The Other Side of Truth (The Marked Ones Trilogy Book 3) (11 page)

I squinted at the building like I used to when I looked at The Embassy or the Kalo Galleria, but it didn’t change. With a huff, I looked over at Connor.

“Hey Connor, do me a favor. When you look at that wall over there, what do you see?” I asked as I gestured to it with my head.

“A boring-ass wall,” Connor replied, more than unimpressed with the wall. “Why, what do
you
see?”

“I also see ‘a boring-ass wall,’” I answered with a sigh.

“Oh,” Connor answered as he continued to stare at the wall. “So
why
exactly are we staring at a boring-ass wall?” he asked after a minute or so, his ponytail of well-kept dreads swaying in the strong breeze like bits of rope.

I pulled the key from my hoodie pocket and held it out in my open palm. “Kiskei gave me this and a note with this address.”

Connor stared at the key for a moment, and then at the building before his eyes drifted back to the key. He swallowed hard and then asked in an uneven voice, “This is daemon stuff, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I answered with an uneasy smile. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure where he stood with the whole me-not-being-human bit.

Connor kinda grunted, but didn’t say anything and we went back to staring at the wall. After a few moments slipped by, Connor finally said bluntly, “So are we gonna stand out here all night in this fucking wind, or are you gonna go see if that key opens something?”

“Yeah, I’m going, geez,” I said as I rolled my eyes at him.

I walked across the street and stopped in front of the plain gray door. Then I took one last deep breath and pushed my key into the keyhole. I tried to turn it to the side, but it wouldn’t budge. As I narrowed my eyes at it a small light above the keyhole flashed red. I pulled the key out and stuck it back in again, but the small light above the keyhole still flashed red. I huffed at the door and turned on my heel, walking back across the street.

“Well?” Connor asked as he gestured toward the door.

“It won’t open. The note said Saturday, so I guess I’ll just have to wait until then to see what’s inside.”

I probably could have asked Kiskei what was on the other side of the door. But I got the distinct impression that he wouldn’t have told me even if I had asked.

The Missing Girls

Thursday, November 8th

TRAVIS

N
ikkollas Varrook. Marked One. Deceased.
Three small statements that said everything and nothing all at once.

KARA had been processing batches of genetic profiles while I had been scouring the Daenaranet for all instances of those pictures of me and Nualla I had promised to destroy. Which was how I had stumbled into a comment discussion speculating as to whether the dark-haired girl in the images that appeared in
Secrets
magazine was actually Kira Varris instead of Arius Nualla Galathea. Karalia_Darling453 had commented after the previous poster saying that Looking4One was an idiot, because Kira Varris had still been a Kakodemoss captive when the pictures had been taken. As further proof of what she was saying, Karalia_Darling453 had linked to an article in
Kalo Empire Magazine
.

The exposé on Kira in KEM had talked about her abduction as a newborn baby and her harrowing escape from the Kakodemoss facility, all of which I knew to be complete and utter bullshit. I had nearly closed the article tab when a reference to a 1992 article about the Missing Girls had caught my eye. But being that the article was from 1992, it wasn’t on the Daenaranet and I had sent Akiko off to find a hard copy. It was probably going to turn out to be a waste of time, but, well, what could I say? It had piqued my curiosity, and that was a beast I had never been able to turn my back on.

But really, the comment did get me thinking about Nikki and Kira’s encrypted birth records. Which was how I ended up staring at a record screen that stated:
Nikkollas Varrook — Marked One — Deceased
and realizing that I didn’t have a clue who the hell Nikkollas Varrook
was
and why
his
name had been listed as their father instead of James Varris.

Nikkollas’ records were even more bare than James’, which was basically a red flag saying,
Hey, someone fucked with me! Drop everything and look at me!

I flipped through The Embassy’s records on Nikkollas Varrook, but there didn’t seem to be a whole hell of a lot other than, Nikkollas Varrook — Marked One — Deceased. So I jumped on over to the Daenaranet and typed in his name. And to my utter shock, the screen filled with link after link of articles. I clicked on the first one that lead to a digitized version of an old KEM article talking about the 1993 Avensana Labs Disaster.

“Interesting,” I said aloud as I scanned the article. The Avensana Labs Disaster was a unique point in daemon history, because even with the sheer volume of the destruction, there were surprisingly few casualties. And apparently, Nikkollas Varrook had been one of them.

I finished scanning the article and then clicked on the next link on the search list that was also apparently an old digitized KEM article.

Shooting for the Stars:

Three Karalia Scientists Map the Daemon Genome

I scrolled quickly past the image of three smiling guys in white labs coats to the article.

They said it couldn’t be done, but on August 24th, these three fine Karalia scientists, Joshua Centrina, Kiskei Kirihara, and Nikkollas Varrook, along with their team, announced they had mapped the daemon genome. After three years the Avensana Project has…

I just gaped at the screen.
Joshua Centrina, Kiskei Kirihara, and Nikkollas Varrook.
I scrolled quickly back up to the image and just stared at it. There was my father, looking no older than I was now and Kiskei and…
Nikkollas Varrook
. The third person in the picture with a wild tangle of black wavy hair and piercing blue eyes like sapphires, was Nikkollas Varrook. The same Nikkollas Varrook who was in so many of my parents photographs. The same Nikkollas Varrook who was also probably Nikki and Kira’s father.

I scrolled back down past large sections of the article hunting for more pictures of him, but as the next one slid onto the screen, my heart stopped. This one was of Kiskei and another female scientist pretending to be working in front of a set of microscopes. But it wasn’t seeing Kiskei that had made my heart shudder to a halt—it was the girl. A girl with pale blond wavy curls pulled back into a ponytail and startlingly blue eyes. A girl who could have passed for Parker’s twin if the image hadn’t been from over twenty years ago. And then the realization of who the girl in the picture
was
started to click into place.
Her mother.
The girl in the picture was Parker’s
mother
.

Someone shook my shoulder, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen. I think the person must have been saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear it with the ear-buds still in my ears. They shook my shoulder again, and I finally looked up. It was Akiko.

I pulled the ear-buds out. “What were you saying?”

“I said, ‘I found that article you wanted,’” she answered with slight exasperation as she placed a piece of ePaper on my desk.

I looked down at it, then back up at her. “Thanks.”

“Did you need anything
else
?” she asked with arched eyebrows.

“No, I’m good,” I said distractedly as I looked back down at the article.

“Okay then, I’ll be heading back down to the labs to see the progress on those terminals. Call if you need anything.”

“Okay,” I replied without looking away from the ePaper.

The article that Akiko had dug up detailed the abduction of a young Avensana Project scientist named Kassandra “Kass” Zahorsky. Who was apparently the last woman to be abducted, and the only one to escape out of a group of women in Karalia they were calling
the Missing Girls
. Kass had been found seven months after her disappearance wandering the streets of San Francisco extremely pregnant, and in a state of delusion. Shortly after being rushed to the Folsom Street Kalodaemon Hospital, she had gone into labor, and both she and the unnamed baby girl had died from complications. The remaining Missing Girls were apparently never found.

I looked at the date of the article in which the blond girl, Kass, had appeared alongside Kiskei, and then at this one. Three weeks. It had been only three weeks between when Kass had appeared in the article and when she had been abducted. And the sick feeling twisting in my stomach told me it wasn’t a coincidence that she had been taken. No, I was almost one hundred percent sure the Kakodemoss had been behind the abductions.

So the question was, why had the Kakodemoss been so interested in the research on the daemon genome? And why had Skye lied about the true identity of Nikki and Kira’s father? And most importantly, just what the fuck was going on?

Watcher of Shadows

Thursday, November 8th

PATRICK

I
stared at the plain gray
door set into the corrugated cement wall. The note had said Saturday, but by Thursday evening I just couldn’t help myself. And so I went back to 512 Nymphaea Street.

Standing in front of the door, I shoved my key into the keyhole, even though I knew it would light up red again. But this time, the light flashed orange and then green. I gaped at it for a heartbeat before I slowly turned the key. A small clicking reverberated through the door, and then it opened inward a fraction of an inch. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door the rest of the way open.

On the other side of the door, a stone walkway lead toward a set of ebony-colored double doors with a lotus carved into each of them. The doors were slightly ajar, warm light spilling out of them onto the stone walkway. To either side of the doors, a pair of gazelles carved out of stone stood like sentinels. They weren’t the simplified, modern-looking crap you saw throughout the city. No, these looked ancient, like someone had stolen them from an Egyptian temple or something.

I stared at them a long moment before I finally noticed the sound of water. I looked to the left and was shocked to see that a five foot wide moat dotted with waterlilies enclosed the square building in front of me. And lining the entire length of the inside of the corrugated cement wall were long stalks of vibrant green bamboo.

“Huh?” I said to no one but myself as I looked back at the ebony doors. Just what exactly had Kiskei sent me too?

I took a deep breath and walked across the stone walkway and up to the double doors. Without hesitating, I pushed the doors open further and stopped abruptly. About ten feet in front of me, in what looked like an entry room, was a mosaic set into a stone wall. Candles danced and flickered from stone shelves that rose up in an inverted pyramid in front of the mosaic of a woman in black.

I took a few steps into the entry room and stopped, staring at it. The mosaic was done in the same style as the one at The Embassy temple, but the woman didn’t look the same. Unlike that one, this woman was dressed in a black kimono top and an Eastern-style cuirass like a samurai warrior, along with
hakama
pants tucked into knee-high black boots. Her hair pulled back into a triple braided loop, and her right hand resting on the hilt of a sheathed
katana
. But most noticeable was that her expression was not welcoming like Daenara’s, but instead deadly serious.

I don’t know how long I just stood there staring up at her before I heard a sound from close behind me. Without a second’s thought, I struck out as I whipped around to meet the sound. Shawn dodged quickly to the side and my fist sailed past his cheek, my thumbnail slicing across his skin.

He just blinked at me, and I at him, and then he said with a crooked grin, “Hey, Patrick.”

“
Shawn
?” I asked in stunned disbelief. “What the fuck are
you
doing here?”

“Probably the same thing as you,” he answered with a shrug. “Trying to figure out why I got a note and a key left in my locker.”

“It was in your locker?” I asked as I pulled my hand away from him, and jammed it back into the pocket of my hoodie next to the key.

“Yeah. Why, how did you get yours?” Shawn asked as he ran the sleeve of his thick, long-sleeved thermal shirt across his cheek. Which did nothing really other than smear a streak of blood across it.

“Kiskei,” I replied as I considered telling him about the blood.

“Really? huh,” Shawn said in confusion as his brow furrowed. Then he seemed to notice the mosaic behind me. His eyes got large, and he pushed past me. He picked up one of the votive candles that had blown out and touched it to another to relight it. As he placed the candle back down gently he bowed his head, his hands pressed together, brushing the bridge of his nose.

I stepped next to him, and looked up at the mosaic. I let my eyes travel over it until I ended at the black lotus edged in pale gray that adorned the center of the woman’s cuirass, and the large black raven perched on her shoulder. “That’s not Daenara, is it?” I asked as I gestured to the wall mosaic.

Shawn just looked over at me with a slight crooked smile. “’Course not, that’s Kalona.”

I nodded and looked back at the depiction of the deity. “Is she the deity of war or something?”

Shawn’s expression darkened for a moment before settling back into his normal cheerful friendliness. “Not
exactly
. We don’t idolize war, we honor the warrior. Kalona is the Protectress of the Warrior, Watcher of shadows.”

“Ah.” I looked back at the mosaic and finally noticed what she was standing on. “Is she standing in the center of a black lotus?”

“Yep,” Shawn answered distractedly as he looked over the candles, probably searching for any more that might have also blown out.

“Why black?” I asked as I looked back at Shawn.

“Because black is the color of death,” he answered, the normal playful tone to his voice turning serious.

“Oh.”

He pulled a charm out from under his shirt. “Every member of the Protectorate wears one of these, whether they believe in her or not.”

A simplified version of the mosaic was set in relief in a circular silver pendant. The flat areas around her were filled with a black patina so it appeared much older than it probably was.

I took one last, long look at the mosaic wall and then looked to the right and then the left of the entry room. Both hallways seemed to turn at the ends and continue on.

“Right or left?” I asked as I looked back at Shawn.

“Right.”

I nodded and we walked down the hallway that turned to the left at the end. After we turned the corner, the hallway continued on for about ten or fifteen feet before it opened into a vast space. I stopped abruptly, and glanced around the room, letting my eyes travel across every inch of it. The ceiling rose up a good twenty-five feet, and had a mezzanine and windows lining the entirety of the upper edge. A couple feet from the ceiling, solid ebony-colored wooden beams crossed the room at intervals, creating long shadows across the cream-colored mats that covered the floor. The rest of the room was paneled in the same ebony-colored wood, and on the wall across from us was a collection of
bokken
and other wooden practice blades.

There was something about the room—maybe the warmness of the mats or the light streaming through the windows—that somehow made the abundance of black feel less like a funeral parlor, but it did nothing to make it seem less serious.

“Okay, this was not what I was expecting,” I admitted as I arched my eyebrows at the room. Okay, maybe
some
part of me was, but not a very loud part.

“Oh my gods! No way!” Shawn blurted out abruptly as he pushed past me, and walked into the center of the room. He looked up at the cream-colored ceiling with the ebony beams and turned around slowly, taking in the whole room.

“What?!” I yelped as my eyes darted around. Aside from the wooden practice blades and two hanging banners in Daemotic, the room was pretty much bare.

“I know where we are,” he replied as he finished turning around, and his eyes returned to me.

“Which would be?” I asked as I gave the room another quick look over.

“In the Temple of Kalona,” Shawn answered with a huge grin.

“Well
yeah
, I kinda figured that, what with the picture and all the candles,” I said as I gestured back toward where we had come from.

“No, you don’t get it. The Temple of Kalona—”

“Is where the Warriors of Kalo train,” Kiskei finished as he appeared in the doorway at the other end of the room. A smirk spreading across his face as he leaned against the wall, his arms folded across his chest casually.