Staked!

by Candace Wondrak

  Normally I wouldn’t be caught dead doing something for Gabriel, at least not something like this. I was doing it because I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be near him, it’s just that I couldn’t.

  Oh, my God…I couldn’t be near Gabriel without thinking how much I wanted him to kiss me in real life. The boy already said he’d kissed me once, when I was in a comatose state three years ago, but I wasn’t awake and aware of what was taking place.

  The walk down the driveway seemed abnormally long. Maybe I was unconsciously making it take longer than it should.

  After my strangely lengthy walk, I made it to the mailbox and retrieved the few letters and bills there were. No magazines, just a daily paper. We were some pretty boring people, weren’t we?

  A squeak called my attention, and I looked to my left to see a big, white van where two men were lifting a number of black bags into the back. I knew just what was in those bags, too. Taiton and Sephira.

  When the younger man bent to pick up another bag, he glanced to me and smiled. Mr. Wood, my math teacher. To make my conscious feel better, and so that he could get back to work, I smiled and waved. These two guys, plus Cleo, were the ones who took Koath after he was murdered by the same Daywalker who had, inadvertently, avoided being captured/purified by Taiton.

  I guessed he was lucky, huh?

  For now.

  I was going to head back up to the house, but I made the terrible mistake of scanning the neighborhood first. I did not like what I saw.

  Walking across the street, from the open door of the house opposite mine, with an insanely smug expression on his face, was Crixis.

  How badly I wanted to wipe that arrogant, hypocritical look off his thin face…and also how I badly I wanted to kick myself in the rear for noticing the fact he wore a similar shirt to what he tore off in my dream.

  Clutching the mail tighter, I stormed across the street and went up his porch, where Crixis waited for me with a smirk that was trademarked to bad guys.

  “What are you doing here?” I decided to ask, figuring I had nothing to lose. If I could die and somehow survive an encounter with an Original, I could handle myself against Crixis for a few minutes. Then again, I was wrong before. “I thought you said you would leave us alone if we helped you?”

  Crixis held in his response until he was a few feet from me. “I am leaving you alone. I’m not attacking you or anyone you know, am I?” He cocked his head, causing a wisp of his cleaned black hair to fall over his eye.

  “You promised you would leave—” I was soon rudely interrupted by the man I wanted to shank with a spoon-knife. Again and again.

  “Actually,” his haughty self felt the need to correct me, “I never said that. I promised I would stop kicking your ass so hard and that I wouldn’t kill anyone else you care about.”

  My teeth grinded instantly. “You’re just asking for it now.”

  “Oh.” Crixis stuck his hands in his pockets and thought. “Perhaps I’m thinking of someone else, then. The girl who’s tried time and time again to defend herself from me, can’t fight the urge to listen to my calling, and has very improper dreams of me…wait. That is you.” A know-it-all grin crossed his face.

  “You,” I lowered my voice to a harsh whisper, having a sudden and impractical fear that the men in the house could hear me, “I knew it was you who caused my dream last night.”

  The Council members who took the bodies drove away, leaving me all alone with Crixis, who waited for that precise moment to step way too close to me and say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t have time to enter your dreams.”

  What? There’s no freaking way that was true…was it?

  “Liar,” I accused, placing the mail between us to give me more space. This family-killing Demon liked to get too close to me, and one of these days, he was going to get punched. Repeatedly.

  Him saying he hadn’t forced his way into my dreams was a game he was trying to play. He wanted to see how I would react. He wanted to play me.

  “I was far too busy moving in to have any time to—” Crixis seemed pleased when I cut in. My lack of manners must have been a turn on. If only he could see how much I was holding back from going truly ballistic on him.

  “Moving in?” My voice trailed off.

  “Tell me, are you going to throw me housewarming party?” The way he spoke the words with a mischievous tone…

  Even if he didn’t whisper it like a psychotic creep, I would have known exactly what he meant. Sick.

  A grunt left me when I heaved a punch to his jaw with my free hand, staggering him back in astonished surprise. “Don’t you ever talk to me like that again. If you do, then I will personally chop off your fingers and toes. You might be invincible, but I could still make your eternal life miserable.”

  Clutching the mail as tight as I could without tearing the paper, I spun on my heel and stormed up the driveway before he had a chance to reply. I knew he was just going to grin his evil half grin and say something snarky back.

  And I couldn’t deal with him. Not now.

  Not ever.

  Chapter Forty-Eight – Liz

  The board was going to hire that nice secretary, just as they rightly should. She seemed to be a very agreeable woman who enjoyed interacting with children on a daily basis. That was a quality that was difficult to come by these days.

  The high school began its school day in forty minutes, but I was here, in my office, far ahead of time because there were a few things that I needed to take care of. All but one involved the school.

  The most important one dealt with the Council.

  Taiton’s report.

  Throughout this entire mission, Taiton kept a detailed report that accounted every major advance. I, myself, haven’t read it, but I was seconds away from doing so.

  I pulled the file from the flash drive and opened it. There were a few, solid pages, which I knew would make for a light read. In any case, I was there to witness most of this; therefore, I had no need to read through all of it.

  I would skim for significant minutiae, though, and finish the report with the end result.

  The first few paragraphs were straightforward enough. I was beginning to suspect Taiton hadn’t gotten to the precise point that I was looking for, but it was then that I found their names.

  Raphael, Kirk, John, Claire, and Alyssa.

  So Taiton had mentioned them, and their respective Demons, after all.

  That certainly wouldn’t do.

  A hesitant finger clicked the mouse after the whole paragraph describing what they were, who they were, and their relationship to Kass. This might be against my better judgment, but I couldn’t allow the Council to see this.

  If they did read this in its entirety, then they would undoubtedly send more Agents to purify them as well. The Council was anti-Demon all the way.

  The Council could never see Taiton’s original report.

  Breathing lightly, I held down the delete button until there was no record of Kass’s Demon friends.

  Chapter Forty-Nine – Michael

  Gabriel and Kass were downstairs in the kitchen, one complaining how I didn’t make breakfast and the other defending my honor, saying I was cooking them lunch instead. Gabriel was right. I was baking them a lunch that would be so delicious, they’d never forget.

  My door was locked, and I sat atop my bed, Koath’s laptop in hand.

  I still had one more article to read: the one that Koath wrote just hours before his death.

  There is a part of me that wants to tell Kass that I am her father. All of those days she whined about how she never met him, never knew who he was…those times were the worst. I wanted desperately to tell her that I was right beside her all along.

  But even that would be a lie. I left her three years ago because the new head of the Council wanted to see if I had any conflicts of interest, since my Purifier was indeed my own daughter.

 
When I returned home, I found that we’d been right, and that Kass was the deciding factor in the fate of the world.

  Deep down, I was resistant towards the idea that the worst evil imaginable was given powers only an Angel would have: healing and mind-reading are only two abilities he has because of the light in him.

  For all the light, though, there is an equal, if not a bit unbalanced, amount of darkness. If he didn’t have Kass at his side, who also has a Heaven-sent ability to bring out the virtuousness and integrity of every Demon she encounters, he would break.

  If Gabriel ever loses her, God help us. God help us all.

  I closed the laptop abruptly. I knew it. The boy I’d been watching all these years was the one we’d been searching for for centuries. Millennia. He was the one the prophets spoke of to my ancestors.

  The one who would wreak havoc on the world, destroying everything and everyone, except the chosen few. The Order. Tainted blood, Sephira called it, but that was hogwash. My blood was pure.

  In the next few seconds, I was dashing to my closet and dragging out an almost-forgotten black box. I put in the combination and threw the top off. The sight of the prehistoric cell phone nearly made me laugh outright. I plugged it into the wall, and after waiting a minute as it charged, I dialed the only number stored in it.

  After a few rings, an answering machine told me to leave a message. I didn’t think he’d answer.

  “This is Michael,” I said quickly while prying open the bottom, hidden drawers of the leather box. “I found him. He’s been right under my nose for all these years. I’ll send you his information when I get the chance.” I paused, my phony English accent wavering, “I know how to awaken him.”

  I hung up and dug through the remaining contents, searching for the jar that held my favorite poison. I found it in a matter of seconds. Holding up the jar, I smiled in remembrance of my last kill.

  It was a shame it had to come to this, it really was. I didn’t want to inject this poison into the food I was baking, but I had to. It was my duty.

  Kassandra Niles had no idea what was in store for her.

  The Order would reign supreme, and in order to do that, Kass had to die.

  Skinwalkers

  Chapter One – Kass

  Walking through the cemetery, stake in hand, my palms were too rough from the constant fighting and training to ever get a single splinter. Some nights were quiet, and while I loved the fighting and the staking and the witty lines I tried, sometimes the quiet nights were the best. It’s when I did a lot of my thinking.

  Of course, in order to have some quiet time, I’d have to actually go hunting in the cemetery again. I haven’t been on a good hunt in ages, it felt like. Lately, my life had been nothing short of a whirlwind.

  A few days ago, all the visions of my mom came to fruition.

  I died.

  It might be silly, but I could still feel Sephira’s hands around my neck. What was even more ridiculous was the fact that I swore I heard my own neck snap before everything went black.

  I didn’t stay dead, though. In a never-ending space of white, I saw Koath—my dad. It was…still weird to call him that. My whole life, even after he dumped me with Michael and Gabriel, I knew him as Koath. He would forever be Koath to me.

  Not that I was used to him being gone, because I wasn’t. It didn’t happen that long ago. I was still angry, still mad at Crixis—and the idiot thought it was a good idea to live in the house across the street from mine?

  Somehow, some way, I was going to find a way to purify the un-killable, whether or not there was a higher-level Demon inside of him.

  I let out a sigh. Lately, I’d been way too angsty, but I didn’t know how to act otherwise.

  A loud noise shook me from my mind, and I came back to the present: school cafeteria, talkative students, the new principal—a rough and tumble sort of guy, a normal civilian in a position where the last two principals had vanished (or were murdered, depending how you looked at it). He stood with his arms crossed, his suit tight on his body. He looked like he used to be a football player or something.

  Liz couldn’t take the position permanently; she didn’t want to. She was too busy with Council paperwork and sending Titain’s body overseas. The poor guy. He’d done nothing but his job, and now he was dead.

  People had a habit of dying around me.

  In reality, Liz would probably return to the Council, once she wrapped things up here. I overheard her talking to Michael, saying that she had to find a new Guardian for Max, and that she was tracking down a lead nearby.

  That was all right. Max deserved someone like Koath, someone who could focus on him, not someone who had a million other responsibilities.

  The loud noise that brought me back to my body belonged to Gabriel and his food tray, and he sat down with a smile across from me. He’d cut his hair last night; the sides were almost scalp-level, and his usual spikes were unstyled and only an inch long, laying flat against his head. He wore a long-sleeve shirt, too lazy this morning to dab makeup on his tattoos.

  Beside me, Max nearly lost hold of his book with the ruckus. He blinked, staring at the tray of nuggets and fries. “Didn’t you pack a lunch?” He put a finger in his book, titled Genome Sequences.

  What a strange kid.

  “Of course I did,” Gabriel answered with a wink at me. “I just thought, you know, since you’ve been starving yourself, I’d do you a solid and get you some food I know you can’t turn down.”

  “I have not been starving myself,” I muttered, eyeing his chicken nuggets. “I just…haven’t felt like eating. Dying does that to you.” The past few days I’d simply thrown away the lunch Michael had packed for me.

  Sorry, Michael.

  Gabriel’s brows rose. “Oh, really? You have a lot of experience with that?”

  “More than you, you jerk,” I said, rolling my eyes as I pushed my lunch toward him. “Fine, fine. The aroma of those store-bought, freezer-burned chicken nuggets convinced me. Trade me.” It was hard, acting like everything was fine, acting like your best friend couldn’t possibly be the Devil.

  There might be some darkness in him but come on—it’s Gabriel. The boy had a Lego Deathstar hanging in the corner of his room.

  And…that dream. The kiss. What came after...

  I pushed away the thought, since the boy could read my mind, though I made him promise me he wouldn’t.

  And, judging by his vacant expression, he didn’t.

  “Fine,” Gabriel begrudgingly said, pushing the tray toward me and taking the bag. He took out Michael’s homemade pulled beef sandwich and dug in with no hesitation. “But don’t judge me when I eat the one he packed for me right after I finish this one.”

  I took a bite of a nugget when Max looked around, pushing his glassed up his nose. “Where’s Claire?”

  Claire, the athletic Morpher who could turn into a white cougar. Claire, his maybe-girlfriend who was bitten by Crixis to force me to go along with his asinine plan. Claire—the girl who I was supposed to swing by and pick up from the art room before I came to lunch.

  “I said I’d meet her. I totally forgot,” I spoke with a sigh. “I’m terrible.”

  “Well,” Gabriel said thoughtfully, “we don’t put up with you because of your wonderful people skills. It’s a good thing you’re pretty.”

  The hair on my arms stood in unison with my straightening legs. Why did he have to go and say something like that? The idiot. The stupid idiot. Didn’t he know I was desperately trying not to have a repeat of me and the other Gabriel from the other world? That was nice and fun, but it couldn’t happen here.

  I wouldn’t let it. Nope.

  I shot a quick glance at Max, who munched on a granola bar as he read, as if Gabriel saying something like that happened all the time. It did, far too often, more than it should. “I’ll be right back,” I said, hurrying away.

  Maybe it was because I wanted to crawl out of my skin, or possibly even the fact that it had h
appened so much to me here, in the school, but the moment I stepped into the empty hall, I froze, expecting to walk into a vision.

  No visions, though. None at all. Not sure if I was thankful or annoyed.

  Shrugging it off, I hustled past rows of lockers, turning down the school’s back hall, where the art and choir rooms were. I passed a few kids, because there were always nerds who liked to eat in the choir room, and stopped in front of the art room. Its door was closed, which I found a little odd.

  I was about to knock when I heard someone call my name.

  “Kass.” A boy spotted me from a ways down the hall, near the photography room. He had some prints in his hands he must’ve gotten from the library. Seth, with his shaggy black hair, pearly white smile and…

  God, no. Not again.

  I steeled myself as he walked closer. “Seth, right?”

  “You remembered my name,” he said, amused. “Somehow, I’m surprised.”

  He wasn’t surprised. Not with his looks. Not with the fact that we’d run into each other more and more lately. He just wanted to act cool, and play a game I wasn’t interested in, not after everything.

  “Not as surprised as I am that you remembered mine,” I muttered, returning to the closed door.

  He didn’t take the hint. Instead, he said, “I haven’t seen you at any of the games. You should come to tomorrow’s. I could use you cheering me on in the stands.” Dimples on his cheeks—cute, but, again, no thanks.

  After what happened at that football game, and the following stuff with John, going to a game—even if it was a basketball game—did not sound like my cup of tea.

  “Oh, I’m sure you have a squad of peppy cheerleaders who have more than enough spirit to cheer you to victory,” I said dryly.

  Seth was about to say something else when the art room door opened, and Claire stood there, confused. Her blue eyes traveled to Seth, and then to me. Seth took the hint this time and waved before walking away.