Burn the Night Read online

  Not for the first time, Emma marveled at how Slain was able to put her at ease. He reminded Emma of her father; not quite as playful but just as kind and strong.

  “So what do we do now?” Emma asked, trying to figure out what next steps she should take. “I have a feeling General Fox is going to be waiting for me at home and he’s probably not going to be too happy with the way we teleported out of his car and didn’t wait for him.”

  “Agreed.” Slain stood from his seat behind his desk. “I’ll contact Director Trueart immediately and get something for you to give to this general when you return to Earth. In the meantime, why don’t you check in on your mother and get something for your headache.”

  Emma’s face must have given her thoughts away.

  “Please, the number of times you winced and touched your head was enough for me to tell you didn’t get away unscathed from the fight with the Vilmar,” Slain said, motioning with his chin to the door. “Go take care of yourself. Your planet is going to need you ready and healthy in the coming days.”

  “Right.” Emma rose from her seat, then hesitated as she made for the door.

  “Is there something else?” Dean Extile asked as he noticed Emma’s hesitancy to leave. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Emma bit her lower lip, then decided to ask the question that had been on her mind since General Fox had recommended it that morning. “Do you—do you think I should tell my father what I am? I mean, about all of it and what’s going on here?”

  Dean Extile took a moment to think about Emma’s question.

  “You’re just going to answer my question with another question and let me figure this out for myself, aren’t you?” Emma sighed. “You have that look on your face.”

  “Do I?” Slain smiled. “If you know all of that, then maybe you already know what the answer to your question is. What do you think?”

  “I think raising me as a single parent, he’s given everything to me. I think I love him and I want to keep him safe. That means keeping him as far away from all of this as possible.” Emma hesitated. “And then there’s the whole mother thing who left him and ended up being an alien. He’s gone through enough.”

  “And yet for all those reasons, one remains that rivals what you have shared.” Slain continued Emma’s train of thought. “He’s your father and you love him and you hate lying to him.”

  “I do,” Emma agreed. “More than anything, I wish I could share this part of my life with him. But is that selfish of me? Just because I want to tell him to make my life easier doesn’t mean I should if this knowledge is going to put him in harm’s way.”

  “Emma Jackson.” Slain approached her and placed a gentle hand on her right shoulder. “You are the most unselfish person I know. Trust me, that’s saying a lot. I’m the dean of an intergalactic academy. Be true to your instincts, be sure to think with your head, but only after it’s consulted with your heart.”

  Emma smiled at Slain. He hadn’t given her the answer she wanted. What he had given her was something to think about.

  “Go, go get something for that head.” Slain removed his hand and made his way back to his desk. “I have an Alliance to contact.”

  Emma obeyed, leaving his office through a large door. On the opposite side of the door, a waterfall paused briefly to allow Emma to exit without getting wet. The waterfall was one of her favorite things about Slain’s office, that and the ceiling.

  The ceilings in the entire Academy simply didn’t exist or at least didn’t seem to exist to her eye. The space above her simply went on and on like the sky. It also changed colors from bright to dark when the Academy’s daily cycle changed from daytime to night.

  The waterfall that existed over Slain’s door came seemingly from nowhere. A long sheet of water fell into a groove in the floor and was carried away to where? Emma had no idea.

  I hope they’re not recycling toilet water for the waterfall. The idea popped into Emma’s head making her grin. Or drinking water, or both.

  These thoughts traveled with Emma as she made her way to the infirmary. The pounding in her head had not intensified, but neither had it subsided. It was annoying now more than anything else.

  When Emma reached the infirmary, she was met with the familiar sight of white beds lined up neatly on either side of a long room. Only one bed was being used at the moment about halfway down the aisle.

  Tistan Duel lay on her back. Both of her wrists were in a kind of metal cast. Beside her bed was a short Bracka woman named Madame Cherub. Emma had interacted with the head of the infirmary twice before. Once when she was injured from a charging Turlock and once when she and Instructor Drown needed to get to Slain’s office to return Emma to Earth. The woman had shown up out of nowhere to assist them.

  Scenes full of mystery still touched at Emma’s mind. She remembered the two Alliance guards Madame Cherub had lulled to sleep simply by the tone of her voice.

  “You can come in,” Madame Cherub said without turning around. “Your mother is sleeping now while the Bone Builders do their work.”

  “How did you know I was here?” Emma asked as she entered the room and made her way down the aisle of beds. “I didn’t make a sound.”

  “Sound is only one way to realize you’re not alone.” Madame Cherub rose from her seated position. She turned to smile at Emma. Her face was wrinkled with the passing of time, but still full of joy and life. “Now what injuries did you endure during your fight with the Vilmar?”

  “Just, just a headache.” Emma grimaced as she touched the spot on her face where Desmond Dalshire had landed his strike. “I didn’t realize Vilmar were that strong or quick. I’ll be better prepared next time.”

  “I know you will.” Madame Cherub gave her one of her signature wide grins. “Please, come and sit. I’ll mix the elixir to take away that headache you must have.”

  At the last part of her words, Madame Cherub looked down at Emma’s glowing vambraces. When not in use, they shimmered with a dark purple energy.

  Emma caught the Madame eyeing her vambraces.

  “Have you ever seen them before?” Emma asked. “I mean, a pair of vambraces.”

  “I’m old but still not that old.” Madame Cherub made her way around the bed Emma sat on to a short table. She opened the doors to the table and began gathering the supplies she needed. “The Arilion Knights have only just begun to reemerge in the galaxies. Before that, there were millennia when the universe was left without its knights.”

  “Why do you think they’re—I mean, we’re back now?” Emma asked, not sure if the Madame would have an answer but hoping for some pearl of wisdom. “I mean, why now?”

  Madame Cherub pursed her lips as she produced a small tray with an empty beaker. Next, she brought out three separate vials all holding a different color liquid.

  “I imagine there are threats that have entered the universe that would require the aid of Arilion Knights to vanquish. You see, the Light hates the dark. It will not abandon us to it. You had to turn back the Shay from attacking your own planet. You turned their attack but did not defeat them. Now the Vilmar are seeking to infiltrate Earth.” Madame Cherub poured the first vial of light blue liquid into the beaker, followed by the next vial of dark green substance that reminded Emma of some kind of vegetable-based smoothie.

  When the liquids combined, the contents of the beaker bubbled.

  “I wouldn’t normally gossip, but you’re an Arilion and I think you should know.” Madame Cherub paused to look at Emma.

  There was something dangerous in the old woman’s voice that made Emma hold her breath.

  “There have been reports of Arilion Knights being chosen around the universe. But as always, when heroes are called, villains move to meet them.” Cherub lowered her eyes, pouring in the final vial of dark red liquid that looked like blood. It fizzed as it hit the other two in the beaker. “I’ve heard of a new order of Knights. A dark order emerging to combat the Arilion. You need to
be careful, Emma Jackson. I fear for your life.”

  8

  Madame Cherub held Emma’s gaze past the point of it being comfortable. Emma felt a sense of dread descend on her. She had always known the Madame to be cryptic but in a kind of loving and jovial way. This was something very different.

  “I don’t mean to frighten you.” Madame Cherub cleared her throat. “I just want you to be aware of the many forces working against you in the universe. The Light will not let you down.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by Light,” Emma confessed, trying to figure out if the Madame meant the forces of good by using the term or an actual being or maybe just the goodness that lived inside of others. “I’ve never seen this Light. Even when I was chosen.”

  “That doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist.” Madame Cherub tried to grin. “Here, drink this elixir. It’ll take away the pain in your head.”

  Emma accepted the glass beaker, looking down at the liquid.

  “It’s best not to overthink this one or smell it,” Madame Cherub warned. “Just down the hatch.”

  “Down the hatch,” Emma repeated, bringing the beaker to her lips and swallowing the liquid. It tasted like old fish if the fish had been infected with a zombie virus that rotted it from the inside out.

  “Nope, no,” Madame Cherub coached as Emma brought a hand to her mouth and closed her eyes, fighting every fiber in her being that told her to spit it out. “Swallow it, Emma.”

  By some miracle, Emma gagged down the liquid, shaking her head. Tears came to her eyes as her body was racked with coughs.

  “Oh man, maybe I should have just stuck with the headache.” Emma licked her lips and fought the urge to spit. She looked over at the slumbering form of her mother, making sure she hadn’t woken her from her peaceful state.

  Tistan’s eyes were still closed. Her ample bosom rose and fell with every breath she took.

  “Don’t worry,” Madame Cherub told Emma. “I slipped your mother a sleeping aid to help speed her recovery.”

  “You ‘slipped’ her something?” Emma looked at her mother, then to the Madame of the infirmary with shock clear on her face. “What does that mean? You roofied her?”

  “No one went on anybody’s roof.” Madame Cherub shook her head. “I’ve known Tistan Duel long enough to understand she wanted to get back into the fight as soon as possible. Your mother is a woman of action, as you well know. She’d be up and running around the Academy with the Bone Builders on her wrists if I hadn’t given her something to sleep.’

  Emma nodded along with Cherub’s assessment of her mother. She wasn’t wrong. Tistan would be meeting with Slain or coaching Emma on how to handle the events coming her way if she were awake.

  She took a closer look at the metal cases around her mother’s wrists. They were identical and clamped on to her like manacles. A display on either one showed a read out in green and red lights that Emma didn’t understand.

  “Bone Builders are exactly what they sound like,” Madame Cherub sidled up to Emma. The short Bracka was twice as wide as Emma but only came up to her chin. “They’ll assess breaks or fractures in the bone and repair it within a few hours’ time. Tistan will be up and raging to go very soon.”

  “I see,” Emma said, looking down on the alien mother who had only reentered her life a few months before. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

  “And you?” Madame Cherub asked. “How’s the head?”

  Emma had completely forgotten about her own headache. It was gone like some distant memory that had happened yesterday or the day before.

  “I feel great, thank you,” Emma said, giving Madame Cherub a sideways look. “You didn’t slip something in there to make me sleep too, did you?”

  Cherub shrugged before she shuffled around the bed to return the vials and beaker she used to administer Emma’s medicine. “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. We’ll never know.”

  “Uh, no.” Emma grinned, realizing the Bracka was teasing with her. “I’ll know if I wake up all of a sudden drooling on your floor.”

  “No, I refrained.” Madame Cherub motioned with her head to the doors of the infirmary. “You have a visitor. I wouldn’t want you to miss out.”

  Emma moved her gaze over to the open doors of the infirmary where Instructor Drown stood. The Halyna teacher of combat was a longtime friend of her mother. He and Emma had gotten off on the wrong foot when she first started at the Academy, but when she had needed him the most, he had come through for her.

  He was dressed in a long robe, his orange skin a shade darker than either Tistan’s or Slain’s. Stubble ran over his jaw and his shoulder-length hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  He waited there at the door, his eyes on Tistan’s still form only. Emma thought he might enter the infirmary to speak with them. He didn’t.

  “You should go to him,” Madame Cherub whispered. “Like most warriors who have seen and lost too much, he wants to take the first step, but he won’t let himself, maybe even can’t allow himself.”

  Emma didn’t bother with asking the woman what she meant. She was getting used to Madame Cherub’s cryptic way of talking.

  Emma crossed the infirmary and made her way to the door. It wasn’t until she was only a few feet from Drown that he moved his gaze from Tistan to Emma.

  “How is she?” he asked, skewing her with one of his signature cold stares. “What happened to you two?”

  “She’s fine,” Emma assured the instructor. “Her wrists are broken, but Madame Cherub administered the Bone Builders and drugged her. That last part sounds bad, but it’s so she can sleep.”

  Drown sighed relief, his muscular chest actually descending as he did so. The hardened warrior had a soft spot for her mother that Emma suspected went further than friendship.

  Drown caught Emma’s eye as she witnessed his sense of relief.

  “And how did it happen?” Drown changed the subject quickly allowing no chance that Emma would be able to ask him how he felt. “Who did this?”

  “There’s an alien race trying to infiltrate Earth called the Vilmar,” Emma explained. “We discovered a coven including humans the alien turned and the alien himself. Those he turned were easy enough to get rid of, but he was stronger than I thought.”

  “You’re stronger than he could ever be with those vambraces,” Drown growled at her. “You should have been able to take him easily.”

  Heat rushed to Emma’s face as she caught the tone in his voice that said he blamed her for what had happened to Tistan.

  “Yeah, well, I guess I’m still getting used to being an Arilion Knight and the whole mother back in my life thing and aliens running around freaking Los Angeles.” Emma didn’t mean to shout, but her voice filled the infirmary. “Why don’t you go and fight the Vilmar? I’m sure you’d do a much better job than I could.”

  “You need to train harder.” Drown ignored her words, looking down at her with an intensity she would have shied away from two months before. “You need to be like the Arilion Knights of old. You can be like them if you push yourself past your limits. Don’t hold back.”

  “I’m not holding anything back,” Emma said through clenched teeth. Anger burned in her heart.

  Just go before you say or do something you regret, Emma told herself. You have better things to do than argue with Drown.

  “So, hey, it’s been really great catching up with you, Instructor Drown,” Emma lied and gave the Halyna a fake smile. “I’m going to be going now.”

  Drown didn’t respond to her. The only indication he gave of hearing her at all was moving his gaze back from her to her mother.

  Emma cooled off by traveling through the Academy. She headed down to visit the Beast Prevention class taught by the newly appointed Ree named Instructor Low. The Academy had found a suitable replacement for the position, reassigning the android who had previously taught the class in a lateral move to assist Emma’s mother in her duties as chief security officer at the Academy.

&n
bsp; Emma walked the halls as the students of the Academy were released from their classes for their midday meal in the mess hall. Emma did her best to smile at familiar faces, but there was no denying things were very different now.

  As much as she wanted to be one of them, just another recruit at the Academy, she wasn’t. She had entered the Academy under a disguise and had to lie to her class of recruits. Then she was chosen as an Arilion Knight. This separated her even further.

  Now her former classmates weren’t only wary of her being half human, they were in awe of her being a living, breathing Arilion Knight. It was the double-edged sword of not fully trusting her while still being amazed by her that drove most of them away.

  Taking one on one classes with the instructors to further hone her abilities as an Arilion Knight drove the wedge between her and her former friends even further. Layga and Jeba were the only ones that had remained by her side.

  As Emma walked down the stone hall, Jaymore and Elexon caught her eye. The Ree and Bracka boys noticed her looking. They smiled and waved but did nothing to slow their progress as they hurried past.

  Daylon’s familiar face came next. The Halyna boy had shared something with her they were only beginning to explore when Emma’s identity as half human, and an Arilion Knight at that, was revealed.

  “Oh, uh, hey, Em—I mean, Emma,” Daylon said with a boyish grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “I didn’t—I didn’t know you’d be here. I thought you trained in the mornings now and were back on Earth in the afternoon.”

  The entire time he spoke to her, his eyes shifted from her vambraces to her eyes and back and forth. To most of the recruits and even to some of the adults, the glowing vambraces were legendary.

  “Yeah—I—well, there’s a lot going on right now on Earth, so the schedule has been kind of bananas lately.” Emma cleared her throat, trying to make the conversation as least awkward as she could. “How are classes? Jeba and Layga tell me Instructor Grimm is really getting into some tough—”