Immortal Light: Wide Awake (38 page)

Slowly she took a bite, chewed, and swallowed,
almost mechanically. Then she took another bite, and another until
the muffin was gone. Next, he handed her the fruit.

“
Eat.”

She did, and little by little she began to
feel stronger. When she had eaten about half the fruit, she sat the
container on the table and reached for the backpack at her
side.

She stood and looked at herself in the
full-length mirror. Her hair had slowly come unraveled and her
cheeks were black with mascara. Embarrassment tried its hardest to
emerge, but at that moment she just didn’t care; she simply shook
her head at her reflection and closed herself inside the
bathroom.

Thirty minutes later, Lucy emerged from the
bathroom, showered and dressed in jeans and a collared shirt, a
light blue hoodie in her hand. Throwing the backpack on, she pulled
the straps tight and walked over to her father’s side. Gently she
stroked his cheek, bent down and kissed him. She then turned back
to Benjamin, who had stopped reading a book to watch
her.

“
What are you doing?” he
asked.

“
We’re going.” She spoke the words
as if they had come to visit her father at work. Her demeanor was
steely and cold, which caused Benjamin immediate
concern.

“
No, we’re not. You need to be
here with your father.”

“
Why? What good am I going to be
here? If my father wakes up, they’ll call me.”

“
What do you intend to do, Lucy?
You’ve experienced more in the last twenty-four hours than the
average person experiences in a lifetime. You need to
rest.”

Lucy just shook her head. “I’m rested. I’m
ready to start.”

Benjamin squinted his eyes inquisitively.
“Ready to start what?” He knew and feared her answer.

“
I’m ready to start training.” Her
attitude was of complete determination as she tightened the straps
of her pack.

He stood up, dropping the book to the couch,
and walked over to Lucy placing his hands on her arms.

“
No, Lucy, you’re not ready. You
need time.”

“
Time for what?” she barked at
him.

“
Time to heal.”

“
I’m healed. If this is my life,
then I need to learn how to live it. If I really am what you think
I am, then I need to learn how to be that; otherwise, I might as
well just jump off a cliff for all there is left for
me.”

“
Lucy, stop this. You will learn
it in time, I promise you that, but not right now.”

“
In time
isn’t soon enough. They’re out there and they
won’t stop until they get me or you, or we get them. If you won’t
train me, I’ll get Jack to do it. Either way, I’m leaving this
room.”

She spun and walked through the door. Benjamin
followed after her.

“
Lucy, wait a minute.” He reached
for her shoulder but she shrugged him off. He stopped and watched
her take a few more paces. “I’ll do it.”

Lucy stopped but didn’t face him. She could
hear him sigh.

“
I’ll do it. But, you need to make
me a promise.”

She turned and looked at him skeptically.
“What kind of promise?”

He closed the distance between them. “You have
to promise me that you will do everything I tell you.”

Lucy just stared at him.

“
If you can’t promise me that,
then I can’t do it.

Lucy considered his request for a moment.
“Okay,” she responded.

“
Thank you,” Benjamin
said.

Lucy turned again to walk away, but she waited
for Benjamin to join her.

As they arrived in the parking structure where
her car sat, Lucy checked her pockets for her keys. Looking
frustrated, she went to check the fender for the spare, but it was
gone. When she stood up, Benjamin was holding her set of keys out
to her.

“
You couldn’t have left anyway.”
He smiled cunningly at her as she swiped them from his
hands.

Sitting in the front seat of the car, Lucy
realized that she didn’t know where to go.

Benjamin sensed her hesitation. “Kat’s folks
have a spare bedroom all ready for you. They said you could stay
with them for as long as you need.”

Lucy stared at the steering wheel. “I don’t
feel like going to her house. Her mom will be all gushy and want to
know how I feel, and I just don’t want to talk about it right
now.”

“
Well, we could go to my house.
Peter and Jack will be there, and they’ll pretty much leave you
alone.”

Lucy sighed and nodded. “I’d like that. Will
you drive, though? I don’t feel very good right now.”

“
Sure.” The two of them switched
seats and Benjamin pulled from the parking area and headed
home.

Heading into Charleston, they crossed the
bridge, and Lucy asked to stop at Sunset Bay. Benjamin silently
obliged and pulled into the empty parking lot.

Standing on the cold sands with misty rain
blowing in from the sea, Lucy walked barefoot to her tree. Benjamin
walked behind her.

“
It’s so weird,” Lucy said,
unearthing a small rock from the packed sand.

“
What is?”

“
That I was able to recreate this
place so perfectly. Everything is the same.”

Benjamin came up close behind her as she
stopped. She looked out at the ocean for a long while, the fall air
chilling her through her hoodie, and she shivered. Benjamin placed
his arms around her and they both stood staring out at the incoming
tide.

“
Who was he, the man that grabbed
me? Was he a reaper?”

Benjamin didn’t answer right away. He had
promised himself he wouldn’t tell her too much about that night,
but he couldn’t tell her nothing.

“
No, he wasn’t a
reaper. Reapers only want one thing; they feed on the Immortal
Light of another person. They don’t need food or sleep; if they can
consume someone’s
light
, they can go for days at a time. Reapers are wild dogs on a
leash.”

“
Then who holds the
leash?”

“
He’s called Sukabra. In our
language, it means Extractor.”

“
What does he extract?” She
couldn’t be sure if it was the chilling sensation of the word
“extract” or the air, but a shiver rippled down her spine and she
hugged her arms.

“
He
extracts
light
,
but not for the purpose of using it for energy to keep going all
day like reapers. He extracts it to use for knowledge. He can find
out everything there is to know about a person by extracting
their
light
;
then, he carries that with him for the rest of his life until he is
killed and someone burns the remains.”

Every word was a violation of his promise to
himself, but he felt deeply that she needed to know everything. He
didn’t know why except that a guardian’s primary function is to
protect against all evil, and Lucy needed to know what evil was out
there.

“
Is that who
…
”

She almost couldn’t say the words, the nearly
unbearable pain was too close to the surface, but Benjamin knew she
meant her mother and answered.

“
Based on how it was done, yes, we
think that’s what happened.”

“
And my dad, why did he
survive?”

“
I don’t know. That was a miracle
that not even Peter could have foreseen.”

Lucy stopped to take in the empty beach, her
mother’s face dancing in her mind.

“
Who is doing this to us,
Benjamin? I know it’s bigger than this Sukabra, so who or what is
it?”

Benjamin waited for a reason not to tell her,
but he had already broken every promise he had made to himself, so
there was no point in keeping the last one.

“
His name is Korisante-Suen. He’s
the bastard son of our last king.” Benjamin waited for Lucy to
recall the reference.

“
You mean
…?
”
Lucy started
to ask.

Benjamin nodded. “He’s the reason my brothers
and I had to stay behind.”

“
You have to find the queen before
he does.”

“
Yes.”

Chapter
18

From the outside, there was nothing too
remarkable about the Raven home. It looked to be like any other
single-level house with a high peaked roof. To the right, there was
a garage made of brick and dark-stained wood with country style
wooden garage doors. One of the doors was open, and the interior
revealed what easily could have been a showroom for how clean it
was.

To the left of the house, situated about
twenty yards from the nearest wall, was a basketball court. The red
rubber mat of the court was clean and a rack of basketballs sat
near the closest out-of-bounds line, as though someone had been
already shooting around that day. There was another building beyond
the house, but Lucy couldn’t see it clearly, and Benjamin was
ushering her toward the front door.

Benjamin led Lucy through a thick oak door.
She was somewhat surprised at the sight that greeted her. From the
marble entryway she saw that the house was much bigger than it
looked from the outside. High vaulted ceilings supported by light
colored wooden beams stretched the entire expanse of the ceiling.
To her right was nothing but a wide-open room divided into sections
by groups of furniture. To the left she saw a dining table and
sunlight coming from what must have been a bank of windows unseen
from her vantage point. The large, open room had high walls that
were made up almost entirely of book cases lit by recessed
lighting. All of the décor was simple but elegant: earth tone walls
and carpets, dark leather furniture, and wooden tables.

Having been invited to take any seat she
liked, Lucy walked over to one of the overstuffed leather couches
and sat down. On the small table next to the couch, she saw a stack
of three books, all nonfiction, about various subjects. Once inside
the room, she was able to see more of the interior. On the walls,
unseen from the entryway, there were pictures and shadow boxes
ornately aligned in geometric patterns. Asian artwork adorned most
of the empty space, and Lucy’s curiosity got to her.

Standing up, she walked over to observe the
menagerie of items. They were mostly pictures of Jack with various
people, some Lucy recognized and others she didn’t. In two of the
more astounding pictures, Jack was standing with two presidents of
the United States. The first was a black and white picture of Jack
shaking hands with President Kennedy, a broad smile across both
their faces. Jack wore what looked like a Hawaiian shirt and a
large button pinned to it that read “For President, John F.
Kennedy.” The other was even more amazing. It was a picture, also
black and white, of Jack in a light-colored three-piece suit and
rain coat. Standing just behind him, waving to a throng that was
just visible inside the frame, was President Ronald
Reagan.

“
That was one of his favorite
jobs.” Benjamin’s voice startled Lucy.

“
That’s amazing that he knew those
men; he doesn’t look a day younger than he does now.”

Benjamin chuckled. “I
wouldn’t say he knew President Kennedy—that was at a campaign
barbecue in Nebraska, he just happened to get the picture. Reagan,
however, he knew pretty well. He was on the
President
’
s
Secret Service detail for a short time during his re-election
campaign.”

Lucy looked at him incredulously. “How do you
just get into the Secret Service? Don’t they do background checks
and things?”

“
Jack has a gift
for … well, he can create things. Remember your car after the
deer?
”

“
Yes,” Lucy responded.

“
He didn’t use any replacement
parts. For the parts he couldn’t fix, he recreated what he needed
from raw material in his shop. Documents are no problem for
him.”

“
Wow,” was all Lucy could respond
as she examined the rest of the wall.

The photos and memorabilia spanned hundreds of
years, from medieval knives to pieces of ancient Samurai battle
armor. There were pictures of Jack with men in white shirts and
skinny black ties. The number of horn-rimmed glasses made Lucy
laugh.

“
Those are the Saturn Five rocket
developers. That’s Wernher von Braun in the suit.”

Lucy just gawked.

“
Jack had just graduated from
M.I.T. at that time and he loved what was going on in the space
race.”

“
How did he do all of this? I
mean, how did he just happen to be in these places when these
people were changing the world?”

“
Like I said, he’s always been
attracted to power.”

Lucy continued to take in the wall. At the
very end, she came to a small shadow box ornately carved from a
dark, cherry-colored wood. Inside were dried pink flowers and a
piece of cotton fabric that looked like it was torn from something
larger. For no reason at all, she felt sad looking into the neatly
arranged box.