Court of Nightfall (6 page)

She opened her mouth to say something, but Jax whispered in her ear. Her eyes widened, and she nodded. "Alright then. Overall you are looking remarkably well for a woman who nearly died a few hours ago. Get plenty of rest tonight. Stay hydrated, and let me know if anything worsens, or you develop other symptoms."

With deft hands she pulled a syringe from her bag and stuck it into the vein in my arm, filling three vials. "We need to run some tests to make sure there are no other problems, but you seem healthy enough to me."

She stored the vials and packed up her bag while I put my clothing into order. 

She had reached the door before turning to face me, her eyes gentler than before. "I am truly sorry for your loss. I was close to your parents when we were younger. They were good people and will be missed." With that, she was gone.

Her words shocked me. It hadn't occurred to me that there would be people here who knew my parents, but it made sense. There was so much I didn't know; how could I possibly sleep? I stood and grabbed Jax's jacket, slipping it on as I pulled my items out of the tissue box and shoved them in my pocket. "I need to go home," I told him. I had to get to the bunker, to see if there were more clues to what had really been going on.

Jax placed his hand on my arm. "Scarlett, you can't leave right now. Not yet. It's the middle of the night. You need rest."

"Just try and stop me, Jax." I didn't have a plan as I slammed the door behind me and marched out of his bedroom and into the Teutonic Hall, but I didn't anticipate guards outside the room.

One on each side. They grabbed my arms. I kicked one in the knee and was about to punch the other in the face when a commanding voice called out, "Leave her!"

The Chancellor walked toward us, his long robes flowing around him and his walking stick clicking against the stone floors. The soldiers immediately let me go, scuttling away at a gesture from my grandfather.

"What do you want with me?" I asked, knowing he held my fate in his hands. "Are you planning on keeping me a prisoner?"

"No," he said simply. "But humor me for just a few moments before you traipse out of here barefoot in the middle of the night. I have one question for you. Answer it, and I will provide you an escort to take you wherever you wish to go." He looked down at my bruised feet. "And shoes," he said.

He sat at the table near us and gestured for me to join him. Recognizing my limited resources and shortsighted plan, I sat.

"What is it you want, Scarlett?"

I crossed my arms over my chest. "My parents."

His eyes flinched. "Of course. I ask the wrong question." He leaned in, serious. "What will you do?"

"I'll find the Nephilim." I stuck my hand into my pocket and pulled out the Token of Strife, squeezing it until the cuts on my hand opened up again. "I'll find the Nephilim who killed my parents, and I'll make the monster pay with his life."

He nodded. "Then stay, and let me train you. Let me forge the sword that would avenge my daughter's death."

His eyes glossed over as he spoke of my mother, and for the first time, I realized Jax and I weren't the only ones in mourning. He'd lost a child, perhaps the worst kind of loss a person could face.

But our shared loss did not make me trust him any more. Could I really join these Orders? These people? Could I trust anyone here?

Changing tactics, I asked something that had been nagging me since walking through these halls. "How did my parents get involved in the Orders? In protecting this 'weapon'?"

"Stay, and I'll tell you," he said.

More secrets. Fan-freaking-tastic.

"I need to get back home. Everything I have is there. All my memories, everything I have left of my parents… "

"The Inquisition is there, discerning what happened. But when they leave, I promise, you can return home."

"Alone. With my father's airplane."

He raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "Very well. Alone. And with his airplane. I assume you can handle the aircraft by yourself?"

"Yes." I had before, even if it wasn't strictly legal.

"Will you come back? Will you train with me and learn what you must become to avenge your parents?"

This mattered to him. And a thought occurred to me as we sat there, measuring the breadth of each other: he needed me. Though with this entire school, with all four Orders at his disposal, I didn't entirely understand why. But the fact remained: he needed me.

And I needed him too. I could shoot a gun and maybe throw a few punches. I could hack any system on the planet, and I could fly an airplane. But I had no idea how to kill a Nephilim. I needed him and Castle Vianney, maybe just as much as they appeared to need me.

"I'll come back. I can't promise beyond that, but I'll come back."

"That's good enough for now," he said.

"How long until I can go?"

"A few days."

Jax came out of his room and stood beside me as I thanked the Chancellor. "What do I call you?" I asked.

He smiled. "You can call me Grandfather. I would like it very much if you did."

I didn't know how I felt about that, but it might be good to have another living family member. To not be the last of my blood.

The Chancellor turned to Jax. "Tomorrow, take her to the city, to the bank. She needs to see what her parents left her."

"Yes, sir," he said.

The Chancellor—I couldn't quite bring myself to think of him as Grandfather yet—stood to leave, but hesitated. "Scarlett, do you know what you're holding?"

I opened my hand to look at the black ring. "My father called it a Token of Strife."

"The Tokens are an ancient practice of the Orders. The Token of Strife symbolizes a conflict. When you give a Token of Strife to another, you are challenging them to combat. But only when you put the Token on, do you agree to the challenge."

"My father wore it… during the battle."

"Then your parents died fighting for their beliefs. For their belief in protecting others. For their belief in this place. They died as Templars."

I sucked in my breath and squeezed the ring harder.

The Chancellor put his hand over mine, his lined skin thin as paper and smooth against my own. "I know you can't trust me, but perhaps you can trust them."

Jax and I had slept in the same bed before, but last night it felt different. Everything felt different.

I hadn't wanted him to give up his room and sleep in the hall. "We've shared a bed before," I'd reminded him. "Just stay. Besides, I don't want to be alone."

I wasn't sure how true that was, but it worked. He stayed and I woke up this morning with his arm draped around me, the stubble of his cheek rubbing against my shoulder.

It was never sexual in the past and it certainly wasn't last night either. But it was comfort. Friendship. A semblance of safety in a world that suddenly seemed dangerous.

I dreamed of my parents that night, and for the briefest of moments, just as I was waking but before consciousness dealt its blow of truth, for those few moments I'd forgotten about the day before. Forgotten that my parents were dead and I was homeless in a world I didn't understand. I had them back, if just for a flicker of thought, and it felt so good. So happy.

Then the memories came crashing in and reality destroyed that briefest of peace.

Now I stood at the gates of the Castle, dressed in borrowed clothes and borrowed shoes, my hair braided to one side, my treasures tucked into my pocket, ready to face New York City with Jax.

He'd dressed in his Order's formal uniform, a cloak with the Teutonic symbol on it. His wolf pendant hung around his neck, as always, but now he also wore his Teutonic Knight Order ring.

"This is where you were when you said you were going to summer camp or visits to your grandparents, isn't it?"

"Yes."

I knew he hated lying, hated knowing that it would be a long time before I stopped piecing together the little, and big, discrepancies that now made up all my memories. That my life had become a puzzle, broken into too many pieces to count, that I had to put back together, only it wasn't making the right picture. It was making a new picture I didn't recognize.

We didn't take the car as I'd expected. Instead, we walked into Vianney, the town, and went down into the one subway station they had. "How can we get to Manhattan from the subway? We're on an island."

He smiled, a bit of boyish charm shining through the soldier. "You'll see. It's pretty incredible."

Incredible was an understatement.

We didn't have subways in Montana, but I remembered going on one before the war, when I was little and my parents took me to New York for a family vacation. This was in a class all its own.

We crammed into the train with several other students and some faculty and with a rumbling and jerk, headed underground.

But we soon found ourselves not just underground, but underwater.

Jax pointed to something and I followed his finger. "They built a tube from Manhattan to the island, all underwater, and created the world's most advanced underwater subway." The walls of the train turned transparent, allowing us to see the underwater world around us. Fish swam by, ignoring the giant sea monster of humanity, but what most surprised me were the larger-than-life sculptures that lined the bottom of the lake. It was an entire scene, humans and Zeniths and some Nephilim and Lycans, a re-creation of a battle during the Nephilim War, all made of stone.

"That's amazing!"

"A local artist created this to encourage coral reef growth once they got permission from U.F.I. It certainly makes the commute interesting."

We arrived in Manhattan faster than I would have thought, and I followed Jax out of the subway tunnel. I noticed lines of soldiers at the entrance and exit of the tunnels, checking the IDs of all who went in, and asked Jax about it.

"Only students, staff and those who live on the island as support are allowed to come, unless they are on a special guest list. Everyone who wants to ride this particular train has to be cleared first."

My first thought upon stepping out of the subway was holy crap, New York had changed since I was a kid. My second thought was mostly wasted on gawking at the fashions I saw on everyone. "Is she wearing a tree?" I asked, my eyes glued to a beautiful woman covered in leaves of reds and greens, the branches contouring to her body in such an organic way she looked part tree herself. She touched something behind her ear and suddenly her hair went from brown to green!

"It's the latest in fashion," Jax said. "Eden Wearables. Once scientists figured out how to grow living plants into predetermined arrangements, architects, fashion designers and artists of all kinds jumped on it. It's pricey, but it's out there."

"And that hair color, I've heard of it. Instant hair dye, what's the brand? Easy-Dye." In a weird way, I kind of loved it. A lot. New York had changed. With Eden Wearables and Eden Architecture, the city now had a very “return to nature” vibe. Mixed with that were Zeniths walking around, tagged with their color coded ear pieces. Not something we saw often in Montana, though of course I'd seen more on the news. What shook me the most were all the Inquisition Officers policing the streets in full armor, their faces covered, looking part future, part medieval, and kind of scary. I knew their Order attracted the bad seeds. The sociopaths who wanted to exert control over others. Their history wasn't stellar and only after the Nephilim War were they allowed into the Orders of Knights at all. My parents spoke often of their abuse of power.

Every Zenith who didn't work for U.F.I. in some capacity had to register with the Zenith Registration Directive (Z.R.D.). I'd never had to because I never had powers. But I did now. Would I still be tested? I thought I was done with testing when I turned 18, but I had no idea what they'd want to do to me at Castle V. Would they be able to tell something had happened to me? I considered letting them figure it out. Maybe then I would know why I was changing. Why I was becoming something different.

I could feel it, this shift inside me. I couldn't eat breakfast. Just like last night, the food tasted like ash in my mouth, but the Life Force was like Blue Ice to an addict. The best drug. My senses were sharper, my healing faster, my body growing stronger. I tried to hide it—to keep the truth from Jax, especially. Something had changed me last night. Something to do with the weapon, but I didn't know what, and I didn't know if I could trust the Orders yet.

As we walked down the street, I noticed the man in front of us had an earpiece marking him as a Zenith. An Inquisition Officer and his partner noticed too and stopped the man. "Random inspection," the first Officer said through his helmet.

The guy didn't argue, but didn't look happy either as they patted him down. No one around us even paused, which told me plenty about how common this was.

The second Officer checked out his ID while the first one inspected his possessions and checked his pockets.

Helmet 1 showed his partner. "Elemental. Fire."

Helmet 2 pulled something out of the poor guy's pocket. "And lookie what I found. A lighter. That's an Unauthorized Item for a Fire Elemental."

"I'm on my way to register it," the guy said. "Please…"

I expected him to get ticketed, maybe even taken in and booked on some charge or other.

I didn't expect Helmet 1 to shove his baton into the guy's gut and activate the Taser.

The brutality of it froze me in place, staring wide-eyed as the guy fell to his knees, shaking and vomiting.

"Attempting to manipulate an officer," Helmet 2 said.

The guy held up one hand as he clutched his stomach with the other. "No. No, I wasn't…"

Helmet 2 hit him over the shoulders, crushing him to the ground. His chin hit the asphalt and cracked into splashes of red.

No one stopped.

No one came to his aid.

People just walked on by, talking on their e-Glass, checking email, ignoring the human rights violations taking place in front of them. No one cared about this Zenith, this
man
, being beaten in public for a minor infraction.

Memories of my last trip to this city surfaced in my mind, after the Attack on Diamond Head, after our country became militarized to 'protect' us from Zeniths. A man on the street beaten by soldiers. They wore different uniforms, you could still see their faces back then, but the scene was the same.

"Why doesn't anyone stop them, dad?" I'd asked him, as I gripped his hand.

"Because they're afraid to."

"Then I'll stop them." I dropped his hand, ready to rush forward, but he put his arm around my shoulder.

"No, Scarlett."

"I can fight," I told him.

"But you can't win."

"Then you stop them, dad." I knew he could do anything.

"I can't," he said, his voice sad. "I'm afraid, too."

I balled my fists. "I'm not. And one day, when I'm big, I'll come back here, and I'll stop them. I'll win."

My dad chuckled and squeezed my shoulder with affection. "Remember, little Star, it's easy to fight, but much harder to know when. When to fight. When to win." His voice lowered. "When to lose."

"Why would I ever want to lose?"

He just smiled and ruffled my hair. "One day, I'll tell you."

He never did tell me. He never got the chance.

But this time, I would fight. And I would win. I walked up to the soldiers. "Leave him alone!"

They turned to me, batons raised. "Move along, citizen."

I didn't budge. "Leave him." I thought back to last night, when I'd taken control of that one soldier. Maybe I could do it again, with them.

They walked toward me, ready to strike. "Disobeying an Inquisition Officer," Helmet 1 said.

I steeled myself against potential attack as I stared at Helmet 2, willing him to obey me.

As Helmet 1 prepared to strike me with his baton, Jax put himself between us. "At ease." He showed his ring. "She's under my protection."

Both Helmets stepped back immediately, almost cowering before Jax. "Apologies, Sir."

They turned their attentions back to the Zenith laying on the ground, still clutching his gut.

"Leave him with a warning," Jax said before I could intervene again. "I'll make sure he registers that lighter."

They didn't even hesitate. "Of course, Sir," they said as they walked off, likely looking for another victim.

I heard them talking as they left, awe in their voices. "A Knight," Helmet 1 said. "Yeah, a Teutonic Knight, no less," said Helmet 2.

Jax helped the Zenith stand.

"Thank you, Sir," he said to Jax.

Jax grabbed the man's lighter, dropped it on the asphalt and crushed it with his foot. "Don't be an idiot," he said. "Request permission through the Z.R.D. before you carry around items on your forbidden list."

"Yes, sir," he said, stumbling away, his chin leaving a trail of blood.

I looked down at the offending lighter and sighed. "All that for this?"

"He's registered as Elemental Fire," Jax said, a hardness in his tone I hadn't heard before. "He could have used that lighter to kill us. Or blow up this entire street. Zeniths need to follow the law, just like everyone else."

"Then why'd you help him?"

He looked at me, his hazel eyes full of secrets. "I didn't do it for him," he said, then continued walking.

He did that… for me?

I rushed to keep up as we made our way through Times Square. In front of us, a large group gathered and a hush fell over the crowd as all the e-Boards went blank and then lit up with the same image. Live footage of what everyone had come to see—a platform surrounded by Inquisition Officers.

"What's going on?"

Jax crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw set in a hard line. "They're executing The Shadow of Rome."

"She's the one who led the rebellion in Italy, right? Attacked the Vatican itself. I saw it on the news. My parents…" I choked saying that but forced myself to continue, "my parents were in an uproar about it. I guess now I know why."

Jax nodded. "Though the attack failed, the rebels still consider it a victory. The Inquisitors are trying to ensure they no longer see it as such."

"Why do they see it as a victory? Didn't the other rebels retreat?"

"When an Inquisitor was sent to hunt her down, she defeated him in single combat. She's the first person to do that since the Nephilim War. Since the Nephilim were all killed, no one has been able to stand against the Order, no one had the strength. Not until the Shadow."

That part wasn't in the news. "How'd they capture her?"

"The Inquisitors captured some of the rebel forces and used them as bait. When she attempted to rescue them, they surrounded her. It just happened a few days ago."

I pushed through the crowd to get a better look. Jax held out his hand to stop me, but I went anyways, curious to see this woman who incited such fear in the most ruthless of Orders.

She looked so… small, sitting on her knees on the stage, her head down, red hair falling in front of her face. The Shadow of Rome looked up, making eye contact with me, and I took a step back, shocked. She looked no older than me. How did she defeat the undefeatable?