Demon Vampire (The Redgold Series) (96 page)

“Are you mocking me now?” Salas didn't enjoy being made fun of.

“No. I'm only telling you I saw it coming.” Sophialla continued. “I have existed as I am now for several hundred years. If I wanted to, I'm telling you that I could have killed all of the elders many years ago.”

“Then why haven't you?” If you're helping me now, why haven't you done this all yourself?” Salas wanted justification to what Sophialla wanted with him. He was trying to pry out her intensions. He heard only silence in her mind.

“I want something else to happen. A result of all the elders dying and all of the demons awakening.” Sophialla had a clear plan.

“And that part you're not going to tell me.” Salas understood Sophialla's intentions now, she wanted to use him. She was going to help him to help herself. “And if I say no?”

“All I have is time, Salas. Far more time than you do by your habits.” Sophialla was calling Salas sloppy and he knew it. “I am offering you a way to merge with your host instead of consuming their soul to fuel your efforts. I am offering you a choice.”

“Like I would ever bend to another will. I don't compromise, Sophialla. I thought that if nothing else you would have picked that much up while you researched me. I will kill Fear in my time, my way. With help from no one else. I don't care what your plan is, it's not for me.” Salas was set in his ways. His own physical fear of Sophialla didn't matter. He had come accustomed to gaining an advantage over his hosts. If he was assisted now, it wouldn't be his revenge against Fear. He would feel cheated. “Are you done here?”

“Yes. I can see I'm only wasting my time on you as you are.” Sophialla turned back. She stepped through the rock again. “In a few hundred years you will be in a different situation. For now, gaze upon my awakened abilities and weep at their effect.” Sophialla walked away.

Salas peered out. Sophialla was gone. The landscape however, showed unnerving signs of her presence. The earth, as far as Salas could see was warped. Dirt, stone, trees, clay, everything had been pushed back to clear a path for her. There were no marks, no impact points to speak of. This was a result of her gift. She had separated the obstacles around her and made her own way to Salas directly.

Salas' hands steadied themselves, Love's body was settling down. Salas would remember Sophialla's offer for the rest of his life.

Within Zack's dream world, Salas recalled the tale. Catching Zack up on part of his past.

“I don't understand, Salas. Why didn't you take her offer?” Zack wanted to know.

“How would you feel if someone else married Kyli and had children with her?” Salas cut immediately to the point by slicing through to Zack's emotions.

Zack felt the pain of imagining the scenario play out in his heart. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Sophialla would be the one taking my dreams from me. Just like you don't want someone else stealing your goals in life. Fear and the other elders are mine. I see Sophialla as a rival, not a solution.” Salas laid it down for Zack.

“Did she ever tell you what merging would mean?” Zack asked Salas.

“No, but I got the idea. You know me enough to realize I don't compromise. It wouldn't work out.” Salas explained himself, he didn't like that idea at all.

“Then what now? How am I supposed to face everything out there?” Zack gestured to the world outside.

“With me of course. But that doesn't matter right now.” Salas smiled.

“Why?” Zack knew something was up.

“She's here and you need to wake up.” Salas clapped his hands together.

* * * *

Zack woke up. He could feel the warmth of a smooth hand on his face. Zack slowly opened his eyes. The blur shifted to a rough image of a girl sitting next to him on his bed. Her light brown hair was long and perfectly straight. Her dark green eyes came into focus as her face did. It was long, ovaled and beautiful. Her skin was an olive, comforting hue. She was tall, sitting with a plain black shirt and a tan long skirt. Zack had no idea who she was.

“Who are you and what are you doing in my room? How did you even get in here? I had the door locked.” Zack looked at his bedroom door. It was still closed.

“I knew you wouldn't recognize me, Zack. As to how I got in, that should be obvious.” The girl's voice was very familiar to Zack.

Zack knew this person. He couldn't place her though. He concentrated, unconsciously holding his breath.

The girl leaned into him. Hugging him tightly. She was hot, physically. Zack still didn't know who she was. She held him, taking her time to feel the pressure of their skin against each other. She whispered softly into his right ear. “Do you know how to live a long happy life?”

Zack shook his head no.

“The trick is to keep breathing.” The mystery girl said quietly as she kissed Zack's ear lobe.

Zack inhaled deeply. A flood of cherries and lavender swept over Zack's senses. He knew instantly who this girl was. “Kyli?”

“Took you long enough. And I thought the black shirt was a dead giveaway.” Kyli popped back up and smirked.

Zack sat up. “What's going on?” Zack ran his fingers through Kyli's hair, over the back of her head.

Kyli seemed to purr. “Mmmmmm, that feels good.”

“Is this a wig?” Zack ruined it.

Kyli swatted Zack's hand down. “No, it's not a wig. It's my own hair.”

“But it's straighter than before, and
brown.
” Zack was digging his grave.

“This is my natural hair color. I wanted you to see the real me.” Kyli explained.

“And your eyes? Contacts?” Zack threw another shovel load past his shoulder.

“No, the blue eyes weren't contacts. These are my real eyes as well.” Kyli thought about what Zack was going to say next. “And yes, this is my natural skin tone too.”

“Well, what's going on? I can understand hair dye, contacts, and a tan, but why?” Zack wasn't getting it all. He climbed into the grave and sat in it.

Kyli was not happy. She had to start from the beginning. “Zack, listen. I didn't dye my hair, I never have. I've never had to. I don't wear contacts. I've never needed a tan in my life. This is my real skin tone.”

“Then why are you dressed like this?” Zack sat as the dirt around him quickly collapsed and buried him alive in his own words.

Kyli slapped Zack with a swift left back hand to the cheek. Zack went down, planting his face into the bed.

Zack popped back up, confused. “What was that for!?”

Kyli folded her arms. “For someone that can read minds, you can be truly clueless sometimes. Tell me why.”

Zack thought about it. He opened himself up to Kyli.

“This is her gift.” Salas whispered to Zack. “What you are seeing is the real her, unaltered.”

“This is your gift? But I thought you were able to enter the sleeping dreams of others? Something similar to me.” Zack could hear Kyli's mind. “This was your original gift, wasn't it? But how is that possible?”

“This is the gift I received at puberty. For a couple of years I tried to become Marin's apprentice with no result. Finally, my dad intervened.” Kyli sighed, this was upsetting her.

Zack placed his right hand on Kyli's left. He gently squeezed it to remind her he was there for her.

Kyli shed a single tear from her left eye. She wiped it off and continued. “You need to understand, my gift takes three days to work. As an assassin, that's just not practical. What I have is called a minor chameleon ability. It's a type of alteration. It's minor because of the extent I can push it, also due to the time it takes me. My dad could see early on that it would only hurt my chances of Marin accepting me.”

“Marin had to accept you?” Zack wondered why there was an application process.

“Yes, if I wasn't up to his level, it might endanger him. The idea was that if he trained me, I would tag along and participate when I was ready. Kind of like a shadow at a new school, but with killing.” Kyli smiled and another tear fell. “I told you I was good with weapons, remember?”

“Yeah, you did.” Zack wiped the tear away this time.

“My dad decided that the only way I would be safe and useful is if I had a different gift.” Kyli lowered her head. “So he found another vampeal with a useful gift. He traveled to where she was. He was away long enough to witness the solar eclipse there. When he returned, he had a Redgold crystal.”

“That's what Malio did to gain all of those gifts. I thought Redgold was too taboo among vampires for someone to just make it openly.” Zack didn't know why David would do this to his own daughter. To force Kyli to take a gift that wasn't hers.

Kyli raised her head. “It is. Having a piece of Redgold means that someone died. It's worse than fresh blood on your hands. It's illegal in our world. But my father needed me to be viable.”

“So you took it and your other gift was the result.” Zack surmised.

“Yeah. After that, Marin taught me. He didn't seem to want to know why I had another gift. He never shunned me for it, but he never acknowledged the change either. It was unspoken to him. A secret that he simply understood. I still don't know if my father ever paid Marin. Honestly, I've never had the strength to ask him myself.” Kyli sighed again.

“No, I don't think Marin would have ever taken you if he didn't think you were worthy to be what you are. I've seen you Kyli. You are good.” Zack smiled and lifted Kyli's chin up with his left hand.

“Do you want to know what the messed up part is?” Kyli sniffled.

“What?” Zack was too caught up in Kyli's eyes to hear it from her mind.

Kyli dry swallowed, tears were pouring down her face as she spoke. “All I wanted to do was to make my dad proud of me.” Kyli leaned into Zack for a hug. “I wanted him to acknowledge me, who I am, my gifts, my talents.” Kyli burst out crying.

“And he responded by giving you a new gift that changed everything you are.” Zack filled in the rest. “You became a completely different person to please him. You took all the difficult jobs to prove you had what it took to be infamous in your trade. You even told yourself that you could kill a kid if it had to be done.” Zack's voice slowed. “That's why you told your father that you would have no problem killing a monster to save the world. That you could get close to me, gain my trust. Make me fall for you. Get me to let my guard down and still have the strength to kill me when you found the chance.”

Kyli's mood shifted to complete mortification. Zack knew everything. She didn't know what to say next. She couldn't recover from it.

Zack spoke again. “That doesn't matter to me now.”

“Because she couldn't kill you if she tried, not now. I wouldn't let her.” Salas reminded Zack.

Zack continued. “I've done things, Kyli. Things I'm not proud of either.”

“Like what?” Kyli licked the tears from her lips and cleared her throat.

“I hurt some people.” Zack came out with it.

“What?” Kyli raised her head, unconsciously pulling back a little from Zack.

“It was the gang that beat me up about a month ago.” Zack recalled. “It was the night I killed Malio. The night I ran off angry.” Zack clenched his teeth, he didn't want to say it, but he needed to. He wanted to clear his conscience. “I saw them picking on a kid for some money. They were beating the hell out of him.”

Salas chimed in. “Don't mislead her Zack, they were killing him.”

“They were killing him.” Zack corrected himself. “They were going to kill him the way things were going.” Zack could here Kyli's question in his mind. She wanted to know what he did to them. “I made them scream.”

Zack's temperament was disturbing Kyli. She remembered what she saw in the dream world when Zack was tearing apart Malio. The look on his face while he was doing it was the only thing she could see. Kyli pulled back, consciously.

“I approached them.” Zack said with a smile.

“Are you sure you want to tell her everything?” Salas asked Zack.

Zack ignored Salas. “I waited as they taunted and tried to intimidate me.” Zack's tongue slid across his lower lip. “I began to kill them. To take revenge for what they did to me. For what they were doing to this innocent kid. For what they had done to countless others. I did this for all of them. I enjoyed it.”

“You enjoyed it?” Kyli was appalled. She had executed people in the past, but cleanly, with no emotion, and without any personal pleasure in the act. Content with the knowledge that it would benefit the greater good. She could see the look in Zack's face. He was grinning.

Zack snapped out of it. “No, I didn't enjoy it. I said I did it. That I had killed them for what they did to me. That they deserved it.”

Kyli let go of Zack's hand. “No, you said you enjoyed it.”

“See, she's scared of it. Scared of you, the power you have.” Salas said to Zack.

“How many were there?” Kyli wanted to know the numbers.

“There were eight of them I think.” Zack admitted.

Kyli understood that a human was no match for a vampeal, but eight hardened thugs were. Especially against a month old vampeal. That much power had come from Salas, there was no doubt in Kyli's mind.