Sweet Sleep (The Children of Ankh Book 1)

by Kim Cormack

  Grey brushed his tussled sandy hair out of his eyes. He put his hand on Lexy’s shoulder and said, “Mellow out my feisty friend. I don’t want to be the one to retrieve the phone.”

  Lexy grinned at her friend Grey, “I should do it just so you have to go and get it.”

  Grey whispered, “I love you Lex. You are the best wingman ever.”

  Markus was standing behind Grey, “You know I am right here.”

  Grey turned around and said, “Didn’t see you there. Am I bad?”

  Markus replied, “I really need at least one of you to attempt to act your age. Fake it if you have to. I just need to feel warm and fuzzy about the remote possibility of you all making an attempt to follow your orders.”

  Frost leaned over and whispered in Lily’s ear, “I bet frog sticker girl has less of a problem with authority than you do.”

  Lily gave the dark featured sexy Adonis, a dirty look. She snapped, “Go put on a damn shirt.”

  Frost’s eyes met Lily’s and he mouthed, “You want me.”

  “Kiss my ass, Frost,” Lily mouthed back, and then smiled.

  “Just name the time and place,” he mouthed back, returning her sultry smile.

  Markus slammed his hand down on the table startling them. “Cut that crap out. I don’t personally feel like being roofied by you two,” Markus scolded. Then he stood back up straight.

  “What crap, Daddy?” Lily said. Her innocent smile deceived not one person in the room.

  “Pat down your horns, honey. They are making your hair a tad poufy,” Lexy sparred.

  “Lily, I need to know that you understand that you can’t kill our only survivor because she spilled your coffee,” Markus said. His tone was drenched with sarcasm, and directed at his always disobedient daughter. Markus paced back and forth behind his daughter’s seat. He was quite obviously furious with her. He stopped walking and waited for her response. She didn’t give him one. Raising his eyebrows, he clutched the back of her chair with every inch of patience that he had left.

  Markus scolded, “I recall sending you in months ago as part of the detail to protect her and to keep an eye on the boy. This does not mean I wanted you to cause her further drama by flirting with her physic boyfriend. I also did not want you to kill an innocent gym teacher to prove a damn point.” Markus met Lily’s defiant stare with his own fatherly glare of disapproval.

  “I wasn’t trying to kill her. I was just messing with her a little,” Lily answered with an innocent look.

  Markus stood behind his daughter’s seat. With one hand he shifted the seat’s position so she would be forced to face him. He said, “How old are you? We are not allowed to just randomly off mortals for no reason. I’m liable to get into some seriously medieval shit for that.”

  Lily sighed and explained, “Sorry, the man walked right under it. These mortals are all desensitized from these shows they watch. I don’t know about you, but if shit starts falling from the sky, I run away. I don’t wander over and try to get a better look at it.”

  “You have now volunteered yourself to be a member of her permanent detail. Freja’s kid doesn’t leave your sight until she is eighteen years old,” Markus stated without room for objections.

  “Grey, keep an eye on my daughter. Make sure there are no more unfortunate incidents,” Markus ordered, putting a hand on Grey’s shoulder. Grey brushed his wheat colored medium length hair out of his eyes with his hand again.

  He glanced at Lily and replied, “No problem, I’ll keep an eye on her.” He smiled at Lily.

  She winked at him and said, “I hope so. You know how much trouble I get into if I’m left to my own devices.”

  Markus sat down at the head of the table and stated, “I need a drink. You people are driving me to drink.”

  Grey slid a bottle of wine down the table and it stopped in front of Markus. It was a hilarious move.

  Markus said, “Am I supposed to open this with magic or something?”

  Lexy stood up walked over to the fireplace and grabbed the poker. She casually strolled across the room, and grabbed the bottle of wine off of the table. One would assume that she was going to the obvious and jab the cork into the bottle with the poker. Instead she swung her arm back like batting practice and smashed the neck of the bottle off. Shards of glass exploded everywhere. Tiny droplets of wine covered everyone in the room. She beamed grabbed the broken bottle and filled Markus a glass. Markus sat quietly at the end of the table not daring to utter a word. Lexy pulled out her chair and sat back down.

  She said, “Try not to swallow any of those tiny shards of glass. That might hurt.”

  Grey had his hand over his mouth. He was in tears, silently belly laughing at Lexy’s behavior. Everyone else was dead silent for a moment. Grey stretched over to the middle of the table and slid another bottle of wine towards Lexy and said, “Do it again.”

  Lexy began to laugh, everyone else joined in rather cautiously. Lexy walked the fine line between sanity and insanity as though it was an invisible tightrope. Everyone else just tried not to push her off. She also had a slight anger management issue. Nobody wanted to piss Lexy off. Grey and Arrianna could get away with almost anything. She would never hurt them. Grey, Lexy, and Arrianna had gone into testing together. They had once been in Kayn’s position.

  Grey said, “What about her boyfriend, is he viable?”

  “He was quite easily tiered up due to his psychic lineage. Did you see how much that kid filled out in seven months? I would imagine he is,” stated the dark-featured Frost.

  “He can see dead people. It’s starting.” Lily added.

  “Well, we suspected he was from a psychic family line after he was able to hear Kayn’s twin’s spirit during her correction. We had to tier him up or he would have had to be corrected. I thought the act of not murdering her boyfriend might help us all become better friends. After doing a little bit of research, we discovered that he is from a very gifted and powerful psychic line. We always need oracles. This could be a two for one deal.” Markus added.

  “You should probably try to avoid sleeping with him,” Frost whispered in Lily’s ear.

  Lily turned around and glared at Frost, “Back’atcha, regarding frog sticker girl. Will you be wearing clothes to school because it may be a bit hard for us to stay under the radar, if you’re half naked, and look like a water cooler delivery boy from a commercial?”

  Frost winked at her and didn’t bother to reply.

  Markus said, “Please just this once can you four all do exactly what you have been told to do. No creative changes. No excuses. No messing around. No ego trips. No more accidental murder sprees. Just go pick up those two second tier kids and brand them to Ankh.”

  Frost said, “No problem.”

  Markus replied, “Right … No problem. Markus looked at Frost and said, “Well, you have been waiting a long time for this one. Go mark the frog sticker girl. If you get the chance to mark them both, just do it. We can worry about explaining everything to the boy later on.”

  Lexy said, “and if he doesn’t want to come?”

  Grey answered, “He is in love with her and he is her best friend. He will come.”

  Markus stated, “We have no time to dick around here, if the boy doesn’t come willingly, mark him and kill him. We will worry about becoming friends later. The girl will have to suck it up. It’s better us than a Correction.”

  Chapter 15

  Welcome to Clan Ankh

  Kayn flung herself down on her bed as if she were an exasperated rag doll, her hands over her eyes. If she could, she would will the hands of time to reverse. This was definitely not how she saw her first day back at school. She sobbed into her pillow. She knew she should have trusted the instincts she’d felt when she left the house. She had been thinking that home schooling was a far better option for her than entering that lion’s den, otherwise known as high school.

  The danger would be coming from all over now. It would fall from the sky above her. H
er mind still struggled to see that her life would never be close to the same. She was in danger. That meant everyone around her was in danger. She stared at her own hand for a second tracing her thumb and her finger together. She was not supposed to be alive. This was only a skin suit. Her life was not her own. It had been given back to her for her service in a clan. She didn’t even know what that meant. There were only a few people in this world that mattered to her. It hadn’t seemed real because it didn’t make sense to her. What clan? Where were they? Why were they even important?

  There were a million small seemingly insignificant moments that could have been altered today. Had she simply run away to protect her loved ones, maybe another innocent person would not be dead because he had been standing too close to her. As in love with Kevin as she now felt, she had no choices left to make. There was only one way this story could play out and still guarantee Kevin’s safety and the safety of Kevin’s family. She should have called him. She could have had these last weeks to hold onto in her memory. Instead she had left it to the hands of fate which had yet again cut her a raw deal. Kayn understood that for Kevin to be safe she would have to let him go.

  Kayn thought for a minute about her gym teacher and began to cry until her eyes were puffy and swollen. He was such a nice man with a family and all he had to do to die was stand next to her. She was so confused. Maybe she should stop in to see Kevin tonight and check on him to make sure he was okay after everything that had happened today. Not stalking of course, she told herself with a touch of guilt, just observing. Kayn could pretend that was the case, but even she knew that wasn’t the truth. Coming into someone’s bedroom while he believed he was alone and observing him was stalking, even when done in an experimental testing of abilities way.

  Kayn wondered how quickly Lily had called him and come over to console him over their break-up. Oh, yes, she remembered his, “we can’t break up because we were never together” statement. A glimmer of jealousy rippled through Kayn, making her feel both anger and disappointment. Nobody had wanted him before when he was just Kevin—her geeky, normal, short, and scrawny best friend. She had wanted him on some level and it would have worked between them back then, if only she had owned up to her feelings a couple years ago.

  Why was everything so damned complicated now? Kayn thought as she buried her face in her pillow. She rolled over and looked at her bedroom ceiling, having a memory flash of one of the many pranks that she had played on Kevin. She giggled through her tears for a second. She lay on her bed, hands still over her face, and closed her eyes for a minute. She was mentally exhausted.

  Kayn awoke with a start. She must have fallen asleep; she gazed out her window, her eyes graced by the darkness of night. Realizing how long she must have been asleep she glanced at her clock. It flashed 4:00 p.m. She hadn’t even been home to accidentally unplug it at four. She had to go to the bathroom. Sliding off her bed, her socked feet hit the cushioned carpet. She walked toward the almost closed en suite bathroom door. The scent of metal caused her a moment’s hesitation as she touched the door’s handle. She could smell Chloe’s perfume. She shook her head. Maybe she had sprayed it and not remembered.

  Kayn pushed open the door as she flicked on the light. She staggered back against the bathroom wall. On the floor before her she saw the crumpled body of her twin. It was as though she were watching her through a television screen. Her sister’s fingers still twitching, as if to will her almost life-drained body to live.

  “Chloe,” she whispered taking a step toward her sister’s body.

  Kayn was in the midst of some kind of vision of her sister’s last moments. She felt another presence in the small room. A chill travelled up her spine and she began to shudder. The air in the bathroom grew icy. Kayn noticed the steady waves of moist air her breathing caused. She had heard many tales from Kevin’s grandmother about visitors from the other side. The stories always described the coldness of a room as the spirits passed by.

  She had known that her sister was still around. She had seen Chloe in mirrors as she passed them. A couple of times her sister had tried to make contact with her but she had not taken her body for a spin for a couple weeks now. Kayn had the feeling her sister was somehow partially inside of her, yet not completely. There were moments where she seemed to channel Chloe. Moments where she had wondered how much control she actually had and how much now belonged to her twin. Her sister’s remains were trying to show her something she’d missed about that night.

  She felt something cuttingly cold walk through her. It was a darkly clothed man. He leaned over Chloe’s body as her sister’s fingers twitched, her breathing slowed. He whispered in her ear with no ceremony, “You scratched me, you little bitch; you’re a fighter—a worthy adversary indeed.” He stroked her sister’s wet hair almost lovingly away from her bloody, disfigured face and pulled a blade out of his pocket. Smiling, he leaned over her sister, he was excited, sweat glistened on his forehead. He breathed heavily as he cut her shirt and started to draw something on her chest with the blade.

  Her sister wasn’t making any noise now and as tears fogged Kayn’s vision, she knew that she was being sent information. She had to pay attention. She fought the instinct to save her sister as every pore in her body was screaming at her to stop him from hurting her. Kayn knew that stopping him wasn’t an option because this had already happened. Her sister had been gone now for almost a year.

  He stroked her hair once more and whispered, “Why don’t you just die?”

  Then she heard something that sent shivers coursing through her entire being. It was her mother’s voice. She called out to her sister, “I’m home, you had better be home doing your homework, Chloe.”

  Kayn began to cry, her tears flowing freely now, as the man who had just mutilated her twin sister whispered, “Oh, dear, Mommy’s home. I should go greet her at the door. Wherever are my manners? I’m being so rude.”

  He walked through Kayn again and she felt stabbed by ice, as if his memory alone could create the dead of winter as he passed. As soon as he left the room, Chloe began to move. She wasn’t dead. She had willed herself not to move to save her mother. Chloe had been playing dead. Kayn wanted to cheer, forgetting for a split second that her sister never was able to save her mother. Her mother’s body would be found crumpled in the closet. Chloe’s body would be found where she lay, right here in their bathroom.

  “Mom,” Kayn heard her sister say as she lay dying, her voice raspy and cracking.

  Chloe was trying to move. Kayn could feel her sister’s desperation to protect her mother. Her sister’s anxiety filled the air in the room. Kayn felt as though her sister’s feelings were coursing through her veins. Pulsating with urgency and desperation, it pounded Kayn’s soul, making her unable to allow her mind to step back from the vision she was seeing. She was unable to separate her mind from the situation now. There was no way to disconnect from the horror that her sister was trying to share with her.

  Her twin’s soul screamed through the house from within her sister’s mind, “Run, Mom, please run.” A weak, breath filled voice came out of her dying sister. “Run,” Chloe whispered again.

  This time she wasn’t just thinking the word. It had actually come out. As she struggled to move, she willed with everything inside of her, pleading for her mother to run.

  Kayn wanted to follow the man, but how could she bring herself to leave the bathroom? How could she leave her sister to die alone for a second time? She heard her mom’s single, muffled scream from the landing by the front door and knew how quickly she had been silenced. Her mother had died quickly and instantly. She had a peaceful second as she absorbed that thought, grateful that she hadn’t suffered as the twins had. Kayn got down on the ground beside her sister, thankful tears blinding her vision.

  “I’m here honey,” she whispered to her slowly dying sister. “I’m here, Chloe. You’re not alone,” Kayn whispered lovingly as she watched a look of peaceful acceptance pass over her sister’s be
aten face.

  “I love you, Chloe. It’s going to be okay,” she whispered as she tried to touch her. All she felt was icy air. She backed away. Everything was so real that she had believed that she could touch her dying sister one last time. Kayn caught herself mid pull, forgiving herself for her fear. She then came closer again. She knew that her soul desperately needed this moment to release the guilt that she felt, yet kept hidden, for not dying with the rest of her family.

  “Kayn,” her sister whispered as the blood pooled around her on the cold linoleum floor.

  Kayn sat there silently watching her sister dying, and hearing the words sung by her mother in her mind. She began to sing to her twin’s nearly lifeless body as she was passing on …

  Sleep, sweet sleep till the morning

  Just dream away and close your eyes

  My love, you’ll be safe until the morning

  Sleeping in my heart, all through the night

  Although bad dreams come to scare you

  My love will scare them all away

  My heart

  Kayn stopped singing, too choked up to continue as she saw a look of peace slip across her sister’s face. Chloe lay still. With one last breath she curled into the fetal position as she passed on. Her twin’s one remaining eye staring off into the distance, as if she could see something that was lingering right in front of her.

  Kayn sat still in this past moment in time. She was afraid to move for fear of breaking the fragile connection between them. After bearing witness to the events, she felt a peacefulness come over her soul. She sat quietly, absorbing the events that had transpired, giving herself one more minute with her sister. Suddenly her sister’s head turned all the way around and whispered, “You’re next. Run, Kayn.” Her sister’s vision then turned to mist and evaporated.

  She jumped back, startled, whipping her head around. She looked instantly behind her. Kayn breathed a sigh of relief when nobody was there to kill her. She looked at the empty bathroom with a feeling of anxiety passing through her. Was her sister talking about that day or right now? Kayn pulled herself up to a standing position. How long had she been sitting there, she wondered. As she tried to stand, her legs felt like Jell-O. Her bedroom door opened suddenly.