Shadow Walker (Neteru Academy Books) (2 page)

Her parents fighting downstairs made the ache for Yaya blossom within Sarah’s chest. She missed Yaya so much. She wished things between her and Al were different, too. But it was what it was. Sarah looked at Tami, silently begging her to just leave things alone.

“T,” Sarah said, exhaling heavily, “our parents are fighting…and it sounds bad. We’re going to find out what’s going on.” She glanced at her brother, who’d already started down the hall. “I’ll be back.”

Tami looked concerned but just gave her a quick hug and then made the call me sign. She slipped back into her room while Sarah hurried after Al.

They took the back way, which ran behind what was now the war room before heading down two flights of stairs. Sarah tried her best to ignore the forms cavorting in the dark corners. The shadows seemed especially playful tonight. Actually, she called them playful, but she had never bothered to find out what they wanted. Her mom and grandma said they were harmless and that being able to see what was really in the shadows was all a part of her second sight. Some gift. But since no one else in the house could see them, she didn’t really want to know what these eerily stretching shapes meant. Right now, she stayed close to Al as she hurried past them and ignored the fact that they seemed to be laughing at her.

She and Al stopped outside the war room and splayed their hands against the wall for better reception.

“They didn’t even seal the room,” Sarah said in awe. She turned and looked at her brother. “It’s wide open to a telepathic siphon.”

“More than that, I bet if we try hard enough we can get an image to come into our minds,” he said, closing his eyes. “They must be really pissed to leave themselves vulnerable like that.”

Her brother’s comment chilled her. Sarah closed her eyes, straining to hear.

The twins fell silent once more, losing themselves as they tuned in to the voices just beyond their reach. Sarah felt her hands almost become one with the paint on the service corridor exit walls, her awareness drowning out the sound of her heartbeat and that of her brother’s. Muddied voices soon gave way to clarity. She could feel the impact of the emotions like a gut punch first, and then the sound came after it, like a Doppler effect.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass, Damali!” her father shouted. “I don’t want those kids going to the Academy until we find out who or what is snatching bodies! Some agent of evil is kidnapping students, snatching these kids out of thin freakin’ air! We forced the Armageddon, Damali, and made it come early. So now who knows what the real timeline is for the return of the ultimate evil? What about that ain’t clear?”

Sarah’s and Al’s heads snapped around, and they stared at each other, eyes wide in shock. Their father was no longer speaking to their mother in his normal controlled diction. He’d lapsed into hard slang and his Spanish accent was now getting thicker by the second the more upset he became. That always happened when her dad went ballistic.

“Bodies?” Al mouthed. “Kidnapping students!”

Sarah shook her head frantically. She didn’t want to know what they were talking about. Her father had said someone—or maybe it was actually something—was out there kidnapping people from school. Snatching bodies? Where, how, how many kids were missing? It was so horrible she wanted to just turn away from the telepathic eavesdropping. This had been a bad idea. But curiosity won out as Al pointed to the wall and they both went back to listening.

“You have to have faith…and they aren’t babies any more, Carlos,” her mother was saying, her tone firm but calm. “Sooner or later the kids have to learn to battle the same things, if not worse, than we fought.”

“What? They’re only fifteen years old. All of ‘em—every kid in this compound! That thing we chased back to Hell during the Armageddon was not supposed to surface for twenty-one years! Every telepath we know said so. And now—”

“We don’t know that’s what it is, Carlos. It doesn’t have to be the ultimate evil, it could be—”

“They aren’t ready, D!”

“You mean you aren’t ready, Carlos. And that’s why they have to go to the Academy—to learn how to fight what will be coming for them a few short years from now.”

“They don’t have to go while the school is in crisis, Damali. That’s all I’m saying.”

“That’s all you’ve been saying since they hit puberty and started presenting their talents. I told you then it was time for them to go into intensive training with the others, but you wouldn’t listen to me. Now they’re—”

“You and I both know these kids are special, D. They aren’t like the kids from other Guardian compounds—they’re from
the Neteru squad
and need a few more years of individualized attention.”

“Just stop it, Carlos. It’s now or never. I’m just as worried about them as you are, and I love them just as much as you do. But as their mother, I know we can’t take them to the next level as parents. To keep them here is to handicap them, and I won’t allow that. Not with what they’re facing as their destiny. They have to get the intensive talent training, all day, every day, plus all the regular stuff, like history, technology, math, science—everything that we don’t have time to teach. How are we supposed to do that while we’re out in the world battling everything that goes bump in the night? The closer it gets to the return of the Unnamed, the more we’re seeing demon raids on innocent humans. Am I wrong? So when will we be here at the compound to keep them safe, huh? When will we be able to take time to keep them sharp on how to slay vampires, how to take down a werewolf or how to behead any number of hellhole vermin without getting nicked? When you figure that part out, Carlos Rivera, you let me know. Until then, they’re going to the Academy.”

There were two beats of silence, and she imagined her father standing there, his face getting a little red, eyes slowly turning silver, and fangs lowering, which happened whenever he got annoyed—tonight he sounded way more than annoyed.

“And what?” her father finally said. “I’m not ready to have my only baby girl and my only son snatched down a damned demon hole!” His voice was rising again. “Is that wrong? Am I out of line for feeling parental concern?”

Sarah nearly gasped aloud when the strong surge of her father’s anger, frustration and, to a lesser degree, his fear pulsed through her. All of a sudden her mind’s eye snapped completely open in a way it never had before. Suddenly she could see the inside of the war room. She and Al must have gotten in sync and now were concentrating together so hard that their powers had combined to show them what was going on beyond the wall. Never in her life had a vision exploded inside her head like this one did.

Her father was walking in a tight circle, gathering ammunition, picking up shells and a shotgun, as well as stuffing his vest with grenades. Her mother was at the door, arms folded, blocking his exit. They weren’t breaking up. They were having a standoff. But it was clear that he was going demon hunting tonight no matter what her mother said to him.

Her father was in rare form. Tall, muscular, caramel colored, with short dark hair and dark eyes that were flashing fire. Although they were arguing, she could see the look of appreciation in her mother’s expression as she watched him pace angrily around the room. But her dad was no pretty boy, handsome as he was. Beneath his normal city street charm as her uncles called it, there was no mistaking that demon-killer instinct lurking just beneath his surface. Something had detonated that in him tonight. She just wished she knew what it was. Bodies were missing? Whose? What had grabbed them? No wonder he was flipping out. Plus, the reminder about her own and her brother’s destiny to fight evil made her weak in the knees. She didn’t want to be a demon hunter! Not now, not ever.

Her dad was a warrior, merciless when protecting his own. Vampires were, by nature and reputation, ruthless—and her dad used to be a vamp before he went into the Light. That was no secret. Everybody in the family knew it, all the other Guardians knew it, and it was the thing that gave him a little extra street cred when he told people he had a bad feeling about something. She just wondered why her mom wasn’t listening to him about something as important as this.

Puzzled, her palms moist against the wall, Sarah strained harder to hear. It just didn’t make sense. If her dad wanted to defend them all against something terrible, then what was her mom’s problem? Legend had it that her dad had taken the word
ruthless
to a whole new level while in the Dark Realms. She’d seen the vamp trait of being ice cold when it came to revenge in both Al and Tami, but the ruthless gene seemed to have skipped her entirely. Sarah let out a soft sigh. She definitely took after her mother and was more prone to diplomacy rather than brute force.

Well, at least Dad hadn’t totally dropped fangs yet, she thought. Even though her Mom had told her long ago that, technically he wasn’t a Vampire any longer, at least not since he’d been pardoned by the Light, some things were still fused in his DNA. His fangs were one of those leftover things from his past, like his temper. When her father’s fangs started showing at full length, it was a sure sign he was about to blow.

“Then let’s do a sweep, me and you—as Neterus,” her mother finally said, tucking a Glock nine-millimeter in the waistband of her fatigues. “If we can shut down any demon portals that have opened up near the school, then they go. But we cannot home-school these kids forever until all evil in the world is vanquished. That just isn’t a part of their destiny.”

Sarah and Al glanced at each other once again. They had long gotten used to hearing about their “destiny” and the war they would inherit as their parents’ children.

It was common compound knowledge that, sixteen years ago, just before she and Al had been born, the world as everyone knew it had come to an end. To hear their parents tell it, everything had changed big time. It was hard to imagine a world different from the one they now lived in, but within all their lessons and as a regular part of the conversations around the compound, everybody referred to the secret war that had gone on for centuries between The Light and the Dark Realms. Then all of a sudden the battle had come to a head because their parents chased the darkness into the depths of hell, and the Armageddon—the last battle—hit the streets, where normal humans finally saw what had gone unseen for eons. Governments fell, economies crashed…. She could feel Al’s question forming in his head just like it was forming in hers—was it happening all over again, but this time earlier than the prophecies foretold?

Back then, pockets of humanity had eventually returned. But if another huge war like that broke out, what would people do? Food was already scarce, disease was rampant, people fought like animals for clean water and anything that would make life bearable. Her family said that living in the world as it was now was like living in a nightmare. For months now, leading up to her planned departure for the Academy, she’d been having horrible nightmares…the kind her mother and Nana said would pass, but their eyes told her differently. They knew something was wrong, too.

Just like she’d always been able to feel things a little deeper than the others could, right now the hairs were standing up on her arms. What if their destiny was here now? What if evil wasn’t going to wait until they were twenty-one? That was what nobody else in the compound seemed to get. Sarah covered her heart with one palm and squeezed her eyes shut tighter. Her heart felt like it was slamming a path out of her chest. This whole destiny concept wasn’t going to be fun—it would be bloody and terrifying, as far as she could tell. Besides, what if the evil that missed them the first time was now on a rampage, snatching kids from school in search of the Neteru compound brood? They were
so
not ready to go to war, to be any kind of heroes, much less to save the world.

But then again, what was she going to do, stay home alone while her parents were off fighting demons and the other kids were at school? At least at the Academy there’d be safety in numbers. Sarah said a silent prayer. Please, please, God, don’t let the Armageddon be happening again.

Most of the survivors of the Armageddon lived in colonies established by the new world leader, who her parents said was an agent of the Antichrist. It was forbidden to mention his name, because according to Nana Marlene, words and names had power, especially when spoken by those with supernatural strength. Regardless, those colonies were strictly governed and fiercely protected. But not everyone chose to live there. Not everyone trusted that new leadership. Her parents clearly didn’t.

But what could be going on outside their little oasis, if her parents and aunts and uncles had driven evil back to the Dark Realms years ago? Where had the students and staff gone missing from—in the little-town colonies around the compound? At the Academy itself? It was all too bizarre.

It didn’t seem likely they could be attacked here. Sarah repeated the facts to calm herself now, the same way she would when she had bad dreams. She had to relax; she was just freaking herself out.

Her dad had used his powers to relocate them to the Greenbrier Hotel deep in the Appalachian Mountains. It was well-hidden and inaccessible except by air or by energy transport. All the roads leading to it had been destroyed in the war. It was from here that all the adults in the family continued to fight against any remnants of the Dark Realms, alongside other guerrilla Guardian colonies around the world. But here,
home,
was supposed to be safe. It was.
It was.
It really, really
was
.

An uneasiness crept through Sarah as her brother turned away to continue listening. Her parents weren’t just regular Guardians of the Light—they were Neterus, the highest level of warrior, chosen as the leaders by all other Guardians. And their children’s destiny training was supposed to begin at the Academy, the secret, exclusive school set up to train the best warriors of the Light. How could the place that housed kids from all the Guardian teams all over the world not be safe?

But from her parents’ argument, it was clear that trouble was brewing at the Academy. Bodies. They had mentioned bodies. If that was true, then maybe she and Al weren’t going to get the chance to learn slowly or to get a little older before taking on the Dark Realm, or even get to meet other Guardian kids their own age. Maybe it meant they would get thrown right into combat or something equally bad. All her life she’d dreamt of just having a chance to be normal, not to have to live in hiding… maybe be around other people besides her relatives. Now it seemed like maybe none of that would happen.