The Blood Key (The Wander Series Book 1) Read online

  Cyril was a whirling dervish of jabbing arms and sliding feet. He didn’t make any noise. No one did. No grunts of effort, no cries of dismay or pain—just the shush of movement and then it was over. I knew it was over because the only people still breathing were me, Dom and Cyril.

  My father kicked the now deceased Dobbins in the head. “Stupidity! Sheer pig-headed idiocy! It didn’t have to end like this…”

  Green splatter patterns were all over his shirt. The color was a faded jade. Liquid gloves coated his strangely misshapen hands. I noticed the blonds’ fingers were fused to points and did a double take at Cyril’s. They were already separating into normal digits.

  Dominic helped me stand. His complexion was paler than normal.

  Cyril beckoned to me and my mind flashed to the scene in The Last of the Mohicans where the evil abductor beckoned to the weak sister on the cliff with Uncas’ blood on his hand. This man was my father though and I got the feeling he’d murdered these ‘men’ to protect me, not for cold-blooded revenge.

  I stepped toward Cyril, thinking hard about the possibilities. Could I mold different parts of my anatomy into weapons if I chose? I stared at Dobbins’ hands as I lifted a foot over his still form. They looked like small malformed flippers with double-sided serrated edges.

  Cyril cleared his throat. “I’m glad you aren’t frightened of me, Bozena. It shouldn’t have come to this. We do not commit acts of violence directly against each other unless times are truly desperate. I underestimated the lengths other Shu or Nut might go to for the Dalah.” He smiled, “And yes, I can teach you to mold your body into different forms for defense.”

  My breath caught. I thought my next question his way.

  “Hm. I don’t know why I can hear you now when I couldn’t before. The drugs at the institute could have something to do with it. Or prolonged proximity.”

  Dominic grazed my shoulder.“What’s he talking about, Z?”

  I touched Dom’s knuckles, trying to ignore the tremble of my fear in them. “Cyril can hear my thoughts.”

  PART TWO

  14 REUNION

  Dominic glanced sideways at Cyril. “Well, that’s … awesome.”

  I cocked my head. Blood flowed in a molten river through my veins. I recognized the tang of power boiling beneath my skin. Confusion and anger were putting me on edge—ready to strike without provocation. This wasn’t me. I didn’t hurt others, especially those I loved, out of irritation. How could I control this? I needed to know more, much more.

  My father’s voice echoed in my mind, “Steady, my love. He may be a Geb, but you can still cause him harm if you try hard enough.”

  Out loud I shouted, “What the hell is a Geb? Or a Shu? Or a Nut? Eff an A, I’m not a lizard, Cyril!”

  Dominic’s words were almost a whisper, “Technically newts are aquatic amphibians.”

  The whites of his eyes grew at the fury written plain on my face.

  “Really, Dom, really?”

  Cyril threw his head back, eyes closed; hands loose at his sides. I couldn’t sense anything foreign in my mind so he wasn’t talking to me. If not me then who?

  Dominic moved his hand down my arm until he encountered the bare skin of my forearm. Immediately the power I’d felt building melted away. I pictured water tearing through a wet paper towel to circle a drain and disappear.

  “What does being a Geb mean, Dominic? Why can you do this to me?”

  As he withdrew his touch a thin line of energy jumped between us in a static shock.

  Dom’s expression went inward as if he were sorting through his memories as he spoke, “The literal meaning of ‘Geb’ is of Egyptian origin. He was basically the god who represented Earth who was the husband and brother of the sky goddess, Nut. I’m a ground. The power you can channel meets zero resistance in my body as it passes into the earth.”

  My head felt like it was spinning but the power stayed put. Improvement.

  I asked, “Cyril said they came over in the time of the Romans, so how come all these Egyptian names?”

  One of Dom’s eyebrows crept up. “Like I know! I’m not that much older than you, Zena. I’ve only got the oral histories passed from ancestor to ancestor. And even that’s more about us, not them.”

  “I’m one of the ‘them’, Dom.” I started to cross my arms over my breasts and then noticed the green blood on my cardigan.

  He grumbled, “No, you’re not. Not really.”

  Curious, I knelt by Dobbins’ body. A wide horizontal cut split the flesh of his neck. I could see inside to the veins, connective tissue and muscle. The green bodily fluid was turning to a tacky blackness around the parted skin. Would my blood look like that when and if I died? What if I had to have surgery or something? I’d had paper cuts and knee scrapes as a kid. I’d always bled red. I turned my hands until I could see the underside of my wrists and the bumped up blood roads between the tendons. How was I so calm with three dead people in my kitchen?

  Cyril’s voice over my head had me standing in seconds as if I’d been caught doing something bad. It made me feel like a child again, only not in a good way. My anger began to bubble and boil, along with the incoming tide of my power.

  “Go out to the garden, Bozena. Take Dominic with you and do not come near until I tell you. Understood?”

  When I didn’t answer he barked, “Understood, Bozena?”

  I felt my face mold itself into a stubborn expression. “Why do I need to leave?”

  Cyril took a deep breath and his whole body sagged on the exhale. “For your safety. You’re too charged right now. If I power up, we could create more energy than even Dominic could drain.”

  The food I’d eaten earlier was threatening to come up my throat and acid ate at the back of my tongue. “Oh, so the whole immolation thing again?”

  He bent to grab one of the blonds by his heels. “Yes. Now go outside.”

  Dominic led the way. I stared at a spot right between his shoulder blades where sweat had created a raindrop shape of darker fabric. The shredded hems of his low slung jeans brushed mop-like through the scattered dirt on the flagstones of the garden.

  I breathed in, basking in the rich scent of earth and plant. Insect noise was a background drone. I watched a black and white warbler dart in a fast dive, petite wings tucked to feathered sides, before it scored a dragonfly out of the air. The avian assassin landed on one of the dark brown rain gutters to gulp down his treat.

  Hidden by overgrown sunflowers and Chinese silver grass sat an arched bridge overlooking a small koi pond. There were no fish, just mucked up algae water. Their bones were probably rotting on the plastic lining under the brackish liquid. Poor fish. When I braced my palms on the rough wooden rail a splinter jabbed into the meat under my right thumb. I jerked it away, my face twisting in a surprised grimace.

  Dominic snatched my wrist to get a closer look.

  “What—do you want to see if my blood’s green? It’s just a sliver. I can pick it out on my own.”

  I was protesting to the side of his head. He had my arm tucked under his arm, against his ribs. One hand pushed my hand flat and palm up while the other poked around. A painful pinch and then Dominic released me.

  He presented the inanimate offender in his palm and then dropped it into the murky water below. “All better.”

  The day got brighter and bluer. A loud crack of thunderous vibration shook the air. Dom and I gripped the wooden railing for balance. Algae-thickened water sloshed onto the grass roots on the pond’s sharply sloped bank of stacked rocks. Wing flutter let me know the black and white warbler had hastily abandoned its perch.

  When I tried to go around Dominic toward the kitchen he slung an arm around my waist.

  “He said stay put, Z.”

  I slid my fingers under his where they dug into my cardigan and bent his hand further than his wrist was meant to go to dance backward off the bridge. A raised plank caught the back of my foot and I ended up on my butt. Ouch.

  D
ominic cupped his injured hand to his chest and laughed. “Ha! Serves you right,”

  I drew my knees closer and rested my chin on them. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to take a closer look.”

  He shook his injured hand by a jean-clad leg. “So are we going to talk about…things?”

  Traitorous heart beating into my throat, I picked at the pinhead of red blood where my splinter had been not moments before. I wondered why my blood was a different color. If I was an alien and all…?

  “Okay, I’ll bite—what things? From my point of view that’s a lot of area to cover.”

  Dominic offered his unaffected hand and I took it. Our palms were warm against one another and the grit from the flagstones I’d picked up rubbed on our skin creating unexpected friction. We both dusted our butts at the same time. Our eyes locked and we stood in silence. Bug song picked up and a fly went right past my ear. I shivered.

  He swatted at the same fly that had buzzed me before suggesting, “We can start with what I am if you like, Zena?”

  A thought jabbed and I blurted, “Were you really friends with Christophe or was that just some master plan to get closer to our family?”

  He turned his face to the sky and squinted at the glare of the sun. “No master plan. I didn’t know what Christophe was until I met your father and by then he was my best friend. It didn’t matter to me.”

  “So is your last name really Vargas or is it all fake?”

  Growing up, Dom had had home trouble. Sometimes he spent weeks sleeping over until he became a fixture around our household. His mother, Belinda, had been in and out of the hospital with cancer treatments and his father, George, had worked three jobs just to tread water with the medical bills. Was all of it a clever story? How much of my life was real? If it was all a mockup it was pretty elaborate. Belinda’s funeral had been beautiful and sad.

  He tucked his hair away around an ear. “Vargas is the only name I’ve ever known, but my family came from Mexico when the Spaniards still held California as their territory. I haven’t dug around any further than that.”

  I reached out to tilt his head back with a thumb and he dodged.

  His eyebrows joined over his nose. “What are you doing?”

  I tsked at his jumpiness. “Checking your pupils. One was more dilated than the other earlier.”

  He relaxed and let me angle his head downward by the chin. His whiskers under the pad of my injured thumb made the wound from the splinter sting. Dom’s eyelids fluttered for a moment. The whites were shot through with red veins but the black centers matched and I felt a stir of relief.

  Dom asked, “What do you see?”

  I wasn’t ready to let him go so I stalled with a question, “What Cyril said about love or strong feelings, is that true?”

  I moved a stray curl to his temple and cupped his cheeks so he would hold still. A moist saline film made his eyes look polished. An awareness of our physical closeness made my insides curl and stretch.

  “He also said too many memories of you would null the rewire, Z.”

  When I spoke, my words were in line with his mouth. I hoped my breath didn’t stink. Halitosis—the bane of romance.

  “They look even. If Cyril caused any brain damage, I guess we’ll find out as we go along.”

  Dom smiled in a boyishly charming way. “That’s reassuring.”

  My father’s voice made us jump apart.

  “I said wait outside, not make out in the garden, Bozena!”

  He looked bedraggled, like a giant’s foot had crinkled him into a cartoon accordion and he was still trying to stretch back out.

  Dominic stepped a little closer to me in defiance.

  “No one was ‘making out’, Cyril! You’re so embarrassing.” I could feel the fading heat in my cheeks and neck—little pinpricks of shame poking at me from the inside. Dominic had dashed my hopes for any returned feelings. Cyril’s accusation made me more miserable.

  Dom huffed, “We’re both adults. If we had been kissing, then so what. There are more important things going on than your daughter’s love life. What did you do with the dead Shu?”

  Cyril put his hands to his waist and leaned his head back to gaze at the sky. A gust of wind swooped wild and carefree through the garden, stirring all of our hair and rustling the leaves around us. It smelled clean and crisp. I inhaled and felt calm leach into my bones, driving away the anxiety that’d been dogging me.

  My father answered in a peaceful detached tone, “They are gone. Somewhere they will not be disturbed. It is the place we have all agreed our bodies shall rest.”

  I asked, “Are you alright, Cyril?”

  His dark eyes were pits to drown in when he looked my way. Haunted wasn’t enough of a word to describe them. They were wells of time and pain. Two obsidian points of reigned mental disorder. And then they cleared.

  He straightened and the rumpled look of him became an afterthought. “I’ll survive. Come with me. I have something to show you in the library.”

  15 REVELATIONS

  All of the furniture in the library was covered. Even the big black desk my father and Christophe had once used to study. The enormity of it hit me. Two stories’ worth of books. Every wall was a book case with at least twelve shelves. They were all full. I’d always just accepted this as the norm, until I went to school and realized most families didn’t have extensive libraries filled with priceless antique volumes. Not that Cyril treated them with care; he appeared to take them for granted. Christophe was the one who’d cherished them.

  I lingered by a dust filmed shelf as Cyril whipped the white sheets off with the gusto of a magician pulling a tablecloth free from under someone’s dinner. Natural light streamed in through a massive skylight, making the few shadows in the room faint and gray.

  Dominic tucked his face into his elbow and coughed at the thrown up dust lingering in the stale air. It was obvious nobody had been in here for a long while.

  Something moved in the back corner of one of the shelves about shoulder high. Multiple eyes and eight hairy legs. The brown spider raised its first pair of legs and fangs at the same time in warning. Its rounded body was covered in the bumped up mass of its young. Wolf spider. If I killed it all the babies would scatter. Better to just leave it alone and avoid that particular shelf. Plus, it was killing other bugs, so bygones.

  I meandered closer to Dom. Cyril was humming under his breath again. This time it was “Little Boy Blue.” What was his fascination with children’s nursery rhymes? I mean, he’d sung them to me enough as a child so they were all committed to my memory, but what was the point of a grown man humming them now? Maybe they calmed him.

  Dom waved another puff of fine airborne dirt away from his face then sneezed. I patted his back in passing as I made my way to the desk.

  “Cyril, what is it you have to show us? I’ve been in this library a million times.”

  He stopped to haphazardly fold the white canvas into a rectangle against his already ruined clothes. “Don’t exaggerate, Bozena. It gives the impression of low intelligence.”

  I rolled my eyes at Dom but his face was serious.

  “Don’t insult your daughter. Final warning, Cyril.”

  My father smiled and the darkness came back into his eyes. “Just try it, young pup. I’d lay you flat. She is my child and until you can lay claim to her in marriage you have no say over her treatment.”

  Okay, what the hell! I was nobody’s property. “First of all, I’m not getting married anytime soon.” Yeah that was mortifying. I made sure not to look at Dom. “Secondly, I am my own damn person whether I’m your child or not. You don’t own me, Cyril. Did you miss the whole feminism movement or what?”

  Cyril laughed. “You’d better be glad I claimed you, dear one. Being unattached in our society has dangers you don’t want to contemplate.”

  Dom put an arm over my shoulder and I stiffened at the unexpected contact.

  Voice deep Dominic warned, “Just get to the poin
t and stop being a tool. Zena’s got enough to worry about without you hinting at metaphorical goblins and ghouls. Or are you trying to keep her insecure so she’ll be afraid to venture anything without you?”

  Dom gave my shoulder a squeeze. He was following true to form—protecting someone he viewed as weaker against someone stronger. I didn’t need a white knight. I could handle myself. My shoulder shrugged his hand off and I paced forward—closer to Cyril.

  My father’s mouth slid into a sideways smirk as he dropped the messily folded cloth to the hardwood floor. “Not at all, not at all. I’m merely hinting at the danger she’s been shielded from the majority of her life.”

  I tugged my scarf tighter around my hair and yanked the ends until my ponytail sagged less. The roots protested with tiny nerve burns at the treatment they received. To say I was beyond my limit of patience would be an understatement. I wished Izzy were here, but she wasn’t, and I didn’t want to think about what that meant.

  “Just say what you want to say, Cyril.”

  His smirk bloomed into a tooth baring grin. “As you wish, my love.”

  He bent at the waist and did something out of my sight to the side of the desk. It began to hum and shake. The large black paneled top split into three pieces. It was like watching a robot mold itself from inanimate object to living machine. I gasped as the center flap bent at multiple ninety degree angles to form a narrow set of stairs, seeming to defy physics. There simply wasn’t enough mass to account for the transformation. Blue-white light came from below. Without a grinding noise the sides of the desk widened in smooth silence until two of us could descend at a time.

  I grumbled in disbelief, “Right, Cyril. This has been hidden the whole time?” At his superior nod I snorted, “Figures.”