I knew she called me beautiful. How she could say that while planning to kill me was beyond my comprehension.

  “Even after she lost her powers, she was happy to have you,” he said. “Her father had lost his, and she wasn’t the descendant, so she knew there was a chance you might not be—”

  “So, what changed?” I interrupted.

  His lips pressed into a thin line. The gesture ordered me to think, and it only took me a second to remember all of the events Luthicer had explained.

  “Jessica,” I whispered her name.

  My dad
leaned forward. “Your mother wanted to take her in after the car wreck,” he paused, “but I was afraid for Jess. I thought—” he paused. “The way your mother looked at her. It was the same look she had when she found out she was pregnant.”

  “You thought she’d kill her.”

  “Not exactly,” he said, “but I didn’t want to risk anything.” My dad’s brown eyes flickered over his desk as if he wanted to drown himself in his paperwork. “Even after I placed Jess in a home, the look never left her.” He drew in a breath. “So, I took you from her. I stopped letting her watch you.”

  “Why?” The question had been asked so many times that it was beginning to lose meaning, but it continued to fall out of me.

  “She had problems before you,” he said. “Too many of them to count. When she was fifteen, she tried—” He choked instead of elaborating. “I saved her a few times, but I knew I couldn’t save her from herself forever.” Her suicide hadn’t been her first attempt. “Her childhood wasn’t easy.”

  “Neither was mine.”

  “Just because your situation is different than hers doesn’t mean she didn’t have a reason to struggle, Eric.” His tone was taut, filled with a line he was drawing between us. “But you should be glad you don’t have the same problems.”

  Feeling any form of happiness seemed like a wide order for him to give, but I locked my jaw to prevent myself from arguing.

  He stared at my mouth like he knew. “She was just as beautiful of a person as she was ugly,” he said. “She had many friends, and she didn’t hold back, even though she knew they could be in the Light. She loved, and she laughed, and she taught other shades how to understand parts of their powers they couldn’t control otherwise.” His bottom lip trembled. “She helped them because she couldn’t help herself, and I imagine she took her own life because of that.”

  “Because she couldn’t help me,” I added the piece left unsaid in his speech.

  “It doesn’t mean she was right,” he spoke so quickly his words melted together. “None of it was right, and I am sorry for that. We made mistakes. We are just as human as we are shades, and—”

  “Who are you trying to comfort right now?”

  My dad stopped speaking.

  I dropped my face. I didn’t want to look at him anymore. “I’m sorry.”

  “You,” he paused. “I don’t want you to apologize to me anymore.”

  I stared at the ground. It was speckled with dust, tracked in from the outside world, from the very forest my mother had died in, from the same ground where I had met Jessica.

  “I don’t remember her killing herself,” I said, searching for the next part of the memory, but my father tapped the table to break my concentration.

  “She never took you into the forest, Eric,” he said. “We found you by the river.”

  “You were looking for me?”

  He repeated how he didn’t let her watch me, but explained how he couldn’t watch me while pretending to be the leader of the Dark. “The night before, I left you in Urte’s care,” he said. “When I went to pick you up that morning, he told me she had gotten you already. She had done it before, but since she hadn’t arrived at the shelter, we knew something was wrong.”

  My gut twisted.

  “I went straight to the bats.” He knew about the nocturnal creatures that had been so important to me. “She always went there when she was in one of her moods.”

  “She showed them to me.”

  “I know. She showed them to me, too.” His lip pulled up in a shaky smile as he gestured to my ring. “But when I saw you were holding her ring, I knew.” Even in the lighting, his eyes reflected the mist covering his irises. “I think I knew before that. I sensed it when she took it off.” His hand rose to his face, and he rubbed his eyes. “I only hoped she left you alone, and while I found you—” He stopped. “Urte found your mother.”

  My trainer had been more involved than I ever realized.

  “I didn’t sleep that night,” he continued. “I think that’s why I can’t stand the fireworks.” She had killed herself on Independence Day. “But I also think that’s why you love them so much.”

  He didn’t have to remind me of how much I had begged to sit on top of the hill during the holiday. Every year he took me, and every year, he ended up leaving me there.

  “You stayed up with me all night,” he explained. “We sat on the front porch, and you just couldn’t take your eyes off of them.” He fiddled with his shirt before touching his paperwork, before fiddling with his shirt again. “You had the same look on your face when we found you that morning, and you showed me the bats. You loved everything you saw, and I—”

  “Dad.”

  A tear escaped him, and he rubbed it off his cheek. “I am sorry, Eric,” he said. “I am so sorry.”

  “Can you stop apologizing to me?” I repeated the same thing he said to me, but he acted like he hadn’t heard. I had to say it again, but this time, I forced a smile. “We aren’t going to get anywhere if we keep doing this.”

  His cheeks sank in, and his lips pressed together, but he nodded.

  I stood up, but my knees weren’t shaking anymore. “Thanks for telling me,” I formed the words I never thought I would say, “even if it is a little late.”

  He stared up at me. “A child shouldn’t know these things about a parent.”

  “I’m not a kid anymore,” I said, even though I wanted to be. I was only eighteen, but I didn’t have the luxury of a normal childhood, and for once, I didn’t want it. I wanted to live my own life. “I think—” I paused and tried to find the words I logically had, but had yet to emotionally feel. “I have a lot to think about,” I managed, “but you did what you could.”

  “Let me do more,” he insisted and stood up. “Let me help you now.”

  “You can’t,” I said, knowing I had to fight Darthon on my own. “But I will let you know if you can,” I added before he could argue. “I’m going home for a bit.”

  He closed his mouth only to open it again. “Mindy and Noah will like that.”

  “I won’t be late.”

  “Stay out as late as you want,” he said. “Just come back in one piece.”

  37

  Jessica

  “That’s it.” I pointed to Crystal’s house, and Jonathon parked two houses down. We were both humans—for now.

  He killed the lights, but kept the engine on. “Are you sure about this, Jess?”

  “How many times are you going to ask me that?” I unbuckled my seatbelt before turning to him. In the dark, his eyes were green. He had to use his shade sight while driving. “You saw Eric’s face. They’re involved.”

  “What if Crystal is too?”

  I dropped eye contact. “I’ll text you if anything goes wrong,” I said as I stepped out of the vehicle. I shut the door before he could repeat the question.

  As much as she was a gossiping punk, Crystal was my best friend. She showed me around Hayworth, even before Eric did. While Eric showed me my shade identity, Crystal helped me find one as a human. She never spread rumors about me, she always confided in me, and when I thought about our friendship, I smiled. Even though she didn’t remember it, she stood up for me when Robb attacked me, and she would again when her memories returned. Until then, I had to push my personal life aside. The prophecy was bigger than my problems, and it had to be dealt with first.

  I stayed focused as I walked up to Crystal’s house, stopping at the end of her driveway. She already stood on her front porch, and her eyes gazed down the street. “Who’s that?” she asked, even though she wasn’t stupid. She knew whose car it was. She always knew everything.

  “A friend dropped me off,” I said, waiting for her to question the fact that Jonathon Stone and I knew each other outside of school, but she didn’t.

  She pointed her head toward her car. “Ready?”

  Her voice wasn’t bouncing as it usually was. It was tight and strained. She almost sounded like someone else
entirely.

  “Yeah.” My grip tightened on my bag when she didn’t walk toward the car. Zac and Robb must have already been waiting. “Are you?”

  She nodded as she stepped off the porch, but she didn’t speak as she walked toward the car. It was only then that I was able to see her stride. She was marching like a warrior headed into battle.

  Perhaps she was involved, after all.

  …

  Zac’s clothes matched his pitch-black hair. He blended into the darkness as he picked a table on the patio. Robb, on the other hand, glowed in his red coat, but neither of the boys sat down as we took our places at the coffee shop. Even though it was cold, it was nice enough to sit outside, and we were all desperate for fresh air—except for Robb. I half-expected him to smoke later on.

  Robb pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. “What do you two want?”

  “Macchiato for me,” Crystal answered. “Black coffee for Jess.”

  I stared at her, and she shot me a grin. “Am I right?”

  She was, so I nodded.

  “We’ll be back,” Zac said before the two ducked inside the building.

  The coffee shop lit up the only shopping street Hayworth had, but I couldn’t see Jonathon’s car parked anywhere. I had to trust him when he said he would be watching. This place set my nerves on edge. Even though the coffee shop was only one year old, I was familiar with it. Too familiar. In my first semester at Hayworth High, Eric had ditched me here during our project, and this was the last place I ever saw Camille as Teresa alive. Crystal had been with me that night, too, and staring at my friend was an eerie reminder of the time she left me alone, oblivious to what I would later face. I couldn’t blame her, but I wished we had picked somewhere else to go.

  “You okay?” Crystal broke through my thoughts as she spoke.

  I nodded.

  “You seem tense.” Her brown eyes dragged over my face. “Just the date?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her right cheek lifted with a half-smile. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, you know,” she started and stared at the street. “I just hated to see Eric acting so calm about it all.”