Read Sin Eaters: Devotion Book One Online
Authors: Kai Leakes
Sin Eaters: Devotion Book One (10 page)
Calvin's voice broke through his inner thoughts. “Damn! Really? I remember he was killed by a Snatcher. Shit makes sense now.”
“No, brotherpoo, it's deeper than that.” Exhaling, Kali watched her brother as she continued. “Grammy was ashamed how this happened, but Uncle Bishop's dad ran off and hid with Sera so they could be married. It took a long time before Grammy could even find them to demand that they come home. Bishop's dad had died protecting Sera, and Sera had brought Bishop home to raise him. The summer we spent, when you had just found out about your immortality, that was when we got to meet him, bro. Then a year later he was killed by a Snatcher, dying in the same his father had died when he was protecting him.”
Kali wiped a solitary tear falling down her toffee cheek, with the heel of her hand as she gave a half-hearted smile. “You Freeman-Steeles know family is your life or death.”
Calvin shook his head and slouched over in the chair. He had taken the time to sit and cradle his head, the new knowledge swarming his mind. “Why did that shit have to happen, sis? I connected with him. He schooled me in so much. I had no idea he was Immortal. What made a Snatcher come after him?”
“I don't know,” Kali replied softly. “She wouldn't tell me that.” Tears choked her up, making her draw her knees up to her chest.
“I think we need to find out, because I have a feeling it's connected to his children,” Lenox replied hoarsely.
Kali was already combing through her computer again at Lenox's words. She tried to distract herself from the emotional tension of her cousin's background history while she checked out birth records and reports on Bishop Steele's death. Determination caused her to furrow her brow.
“As Kali mentioned, they are not even registered with Society then,” Lenox pointed out.
“So how do we handle this, Khamun?” Marco calmly asked, watching his fam. “You're her Guardian.”
Everyone sat lost in thought while he paced then stopped then paced again.
“I'm not her Guardian then, since she is a Vessel and Oracle. The law of Guardians doesn't apply here now. I can intervene and get her, but we have to do this intelligently, as Nox said. Everything in me wants to grab her now and usher her in here, you know, but we can't,” Khamun said. “We can't drop the ball like the past Guardians did with that lost Oracle. We have to surround her, and we have to gain her and her family's trust. We need to insert ourselves around her.” He ran over what he needed to do in his mind.
Marco agreed.
Lenox thought quietly, a Trinity resting between his fingers, while Kali was clicking away at her laptop, and Calvin was pacing with Marco.
“Well, I'm her fam, ya know. I got this. I can go and insert myself.” Calvin, a flash of determination and slight humor flickering in his emerald eyes, looked at Lenox then Khamun. “Ey, Lenox, you keep your position as you are doing, you know, acting as their liaison for our company, and Khamun, brah, you'll finally get to met ya Guide.”
Khamun flashed a smile.
As Calvin headed to the door, he said, “Kali, I'll let them know you're back from ya trip. I bet they are gonna head up to Chi, so we need to keep a team with them.”
Kali suddenly stood, snapping her computer shut, and swiftly moved next to Calvin. “No, I'm coming too. They are my family as well. Plus, everyone here needs to get their asses in bed and rest. You do too, brotherpoo, but I won't fight you, so let's go.”
Khamun interjected as Kali hugged her brother. He noticed Calvin's body was tense with emotion.
Khamun's eyes briefly flashed with worry and care. “Cal is right. We need to integrate fast. Early in the morning, I'm gonna transition to Chi and wait for Calvin and his family. Marco, get in touch with the Chi-town team. My Guide and her Gargoyle's brothers need protection now. We'll have to integrate them into this as well. We won't lose any more innocent people to the Cursed. We can't. ”
“I'll stay here and keep the ranks with Marco, watch the city and protect our territory while keeping Society council at bay,” Lenox calmly replied, his arms crossing his chest.
“Yeah, we gotcha back, fam.” Marco nodded, his eyes flashing with care.
Everyone agreed.
Khamun closed his eyes and spoke in the old language of Angels. Both Marco's and Khamun's wings unfurled as power washed over everyone. Calvin's tattoos, Lenox's eyes, and Kali's mehndi and bendi all glowed as they whispered in sync. They needed prayer to guide them through this, to protect a woman who would save a dying race.
Yes, they needed to do all they can, so they would not lose anymore to absolute death and loss. Over the passing generations, many Nephilims had gone missing. Either turned into Cursed, or permanently killed off through attacks by the Cursed. This prayer was a vow to continue to fight until they couldn't fight anymore.
Chapter 6
(Lost Scrolls of Nephilim: Text Two)
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It was found that the One God's son had a close friend, another who would become a lost disciple and prophet in his plan. She would forever be named The Whore, The Prostitute, The Harlot. But before that, before she became The Lady Magdalene inflicted by demons, she was just a young girl, a young woman on the verge of her eighteenth year. Forever his loyal friend, it is said, she understood him more than anyone, birth just for him by his Holy Father.
In these lost accounts we knew the truth, the truth that this young girl would forever be at his side. Bound to him by his denotation dreams and amicable union, he found her when he was but fourteen and she twelve years. This union forever bonded by the One God in innocence and love.
The three crusaders, the first Guardians, the wise ones, bore witness to miracles of the young messiah. Their accounts are what we carry within us always. The young one sat calm on the cool waters boating, reflecting as only He could. The three crusaders sat at his side, answering all his questions and also learning much from him. The young messiah smiled and pitched his rod as his head bowed, and the waters became silent. It was with this that a multitude of fish rose to jump into the small boat as the young one opened his eyes and smiled.
“She is awakening,” was all the young man said as the three wise ones listened to his declaration and asked his parents' permission to find the one from his vision.
They found her in the fishing village of Magdala playing near the water's edge, her long, thick mane of dark hair glowing from the sun's rays being used as a rope to taunt fish toward her. The young protector went to her side that day and they were inseparable, training and educating each other as well as the wise ones.
I smile at the memories of these two. Darkness only was beginning to touch the pair as the young Magdalene became a woman. Eldress Mary was with the young Magdalene when the first prophecies arrived, giving the young girl visions stronger than even Eldress Mary ever had.
Night terrors and head pains plagued the young Magdalene as the first demons were sent her way at eighteen, forever marking her and moving her into what the mortals historically named her. But to us, she was an innocent, a Disciple, the first Oracle to be attacked by the Dark, bitten to be Cursed, until the young messiah healed her and purged the evil from her in later life. For this we know the truth, the truth of this holy anointed pair to be fighters against the Dark, more than disciple and messiah, but united in holy matrimony and spiritual teaching. The young anointed protectors, fighters for humanity and us.
From this we vowed to forever watch over and protect our Oracles. To stop the Dark from taking what they themselves could never sire, vessels of knowledge against our enemies. Vessels of power created to stand at the side of our experienced fighters, varying within them the memories of this present and their pasts. Vessels taken through the generations to be seeded with darkness until our Oracles became rare and almost extinct. We protect them with our very lives, we watch them close. This is our history and no other. The Light will always prevail. This is the end of my entry.
Chapter 7
Sanna and her family had all packed up last night and were just about to head out when Calvin came to the house. Calvin almost crushed Tamar with a bear hug, and Kali was right behind him, running up to Sanna with a tight embrace. Tamar had always treated her cousins Calvin and Kali like a third son and a third daughter, so when they both insisted that Sanna's family travel in his and Kali's Escalade trucks, they could do nothing but accept and head up to Chicago. Calvin had explained to them that he had a townhouse in Lincoln Park, where they could all stay.
The drive was long, so Sanna used the time to talk to her sister Amara on the cell. Amara was panicking and anxious, but Calvin had called and told her that he was sending her plane tickets. He was also sending his frat brother Khamun to wait at O'Hare Airport for them.
Amara was waiting at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport going stir crazy with her bestie Miya, Kyo's cousin. Sanna could hear Miya trying to keep her calm as she tried to distract her with random questions. Sanna was happy that both of them clicked so well as kids. Miya was good people. It reminded her of herself and Kyo but with a slight difference.
Thinking about Dare and Take, Sanna couldn't help but smile. Their attitudes mirrored each other'sâsuave, protective, loving, and very supportive of those they called family and friends.
Sanna was scared out of her mind for her brother and godbrother. She had just got done talking to them, and now they were laid up in a hospital probably unconscious or something. This was insane. She calmly tried to breathe, but pain shot into her skull and spread through her like prickly nails as she leaned her head back, sweat soaking her skin. The car suddenly seemed too small. She had to ride this pain out, had to make it to Chicago to make sure her family, her brothers, were okay. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Flashes of light seemed to drown her as she momentarily opened her eyes and saw her cousin Calvin watching her in the rearview mirror. Briefly as if in a blink of an eye, she swore she saw his irises glow with green power. Leaning forward, she quickly rolled down the window and closed her eyes again. That ebbing ache made silent tears roll down her cheek as she bit her lower lip. She could do this. She could make it and check on her brothers then curse them out for being reckless, or for getting hurt in the first place.
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Five hours later they arrived in noisy, bustling Chicago with the sizzling weather, traffic stalling them. Their Escalade seemed to hit every pothole known to man. One pothole was so bad, Sanna thought it took off a hubcap as the truck lifted in the air then dropped back down.
“Damn!” Sanna yelled. “These streets are a hot-ass mess. And the drivers here seem to be just as bad as the ones in ATL. What the hell!”
Her mother chuckled, and Calvin nodded his head in agreement. “Shawty, you ain't said nothing but the truth.”
It was a deja vu moment for Sanna when they finally made it to the hospital and she glanced at a sleeping Kyo.
Kyo opened her eyes and abruptly sat up. She was back. This was part of her dream. She had stood on that exact roof of the hospital. She had floated five levels up peering into the room her brothers rested, and here she was in a reality where her brother may be severely hurt.
How could he get hurt? What was he doing to become so messed up that he was in the hospital? What was going on here?
Nothing had been going right since the attack back in St. Louis, and now this mess with her little brother. No, this couldn't be happening, shouldn't be happening.
How could he get hurt? What was he doing to become so messed up that he was in the hospital? What was going on here?
Nothing had been going right since the attack back in St. Louis, and now this mess with her little brother. No, this couldn't be happening, shouldn't be happening.
Now she was sitting in an Escalade, worried and praying until her hands became cramped from clenching them so hard. The emotion was so high, Sanna had suffered through another migraine but hadn't told anyone about it, playing it off as cramps and keeping her cool as usual. That pissed Kyo off. She couldn't do anything but shake her head as she glanced at her godsister.
Kyo could see the strain it was having on her. Hell, she could feel it. She wanted to scream. Wanted to tell Calvin to stop the car and pull over so she could shake the hell out of Sanna and help her sister with the pain as they both cried.
She remembered the dream, seeing her brothers bloodied and mangled. There was nothing she could do, and it terrified her. Things in the dark were coming after them all, and the only reason she knew this was because Sanna had said it out loud as she dreamed it. The family was under attack from entities neither of them could see, yet no one was saying anything. All she could do was shake her head and pray that this feeling was nothing but nonsense and that her brothers were okay.
Halting the sudden desire to have a nervous breakdown, Kyo was out of the car in a blink as she fleetingly looked around with a strange expression on her face. It had been a long time since she had been to Chicago, but it felt like it was just yesterday, in her dreams.
Sanna furrowed her brows in a grimace, watching her godsister as she glanced with a raised brow, eyes wide, her hands fisting on her lap before spilling out of the car to head into the hospital.
The sterile hospital halls whisked by Sanna as everything felt like a scene from a movie. Everyone around her seemed to move, whereas she seemed to be walking in suspended motion.
Patients coughed. Monitors beeped, rang, and screamed for attention.
Following the color coding strips in the hospital, everyone made it to the ICU, rushing the nurses' station. Hospital staff seemed to not notice the huge number of people standing in the waiting area.
Sanna was two minutes away from grabbing the throat of the next person who had the nerve to ignore them, until her godfather Dr. Hideo Satou walked up to the nurses' station and spoke in a very hushed tone to the curly head of a woman, playing as if she was filling out various forms. His voice became clipped with restrained anger.
Dr. Hideo Satou was a tall, muscularly lean, handsome man. You would have thought he was in his early thirties, but he was in his late forties. His jet-midnight hair curled around his face in a feathery, shaggy haircut, which reflected where Kyo got her style. And his laid-back style of light blue jeans and a white button-down shirt with brown leather oxford sneaker designer shoes made him look like a graduate student.
Dr. Hideo leaned in, smoothly looking over his black-rimmed glasses, and addressed the nurse, “I wish to know which room my sons are located in.”
It always amazed Sanna how many confused Dr. Hideo for someone her age. It was only when he opened his mouth, and wisdom and knowledge spilled forth, his age showed. Dr. Hideo was Japanese-American, but was reared in Japan before coming back to America at thirteen. Family tradition had him making trips back and forth, which made him a child of both nations. His world-known pedigree in neurosurgery made him the most bad-ass doctor in the nation, and he now stared down an insensitive woman who looked up at him as if she owned the world.
It took every skilled lesson in meditation and martial arts, as well as the dragon arts, for him to not shift in this unethical practicing hospital. His son, his flesh and blood, was lying in some gurney bed, bleeding out, as his other son, his godson, lay in a comatose state. He could smell their energy and blood. He could also tell that if they had not made it out of wherever they were, they would have been on the brink of dying. Now this unprofessional degenerate of a nurse wanted to stop him from knowing where they were.
He could drop to their uncouth level and bypass all the ignorance and go to his sons by following their scents, but if he did, his already boiling anger would have him shifting in a drop of a dime and that was not acceptable, not right now. No, he would keep his cool and play by the rules and be patient.
Hideo rolled his shoulders as he calmed the dragon within and stared at the nurse, dipping into her mind smoothly, dissecting her brain, to make her pull up files and background information, so that she would get up off her prissy ass and pay attention to what he was saying.
“Sir, I'm not allowed to give you that information. Your son seems to be on blackout, and you are not the father of Mr. Steele, so I am not at liberty to share that with you.”
Dr. Hideo bowed his head, his face tightening with frustration as his voice seemed to lower even further. His grey eyes flashed with power as his nails lengthened. He kept himself from leaning into her face and snapping her neck, aware of the people around him. Those blessed people had him checking himself as everyone had to take a double take while they stared at the unusually cool and collected male gripping the edge of the desk, quietly talking to the rude woman.
Sanna swore she saw a haze of cold energy surround Pop Hideo as she took a double take, blinking at what she thought was his nails lengthening before she shook her head. Running a hand down her face, she looked up again, her eyes refocusing. By the grace of the Most High, she saw him as he normally was, resting against the nurse's desk, his facial expression locked in cold, restrained frustration.
The nurse huffed, clicking on her keyboard, one key at a time, her eyes glancing up and locking on Pop Hideo.
Sanna raised an eyebrow. If that chick said one wrong word to her godfather, then it was going to be a fucking problem, ending with her foot in that chick's back. That's how upset she was at this particular moment.
“Of course . . . I am sorry. I understand protocol, but as you see, both young men call me father, so Mr. Steele, as you see, is my son, my godson.”
The nurse continued to click. She leaned into the computer screen then abruptly stood up, pushing away from the desk, one hand snapping quickly to her temple. She shuddered then exhaled. “Dr. Hideo Satou?”
Dr. Hideo stood back with a curt nod as the nurse pulled out a clipboard, made notes, and slid it toward him.
“Please sign here and here, and I will page Dr. Toure. He specifically told me to let you and your family pass through. IâI am so sorry. It's hospital policy to keep patient information private when they are placed on blackout.”
Hideo Satou shook his head. He wanted to be a smart ass and call her on her disrespect and rudeness, but instead he just glanced at his wife before turning back to the nurse and offered a tired smile. “It is okay. We just want to see our children.”
Emi Satou quietly walked near her husband and wrapped her arms around him while he nuzzled his face in her silky ebony hair. She knew her husband and was quietly sending him soothing support to keep him calm. If she hadn't, then that woman would be dragon bait, and that wasn't something they needed right now, not today. Her husband needed comforting, and she was going to give it to him, even though her insides were being eaten up due to the stress and worry for her sons.
Gently cupping her husband's clenched jaw, she gave him a soft kiss on his lips, and both exhaled with emotion. Worry filled them as they glanced toward Kyo and motioned for her as she walked into their open embrace.
Emi was the same height as her daughter. Anyone who didn't know would swear they were twin sisters. Emi just had longer hair with hazel eyes. Her daughter was a beautiful blend of her Okinawan descent, creamy tan skin, almost pale-almond-hued, with her father's strong Tokyo style, smarts, and sensual mouth.
Emi quietly spoke with her daughter. She smoothed her child's spiky hair, brushing a red strain of bang from her face so she could kiss her forehead. A comforting smile hit her lips, letting her daughter know she was here for her. Tears sparkled in her eyes as she glanced at her other daughter, her dear godchild Sanna and she wrapped her in an invisible blanket of ease.
Sanna sat uncomfortably in the plastic cold chairs in the waiting room and watched the family. Everyone was shaky and scared. Their nerves were on end while sending prayers to the two young men who lay under protective care. Since they were in blackout mode, everyone knew it had to be serious.
Calvin had disappeared. Mr. Hideo spoke to the nurse again, and Kali sat by Sanna, resting a hand over her head. She returned the loving touch back as she rested against her cousin's comforting shoulder. It was something about her cousin, which always calmed her when she was near. It always put her in the mindset of how her mother made her feel. Though Kali was younger, she still seemed to have this inner well of maternal comfort Sanna seemed to appreciate.
A sudden vibration had Sanna's leg shaking. She contorted her face in a frown and pulled out her cell. One glance at the text message had her smiling. She showed Kali the screen. Amara was on her way, having caught the earliest plane she could jump on with Miya. She quickly texted her sister, letting her know that Calvin's frat brother, Khamun Cross, was going to meet them at O'Hare Airport and drive them both to the hospital.
She tiredly laughed as her sister asked her what he looked like. She frankly had no idea at all. Hell, she had no idea who he was, except Calvin seemed to trust him enough to have him pick her little sister up. So she texted that bit of tidbit back. Her cell phone began to fade in and out, the words before her becoming fuzz as her body started to overheat.
Blinking back tears of pain, Sanna stood as she looked around for somewhere private to have her spell. Kali was asking her something, but at that moment all she could hear was mumbling, her hearing fading in and out like a rush.
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