Daughter of Gods and Shadows (10 page)

“Did he attack you as well?” the reporter asked, shoving the microphone in the woman's face.

The woman nodded and was immediately collected and gathered up in a man's, presumably her husband's, arms. “She can't do this! Not now!” he said, quickly whisking her away.

Rose had been glued to the television, watching the horror unfold on almost every channel, hour after hour, for the last two days. The sounds of sirens bombarded her from the television and from outside her own window. It was happening everywhere—in her city, in cities across the country and around the world.

She had lived in this world for four thousand of its years, and she had seen the destitution of plagues, wars, even genocide. She had seen entire nations destroyed by volcanoes, cities devastated by earthquakes, floods, and tornados. Rose had lived through everything she thought that this world had to offer, but never had she ever seen anything as horrific, as terrible, or frightening as this.

Humans turned against humans, fathers killed their wives, mothers killed their children, children killed their parents. It started with the sickness, a flu or viral infection of some kind. People died from it, only to come back to life hours later, attacking those around them, feeding on them, like animals, like zombies, only they weren't the mindless creatures she'd seen in movies, these weren't zombies.

They took that young woman's father away in handcuffs, covered in his wife's blood, and he cried like a baby as they dragged him to that police van and shoved him inside.

“I don't know.… I don't understand.… I'm so—sorry! God! I'm sorry!”

“Rose. Rose?”

She had no idea how many times Khale had called her name before she finally managed to get Rose to peel her gaze from that poor man on the news.

Khale looked like she hadn't slept in days. “We have to go.”

Rose stared dumbfounded at her. “Go? Go where, Khale?”

Of course the Shifter knew what was happening, and not just here, but all around the world. There were no safe places left anymore.

“Look,” Rose raised a trembling hand toward the television screen. “Look what he's done.”

Khale stared blankly at the screen.

Rose turned her attention back to it, too. “I've spent the last four thousand years waiting for this, Khale, always knowing that someday it would come. But deep in my heart, I'd hoped it never would.”

“We've been preparing for this, Rose. We've been preparing Eden for this.”

“But how could we really?” she questioned. “This task you assigned to me has been an impossible one from the very beginning. There was nothing that I could say or do to get that child ready for what is happening now.” The lump in her throat swelled even more.

“We have to go and get Eden and bring her back, Rose. Now is not the time for her to run away.”

Rose turned to Khale. “Is that why you're here?”

“You know she won't come home if I ask her. She's closer to you. She listens to you,” Khale reminded her. “And she loves you.”

All of a sudden Rose was feeling her age. On Theia, she had been Mkombozi's nurse and caregiver, and before that, she had been Khale's. Her kind were healers, known for their tenderness and often sought after by aristocrats of Theian society to be their physicians or tend to their children.

The term “Ancients” was a misconception. It was a word that construed the theory that their kind lived forever, and that wasn't true. They outlived humans, but their lives ended just as any living creature's life had to end, and Rose was at the end of hers. For the last twenty-four years she'd spent every waking moment of her life taking care of Eden and trying to prepare her for these new times. Rose looked at the screen again, at the chaos and turmoil filling the streets, knowing that she had failed.

“I remember the night she was born,” Rose quietly admitted with tears filling her eyes.

She had been a doctor back then and had delivered that child. The mother was a young and frightened teenager.

“She cried, Khale,” Rose said sadly, remembering holding the squirming newborn in her hands. “But only for a moment. I'll never forget the sound of it, though, because it was distinctly her cry, her voice. That was Eden.”

“Rose,” Khale said, woefully. “Rose, we don't have time for this.”

Rose ignored her. Maybe Khale didn't have time, but Rose was no longer concerned with the concept of time.

Her mother didn't want her at first, but the young woman cried when that baby died. Her heart was broken. Rose's heart broke for her.

“I was so nervous about performing the ceremony,” she admitted with a fragile smile. “I had seen it done before by my elders, but only twice, and I wasn't sure that it would work or even that I wanted it to.”

Her memories took her back to that night in her apartment before she left for the morgue.

“You can do this, Rose,” Khale had told her all those years ago, long before that child had been born. “The ritual is rooted in Ancient magic, so it will work.”

Rose finished packing all the things she needed for the ceremony tonight and had left no traces of herself in that apartment. Rose stood in the middle of the living room, taking deep breaths to calm her nerves. She took an old shoe box from the top shelf of a bookshelf and placed it on the dining room table, opening it and removing its contents, spreading them out in a perfect line next to one another.

The first was a small silver vial, ornate with rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. Inside the vial was water that had been blessed by Ancient Healers in a time before even Khale had existed. Next, Rose pulled out a fragile papyrus scroll that she had been careful to handle, fearing that over time the brittle document would fall apart in her hands. A white candle and lighter and finally a soft angora blanket that she had made with her own hands centuries ago. All lay displayed on the table as she examined them. After taking inventory of these things, she replaced them, carefully packing them away, tucked the box under her arm, and left for the hospital.

Rose's heels clicked lightly against the glossy linoleum of the bottom floor of the building, heading toward the morgue. It was late. Rose flashed her medical credentials to the security guard, who barely glanced in her direction as he buzzed the door open to let her in. Why the dead needed security guards was rather laughable.

The infant looked even smaller than the six pounds, eight ounces she had weighed at birth. Rose laid her on top of the blanket on one of the autopsy tables and stared at her. She didn't look real, and Rose certainly couldn't fathom the idea that somehow the things she was about to do would bring her back to life. But, then again, it wasn't that teenage girl's child who would come to life. That child had passed through this world for a moment before moving on to her next life. This would be Khale's child.

With a finger, Rose pushed down on the tiny chin to open her mouth and, drop by drop, let the water from the jeweled vial fill her mouth until the vial was empty. Rose lit the candle as her Ancestors had done.

“The essence of the individual will follow the light,” she had learned. “It is a beacon to those who are lost, whose life journeys have not yet ended, fully. But beware the essence of evil or angry beings, for they should never be allowed to return.”

Rose gently unrolled the scroll. Her eyes glistened with tears at the images drawn by her own hand so long ago. A stream of very old symbols filled the page as Rose began to recite the oration to open the gateway between the Ancients and the infant lying on that table.

“Give me the sweet breath that is in your nostrils. I am the guardian of this great being who separates the earth from sky. If I live, she will live; I grow young, I live, I breath the air.”

Rose finished her incantation, took a step back away from the table, and held her breath. Had it worked? Had she brought the Ancient essence of Mkombozi into this world? Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement.

A deep, threatening rumble rose up from the ground. Equipment on the shelves began to shake and fall to the floors. The walls began to crack, and Rose truly feared that the building was about to cave in on her. Then the child started to cry.

“Thank you, Rose.” Khale said, stepping out of the darkness, as tall as the ceiling, thin and powerful, with flower petals where lips should be, a stream flowing down her back and onto the floor, filled with all manner of sea creatures, her skin as blue as the sky. “You did it.” She smiled. “Mkombozi is here.”

“Doc!” the security guard banged hard on the door and tried turning his key into the lock. “Doc, you all right in there? The door's locked! Doctor?”

Rose looked desperately at Khale.

“She is cold, Rose.”

Rose snapped out of her hesitation, rushed over to the child, and quickly wrapped the blanket around her.

“I'll get help!” the man said outside of the door.

Rose gathered the child in her arms and held her close to her heart. She looked across the room for Khale, but the Ancient was gone. Several minutes later, the quaking stopped and Rose pulled the door open with little effort. She looked around for the security guard, but he was nowhere to be found. Rose found the stairwell and quickly left with her child.

“Rose? No,” Khale said sorrowfully, kneeling down at Rose's feet and taking Rose's hands in hers.

Rose noticed how old her hands looked, and all of a sudden she was so very tired. Rose had unintentionally stepped out of the spell of her glamour, which had kept her looking young all these years, and she felt relieved.

“You can't do this, Rose,” Khale pleaded with her. “Not now. She needs us. She needs you to bring her home, Rose. You know she won't come with me.”

The Great Shifter was crying.

“I have loved her, Khale, as if she had come from my body. I have done all I can for her. But I will not bring her back. Not this time,” she said, surprised by how feeble her voice was.

“Rose, she's not ready to be out there on her own yet. She needs us to guide her and to watch over her on this quest for the Omens.”

“I will not lead her to that,” Rose said firmly.

“Look! Look at what is happening to this world! Look at what the Demon has started! Rose, she needs to do this, and we have to help her!”

Eden's small and pretty face flashed in Rose's mind. The little girl, so small and afraid, who smiled when she curled up in Rose's lap and laughed until she cried when Rose tickled her. The child who fell asleep in her arms when she sang to her—that was her child. The scared young woman who was out there somewhere, running as far away and as fast as she could from Theian prophecy, was her Eden. And Rose hoped that she would escape it and get as far away from it as she could.

She looked at Khale, gradually fading from her sight, and Rose breathed a sigh of relief as she welcomed her long-awaited rest. “All I've ever wanted was for her to be happy, Khale.”

Khale's expression twisted in confusion as if the word “happy” was a foreign concept to her.

They both knew the fate of the Redeemer after the bond with the Omens was completed. The Omens would make her powerful enough to defeat the Demon, and then they would destroy her. There was no other way that it could end. At least if Eden was running, maybe she had a chance. At least running away gave her a choice.

“Rose?” Khale shook her. “Rose!”

The sound of Khale's voice sounded so far away. Weightlessness enveloped Rose and finally she was set free.

 

BERLINER MORGENPOST

BERLIN OFFICIALS DECLARE A STATE OF EMERGENCY

Military forces have been called in to restore order to Berlin. Scientists have not been able to identify the mysterious plague that has killed thousands. Days later, these same patients, who have been declared legally dead, reanimate or are resurrected, seemingly fully recovered initially, only to attack and appear to feed on other humans. One medical professional interviewed stated the following: “The initial onset of the disease appears as meningitis or influenza, but does not respond to treatment of either. We have no idea what it is.”

 

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY

Three days ago Eden was at the airport trying to buy a one-way plane ticket to Fort Lauderdale. Now she was on a bus heading for Cleveland. All air travel had been suspended until further notice. Eden had been sleeping in a bus terminal for three days before she finally managed to get a ticket out of Brooklyn, and the only bus leaving was headed to Cleveland. The ticket cost her six hundred dollars. She paid it because all that mattered was getting the hell away from this place.

She'd tried calling Rose several times, only to have her calls go straight to voice mail. In the past, Rose, along with Khale, had always found Eden and had always convinced her to go home. This time, Eden had no intention of going back, but it would've been nice to hear Rose's voice and to know that she was okay. Of course she was okay. Rose was an Ancient. For now, at least, Rose had to be safe.

Eden sat huddled beside the window in a seat next to a pregnant woman holding a toddler in her lap. The people on this bus were scared. She was scared. Eden had no idea what was waiting for her in Cleveland or where she'd go after that, but the fact remained that New York had caved in on itself and turned into a nightmare. She'd been checking the news on her smartphone.

People were getting sick and dying and then coming back to life and killing each other. There had even been reports of some people eating other people. It was crazy. Eden had been feeling sick to her stomach for days. She hadn't been able to eat and she'd barely slept. This was it. She knew it. This was what Rose and Khale had been telling her about all these years. It was real. The Demon was real, and this so-called plague was no plague at all. Her gut told her that all of this was a part of the prophecy that had been drilled into her for as long as she could remember.