Enlightenment (Children of Ankh series Book 2)

by Kim Cormack

  The Escape Clause

  In the room Kayn entered, the others were waiting patiently for them all to confess their way through. Five large black gargoyles paced back and forth on the far side of the room. Kayn looked up at the ceiling, perhaps for divine intervention. A tornado dropped from the ceiling into the center of the room.

  Kayn stared at it in awe as she said, “What is that?”

  “That’s our way out of here,” Haley replied. “We all have to jump in together. It seems to only come down one time for each of us. That means as soon as Astrid comes through that wall and looks at the ceiling, it will come down. We’re all going to hold hands and jump into the center of that tornado. There is not going to be a second to think.”

  Kayn watched it disappear into the stone above her. Would Astrid jump into an indoor tornado blindly because Haley told her to, now that was the million-dollar question? Kayn glanced back at the wall. It had been awhile, Astrid must have a lot to confess. They all laced their fingers together, leaving Haley as the last link on the chain.

  As Astrid appeared though the wall, Haley held out her hand and said, “Just take my hand.” Astrid took it without question as her funnel descended from the ceiling. They all leapt into it. It sucked them up and spun them around, in the wrath of nature’s harshest brutality. Against insurmountable odds they fought to hold onto each other’s hands. There would be no option of freedom from these walls if they were minus even one. Kayn knew she had less than a minute of spinning motion left in her before she either passed out or painted the funnel with her vomit. Her skin rippled and her mouth was extended wide open from the sheer force of the funnel as if in position of a permanent scream. She was going to be squished against the walls or incoming end of the funnel’s cement passageway. Her mind pleaded, open up! Please! You have to open up! As they flew towards impact, it opened and she shot into the sky. A burst of fresh air came as a welcome explosion to her senses. It was difficult to wrap her mind around the moment of glorious freedom because it was impossible to think about anything except her stomach churning upwards motion towards the clouds. There was a briefest pause as she stopped moving upwards and began her rapid descent towards the gray stone surface of the enormous and from this vantage point extremely intimidating crypt. Stop yourself! She continued to fall. Stop yourself! Her mind screamed. She clicked into the reality of the red splat she was about to create on the crypt’s surface. She managed to stop herself, hovering only a foot from impact. Everyone stopped themselves except for Zach. They each scrambled to their feet. Zach’s head lay alone with eyes gazing forward into nothing. Where was the rest of him?

  Astrid approached, holding Zach’s dripping severed arm. She said, “The crypt must have closed on him.”

  They stood there, frozen for a second. What in the hell were they supposed to do now? Astrid was about to panic. They’d finally made it out. The two lost Ankh’s escape plan had been twenty years in the making. Kayn’s mind felt numb. That’s it then; they would obviously have to go back in and find the rest of him. They’d never have the strength to get back out again. They could spend years searching for the rest of his body. There was no option. They would not leave him behind. They could not leave him behind. Kayn wasn’t sure she had it in her to last another day. She sunk down beside Zach’s severed head and stared into his wide open glassy eyes. Kayn looked up at Haley and said, “Well… what in the hell do we do now?” Haley squatted down beside her and stroked Zach’s hair. She appeared to be thinking. Kayn had a seriously warped sense of humor. They were staring impending doom in the face and she was grinning at the sight of Haley petting Zach’s severed head.

  Astrid noticed her grinning and she exclaimed, “You really are a little sick in the head, aren’t you Kayn? You were probably certifiable far before any of this went down, weren’t you?”

  Kayn couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. It was even more funny now that somebody who was certifiably insane had called her on her lack of sanity. Could nobody else see Haley stroking the hair of a severed head? How was this not hilarious?

  “Her messed-up sense of humor is a coping mechanism,” Melody explained. “She always tries to make the situation funny. It helps everyone else. I know it helps me.”

  Kayn comically urged, “Oh, come on. Just think about it for a minute. We now have to go back in there, because we only have a few pieces of Zach and Haley is stroking his severed head. In what world is this not an absolutely hilarious situation?”

  Haley looked like a light bulb just turned on between her ears. She announced, “We are still out of the tomb. We should be sucked back in already. It must still be possible. We’ll just bring the parts of him with us. We need to get to the Amber room. We have his head. We have the hand and it’s even the one that has the Ankh symbol on it. This feels possible. It must be possible.”

  Kayn couldn’t stop laughing, it was quite possible the, ‘let’s just bring his body parts with us’ motivational speech finished her sanity off. The amber tinted bubble could be seen vaguely in the distance. Haley gazed down at Zach’s severed head and grabbed his brain matter-oozing mass of hair and goo. Astrid held his severed arm and the group sprinted towards the amber chamber in the horizon. It was far enough away for them to grasp that if they’d continued their journey in the interior with distractions, it would have taken weeks to find it. They didn’t know at this point if this insane idea would work. They had only pieces of their third member and they had two extra Ankh they hadn’t come into the Testing with. This competition was rigged for failure. Had they not run into the other girls their minds wouldn’t have been capable of living through many more hours, let alone days. The four girls and hunks of Zach raced across the top of the crypt. Nothing was as it appeared. They ran and ran without feeling like they were getting much closer to the Amber room. It stood out in the distance, its rounded amber glossy tower beckoning them from afar. They finally reached its smooth amber surface with their teammate in hand…Quite literally. Breathless and absolutely soaked in perspiration, the four girls collapsed on top of it. How were they going to get inside? They were momentarily blinded by an intense white light. The four girls opened their eyes to find themselves standing in the sand in the center of an actual coliseum. The very kind Zach had imagined the Testing would be held in. All four of them were still huffing and puffing, unable to catch their breath. She was going to snap if a two-headed monster appeared. She was going to lose her shit! Her twisted sense of humor could only take her so far. Kayn said, “Oh shit. Please… No more.” She felt like she had forgotten something crucial. What was it? Her brain was a puddle of mushy goo. Kayn spun her head around and stammered, “Where’s Zach! Where is he? We have to go back!”

  The crowd roared as Zach appeared out of thin air. He was standing there in one piece right beside her. Kayn had to stop herself from jumping into her friend’s arms. They were whole again. The three of them had made it out of the Testing. Whoops, there were five of them now. It crossed her mind that they might still get in trouble for smuggling out the other two. At this point, she was so far past caring it was ridiculous. She received her second wind. Bring it on.

  A booming ominous voice echoed through the coliseum, “Walk forward Clan Ankh.”

  Kayn looked around. It’s a circle. Which way is forward? At least twenty pink stones appeared in the dirt about ten feet from her. The group walked towards the stones and stood before them.

  The gravelly sounding male voice chuckled, “What very clever young second tiers you are climbing right out through the top like that. You managed to get out with two from a prior Testing. This has quite obviously never happened before… Impressive.”

  The crowd cheered. They all looked like normal people of various shapes and sizes dressed in togas. Kayn glanced behind her at the crypt that hovered in the sky, spanning the horizon. We made it out. Kayn smiled and looked at the others. They were going to let them all go home.

  The voice commanded, “Choose your stone.�
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  Kayn instinctively gravitated towards one. She bent down and picked it up. She felt her life force bind to the stone in the palm of her hand. Her stone, seemingly on contact with her palm was carved with the symbol of Ankh. She glanced at her clan members who appeared equally amazed.

  The voice spoke again, “You are now bound to your clan…You are no longer contained beneath mortal skin. You will be now and forever more Ankh.”

  An incredibly tall woman with her face hidden by a veil casually strolled through an arched door and out into the center of the coliseum. She stopped before them, raised both of her hands into the air and let out a high-pitched sound. They were blinded by light as the crowd cheered again. Kayn was cowering from the light’s overwhelming glare. She opened her eyes to find that she was standing in the soft silken sand of the in-between. No diamonds were present this time, only the forms of their clan walking towards them in the distance against the backdrop of a breath-taking sunset. It was beautiful to witness the expressions on everyone’s faces as they realized that five Ankh had come home. Kayn stood back and watched as they laughed and embraced. Zach noticed her absence. He grabbed her hand and towed her towards the rest of her clan. Kayn went with Zach even though she felt like being by herself for a little while longer.

  Jenna hugged them both at the same time. She whispered, “Dragons need a Handler. Zach, you are now Kayn’s Handler.” Jenna walked away and embraced Haley without any further explanation.

  Kayn released a burst of laughter at Zach and said, “I don’t think so.”

  Zach hollered at Jenna, “She’s not going to listen to me! This is a bad idea!” He shook his head and grimaced at Kayn. “I know you’re not going to listen to me.”

  Kayn grinned and shook her head at him. She responded, “Probably not.” Zach took off to attempt to get Jenna to listen to reason. As Kayn watched him chasing Jenna around, she started to giggle. He can’t even handle himself! What was Jenna thinking? If the aim of that conversation had been to make her laugh and cheer her up… it had definitely worked. She met Frost’s stare. He smiled and winked at her as Astrid hugged him.

  Lexy strolled towards Kayn. She embraced her and said, “I’m glad you made it.” They strolled away together towards the flaming orange back drop of the sunset. She had a new position in the clan. There would be expectations. It made her nervous. Dragons probably weren’t supposed to feel nervous. She was supposed to be a hurricane, a plague, an apocalypse. She was a method of destruction. It was an intimidating job description.

  Lexy whispered as they walked away, “From one Dragon to another, you don’t have to listen to anyone. They won’t expect you to.”

  Kayn had come to the end of this part of her journey. She’d had to lose one version of herself, in order to find another.

  Tiberius had been wrong. She wasn’t a lion or a lamb. She was destined to become a Dragon. Kayn never anticipated this plot twist in the story of her life.

  Two Dragons walked off into the flaming sunset until they disappeared together in the magical land of the in-between.

  The Beginning

  About the Author

  Kim Cormack is the always comedic author of the darkly twisted epic paranormal romance series, “The Children of Ankh.” She worked for over 16 years as an Early Childhood educator in preschool, daycare and as an aid. She's lived most of her life on Vancouver Island in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. She currently lives in the gorgeous little town of Port Alberni. She's a single mom with two awesome kids.

  Ankh

  Trinity

  Triad

  Stop by the series website and find out which clan you belong in. kimcormack.com

  P.S Thank you my awesome series readers for your lovely reviews. I do read them all and I hope to keep you entertained for many years to come. XO

  Also by Kim Cormack

  Sweet Sleep

  Enlightenment

  Wild Thing

  Wicked Thing

  Let There Be Dragons

  Coming Soon

  Beautiful Disaster

  Bring Out Your Dead

  The Repopulation Project