“Where are we?” She glanced around, recognizing the girls’ bedroom. Instinctively, she pushed herself up, and immediately she realized she could feel both arms. “Omigod. Oh, wow.”
Cayne was right there, sliding his arm around her back as tears welled in her eyes, and then she was crying, exhausted and worried and scarred. She leaned her head against his shoulder, realizing as she did that it felt better. Not perfect, but very close. Which made her start laughing.
“Cayne?” She giggled. “I feel better. Is that weird?”
He shook his head. “I’m glad to hear it, but no,” he told her gently, “it’s not weird.”
“Well c’mon.” She sat up straighter, wiped her eyes. “What did I miss?”
He inhaled slowly, and anxiety gripped her.
“Is it bad?” Fear made her voice shake.
“Not on its face. Maybe not at all.” He flashed her a lopsided grin. “You should feel better for a while. They didn’t fix it permanently, but Jacquie said they can keep it from overwhelming you.”
“What did they do?”
“Henry has an older brother, name is Blake. He’s a healer.”
“So we’re okay? We can stay here?”
Cayne nodded. “That’s the biggest catch. You have to stay here if you want Blake to heal you. Jacquie said they can fend off any attack, but…” He pursed his lips. “Julia, it’s not a simple thing, this place. To them, it’s war, and you’re on their side. I don’t know what they might involve. I tried to ask, but Jacquie stuck to generalities. The things all ex-Chosen are required to do.”
“That seems like a good thing.”
Julia was looking around the room now; it was a wreck, with clothes, shoes, jewelry, and toiletries scattered everywhere. She glanced down at herself, at her long-sleeved white House of the Gods tee over her ski pants.
“I can’t believe I passed out. How embarrassing.”
Cayne laughed. “I can see you must be feeling better.”
She punched him. Then she leaned over and kissed him.
That was the moment someone knocked. Julia recoiled, startled and already anticipating the flare of pain an increased heart rate would cause. When nothing happened, she giggled.
“Yeeeesssss?”
“Jules! You’re up!” Wearing her own ski pants and a green t-shirt, Mer raced over. “Can I hug you? Are you okay?”
She looked to Cayne. “You didn’t tell them?”
“I wanted to be sure.”
Julia threw her arms around her friend.
On the surface, Mer seemed lighthearted, but Julia felt strongly that something was wrong. She leaned against the pillows behind her and, for the first time in a day or so, applied her whole attention to the moment.
“So...we’re okay here? No problems?” she asked, glancing at Meredith.
Her friend shrugged.
“I told her they wanted her to stay,” Cayne told her.
“Ah. Can we just kidnap Blake?” Mer asked.
“He’s a little large for that,” Cayne said with the ghost of a smile.
“But can you leave, like, even for a day?” Meredith asked.
“Maybe for a day,” Cayne said. “They don’t want the Three to get their hands on you. If you leave for longer…no healing.”
“But they’re letting you decide,” he quickly added. “There’s a better way. We’ll find it.”
“I don’t mind seeing how things go,”
Meredith cleared her throat, and Julia got that feeling again, that sense of her friend’s anxious feelings. “Um, Julia… I have something to say.”
Julia’s stomach flipped. “Okay.”
Meredith inhaled deeply, then she glanced over at the door. “Nathan is here. At the resort. And he wants to talk to you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nathan was there. And he wanted to talk to her. Julia’s chest fluttered with shock, followed by a wild wave of excitement for Mer, followed directly by fear with a big, fat “F.”
“Nathan is here?” she squeaked. “He’s
here
? Like…
IN THIS RESORT
?”
Meredith nodded. “Don’t be scared, Julia. He won’t force you into anything. He says he only wants to talk.”
Julia glanced at Cayne, but his face was carefully blank, so blank that even she couldn’t read it.
But Julia was already shaking her own head. She remembered the Chosen zombie that had broken her arm. She remembered who had left her with Dizzy. Who had been absent the day of Dizzy’s rampage.
“Mer—” she shook her head. “I’m glad you get to see him again. I’m like,
so
glad. But…I can’t. I know he cares about you, but I don’t know anything else. Or—wait, yeah I do. He works for The Three, and that’s not where I want to be. Not unless he has some seriously new information. They did this to me, remember?” She pointed to her head.
Meredith’s emotion was reflected in her face, which went stark and red as Julia spoke. She nodded twice, fast, and then she pressed her lips together, covering her face with one hand and turning around, toward the door. Her shoulders slumped, and Julia crawled down to the edge of the bed, where she could reach out toward her friend.
“Mer…”
“It’s okay.” She tossed her long, black hair over her shoulders, the tips of it flying out toward Julia, and then she stepped toward the door. She turned back around toward Julia and Cayne.
“I won’t let him in.” She wiped her eyes and put on a resilient smile. “I’ll try to get him to tell me what he’s here for. Exactly. What the plan is. If he’ll leave or just…decide to stay.” A tear dripped onto her t-shirt.
“I’m so sorry,” Julia said, feeling horrible.
“Don’t let him in,” Cayne warned.
“Maybe later,” Julia said. “I just need a little time.”
Cayne’s gaze jerked to hers, as if to say
a lot of time
, and Mer was out the door.
*
Several hours later, Julia was sitting between Cayne’s legs on the floor in front of the wing-backed chair, having her shoulders kneaded. Cayne’s long, strong fingers really did the job, which meant her eyelids were heavy and she was having trouble keeping up with the discussion, despite its life-altering importance.
“It should be me who talks to him,” Drew was saying. “I’m a fellow Shepherd.”
“Are you?” Carlin said, wrinkling her nose; she was perched on the lit fireplace, sipping an Irish coffee. “I don’t think anyone’s saying
baaah
anymore, at least not anyone with sense.”
Drew rolled his eyes and tugged on the collar of his purple Polo shirt. “Julia,” he said, looking at her. “Meredith shouldn’t have to handle this alone. Wouldn’t you agree?”
As Julia opened her mouth, Carlin jumped up. “I do, too, Drew. I just don’t think we should give the rat a chance! Why not report him to the Swosen? I’m sure Jacquie would be only too glad to throw him out on his stinking ass. Meredith would be upset, yes, but Nathan is bad for her. He’s worked for The Three since he was a small boy! You know it, too,” she said, sinking back down to the stone. She folded her arms over her crossed legs and glared down at the carpet.
“Carlin has a point—” Cayne started.
“That is damn straight,” she said, grinning at him and sounding very Spanish. “When you were a threat, you were a threat, and I called threat. I have Julia’s best interest in my heart.”
“But what about Meredith?” Julia countered. “We can’t do that to her. She cares about Nathan. Drew’s right. Someone needs to talk to him and see why he’s here.”
“What do you think you’ll learn?” Cayne asked. “Can you imagine him saying anything that would help?”
“It would help because I wouldn’t be blind,” she said, looking over her shoulder and pulling away from his hands, which had started kneading too hard anyway. “I think he’s still working for the Three. We all know he is. I think he came here to deliver a message, which I want to hear. Then if we don’t like it or we have a problem, we can send him packing.”
Cayne stood up and stepped in front of her, staring down at her until Julia lifted herself up into the wing-backed chair. “What’s that stare for, Mr. Mysterio?”
Cayne’s green eyes bored into hers and finally he said, “You really want to know what Nathan says?”
She nodded.
“Then I’ll go talk to him,” he said. “What’s the room number, Drew?”
“I won’t tell. He won’t talk to you. He loathes all Nephilim.”
“I won’t be…disrespectful,” Cayne said, looking Julia in the eye. And, oddly, she believed him.
“Please don’t be,” she said. “Let him say what he wants to say, and remember Meredith cares about him. I’d like to come, too,” she tried, but it was a halfhearted try; she was horrified of being sneak attacked and spirited away.
“I’ll give him your regards,” Cayne said.
He walked over to Drew and crossed his arms. Drew crossed his.
“Please, Drew?” Julia said.
Carlin jumped up, pulled out a walkie talkie, and pressed the button. “Roger, what room number?”
“Five thirty-three.” Mer’s voice crackled. “Is she coming?!”
“No,
he
is. You should come back. Come back now. Roger.”
“Uh-oh…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cayne remembered the Stained called Nathan. From the museum yard. And farther back, a potent memory recovered one night when Nathan stood outside his cell at the Stained prison.
It was his final assignment, though he didn’t know it at the time. Samyaza had called them assignments with a snarling laugh, and Cayuzul would roll his eyes or look down at the ground below their feet. He knew there was something wrong with his mentor, had known for quite a while, but there was nothing to be done. He had nowhere else to go. He was schooled only in death, and to hear others tell it, the Stained would find him if he broke off on his own. They hunted Nephilim with their minds. They blinded them. Clipped their wings. Tortured them.
Cayuzul knew torture, and he did not wish to be on the receiving end again.
The targets on this cloudy day lived in a peach and white San Francisco row house.
“This one is important,” Samyaza told Cayuzul, as they descended from the dark cloud where they’d been hovering, watching the early morning traffic trickle toward downtown.
“They have children,” he said, in his booming voice. “All must die this day.”
Samyaza would take those. Cayuzul had tried, once, to kill a Stained child, and when he’d hesitated, the boy’s father had nearly killed him. Samyaza had dispatched both, then ridiculed Cayuzul for decades. It was the one weakness Cayne didn’t try to rid himself of.
He would terminate the parents, efficiently. They always fought back, but they were never strong enough.
Cayuzul thought about the why behind it, as they tilted their wings and glided slowly toward the house’s large chimney. He remembered stories of the Christ child, the way infant boys were killed by a jealous, ancient king, and he had made the mental comparison before. Obviously, the Stained children were a threat. They would become adult Stained, so it made tactical sense to snuff them out early.
But why did Samyaza seem to pick certain children? Certain families? Cayne had never worked out why, because it never seemed to matter…until recently.
He had started passing his nights, the time usually spent in a state of rest or pleasure, cataloguing the faces of the Stained whose lives he’d ended. How they were often contorted with pain for their children. They would plead for the children. And for some years, it had made him want to end them. What about their damn kids? Who was he to care? No one had cared for
him
.
But recently, it seemed…
He shook his head. It didn’t matter. Couldn’t.
Samyaza entered through the attic and kicked out the floor, wood splintering into a child’s bedroom, a long beam falling atop a crib.
The assignment was unpleasant in the extreme. The man and woman were stronger than most, and Cayuzul wasn’t up to task. Samyaza took care of the father. Cayuzul was left with the mother. She held her baby, screaming, and he’d reach to pry the wee bairn away. But he didn’t know his own strength…
Walking through the hallway now, so many years later, Cayne put his hand over his chest. He couldn’t bear to think of that.
Samyaza killed the mother, too, and then began searching the home, looking for information about other Stained. His head in a drawer when a bloody bairn thought dead had walked through the doorway of his parents’ room. He held a curtain rod like a sword and pointed it at Samyaza.
“You are a demon,” he said through chattering teeth. He lingered in the doorway, staring at Samyaza and Samyaza alone. “Where are my mommy and my daddy? You cannot hurt us. You are a demon and we are Chosen.”
And then the boy had stepped forward, a mighty avenger until his eyes swung to the left, where Cayuzul stood amidst the bodies of his parents.
Then he started howling. And it was the howling that came into Cayne’s sleep for many nights after, long after Samyaza laughed and lunged at the bairn, and the bairn dashed out the front door, running into traffic, falling and hitting his head and lying motionless amidst the cars.
And the howling would not relent. So Cayuzul did what he must: He defected, and lived alone, and only in his nightmares did he see the boy’s face.
He hadn’t recognized the face until that night in his cell. The boy had worn the same expression—that of a wordless howl—and Cayne thought he must have changed greatly, because it made his insides feel as if they were being twisted.
He felt that sensation again.
*
Nathan cursed himself as his hands curled into fists. There was no action he could take against the Nephilim. His ability, the power of suggestion, was meaningless against their kind, and even if it wasn’t, he had to get Julia back. If he attacked the Nephilim now, she would never agree to leave. A lot of people would die.
A long time before, the fierce, Nephilim Hunter had been known as Cayuzul. He was the protégé of the Nephilim king, Samyaza, and together the duo hunted down Candidates and their families. The Chosen had never worked out how Samyaza got his information. He didn’t seem to torture his victims; in fact, they often killed with a single stroke of his dagger.