The Secret Aftermath – Chapter 1

To say I’d had a bad day was an understatement. It had been catastrophic—and it wasn’t over yet.

If you’d told me three months ago that I would work for a crime and trauma scene decontamination company based in Dallas, discover there was a secret race called the Paphal Saĝiga (or “Secret Humankind”) living amongst us, and that they would put a tracking device/bomb in my neck to ensure I kept their secrets, I would have avoided eye contact with you and run for the hills until it was safe to come out again.

And that wasn’t even the worst of it!

I had also became the fixation of a Secret Humankind assassin. One who was working through a list of names given to him by his master. A list of people who were indirectly connected to some hush-hush project that had been ongoing for years, even decades. But we didn’t know how close the project was to implementation, much less how to stop it. We’d managed to capture the assassin, but unbeknownst to everyone, including him, he too had a bomb in his neck, and his boss hadn’t hesitated to activate it—on one of his own kind.

There was one more thing—and it was a doozie. The assassin had always insisted I had a secret—a secret even I didn’t know I had. But it had been revealed as I lay in a pool of my own blood after I got in his way when he tried to kill my roommate.

I had the ability to tap into the energy exuded by all living things, the ambient energy the Paphal Saĝiga fed from. The same power that allowed some of them to do feats that most people would consider magic.

But I wasn’t one of them.

“Yes, Miss Xero, I’m afraid the summons is legitimate. You’ve been ordered to appear before the Council of Purpose.” Dawn Anghelescu, owner of Remington Safe and Clean and my boss, allowed the fancy scroll she’d been reading to roll itself closed. She was a European beauty, tall and graceful, with luxuriant hair of gold and brown. She’d been molded into a vâlvă, a Romanian spirit, when overcome by the Change. Yes, she was part of the Secret Humankind—but for some reason, not only did she seem to want to protect me, she was also vested in stopping the clandestine project we’d discovered.

In case you were wondering, my last name is pronounced the same as “zero.” As in the zero luck I was currently having.

A group of us was currently having a pow-wow in a unique conference room that included palm trees. The plants acted as living batteries to power the symbols etched into the art-nouveau glass greenhouse nestled inside the room. From my understanding, it kept others from mentally eavesdropping or electronically bugging the room.

“I figured,” I said. “But thank you for checking.”

Not that long ago, I’d been furious at Anghelescu—for spying on me after I’d applied for the third-shift job at her company, for hiring me and then putting a bomb in my neck during orientation, for not telling me about the “special” jobs I’d need to deal with. But I had realized recently that she’d also made it possible for me to make some genuine friends—maybe even some I could think of as a family—and had given me a place to belong. I’d decided to fight for these things rather than run away.

The woman in the crisp blue suit standing next to Anghelescu frowned at our exchange. Her male partner wore an identical suit, and his expression stayed neutral—but the red aura around him looked spiky and prickly, as if he were eager for a fight and any excuse would do.

Oh, didn’t I mention? I can “see” auras now. Yeah, because having a “spidey sense” for danger and odd hunches hadn’t made me weird enough already. Though as an orphan in the foster care system, it had come in handy several times. My dead friend Laurel would have had a field day with all this.

The rest of my companions were no happier than I was about this confrontation. We were an eclectic mix of SH and humans in the know. Karamel Oaks, bubbly and a little hyper at times, was a dryad, and the nicest person you would ever meet. Stan Lockhart, my work partner, looked like a guy plucked out of the sixties with his telltale muttonchop sideburns, and was a hundred percent human. Cillian Doyle, a short and mostly harmless lecher, was a korrigan who had visions. He was hiding under the table at the moment, hoping to stay off the party crashers’ radar. Last, but in no way least, was another human, Detective Rafael Ruiz. A Puerto Rican, he was handsome—Laurel would have deemed him “too hot to handle” if they’d ever met. As it was, my roommate Penny Baxter had become an instant badge-bunny when she’d caught a look. I was still working out exactly how I felt about him.

Since I had tapped into the living energy, proving I wasn’t strictly human, Ruiz might want nothing to do with me. I might want nothing to do with me, even If I lived through the day—which, to be honest, was looking highly unlikely. The somber looks plastered on my friends’ faces told me they knew it, too.

But I was done running. For the first time in my life, there was something I wanted to stay and fight for—even if I ended up dead.

From what little I’d learned about them, the leaders of the SH were a paranoid bunch. So I highly doubted they would take it very well to learn the news of a human who was able to tap into the energy that kept them alive and made them special.

I stepped slowly around the conference table to approach my “escorts” and Anghelescu, who were standing by the open door of the meeting room. Despite being aware of my new ability to tap into the ambient energy, I had no idea how to use it, so balking at the summons was out of the question. No point in giving the suits an excuse to end me right then and there. Besides whatever powers they’d gained at the time of the Change when they’d reached puberty, I was also aware the Secret Humankind could carry weapons that were kept hidden until they needed to use them. Since these suits represented the Council of Purpose, I was sure they had plenty of tricks up their sleeves.

The stiff postures of my friends, who had all shot to their feet when the suits first arrived (except Doyle, who picked that moment to cower under the table and try to remain unseen), told me they thought it could come to violence as well.

The woman suit put up a hand to stop me from coming closer. “That’s far enough. Now put your arms out.”

“Is that necessary?” Anghelescu asked. “As you can see, Miss Xero is cooperating.”

The woman didn’t look at her, keeping her entire focus centered on me. “I have my orders, Guardian.”

I stuck my arms out as requested, pretty sure I knew what was coming next. If there was one thing I’d learned about the leaders of the SH during the short time I’d known about them, it was that they were incredibly distrustful. That they wouldn’t want an anomaly such as myself standing unrestrained before them, despite the bomb implanted in my neck, didn’t surprise me one bit.

The woman pulled a pair of weird-looking cuffs from inside her suit jacket and slapped them on me like a veteran cop. The moment they closed, it felt like the air had been sucked out of my lungs and my body cut into tiny pieces. My knees gave way at the shock, but Anghelescu was there and propped me up. My vision was blurry, and I felt weak and gooey, as if I had a severe case of heatstroke.

“I’ve got you, Miss Xero,” Anghelescu said. “You’ll feel better in a moment. Deep breaths will help.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Ruiz take a menacing step toward us. “What did you do to her? “

The woman’s companion moved forward, too. While I appreciated Ruiz’s concern more than I could say, the last thing I wanted was for the detective to get hurt on my behalf.

“I’m—I’m okay.” I wasn’t, but I couldn’t let things escalate. Raising my head to look in his direction took a lot more effort than it should have. That was when I realized the auras I could see before were gone.

“Detective, everything is all right.” Anghelescu raised a brow, still propping me up from behind. “The cuffs have a dual purpose. Not only do they restrain the wearer, but they also cut off access to the ambient life force. It can be quite a shock, but it won’t harm her.”

I wasn’t so sure. My whole body was shaking. I hadn’t tapped into the energy for long, but not being able to connect with it now made me feel like a junkie needing a fix in the worst way. How much worse would it feel to someone who had been connected to it for most of their life?

“I’ll be coming with you, Herald.” Anghelescu aimed this at the woman.

“That is unnecessary, Guardian,” the woman answered stiffly, as if offended. “You are not part of the summons.”

“Nevertheless, I insist,” Anghelescu said, adding a bit of steel to her voice. “Miss Xero is within my purview and, therefore, my responsibility. She’s not been with us long enough to know what to expect or what rights she holds. I will be her advocate in this matter.”

I was rallying from the trauma of being cut off from the energy, so I straightened to take my weight off Anghelescu. It was the least I could do. By shoehorning herself into this, she was putting herself at risk.

The herald’s eyes narrowed in displeasure, but she made no further comment. Instead, she turned on her heel and led the way out of the room. Anghelescu and I followed, with the male suit bringing up the rear. I glanced at Karamel as we walked by and found her eyes brimming with tears, her brow furrowed with worry. I tried my best to give her a reassuring smile, but I wasn’t sure how well I managed.

Rather than steer us toward the primary set of elevators in the building, the herald walked briskly through the halls until we arrived at the service elevator. As we waited for it in charged silence, I noticed my reflection on the doors. Instead of the new thick and madly curling brown mane with golden highlights, my hair had returned to its regular state: mousy brown and limp. I itched to put it back into its usual ponytail, but I doubted I could manage that in cuffs, and I had no rubber bands, anyway. To my surprise, my dark amber eyes hadn’t returned, but neither were they the same new bright gold color. They were currently somewhere in between. What that meant, I didn’t have the faintest idea.

We piled inside the elevator car when it arrived.

The female herald removed a ring from her pocket and put it on, then touched its gemstone to the keyhole on the panel and uttered words I couldn’t quite hear. The elevator started down. None of the numbers on the board lit up or showed on the tiny screen above the doors, so it was hard to tell, but the descent seemed to take longer than usual. My ears popped just before the car finally came to a stop, which was weird. Just how deep did we go?

The doors opened, showing a stone passage only a foot wider than the elevator doors. The white natural stone had been smoothed and polished. A chalky white like how my skin will look like once I’m dead, I thought.

The female herald didn’t hesitate; she stepped out of the elevator, leaving the rest of us to follow. Compared to the openness and extended visibility outdoors, the corridor felt somehow heavy, almost oppressive. Runes along the curved ceiling glowed, giving off light for us to see by.

We didn’t go far, for which I was grateful. The day’s strenuous events and the suddenness of being cut off from the energy had left me bone weary. Anghelescu walked beside me, and I caught the occasional half-glance coming my way, as if to make sure I wasn’t about to fall on my face. The calm, even set of her expression during all this would have made the top poker players in the world proud.

A metal door stood open, its hinges fused into the stone wall, allowing entry into a twenty-by-twenty room with no other exit. In the middle of it sat an octagonal stone dais, which held a freestanding pointed Moorish arch. There was nothing else in the room. The herald headed straight for it.

Anghelescu and I followed. The second herald loomed like an executioner behind us, ready to chop off our heads if we tried to go back the way we had come in.

As we approached the dais, the gem on the ring the herald wore emitted an inner light. The area within the arch grew suddenly opaque and then shimmered as the scrollwork carved into the arch and the edge of the dais began to glow, and then somehow to move. A weird sense of noise and pressure started to build. The herald stopped before the shimmering arc and spoke a string of words I couldn’t hear despite being right behind her, the unheard clatter eating the sound as it issued forth.

My spidey sense remained quiet, though I couldn’t tell if that was because of a lack of danger or if it, too, had been cut away from me. My switchblade, Stitch, was the only thing I knew for sure they hadn’t taken, a comfortable and reassuring weight in my pocket. That they hadn’t searched me before coming here was either stupid or overconfident of them.

The pressure seemed to stabilize, making my ears pop again as the shimmering area inside the arch turned into a mirror. The female herald stepped into her reflection and was gone—more crazy magic. Laurel would have dealt with this so much better than I could. Suck it up, Xero.

I stared at my now-unimpeded reflection, frown lines showing clearly between my brows.

Anghelescu placed her hand on my arm. “This is merely a transportation device, Miss Xero. Just walk into it like any other doorway,” she said. “We can do it together.”

I gave a curt nod, unable to look away, and held my breath as I stepped forward when she did. A shiver coursed through me, tingling cold covering me from head to toe even as my foot settled on a different dais than the one I’d been on before. The female herald was there, looking impatient, waiting for us. Anghelescu encouraged me forward to make room for the second herald before he could smash into me as he also came through. The first herald removed her ring from her finger, and the space inside the arch returned to normal.

Unbidden, I wondered what would happen to a person caught in mid-passage when the portal closed. Would they be cut in two, or be trapped in between, lost forever?

I’ve never had much of an imagination. This definitely wasn’t the best time to start having one.

Unlike the room we used to get here, this one was large—at least twice the size of the first room—and so was the pointed Moorish arch. The rock was different, too—sedimentary amd colorful layers rather than the previous white, though it, too, was smoothed, polished, and beautiful. Light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, due to means I couldn’t fathom. Despite the direness of my situation, I couldn’t help but gawk.

There were four exits from the room, though only one stood currently open, the other three sealed by thick metal doors covered in glyphs. The fourth stood on its own next to the open entrance, the door’s depth measuring longer than my arm. Each of the four locations had two guards, though their uniforms didn’t match. One was dressed like a Roman centurion; another wore samurai armor with a gruesome mask to drive fear into the enemy. One sported a conical hat and a chest-piece that looked as if it were made of bronze—a Hittite? There was even one dressed in the blue coat and tricorn hat associated with the Continental Army during the American Revolution. All their weapons looked brand new, easily able to bring me death if they were so inclined.

Old-world empires and history had seemed so unnecessary when I’d been in high school, but luckily, downtime at the job and discussions with Stan had slowly been filling in some gaps since I had become aware of the SH.

The female herald set a brisk pace out of the room and down the hall. There were guards at each intersection we passed, all wearing different garb. Columns were carved at the corners, each representing a different culture or people—Minoan, Ionic, Mycenaean, Persian. I could only assume this was an attempt to preserve their past in some way. Perhaps to show the Paphal Saĝiga who came here that they were one people, regardless of where they originated? Except I saw no one here but the guards.

And the more of them I saw, the slimmer my chances for survival grew if I ended up having to make a run for it. Not that I had the faintest chance of activating the arches to escape from here anyway.

The passageways were broad enough that four or five people could walk side by side. After several minutes of hearing our footsteps echoing, we finally reached a set of curved double doors. I really hoped this was our destination—I felt ready to drop at any moment. The door guards asked no questions, just opened the doors to let us through.

It seemed we were expected.

An involuntary shiver racked its way through me. But at least this time, I wasn’t walking into danger alone. Anghelescu was with me. Even if she could do nothing to help me, it was still less nerve-racking than when I had gone to meet Jake in the parking garage alone for our final confrontation mere hours ago.

Or so I kept telling myself.

Considering how quickly the council had drafted the fancy scroll and sent the heralds to fetch me, they must be panicking. Fear bubbled in the back of my mind as I stepped inside, about to meet those who held my life in their hands.

The first thing that caught my attention was the high, domed ceiling, then the circular walls of the vast room. The latter were split into three evenly spaced rows by grooved borders. The bottom row was carved, the second was carved and painted, and the highest was only painted. Each row depicted mythical beasts from the oldest to the newest. A Secret Humankind historical record—one representing the changes in humanity’s imagination and the creatures the SH had become during their time of the Change. Creatures like a hunter figure with the head of a bird, a sphinx, a basilisk, and a manticore; a minotaur, a medusa, a lamia, and a naga; followed by unicorns, dragons, and even a paper umbrella with one eye and a leg sprouting from inside it. On the top tier, I spotted vampires and werewolves; trolls, yeti, and Bigfoot. I didn’t recognize most of the figures represented there, but they ranged from the fantastical to the terrible and the sublime.

A few feet into the room, the central area sat lower than the rest, with three steps leading down to it. At the very center was a large inlaid ceramic tile depiction of an ouroboros—a serpent eating its tail. Anghelescu signaled me to follow her there. Though they were made to blend with the snake, I spotted several chain anchors bolted to the floor. I felt a shudder course through me.

The heralds remained at the top of the three steps in a ready stance. On the far side of the upper area sat a dark, curved marble desk with seven matching cushioned thrones. Five men and two women of varying ethnic backgrounds filled the seats. Some were dressed in historical garb, while others wore modern suits. Almost all of them had open laptops or tablets on the formidable desk. The position of the counter and thrones, set above those standing in the lower circle, made for some heavy subliminal intimidation.  

All seven of the seated figures stared at me, some with unreadable expressions, others with open disgust, and one or two with a measure of curiosity. All but one looked to be in their mid-twenties to -thirties, which didn’t surprise me, given how long the SH seemed to live. The last appeared to be in his mid-forties.

The people seated there could be none other than the Council of Purpose—the very ones holding my fate in their paranoid little hands.