Shadow Walker (Neteru Academy Books) (39 page)

“What’s my daughter doing down here, Marlene?” Sarah’s father finally said, stepping away from the table. “She should be in assembly with the other students, listening to Shabazz’s security update.”

“She’s here to meet Professor Zachariah Raziel,” her grandmother said in a calm but firm tone.

“Professor Razor fits better,” the ominous being said in a disinterested tone, walking slowly toward Sarah.

“Why?” her mother said in a horrified whisper, hurrying toward Sarah and getting between her and the professor.

“Because it’s time,” Headmistress Stone said firmly, then gentled her voice. “Although it was an accident, she activated the shadows and severely injured a student today, Damali. She has to learn how to control her power. It’s time, even though she’d initially been placed in the Blends division. I don’t know how Counselor Z could have made such a mis—”

“No!” Carlos shouted. “I forbid it! Especially with everything else that’s going on.”

“It is her destiny,” Headmistress Stone said calmly.

“I didn’t mean to, Dad,” Sarah said, beginning to tear up. Her panic-stricken gaze went from her parents to her grandmother, then to the furnace silhouetting Professor Razor in its orange light. “I didn’t know about the shadows. I didn’t know I could—”

“Are you mad?” Professor Razor said, changing course and walking up to Carlos to get in his face. He spoke in a quiet, lethal tone as he stared at her father eye-to-eye. “You’ve allowed this child to be afraid of a talent like this, as well as remain unaware of how to properly use it? That’s like throwing a loaded gun into the middle of a schoolyard filled with toddlers. Guaranteed, one of them is going to pick it up and pull the trigger!”

“She’s my daughter!” Carlos said. “Don’t lecture me, Reaper, when you’ve never had a child of your own!”

“In this school I have three hundred children, Vampire!” Professor Razor said through clenched teeth. And as fast as light he called a scythe off the wall to come whirling into his hand, then caught it in his grip and brought it with a clang against Carlos’s quickly drawn sword.

“You were the only one that got away, Rivera. The only Vampire I chased into the depths of Hell all the way to Level Six and missed. But a Reaper always reaps what is sown. Do not make me forget that you are now a being of the Light.”

“Any day or night, mother—”

“Carlos!” Damali shouted.

“Gentlemen!” Headmistress Stone said loudly, and banged her stick on the ground.

“Mom, Dad, I’m so sorry,” Sarah said, wiping at tears that wouldn’t seem to stop flowing. “I know with Ayana missing this is the last thing you need, but—”

“No, Sarah,” Professor Razor said, stalking away from her father, still swinging his scythe. “Your father owes
you
an apology.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to a fifteen-year-old! I did what I did for her own protection!”

Sarah’s mother left her side as her grandmother closed her eyes. “Carlos…what did you do?” She grabbed Carlos’s arm, then looked at Professor Razor.

“He made a deal with Counselor Z to hide Sarah in Blends,” the professor said. “You can’t lie to a Reaper—and now that I have you both in the same room, I know my gut hunch was right! He thought that if she was with the less developed students she wouldn’t be so competitive and her ability would lie dormant for years.” Professor Razor looked at Carlos hard. “Tell her! Tell them! You have the strength as a Neteru and an ex-Vamp to block seers, but not a Reaper angel!”

“Carlos…” her mother whispered, hurt singeing her tone.

Sarah’s grandmother simply closed her eyes.

“Dad?” Sarah ran forward. “You put me in Blends—made me test three times to be where I wasn’t supposed to be?”

“Z wouldn’t have done that unless coerced,” Sarah’s grandmother said quietly, her gaze now fixed on Sarah’s father, and the weighted accusation went off like a siren in Sarah’s head.

“You put our daughter through that?” Sarah’s mother said, her voice a near whisper.

“Tell the truth, Carlos,” Sarah’s grandmother said in a calm voice. She gazed off into the distance as if seeing something the rest of them could not. “I should have seen this before, but I had no reason to vision-check family. Counselor Z tested the girl three separate times just to try to give you a chance to accept the truth…a chance not to ask her to do something that went against her core values as both an oracle and a guidance counselor. But you knew Z would do anything for you.”

“You had no right to do that to her,” Sarah’s mother said, tears shimmering in her eyes.

“I had every right!” Sarah’s father shouted, exploding. He used his sword to point at Sarah, his haunted gaze going to each face as he spoke, but landing on Sarah’s last and longest. “You don’t know, but I did. From the day she was born, I knew. It was in her blood, in her skin. I could smell her. I knew she was the one we’d lost, Damali! She’s not a twin. She’s our firstborn, my baby girl that Hell snatched from me once. I will not, do you hear me, I will not, send her into the darkness to hunt anything! I don’t care about destiny. Damn destiny! And she’s definitely not going to learn how to smoke demons in Hell from a Reaper! Never!”

“Destiny is the province of God, and the last time I checked, you ain’t the One, son!” Professor Razor shouted, lowering the scythe at Carlos. “Don’t forget your place in the food chain, Neteru. Switch sides like Lucifer did in a fit of hubris, and it’s your ass.”

“I don’t want her in the Shadow class,” Carlos said in a low, warning rumble. “I ain’t having it.”

They were arguing about her as if she wasn’t even in the room! Didn’t she have a say about anything happening in her life?

“It’s my choice,” Sarah said firmly. She looked her father in the eye. “Who I am, who I will be, what I do with my powers and which battles I choose to fight—they’re all my choices. You had no right to take that away from me. Do you know what you’ve done to me? Do you know how scared I’ve been? And all because I didn’t know?”

Her father walked back toward her with his sword in his hand and punched the metal table, causing her to jump. “As long as I’m your father, I will decide on matters like this! You have no idea what the Dark Realms can do to you if they get their hands on you. I’ve kept you safe!”

But her mother’s stricken gaze left Carlos and went to Marlene. “Is it true what he says? When did you know she was the one I’d lost, Mar?”

“If you had known too soon,” Marlene said with her eyes closed, not fully answering the question, “you would have mothered her differently—and it is her destiny to be a Shadow Walker.”

Her whole family had kept secrets and told lies? The closest people in the world to her?Her father turned to her mother and held her with his troubled gaze. “Don’t fight me on this, Damali.” Then he turned and walked out of the Crematorium. Her mother ran after him.

Sarah couldn’t believe that her father had just left like that. He had lied. He had tried to keep her back because he didn’t want her to even try. Did he think so little of her?

Fury rose inside her, and Sarah took off after her parents. As soon as she stepped through the door, she held up her arms in front of her face. The hallway was filled with gale force winds as her father began to open an energy fold-away.

“It’s my life!” Sarah shouted behind him. “I’ll do whatever I want to with it!”

She hugged herself, crying tears of outrage and betrayal, then slumped against the wall when he didn’t even look back at her. He simply walked away into nothingness. Then the winds died down and he was gone. “I hate him!”

Her mother walked over to her and drew her into a hug. “Don’t hate him, even when he messes up, even when it’s this badly. Sarah, your father loves you. He just has a strange way of showing it sometimes.”

Her mother’s arms and wings surrounded her, and though she tried to stiffen against the embrace, the heartbreak of the one person she looked up to the most failing her the most was too much to bear.

“He lied,” Sarah said angrily against her mother’s shoulder, breathing hard.

“I know,” her mother said softly.

“I will never forgive him for this!”

Her mother stroked her back. “Never is a long time, baby, and forgiveness is divine. He was wrong. He was pigheaded. He was a lot of things, Sarah,” her mother said, finally holding her away from her to look into her eyes. “But your daddy loves you. That doesn’t make him right; it just makes him more human than most people realize.”

Tears streamed down her mother’s face, and she didn’t try to hide them. The sight of her mother so upset by something her father had done was as upsetting as anything else that had happened that morning.

“One day, maybe you’ll understand just how scared your father had to be to do something this outrageous. I’m not going to apologize for him anymore. It is what it is. He owns this all by himself.” She wiped Sarah’s face and then her own. “But I want you to put this anger to good use. Go in there and soak up everything you can from Razor, you understand me? He’s got a lot of experience. Remember how your nana Marlene used to say, ‘You can show ‘em better than you can tell ‘em’? Show him, Sarah. You become the best with whatever gift you were given. Nobody, not even your father, can take your destiny away from you.”

Sarah sniffed hard and nodded. Yes, she’d show him. And she’d use every skill she had to help find Ayana.

P
rofessor Razor opened the door and came out into the hallway with her grandmother. “Let’s me and you take a walk, kid. Go get some fresh air. It’s the only thing that clears the head after a good hell fight.”

They walked along the corridors in companionable silence, and Sarah was surprised to find Professor Razor wending his way up toward the Great Hall. The moment the passed the barriers, he looked up at Mojo and snapped his fingers, waking the surly dragon.

“G’morning, Mojo. Normally, I’d light you some incense and leave an offering, but this morning I just want you to meet a jumper.” Professor Razor turned to Sarah as he walked her toward the huge doors. “If you decide to break the rules and go for a stroll out here one starry night, bring him something and say a prayer, otherwise you and your date will be dragon treats.”

The old dragon grumbled and resettled himself as they strolled out of the building into the small courtyard.

Professor Razor held Sarah’s arm. “We’re going up to the top. But on the way up, I want you to think about three things.”

She simply looked at him, frighteningly aware that if her grandmother and parents hadn’t introduced him to her, she would have run headlong screaming to get away from him.

“One,” he said, ticking off his points on his wide, calloused fingers. “People screw up, so what are you gonna do? Spend your whole life whining about your mom or dad and what they did to you, or are you gonna suck it up and move forward with your own life? Two, like Headmaster Shabazz told you guys at the opening ceremonies, we aren’t stupid. We know students have been opening illegal vortices around the school to sneak out and do what young people do. We also know that too often they’re also getting high while doing something dangerous. Foolish. No newsflash, but we
will
find the culprits,” he added when Sarah’s eyes got wide. “What, you think with all the advanced seers in this joint we wouldn’t know?”

He shook his head. “Yeah. We know. The problem is, these kids’ve gotten really good at masking who’s doing it and when. More about that later, during my class, but I’m going to show you a known danger area right now. Seeing it is better than reading it on your PIU—since I’ve heard you’re the adventurous type, prowling the halls unescorted. Need I say more?” He gave her a meaningful look, then began walking toward the steps that would take them to the top of the Great Hall.

“You said there were three points?” Sarah said, catching up to his long strides.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, not bothering to look at her. “Don’t fall. It’s a long way down.”

She peered over the edge, stepped back and shut her eyes for a moment.

“You coming or what?”

Summoning her courage, she took a deep breath, said a quiet prayer, then began the steep climb up to the last platform that separated the school from the floating capstone. Moving very carefully, she placed each foot with precision, going up sideways so her entire sneaker would fit on the narrow steps. But Professor Razor took the steps two at a time, without holding onto anything, and only hit each step quickly on his toes, since his large combat boot wouldn’t fit no matter what.

“Don’t look down,” he said with impatience, waiting for her on the platform, half of his boot hanging over the edge. He popped a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a snap of his fingers.

Sarah stopped for a moment and squeezed her eyes shut to stop the feeling of vertigo.

“A demon is on your ass, kid! Move it and get up here pronto!”

She began climbing again with a little more gusto, and when she finally reached the top, he held out a hand and pulled her to stand beside him with amazing strength.

He looked at her, then looked up at the sky, blowing out a stream of white smoke. “You almost feel like you’re up in the clouds from here.” He let out a wistful sigh, took another long drag on his cigarette, then sent his gaze out toward the horizon.

Sarah stood beside him, captivated. “It’s beautiful,” she said quietly, taking it all in slowly.

Gorgeous snowcapped mountains rolled out in a blue-mist range before her, and as she glanced down she saw a black ring of burned-out forest. Beyond that, the leaves of the dense tree line in the valley below made everything seem to be nestled in a sea of fire-orange, red and yellow confetti.

Above her, the huge floating capstone cast a shadow on the platform, but there was enough light that she could see into the base of it. The way the stairs spiraled up and the way the shelves were built into the walls reminded her of looking into a seashell. Her mother had brought her one from one of her many journeys when she was just a little girl. For hours the queen conch shell had fascinated her as she tried to spy into the pretty pinkness by holding it up to the light, wondering how the thing that had once lived inside it might have made such a winding place of beauty its home. Now she wondered how students got up into the ultimate library in the world, and once in, how in the heck did they select an Akashic Record or sacred text, much less find a place to sit and study?