The Hidden Prophecy Trilogy

1. Twisting Shadows-2

sweet The breakup had stung, though. She missed having someone who would laugh at her jokes and eat the pickles she didn’t like, and someone who believed in her. After her parents had died ten years ago, she decided she wanted to change the world. She wanted to house the homeless, feed the poor, establish better education for inner-city kids, the works. Max had told her it was a pipe dream, and human services careers didn’t make nearly enough money. Either way, when she and Max had started dating, she had thought she had the perfect relationship. It was a pretty picture for a little while, but she refused to be a trophy, even if Max’s distasteful expression came up anytime she made herself heard.

“When do I have time for a boyfriend? I have four classes worth of homework to do, then I have to get back up tomorrow for school, and then we are working tomorrow night again. I look like I haven’t showered in months, and I’m pretty sure this is a bleach stain on my sleeve,” she said, picking at the threads of her gray sweatshirt.

“Girl, we both know damn well that given a nap, a shower, some makeup, and a change of clothes and you would be the hottest person, like, ever!” Mitra said, throwing a hand up. Kinza knew she was exaggerating but appreciated the effort she put in. She just rolled her eyes and rested her head on Mitra’s shoulder.

As they moved further west out of downtown, the shiny high rises gave way to the trendy neighborhoods of the Chicago Loop. Shops, restaurants, parks, and some smaller apartment buildings passed by the bus windows. That would eventually fade to the areas of Section 8 housing and broken down parks. People were still outside this late, enjoying the last bit of nice weather in early September. As Kinza was looking out the window, she felt the back of her neck tingle. It was probably just the wind blowing through the open window, but on instinct, she whipped her head around, slapping a hand to her neck.

There was nothing there.

But to her surprise, someone sat at the back of the bus. That’s odd, she thought to herself. I know I didn’t see anyone else behind us when we got on. Maybe he had been lying down. It wasn’t unusual for the occasional drunk person to be seen passed out on the back seats late at night. But this person didn’t look drunk. He was wrapped in swaths of dark material from ankle to wrist. It looked like both pants and shirt could have been made from a single bolt of fabric. A hood hung low over his eyes, and a mask pulled up over his nose. Kinza could feel him looking at her, though. The light seemed to bend away from him as if repulsed, casting the back of the bus into shadow. She honestly couldn’t tell what he looked like with how covered he was. Maybe it was some new tech-wear style. She tried to keep up with current fashion trends, but her budget kept her on a strict leash.

That’s odd, I know I didn’t see anyone else behind us when we got on. Maybe he had been lying down. feel She quickly turned back around.

“What?” Mitra asked, looking at her and then throwing a quick glance over her shoulder. Mitra didn’t seem to think anything of the man.

“Nothing, just a mosquito or something,” Kinza replied. But for the next few stops, she could feel eyes burning into her back, goosebumps running up her spine. It took all her effort not to turn around. Something about him just felt off.

off.Growing up in Chicago’s west side had taught her how to handle herself and recognize when she was in a shady situation. While her neighborhood was relatively safe, any big city had its downfalls, creepy stalkers being one of them.

In third grade, a friend of hers had gotten beat up on the way home from school one evening. The group of older kids had come out of nowhere. She had learned to always walk home with another person whenever she could. When she turned fifteen, she started getting catcalls from sleazy men as she walked to the bus stop. After that, she kept a little switchblade with a plastic green handle in her purse just in case. She had never needed to use it, but it made her feel better to have it on her.

use Mitra got off a few stops later, promising to find her a boyfriend by the end of the month. Kinza, still distracted, absentmindedly said, “Yeah, sure.”

The little squeal Mitra let out pulled her back to the present, and she realized too late that she was going to be receiving a slew of profiles later that evening.

As the bus pulled away again, Kinza looked into the window’s reflection, hoping to catch a glimpse of the shadowy person, but couldn’t see anything. She slinked a little lower and casually peeked over her shoulder, feigning adjusting her hair.

There was no one there. Maybe they had gotten off? She sent a quick text to Mitra, telling her to let her know when she got home safe. Mitra texted back almost immediately that she would.

Maybe they had gotten off? She relaxed a little now that the person was gone. Moving her hand under her shirt, she scratched lightly at the tattoo on her upper abdomen. It was a palm-sized mandala with two smaller circles in the center that looked like symbolic eyes. The whole thing was surrounded by delicate chains and inked gems that stretched to the sides of her stomach. Her parents had told her they had taken her to get it when she was little, but it had been there for as long as she could remember. And there was no way any licensed tattoo artist in the state of Illinois would tattoo a child. She had given up asking her parents for the truth and just accepted it as a sort of birthmark instead. Sometimes it would tingle softly, just like the back of her neck had only a few minutes before.

She got off two stops later and threw her light blue backpack over her shoulders. The bus stop was at the corner of a small park. The next block up was a short strip mall with a smoke shop, a liquor store, and a nail salon. Her house was a block around the corner from there. She knew the entire neighborhood like the back of her hand and started on her walk home.

It only took her a few steps before the tingling sensation returned to the back of her neck. She kept her head up and looked around her. There was no one behind her. The only light was from a street lamp across the park.

For a second, she thought she saw a shadow move underneath the light. It was probably a stray cat or something. She’d seen a few wandering around recently.

She walked a little faster and crossed the street to the strip mall. She went across the parking lot of broken asphalt to the awning hanging over the storefronts, wanting to stay in the light. The stores were just closing up, the employees locking their doors and heading to their cars. The tingling feeling never left her neck. Just to be safe, she reached back and palmed the little switchblade from her backpack and pulled her sleeves down over her hands. It was a little big on her anyway.

As she passed the nail salon, she heard a scraping movement from the top of the building’s awning. Her head snapped up, but of course, she only saw the underside of the awning. Heart beating faster, she looked around again.

There.

Through the shop window’s reflection, she could see someone walking on the sidewalk on the other side of the parking lot, in pace with her own reflection. She glanced over out of the corner of her eye.

It was him, the guy wrapped in dark fabric, the light from the streetlamps fizzling out as he walked by. He was openly looking at her now, even though she couldn’t see his eyes under the hood.

Kinza’s heart started pounding in her chest. She knew when she was being followed but knew better than to run. She had seen too many Animal Planet documentaries where the moment the gazelle took off, the lion bounded across the grass only to reach the frightened animal in a few leaps, snapping its neck in its powerful jaws.

To hell with being a gazelle. She planned on being a tiger in a gazelle suit. Albeit, a frightened tiger in a gazelle suit.

frightened Once she rounded the corner of the liquor store, she would only have another block until her house, and Grams always kept the outside light on until she got home. She picked up her speed, looking around to see if anyone else was around. There was a group of people in someone’s backyard a few houses away, but it sounded like a party. Music boomed out of old, crackly speakers. They most likely wouldn’t be able to hear her if she screamed. The parking lot was almost entirely empty now.

The corner of the store was just up ahead. She looked to her left, keeping her eye on the figure, and she turned right, around the corner.

She slammed into a human wall of muscle and stumbled back a step. Gasping, she looked up, and for a moment, she thought the dark figure had materialized in front of her. But when the person grunted and twisted away from her, she realized it was just a man in a zip-up, black hoodie pulled low. He was way too tall to be the figure she had seen on the bus, who had only looked to be a few inches taller than her. When he didn’t immediately grab her, she mumbled a quick, “Watch it,” and kept moving.

As she got further away from the strip mall and onto her block, she worked on moving her stomach out of her throat and back to where it belonged. She admonished herself for not even thinking of the knife as she ran into the man. Peering over her shoulder, she looked to see if the dark figure was still following her, but no one was there, just the empty street.

She sighed in relief but kept her ears open the rest of the way home.

* * *

Nothing about this job was going as planned. And Zaid hated when things didn’t go as planned.

hated Climbing back up to the roof of the liquor store, he watched the girl walk down the street, steps hurried. He should have taken her when she ran into him, but something about the past week had been off. In the seven years he had been venari, a bounty hunter, he had never screwed up a target, and he wasn’t about to.

venari, He had been tailing her for the past week, following her around the city and back to her house. It typically took a week, max, to take down a group of ubir. Maybe two days for a single, but never this long for just one. The first thing that threw him was the lack of Aura. Every ubir he had ever encountered had an Aura that radiated shattered, chaotic energy. Their thoughts were always unguarded and erratic, standing out from silent human minds like rabid dogs in a field of sheep. The longer they had been ubir, the more shattered and corrupt their minds became.

But her Aura was silent. It was like she wasn’t Anunnaki at all. Just human.

The second thing was another Aura coming from across the parking lot. Her daily routine had been down to the minute, but as she walked home tonight, something had changed. As far as Zaid knew, there weren’t any other venari in the area; they always worked alone, there were no longer enough of them to work in pairs. But there was clearly a steady Aura coming from the other figure. When Zaid had reached out with his own Aura, keeping it visually restrained, he was met by a mind wrapped in an iron-clad fortress. They weren’t letting him in. Anunnaki customs dictated they should at least acknowledge each other, regardless of his distaste for unnecessary communication.

another venariThe last thing that made this target so odd was he was given a name.

Kinza Solace.

He had never been given a specific name before. His direct superior would always provide a city, an age, and a list of potential abilities to watch out for if they were known. That’s it. This time the name and city were the only things he was given. If he had to guess, it must have been because this ubir was particularly dangerous. He had a hard time picturing the girl being more dangerous than a chihuahua. He knew that some of them had abilities to hide in plain sight, veil their Auras, and even compel the minds of the humans around them. Ubir kept their abilities from when they were still Anunnaki; they were just more unstable, deadly even. Hence the need for venari.

venariZaid ground his teeth in frustration, making his jaw ache. The pain had him focusing again. He c****d his head as if to listen but instead settled into a familiar routine, feeling for the heartbeats in the area. He had done this a thousand times in his life and would easily do it thousands more. The ability was one of the many reasons he was so good at his job. He didn’t have much in life, but at least he was damn good at what he did.

He waited until he could feel the steady pulses from the houses around the neighborhood, tens of them coming from inside homes, in cars that passed by, and a group of them clustered outside in a nearby backyard, some obnoxious music blaring out of broken speakers. He felt the heartbeat of the girl walking down the street, away from him. The other dark figure’s heartbeat vanished with its owner, melding into the shadows as soon as they had noticed Zaid’s own Aura.

He had no intention of following them. He was ready to be done with this stupid target.

Moving across the rooftop to jump down the back of the building, he moved faster than the human eye could track, jumping over fences, into backyards, sticking to the shadows. Catching up to the girl took moments. He watched her from her own backyard as she turned to open the gate, walk up the path up the stairs, and enter her house.

Crouching, he waited, silent as the midnight wind with his back to the right of the kitchen window. It was cracked less than an inch. He knew because he had done it himself earlier that day, waiting until the old lady took her afternoon nap to pull it open. Settling to the ground, Zaid waited, ear c****d to the window, to listen for his target’s name. He wanted to verify it was her one last time before he took her back to Rhapta.