Lesser Gods (37 page)

“I remember, Addy.”

“So you know that I don’t mind talking about the Slayers, if that’s what you really want to talk about.”

I suspected that Alia was worried the topic would upset me only because it clearly upset her, though I still couldn’t fathom why. Had my sister seen something while assisting the Knights’ raids on the Slayer houses? Something that had given her a heavy dose of PTSD? I hoped not, because that would have been my fault, and I knew I had caused Alia far too much pain and suffering already.

“It’s okay, Alia,” I said to her reassuringly. “Ask me anything you like.”

Alia took another deep breath.
“When you were there... under that house... how did you survive?”

“Well, I already told you that Charles helped me a lot. Aside from that, I just held on to the hope that someone would find me before I died. After all, I was blinded and chained to the wall. There was no escape on my own.”

“Were you all by yourself?”

“I was for most of the time.”

“What were you doing?”

“Just sitting. Sitting and thinking.”

“What did you think about?”

“Lots of things, Alia,” I said, giving her a smile. “I thought about you. I thought about how scared you were of me when we first met.”

Alia laughed weakly.
“I remember.”

“And I thought about how scared I was of Cindy when I first met her.”

“You were?”
Alia asked in a surprised tone.

I nodded. “I almost jumped off a building to escape her.”

“What else did you think about?”

“Well... I thought about Cat. And I thought about the Angels, and the Slayers. I thought about how different we are.”

Alia remained silent for a few heartbeats. Her shoulders were quivering slightly again, and I got the feeling that she was struggling with something which had been poisoning her for so long that she wasn’t even sure she wanted to part with it anymore. When my sister spoke again, I could barely hear her telepathy.

“Addy,”
she whispered,
“what are the Slayers really like?”

I didn’t want to go into the graphic details. Besides, having been in Father Lestor’s basement herself, Alia had already seen firsthand what they had done to me.

I shrugged as I said, “What can I say? The Slayers want us dead. They fear us and hate us. Not for who we are, but what we are.”

“What are we?”

“I don’t know that, Alia. I wish I did.”

Alia let out a quiet sob.
“I think my parents didn’t know either. I think that’s why they hated me so much.”

Alia had never once mentioned her parents before today, and now I knew why it had taken her so long to get to this point. I pulled Alia onto my lap and hugged her tightly from behind.

Her telepathic voice trembling, Alia whispered,
“I think my parents might have been Slayers, Addy.”

“Alia, your parents...” I stopped myself. Alia still didn’t know that she had been kidnapped as an infant. Alia’s keepers weren’t God-slayers, but considering what they had done to her, they might as well have been.

Alia’s whole body was shaking as she sat in my lap, and I felt her warm tears dripping onto my arms wrapped around her chest as she continued,
“When I was little, every day was pain. Pain and fear. They said I had the devil in me. They said they had to draw the devil out from my blood. They did things to me. They hurt me.”

“I know, Alia,” I whispered, remembering the chill I had felt when I first noticed the crisscrossing scars across her back. Knowing nothing of psionics, Alia’s keepers had nevertheless learned early on that Alia couldn’t speak into their minds when she was bleeding.

“They put me in a room with no windows, Addy. Like the one I found you in. They tied me to a table, and they... they...”
my sister’s telepathic voice trailed off, leaving a ghastly silence.

“They’re gone now, Alia,” I said soothingly, hugging her even tighter. “That is never going to happen to you again.”

“They hated me so much, Addy. I just wish I knew why.”

So that was why Alia wanted to know about the Slayers. A mere seventeen days in Slayer captivity had nearly killed me. Alia had to survive her psychotic keepers for years.

“I wish there was always a reason why people hate,” I said sadly. “If there was a fair reason, maybe something could be done.”

My sister didn’t reply. I kept my arms around her, gently rocking her back and forth on my lap. She was still dripping tears, but a little less than before, and she wasn’t shaking so badly either.

I knew that the only reason Cindy hadn’t yet told Alia that her “parents” were really her abductors was that Cindy didn’t want to open up an old wound by discussing Alia’s past with her, at least until Alia was old enough. My sister still wasn’t quite ten years old, but Cindy herself had admitted that “old enough” was a debatable point. And since Alia had brought the subject of her parents up herself, I decided to go ahead and tell her.

“The people who hurt you weren’t your parents, Alia,” I said quietly.

Alia remained silent, and I continued, “Cindy told me, and she was going to tell you too, someday when you were ready to talk about it. The people you called your parents weren’t your parents. Your real parents loved you very much. The people who hurt you had taken you from them when you were just a baby.”

“But... why?”
asked Alia in a tiny voice.

“Your real parents were psionics,” I explained. “Your keepers claimed they had rescued you from your ‘demonic’ parents. Your keepers weren’t Slayers, but just as bad. They believed that anyone who could do the things we can do must have the devil in them.”

“They said they would cure me of my evil.”

“Which goes to show how little they understood you,” I said, and then added firmly, “Don’t you ever think of them as your parents again, Alia, because they’re not. They never were.”

I felt Alia nod slowly and wipe her eyes.
“They’re not my parents,”
she said quietly.

“They’re not,” I repeated.

“They’re not,”
Alia said again in a resolute tone, breathing deeply. She wasn’t shaking anymore, and I breathed easier too.

Alia asked hesitantly,
“Addy, where are my real parents?”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t know,” I said. “If someday we find out, we’ll make sure you get to meet them. But for now, I think Cindy is as good a mother as anyone can hope for.”

“Cindy found me in the woods,”
Alia said in a hushed voice.
“She saved my life, but I didn’t trust her for a long time. I didn’t talk to her. It was like everything was dark around me and... and I didn’t want her to hate me. When I started living with her, I was like an animal. I just ate and slept.”

“You had been treated like an animal. That’s only normal, Alia,” I said. Then I smiled, saying, “Look at you now. You’re going to be ten years old in a few weeks. You’re a healer, and the youngest-ever Guardian Knight. You can go outside. You can talk, and swim, and ride a bike. You helped us escape from that terrible underground place. You helped Terry and me rescue Cindy. You’re not afraid of anything, Alia. Cindy loves you very much, and so do I. I don’t know how I would have survived your keepers if I had been you, but I’m glad you did. And I hope we find your family someday.”

Alia rested the back of her head against my chest, saying softly,
“You are my family, Addy. You and Cindy. And Terry if she ever comes back.”

“And Mark,” I added, relieved that Alia sounded so at peace.

“And Mark,”
agreed Alia.
“And Cat when you find her. And Laila when you two get married.”

“Alia!” I said warningly, and suddenly my sister laughed. It was her first real laugh in weeks, and I wished Cindy could hear it too.

“Come on, Ali. I’m sure it’s past your bedtime by now,” I said, picking her up and carrying her over to her bed.

As I tucked her in, Alia asked timidly,
“If I tell you a secret, Addy, will you promise not to laugh?”

“I’ll try my best,” I said.

“When we were trapped down in the PRC, and we shared that bed, I wondered if that meant we were married.”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

“Addy! You promised you wouldn’t laugh!”

“I said I’d try,” I replied, still chuckling.

I felt Alia’s pillow smack into the side of my head.
“Addy!”

“Sorry,” I said, biting my mouth to keep it straight. “I guess that’s not so silly when you’re only seven years old. Here, how about I tell you a little secret in return?”

“Okay,”
Alia said happily.

“Every once in a while, I actually miss sharing the bed with you.”

“Does that mean I can still sleep with you in your bed sometimes?”
Alia asked in a hopeful tone.

“No,” I replied flatly. “Now go to sleep. I’ll be back after I take a shower, and you had better be snoring by then.”

“I don’t snore.”

I gave her another quick hug before I grabbed my nightclothes, turned off the light and left the room.

Cindy was meditating in the living room, and I explained to her what had just happened.

“I suspected it was only a matter of time before Alia would want to know more about her past,” said Cindy. “I guess Alia is growing up too.”

I said hesitantly, “I was afraid I might be jumping the gun, discussing her past with her before she was, well, older.”

“It’s alright, Adrian,” Cindy replied peacefully. “If she brought it up, then she had the right to know.”

“You still don’t know who her parents are?” I asked.

“To the best of my knowledge, they’re not with the Guardians. Possibly some smaller faction.”

“Possibly the Angels,” I replied evenly.

“Possibly,” agreed Cindy.

What if Alia’s biological parents really were Angels? What if the Guardians had already killed them? What if they hadn’t, but were about to? I remembered how Charles had mentioned psionic families being torn apart in the inter-faction conflict. My sister had no memory of her biological parents. If they were Angels, maybe it was better that she remained ignorant.

“Alia’s asleep now,” I said.

“How do you know?” asked Cindy.

“I can hear her mumbling in my head.”

Cindy chuckled. “She still does that, huh?”

I shook my head in wonder. “How does she do it, anyway? Use her telepathy in her sleep, through walls... It’s like she always knows where I am.”

“She knows you’re always close.”

“I think I’ll go take my shower.”

As I stood under the steaming hot water, I reflected that my sister had only wanted to know why there were people who hated us so much. She wasn’t the least bit bitter. Alia had never once shown any resentment toward the many people in her life who had hurt her, except perhaps me, and such times were so short-lived that I often envied her inability to hold a grudge. But unlike her, I could and still did hold many.

I remembered that Cindy had killed Alia’s abductors. It was the only time Cindy had directly taken any human life. She had told me that it was her single greatest regret, though I couldn’t understand why. As far as I was concerned, there was no punishment severe enough for people who would do that to a child. Alia’s keepers were dead. Good riddance.

And that brought my thoughts back to Mr. Simms.

Hearing the pain in Alia’s telepathic voice as she talked about her abductors had solidified my own desire to see the former Sky Guardian pay for what he had done to Charles’s sister. Mr. Simms lived alone, and I was still a Raven Knight. How hard would it be for me to simply knock on his door and shoot him dead?

The problem wasn’t killing him, but getting away with it. Blind, I couldn’t guarantee that there were no witnesses. If I were caught, I would either be jailed or banished from the Guardians, thereby losing the only support I had in getting Cat back from the Angels. I couldn’t risk that for a dead Slayer, no matter what I owed him.

As I toweled myself dry, I could still hear Alia in my head. I stopped to listen to her quiet murmuring for a moment. And I knew then that if ever the opportunity presented itself, I would make sure that Mr. Simms got his due.

Chapter 12: A Finding-Day Surprise

My sister seemed a bit more her normal self the next morning, which was still a far cry from the average nine-year-old, but reassuring nonetheless. She still had her bouts of silence, of course, but they became somewhat less frequent as the days passed, and with her renewed cheerful chattering in my mind, I even managed to forget about Mr. Simms for a while.

Alia had good reason to be happy, as her first double-digit birthday was just around the corner. Alia knew, and it didn’t bother her, that her actual date of birth was a mystery. March 24th would be her “finding day,” marking the day that Cindy had rescued her from the forest.

With Ralph out on another mission, I could spend weekday afternoons with Laila while still having enough time to spare for Alia. The weather was already getting warm enough to occasionally go out without a jacket, and the early-spring winds were ideal for kite flying. No longer able to tell the difference between light and shadow, I had pretty much forgotten what it was like to be sighted. My life had become as normal as it ever got for a blind teenager in a psionic town.

Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t last.

I had Cindy do Alia’s birthday shopping for me. My sister’s mouth-speaking was now so good that, except for an occasional lisp, no one would guess that she ever had a speech impediment. Alia, who loved to take infuriatingly long baths, had recently started singing aloud in the tub. Usually it was just nonsensical verses, but Cindy encouraged it, and so did I when I asked Cindy to purchase a children’s handheld sing-a-long player for Alia’s birthday.

“Sounds like a pretty noisy toy, Adrian,” warned Cindy. “Are you sure you want to get her this?”