Midnight Surrender: A Paranormal Romance Anthology (19 page)

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The Seven Cities of Gold

I am the Shadow Slayer. I will live five hundred years. Five hundred years ago Columbus was about to discover the New World and ice cream hadn’t been invented yet. Five hundred years from now humans will most likely populate space and have cures for the incurable. Maybe by then, a five hundred year life won’t seem so epic.

I stare deeply into my boyfriend’s gorgeous golden eyes. When I’m granted my reward, my Last Life, Drew will be long since dead and we will have lived one thousand years between us. Drew’s five hundred years only reveal themselves in his kiss. He kisses like a man who’s lived countless lifetimes and discovered the only thing that matters. Nothing about Drew says he’s just begun his Last Life.

He’s someone girls notice under the Friday night lights––especially the way he pulls off the winning play week after week. And, if you’re like most girls you’d die to just talk to him and even concoct ways to make that happen, including circling back in line again when he and his friends walk up to the snack shack, or walk an extra loop around the parking lot in search of a ride, hoping to run into him.

Tomorrow’s game is against LT. We hate LT. I don’t know why, it’s just the way it is. Freshmen sort of have to accept things like arch rivals. Before I found out what I am, before I met Drew, I felt like freshman was tattooed on my forehead. It’s kind of cool how everyone at school, make that everyone in town, wants to beat LT.

Drew and I snuck onto the football field ten minutes ago. It’s pretty epic scaling the stadium gates. I’m afraid of heights, but Drew and I climbed the chain link side by side. I feel like I can do anything when he’s with me. He’s the kind of guy a girl would break into school with and not care about what punishment might come down after. I love lying here in the empty stadium with Drew, like this. Like everything’s normal. Like we’re normal.

“
It’s easy, Roxie,” Drew says, lying beside me, inches away.

“
What is?” I shift a little in the grass and turn to face him.

“
Killing the moon.” It’s the night before the big game against LT, but Drew’s a million miles away.

“
If you say so.” I shiver and stare at the huge goal post above us, ghostly against the night sky. He knows how badly I’ve wanted to kill the moon. How important it is. I’ve been hounding him non-stop about it since homecoming––the night my life changed––when he spoke of it at the bonfire.

We are said to kill the moon because its phases are meaningless to us. Time doesn’t matter to us.

I’m not sure I’m ready. I mean, not now. Not this second. Not on a Thursday night. Such a normal night. I like normal. Moon killing seems more of a Saturday night thing, I guess. Saturday nights are meant for the extraordinary. I stroke my arm and feel the rough edges of my massive scar. There’s not enough Mederma in the world to completely heal my first battle wound.

“
Come on!” Drew says, standing over me in just the right spot so that the goal posts stick out of his head like huge horns. I laugh. But he gets all jumpy, searching the bleachers as if he expects to be surrounded. Just like he did at homecoming before he took me to the enchanted labyrinth. When he told me what I was. I love the way he’s looking at me now––desperate and dire.

Drew holds out his hand and I grab a hold of it. He reaches down and grabs my other hand, tugging on my arms. I lift off the grass, out of the end zone and into his arms. He pulls me in close like his shadow had when we danced.

Shadows want to be human more than anything.

I hug Drew, exploring his perfect body. I never want us to be separated again. But we will. I’ll see all I love die.

“
Shadows are at play,” Drew says, staring at the moon.

“
Even more important for me to know how to kill the moon then, right?”

He gives my hand a History Channel kiss.

“
Tell me about The Seven Cities of Gold,” I say.

He holds my hand in his and we walk off the field and onto the track.

“
First, you need to know...the truth.”

“
About what?”

“
About me.” Drew glances at the moon again. “Stand here.” He wraps his arms around my waist and gently walks me over by the bleachers. We stop only a few feet away from them. He lets go of me and stands a few feet away, staring at the all-weather track. “Ready?”

I swallow hard. “Sure.”

He smiles and takes guarded steps, one and then another, inching his way toward me and never taking his eyes off the track. I watch our shadows blend into one. When I feel his hand on my lower back a flash of silver light surrounds us. I jump into his arms, trembling, and search his golden eyes, more gorgeous than ever. He holds tight to me, and whispers, “Close your eyes.”

So I do. His voice is different, deeper, with an accent I can’t place. A chill ripples from my head to my feet.

“
Now…open them again.”

I open my eyes to the gentle crash of waves on an enormous beach. The warm evening air heavy on my skin.

“
You only know me as Drew, the boy I’ve had to become. But I want you to know the real me. My name is Andrés Carrera De Portolo.”

“
Andrés?” I whisper, liking the way his real name leaves my lips––mysterious, foreign and dangerous. Even though Drew doesn’t sound like the Drew I know, his accent makes him hotter than ever. I bend down and run my fingers over the sand, letting it sift through my fingers. This is real.

“
It was here that the last Slayer came for me. It was here I gave him his Last Life.”

“
Tell me about the Slayer before you.”

Drew takes a full breath and looks up the slight rise of the beach to a field of palm trees. He sets his gaze back on me as if he’s measuring his words. Considering.

“
The world knew the last Slayer as Francisco Vazquez de Coronado.”

“
Coronado. The explorer?”

Drew nods. “The same. He was tormented in his Last Life by the pursuit of the gold he would never find. But, he was also tortured by something more.”

I swallow hard. “The Seven Cities?”

Drew casts a long eye on the silver ocean, sparkling at the horizon. “Do you know what it is to live in a world where men kill women for sport? Where simple gossip can kill a woman?”

I’m breathless and can’t focus. Yet the look in Drew’s eyes comfort me in spite of all that he says. In spite of the lives he lived before I was born. His golden eyes seem to glow, even in the dead of night.

“
No,” I say. “I don’t know anything about killing women for sport. But I do know how gossip can kill, or might as well. The way some girls at school can spread a rumor, it’s like they might as well have the power of life and death.”

“
Clearly. But, you must be ready for something more. Something deadly. Especially if you are to kill the moon. There are places where women could not go. Would not go. Dared not go. This is one of them.” Drew uses his whole arm to sweep the expanse of ocean in front of us. “I had not seen a woman in ten years, not until I saw the picture of...you.”

“
How could…”

“
Your likeness was inlaid in gold, burnished in a charm as was the tradition. The necklace, a gift given to sailors on long journeys, was ceremoniously kissed by their girlfriends in hopes the kiss and the gold would offer protection enough to reunite the lovers. Yours was lost at sea. It washed up on shore…” he says taking a few short steps, sort of pacing. He stops, kneels low to the ground and runs his hand over the wet grains of sand in the spot of surf where the island meets the sea. “Here.”

“
It wasn’t me,” I say with a laugh.

Drew reaches around his neck and lifts a golden chain with a simple charm over his head and hands the necklace to me, charm first.

I cradle the charm, licking my lips, straining to see the worn inscription.

“
That’s a sailor’s moon,” Drew says, staring at the heavens, at the beautiful silver circle in the sky. “Step out of the light and let the moon show you what you long to see.”

I hold the charm in the silver light. Familiar waves of hair burnished into the gold, and a slight smile comes into view. I gasp at the sight. “She’s…me.”

“
The Seven Cities were legend, its quest the greatest of its time. Its mystery, one of the greatest of ours. The Seven Cities was an ancient quest that ended in murder, deceit and worst of all––utter and total failure.”

I shake my head. “This can’t be me.” I’ve wanted to hear about The Seven Cities of Gold ever since I claimed my sword. I’ve longed to know its story, to hear about my sword’s origins. I’ve longed to know how the sword came to be. But now, my stomach churns and I want to freeze time. I want to go back to the football field and lie in the grass. I’m afraid of who I am, now more than ever.

“
But, The Seven Cities of Gold were discovered. By some. They weren’t just a crazy man’s dream, although they certainly turned into his nightmare. All who had lusted for them had been blinded by desire and riches beyond the young world’s imaginings. But these are the things that bewitch young men. Adventure. Honor. A great quest. What young man upon hearing of their treasure would not want to ravage them? Would not want to stake his claim?”

My mind is dizzy with everything Drew and I have been through. Dizzy with the idea of five hundred more years of this. Drew’s no boy. And as he talks, it seems like he’s turning into another man. One I’m not sure I’ll ever really know.

“
How did you know? How did you know I was the next Slayer? How did you figure out it was me?”

“
I saw it in your shadow.”

I gaze deeply into his ancient eyes, questioning.

“
The Slayer’s shadow glistens. The sheen only seen by Slayers alone.”

The full moon is so bright it casts my shadow as dark as the noonday sun. Down in the darkness of my sandy, full moon shadow a golden light sparkles from the outside edge into the center and back out again.

“
We’d met in darkness. It was only when I saw you in the light that I knew. Only when I saw you in the cafeteria that I knew you were the Slayer.”

“
But that couldn’t have been the only way. You would have had to comb the Earth in search of a single shadow. It would have taken forever to find me out of all of the people on Earth. There had to be something more to it.” I say so fast I can’t keep up with my own words. I literally choke on my own curiosity.

Drew raises his eyebrows. “I’ve loved you for centuries.”

“
Centuries?”

His face softens as if he’s let something go, a secret he’s been trusted to keep and is now finally free of.

“
You did?” I barely get the words out because he slays me with his stare. “But…I wasn’t born, yet. How could you? You couldn’t have known me.”

“
I thought you a sprite. A dream. A ghost, at first.”

He reaches into his pocket. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to give you this small token.” He pulls out a string of shells. One after the other they spill out of his pocket. White and beautiful. As if they’d just been plucked from the sand. One tied to the other with knots that seem to hug each shell. I lean in closer to Drew and he lifts the shells over my head. They settle on my chest, over my Oakdale Red Devil football jersey. Drew’s football jersey.

“
I made this for you,” he says staring at me from under his blond bangs. “The promise of this moment is the only thing that kept me alive.”

Learn more about Laura A.H. Elliott and the Shadow Slayer Series at
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www.Laurasmagicday.wordpress.com

13 on Halloween (Shadow Series #1) and Shadow Slayer (Shadow Series #2) are available now

Liv’s backyard
June 2015

“
Jedd, Shy is dangerous! He killed two of our classmates and kidnapped a little girl! Why are you being so stubborn about this?” I demanded an explanation for his pigheadedness. He was being impossible.