Cloak of Deceit: An Alex Moore Novel (5 page)

Behind me, the darkness built into a towering wave. The voices became a collective force, shaking the ground, even the air. They crested overhead as the sand receded under my strides.

“No!” I screamed as the wave curled over me, shutting out the light.

I woke up screaming and dripping with sweat. The room was tilting from side to side. The voices had stopped, but a low rumble and frantic rattling engulfed me. The ground actually
was
shaking. It wasn’t just the remnants of my dream.

The walls vibrated. Pictures slid to the floor. The lamp toppled over and broke, plunging the room into darkness, as if the shadows had tried to follow me back into the real world.

I leapt from my bed, surprisingly quick and agile, as if gravity had less hold on me. I braced myself in the doorway while the building continued to shimmy, the forty year-old joists creaking in protest.

The inside wall of my room cracked from floor to ceiling. Screams echoed from the surrounding dorms. I tried to calm my breathing, to reassure myself that it wasn’t real. I was here.

My name is Alex Moore. I’m twenty-one. I go to Pacific University. I play forward on the soccer team. I just got accepted to Stanford. Oh yeah…my ex-boyfriend killed me two nights ago.

A buzz ran along the hall, electrical outlets exploding in its wake, filling the air with a smell of ozone and dusty plaster.

“It’s just an earthquake,” I said to myself, “they happen all the time.” I was thankful for the feeling of my tense muscles, my feet underneath me, clothes clinging to my sweat-slicked skin.
I’m here
. The darkness that wanted to swallow me up wasn’t real. I was too overjoyed that my soul and body were still connected to be scared of a little natural disaster.

The earthquake stopped.

I released my death-grip on the doorframe and sank to the floor, grateful for the dirty, flattened carpet under my fingers. I lay there, not breathing for a long moment of eerie stillness. I counted to a hundred very slowly, and still didn’t need to breathe.

Not all a dream, then.

The fire alarm blared through the calm, and the sprinklers came on. A pounding of feet hit the hallways, along with the murmur of a whole dormitory of people stirred from sleep into hysterics in a matter of minutes.

“Alex! Theresa! Come on!” Someone banged on my outer door.

I got up slowly, relishing the spray of water raining down, each cool drop a tingle of awareness on my now heated skin.

Outside, the corridor was a chaos of people shoving and stumbling in a pack of drenched bodies as alarms blared and emergency lights flashed. To me, they seemed to be moving in slow motion. Every detail was stretched out. Watching them felt like observing an ant farm — an invisible plate of glass and a world of understanding between us. They were so oblivious. Like I had been forty-eight hours ago.

Nothing could have made it clearer that I was different now. I felt it in every cell of my body. For one thing, I felt strong. Fit. I could probably do an Ironman without batting an eyelash. But I could also taste their fear in the air — a jolt of saltiness, like touching your tongue to a battery. I could smell each of them, from the pungent hungover stoners to the sweet innocent freshmen. I took them all in at once, but my brain catalogued every unique signature. A new part of my mind had opened up to discern and process this information. It was such an incredible high, I’ll admit I temporarily lost myself in the power trip.

When fire truck sirens joined the fray outside, I made my way down the stairs and through the front door. The bulk of the students had gathered across the street on the lawn in front of the health building. I turned the opposite way, slipping into a narrow alley between our hall and the next.

The murmur of the crowd filtered out of my hearing, and the alarm bells finally stopped. I walked down the alley feeling as though I was made of silk and shadow, invisible and walking on air — a part of the night. Moonlight caressed my skin in a soft, milky beam. It was the most incredible feeling I’d ever had in my life. I smiled at that thought —
not my life, my death
.

I was an Undead. It had to be true — and it felt incredible! Like I had finally, truly awakened. Even the mice scurrying along the side of the brick building held a new wonder for me. I had no trouble seeing the fine details of the alley through the dark. I knew I didn’t have to breathe to live, but every lungful of air brought a cacophony of new information about the world around me. My appearance hadn’t changed, that I could tell, but I was more tuned-in to every part of my body, in precise control of each movement and aware of every molecule of my being.

I wonder if I can leap off tall buildings like Kate Beckinsale.

Still lost in the wonders of new world, I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until it was too late. I hadn’t heard a footstep or even a rustle of clothing, but I felt when the air shifted behind me. I whirled on my heel and threw my hands out, bracing for a body check that never came.

Instead, I saw Julian’s surprised face for the blink of an eye before he flew backwards, as if yanked from behind by an invisible rope. He crashed into a fire escape with a loud clang and a grunt, and then fell ten feet to the cement with a wet slap.

As he lifted himself to his knees, I ran to him.

“What are you doing here?” I grabbed an arm and helped him lean against the wall. “Am I in trouble already? I just woke up!”

He jerked out of my grasp and scowled at me.

I eased away, hurt by the look of accusation on his face. But the rest of me, the newly blossoming Undead, felt a jolt of excitement at the sight of him. The smell was even more enticing now, if that was possible. Even the innate
sense
of him had me buzzing. He was kindred, like me. I knew instinctually.

But what was really fascinating was the halo of soft golden energy that surrounded him. It melted on my skin like butter and invaded my palate with an infusion of vanilla and caramel. My mouth watered. Deeper parts of me pulsed with warmth.

The look on his face slowly changed from anger to confusion to…astonishment?

“You’re so beautiful.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Why didn’t you tell me it would be like this?”

“I—” He stared at me for another second, then stood. His expression locked down into an unreadable mask. “I didn’t know.”

I cocked my head, wondering what he meant, and reached out to take his hand.

Julian grabbed the front of my shirt and swung me against the wall with a knife pinned at my throat. I looked into his deep brown eyes, now hard and cold. My jaw hung slack in surprise.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re one of them?” he snarled. His face, suddenly fierce, was inches away from mine.

“One of who?” I swallowed hard, my throat constricting with panic, acutely aware of the blade grazing my skin. There was nothing of the guy from my dorm room looking back at me. He was the definition of Stone Cold Killer.

“A Grigoric Agent!” he yelled in my face, pulling me from the wall just to slam me into it again, harder. My head cracked against the bricks, and I bit my tongue. I whimpered, and tears welled in my eyes without my permission.

“Is this some sort of trap?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I yelled back, enraged by his betrayal of my trust. Even admitting to myself that I had trusted him seemed so stupid.
Exactly what got you killed in the first place!
“Why are you doing this to me?”

I closed my eyes to the ugly hatred twisting the face I’d already grown to like. I wanted to sink away from the sharp, flinty cloud his energy had shifted to. What I could only describe as tangible rage poured off of him in waves.

My chest constricted with regret. I really was all alone.

Julian studied my face, his eyes tracking the single tear that managed to escape. Slowly, he relaxed and lowered the blade from my throat. I wiped my cheek and sank down the bricks until I folded in on myself. I shivered in my soaked pajamas as the November air bit at my skin.

“You really don’t know?” He sounded just as confused as I felt.

“No!” I didn’t know anything anymore. I didn’t know who I was, what I was, or why he was so angry.

Julian pushed off from the wall, cursed, and spun around, his black coat twirling in his wake. He paced in front of me, muttering to himself.

All my joy of discovery faded as confusion and exhaustion settled in. I’d been used, and then thrown away. Abandoned into a world where nothing made sense, or worked like it should. No safe place. No one to turn to. If only I could disappear, or just wake up. Even the one person I wanted to count on to guide me was unreliable.
Serves you right.

“I don’t understand how this could happen.” Julian had finally stopped pacing. He stood a few feet away, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“I don’t understand any of this at all!” I raked my fingers through my wet hair. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be some sort of know-it-all enforcer!”

“I know!” He whipped around and slapped his fists against the opposite wall, then leaned against it, his head sagging between his shoulders.

“I didn’t ask for this.” I sniffed.

“I know,” Julian repeated, calmer. He straightened up and faced me, apparently decided on something. He squatted to my level.

I pulled myself into a tighter ball and leaned away.

“I’m not going to hurt you.” He was back to being friendly and reasonable. His mood swings were going to give me whiplash.

“You said that before.”

“And I meant it.” He held out his hand. I looked from his offered hand to his face, which I couldn’t read. But the light around him had settled to a faint golden halo, with the occasional flare of smoky grey. I had no idea why I believed him, or if it was the right thing to do, but I knew I would rather trust Julian than not. I would rather have one friend than no one at all. I didn’t have much choice. No one else would ever believe me. No one else could tell me what was going on. I took his hand.

“We have to get you out of here.” He shucked his coat and placed it over my shoulders, then wrapped an arm around me and scanned the darkened alley in both directions.

“Why?” I stumbled, but Julian righted me and nudged me along.

“Because the Grigori will be looking for you now, but they kill Undead on sight.”

“Oh.”

Right — of course. Silly me
.

Chapter Four

J
ulian drove a rusty old pick-up truck and lived about forty minutes west of Forest Grove, closer to the coast. Most of the ride passed in an awkward silence. I welcomed it. I was still floundering in a sea of new emotions and instincts, too stunned to ask intelligent questions. And I could practically hear the thought processes churning in Julian’s head. Based off of the flickering red haze surrounding him and his tense frown, I was guessing they revolved around me and weren’t necessarily good.

For a while I stole secret, casual glances but then I studied him more openly. He was much more interesting than the drab landscape out the window, and seemed unconcerned with my presence anyway.

The truck’s headlights cut a sharp triangle through the dark two-lane highway. The shadows of the trees loomed over us on either side, reminders of my nightmare.

I trembled, and then reached over and flipped on the radio and fidgeted with the old-style tuning knob. “I wonder if there’s anything about the earthquake.”

“Earthquake?” Julian gave me a quizzical look.

“Yeah, you know, when pressure builds up under the earth’s crust and is relieved by the shifting of its tectonic plates?” I wasn’t sure we were on good enough terms for sarcasm, but it’s my fall back in uncomfortable situations.

He shifted his attention back to the road. “What are you talking about?”

“The earth shook tonight, violently. Didn’t you feel it? My entire dorm evacuated.”

“There was no earthquake.” He wrung his hands around the steering wheel.

Was that anxiety, or frustration? I couldn’t tell. He seemed to run hot and cold, and switch between them quicker than I could track. It was frustrating, and yet—maddeningly—a little enticing. I shouldn’t have been thinking about it at a time like that, but I couldn’t deny that Julian encapsulated most of my girlish fantasies. His dark, sultry looks, and a body built for battle, or more nefarious activities. And he was a nine-point-seven on the brooding-mysterious scale. Which usually got me in shitloads of trouble, or, you know…dead.

I sighed. “Well, there was on my planet. It woke me up out of a nightmare I was having — even with the drugs you gave me.”

Julian’s head swiveled around slowly. He looked me up and down, then jerked his gaze back to the front. “What was the dream about?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “But maybe you could answer some questions for me.”

“All right.” Julian turned the radio off and relaxed back into his seat like he was getting settled for a long talk.

Finally
, I thought, wondering where to start. “Who are we running from?”