Daughter of Gods and Shadows (8 page)

“H-he?” Eden stammered. “Who are you talking about? The Guardian?” Was she referring to the Guardian? Is that why he'd appeared?

The creature shook her massive head. “No, not him. He's found you already, but this other one searches for you because the Omen compels him to. She commands him because she has grown impatient. It knows that you won't come to it, so it's coming to you. It doesn't matter what you look like or how far you run. The Omen is coming to find you.”

Omen? There was more than one, so why did she just say “Omen”? Eden was practically a story on
America's Most Wanted
and this thing was talking about a fuckin' Omen? She shook her head and turned to walk away.

“You can't deny the truth, Redeemer.”

Eden turned to face it. “Stop calling me that! I'm not Mkombozi.”

“Liar,” it challenged. “And you fail to complete the Prophecy of the Omens.” It looked angry, if that were possible. “You fail to destroy Sakarabru, and because you fail, he is back and he is angry.”

Fail? Or failed? This thing spoke strangely. Eden shuddered. No one but Rose had ever said that name to her—Sakarabru. Coming from this thing, it sounded different. It sounded personal.

A couple of guys driving by hung their heads out of the windows of the car, gawking at the troll as if it were filet mignon. “Hey sexy!” one of them called out, licking his lips.

“I think I'm in love,” another shouted from the back seat. “Meet us at Patmos! Drinks are on me!”

“And me!” the other shouted from the passenger seat.

That troll thing rolled its eyes in annoyance. “Tiresome,” it muttered irritably. It turned its attention back to Eden. “I should be afraid of you.” It studied Eden, looking her up and down. The troll smirked. “We all should be afraid of you.” Disappointment washed over it as its eyes met and held Eden's gaze. “He's found you.”

“Sakarabru?” she asked, hesitantly.

The troll laughed. “Of course not. I'm not talking about him. The other one. He finds you and he's impatient too.”

Eden swallowed. “The Guardian,” she muttered to herself.

“Your lover.” That thing smiled again. “Your Guardian. He is a handsome one and determined. He knows what must be done. Trust him. You need to hurry,” it said, before turning and walking away. “Hurry and bond, fulfill the prophecy so that we can all finally be done with this.”

*   *   *

Rose stared hypnotized at the video footage being played over and over again on every news station in New York City.

“Authorities are asking anyone who thinks they can identify the woman to contact them immediately.”

“It appears that the woman was being attacked by these men, but what happened next … well … it's just unexplainable.”

She had seen so many strange things in all of her years living this life. She had seen Eden do strange things, but nothing like this. The rest of the world could not believe what she'd done, or that things like that were possible. What would they do now that they had seen?

Eden came into the brownstone and blew through the living room, past Rose like a whirlwind, taking the stairs two at a time leading up to her room.

“Eden?” Rose called after her, and followed her upstairs.

Eden had already started packing by the time Rose got there, and she was crying.

“Don't try to stop me, MyRose,” she snapped, throwing things into a small suitcase. “I'm no savior. I'm not what these Ancients need. You know it as much as I do.”

Eden had tried to be brave, and Rose's heart went out to her. But maybe the girl was right. Mkombozi's essence may have been reborn into this child's body, but it hadn't been reborn to live out its destiny, at least not in this life.

“Stopping you is the last thing I would try and do, MyEden,” she said, sadly, walking over to Eden and taking hold of her hands.

Tears streamed down the girl's face in rivers, and all of a sudden, to Rose, Eden looked like she was six years old again. “It's over,” she said, sounding so defeated. “The police are going to be looking for me. I'm all over the news, the Internet…” She shrugged. “I killed that guy,” she said remorsefully. “I can't explain how I did it, Rose. I just got so angry and I hated those men for what they were trying to do to me. It's only a matter of time before they find me, MyRose. And what's going to happen when they do? What will I do to the police if they find me?”

The authorities were the least of the challenges facing this young woman, and still, she couldn't see it, but Rose could.

Eden sat down wearily on the side of the bed, pulling Rose down next to her. “I have tried to understand the things you've told me all my life, MyRose,” she sobbed. “Believe me, I've tried, but I never wanted to be her. I've never wanted to have to see and do the things she did, because to me, I'm just Eden.” She stared helplessly back at Rose. “I'm me.”

“And you are, Eden,” Rose said, tenderly. “I've always understood that, and I've always tried to do my best to prepare you, but I'm afraid I've failed you.” She pressed her hand to Eden's cheek. Rose hadn't realized that she had started crying, too.

“It's all so impossible to believe,” Eden said, swallowing, struggling to compose herself. “I'm not—that person, that being. I'm not her, MyRose. I can't be, because…”

“Because you're afraid to be,” Rose said, finishing her thought for her.

Eden nodded. “Who would want to be that? I killed that man as easily as I'd swat a fly.”

“They attacked you, Eden!”

“They fuckin' did!” Eden shot back angrily. But just as quickly, she suppressed it. “They deserved to be punished, but not like that, Rose.” Eden grimaced. “I did things to them that … I tortured them. No matter how I try to forget that, I can't. I punished them in a way that was cruel and evil. If that's what this Mkombozi is like, then why would I want to be her?”

Rose resisted the urge to tell her that she was trapped into a fate that she couldn't escape. Eden's choices had been taken from her by Khale the moment the Ancient Shifter had decided to reincarnate Mkombozi's essence into that newborn infant.

Defeat washed over Eden's expression as she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “I have to go,” she said sadly.

Rose nodded and smiled. “Of course you do, MyEden.” Rose felt her heart split in two. The world wasn't a big enough place for Eden to run, but Rose couldn't tell her that. It was a lesson she'd have to learn on her own. “Where will you go?”

Eden shrugged again and took a deep breath before responding. “Someplace warm,” she quipped, forcing a smile. “Someplace where there are no subways, air pollution, or weird-looking creatures that only I can see.”

Rose smiled, too. “I hope you find that place. And I hope that it's all that you dream it should be.”

Rose said it but she didn't believe it. There was no place like that in this world for Eden. There never would be.

 

IN A SMALL TOWN

After a while, Kifo had become numb to the sounds of their screams. It was different than it had been on Theia. Back then, he'd collected the bodies of Ancients who had fallen in battle—Weres, Valkyries, Guardians, and Shifters—and used the spells he'd learned from the mystics and transformed them into soldiers for Sakarabru's Brood Army. Their bodies were strong, even in death, their resolve and discipline unmatched. A Brood soldier who could shift into a beast or who could fly was worth his or her value in treasure.

Kifo's spell not only reanimated the dead, but it made them physically stronger, their muscles and bones as dense as armor, and the beauty of it all was that they all became loyalists to the Demon. They were slaves to his will, and that was what had made the Demon the fierce conqueror that he was on Theia.

Some of the people called out to him in Spanish, “
Reaper! Ll
é
vame! ¡Por favor!
Reaper! Take me! Please! Let death relieve me of this torture!”

They weren't the first whom he had turned, and they wouldn't be the last.

The scent of disease, urine, and feces filled the air. Kifo donned another expensive custom suit, which he would later burn because the smell was overwhelming. The mystics knelt over each of the undead humans, performing their rituals that would change them and make them into the Brood soldiers of this world.

He had started with the sick, terminal patients who were close to death already, but the transformation turned sick humans into weak Brood. He needed strong, able bodies for Sakarabru's army. But like forging metal, the strong needed to be broken down before they could be made. The sickness he had released into the world was beginning to spread at an alarming rate, attacking the strong and the weak. The weak would die off. The strong would become soldiers.

Kifo was a Djinn, his mystics were phantoms, and they all had the power to choose whether or not to allow humans to see them. Doctors and nurses rushed through hospital corridors and in and out of rooms tending to the sick who had come to them for help, unaware of the mystics hovering over patients, chanting their spells. There was a sliver of space between life and death, however, where the victims of these rituals could see them. But in the fever of their sickness, their claims of seeing ghosts and spirits fell on deaf ears.

“Wh-what…? Wh-why are you doing this?”

He stopped in the doorway of the room of one patient, a large Latin male going through the transformation, who saw Kifo.

Tears fell from his eyes as he swiped his muscular arm through the mystic at his bedside.

“Calm down, Señor Gomez. Sir, you've got to lie still,” the nurse standing on the other side of the bed told him.

He looked at her as if she were the crazy one. “Stop him! Don't let him do this to me!”

“
Declare your allegiance to Sakarabru,
” the mystic chanted. “
Deny your faith. Deny your God. Sakarabru will set you free,
” the mystic muttered over and over again.

“
Medico!
” she called out as the man became more erratic.
“Necesito un doctor aqu
í
!”

“Why are you doing this? Why?” His cries faded as Kifo walked away.

“Are you obedient, Kifo?”

Obedience was important to Sakarabru. More important than power or fighting abilities. It's what he demanded of his Brood Army. It was what he demanded of Kifo.

“As always, Lord Sakarabru.”

Why was Kifo doing this? Why had he brought the Demon back from the brink of destruction? Kifo had never known family or where he was from. He had been raised by Sirh Magi in the Northern Territory, and they had taught him the secrets of life and death and the infinite connection between all things.

“There is no end, Kifo, and there is no beginning. We are all who and what we are at any given moment. And it's the moment that matters. You and I are the same; we are one separate but connected being. If I should die and you live, that bond does not break. We are tethered, as all life is tethered.”

The Sirh were peaceful, spiritual beings who lived quiet and simple lives, neutral to the conflicts brewing between Khale and Sakarabru. It was that neutrality that killed them.

“Run, Kifo! Hide! Go now!”

The Sirh had taught him to respect life and to honor it. They had taught him not to fear the afterlife, but when he lost them, Kifo was a scared and frightened young Djinn, a child who quickly learned that not all Theian Ancients believed as the Sirh had believed that all life was precious, especially his.

He had scavenged for food and a place to sleep at night. He had huddled in caves to avoid being seen or caught up in wars that he wasn't brave enough to fight. Kifo was a mystic, not a soldier, and he was afraid.

He had wandered into the desert and found a Faih, akin to an Earth scorpion. Kifo found it dying and was going to eat it but couldn't bring himself to do it. Did it have the same passion for living as he did? Did it deserve to live? Did he?

Kifo had closed his eyes and repeated a chant he had learned from one of the Sirh magi, and as he chanted, he focused on the bridge that this Faih was traveling to get from life to death. He imagined its fear, its uncertainty, and its regret that it had to leave its life behind too soon. And then, at that crucial moment when he knew that the Faih had accepted its fate, Kifo refused it passage to the other side of that bridge he saw in his mind, and the Faih flipped over on its legs and quickly crawled away.

He had been so caught up in his chanting that it wasn't until he saw the Faih crawl away that he noticed someone standing over him. It was a young general, Sakarabru.

“What did you do?” he asked, towering over Kifo.

Kifo thought long and hard before responding. “I took away its option to cross over,” he finally said. “It had no choice but to come back to this life.”

Sakarabru had been kind to him. He had been patient and had encouraged his studies in the art of mysticism. It was Sakarabru who convinced him to use his abilities on a fallen Ancient soldier who was near death.

“Remember the Faih?” he asked Kifo, as his soldiers dropped the nearly dead body at Kifo's feet.

Kifo looked confused. “But this is a Shifter, Sakarabru.”

“Satisfy my curiosity, Kifo,” the Demon had responded.

Kifo lived with the Demon, but in his mind he hadn't chosen a side in the wars. It wasn't until that moment that he realized that the Demon was asking him to choose his side.

It took much longer with the Shifter than it had with the Faih. Kifo had chanted over him for three days before he was finally able to stand. He was alive again, but different. He was angry and almost feral, until Sakarabru spoke to him. The Demon's voice calmed him, and he was obedient to Sakarabru.