Immortal Light: Wide Awake (46 page)

“
Lucy!” Kat clung fast to Lucy’s
upper body. “I was so scared. They came out of nowhere.”

“
I know, just relax. We need to
find a way out of here. Can you move?”

Kat pushed herself up on her elbows and sat
up. Lucy took that as an affirmative.

Getting to her feet, Lucy stepped lightly to
the window. It was covered with wooden boards that seemed to be
rotting, so Lucy tried pulling on one of them. With a dull thud, it
broke away then crumbled to damp sawdust in her hands. She looked
over to the bed with hope and Kat’s eyes widened. Jumping quietly
to her feet, Kat went to help her friend.

One by one they pulled the deteriorating
boards from the window frame. Slowly, the freezing winter air blew
in the window and the outside smelled of evergreens.

“
Where are we?” Kat asked in a
near silent whisper.

As she pried another board from the window,
Lucy quietly answered, “Kenny said something about Crescent City. I
think we’re in California.”

Kat twisted her head in curiosity, “Kenny,
your boss Kenny?”

“
Yeah, he’s a reaper,” Lucy
replied casually. “Okay, let’s go.”

There was enough space for the two of them to
get through one at a time. Kat swung her leg up and over the bottom
of the sill that was more than three feet above the floor. The two
girls froze as they heard footsteps and voices outside their
door.

Lucy turned quickly to Kat. “You need to run
as soon as you get out. Go into the forest and make a giant loop
back toward this place. See if you can find a road. Go!”

Kat jumped down out of the window and set off
into the dark forest.

Lucy pulled herself onto the sill. As she
found her footing and was about to jump through the window and
start sprinting, the door of her room flew open. Before she could
even turn around she felt hands all over her throwing her to the
bed, the sword handle driving into her lower back, and she rolled
over with a grimace.

The light from the doorway was blocked by a
giant silhouette. Sukabra looked down at her and slowly entered the
room. He walked over to the window and stuck his head through it,
seemingly admiring the girls’ handiwork.

Following behind him were
half a dozen more reapers whose impatient stances made them appear
as though their appetites for Lucy’s
light
were being held at bay only by
the orders of their master. The only one that didn’t move in
anticipation of a fix was Kenny. Lucy saw him standing in the
shadows of a far corner, just waiting.

Sukabra looked to the reaper closest to him
and jerked his head toward the window. The reaper, who appeared to
be Sukabra’s number one, started to leave the room through the door
and motioned to the others to follow. One particularly nasty
looking reaper that stood nearest to Lucy looked at her, licked his
pale lips, and sneered.

“
Simon!” Sukabra addressed the
leader. “Alive.”

Simon answered with a nod and the band of
reapers headed out into the cold. Kenny looked coolly at Lucy as he
walked out last.

Alone in the motel room, Lucy looked up at
Sukabra, who had grabbed a nearby chair and sat down in it. She sat
up and pushed herself to the head of the bed until she felt the
hilt of the sword press into her back.

There was silence as the two of them stared at
each other. Lucy could make out the room much better now that the
window was less obstructed. She could see the bright green carpet
turned brown with age. The mattress she sat on was bare and
cracking.

Sukabra sat in his chair. He was a giant of a
man whose head, when sitting down, reached more than halfway up the
wall. He was completely bald and the right side of his scalp was
covered with a black tattoo that looked almost like vines extending
over his head and curling just behind his eye. His rich, dark skin
seemed to accent the bright whites of his eyes and gleaming
teeth.

Lucy looked to the window, thinking about Kat.
She wondered just how far she had gone, if she had made it to the
road.

Sukabra glanced toward the window as well and
then back at Lucy. “Don’t worry about your friend. My reapers will
find her.”

His voice was deep, but every word was
articulated by a refined accent that Lucy couldn’t place. Peter was
right; he wasn’t just a reaper goon. He was powerful. A small grin
was evident in the corner of his mouth.

Lucy’s body tensed. She wanted to reach into
her backpack, pull out her sword, and kill Sukabra. She tried to
calculate how quickly she could clear the bed and plunge the sword
into his heart. No matter how she figured it, she wouldn’t be quick
enough.

“
Lucy Higgins, I need you to
listen to me if you want your friend out there,” Sukabra gestured
to the window, “and your friends up there,” he gestured to what
Lucy assumed was North, referring to the Ravens, “to live another
day.”

Lucy was afraid, but she felt she had nothing
to lose at that moment so her confidence was building. “I know what
you want.”

“
Yes, but do you know
why?”

Lucy didn’t answer because she didn’t
understand what that had to do with anything.

“
You see, I ask you that because I
don’t believe in taking the life of anyone without them knowing why
I am taking it.”

Lucy sneered at him, “Isn’t that considerate
of you.”

Her sarcasm amused Sukabra, but she didn’t
care. She was entering a place in her psyche that gave her
strength. It was the place she imagined soldiers in battle would
find when they considered themselves already dead, having such a
slim chance of surviving that being scared was a useless
emotion.

“
Did you bore my parents to death,
too, before killing them?”

Sukabra looked at her curiously. “I did not
kill your parents, Lucy Higgins. I would not have wasted my
time.”

Lucy could feel her rage
building as she realized that Sukabra was not the one who stole her
mother’s
light
.
Her mother was the victim of a reaper attack, and her father was in
that hospital bed because of the animalistic cravings of a
reaper.

Sukabra could see that she was unsettled as
her mouth contorted and quivered while she looked at him in the
darkness.

“
I tell you this so that you will
know that you’re not going to be wasted like your parents and so
many others that my reapers dispose of like table scraps. You’re
special, Lucy Higgins.”

Fury boiled inside her as she thought of
reapers attacking her mother. “So, I guess my mother wasn’t special
enough for you.” Her tone was acrid.

“
I try to teach
these animals how to use discretion, but when they get hungry, well
…
”
he shrugged
his shoulders as if to dismiss the killing of her mother as boys
being boys.

Lucy sat up straighter and fought the urge to
reach for the sword.

“
Lucy Higgins, I don’t want to
upset you right now. I merely want to talk.”

“
Why don’t you spare me the
monologue and just get on with it,” Lucy almost growled at him. She
wanted him to come closer; she wanted him to put himself in
position so she could strike.

“
Because, Lucy Higgins, I have a
policy, and that policy doesn’t get broken.”

“
What about the first time you had
me? You started the process then without explaining anything to
me.”

Sukabra’s eyes widened a little bit. “That was
not an extraction. That was simply to get you to stop fighting. I
was just trying to get you unconscious.”

Lucy’s heart sank as she remembered the
absolute despair that her last encounter with Sukabra had given
her.

“
An extraction,
Lucy Higgins, is far worse than simply taking your
light
. An extraction
takes you, but rather than keeping you trapped inside the foul
recesses of a reaper, it’s more like torture, and then you
die.”

Lucy swallowed hard.

“
When I extract you, I am able to
control you and communicate with you, and if you won’t give me the
information I want from you, I can make it hurt. The only problem
is that your feeble flesh might make it difficult to keep you alive
long enough to extract what I need. However, if you survive and I
manage to get what I want, your body will be so drained of any
substance that you’ll live the rest of your life as a useless,
lifeless husk of a person.”

The prospect of extraction
frightened her. She wasn’t afraid to die, she was afraid of the
pain. She wondered if she would be able to go into her
haven
to lessen the
blow. Sukabra seemed to read her mind.

“
If you’re
thinking of going into a
haven
of some sort, I’ll tell you now that it will be
brief. It will take some time to bond. But, as I reach in to
extract what I want, the first thing I will take is your ability to
control your own mind, and then the anguish
starts.”

She decided with certainty that extraction was
not an option, so she renewed her plans to somehow get him close
enough to strike at with her sword.

“
The reason we need you, Lucy
Higgins, is because you have knowledge deep inside you that you
don’t even know you have.”

His words were clear, but Lucy was obviously
distracted.

“
Lucy Higgins, I’m trying to tell
you something that your boyfriend and the other immortal weaklings
won’t tell you. They’re afraid of you knowing the
truth.”

It only took that moment for
Lucy to divert all of her attention back to Sukabra. “They’ve told
me everything. I don’t think
you
know everything.”

He chuckled. “Lucy Higgins, there is so much
you do not know about who you are that it would scare you to know
what kind of power you have.”

Lucy glared at him. “Then why don’t you
enlighten me?”

“
I am on a quest for my master to
find the prophesied Queen of Zharem. Have your friends even told
you of the prophecy?”

Lucy looked stone-faced at him.

“
Well, the prophecy says that the
queen will be brought to this earth by the hands of the gods, and
only she will have power to bring back the city, Zharem, so that
she can rule it with her king and take control of the realm of
Zharem.”

“
I know all of this, but what does
it have to do with me? I’m just the guardian, a
bodyguard.”

“
Oh, is that what you think you
are? I’m not entirely surprised Peter never told you.”

“
Told me what?” Lucy looked
directly into the black irises of Sukabra’s eyes.

“
The prophecy is conditional. It
says that the queen will not come and rule unless all evil that
seeks to take control of the city from its people is
destroyed.”

Lucy stared uncomprehendingly.

“
That’s where you come in. A
guardian will be provided by the gods, a guardian whose powers will
be unknown to her,” he stopped for emphasis. “Yes, your friends
believe that is you, and my master is counting on it.”

The words stopped Lucy from
breathing.

“
You are the guardian that will
destroy all evil; you, singlehandedly.” He paused just to look at
her and laugh in his chest at his own words. His brief convulsion
was short lived as he went on. “But, the most important piece of
the puzzle is that deep inside you, you know exactly who the queen
will be.”

Lucy shook her head. “I have no idea who she
is.”

“
See, that’s the beauty of it; you
have it written inside you. It’s a link you have that will become
more evident as the arrival of the queen grows closer. She could be
a baby right now or not even born yet, but someday you will know
her.” There was another pause as he started to chuckle
introspectively.

“
What’s so funny?” Lucy asked
angrily.

“
The foil to this whole prophecy
is that I have a power that will extract from you the identity of
the new queen even though you don’t even know it yourself. My
master can bypass the part of the prophecy about the guardian if we
can simply go get the queen and use her to bring back the city and
take it for ourselves.”

Lucy thought about what he was proposing. She
realized that they could make her completely irrelevant, which
meant she had very little time to think of a way out.

“
What happens if I die before you
can get what you want? What if I just let myself go?”

“
Well, if something as unlikely as
that were to occur, the process would simply start over. You see,
the gods are funny about making things work in their favor. But, my
master is more powerful than the gods, and he will find the queen,
regardless. Do you think you are the first guardian we’ve tried to
extract?”

Lucy’s eyes widened. “What?”