“That’s him,” Steph whispered, her tone full of urgency.
Maeva dared another glance at the office but she already knew what she’d see. The boy from the forest stood in front of the desk, towering over Ms. Kilpatrick. He wasn’t that tall, but everything about him screamed death to Maeva. The way his shoulders coiled, the wire-straight posture, hands fisted at his sides. He wore all black with no logos or designs whatsoever on anything. The only color he wore was the silver square belt around his waist. His arms were skinny but tightly packed with ribbons of muscle that worked into his forearms. His skin was ghostly white. He turned his head a fraction of an inch in their direction and Maeva gulped waiting for him to see her.
“Don’t stare,” Steph seethed as she pulled Maeva down the hall. They reached the center point, halls branching off in four different directions. Steph continued walking but Maeva couldn’t help herself. She turned, meeting his cold, hard eyes. Her chest pinched the moment she saw his lethal expression and she flushed, warmth spreading from her head to her toes. She dropped her eyes and followed Steph to first period, tears in her eyes.
It was the boy from the forest, she was sure of it. She tried to conjure the image of his frightened blue eyes but all she saw was his livid expression, knifing into her as if willing her to spontaneously combust. Maeva retreated to the bathroom, bracing her hands on the counter on either side of the sink. Her heart was a drum in her chest, pounding out a bass note so loud it reverberated in her head. Sweat soaked the rim of her black tank top and she fanned herself trying to get the granules of sweat on her face to dry. She cranked the tap and splashed water on her face. Squeezing her eyes shut, she forced the tears out of them and looked herself in the mirror. Bloodshot hazel eyes with flecks of brown looked back at her. Her black curly hair was frizzing up, little flyaway strands escaping her ponytail. She smoothed them down with her wet hands and ran the rest through the thick curls, her mind still a muddle of incoherent thoughts. She knew what she was thinking only she didn’t know how it made any sense. She fixed her gaze on her eyes and mouthed the words to herself, answering the question Steph couldn’t.
“He came here to hurt me.”
***
Chapter 9
Sickness
Krishani waited until everyone left the classroom, the clock above the chalkboard reading 3:35. Pre-Calculus wasn’t a very interesting subject. He understood the equations because the tiny pinpricks of memories he stole from another soul forty-four years ago. He zipped up his binder and slid it under his arm as the last kid left and eased out of his chair, tapping his knuckles once against the black tabletop. The teacher, whose name he didn’t bother remembering looked up from his cluttered mahogany desk. He reminded Krishani of a weasel and a rat; round, small nose and mouth, graying combed over hair. Krishani glowered at him the way he would have in Avristar at Adoron, or any of the girls at the Elmare Castle asking him for a dance. This teacher wasn’t important, he was part of a system, one Krishani knew well enough because he’d spent the past nine years being part of it in Leeds.
“Good job, Mr. Norton,” the teacher said, his voice stuttering a bit on the name.
Krishani narrowed his eyes and nodded curtly, emerging into an empty hallway. His boots felt like lead as he moved to his gray locker, twirled the combo, and stashed his binder inside the metal space. His original plan wasn’t to attend school in Kenora. He was there for a purpose, find Kaliel. However, after Elwen went over the paperwork that kept them in Canada, he added that by Canadian Law he had to enroll in school. He also said it would help Krishani keep a low profile. Yes, because being the only guy in a small town with an accent
and
attending high school was the best way to keep a low profile. He’d already heard the banter from the girls throughout the day about him and it was off putting.
His broody, don’t-fuck-with-me attitude used to make girls run screaming for the hills, but these days it turned him into eye candy, and made half the female student population swoon over his very presence. He didn’t like that. It made him think about the dagger he kept on the nightstand along with the assortment of pills. If they touched him, if they tried to get close … he took a deep breath and tried to calm the ever present anger coiling his bones and turned his attention to the deserted hallway. He turned the corner passing the office again, and almost stopped in his tracks.
Kaliel closed her locker and hefted her backpack over her shoulder, using both straps. It looked silly on her thin frame, clad in dark skinny jeans, black ballet flats, and tank top. She didn’t look at him as she turned, showing off a ponytail bursting with curls. She began going down the long hallway towards the side exit. Krishani thought he was going to pass out. She wasn’t anything like he remembered. Weighted down with the responsibility of the modern land, oblivious to the past, it was like she didn’t know anything about the girl she used to be. She pulled out an iPod and stuck the buds into her ears. Krishani heard his heartbeat pounding in his ears as his footsteps beat the floor with a steady boom, boom, boom.
She whirled, pulling the ear buds out and letting them dangle on her left hand. “Are you following me?” she asked; hazel eyes wide, mouth slightly open. He noticed her chapped lips, raw breathing, and the increase in her pulse as he quickened towards her, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“You don’t remember,” Krishani said, every syllable punctuated with double meaning. He stopped a couple feet away, noticing her body language that said two things at once: stand closer, stay away.
Instead of doing what he thought Kaliel would do, break down, maybe cry, she crossed her arms and clucked her tongue, a disappointed mask crossing her face. “You left me there to die.” It wasn’t a question.
Krishani couldn’t hear more of it. He left her to die? She fed him to the Vultures without even knowing it and stood there as if nothing ever happened between them. She looked at him like it was the second time in her entire existence she’d seen him. Every emotion, every dirty thing he could think of rose to the forefront of his mind. He took two long strides and gripped her upper arms so hard she yelped in protest, the backpack thudding to the floor as he backed her towards the lockers and slammed her against the wall beside one of them, pressing her fragile body against the stucco covered concrete.
“What do you want from me?” she shrieked, tears brimming her black lined eyes. She met his lethal gaze, terror in her violet-tinged eyes. “Why are you here? Why were you there?” Her voice ripped through the air like a ghost. With those simple words it was like she’d stabbed him in the heart. He stared at her, forcing the body to hold on, forcing the Vulture begging to be free to stay. Stay long enough to see it through, stay long enough to do what he had to do. He couldn’t find the words to answer. She was everything to him and she threw it all away. She forced him to be a monster he couldn’t control. He stared at her dead pan for a long time, examining every inch of her from her rough hands pressed flat against the concrete, to the twitch in her manicured eyebrow to the steady pulse of her jugular vein, counting out the elevated beats of her heart. She smelled like pencil shavings, laundry soap, and a hint of body spray, some combination of African violets. The smell pulled him out of his stupor and almost made him break. Of course she would be drawn to violets. He couldn’t count the times she had produced them with a single touch on Avristar. They were just as much a part of her now as they were then.
He pushed off the wall, taking slow deliberate steps towards the doors, his insides trembling with every step he took. He was trying to be careful because he didn’t need her seeing him convulse and fall apart. If he could hold on long enough she’d only see the monster she created, not the sad desperate boy living inside that monster.
“Wait.” Kaliel interrupted his thoughts as he put his hand on the long push bar. He turned his head a fraction of an inch, enough to see her standing in the middle of the hallway looking disheveled and fearful. He waited for her to say something but she had that spellbound look on her face. “Who are you?”
Krishani had many names. The one on his passport, the one the Vultures called him, and the ones he was born with, but he wasn’t going to make this easy for her. If she really wanted to make things right she was going to have to work for it, whether she remembered the past or not.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” he said, pushing the door open and covering himself in burning sunlight.
O O O
Krishani unlocked the tumbler and took the steps two at a time until he stood on the landing in front of his flat. He fumbled with the keys as he tried to unlock the multiple dead bolts. After a few tries he shoved the key into the hole and violently turned. He forgot to bring a lunch and everything in the cafeteria was junk food, fast food, or mystery food so he skipped it for a glass of water. Spots dotted his eyes, a pounding headache flashing across his temples as he rammed his shoulder into the door and it scraped open. He ripped off his shoes and threw his keys at the island. They landed somewhere on the floor beside it as he collapsed on the couch, his entire body out of energy.
“Bad day?” Elwen asked rounding the couch and handing Krishani a glass of water and two powdery pills. Krishani downed them in one gulp, gasping for breath the moment he finished.
“I need to eat.” He couldn’t think straight, his head burning like a torch. He wiped the sweat off his brow, feeling the urge to take off his shirt. He launched across the room, turning on the fan in the corner and fell back on the couch, reveling in the cool air. He closed his eyes, the encounter with Kaliel etched on his mind. He didn’t want to forget anything about it, the way she looked at him, the words she said. He tried to tattoo the memory onto his brain so if he died he could take it with him. He’d take fresh memories of Kaliel to blind vicious hunger any day. A cold compress found his hand and he absentmindedly pressed it to his forehead as Elwen set a bowl of cereal on the rectangular oak coffee table in front of him. He picked up the bowl, shoveling spoonfuls of sugary flakes into his mouth.
Elwen perched on the edge of the sofa chair, fixing him with his usual amused look. He scoffed. “You couldn’t do it in the forest and you can’t do it now can you?”
Krishani swallowed a growl in his throat. “What I do won’t change anything.” He went back to the cereal, almost finished, as Elwen huffed.
“Killing her is what you
came
to do. It’s why I’ve wasted nine years helping you find her. This has always been about revenge.”
Krishani swallowed, choking on flakes and coughing. He put the bowl down, feeling infinitely better. The pills worked fast magic. He didn’t want to talk to Elwen. He wanted his ancestor to do paperwork and make it possible for him to live some semblance of a normal human life. Talking wasn’t necessary. He moved fluidly to the other side of the coffee table and flicked on the Xbox, grabbing the controller. He clicked a button on another remote to turn the flat screen on, and one more to turn the surround sound system on.
The game came to full life both on screen and in the flat, noise booming through the speakers. It made pain leapfrog across his brain so he hit mute and used the Xbox controller to start the game. It was boring, but it was a great distraction from Elwen’s ranting.
He didn’t want to think about Darkesh. The Vultures were trained to do two things: devour souls and track enemies of the Valtanyana. If they ever found a Flame, they were to be turned in. Kaliel was obviously the only one they cared about, even though she gave them everything they wanted. Krishani didn’t know the details, but for nine thousand years, Kaliel had been gone. She might have been a danger to them but she was only a girl, a very normal teenage girl. He growled, setting off a bomb, making body parts splatter across the screen.
“They’re going to torture her until she goes nova,” Krishani said, his voice like acid. He kept his eyes on the screen refusing to let emotions plague him. He knew it when he was standing in a field of boulders staring at the hoard of Vultures on the horizon. He knew it when she told him she betrayed the Flames. If they ever found her, they would torture her for all eternity, dissecting her secrets, the very reason for her existence. As a result of her betrayal, he had felt every type of pain for the past nine thousand years. It never went away, not when he possessed a body, not when he devoured a soul, never. It was a dull throb with its own steady pulse, pumping poison through him. Elwen sat on the far side of the couch, resting a mug of tea on the coffee table.
“You found her, we don’t have to stay.”
“Nowhere is safe,” Krishani said, taking a sidelong glance at him.
Elwen put on his best poker face. “I can make a phone call. Someone else can take care of it for you.”
Krishani gritted his teeth, a jaw muscle twitching sporadically. “I know, but …”
“You can’t do it.”
“If I kill her, they’ll find her. If I don’t kill her, they’ll find her.”
“All the more reason to get it over with.”
Krishani paused the game, frustration rising to a boiling point. “Darkesh will turn her into his puppet.” He spit the words out like they were dirty and colored with ulterior motives. Elwen raised his eyebrows and took a sip of tea.
“You want to be a good guy now? Hide her in the Great Library?”
Krishani slammed the controller on the coffee table. “Kemplan works for them.” He stood, pacing the length of the hallway, his hands in his hair, then laced behind his head. His muscles coiled like springs and stiffness skated throughout his limbs. “Why … how?”
Elwen moved to the island and rested his elbow on it, making his body bend at an odd angle. He gripped the mug in the other hand and took another sip. “Maybe Tor …”
“Tor is dead.” Krishani seethed, trying to control his breathing, and the burst of emotions making his heart feel like shrapnel. He pulled at the short strands of hair, covering his fingers in a thin layer of gel. He closed his eyes trying to get the taste of her smell out of his mouth but it was there, violet flowers, permeating his tongue. He dropped his hands to his side and realized they were fists.
Elwen shot the boy a wicked grin. “You can’t kill her.”
Krishani felt lightheaded, the cereal not enough to keep him conscious. “She doesn’t belong here.”
Elwen chortled and stood up straight. “Do it quick and it won’t hurt.”
Krishani blinked, his mind emptying of all the thoughts he had a second ago. Elwen talked about death like it was nothing. Sure, Krishani had seen tons of it in his lifetime but this was Kaliel. He felt disjointed as the words fell out of his mouth. “They’ll keep her awake. They’ll make sure she feels every agonizing second of it. They won’t be merciful.”
Elwen sniffed, and it seemed like he was trying to clear his nasal airway. “She’s only getting what’s coming to her.”
Krishani contemplated strangling him, pressing his fingers around his trachea and squeezing until his face was beet red, but he didn’t move. He glared at Elwen, his eyes like poisonous arrows. “I don’t know.” He turned on his heel and stormed down the hall to his room, slamming the door behind him.
***