AMANI: Reveal (29 page)

              My mother’s eyes filled with tears and she looked away.
              I knew I ought to say something. Anything. “She seemed happy there,” I said. My parents frowned at me. “I mean, she chose to become one of them. She wasn’t forced into it.”
              “How can you be sure?” Mom retorted.
              “She’s been working with them for longer than a month. I don’t exactly know when she transformed into a Rascal, but it could’ve been days or even weeks ago.”
              They fell silent again, until my father asked, “What—I mean—what does she feed on?”
              “Others’ powers.”
              “And you?”
              I automatically opened my mouth to answer, but then realized I had no idea. I hadn’t yet thought about it, and as I did, I wondered if my ability as a Seraph would be erased by the overwhelming Rascal venom now freely flooding my veins. Curious, I asked my father if I could experiment on him. When he agreed, I leaned forward and grabbed his hand in mine, focusing on him, his thoughts, his current feelings.
              I was relieved to see the purple spot—though it was much darker than usual—come right at me within seconds. But it was only once my soul had Sojourned that I felt the difference.
              It wasn’t as much in the way I saw and heard things. I could see myself looking into my father’s—my—eyes and hear myself breathing, but instead of being completely submerged into my dad’s thoughts and actions, I was able to keep a certain distance from them. I knew who I was.
              “My name is Amya Priam, a nineteen-year-old hybrid between a Seraph and a Rascal,” I heard my father say at the same time I thought about it. “What just—?” I turned toward my mother, whose eyes were going back and forth between me—my dad—and my body. “Did I just say that?” I continued, then bit my lips together. “Oh God…”
              I Sojourned back into my own body and got up brusquely, flipping my chair upside down. I backed away until I was pressed against the door, breathing fast. One quick glance at my mother confirmed my suspicion. I had just made my father say those things.
              “Did it work?” he asked, oblivious to the situation. He peeked at my mother, who was frowning deeply next to him, and he added, “What? Did I say something wrong?”
              “You called yourself Amya, nineteen years old, and a hybrid,” my mother said quickly, still incredulous.
              “No I didn’t.”
              Mom glared at me, while my father’s eyebrows just kept raising higher.
              “
I
did,” I affirmed, shaking all over. “At least, I thought about it. But then I heard Dad say what I was thinking… and—and I don’t know how I did it!”
              Or did I? Before I was bitten, my ability as a Seraph was already enhanced by my Rascal genes. Had the bite merely modified the Sojourns so that I could now
control
people’s thoughts and actions? I had to get to the bottom of this.
              I gazed directly at my dad and asked if I could try once more. He did not understand what was going on, so he simply nodded.
              This time, however, I tried to Sojourn without touching him. I hadn’t been able to do it on Wyatt and the Guardian, but maybe now…
              It worked instantly. I was in my father’s head within seconds. He was wondering why my mother wore such a fearful expression on her face, when he stretched his arm and spoke to my body on the other side of the room. “What are you waiting for?”
                “I’m here,” he added, as I thought it. My mother gasped as I tilted my father’s head in her direction. “It worked!” I exclaimed in a deep, low voice.
              Okay, my next step was to move. I could feel my dad wishing to remain seated, but when I was certain I wanted to stand up, he stood up, then looked around, astonished.
              “She’s doing that, isn’t she?” he asked.
              “Yes, I am,” I answered in his own voice.
              I left my dad’s body, absolutely creeped out by my new ability.
              “This is incredible!” he blurted out, examining himself.
              “That is not the adjective I would have used, Kellen,” my mother said, severely.
              “Of course it is! Oh, I have to create a character in my books who can do that! It was like I blacked out when you took control of me,” he said to me, his eyes beaming. “One moment I was sitting comfortably on the bed, and the next, I had no clue why I was standing.”
              “Could you hear me—well, yourself—when I answered you?” I asked, my heart still beating rapidly.
              “Did you? No, not at all. I believe—maybe your soul overshadowed my brain when you were in control. It’s brilliant! Absolutely ingenious!”
              I glanced at my mother for help. As opposed to my father, I found my new powers rather scary. Seeing the look on her face, we were in agreement.
              “Does that mean I won’t need to feed on anything?” I wondered aloud.
              Dad sat down. “You’ll see… But I would not be surprised since you were a Seraph long before you ever turned into a Rascal. Your mother’s genes are still more important.” He paused a moment, then smiled excitedly. “You’re a Serascal now! Oh, I need to write this down! I need a pen and a paper… forgot mine at home… Serascal… how clever…” he muttered as he got up and walked toward the door, giving me a quick hug before he disappeared into the hallway.
              As for my mom, she was the first one to recover from my dad’s nonsense. She grumbled something about him getting lost in the house because he was too excited, and she vanished after him.
              I did not follow them, because my new ability suddenly made me feel like a dangerous animal that ought to be kept in a cage. Instead, I leaned against the wall behind the door, slid down, and buried my face between my knees.

Amya Priam

Only a few minutes later, however, I heard Samera’s and Xander’s voices getting nearer. I could not avoid them all my life—which would last longer than I had ever expected—so I joined them in the hallway.
              “Oy! Your parents just passed us in the stairs,” Sam told me. “What did you do to your dad? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy!” 
              I groaned and rolled my eyes. Then I realized what I’d just done. Since when did I groan? Seriously, it felt like all my emotions were intensified tenfold. I would have to work on that later…
              “We just found out what I can do now that I’m some weird hybrid.”
              “Oh! That’s what he kept saying. He called your kind Serascals, didn’t he?”
              “I believe you can only use the word ‘kind’ when you refer to more than one person, but yes, he did call me that.”
              Sam was about to reply when Xander said, “What is it? What do you feed on?”
              I crossed my arms over my chest. “So far, I don’t so much as
feed
on people; I control them when I Sojourn.”
              “Control how?” Sam asked too enthusiastically for my taste.
              “I don’t know. I don’t become the person anymore. It feels more like I’m an audience and I can change what the person does or says at will. But they black out when I’m the one in control…
I’m not going to use it
!” I added, seeing as Samera’s eyes kept growing bigger and more delighted as I spoke.
              “Why not?” she asked, clearly disappointed. “It’s awesome! How come you get all the cool powers?”
              Both Xander and I glared at her at the same time. “I can bite you if you’d like!” I threatened. “See what kind of
cool power
you get as a… Protescal? Yeah, that sounds good. Shall we tell my father before or after you transform? You’ll see, it’s a whole lot of fun!”
              Sam did not seem so keen on having my luck anymore.
              “All right, don’t use it then,” she said stubbornly. “By the way, why did your transformation happen so fast? One minute you were all right, and the next you were convulsing in the parking lot. Xander said he took hours before he passed out.”
              “Probably because I already was part Rascal. Delilah told me yesterday that her transformation had been less painful than normal too.” I glanced at Xander. “It must have been awful for you.”
              “Once you pass out,” he said, “once you don’t feel the pain as much, it gets easier.”
              Sam became restless all of a sudden. She kept biting her upper lip and looking at Xander and me back and forth, as though she was struggling not to speak her mind. When neither of us asked her what was going on, her foot started rapping against the floor.
              “Could you please not do that?” I snapped. “What is it?”
              “Sam…” Xander said as a warning.
              What were they hiding?
              Samera kept chewing her upper-lip, unable to control herself… until she blurted out, “You died.”
              “WHAT?”
              “Your heart stopped beating for, like, ten minutes, and we thought you were dead. Well, I did, but then Xander said it was normal. Right? Didn’t you?”
              “Yes,” Xander replied carefully. “I also said that it would be better not to tell Amya, but you seem to have forgotten that part, haven’t you?”
              “Why…? How?”
              Xander walked past me and headed toward the room I’d woken up in. He told us to follow him.
              Closing the door behind Samera, he said, “I’ve never told any of you because I didn’t want to frighten you. When I woke up from my transformation, Wyatt told me I had been dead for a couple of minutes. He said it’s a way for the body to reset completely and start over as a new being. We all go through that.”
              I remained silent, not really knowing what to say to that. I had died… Xander had died…
              But Samera did not let me dawdle on this idea, before she sighed shortly. “I have to confess something too.”
              “What now?” Xander replied, exasperated.
              “Well, I haven’t been myself lately—”
              “We’d figured that much,” I said. “Please don’t give us your speech about your responsibilities and how you’re supposed to protect us. Is it because I was kidnapped? That wasn’t your fault, you know. I walked right into my sister’s trap.”
              “That’s not it—”
              “And how did you find me exactly?” I interrupted her. “I mean, you couldn’t have guessed I was trapped inside a mountain, now could you?”
              “You should thank Adam for that,” Xander explained. “Right after you left him and Mary, he noticed that Daniel’s aura was darker than most people’s. He’d seen that phenomenon only around one other person… me. Vivian was also at the party. She said she was dancing inside when Adam called her and asked her to make sure you were all right. He had enough on his hands, taking care of Mary, especially since she’d started being sick…
              “Anyway, Vivian reluctantly left the dance floor and spied on your conversation with your sister while still on the phone with Adam. She knew something was off when Wyatt and the other Rascals came out of a SUV.
              “Adam had parked his car on Reid Street. He came running after me immediately and we were able to follow you until you entered the parking lot. We couldn’t park next to their car, or they would have suspected something, so we parked a little farther away and that’s when I called Karl. He told us not to follow you, that he would be there soon, but I couldn’t let you out of my sight… until you went pass the large rock at the top of the hill. But at least we knew where you were.
              “Two guards were patrolling the area and we knew at least half a dozen Rascals were inside, so we started making plans. Karl called Michelle and—”
              “—and she came here with my parents using Jeffrey’s convy, and they paid a load of money to create golden bullets. Yeah, my father told me the rest. I still cannot believe they spent all their money to save us—me.” I paused, thinking about how lucky I had been. Were it not for them, I would still be inside that mountain, struggling against revealing the location of Pandora’s Jar.
              The memory of my first attempt to Sojourn into the Guardian’s head came rushing to me. Why hadn’t I been able to Sojourn without touching his skin? I had told Delilah it was because I was tired, but that had never stopped me before.
              Expecting my friends to help me find an explanation, I told them what had happened as well as my two attempts to Sojourn on Wyatt as we were climbing up the hill.
              Samera stopped biting her upper lip and frowned. Xander, however, looked as though he already had an answer.
              “I feared this would happen,” he said. “The moment we discovered that gold could burn my skin almost permanently, I started thinking about the effect it would have on a human, if I were to try and feed on them. I was planning on experimenting further when we were back in New York, but I believe that gold can also block a Rascal’s power on somebody.”
              “But I wasn’t a Rascal then.”
              “You had your father’s genes.” He smiled to himself, satisfied with his theory. “What you just told me confirms it. You were wearing Madame M.’s golden necklace when you tried to Sojourn into Wyatt’s mind, weren’t you?” I nodded. “And then, not only were you under the influence of the necklace, but the Guardian’s skin is brimming with gold. That’s why the ability you have that the rest of your family doesn’t—the ability to Sojourn without skin-to-skin contact, which is only an effect of having Rascal genes—didn’t work. It makes sense.”
              “Yeah, it actually does,” I mused.
              So, if I understood correctly, I had known for a long time that the essence of vanilla could block my ability to Sojourn, but that was only because I was a Seraph. Now gold could prevent me from using my special Rascal powers. What if, for instance, someone was wearing a golden necklace sprayed with vanilla? Would that protect them against me completely?
              “Okay, I can’t take it anymore,” Samera burst. “I have to tell you! I need to share this with someone or I might explode.”
              “If it’s about you chatting with your boyfriend and completely ignoring us this past week, we already know,” Xander said.
              “NO! That’s not IT!” She frowned. “Why would I be chatting with Joshua? No!” She looked at me. “And it’s not about feeling responsible. I’ve been—well, it did start because I was feeling responsible, but
that’s not what I want to tell you
,” she added when both Xander and I opened our mouths to stop her. “I was feeling bad about Gareth. That his memory was erased with no good reason… so I started looking on the Internet for him, you know, on Tinder and Facebook, to befriend him. He was probably very lonely starting a new job with a fake identity.”
              “You’ve been talking to Gareth?” Xander uttered.
              “Well, yes… but there’s more,” Samera continued, looking rather shy. “I found him quickly under the name Gareth Walter. Mom had told me they couldn’t alter his name too much or his memory would come back more easily. Changing his last name from Williams to Walter was just enough to avoid some undesirable recollections of his brother. I friended him on Facebook and we started talking about stuff. He was so confused with his fake life that I couldn’t let him go on…”
              “Sam, what did you do?” I said warningly.
              “Well, I kind of told him part of the truth.” Her cheeks turned crimson. “I said his memory had been erased by the government and I knew who he was. Haven’t told him anything about the Protectors or anything supernatural, but he’s been wanting to see me ever since. I let him know that if we were to ever meet, I would tell him everything I knew.”
              I stood there, not believing my ears. Sam had not only disobeyed her mother, but she had gone against every living Protector as well.
              “Is that what you were doing in your room and on your father’s phone? You were chatting with Gareth?”
              She nodded miserably. “What have I done? But I have to tell him! He suspected he didn’t belong long before I even said anything. He isn’t happy where they sent him.”
              “But at least he’s safe!” Xander said angrily. “He crossed one of the most powerful organizations in this Dimension, Sam. He needed to disappear. His happiness is the least of his problems and you know that.”
              Xander glanced in my direction for help, but I couldn’t give it to him. Not only did I agree with Samera, but I also thought we needed Gareth back.
              “Do you remember what I said about Pandora’s Jar?” I told them. “That it was somewhere underwater? Well, I might have an idea of where it is… and I might have told the Rascals about it. I had no choice; I wanted to keep my sister from getting hurt again—if you’d seen the burn marks… Anyway, I believe the jar is in a temple in the Lost City.”
              “Atlantis, you mean?” Sam laughed, unconvinced. “It’s a myth, Amya. Gareth only talked about Atlantis—”
              “Pandora’s Jar was also a myth. And the Guardian of Chupa. And Rascals. And Seraphs… I think it’s time we acknowledge myths as possible options. And if the jar really is in Atlantis, then we need to find it before the Rascals do.” I imagined my sister smirking victoriously with the jar open in her hands and our Dimension completely destroyed. I could see her surrounded by Wyatt and Daniel, Julian and Meo… all looking down at the rest of the world… “And if we cross their path along the way,” I continued, more determined than ever, “I want to be ready.”
              “Ready?”
              I ignored Samera’s question. I ignored every feeling of loss and heartbreak I felt toward my sister, or my growing fear of my new ability. Instead, I stared into Xander’s beautiful, reassuring eyes, and said, “I want you to teach me how to fight.”