Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (40 page)

“Please don’t make me spell it out,
Endora.”

But I wanted him to spell it out
because there were still a number of issues I was unclear
on.

“If it counts for anything, I’d
already made the decision not to go through with it when you
invited me. My attraction to you is real. At first, I really
thought I might be able to do it. But after the night at the lake,
after I’d met you in person, there was no way.” He paused in his
rambling and laughed humorlessly. “Guess I should have read the
fine print on that Egrgoroi contract.”

“You were supposed to kill me,” I
said. Surprisingly, my voice was calm. I even managed to continue
administering to his wounds, using a little more peroxide than was
necessary to disinfect the cuts, and more pressure than was
necessary to apply the gauze.

The realization wasn’t as
earth-shattering as it should have been. Then again, part of me had
known since we met that he was dangerous. I’d chosen to ignore all
the warning signs.

“Yes. You were my first real
assignment. All the other premonitions I’ve had were
small.”

“How do Bryson and Devon fit into
this? He told her she shouldn’t have meddled in things that aren’t
her business.”

Kannon turned and met my eyes for the
first time. There was so much sadness in them, so much pain.
“Bryson is a type of Egrgoroi, a fire wrangler to be precise. He’s
like the lake creature, though - no soul.”

“And he was also sent to kill
me?”

“I think so,” Kannon said. “He was in
my dream. I didn’t know his name before you told it to me, though.
But as soon as I saw him with Devon I recognized him. Up until that
moment, I’d still thought there was a chance the dream wouldn’t
come true.” His eyes began to water. He wiped away the tears with
the back of his hand. “I knew what I was supposed to do, but there
was no way I could go through with it. Not now after knowing you.”
He cupped my cheek with his palm.

Closing my eyes, I leaned into his
touch. His fingers were rough against my skin as they stroked my
cheek.

“You were supposed to be evil,” he
whispered. “But nothing so beautiful could be evil.”

I willed myself not to cry and asked
Kannon the one question I’d been too naïve to ask from the
beginning, “Which god do you work for?”

A pit of dread formed in my stomach as
I waited for his reply. If he thought I was supposed to be evil,
then that meant he, not me, was one of the Blessed.

“King Kronos.”

My heart sank. That was what I’d been
afraid of.

“What about Bryson?” I
asked.

“Tartarus. Fire wranglers are
exclusive to Tartarus.”

“If you work for King Kronos and
Bryson works for Tartarus, who do I work for?” I opened my eyes and
met his gaze.

“I’m not sure,” he replied sadly. “At
first, I thought for sure you were part of Tartarus’s clan because
of my premonitions. But since you died as an infant, I don’t
understand how that is possible.”

While Kannon might still not
understand how all the puzzle pieces fit together, I suddenly
realized I did. Well, at least how Dad thought they did. And if I
were being truthful, Mom, too. Dad was trying to find a physical
gate to the underworld. He was particularly interested in only one
of the three judges: Minos, the Appeals Judge. There was only one
reason I could think of to appeal my second life – if, at its
ultimate conclusion, I was destined for Tartarus.

I still wasn’t convinced
Samantha’s death was not my fault, but something my mother said
came back to me. “I don’t think
you
were given a second chance at life.” She hadn’t
flat out denied believing I was an Egrgoroi, only that I hadn’t
been given the choice to come back. The more I thought about it,
the more I agreed with her. I wasn’t given the choice; I wasn’t old
enough to sign the contract. But Samantha was.

“What if I wasn’t the one Judged and
Sentenced?” I asked Kannon quietly.

“You had to have been,” he said,
slowly shaking his head. “That’s the way it works.”

“Right, but I wasn’t the only one who
died the day I was born, remember? What if they gave Aunt Sam the
choice but there was some mix-up and I got sent back
instead?”

“Maybe,” Kannon said, sounding
unconvinced.

“That would explain why both sides
want me dead,” I reasoned. “I mean, no one wants a rogue Egrgoroi
wandering around. For all I know I am getting messages from both
sides and screwing up the battle of good versus evil.”

Kannon laughed, but his eyes remained
flat. “Well, you have definitely screwed up that fight.” Kannon
turned away again, staring off into the distance. “There’s
something else.”

Great, I thought. Just when I thought
the situation couldn’t get worse.

“All those people on that list your
father had - Endora, they’re dead.”

Chapter
Twenty-Six

“Dead?” I repeated. No wonder Devon
hadn’t gotten any return emails.

“Well, except for one,” Kannon
amended.

“Betsy Klinefelter?” I guessed, since
she was the only one Devon hadn’t been able to email.

“How did you know?”

“Dad didn’t have any contact
information for her.” I shrugged, “It just seemed like the logical
guess.”

“Well, I found her,” Kannon said, not
sounding happy about it. “I’m hoping she can help me.”

Help
him
? He knew what he was and how he
became that way. I was the one who needed help. I was the one
destined to spend eternity in hell, through absolutely no fault of
my own. Then again, if it was a clerical error that made me an
Egrgoroi and sent me back to guide other souls, maybe my fate was
still my own. A girl could hope.

“Why do
you
need help?” I asked.

Kannon looked at me like I had three
eyes.

“You were supposed to
die
tonight. And I was
supposed to make sure you did. Preventing that from happening
voided the deal I made with the Panel. I forfeited my second
life.”

Of all the truths I’d learned since my
eighteenth birthday, Kannon’s hit me the hardest. The weight of his
words, his sacrifice, was too much for me. The world started to
spin - faster and faster, like the Vortex at King’s Dominion - and
I braced myself for the bottom to drop out from underneath me. My
stomach somersaulted, the Shirley Temple sloshing around
uncomfortably. Sweat beaded along my hairline at the same time
chills ran up my legs. Blindly, I reached to steady myself on
something, anything.

Kannon’s hand found mine. The current
that passed between our joined hands was the literal jolt I needed
to restore equilibrium. He began dabbing gauze soaked with bottled
water across my cheeks to cool the feverish skin.

“Don’t feel badly for me, Endora. The
choice was mine, and mine alone. I knew the consequences and I did
it anyway.”

I did feel badly for him,
though. Of course, I was glad he’d made the choice he had. At
eighteen, I’d barely begun to live. There was so much I’d been
looking forward to, so much left to do in this world. But that
didn’t stop me from feeling guilty that my continued existence on
earth came at the expense of another. First Sam died for me, now
Kannon would. Maybe I
was
evil.

I did the only thing I could think of
– I slipped the chain with the dream catcher over my head and
brought it to settle around his neck.

Kannon fingered the pendant. “What are
you doing? You need this,” he said and tried to unfasten the clasp
with one hand.

“No, you need it. I haven’t had any
dreams while wearing it. No messages have gotten through. They
can’t send you messages while you are awake, right? Only when you
are sleeping, unconscious, or meditating? And they can’t reclaim
your soul until you die, so as long as you can stay alive, you and
your soul are safe,” I said, praying Dad’s research was
accurate.

I wasn’t entirely sure, but from what
I’d read, the gods themselves couldn’t pass over the physical plane
into our world. That was why they needed the Egrgoroi to do their
work on earth. Hermes passed messages to the Egrgoroi while we were
sleeping, unconscious, or meditating. Our souls could be dragged
into the underworld during those times too, but as soon as we woke
up, we would be back in our world.

“Easier said than done,” Kannon said.
“Other Egrgoroi will be sent for me. Once Bryson has recovered from
our fight, he’ll probably be hot on my trail.” He released my hand
and scrubbed his face with his palms.

“How do you think this Klinefelter
woman is going to help you?” I asked.

“She’s a rogue Egrgoroi, as you call
it. She voided her contract with the gods years ago and has been on
the run ever since.”

“How?” I asked.

Kannon shrugged. “No clue. That’s what
I’m hoping she’ll tell me. Of course, that doesn’t solve the
ultimate problem of where my soul is going to go when I finally
bite it, but at least I can prolong the inevitable.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said, not
realizing what I’d intended to say until the words were out of my
mouth.

“Endora, if you are with me and the
other Egrgoroi catch up with me, they will kill you
too.”

“Um, in case you haven’t noticed, the
powers that be already tried to kill me. Since they failed, I would
be surprised if killer Egrgoroi aren’t on their way for me
already.”

“You’re right,” he conceded. “People
are coming for you. The underworld wants you back.”

“So you’ll let me come with
you?”

Kannon sighed. “Are you
sure?”

“Positive. When do we
leave?”

“I was going to leave tonight…” he
trailed off.

“Can we wait until the morning?” I
asked. There were some things I wanted to take care of before we
left.

“On one condition,” he said and
removed the dream catcher from his neck and looped the chain over
my head. “You take this. Once we are together again we can take
turns sleeping and wearing it.”

Reluctantly, I agreed. It seemed a
little selfish of me since his predicament was my fault. If he’d
just let Bryson have me, he would still be on course for a good
afterlife. For any life.

A bright yellow car pulled to a stop
in front of us, Diamond Cabs painted on the side. I helped Kannon
to his feet. He pulled his tux jacket closed, holding it in place
with one hand. We looked like quite the pair. Kannon bore the marks
of his fight with Bryson. The hem of my dress was torn, my feet
were covered in small scratches and dirt since I was still
barefoot, and both of us had soot from head to toe. And we probably
smelled horrible.

“Where to?” the cab driver asked as we
slid into the back seat. He didn’t bother turning around at first,
just looked at us in his rearview mirror. Apparently what he saw
was abnormal enough that he felt the need to turn completely around
in his seat to gawk.

Kannon rattled off my address, then
shoved several twenties through the rectangular hole in the
Plexiglas divider. “I have more if you hurry,” he added when the
driver continued to stare.

We rode in silence. Kannon rested his
head against the seat and closed his eyes. My throat was raw from
the smoke I’d inhaled, so I drank the remaining bottled water and
tried to fit the rest of the puzzle pieces into place. One of the
things that bothered me most was why tonight? Bryson could have
killed me on my birthday. Had Kannon not been there, the lake
creature would have done it for him.

Oh god. That was why Bryson suggested
I jump. He had tried to kill me. If I’d died in the water, no one
would have questioned whether it was an accident. Like Devon had
said, people disappeared in Caswell Lake all the time.

“Kannon?” I said softly. The cabbie
had the radio on, but I didn’t want him to overhear our
conversation. Not that he was likely to believe his ears if he
did.

“Yeah.”

“When did you have the dream about me?
The dream about tonight.”

“The night before we met.
Why?”

“Just curious,” I mumbled.

My mother’s Saab was not in the
driveway when the cab dropped us off twenty minutes later. I found
that strange since her social life was non-existent. Maybe she’d
gone into the office?

At the front door of my house Kannon
and I said goodnight and agreed to meet, where else, at The
Moonlight Diner at 6:00 a.m. Kannon instructed me to pack one bag
with several changes of clothes and my toiletries. Absolutely no
cell phones, laptops, or anything else that could be used to track
us. That was to keep our families and friends safe. Until we
figured out how get the other Egrgoroi off of our backs, we were a
danger to be around.

I called Mom’s cell and left a voice
mail when she didn’t answer, explaining that I’d eaten something
bad at dinner and came home early. That way, if she heard about the
fire on the radio or whatever, she wouldn’t worry about me. When
she knocked on my bedroom at one a.m., I pretended to be
asleep.