Court of Nightfall (5 page)

Up until that point I'd been mostly numb. I'd wanted to find out what happened to my parents, and I'd hoped that answering all their questions would accomplish that. It was becoming clear that was not the case, and I'd had enough. Rage built in me, boiling up from the new holes in my heart. Before anyone could ask me another inane question, I spoke, my voice strong, firm, commanding. "I am not a 'girl', Ragathon, I am a woman with full agency and legal rights, and I do not appreciate being spoken to, or about, in this condescending manner."

I made eye contact with each of the council members. "As for the rest of you, I'm done answering your questions. I've told you everything I know. This morning, I thought I had a normal life and normal parents and then all hell broke loose. My parents are dead. I am standing here covered
in their blood."
At that I thought I saw the Chancellor flinch.

"I've been attacked, injured, beaten, and I've lost everything that mattered. I'm hungry and tired. I need a shower and time to mourn my parents and figure out what I'm going to do next. I don't owe you anything. I don't know any of you and you don't know me. Whatever arrangement you had with my parents died with them. So unless you are taking me prisoner," the Chancellor raised his eyebrows at that and I fired back, "and let me warn you if that's the case, I will be seeking legal action against you, this school and U.F.I. for condoning the capture and imprisonment of an innocent," I stared him down, then continued, "then I insist on being taken somewhere where I can shower, eat, sleep and grieve. Alone."

I could feel Jax stiffen next to me. A stunned silence filled the room and I waited, sensing that my life hung in the balance in that moment.

Then the Chancellor chuckled and tugged at his beard. "The girl…excuse me, the young woman is right. We've been treating our
guest
badly. We have enough information to start an investigation into this matter."

Ragathon interrupted. "But I have more questions—"

The Chancellor held up his staff. "We are done!" He looked at the other Head, a challenge in his eyes, but Ragathon backed down. "Jax, please show Miss Night to a room and make sure she has all she needs to be comfortable."

His eyes fell on me again, a knowing look in them. "Miss Night, please accept my condolences on the death of your parents. Whatever we can do to help bring their killers to justice, we will do."

I didn't exhale until we left the Council Room. My body went limp, and I felt light headed and drained.

Jax turned to me. "I've never seen anyone talk to them like that and live to tell the tale." He had a look of wonder in his eyes, but also fear. Of me? Of them? I didn't know and honestly didn't care much in that moment.

But I did have one question that nagged me. "That man. The middle one, the Chancellor. Who is he?" I knew he was the Chancellor, but something about him tugged at my mind. The way he looked at me. The way he laughed when I stood up to him.

Jax's face was a study in neutrality. "He's your grandfather."

"My grandfather? But… he's dead. He died before I was born." I had no grandparents left. My dad's parents died a few years apart when I was a child, though I never got to meet them because they lived overseas. My mom's mother died when she was a teenager, and her father… he died while she was pregnant with me.

"When your parents went into hiding, they cut off most of their ties with the Orders. That included your grandfather."

Jax led me back up the stairs we'd come down and through the halls of the castle as we talked. "Have I ever met him?" I asked.

He shook his head, running a hand through his dark hair. "No, your parents went into hiding before you were born."

While Mom was pregnant with me. All she had left was her father, and she cut off their relationship to protect this weapon.

I became keenly aware of my sorry physical state as students from different Orders walked by, staring at us. I must have looked like I'd survived a battlefield. I guess I had. "It's late for them to be up, isn't it?"

"We have different training exercises that run throughout the day and night."

A tall girl with red hair and the mark of the Teutonics on her tunic stared at me as she walked by.

Jax tugged at my hand as he glared at her, dark eyes narrowed. "Mind your own business, soldier."

Her mouth snapped shut, and she hurried off as Jax increased his speed, and I rushed to catch up.

We entered a large hall with couches, chairs and tables scattered throughout and a huge hearth roaring with a fire. Above it hung a tapestry embroidered with the Teutonic Knight symbol. Only one student occupied the room: a long, lanky man reclining on a couch in one corner, a large leather book covering his face as he slept.

Jax crossed the room and slapped his boot. The man jolted awake.

"Get to bed, Saunders. You'll be useless to me tomorrow otherwise."

"Yes, sir," he said and scrambled out one of the doors, not even sparing a glance in my direction, which I appreciated.

"Tomorrow you'll be given a room in the Initiate's wing," Jax told me. "But for tonight, you can have my room. I'll sleep out here."

He led me through the door on the East side of the hall and straight into a suite with a sitting area, a study area and a bed. I saw touches of the Jax I knew in the room—his favorite baseball glove and ball sitting on his desk, a stack of comics I recognized from home, jeans and t-shirts strewn about, familiar pieces of a life that no longer existed for me. Mixed in with this were other items I'd never seen—a sword with the Teutonic Knight symbol engraved on the pommel, a ring bearing the same mark, two sets of armor on dummies in the corner, one light and one heavy… pieces of his life I'd never known existed.

He cleared his throat and went to his closet to get a towel and some clothes. "I know these will be too big, but they're clean and will do the job until I find you something more appropriate."

I accepted them, the smell and feel so familiar to me. These were the sweats he’d always worn when we’d had movie nights at his house. When we'd fall asleep with the television on, a bowl of popcorn between us, not waking until the next morning. The memory made my eyes burn with the heat of unshed tears.

"Thank you," I said.

He looked like he wanted to say more, his face full of unspoken thoughts. I paused, waiting, but he just nodded. "Help yourself to anything. I'll be back with some food."

He turned and left me standing alone in this half strange, half familiar space of memories.

I went to the bathroom and saw my reflection for the first time and trembled. It wasn't as bad as I thought. It was worse. I looked like the scene from
Carrie
,
where she was bathed in blood. Only this blood was human, and some of it was mine. Perhaps even most of it. But a lot of it also belonged to my parents.

I waited, expecting the pain to overtake me, but I'd buried it too deep for it to surface now. I pulled out the Token of Strife from my pocket, and the memory chip from my shoe, peeled off my clothing and dropped the pile in the small wastebasket by the toilet. My hands were steady. Numb. I looked around for a place to hide my two treasures, settling on the box of tissues on the toilet.

Turning to the mirror again, I stared at myself. My pale skin was covered in bruises, cuts, scrapes and gashes. But the bullet wound I'd been most worried about had healed considerably. I realized this was the first time I'd ever seen myself in color. I looked so much more different than I'd imagined. I tugged on a long strand of my silver blond hair, rubbing a bit of blood out of it. My eyes were bloodshot and tired, but the blue silver of my irises had an unearthly quality that was disconcerting.

I couldn't look anymore... not until I'd cleaned up.

I turned the water to the hottest setting until steam filled the bathroom, then stepped in, bracing myself against the burn of the water. I let it soak me as rivulets of bloody water circled the drain. I washed my hair four times, until nothing but clear water ran through it. And I scrubbed my skin until it nearly peeled off my body.

As the last of my parents' blood, now just a stain of pale pink, pooled at my feet, a dam inside of me broke, and I fell to my knees in the shower and sobbed, my body shaking with grief. I couldn't stop. Couldn't quiet myself as my sobs grew louder, a keening brokenness tearing out of me.

I didn't hear the knock at the door. Didn't realize Jax had come in until he entered the shower and wrapped his arms around me as he sat under the water, fully clothed, holding me.

In that moment, I didn't think about his lies, his alter-identity. I didn't think about what our future would be or what I would do tomorrow. I just clung to my friend, to the person I'd grown up with, to the only one who knew me inside and out. I clung to him as my heart broke, and he gave me his strength even as he mourned with me. Even as his tears mingled with mine. Even as the water chilled... still we sat there, embraced in our shared grief.

I hadn't been the only one who'd lost family today. My parents had been his family too. Whatever else had happened between us, whatever else would happen later, he was my brother in this loss, and I couldn't shut him out. I needed him too much.

Time passed, but I didn't feel it. Everything stood still until finally my sobs subsided, and I could breathe again. The pain didn't go away but buried itself in my heart. It created a new home in me, nursing on the anger that had begun to swell there.

I looked into Jax’s eyes, my eyelids heavy, tears staining my cheeks.

"I'm so sorry, Star. I loved them too. I miss them too.” He brushed wet hair off my cheek. “I'm so sorry. I should have been there. This is all my fault."

Star. He hadn't called me that since we were little. Only my parents still called me that. I waited for the grief to swell again, but I'd cried all I could cry for the night, and a ravenous hunger overcame me instead.

I pulled away, covering my breasts with my hands as he turned off the now cold water. "I know you do," I said. "They loved you like their own. I know they wouldn't blame you, and you shouldn't blame yourself either. Even if you'd been there, you couldn't have stopped the Nephilim. No one could have."

But I would. Someday, I would.

He averted his eyes and handed me a towel, which I wrapped around myself before standing. "I'll go get dressed."

I grabbed the clothes he'd given me and the tissue box and left him in the bathroom.

I heard the shower turn back on as I dried off and dressed, then shoved the tissue box into a corner under his bed until I could figure out how to keep my few precious belongings safe.

He came out a few minutes later in just a towel, his body more muscular than I remembered, the wolf pendant he always wore dangling around his neck. I turned my head while he shrugged into his own clothes.

He handed me a brown paper bag and sat across from me on his bed. "Some food and some Life Force. You need to get your blood sugar up."

"Thank you. I'm starving."

He had his own bag, and we ate our food in silence. I took a bite of the turkey sandwich he'd brought and nearly spit it out. "I think this meat is bad, or something," I said, holding it out to him.

He took a bite. "Tastes fine to me," he said with his mouth full.

"Mouth closed when chewing," I teased, slipping back into old me as if the day hadn't happened.

He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, bits of half eaten food making a grotesque vision.

"You are disgusting," I said. "Seriously."

We both smiled, but our humor faded fast. I put the sandwich back in the bag and picked up the packet of Life Force, ripping it open and sucking out the sweet nectar that promised "life, health and the zenith force." I felt instantly better. I'd never much cared for Life Force as an energy drink before. It always made me a bit jittery. But now I pulled out a second packet and drank that down quickly, feeling the unquenchable hunger in my gut finally subside.

Around me, colors brightened, and my senses became more alert. No wonder everyone loved this stuff.

Jax finished his sandwich and his own Life Force, and then we sat back, looking at each other.

"Jax, what's going on? What were my parents a part of?"

He shifted on the bed, avoiding eye contact with me. "I'm not sure I should be the one telling you this… "

"Jax, please… I need to know. I have the right to know."

He nodded. "Years ago, before we were born, your parents found some kind of weapon, something that could cripple the Orders, something that could potentially lead to the destruction of the world. Some of the councilors wanted to use it on their enemies. Your parents argued against it. They won their case and, under orders, went into hiding with the device. My father was charged with guarding them. Once I was old enough, I was charged with guarding you."

All these years we were sitting on something that could destroy the world? "Why did you never tell me?"

"The same reason as your parents," he said, sadly. "They didn't want this life for you. They didn't want you to be a Templar."

"They were my parents. Parents never tell their kids everything. But you were my best friend. We grew up together and shared all of our secrets. How could
you
not tell me?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "But I couldn't tell you… because I couldn't hurt you. Or them. And because I'd taken an oath."

His fists clenched together, and I could see the pain he was in. I reached for his hand, and he took mine. And I realized that if he hadn't known about any of this, I would be alone right now. I couldn't reconcile all the lies, but I was grateful he was here. That I wasn't alone in this.

"What was it? What was the weapon?"

He shrugged. "Only the council knows… well, now anyways."

Because my parents knew. I tried to push that thought away, but… wait. He was wrong. I shook my head. "The Nephilim—he knew."

Jax dropped his voice. "I wouldn't talk about that. Not here. The people here have strong feelings about Nephilim. Most everyone believes they are extinct. If they aren't, we have an international crisis on our hands that could send us back to war."

I pulled my hand away and leaned back against his headboard. "You think I'm making this up?"

"I think things are changing," he said.

A knock on the door interrupted us, and a woman walked in without waiting for a response. She wore the tunic of a Knight of the Hospitallers, and I recognized her as the woman on the Council who had seemed cold and calculating. Jax stood and saluted her.

"I need to examine Miss Night," she said, looking at him instead of me.

"Of course, Grandmaster."

Um, hello, I'm in the room too.

"But… " Jax added. "You should ask her yourself."

I could have kissed him for that response. Seems the old Jax was still in there somewhere.

She turned to me, a small smile on her dark face that softened her features for a moment. "Pardon me, that was rude. Do you mind if I examine you? You've taken quite a beating today."

I did mind but figured it was a good idea to get checked out. "Go ahead," I said. "But Jax stays."

"Of course."

As Jax sat back down, she asked me to lay on the bed while she examined my hands. "Your cuts were much deeper, weren't they?"

I nodded, figuring it wouldn't do any good to lie.

"I thought as much. There's some deep tissue tearing, and the bones have been damaged, but they appear to be healing remarkably well." She raised an eyebrow at me, then pulled up my shirt. Jax turned away, though he'd seen all of me already today.

The woman poked at my chest and stomach, her fingers expertly feeling around the hole that had been torn through me. "What caused this?" she asked.

I hesitated, not sure what to say. "I don't remember. Something hit me, and I fell, then blacked out. When I woke, I was in pain and covered in blood, but I was already healing."