The Shikari: Every Family Has Its Secrets, page 6
“Ah no, I’m good but I’m not that good.” He huffed. “I don’t you see you making yourself useful.”
Sloane’s phone vibrated again in her pocket, she fished it out to silence it. Looking at the screen she sighed.
“Answer it; we’re not doing anything. You might as well deal with her. You should at least let her know you’re okay.” Erik looked serious then looked out the window towards the frat house.
“Fine,” Sloane hit the button to answer the phone.
“Hey Amy… yes I’m fine.”
Erik huffed, “yeah fine, we’re just hunting demons that may be organizing to kill us but yes, tell her everything is fine.” He smirked, and she swatted him with the back of her hand.
Sloane continued her phone conversation. “I’m not sure right now when I’m going to be back. I have some stuff to do.” She glanced over at Erik whose eyes were closed but his mouth was upturned slightly. “Yes, I know we need to talk but I can’t talk right now,” she waited. “I will call you later, when I have time okay. Yes, yes. And I will be fine okay. Don’t worry so much. Yeah, talk to ya later.” She hung up and dropped the phone in her lap.
“Now was that so hard? You at least let her know you’re okay.” He pressed his lips together holding back a laugh.
“Shut up, you don’t know what this is like. Do any of your friends know about you?”
“No why would they?” Erik continued to stare out the window. He didn’t want to admit that he kept everyone at a distance because of being Shikari and he understood all too well the decision that she’d made. He pushed someone away because of his birth. The loss still hurt him, but he knew it was the right thing to do. He loved her and that was why he needed to stay away from her. He didn’t want to put her in jeopardy like his mother. He didn’t want to repeat his father’s mistakes. He knew the cost.
Sloane watched the emotions play out on Erik’s face but didn’t probe him.
“Time to move, our guy just got in his car and is headed to the west bank.” Erik started the car and pulled behind their target.
“Wait, what about the other guy?” Sloane asked.
“He’s passed out. I think we’ll get more info from this guy. We’ll figure it out later.” Erik followed at a safe distance. He didn’t want to clue the guy to being followed.
Erik followed until he entered the parking ramp. Erik pulled to the side. “I don’t want to go in the ramp. You follow from here on foot. As soon as I find a place to stash the car, I’ll meet you there. He’s headed to the social science building first floor.”
Sloane jumped out of the car and headed across the street to wait at the benches until she saw him exit the ramp. She didn’t want to look suspicious, so she played with her phone while she waited. When he passed by, she followed. Sensing him the moment he walked by, she was relieved not all her powers had gone berserk. She could still sense a demon. It gave her some comfort and hope her powers would be back soon. He walked at a brisk pace straight for the social science building. Sloane was trying to get a read on him as he walked. She noticed a confidence in his stride, but he was also in a hurry, so it was hard to tell. She wanted to grab him and get information. It seemed so much faster to torture people for the information she needed. She wanted to know already so she could go back to her normal life. She had to take a breath to steady her nerves. She didn’t want to be discovered by her sudden panic.
He went to his class. She strode past, unnoticed. She wasn’t sure what they were going to learn from him. She looked around to find where she could hang out. The guy was obviously going to be staying put for at least an hour, so she thought they could scope out the campus while they were here. She walked outside. Erik walked up behind her.
“So, he’s in class then?” Erik listened and confirmed this himself.
“I was thinking we could check out campus while we wait. The two things these guys have in common are that they’re college students. We should see if there are possessed students here we don’t know about.” She looked expectantly at Erik.
“You mean you want me to listen and see what I can find out. I feel like I’m doing all the work here, when do you come in?” Erik went to sit at a nearby bench, so he could concentrate on the surrounding thoughts. He’d gotten good at blocking them which was good because otherwise he’d be flooded with thoughts all the time. Sloane patiently waited as he went into a trance.
“I only get the one guy right now; it could just be that they aren’t on campus right now.”
“Hm, how close do you have to be to hear them?” Sloane looked around at the campus and wondered if he could scan all of it.
“I don’t know like a couple thousand feet or something. This isn’t an exact science you know.” Erik glanced around wondering just how far he was able to listen. He wasn’t entirely sure. He knew it was a good distance, but he wasn’t sure if he could hear all of campus. “Why don’t you try to see what happens next. Isn’t that what you do?” He looked at her and began tapping his foot.
“It doesn’t work like that. I can’t entirely control when I have a vision, it just sorts of happens.”
“Have you worked on it at all, through like meditation or something? I had to work at mine to expand what I can hear; maybe you just need to work on it, so you can control it.”
“Yeah, maybe. In the meantime, let’s walk around making sure there isn’t anything going on here that we don’t know about.” Sloane wanted to be moving. She didn’t want to admit to Erik her problem. Although they’d been siblings, she hadn’t known Erik for a long time and she didn’t want to share her problems with him. Usually she would talk with Amy, but she couldn’t do that. She needed to keep Amy out of this as much as possible.
“Okay, we can walk around, and I’ll do the heavy lifting.” He winked at Sloane trying to lighten the mood. He didn’t remember her ever being so serious.
“Ha Ha, so let’s head toward the library, there’s something I want to check out there, anyway.”
“Oh, are you in need of a good book? I have a few ideas for you. I mean you should probably get some Vonnegut to prepare you for the days to come.” Erik grinned at her.
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that Vonnegut is your suggestion? But no, I want to use a computer. See if there’s anything going on in the world that we don’t know about. If these demons are the planning kind I want to see if there are any patterns in the news media recently that could lead us to understand what’s going on here.”
“Oh, I see, pretending to work, now are we?” he chuckled, “I guess that isn’t a half bad idea.”
“I’m so glad you agree.” She rolled her eyes at him. She was getting a little annoyed with his failed attempts at humor. “Sometimes when you try to be funny, you aren’t, so stop trying.”
Sloane went right to the bank of computers. She pulled up MPR first, then clicked over to the national site. Erik googled, murders in the last twenty-four hours. He stopped to listen to thoughts between articles.
“So, this might be interesting, apparently there have been a string of robberies at different labs. They don’t look like they’ve been connected by any authorities.” Sloane started.
Erik interrupted her, “if the authorities haven’t connected them why do you think they’re related?”
“If you would let me finish,” she huffed. “It’s what they stole that makes them suspicious. They stole chemicals from different laboratories. Nothing that would raise a red flag with the government but they all can be found in our books.” She pulled out her phone to take note of the laboratories to research more later.
“So, no one outside our group of hunters would know what the chemicals can be used for. Why are they be taking this stuff?” Erik asked. He moved closer to her computer screen, so he could read over her shoulder.
“Ultimately, to take us out.” Sloane turned to look Erik in the eye.
“Wait, what does that mean, take us out? How is that even possible?” Erik stared wide eyed at Sloane. He didn’t remember ever reading that.
“Yeah, not everyone in our society knows about it but there are some things that will harm us. Some combinations will disrupt our powers, some will strip us of our powers altogether, there are lots of things that can be used against us but very few people know what they are. As you can guess, this information is highly guarded.” Sloane got up from the chair. “Come on we have to go tell Bryant. He’ll need to alert the order before anyone is taken by surprise.”
Erik followed Sloane out the door. “So how is it that you know this if the information is so heavily guarded?”
“Mom taught me before she died. She was one of the people trusted with the information and it was entrusted to her to pass down to the next generation.” She turned to look at Erik. “Where’s the car parked?” she put her hand on her hip. They needed to get back to warn everyone. This affected the entire Shikari, and they needed to safeguard against an attack. If the demons found a way to weaken enough of them, they could do whatever they wanted without any worry of being stopped.
“I parked over in the nineteenth avenue ramp. I can’t believe we’re just going to leave the demon here to continue his class.” Erik looked back at the social service building.
“We’ve got bigger problems than one possessed college student. This involves the entire Shikari’s survival.” Sloane quickened her pace now that she had a direction.
Erik soon caught up to her. “I’m on the third level,” he said as they walked to the ramp.
They raced back to the house and burst through the kitchen. Amy was sitting at the table next to Bryant. Sloane stopped dead at the door and Erik walked into her back before looking up. “What the…”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Sloane glared at Amy.
“Finding out what the hell is going on since you wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone.” Amy took another drink of her coffee. She was too calm. She’d been a wreck yesterday. She sat relaxed with her elbows rested comfortably on the table, one hand curled around the handle of her mug.
Sloane crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at Amy. “You shouldn’t be here Amy.” Her tone was biting as her anger spilled out. She looked her straight in the eye, “go home.”
“Ah no, you dragged me into this to leave me in the dust. You don’t think I care the world is in chaos and you’re fighting demons. I can’t just do nothing, I just can’t.” Amy began fidgeting in her chair.
“Ugh,” Sloane threw her hands up in the air, “fine.”
Erik stepped around Amy to face Bryant, his tone low. “We have bigger issues than Amy being here Sloane, remember that.”
She looked back and met his eyes. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, yes, you’re right. Have you been paying attention to the news lately?” She turned to Bryant.
“Some, why?” Bryant’s brows furrowed as he looked to Sloane.
“There has been a string of robberies around the country, different labs and factories. They’re stealing some key ingredients, ones needed to weaken us.” She crossed one arm over her chest and rubbed her elbow.
“I don’t get how we haven’t been informed about this; don’t we have people watching this kind of thing all the time? How did this slip by?” Erik turned accusatory, “And how do we not all know there’s something that can weaken us. I would think that Shikari members would know.” He sighed pushing his hand through his hair.
“Only certain people are entrusted with that information because we don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands. I’m not sure how it would have gotten past us. We have entire teams of people looking for that sort of thing. If you’ll excuse me, I need to make a few phone calls.” Bryant headed to his study.
“I think we need to do some reading, come on Erik lets show Amy the library.” Sloane headed out the door.
Erik looked to Amy, “don’t worry she’ll get used to the idea.”
Amy smiled at him, “I hope you’re right. I thought we knew each other so well. Apparently, I was wrong.” She followed Erik.
“So, what are we reading?” Amy began playing with the chain around her neck.
“We’re going to go through our history books to see if anything like this has happened before. We’ve kept histories of all the demons we’ve dealt with as Shikari so there may be something we don’t know. You should probably read our vows. Now that you know, you’ll need to take an oath.”
“An oath, why?” Amy’s stomach clenched at the idea of having to take an oath.
“Anyone who is aware of our society must take the oath. It keeps us protected but it will keep you safe as well since you’ll become part of the Shikari. Most everyone has powers and is born in but there are a few that have been informed under special circumstances. Sloane will have to come up with an excellent reason you know. I can’t wait to hear what she comes up with.” Erik looked to Sloane, and she glared at him.
“Who says I’m telling them anything?” Sloane had no intention of letting Amy take part in taking an oath. Therefore, she wouldn’t have to explain anything.
“You know that’s the rules. You’re going to have to tell them, she must take the oath. You have no choice.”
“Not if we leave after this is all over.”
“You know that’s not going to fly with Bryant but think what you want. Not like you’ve ever listened to me before.” Erik grabbed a book from the shelf. “Here Amy have a seat. Just in case Sloane changes her mind. You should probably read this, so you know what we’re all about.” Erik handed her the book to read.
Sloane went to peruse the books on the shelf. She wasn’t sure where to start since they had so much history to go through. “Erik, can you remember any stories that we’ve heard before? Any weird happenings from the history we’ve been taught? We need someplace to start. There’s just too much here to go through.” She ran her hand along the books as she read each of the titles.
“You think they’d have this all in a searchable database by now, so we could search by keyword.” Erik understood their dilemma. “Let’s just grab one at random and start skimming. There’s no easy way to do this.” He grabbed a book down and sat across from Amy.
“This seems too impractical and we’ll be reading for days if we don’t know what we’re looking for.” Sloane grabbed a book and opened it. She sat in the closest chair, eyes focused on the book in front of her. Maybe they’d just get lucky.
After what felt like hours of reading Erik slammed his book shut and laid his head down on top of it. “I can’t do this anymore; don’t we have people that do this? Let’s call them.” He was not the library going type. He liked to be out on the streets grabbing and killing demons. He didn’t like doing the required reading when he’d been in training. Since he’d become a warrior, he’d just call the librarians who knew the histories. He wasn’t sure why they were doing this.
“You do realize that if this information is out, it was leaked by an insider. You trust calling the librarians to ask them? I don’t," Sloane continued reading. She’d plow through as many books necessary for the information they needed.
Erik got up, “I’m going to see what Bryant found out.” He swiftly walked out of the room.
Sloane looked at Amy to see how she was doing. She was staring off into space with her finger on the spot where she’d left off.
“Do you have any questions that you’d like to ask?” Sloane steepled her hands on the table in front of her.
Amy came back down to Earth and realized that Sloane had spoken to her, “What?”
“You seem a bit lost. Do you have any questions?” Sloane waited.
“I don’t know, I never knew this existed, it’s so mind-boggling.” She swallowed hard and stared at the book in front of her wide eyed. She pulled at the locket on her neck pulling it back and forth across the chain.
Sloane watched Amy’s expression as she thought about everything. She could tell that Amy was distressed. “Why don’t you go take a break. Go find Erik, he’ll be able to help get your mind off everything. He’s good at that.” Sloane watched Amy. She bit her lip and looked back to the open book.
“Yeah, I could use a break.” She stood, moving to one side to push the chair in. She left.
Sloane liked having a moment alone. She sat there scanning the books and realized she was attempting to do the impossible. She needed help. She needed to see the future. she was annoyed with her power. She looked at the walls of books and felt lost. She thought there might be an answer for her here but as she continued to read she felt despondent. She walked along the shelves, brushing her hand against the books as she read the titles looking for an answer. One book stood out to her. Lessons from the Shikari, she’d never heard of this before, but it struck her, so she pulled it from the shelf. Sitting down, she scanned over the contents. As she read, she realized she’d missed learning some important things. She’d been taught about being a hunter her entire life but knew she’d missed many of the lessons you learned as an adolescent. The teachings in this book were for those who were older, ready for the information. She paged through it, looking for a clue as to why she couldn’t tap into her power. She found a tonic for strengthening one’s power. She shrugged her shoulders and thought it couldn’t hurt to try. She was feeling desperate and weak. Walking to the large mahogany desk Bryant insisted on having for the library, she took a piece of paper from the printer which looked so out of place here, and wrote down the necessary ingredients for a power boost.
Chapter 6
Amy wandered around the house trying to figure out where Erik went. She’d seen most of the house, but she had no idea where Bryant’s office would be. After opening five doors that weren’t Bryant’s office she stopped in a living room and shook her head. Sloane left all this behind to share a two-bedroom apartment with her, it was unbelievable. Their apartment was maybe nine-hundred square feet total which was the equivalent of a room or two here. Finally, after giving up she went back to the kitchen hoping there was more coffee. She needed a caffeine boost. She found the coffee pot with a fresh brew made. Erik stepped out of the basement.
