Authors: Jennifer Quintenz
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Coming of Age, #Romance, #Paranormal, #Teen & Young Adult
She collided with me before I could do more than block her punch. The force of her blow sent me
staggering back a few steps. I faced her, frantic, but hard as I wracked my brain I knew I’d never seen
this woman before in my life. Could she be a spotter? Maybe a member of the Guard from a different
unit? I held out my hand—a gesture of truce.
“I’m not your enemy.”
She lunged for me again, swinging her other arm with more force. I saw the tire iron with just
enough time to drop. It sailed through the air where my head had been moments before. Ice gripped
my stomach. Whoever this woman was, she was not playing around. That blow was meant to end me. I
tried to run past her but she caught me by the scruff of my shirt and jerked me back, hard. I hit the
ground with a sickening thunk, red and black swirls overtaking my vision. When they cleared, I saw
her standing over me, tensing to swing the tire iron for my head.
Lucas hit her like a freight train, bowling her over before the killing blow could fall. A wave of
nausea rose in my throat but I pushed it down and forced myself to roll to my knees.
Lucas was wrestling with her for the tire iron beside a bank of stained glass windows. She released
the iron suddenly and Lucas, unprepared, lost his balance. Before he could recover, she turned,
punching him savagely in the solar plexus. Lucas dropped the tire iron. It struck the ground, impacting
with the sound of a clanging bell. Something was wrong—Lucas gasped for breath with a horrible, wet
sound. He dropped to his knees, unable to do more than struggle for oxygen.
The woman picked up the tire iron and turned back to Lucas, hunched over on the ground before
her.
“No!” My voice sliced through the sanctuary. The woman turned toward me, and I saw again the
lifelessness of her eyes. My breath came out in a ragged hiss of realization. “No.”
The woman left Lucas, bearing down on me. I realized that I had to end this fight, and I had to do
it now. Nothing would make her stop, and the next time I went down, there would be no one there to
save me.
I charged toward the woman. She lifted the tire iron to strike, but at the last moment I dropped,
skidding toward her across the slick, polished stone, feet first. I connected solidly, the force of my
kick shoving her up and back.
No surprised flickered through those dead eyes as she hit the stained glass window. The glass
exploded behind her like a shower of multi-colored gems, clearing the way for sunlight to flood the
sanctuary with blinding intensity.
I skidded to a stop beneath the window and threw my arms over my head protectively. Tiny
fragments of stained glass showered down. The silence was profound, but brief.
Screams sounded inside and outside the sanctuary. I couldn’t summon the energy to look up.
“Braedyn!” Lucas called, voice hoarse.
I moved my arms away from my head gingerly, and slivers of glass tinkled to the ground. Glass
littered the floor around me. Lucas was half-crawling, half-scrambling forward to meet me. I dragged
myself up into a sitting position.
Lucas threw an arm around me. In seconds we were surrounded. Mr. Landon was shouting, his
usually jovial face a mask of panic. Annie was screaming into the phone, eyes streaming. And beyond
them, a shell-shocked crowd of my classmates watched in horrified fascination.
The only thing that felt real was Lucas’s arm around me. I realized I was clinging to him
ferociously when Mr. Landon tried to pull us apart.
“Are you hurt?” he was asking. “Braedyn, are you hurt?”
“Don’t,” I whispered, tightening my grip on Lucas’s shirt. Mr. Landon pulled back helplessly.
“How long?” he asked Annie. “How long until the ambulance gets here?”
I didn’t hear Annie’s response. I was looking at Lucas’s face. “Did you see?” I whispered. “Did
you see her eyes?” Lucas nodded grimly. So I wasn’t crazy. The woman who’d attacked us?
She was a
Thrall
.
We were still clinging to each other 15 minutes later when the paramedics arrived.
Chapter 2
As far back as I could remember, the moon had been a comforting beacon in the darkness. But tonight,
the thin crescent sliver seemed distant, unfeeling. My shoulder ached. A student who’d seen the attack
reported that the woman had leapt for me, clubbing that tire iron across my shoulder. I supposed I was
lucky that the fracture was my only serious injury from the day. Most of the large stained glass shards
had fallen out of the window with the woman. The few smaller fragments that had rained down on me
left only superficial cuts on the skin of my hands and my lower back. My jacket had ridden up during
my slide across the floor; otherwise, I might have escaped with even fewer cuts. My arm was bound
up in a complicated sling, but I knew I’d only have to wear it for a few days, not the month or more
the doctors had prescribed. There were a few perks to being Lilitu. One good night’s sleep would ease
the pain, three or four would heal the fracture completely.
I glanced out the window to the Guard’s house next door. Lucas’s drapes were closed, but I could
see the light was on. It was close to midnight, but he was still awake. Probably getting grilled by
Gretchen again, going over the whole attack in excruciating detail. As the Guard’s resident spotter in
Puerto Escondido, Gretchen would have been on high alert just knowing there was a Thrall in town.
But the Thrall had just attacked Lucas, the last family Gretchen had in this world. She’d drive herself
to find the Lilitu responsible, no matter what it cost her.
A Thrall in town. We hadn’t seen one since Ais’s death. It hadn’t surprised either Lucas or me to
learn that after she’d fallen through the stained glass window, the Thrall had rolled to her feet and
stood up. What did shock us was that instead of returning to the sanctuary to renew her attack on us,
the Thrall had fled the scene. Thralls don’t give up. Once they have their orders, they pursue their
objective until they are killed or incapacitated—or until the orders are rescinded. I couldn’t guess
what the Lilitu who’d sent that Thrall intended. I only knew that it meant a Lilitu was back in Puerto
Escondido.
I tried to tell myself we’d all known it was just a matter of time before the Lilitu resurfaced. Ais
had made it pretty clear that a growing number of Lilitu were hell-bent on breaking through the Wall
that separated our worlds. This war was ancient, but the final battle was coming.
Knowing it was coming and seeing it begin were two very different things.
I shivered under the blankets, wishing Lucas would fall asleep. I needed to see him, to feel his
arms around me in the only safe place we could embrace—in the dream.
I heard a voice downstairs, full of tension. I tried to push it out of my mind, assuming Hale had
come over to talk about the attack with Dad. Hale might have been the leader of this unit of the Guard,
but he sought out Dad’s advice often. More and more often, it seemed to me. I heard another muffled
voice. This one sent a jolt down my spine. Thane was here, too?
I pushed the blankets back and crawled out of bed, slipping my feet into the cozy moccasins Dad
had given me last Christmas. While the September days were still warm, the nights had grown
sharper, heralding the coming New Mexico winter. I edged out of my room and walked down the hall,
stooping to kneel at the top of the stairs.
I couldn’t see into the kitchen from here, but I could hear the three men talking as distinctly as if I
were sitting around the kitchen island with them.
“Marx split his unit into three groups,” Hale was saying. “He’s leading the search into Canada, but
it’ll still take some time to gather everyone together.”
“How much time do you think we have?” Thane asked, his voice clipped even more than usual.
“Enough,” Dad said.
“Even if we can gather everyone,” Thane shot back, “that’s only about 100 soldiers. If this
intelligence is correct, and the Lilitu have found the way to open the seal—”
“We play it safe,” Dad said. His voice was steady, but there was an anger behind his words that
sent a shiver of alarm down my body.
“We don’t even know where this seal is located,” Thane growled.
“You’re the archivist,” Dad snapped back, losing his calm. “Isn’t that your job?”
“How exactly do you suggest I go about finding information that’s—as far as we can tell—all been
destroyed?” Thane’s voice grew softer, dangerous. “She is our secret weapon, but that only helps us if
we use her.”
A chair scraped the floor. “She’s been through enough,” Dad said hoarsely. “She and Lucas,
they’ve already had to deal with more than any kid should be expected to handle.”
“What do you suggest?” Thane asked, a mocking edge to his voice. “Asking the Lilitu politely if
they wouldn’t mind waiting a few years so our children have time to mature?”
“Thane’s right,” Hale said. “That Thrall went after her, Murphy. Keeping her out of the loop won’t
protect her.”
“I’m not suggesting we keep this from Braedyn,” Dad said. “I’m just asking that we not throw her
directly into the lion’s den.” Hearing my name sent a jolt of anxiety through me. It drove the
exhaustion out of my head in an instant. I strained to hear everything.
Thane made a disgusted sound. “This is what she was raised for, Murphy! Or have you forgotten
that? She needs to be training. We’ve got a very limited amount of time to push her to discover what
she’s capable of.”
“If it were up to you, she’d have no social life at all,” Dad said. Warmth spread through my
stomach. No matter what we’d been through, Dad still fought for me to have a life—a life as normal
as we could make it under the circumstances. I bit my lip, suddenly feeling the urge to tell him about
the angel’s promise. He deserved to know.
“If it were up to me, she wouldn’t even be attending high school,” Thane snarled back. “What does
she need with an education? There’s very little chance she’ll survive the final bat—” But Thane’s
words choked off abruptly. All the warmth that had flooded through me a moment ago vanished.
“Murphy.” Hale’s voice rang with authority. After a moment, I heard Thane drag in a ragged
breath.
“You see this, Hale?” Thane hissed. “He’s not fit for this task. He’s let his feelings for the demon
overrule his common sense. Give me charge over her training and I guarantee—”
“Go home, Thane,” Hale said quietly.
“Hale,” Thane began.
“We all need some sleep. Things will seem clearer in the morning.”
There was a long moment of silence, then I heard another chair scrape the floor. I ducked back into
the shadows at the top of the staircase as Thane marched to the front door. He placed a hand on the
doorknob, then hesitated. He turned toward me, as though he’d known all along I was there, listening.
His eyes found mine, steely and calculating. He lifted two fingers to brush his temple in a mocking
salute, and then he was gone, pulling the door closed behind him.
I shrank back against the wall, frozen.
Hale and Dad walked to the front door a few moments later. They both looked exhausted.
“You know it’s time,” Hale said. “She has to start training again.” Dad didn’t answer. Hale put a
compassionate hand on my dad’s shoulder. “I give you my word, Murphy. I’ll do my best to prepare
her.”
Dad nodded slowly. Hale opened the door and walked into the night. Dad closed the door, then
leaned his forehead against the solid oak. After a few moments, I drew back into the hall and returned