Atlas (The Atlas Series) (20 page)

Kala wondered if other Atlases had known sorcery or magic or whatever. Kala certainly felt like it should be a job requirement, since no amount of mundane weapons or martial arts appeared to have any effect on the supernatural. Kala felt a surge of frustration at that thought. She had worked her whole adult life to be practically indestructible, the best of the best, so much so that she was chosen for Turner and Clifton’s elite team. To be virtually defenseless made Kala’s head implode. It was grossly unfair. At least the tranq gun made her feel a little like her old self. She put on the gun holster and placed the gun inside.

Kala sighed. She should be used to the unfairness of life, but it always seemed to knock her on her butt whether she expected it or not.

Still.

Kala wondered how Roberta was going to make contact once she left this place. Roberta said she “had her ways,” but Kala was losing hope that she’d ever have another encounter with the woman again. There was so much more to learn and Kala didn’t know the first thing about how to figure it out. If Roberta was able to contact her, she probably wouldn’t want to after Kala deliberately failed her mission.

Kala walked to the refrigerator for breakfast.

After a giant meal of eggs, bacon and pancakes, Kala felt ready to face the day. A part of her wanted to hole up in this hideout, but she was sure that this wouldn’t be a safe house for long. Staying on the move was the best bet for survival.

Kala put on a baseball cap and tucked her hair up inside. She figured if General Clifton had her on his radar, he’d use every surveillance camera available. That meant keeping her head down so not even traffic cams could readily recognize her.

Kala put on her jacket, making sure the holster was out of sight. Grabbing her bag, Kala left the brownstone and headed for a place where she could find a computer. There was a lot of research to do, mainly about Atlas. She was sure most of what she’d find would be the typical mythology stuff, but maybe, just maybe, someone who actually knew about the real job position would have written something over the years.

A thought hit her like lightning.

Asmodeus’s words: “
You have to die and you have to die by ritual. It’s only because Atlas needs to grow a pair and show himself after 2,000 years of tricking you idiots into doing his job.
”

Something about what he said struck a chord with Kala. If Atlas tricked humans into doing his job, maybe a human could trick
him
into taking it back. Though Atlas himself had said this wasn’t possible, the thought still made her head giddy with possibilities. But just as suddenly a horrible thought overwhelmed her: if she didn’t kill Jack, then Atlas would. Escaping from the burden of this job wasn’t the answer because the answer was always the same: Jack and a bullet through his head.

Kala decided to file away what Asmodeus said for another time. It was definitely important information, Kala just couldn’t process it at that moment, not if it meant thinking about murdering her boyfriend.

Making her way past row upon row of brownstones, Kala reached a busy street crowded with restaurants, stores and, more importantly an Internet café. She picked the closest one to her and paid the clerk for two hours of computer time. She ordered an iced mocha, feeling like she needed a little sugar and caffeine to jump start her day. Sidling up on a bar stool, Kala signed in to the computer with the username and password the clerk had given her.

After a few agonizingly long moments, Kala was finally on the Internet and felt like an idiot when she typed in “History of Atlas”: almost every page about the history of the atlas books, as in maps. Although she had a moment of feeling justified when she remembered thinking this in the presence of the real Atlas. Most people did think of the map kind of atlas before they thought of the Greek god Atlas. So Kala refined her search to: Greek god Atlas history. She found out right away he was a Titan and that Titans were the first Greek panthenon known as the Elder Gods, just as Atlas had told her. Atlas was a second generation Titan being the son of Iapetus, but Kala wondered if there really was a big difference between first and second generations. Everything she read was all the same: he led a fight against Zeus and lost and his punishment was holding up the world or in some legends guarding the pillars that kept the earth and sky apart, either way he was definitely guardian of the earth. Or at least the guy that kept the earth from crumbling. It made an odd sense, everything that Kala had been told from the real Atlas. The histories were a watered-down version of what was true. In order for the world to function properly, Atlas had the burden of making it happen.

Now that burden was hers.

And she was completely ignoring it.

There were also a couple of pages that said Atlas taught humans astronomy, and a story about how he tricked Hercules into taking his burden…

Kala froze.

Tricked Hercules into taking his burden
!!

Kala suddenly knew that the Hercules story was actually the truth. Sure, she knew Hercules probably wasn’t real, or honestly, she couldn’t really say that with confidence anymore, but that must have been the moment Atlas was set free. Hercules may have been Zeus’s son, but he was also half human, which meant Atlas tricked a mortal into doing his job.

After her two hours were up, Kala felt like she knew a little more about Greek mythology than she did before, but she still felt way out of her depth. She had fiddled around looking up what she could on Hercules, but mostly it was stories about his bravery and valor. It said he tricked Atlas back into taking the pillars again. If that were true, maybe it meant that Hercules was the first to shove Atlas’s job back in his face. Maybe Atlas tricked a full-blown human after that. Kala had no idea, and no one to ask. Everything was just one big guess at this point.

Throwing her bag over her shoulder, Kala left the café and made sure she kept her hat down, hiding her face from any cameras that might be above her. It was weird hiding from the people she trusted most. The Ops team had been her family and as far as she was concerned they still were, but Clifton had it out for her. Talk about pissing off the wrong guy. Kala felt that she was a pawn thrown into the middle of a fight between Turner and Clifton, but either way, the most elite force in the government and probably the world now had her face as enemy number one. The person who assassinated the President.

The worst mistake she ever made.

“Kala Hicks?” A man’s voice sounded behind her.

Kala kept walking. She didn’t respond or react. Kala hoped that maybe whoever it was would think they confused her with someone else. A part of her was curious as to who called out her name. If it was one of Clifton’s guys, she’d be captured already, or at least, in the process of
trying
to be captured. It had to be someone from her past who honestly thought they were reuniting with a friend.

As if from thin air, a man stepped in front of Kala. “I’ve been looking for you,” he snarled.

And Kala recognized him right away.

It was the Malak, Grautlin.

Kala switched into military-mode. He was a Malak — he’d be too fast if he saw her going for the gun, so she tried distraction. “How did you find me?”

Grautlin seemed very impressed with himself. “Security camera in the café. You can’t disguise yourself from a Malak.”

Kala pretended to act scared. She pretended to cry dramatically, covering her face with her hands. Anything to disguise what she was about to do.

“You’re pathetic,” Grautlin sneered. “I’ll enjoy killing you.”

Before Grautlin could move, Kala had her gun out of the holster and shoved into Grautlin’s stomach. She pulled the trigger and recited the words from the spell.

Grautlin shrieked, holding his head in pain.

Kala ran.

She didn’t know how long the spell would last.

Kala was just relieved that it had worked at all! And on a Malak!

While she ran Kala reached in her bag and pulled out another ooze-vial, loading it onto the gun. Knowing that Grautlin would do anything in his power not to let her have another chance to inject him, Kala kept the gun out and ready.

Kala cursed all surveillance cameras and hoped that Clifton’s face recognition software wasn’t as advanced as the Malaks’ ability to spot her.

Grautlin’s screams from behind her stopped abruptly.

Kala shoved her way past people walking down the sidewalk, ignoring their stares of suspicion and fear.

Grautlin popped up in front of her, reaching for her neck to snap.

On instinct, Kala canted the levitation words she had memorized and to her amazement made a garbage can lift off the ground and smash into Grautlin. She knew she didn’t have time to inject him again, so she ran as fast as she could down the street and into a nearby alley.

Kala’s adrenaline was pumping fast and she realized she was running aimlessly. Where did she think she was going? Where could she run? A part of her was impressed with herself that she’d managed to levitate the garbage can so easily. Maybe she did have a knack for magic. It excited her a bit.

Just as Kala turned the corner, Grautlin appeared and roared in anger.

“I would kill you slowly if I had my choice,” the Malak raged.

“You could try.” Kala leapt to a set of fire escape stairs on the side of the alley. She was halfway up the second flight of stairs when Grautlin materialized in front of her.

Kala groaned in frustration. “I hate that trick.” She injected Grautlin again, but before she could finish the spell, he backhanded her off the fire escape.

Waiting for the inevitable impact of the cement lasted longer than Kala expected. Just before she reached bottom, it was as if a force of wind slowed her fall. She landed on the ground with a light thump.

Looking around for whatever or whomever had cushioned her landing, Kala laid eyes on a man entering the alley.

Grautlin saw him too and screamed in fury. “She’s mine, Malak!”

Great, another Malak
. Kala had had enough of the supposed “good guys” trying to kill her.

But the man didn’t make any sudden moves toward her, he just stared at Grautlin with anger. “Leave, Grautlin, before you regret it,” the man warned.

“Who are you?” Grautlin didn’t look worried at this stranger’s threats in the least.

“It doesn’t matter,” the man said calmly. “Leave the girl and live.”

Kala suddenly felt like she was standing in the middle of an old-style western gun fight.

She took it as a cue and made a run for the opposite exit.

Grautlin materialized in front of Kala so suddenly she almost smacked into him. She managed to stop herself just inches from Grautlin’s body.

“Time to die,” he grinned.

And that’s exactly what happened.

BOOM!

Grautlin’s body exploded in front of Kala.

She waited for the splattering of Angel guts to hit her, but in a large POOF there was no evidence that Grautlin ever existed.

Instinct took over. Kala whirled around to face the stranger who stood there like the Angel of Death. The fact that this Malak had just obliterated one of his own kind scared Kala in a way she couldn’t describe. Not even Asmodeus had that kind of power and he was the King of the Demons.

And if this stranger could do that to a Malak, Kala knew she was a dead woman.

But Kala was a fighter. She focused on the dumpster next to her, levitation spell already on her lips. Before she could utter a syllable, however, the Malak lifted his finger and placed it on her mouth. Kala tried to say the words of the spell, but nothing came out. A surge of panic ran through her: this man had taken away her ability to speak. Her only defense against the supernatural taken in one touch. She was beyond furious, she was terrified.

“Relax,” the Angel said softly, calmly. “I’ll give you back your voice. I just need to talk to you before you attack me with a dumpster,” he said with a slight smile.

Kala was close enough to shoot. She placed the gun on his chest and was about to pull the trigger when the gun dissolved in her hand. Within seconds her whole defense system was literally dust blowing in the wind. Just like Grautlin.

It took Kala a few seconds to gain her bearings. In this new life of hers she figured she’d listen to anyone who had more power while she quietly devised a plan of escape. First goal: get her voice back. She nodded and tried to look as defeated as possible so he would think she was ready to listen.

Although under normal circumstances it would be quite easy to listen to the Malak standing before her. He was very attractive with short light brown hair in a messy-sexy-swoop, blue eyes and bone structure for days. He was wearing a black, tight-fitted biker jacket with a white t-shirt and jeans. Supermodel anyone?

Why did Malaks and Demons have to be so freakin’ gorgeous
! Supreme beings, Kala guessed, but it still annoyed her. Couldn’t the bad guys be ugly or something, so she could at least tell them apart from the good guys?

The man gave her a look that suggested he wasn’t buying her supplication for a second. Instead of being angry, though, he looked amused. “I think I’m going to explain myself first before I give you your voice back. I don’t trust you… yet.”