Forsaken

by Jacquelyn Frank

  Loved, she realized with correction. He had loved Docia. Then she changed and now…now he was too afraid of what she had become to see beyond it. But the Night Angel had faith that it was still inside of him somewhere, still a very large part of his makeup. In fact, she knew it to be a truth, however lightly scribed it might be in that moment. It was still there, embedded into his soul. But he was grieving that love as though he had lost her…as though she weren’t standing there right in front of his face. It was, at its very heart, a tragedy and Faith felt very sorry for him. She did not let her pity cloud her caution however. Humans were, by their nature alone, dangerous to a Nightwalker being. That fear he held on to was the heart of that danger. When a mortal human feared what they couldn’t allow themselves to understand, they became unpredictable and a constant source of potential risk.

  But still…Faith found humans to be very beautiful, despite these shortcomings. This man in particular was very beautiful. Just as a male specimen alone, with his coal black hair that curled in wide, lazy waves and soulful eyes the color of warmed whiskey. There was nothing boyish or innocent to his face, nothing soft or fatty to his hard, purposely honed body. It took a great deal of work and effort to be in that kind of defined physical condition. Muscle did not sculpt itself. Denim clad thighs did not show their strength unless they were, indeed, full of strength.

  He was not overly built with that muscle and she could tell from his scroll that he was not aiming for appearances. If he had cared that much his vanity would have been written all over him. No, he had much different purposes for the physical condition he kept himself in. She was not blind to the word that was deeply ingrained onto him.

  Killer.

  This was a man capable of taking lives. More than capable, he was an expert at it. However, she could see he was not a psychopath. Psychopaths or sociopaths had blindingly egocentric lights. Lights full of twisted thoughts and deeds. Lights without feeling and without empathy.

  This man was neither of those, but that did not make him any less dangerous or deadly. She would have to be very careful if she was going to spend time in his company…especially while in a weakened state and considering what he thought of supernatural beings.

  Faith found herself touching the whiteness of her own fingers, inspecting the pink of her nail beds with a discomfort she couldn’t help. She thoroughly disliked herself when the blackness that was natural to her was robbed from her. She was also weary, she acknowledged. She had traveled far and fast in order to get here as quickly as possible, and it disheartened her that she had been too late to properly warn them. But she had not been too late to help, and she must be satisfied with that. She had given them time to do what was by far the most important thing.

  “We should go,” she said just as her pigmentation was starting to turn back to normal. “The imp god will only grow stronger the longer he remains in his new corporeal body. And there will be no defeating him without your male pharaoh. Many of our prophets have seen this clearly. The pharaoh will be instrumental in the curtailing of this evil god…but only if he survives. The injury the imp suffered at my hand is not a very serious one and he will recover quickly. When he does he will come at you all with even more vengeance. And you must assume that he knows what the prophets know, or else why would he have come here?”

  “I can think of a reason,” Leo said icily, shooting a scathing look at Kamen.

  “But…but Jackson tried to use his power and it had no effect…” Docia said, her voice trailing away as if she realized that Faith might be insulted by the contradiction. Faith could see the stark fear on her. Fear for the life of her brother. Fear of her own inadequacies. Fear for the love that stood strong and sure at her back at the moment but had come close to meeting the same fate as Jackson. Faith watched as Ram reached out to brush his thumb over his love’s cheek, his arm crossing her waist and drawing her tightly back against him, as if to say “I’m here. You’re safe. I love you and we will be strong together.”

  Faith had to blink, lowering her lashes to try to defray the brightness of their complementary lights. Whenever they grew closer to each other or touched each other it became a blinding thing; a stunningly blinding thing.

  Faith turned away when the tightness in her own throat threatened to reveal her emotions. She did not wish for them to see the envy she felt. There were much more serious things she should be considering beyond the loneliness she felt within her own life. What she could do, she thought, drawing herself back onto task, was see to it that nothing happened to tear these two asunder. Them and the two inside. They were, in a word, remarkable and it would truly be tragic if something she failed to do resulted in their loss.

  “We should begin.” Faith ran the scarf through her fingers thoughtfully. “I don’t think she is very far.”

  “Then why don’t you tell me where she is and just send me after her?” Leo wanted to know.

  “Because the journey to her is not the journey that should concern you. You should be satisfied that I am allowing you to come with me, despite the encumbrance you could prove to be.”

  Faith turned her back on him, unable to look at that white-hot light of fury that burned within him. She knew he would think she was dismissing him, and she supposed she was, but she couldn’t be concerned with that. There were far greater things at stake than the state of his fragile male ego.

  “Come along if you will. If not, I am happy to do this on my own.”

  She left the room without looking back at any of them. No matter which corner of the room she looked at, no matter which light, they were all far too bright and hot for weary eyes to tolerate.

  And she was very weary indeed.

  Kamen moved into the hallway, following in the Angel’s wake.

  “There must be something I can achieve here,” he said to her, his hand gripping the balustrade as she paused on the first step in order to look up at him. “I am a Templar. I have a cadre of spells that could perhaps—”

  “I think you’ve done more than enough,” she said softly, baldly meeting his eyes. There was no misinterpretation. She knew just by looking at him that this was entirely his fault. He was to blame and he felt the weight of it on his soul.

  “Back off,” Leo snarled at him, thrusting his body between Templar and Angel. “Why don’t you go hide in that room Jackson assigned to you and figure out a way to defend this house in case that thing you’ve called up from hell comes calling again.”

  Kamen wanted to argue, was used to feeding ideas to others and hearing his opinion heard with great value. But he had no worth here, he reminded himself. Not with these people. And he did not deserve otherwise.

  “Perhaps you are right,” he said quietly, acquiescing with a dip of his head, readily allowing the Hispanic male to be dominant over him. He could already tell that it took large amounts of energy and self-control for the other man to keep from lunging for his throat, and in a way he had to admire his ability to maintain that control. He also had to admire the fact that it wasn’t fear keeping him from doing exactly that. It was something else…a loyalty he wasn’t all that sure of—one that Kamen could have told him was very much alive and well.

  Besides that, this was Menes’s house and this man, as it happens, was Menes’s best friend.

  Jackson. He was still wont to call him Menes, but in this lifetime, this incarnation, he preferred to be called Jackson. How odd that was, he thought absently. He had never conjoined with the soul of his host enough to want to take his name in place of his own. In fact, all Templars subjugated their hosts, pushing their second soul into dormancy and submission. It made him wonder…what if…?

  Kamen shook his head. Now was not the time for contemplating follies that would eat up his focus and his energy.

  “I will keep your friend safe while you are away,” he said to Leo, even though he knew the human male despised it when he addressed him directly. “If this house is attacked again I can get everyone to safety quickly.”

/>   “Remember,” the Angel said, “do not move him unless absolutely necessary.”

  Kamen nodded his understanding, then turned and left their sight.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Leo couldn’t focus on his driving. They had climbed into a truck, one of the many vehicles kept available on the property, and she had told him to head east. So he was heading east. That was all she said. “Head east.” And not another word since then in the thirty minutes he had been driving. Now he was distracted because she was distracted. She kept turning her hands over, inspecting them front and back, touching her nails, watching them go white when she pressed on them, and then pink again as her capillaries refilled.

  She was also fidgeting with the knee-length dress Docia had scrounged up for her. It was a pretty heather blue one with little blue and yellow cornflowers all over it and dark blue buttons running from neckline to hem. Clearly it had come from Marissa’s wardrobe, it being far closer to the Angel’s height and weight than anything of Docia’s would be. Docia was short and curvy, whereas Marissa was tall and…well…curvy. Though apparently not as curvy as the Angel beside him. The dress was pulled tightly over her breasts accentuating their shape and heft.

  Okay, he had to admit it. She was hot. Like scorching head-on-fire hot. Albinism aside, the minute she had fully turned parchment-paper white, he had finally been able to distinguish her looks in their entirety. Beforehand, with all that monotone blackness, he couldn’t see that she was…well…hot.

  Gorgeous, actually. From gracefully rounded shoulders to her well-defined calf muscles, she was the kind of hot that would have kept her off all the fashion runways because she had curves and blatant female sexuality, not the stick-thin figures and drolly waiflike starvation victim look that supermodels were always striving for.

  Oh yeah. She had booty. She had just enough junk in her trunk to make a man crave using it for handholds as he—

  Whoops. No, no. Not that, he thought hastily to himself when, out of the cold blue tundra that had been housing his emotions and feelings lately a sharp streak of arousal began to stab through him, heading right for his heavily dormant cock and the twin brothers attached. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.

  Come on, man. Focus, he thought fiercely. He looked at the stark road laid out in front of them. Once they had left the city limits and caught the main highway out of Portales, New Mexico, they had left what most would call “civilization” behind. Traffic was nearly nonexistent and it could make for a pretty boring drive. So, it stood to reason that his attention might wander. With that and the fact that he was tired, he excused himself. After all, he had been up all night long, having shifted his own sleeping cycle to coincide with those of the others in the house. Maybe it was like when women got together and their periods started to synchronize. It had nothing to do with the fact that every time he closed his eyes…

  So, mix in a pretty girl with all of that and a man was wont to let his thoughts wander.

  Oh…wait…she was so not a girl. A woman, yes. But there was nothing girlish about her. In fact, now that he’d had some time to study her and replay his short acquaintance with her over in his head, he would actually say she was a very…sexual creature. A sexual creature trying to not be a sexual creature. With her severely swept back hair and her very correct posture she was as uptight as they came, on the outside of it.

  That she worked so hard at presenting a precise sort of exterior told him a lot about what she might be hiding beneath the façade. And once he had started looking, he had begun to find things.

  For instance, the way she kept touching her own hands and arms, the way she brushed her palms down the length of her skirt and the fact that she did both very slowly told him she was deriving a tactile pleasure from her own actions. Her fingertips brushed absently at the nape of her neck, the small touch tugging at the short tendrils that had not been long enough to be caught into the twist of her hair. There was only the barest dusting of them, but she pulled them between her fingers and rubbed at them. Again, just for the sake of feeding herself tactile sensations.

  “So…” Leo cleared his throat of the awkward roughness that barked out of it. “So, tell me a little about Night Angels,” he said.

  She immediately frowned and narrowed her eyes at him. Those strange pink irises were so disconcerting in that endless sea of whiteness…white skin, white sclera, white hair…that he found himself missing that cat-yellow color they had initially been. They had been so unique, so intriguing…

  It was clear she was second-guessing his motives. No doubt she was studying his spotlight thing and reading words that told her things he probably would prefer she didn’t know.

  “What would you like to know?” she said at last.

  Good question, he thought. He wanted information, but he had to be careful how he did it.

  “Well…the foremost thing on my mind is about that light you said we all have. Is there a way someone could maybe, I dunno…lie to you or hide the words the light might show you?”

  “We call the light a scroll. And everyone’s scroll is different, unique, and varied. There can be no absolutes and no way to make scrolls uniform. However, you cannot lie to me if you are not lying to yourself. You can trick me into perceiving a script—the words we see—that is untrue if you put a strong effort into it. For example, if you are feeling fear you can overshadow that script by putting a huge mental emphasis on the strength you will use to face your fear. But that is something only the most disciplined minds are capable of. There are very few people, both human and Nightwalker, who can deceive a Night Angel.”

  “What does that mean…‘not lying to yourself’?”

  “Let’s say that you were grieving a loss. Often a stage of loss is denial. A person can lie to themselves about a given truth. If you firmly believe and feel a lie is true, it will appear on your scroll as though it were a truth. We aren’t lie detectors. The ability is flawed sometimes.”

  “I see. Still, it seems like it is a handy skill to have. I wouldn’t mind having it at my fingertips.” Especially lately, he thought, the understanding making him frown. It would be so much easier to know where he could put his trust if he could read what was really in the hearts of those people who surrounded him.

  “This is a gift that can fall into the ‘be careful what you wish for’ category,” she said, all seriousness. “Sometimes it is better that you not know what is really in the soul of a person. It can be very…disillusioning.”

  Leo could see how that would be. For instance, he wouldn’t want Docia to see past the image he worked so hard at projecting for her. He didn’t want the darkness in his life to spoil the way she felt when she looked at him and smiled. If she could read the truth on his scroll, she might never trust him again. She might look at him and see a monster. A murderer.

  “I understand,” he said. He quickly pushed away from that topic and all the thoughts it evoked. He felt naked enough around her. He didn’t need to help her see the darker parts of himself by mulling them over right in front of her perceptive eyes. “Where do Night Angels live exactly? I mean, given your coloring, it’s not as though you can walk freely in the human world.”

  “No. The only time we can walk in the human world is when we are like this,” she held out her white arms in indication. “But even this draws unwanted attention.”

  He could see that, too. People were obnoxious and cruel. They would stare and whisper, even in the age when seeing weird people and the things they do to themselves might be generally expected.

  “So…?” he prompted.

  “We live all over the world in special enclaves. Like the Bodywalker house in Portales, the homes are in the midst of a huge property, land acting as a buffer to the outside world. We tend to pick places with naturally occurring barriers, like mountains and cliffs…huge estates butted up against a beach and ocean or a great canyon. A dense forest or vast desert goes a long way to discouraging the average hiker. Then it�
�s only the above-average ones we need to be cautious of, and luckily those sort are fewer and farther between. And anyway if they made it to the property they would most likely be greeted with barbed wire and electrified fences.”

  “Fortresses,” he said quietly. “It must be difficult, living in constant fear of discovery.”

  She burst out laughing, the shock of it ringing against his ears in spite of the quick hand she lifted to cover her mouth. At his inquisitive look, she tried to press back her laughter. “Do you really think so? Nature has her ways of camouflaging her creations. Believe me when I tell you that we are equipped with all the means necessary to protect the outside world from learning about who and what we are.”

  “I’ll definitely take your word for it.” He found himself smiling again. Seeing genuine humor on her changed his perception of her. It added a vibrancy to all that colorlessness, the smile accompanying it lighting her eyes as well as her lips. “Are there a lot of you? Does this,” he indicated her appearance, “mean that any albino I meet is actually a Night Angel?”

  “No,” she said, more merriment in her eyes. “Human albinism is very much in existence. I would resist going up to an albino on the street and whispering ‘I know you’re an angel!’ You’d probably get packed up and shipped to the funny farm if you did that one too many times.”

  That made him laugh, and he realized that was twice now that she had delighted him in under thirty seconds. It was such a strange feeling. For the past week he had felt like Chatha had hollowed him out, figuratively as well as literally, and that he’d been stripped of all emotion except for fear and anger. The latter caused by his acknowledgment of the former. He had never thought himself above fear, but he had never expected to be overwhelmed by it. Paralyzed by it.

  When he came back from that too close examination of his demons, he realized he was rubbing taut fingers against his abdomen. Just the feel of his own hand against one of those tender spots made his entire body clench with a crippling anxiety he’d never known before. And that had little to do with the runnels of freshly made scars tracking over his belly and chest. It was more about the scars Chatha could not heal away.