Daughter of Gods and Shadows (3 page)

“Tukufu!” Khale called out, panicked, searching for him all around her. “Free her! She will defeat him if you free her!”

The black, expansive wings of the Guardian blended with the dark skies until it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended.

“Touch her and die, Guardian!” Sakarabru threatened.

“Only you will die this day, beast!” the Guardian growled.

The Guardian, Tukufu, swooped down from the sky in a blur and snatched the female from the Demon's horns before Sakarabru could stop him. But the Guardian left himself vulnerable.

Sakarabru swung a mighty fist at Tukufu and landed it on his chin. The Guardian flew backward but stopped himself and changed direction toward the Demon, and leading with his feet, planted both of them hard in Sakarabru's chest, caving it in until he lost his breath. The Guardian had hurt him. Until this moment, no one had ever hurt Sakarabru before.

Sakarabru charged at Tukufu, but Mkombozi rushed past the Guardian, caught the Demon by those same horns that had stabbed into her, raised him high above her head, and tore each of them off at his skull with her bare hands.

Sakarabru cried out in agony, writhing in pain. Tukufu caught the Demon, held him from behind, and locked his gaze on her.

The sound of thunder rumbled throughout the heavens. The sun in the center of this universe, which had had its light blocked by the darkness of Sakarabru, began to burn brighter, its heat scorching, and it blazed furiously in the distance.

The blackness blinding Khale was gone, but the heat from the sun was unbearable. “Mkombozi!” she called out.

The whites of Mkombozi's eyes filled with blood. Mkombozi stretched her arms out at her sides and slowly closed them together, facing her palms toward the Demon. Slowly, the three of them lifted off the ground and rose higher and higher into the air.

Sakarabru began to twist and scream. Tukufu's wings began to burn, and he released his hold on the Demon and flew away. “Mkombozi! Too much! Pull it back! Control it!” The Guardian called out to her.

Her chest heaved, she balled her fists, the symbols glowed with the power of the sun. Blinding white light from the symbols on her arms and chest seemed to swallow her whole.

“No!” Khale gasped, rushing to Mkombozi from behind. “The Omens have taken her!” Khale reached for her, but the heat coming from the Omens burned her flesh to the bone, and she fell back screaming. “The Omens have taken her!”

Sakarabru felt himself burning. He watched in horror as layers of his own skin began to melt and fall to the ground.

A strange look of something akin to regret shadowed the imposter's face. “You are starting to remember. Aren't you?”

The Djinn took a deep breath, conjured a chair behind himself, and sat down across the room from Sakarabru. “Our world was destroyed when you were,” he explained. “The Redeemer, with the power of the Omens, obliterated you, and after that, the influence of those damn things was so powerful, she couldn't pull back on the devastating rage they filled her with. She destroyed Theia, some say by hurling it into the sun. Most of us managed to escape to this world, but those that didn't…”

Sakarabru still wanted to believe that the smaller Kifo was an imposter, but he knew that he was wrong.

“I took the rumors of the Omens for granted,” he admitted wearily. “Stories of the Redeemer had never been more than bedtime stories to me.”

Kifo simply watched him.

“Theia is gone?”

“It is.”

“And the Redeemer?”

“Khale destroyed her using the Spell of Dissolution.” The Demon could not believe what he was hearing.

“The Spell of Dissolution?” She was a Shifter, not a mystic. “How did she come to know that spell?”

It was a spell that had not been used in his lifetime. It was one that was thought to have been dead and buried with Ancients, generations before their time.

“I believe she learned it from Andromeda, but no one knows for sure. Who else but Andromeda could know it?”

She was the Troll Seer of the Ages. Andromeda had unlimited sight into the past, present, future, even the afterlife all at once. It was said that she had seen the rise of Sakarabru and that he would ultimately rule Theia. But it was also said that she had created the Omens, which would be his destruction.

“What is this new world, Magician?” He glared at Kifo and watched, satisfied, as the Djinn grimaced at the word “magician.” It was a test, a small one, but enough of one to confirm that this Kifo was no imposter. Even in his smaller form, wearing his strange garments, the word “magician” still offended him.

“Earth. Smaller than Theia. The atmosphere is much heavier, and it's colder than Theia, but over time, we have adapted.”

“We?” he asked. “Who survives?”

“Many of the lesser Ancient races,” he said, shrugging. “Pixies, Imps, and Vampyres.”

Sakarabru would've laughed if he had the strength. The mystic had been generous in referring to these creatures as lesser Ancients. They were pests.

Kifo continued. “Some Guardians survived, Shifters, Were and Mer Nations.”

Now the Demon was interested in what he had to say. “And what of Khale?” he probed. The Demon gathered enough strength to sit up straight and lean toward the mystic.

Kifo drew a deep breath. “She lives.”

“She still rules?”

“This world is different from Theia, Sakarabru. The Ancients do not play the same roles here. I'm sad to say that, like you, we are mere shadows of our former selves. Humans rule here.”

“Humans? Are they strong? Good fighters?”

Kifo laughed. “They are … different. Warriors of another sort. They have numbers on their side, weapons and technology—satellites and cell phones.”

Kifo was speaking in a language the Demon did not understand.

“We have learned to co-exist, Demon. Ancients seem to prefer it that way.”

Sakarabru stared back suspiciously. “My army does not co-exist, Kifo.”

“Your army is dead, Sakarabru.”

Dead? How could an army comprised of so many be dead?

“You brought me back to
co-exist
?”

“I brought you back to prove to you that I could. What you do next is up to you.”

The Djinn stood up, and as he did, the chair behind him vanished. “You are tired, Sakarabru, and you need to rest.”

The Demon shot an angry glare at him. “You have no idea what I need, Magician!”

Kifo bowed his head slightly. “I trust that you will find this dwelling suitable.”

As he slowly spun around the empty space, it began to fill with furnishings and artifacts from Sakarabru's Theian castle.

“It's not as magnificent as you're used to, but it's the best that I can recall from memory,” he said, smiling.

Sakarabru was too exhausted to care. Kifo was right. He was weak and he desperately needed his rest, but there was one last statement that he needed to make.

“I will need my army, Kifo,” he said gravely. Sakarabru wanted to believe that the loyalty of this mystic was as true and steadfast now as it had been when Sakarabru ruled half of the Theian world. Did bringing the Demon back after so much time had passed confirm that the mystic's intentions were as pronounced now as they were then? And if so, then just how willing was the mystic determined to prove this to the Demon.

“You created my Theian Army,” Sakarabru stated under the weight of fatigue.

Kifo nodded. “From the bones of fallen Ancients,” he confirmed.

“You have bought me back, but a lord without an army…”

Kifo visibly swallowed. “There are no fallen Ancients here, Sakarabru. Only humans, as I have said, and their bodies aren't as strong as those of Theian warriors.”

“You go, Kifo,” he said, dismissively. “But in this or any other world, I am Lord Sakarabru, and it is impossible for me to co-exist.”

Kifo's form gradually faded away as Sakarabru's eyes slowly began to close, and he fell into a deep sleep.

 

SPECIAL GIRL

Eden lived a paralyzed life. She'd tried leaving Brooklyn several times, only to come running back to the brownstone and Rose's arms with her tail tucked between her legs. She couldn't escape the things that scared her most because those things were everywhere, even here and now on the Staten Island Ferry.

On the surface they looked like people. To everyone around them, that's exactly what they were, but to Eden, the tall, thin man reading the
Post
across from her revealed a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth and had eyes like an owl's. The pretty woman standing at the bow of the ferry, wearing the Donna Karan knit dress and red-bottom pumps, had the face of a cat. And out of the corner of her eye, Eden could've sworn she'd seen a shadowed thing squeeze into a seat next to a window. The old woman sitting in the aisle seat nodded and smiled at it.

Most kids were afraid of the bogeyman under the bed or the monster in the closet, but most kids outgrew those fears when parents said the magic words “You're too old to believe in monsters.”

The difference between Eden and those kids was that her mother never told her that.

Lately, it seemed that the Staten Island Ferry was as far away from home as she would go now when she “ran away.” She could waste away an entire day and well into the evening riding this thing, pretending she had set sail on an ocean liner headed to the South Pacific. Eden stared out into the water, wishing away the rest of the world, listening to music on her iPhone and trying not to think about what was really going on.

Rose wanted to talk. She always wanted to talk. Rose was scared. She didn't have to say it for Eden to know it, but anytime you find somebody in your house floating above her bed with fresh bruises around her neck, then that's a pretty good reason to be afraid. The bruises were real, and if they were real, then that probably meant that the monster in her dream, Mkombozi had been real, too, which meant—what, exactly?

Eden saw things she didn't want to see. Dreamed things she didn't want to dream, and was living a life she didn't want to live. Eden glanced down at the scars inside her wrists that reminded her how powerless she'd been to even take her own life.

How old was she then? Eighteen. She'd been eighteen when she'd left home for the first time, rented a room in a cheap motel in Jersey, and tried to kill herself. It was as tragically romantic a suicide scene as a girl could come up with: candles, a tub full of water, and a naked and vulnerable teenager, crying, cutting horizontally instead of vertically to make sure she got the job done right.

She'd woken up to Rose and Khale standing over her.

“Silly, silly girl!” Khale fussed, lifting Eden out of the water as if she were a wet puppy.

Eden cursed under her breath. “Damn! And I was nearly in a coma, too.”

When they got her home, Dr. Rose expertly sutured her wounds, bandaged them up, and Eden was as good as new.

“Someone is watching, Eden,” Khale told her. “Someone is always watching.”

Rose had sent Eden a text announcing that Khale was on her way to the brownstone, as if she were the Queen of England, and Eden should rush home to bow to her as she entered the house. She was the Shifter—the
Great
Shifter, Rose called her, but Eden had never seen her shift into anything.

Khale was a mousy-looking woman around Eden's age with oversize glasses and a fetish for coffee. Maybe she assumed that Eden would find her more relatable if she were just an awkward young woman, like Eden. Khale talked cool, was up on all the latest video games and music and clubs.

Eden could see through the disguises of other Ancients, but seeing Khale's true form was impossible for some reason. The Shifter made sure that Eden saw only what she wanted her to see. Maybe that's why she was called the “Great” Shifter, because she was really great at being fake.

She'd been trying to encourage Eden to open up about her “feelings,” but she immediately shut down when Eden finally told her, “I have no feelings, Khale. Mkombozi does.”

The Shifter hadn't visited Eden and Rose in more than a year, so the fact that she was coming now made Eden sick to her stomach.

“Is this where you hide?”

Shit! Eden immediately recognized Khale's voice and visibly cringed. “It's where I try to hide.”

Khale sat down next to Eden. She had on a pair of baggy jeans, belted low on her petite hips, rolled into cuffs at the ankles, and a T-shirt with the words
KISS
ME,
I'M
MULTIRACIAL
on the front.

“You keep trying to insult me, and I keep telling you that you're not capable,” Khale said indifferently.

Khale was a big deal among her kind. She was a big deal to Rose. Rose had told Eden that Khale had been Mkombozi's mother and the one who had ultimately destroyed her. So, what did that make her to Eden? Just fuckin' scary, that's all.

“Are you here to remind me again of how proud I should be about my lot in life?”

Khale sipped on her coffee. “I'm afraid we're out of time for all of that.”

That sick feeling in Eden's stomach turned into something else, something unexplainable—or maybe it was just plain fear. She didn't want to talk to Khale, or be Mkombozi, or go out and find her Omens. She didn't want any of this, but nobody seemed to give a damn.

“I'm not doing it, Khale,” Eden told her. “You're wasting your time.”

“He's back, Eden,” Khale said, patiently. “The Seer, Apus, has seen it.” Apus was the Seer of present times, of things happening now.

Eden could feel the heat from those oversize lenses burn against the side of her face as Khale stared at her, but she refused to look back at the Ancient.