“No, of course not. I was looking for some pencils for a project that Nate and I are working on and I saw your sketchpad on your desk. I wanted to see what you’d been working on all summer.”
“You could have asked me,” Sera said.
Her mother nodded toward the sketchpad that Sera was still holding in a death grip against her chest. “Some of those drawings are dated months ago.”
“Mom, please,” Sera said, her eyes darting to the bathroom. “It’s no big deal. Can we just drop it?”
“No, Serjana, it is a big deal,” said her mother in a strange tone. “You’ve been having these dreams for a reason, a very real reason. It has to do with who you are, and possibly things that you’re going to think me crazy for saying to you. You have no idea how much I wish we didn’t have to have this conversation … but we must.” Her mother gently brushed a thick strand of purple and black hair out of Sera’s face, holding it between her thumb and forefinger and staring at it thoughtfully. A sad smile curved her lips as she released it. “And if those sketches are any indication, we need to talk now rather than later.”
Something in her mother’s voice tugged at Sera. “What do you mean ‘who I am’?” Sera said, forgetting about Kyle for a second.
“Sera, do you sometimes dream that you’re somewhere else, someone else?” Sera’s gaze clung to her mother’s. A vision of the four-armed redheaded girl flitted through her thoughts.
“Sure,” Sera said carefully. “I mean, who doesn’t like to pretend they’re someone else?” Her mother stared at her, almost sadly. She pried the sketchpad out of Sera’s numb fingers, opening it to a drawing of a beautiful dark-haired woman with ten arms playing some kind of harp. “Do you dream of the people in here, in your sketches? That maybe you’re one of them?”
Sera’s immediate shock was overshadowed by the audible gasp from the bathroom, and they both vaulted to their feet at a crashing noise.
“Is someone here?” her mother asked with a frown, her brows snapping together.
Sera sighed inwardly as the door opened and Kyle’s green mohawk emerged, his face apologetic and fearful at the same time—which was expected, given the circumstances. Sera’s mother’s eyes widened, reflecting shock and alarm, her body tensing beside Sera’s.
“Hi, Mrs. Caelum,” Kyle said. “I was just using the bathroom. Sorry about the soap dish.” He placed the broken dish on the desk as he edged around the opposite side of the room toward the door. “Sera wasn’t feeling well. I just brought her home after rehearsal. I’m sorry.”
Kyle was still edging around the room, almost as if he was afraid to get too close to where they stood. Sera noticed beads of sweat glistening against the dark ink of the dragon’s wings on the sides of his skull. His gaze was fixed nervously on her mother, who hadn’t moved an inch since he’d revealed himself.
“What’s with you? Why’re you acting all weird?” Sera said, starting to move toward him. But her mother shifted, placing a hand on Sera’s shoulder to stop her.
Kyle also froze, his stance wary, and then mumbled in Sera’s direction, “No, I’m OK. Sorry again, Mrs. Caelum …”
“It’s all right, Kyle, but in the future, Sera’s not really allowed to have friends over when we’re not at home.” Her mother’s voice was frigid.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.” Kyle had almost reached the door at that point before Sera recalled the absurd conversation they’d been having before her mother had shown up.
“Wait,” Sera said. “What about the thing we were talking about? The play,” she added after a glance at her mother’s forbidding expression. “You know, about the Daeva—”
The sudden pressure of her mother’s fingers digging into the flesh of her shoulder cut off the rest of her words.
“Ow!” Sera cried, wincing and twisting away from her mother’s painful grip.
Her mother’s body was now rigid, her hand frozen in mid-air. Kyle looked paralyzed with alarm, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish trying to breathe outside of water. His skin had turned a sickly dull color.
“What did you just say?” she whispered, stormy gray eyes fixed on Kyle although the question was directed at Sera.
“Nothing, just some people that Kyle … forget it. It’s nothing,” Sera said, her voice trailing off at the sudden tension in the room. Her mother wore an expression that Sera had never seen. Sera glanced at Kyle. He looked as freaked out as she felt. “Kyle, you should go,” Sera said. “I’ll just call you later.”
But before either could move, Sera’s mother stepped toward Kyle, cornering him just before the bedroom door. She grabbed his wrist. A rapid flash of blinding white light detonated in the room the instant her mother touched Kyle. Hot white spots danced before Sera’s eyes as she struggled to focus on the two of them. But they seemed unaffected by the intense blaze.
Hadn’t they seen it? Was she imagining things again?
Neither her mother nor Kyle were moving, but Sera could sense something eerily silent transpiring between them. A short exchange of inaudible words followed, but Sera couldn’t understand what either was saying. Straining to hear the conversation, she started to move toward them.
“Stay where you are, Sera,” her mother said without turning around. Her voice was quiet but firm, and Sera automatically obeyed.
“Do you understand?” her mother said to Kyle in a normal voice.
Kyle nodded and didn’t even look in Sera’s direction as he left the room, mumbling what sounded like a warbled apology to her mother on his way out. It was almost as if he were afraid to look at either of them. Sera shook her head, completely rattled by the turn of events.
After Kyle left, Sera waited silently for the tirade she knew would come, but instead her mother stood motionless in a kind of dazed trance, staring at the closed bedroom door. Her eyes were wide and her breathing shallow.
“Mom?”
Her mother turned toward Sera, and for a second, her pale face looked haggard before she composed it into its normal appearance. She walked toward Sera and rested a hand against her purple-streaked hair, her thumb brushing across the softness of Sera’s cheek.
Her voice was knife-like, at odds with her tender caress. “You’re grounded, young lady.”
“What! For how long?”
She paused at the door. “Indefinitely. Dad or I will take you to school, and you’ll come straight home afterward until further notice.”
“But that’s not fair—”
“Unless you want to reconsider going back to Silver Lake High, Sera, you’ll stop this minute, because right now I am regretting ever allowing you to go to high school.”
Sera felt the bottom drop out from beneath as anger flooded her body. A sharp unexpected pain shot up her back into her shoulders, almost doubling her over.
“Because of Kyle? What are you so protective of?” she argued, nearly gasping. “You can’t keep doing this to me. I just want to be a normal teenager. Is that too much to ask?”
Her mother smiled sadly. “I wish more than anything for you to have a normal teenage life but there are things you don’t understand—things that will make that impossible for you. And it’s my duty to protect you.” She sighed, not bothering to explain her cryptic words. “And while you’re under my roof, you’ll follow my rules.”
“This is a goddamn prison,” Sera muttered.
“God has nothing to do with it.” Her mother paused before continuing down the hallway. “If He did, this is the last place you would be.”
“This is the last place I want to be!” Sera shouted.
“Be careful what you wish for,” her mother said with no inflection whatsoever. “Because you may just get it.”
Sera slammed her bedroom door so hard, the entire frame rattled. “That day can’t come soon enough!”
HOUSEBOUND
Kyle sat in his car, his head pressed against the leather of the steering wheel, his breath coming in short pants. His head ache
d. What had just happened was next to impossible. Mrs. Caelum, Sera’s mother, was Daeva.
An immortal.
And she was strong, stronger than any he’d ever felt. Her shade was near faultless. Most deities existing on the mortal plane had shades, specifically, to cloak their energy. Usually Kyle could see right through them, but he’d never met another with one quite like hers.
When he’d come out of the bathroom, Kyle had stayed far away from her for obvious reasons—he knew she didn’t like him. But when Sera mentioned the word Daeva, her shock had cracked her composure enough that her shade had faltered. In a single blink, her energy had been as clear as day, but then in the next moment, it was gone.
Sera obviously didn’t know about her mother. Kyle thought back to the energy he’d felt earlier that morning in the diner and wondered whether Daeva could leave traces of their energy on others or on their children, even if they were human. In his world, nothing was impossible.
Kyle ground his teeth together as the pain receded to a dull thud at the base of his neck. The cell phone in his pocket vibrated. Jude—the only person he didn’t want to talk to right then, but he had no choice. He took a deep, slow breath before answering.
“Hey, Jude.”
“You talk to Carla about Saturday?” No precursor, no hellos, no niceties.
“Not yet.”
“What’s wrong?” Jude was nothing if perceptive.
“Nothing much. I was just trying something. Remember you told me about that source up in Connecticut? I tried to see if I could reach it from here. That’s all.”
“And?”
“It could be big.” Kyle knew he was stretching, but he was banking on the fact that Jude really didn’t understand the inner workings of his ability.
“Maybe we should leave tonight,” Jude said after a pause.
“I need to do something for Carla. She’s out of town, so later tomorrow is the earliest I can go.” There was a taut silence on the other end of the phone. Kyle held his breath, knowing that Jude didn’t like anyone telling him what he could or couldn’t do.
“OK.” The word snapped through Jude’s teeth, barely more than a hiss, and then the phone clicked off. Kyle breathed a sigh of relief.
He leaned back in the seat, pondering whether he should just head home. Kyle hunkered down in the seat as a pair of headlights cut through the gloom of the fading twilight and pulled into the driveway opposite him. Sera’s father got out and walked inside. In one of the windows, Kyle could see him embrace Sera’s mother, and the tender intimacy of it made him feel uncomfortable, especially given what he’d discovered earlier.
Did Mr. Caelum know the truth about his wife? That she wasn’t human? Earlier, she’d known exactly what he was. He could still feel the imprint of her hand on his wrist. Her words had been more than clear—she would stop at nothing to protect her family from any threats, him in particular. Something foul and vengeful unfurled in his belly, and he clawed at where her fingers had touched him.
You should have shattered the bones in her hand, a terrible voice whispered in his head. Kyle swallowed past the sudden hoarseness in his throat as self-loathing consumed him.
He could never hurt Sera’s mother.
But inside, the thing within writhed, delighted at the gruesome turn of his thoughts. He’d been born to hate the Daeva and bred to track them. It was in his blood. It was who he was. He was every bit as evil as Jude … maybe worse because he hid his true nature, pretending to be someone else for Sera’s sake. Fury and self-disgust flowed throughout him as his fingers curled into fists.
Deep down, he knew he could not be trusted.
Sera watched Kyle’s taillights disappear from her bedroom window. He’d been sitting in his car for a long time, and she’d just been about to call him when her father’s car had pulled in the driveway. Shortly after that, Kyle had left. She stared blankly out the window at the space where his car had been.
“Great,” she muttered to herself, picking up the broken soap dish where Kyle had left it. If only he hadn’t been so clumsy in the bathroom, she could have gotten her mother out of there with some excuse none the wiser. She peered down at the reddening bruise her mother’s fingers had left on her shoulder and rubbed it gingerly. Her mother had practically imploded after hearing the word Daeva. Not to mention what she’d said about Sera imagining she was someone else. None of it made any sense.
A tinny, quiet voice pulled her from her thoughts. “Come in Dollface, Dollface come in.”
Sera searched for the source of the voice. A green flashing light under her desk caught her attention—one of Nate’s two-way wireless radios. She picked it up and pressed the talk button.
“Dollface to command,” she whispered.
“Black Hawk here. Do you request backup? Repeat, do you request backup?”
“Request immediate extraction.”
“Negative, Dollface. Enemy snipers on high alert.” Sera suppressed a grin at the thought of her parents as enemy snipers.
“Request … um … snacks?”
“Operation Supply-Drop approved. Black Hawk out.”
Sera soon heard a light scratching at her bedroom door. A black-clad Nate slithered in, crawling commando-style on his belly and carrying a backpack. His face was smeared with red and black.
“Does Mom know you’re wearing her mascara?” She bit her lip to stop from grinning. “And is that lipstick? You’re going to get in so much trouble.”
“You want these or not?” Nate said, brandishing a bag of chips and some other goodies. “‘Cause I can take my supplies to someone who needs them.”
“Don’t be mean. Hand them over.”
“I’m not. You know how hard it was getting down there? The parental units are on high alert.”
“Bring the bounty over here, Black Hawk.” She dug in the backpack and pulled out a candy bar. She bit into it and sighed.
Nate opened a Coke, pulling off his black ski hat, his blond curls springing into disarray. Sera rumpled his hair and hugged him, grateful for his company.
“Thanks, bud. So, what are they doing down there?”
“They’re talking.”
“About me?”
Nate smirked. “Information has its price. Ten bucks and chores for the week.”
“Five bucks and chores for two days,” Sera countered, sitting beside him with her back to the bed. She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest. Nate consulted a notebook he pulled out from one of the myriad pockets on his spy-vest.
“Just ten bucks, no chores.”
“Deal.” She gave him a crumpled ten-dollar bill from her backpack and watched as he pocketed it and wrote something into the notebook. She shook her head. “What do you need money for anyway? Mom and Dad buy you everything.”
“Movie supplies. And every penny counts.”
“Movie supplies? What are you doing, planning to upstage George Lucas?”
A dimpled grin. “All part of the master plan.”
“Seriously, what do you need the money for?”
“I’m entering an online contest: Junior Director for Best Short Horror Film.”
“Don’t you have to be like sixteen to enter those?” Sera asked.
“Thirteen, and I have a fake ID.”
“You got a fake ID to pretend that you’re thirteen?”
“Shhh!” Nate said, placing his ear up to the door. He turned the lights off for good measure. Silvery moonlight filtering through the windows kept the room from being in total darkness. “If Mom and Dad found out, I’d be toast.”
Sera shrugged. “Your funeral. So, what are they talking about down there?”
Nate stuffed his face with a handful of chips. “You and Kyle. They think he’s bad news.”
“I already know that.”
“Well, Mom was going off on something that Kyle said, sounded like she said somebody called Davy. Who’s that?”
“Not a who, it’s a them. Daeva,” she replied without thinki
ng.
“Yeah, that’s it. Mom said something about them finding out about who Kyle was since he wasn’t Carla’s real kid.” He pursed his lips and frowned. “She talked about your drawings and something about her being upset that she hadn’t talked to you months ago when you turned sixteen. Then Dad said something about contacting somebody to try murders.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense.”
“That’s what it sounded like,” he said defensively, and then his eyes brightened with excitement. “What if they’re secret assassins?”
“Don’t be stupid. Mom? An assassin? Think about it for half a second. She faints at the sight of blood. And Dad? He couldn’t hurt a fly.”
Nate frowned. “I guess so. That would have been cool though. What else? Oh yeah, they mentioned drugs, too.” He glanced at Sera with a dismissive shrug and snorted under his breath. “Like you would ever do drugs … way too much of a control freak. Anyway, they mentioned something else called fire.”
Sera started. Kyle had mentioned both Fyre and Daevas, but maybe this was something different. “As in burning fire?” she asked carefully. She was dying to know more about the Fyre that Kyle had mentioned but continued to fake being bored to keep Nate talking.
Nate shook his head. “No, that’s what I thought at first, too. It was weird, like it was something big that they were talking about, all hushed and quiet, like a secret thing. I mean, Mom was really freaked out. So, I tried poking around on the Internet to see what I could find out, trying different spellings, the works. It took me an hour and I still didn’t find anything. I mean, not even a trace of it other than some South African farm story. That’s what got me.”
Nate paused to open the other candy bar. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “I mean everything is on the Internet if you know where to look. Like someone wants to keep it hidden, right? So I looked harder.” He paused, a gleeful smile on his face. “And I found something.”
“About this Fyre or whatever it’s called?” Sera asked.
“I remembered that Mom also said a name, Zeebalba, so I cross-reffed that with Fyre. I had the spelling wrong, but it was all about hell and devils. And I found this really cool site. It was password protected but I hacked it. Some group called the Ne’feri Order. Anyway, it talked about Fyre, but I don’t think it’s the same thing. Way too weird. Something about torture. Freaky stuff. Some of it was creepy, but full of material and great ideas for my movie, like a hundred gods and goddesses. And can you imagine seven hells?”
Alpha Goddess Page 4
