Chosen at Nightfall (A Shadow Falls Novel) (17 page)

Kylie’s heart swelled at Burnett’s words.

She heard Holiday let go of a sigh in the sentimental moment. “And it’s when you say things like that I know why I put up with your cold feet.” Holiday reached up on her tiptoes to kiss him. Burnett pulled her up so he could deepen the kiss.

“Hey,” Kylie said, grinning. “You’ve got virgin eyes watching you right now.”

“Then turn your head,” Burnett said to Kylie, and he smiled. “I should be able to kiss my fiancée.”

Kylie chuckled. “Yeah, but you’d better be careful, they are going to revoke your vampire license if you get any more romantic and mushy.”

“Don’t worry,” Burnett said, his eyes pinched as if serious. “I can still be a jackass, and kick ass, when it’s called for.”

Yeah, like last night, Kylie thought. She still had a few bruises on her ego, and so did Hayden Yates, but she didn’t say it. Down deep, she knew Burnett had justifications for coming off strong with her and Hayden.

Her thoughts went back to her conversation with Hayden, but already the calm of the falls had given her a sense of peacefulness, and she was able to push her worries aside. She glanced over at the two lovebirds holding hands and walking. Maybe it wasn’t just the falls offering this sense of well-being, Kylie admitted. Being back at Shadow Falls and among her friends just felt so damn right.

Almost on cue, the sound of the falls grew louder, and a calm spread inside her chest. Kylie had to admit the falls were definitely contributing to the magical sense of ease. And after everything that happened this last twenty-four hours, she wanted to cling to that magic. Forget that seeing Holiday and Burnett reminded her that she loved someone, too. Forget that Lucas had betrayed her. Forget about running into Mario. Forget she’d probably hurt her grandfather by leaving without saying good-bye.

Oh yes, she wanted the calm that came with being in a place of grace, a place that fed one’s spirit with peacefulness. That offered one a sense of wellness.

And courage.

A voice echoed in her mind. Kylie stopped walking. The voice somehow seemed to mean something, something more than just facing her usual tribulations. As if the voice knew something she didn’t.

Why would I need courage?

If it wasn’t for the peacefulness, Kylie might have started panicking at the little intrusion in her head. The words didn’t come with the cold chill she got when a ghost visited. Not that Kylie hadn’t heard the voice before; she had, several times. In the past, she’d attempted to chalk it up to being her subconscious. But this time, it seemed more.

The peaceful sound of the falls grew stronger and took the edge off her worry. She didn’t want to fret about the voice, or even the reason she might need courage. She picked up her pace.

Five minutes later, they arrived at the entrance to the falls. The serene ambience embraced her. Even the leaves on the trees seemed to whisper their greetings. The water cascading down from the cliff above filled the air with sweet moisture. The light breeze, carrying tiny pinpoints of water, scented the air with some distant flower and natural herbs.

Burnett’s normal stern expression dissolved into something more peaceful. He stopped at the line of trees and agreed to wait outside, allowing them to have their regular falls experience. Removing their shoes and rolling up their jeans’ legs, Holiday and Kylie both walked through the wall of cascading water.

Once inside, it took a second for Kylie’s eyes to adjust. It wasn’t completely dark, but only filtered light snuck in from behind the falls. Iridescent shadows in rainbow colors played on the rock walls. Cool water dripped from her hair and ran down her back, but the coolness on her skin felt refreshing, like walking through a sprinkler on a hot day.

Both Kylie and Holiday found their spots on smooth rocks just at the mouth of the water’s edge. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. The reverence filling the space seemed to mandate a moment of silence.

The calm of quietness completely chased away Kylie’s worries and concerns.

After several minutes, Holiday asked, “Do you have a new quest in place?”

The moment the question found its way to Kylie, a need for direction swelled inside her. “Have I really completed my other quest?” The question wasn’t just meant for Holiday, but for herself.

“You know what you are, and you understand most of your powers. Was this not your quest?”

“Yes, but I’m not completely in control of my powers yet.” She paused. “And I don’t know everything.” The unexplainable need remained and a hunger to have a plan filled her chest. She had to know where to place her focus. She needed a new quest.

The flow of the falls seemed to grow a little louder. Kylie glanced up and then back at Holiday. “You’re right. I have to figure this out. How do I do that? How did I figure out what the first one should be?” She turned to Holiday, not so much panicked, but eager to get started.

“Well, you need to ask yourself what is important to you right now. Usually our quests end up being something that has weighed on your heart, pulled at your conscience, or has been on your mental to-do list that you’ve ignored.”

Kylie inhaled another breath of calm and glanced back at the camp leader. “Okay, I know something, and I was going to talk to you about it, but I haven’t had a chance to think it through yet.”

“What is it?” Holiday asked.

“The chameleon teens, they … the elders are practically locking them away on compounds. They have very little contact with the outside world. They aren’t allowed to have cell phones or computers. I don’t mean to make it sound as if they are mistreated. It’s just that the elders are stuck in this mindset of when they were being persecuted. They think the only way to stay safe is to remain in hiding. They have a strict policy that until you can control and hide your true pattern, you shouldn’t be allowed out into the world.” Suddenly Kylie realized something. “They are as bad as the werewolves. With all their backward beliefs.”

“It sounds like that.” Holiday paused and stared at the water. “That’s a big undertaking.” Her expression said her mind was reeling. “It’s hard to change beliefs that are motivated by justified fear.”

“I know,” Kylie said. “But there has to be a way, doesn’t there?”

“It’s for sure worth contemplating. It’s a good quest.”

What else?
The voice inside her said. The same voice from earlier. But like before, it didn’t completely scare her. It was a question she was about to come to on her own.

Kylie pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around her shins. “There’s something else, too.” And her heart searched for what it was, but it didn’t come.

“What?” Holiday said, and inhaled as if absorbing the calm.

“I’m not sure.” Her words hadn’t completely left her lips when all the flickers of light in the cave started swirling and then shifted as if to dance on top of the water.

Kylie’s breath caught as the shimmering of different colors formed a circle. Yet even with the movement of light, the water seemed deadly still, and the surface below became crystal clear. The circle of light appeared to frame an object below the water. Suddenly, whatever it was bobbed up to the surface with a small splash and started drifting toward the edge.

Freaked out, Kylie butt-scooted back a couple of feet. She felt a little less cowardly when Holiday did the same.

The object—floating atop the water’s surface and moving as if with purpose—got about a foot from the rock’s edge before Kylie could identify what it was. Oh, hell, what did this mean?

Chapter Fifteen

Kylie twisted around on her butt, searching for the ghost and trying to feel the cold. No cold found its way in the cave. No ghost, either. None that Kylie could sense, anyway.

But the sword now inching toward her had to be from the ghost, right? She’d been carrying one around for show and tell this last week and a half.

“Where the heck did that come from?” Holiday asked, her voice filled with concern.

Kylie couldn’t take her eyes off the weapon as it slowly inched closer and closer. “From under the water.”

“I know, I saw, but…”

“I think it has something to do with the ghost,” Kylie said.

Holiday frowned. “You mean the one toting around severed heads?”

Kylie nodded. “That would be her.”

“Why do you think that?” Holiday asked.

“I’m not completely sure, but I think it looks like her sword. Minus all the blood of course.”

“Oh, hell,” Holiday said. “What did you get pulled into?”

“I don’t know. But it wasn’t willingly.” Kylie bit down on her lip. If not for the peaceful ambience of the falls, she’d be completely tripping out.

Holiday picked up the sword. She turned it over in her hands. “It looks real. And old. Do you really think it’s the same sword?” She shook her head in puzzlement. “Ghosts can’t deliver things like this.”

“It looks like it. I mean, I’m not a sword expert.” Kylie reached for the weapon, and as soon as she touched it, the dang thing started glowing. She flung it to the ground and did another scoot backward. “Why did it do that?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Holiday said, and stared back at the sword. “Did you learn anything about chameleons making weapons glow?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I think I might have remembered that.”

“Okay,” she said, still thinking. She gave the sword another puzzled look and then glanced back at Kylie. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yup.” Kylie got to her feet and saw Holiday reach down for the sword. “Wait. Can’t we just leave it here?”

Holiday rose and looked at Kylie. “I don’t think so. I think it was meant for you.”

“You know, I was afraid you were going to say that. But how do you know it wasn’t meant for you?”

“Because it didn’t glow when I picked it up.”

Kylie frowned. “I’m really tired of all this weird crap happening to me.”

Holiday sighed. “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t like it.”

“Well, that makes two of us.” Kylie nipped at her lip again in worry.

Holiday half smiled. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. When we get back to the office I’ll do some research and see if I can find anything about it. And we’ll talk to Hayden, too.” She carefully picked up the sword, keeping the sharp end pointing down. “We’ll find the answer.”

Yeah, Kylie thought, but she had the distinct feeling that if they did find the answer, she might not like it.

*   *   *

Kylie, Holiday, and Burnett, with sword in tow, found Hayden at his cabin. He had nothing to offer. Not even a good educated guess.

Burnett asked him to pick up the sword to see if it would glow for him. It didn’t. Then, because Burnett hadn’t seen the sword glow earlier, he asked Kylie to pick it up. Carefully.

Like she wouldn’t be careful picking up something that looked like it had been used to decapitate hundreds of victims.

The moment she fit her fingers around the hand grip, the iron grew warm against her palm, and just as it had before, it began to glow. It reminded her of one of those glow sticks you bought at theme parks.

“Enough?” Kylie said, eager to put it down.

“Yeah,” Burnett said, and looked baffled. It wasn’t a look that she’d seen on the vamp’s face very often. He reached for the sword and waited to see if it would start to glow, and even looked a bit disappointed when it didn’t. Putting it back down on Hayden’s kitchen table, he gazed at Kylie’s forehead to check out her pattern.

On the walk over here, he’d surmised that Kylie had probably turned into a witch and had lost control of her powers as she had the day she’d sent the paperweight at him, bruising his boys. While Kylie almost wished it was that simple, she didn’t buy it. She hadn’t been thinking about a sword to have conjured one up.

“I’m not a witch, am I?” she asked Burnett.

“No,” he said, and shrugged.

“I told you,” Holiday said. “I checked her pattern as soon as the thing started glowing. As crazy as it sounds, I’m not sure it’s Kylie doing it. But the sword.”

“You think the sword’s possessed?” Hayden asked.

“Say what?” Kylie asked. “Swords can be possessed? Okay … this is just too freaky for me.” She started dusting off her hands to wipe off any possessed germs.

“No, I don’t think it’s possessed.” Holiday touched Kylie to calm her. “I just think for some reason it reacts to Kylie. There’s some connection between her and the sword.”

“It’s strange as hell,” Hayden said. “I could ask Kylie’s grandfather about this. He might know something that I don’t.”

Burnett frowned at the mention of her grandfather, but he nodded, and she saw him work to pull back his discontent. “I would appreciate that.” He even sounded grateful. “Would you report back to me on that as soon as you get anything?”

Hayden nodded. “Of course.”

As they went to leave, Burnett offered Hayden his hand. Hayden didn’t hesitate to take it. Kylie got the feeling that the whole sword thing might have worked in her favor for convincing Burnett that Hayden needed to stay on. Even though Hayden didn’t have the answers, she could see Burnett appreciated having a go-to person for something he didn’t have a lot of knowledge on.

Maybe, Kylie thought, the sword wasn’t a bad thing after all. But each time she looked at it held at Burnett’s side, she recalled the spirit last night carrying a bloody sword and the severed head.

And she started to worry again that whatever this was all about might lead to more bloodshed.

*   *   *

They went to put away the sword in Holiday’s office and then they all walked to dinner. As they stepped off the porch, Kylie was seen for the first time by her fellow Shadow Falls students and was greeted by several campers. Perry came running and swooped her up in his arms, swinging her around twice. When he dropped her back on her feet, Kylie was dizzy and content. He grabbed her arms to steady her. She hadn’t even realized how much she’d missed the shape-shifter until he laughed and it sent a warm déjà vu feeling through her.

“Hey, are you groping my best friend?” Miranda’s voice echoed from behind Perry.