4. Calix

Calix

I could feel Rue's fear. It wasn't the kind of fear one had when they were afraid they're going to be caught in a lie. It was the fear of death. The kind of horror that consumed your soul when something depraved touched you and you couldn't wash it off. A grave sin.

The kind that stained an entire family.

It was safe to say we were all nervous about what she had to tell us. What kinds of implications it put on her. What had she intentionally left out of her profile?

But I was certain she did tell us the truth just now. Koa read vibrations in people, so I'd have known immediately if he'd felt her lying. Especially since she didn't hold just a single soul, but several. That meant her vibrations were loud.

I'd heard stories about shades. In some ways, they were a lot like kitsune. The more tails a kitsune had, the older and stronger they were. I'd heard something similar about shades—the more souls one had, the older and more powerful they were.

Then again, her profile said she was born in the eighties. Clearly, there was more to shades than chronological age. Even my beast could feel that Rue had more than a single soul. We consumed souls, after all .

Koa squeezed my wrist, and I reached behind me a little further to pat his chest, telling him it was all right. He'd relaxed immensely when Rue had handed him her stuffie. The true sign to understanding a Little was knowing how to put them at ease. Making them understand via actions that you accepted them just the way they were.

We sat in silence listening to Javan make the calls. Rue was still tucked into my side, her eyes watching Javan, eyebrows knitted together as she listened. Bryn simply watched Rue with a small smile on his lips.

This was where Bryn thrived. He was a good Papa to Little Koa, but I knew he didn't have any real interest in children, and my Little was far too close to that. But he was still very good with Koa; there wasn't any frustration or anger. No impatience.

But where he thrived was being a husband, he was the best of us by far. That was what he was made to be. And he'd been waiting for a wife—someone soft and sweet that he could spoil in a way Javan, Koa, and I just didn't appreciate.

That's not entirely true. We loved his thoughtful gestures. It was never lost on us how much he loved us. But we all knew that this was the moment he'd been waiting for.

"Are you hungry, Rue?" Bryn asked.

Rue sighed. "A little, yes."

Bryn nodded as he got to his feet and left the room. He was gone for a few minutes and returned with two plates. He handed one with a sandwich on it to Rue. She smiled at him. "Thank you."

Bryn inclined his head. The second, with the sandwich cut into four and with some sliced apple pieces, he handed to Koa.

I shifted to look at Koa as he gave Bryn a big smile. He wasn't Little right now—as much as he wanted to be—but there was no mistaking that he needed to escape reality. Except we needed him, so Big Koa sat behind me with his Little peeking out with matte black eyes.

"Thank you, Bryn," Koa said .

Bryn touched his head. "You're welcome, honey. Eat it all and you can have a cookie, hm?"

Koa grinned and nodded.

"You too, Rue. Eat all of your sandwich and you can have a cookie."

Rue looked at Koa. She leaned closer and loud whispered, "What if I don't like the crust? Does that mean I don't get a cookie?"

Koa chuckled. "Sometimes. If you're just being obstinate, you don't get a cookie. But this is good bread. Our witchy friends made it. You'll like the crust."

Bryn returned to the room once more with three more plates, handing one to me, one to Javan, and taking the other for himself as he returned to his seat. Rue also returned to her seat to eat, and I shifted so I was sitting on the opposite arm of Koa's chair, no longer blocking him.

Javan gave Bryn a smile, mouthing "Thank you" as he listened into the phone. Bryn nodded, giving him a kissy face and a wink.

We ate in silence as Javan continued to make calls. I thought he probably could have sent a mass text and been done with it. Then again, dealing with Iker and Maryn was easier via conversations than text messages.

We'd finished our sandwiches before Javan finished his calls. Then we waited until he ate his last few bites. Once he was done, Bryn took all of our plates back to the kitchen and came back with a handful of cookies. He offered Koa to choose his first.

Koa sighed, giving Bryn a bemused smile. "I'm definitely husband right now," he said, giving Bryn a bashful look.

"I know," Bryn said, leaning down to kiss his forehead. "But I also know you were pulled out of being Little Koa when Javan got here. It was a long day, huh?"

Koa sighed again; this time it wasn't wistful but heavy. "I'm just tired. Tired of dreading being Big because the world around me is… dangerous and heavy. Ugly. I miss being Big in a better world."

"I would take that away if I could," Bryn said. "Eat a cookie and don't tell your Daddy so you can have dessert after dinner."

Koa grinned and took a cookie. He looked up at me shyly, trying not to grin too big. Bryn handed me a cookie, then gave one to Rue, one to Javan, and took the last for himself.

When the cookies were gone, we left the house.

"Where are we going?" Rue asked.

"HP," Javan answered. "Our house isn't built for a lot of people."

"How many is ‘a lot'?" she asked nervously.

Bryn took her hand, kissing the back of it. "You're not under interrogation. This meeting was scheduled to happen in a few days once you got settled, so we could bring you up to speed on what you need to know about what we do here. Why we're here."

Rue looked around. I knew the moment she spotted the wall. Her gaze trained there. "I wondered," she said.

We had allowed time for most of our friends to arrive first so that there wouldn't be a lot of waiting. Since Taro was hanging around waiting for the ceremony, we brought him along. I figured he should know who was in his backyard since he worked close to where Rue lived.

As a few more trickled in and I knew there were still a handful yet to arrive, we took the time to introduce everyone to Rue while we waited. Last to arrive were Adeline and Ellis Daemon with their pet, Alien.

I was about to tell Rue that Alien was safe, but one look at her and I stopped. She stared at Alien with something that almost looked like… familiarity. Awe.

"Flower pet," Rue murmured, staring. "Where did you get him?"

Alien's little puppy nose sniffed the air, wiggling back and forth. His wings were curled on his back, his tail wagging so quickly that his butt shook.

"He was ruining my flowerbed," Ady said.

Rue got out of her chair, still transfixed on the alien dog. She crouched down and held out her hand. Alien sniffed her and then bopped his head against her so she'd pet him. "I wonder," she mused as she ran her hands along his jaw.

"Be careful. He has a lot of teeth," Ady said. "He?—"

Her words cut off as Alien suddenly burst into a spine of wicked needles. Alien seemed as surprised as the rest of the room. He looked back on himself, head tilting, and leaned in to sniff them. He licked one and then straightened himself, looking up at Ady and Ellis with his excitedly wagging tail.

Proud. Like he was screaming look at me!

The needles slowly retracted.

"How did you do that?" Iker asked.

"How did you know he could do that?" Maryn asked at the same time.

Rue pulled her phone out and we watched as she scrolled until she turned it toward Ady and Ellis. "When I was little, five or six, I started drawing animals. Just pretend animals. Combining different features from one to the next. This was my favorite because it was a puppy, but it also blossomed into a beast when it was threatened. My father used to make 3D rendering concepts."

Ady handed me the phone and I was shocked to see what was on there. Bryn leaned in on one side, Koa on the other. There was what was unmistakably a child's drawing, but all around it was a professional concept board of this creature. This exact creature.

"My father used to make me little figures every time he made a new concept board. I had an army of them. Sometimes, he'd make me stuffies of them as well when they looked particularly adorable. "

"What happened to them?" Maryn asked, now looking at the phone as it moved around the room.

"I don't know," Rue mused. "When I was thirteen or fourteen and stopped drawing animals, they all disappeared. I assumed my father thought I was outgrowing them."

"Have you heard from your parents since you left?" Javan asked.

Rue shook her head. "No. I… remembered some things and… blocked them. Everyone."

"Do you mind if Koa looks at your phone?"

She shook her head again and the phone made it back to my husband.

"Go ahead," Javan said, resting his hand on Rue's lower back. "Tell everyone what you'd told us."

Rue straightened and then repeated what she'd seen. "I'm pretty confident at least three of my fathers work for Silence, given how closely they worked as I was growing up. They were always collaborating. My father used to tell me he worked for a toy company, to explain why he was always interested in my animal ideas. Sometimes I wondered why—when he always made these detailed concept boards and little figurines—they never made it to market."

Silence filled the room.

"Because that's not what he was using your concepts for," Maryn said, sighing.

Rue closed her eyes, shaking her head. "No."

"What else can you tell us?" Hadrian asked.

"I think my family has been part of Silence for generations. There was a belief that was passed down through our family. Something I thought was cultural until I became a teenager and really started comprehending the world around me. They called it the Day of Shambala. Which is cultural, or spiritual at the very least, but as I grew up, I realized what my family spoke about was different from the accepted definition of Shambala."

"How so?" Iker prompted .

"In Buddhist text, Shambala is described as the birthplace of Kalki, the next incarnation of Vishnu. Kalki will usher in a new age, a new kingdom, the new Buddha. It's said that he was an ancient king who ruled somewhere in the vicinity of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kashmir where there were numerous religions practiced, most dominantly Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. He warned the people of an imminent threat if they did not band together against a common destructive force. He performed a spiritual ritual called an empowerment, making all his people one family. But the invasion has yet to come. He said there would be twenty-five kings to follow Kalki before the dark forces would come, then a new king would rise from Shambala to vanquish the evil and usher in a new golden era of peace in the world."

The room fell silent. I could practically hear the ticking of time.

"The Day of Shambala…" Ady said.

"My gran used to say that the countdown has already begun. And when the day arrived, a new world would be born of only those who are pure enough to fill it."

Chills raced down my spine.

"Used to say… Has she changed her mind?" Iker asked.

Rue shook her head. "No. My Gran and Gramps are dead. They died at separate times, in different places, but both at their places of work."

Ady's eyes went wide. "One died just over seven years ago, right?"

Rue looked at her, breath held. "Yes," she whispered.

"And the other almost six years?" Hadley asked.

Rue shuddered. "How do you know that?"

"Just over seven years ago, I was held prisoner by ORKA who handed me over to Silence," Ady answered. "When my husbands came to rescue me, they destroyed the entire facility, including everyone in it."

"Oh my god," Rue muttered .

"And almost six years ago, we made a retaliation against Silence for trying to kill us all on a mountain holiday in Hawaii," Hadley explained. "We also destroyed the entire facility, including killing everyone inside."

Rue covered her face. "That can't be a coincidence. Can it?"

Bryn rubbed her back gently.

No one answered her question.

"Have you ever seen this countdown?" Maryn asked. "Do you have any concept of whether we're looking at days or years or hours?"

Rue shook her head, not picking it up. "No. I—" She shuddered again. "I didn't think to ask. It always felt like one of those things that would never happen in my lifetime. You know, like the sun will stop burning one day. Yes, it'll happen. Science says so. But not while I'm alive. I never thought to ask."

"Was there anything on her phone?" I asked Koa.

Rue looked up, eyes wide. Clearly misinterpreting what I was asking.

Koa shook his head. "No. No tracking apps. No mimicking apps. No listening apps. I did turn off your location, though," he said, looking at Rue. "Just in case. I don't want to do a deep dissection of your phone right now since you have a lot of personal things on it, but it'd take a lot more effort to locate it with your location turned off."

She stared at Koa as several silent seconds ticked by. "Thanks?"

He chuckled.

"I think it's our turn," Koa continued, as he touched the side of her face with his fingertips. "I think you understand through context from Ady and Hadley that we aren't sitting around idle. We mostly retaliate when necessary. Ady being kidnapped was the moment we finally sat up and said enough is enough. It was time to do something. For the past seven years, we've been fighting against the growing threats that are ORKA and Silence. Strangely—and for reasons we can't grasp—two years ago, on the exact day we strategized to make a concentrated attack against ORKA, Silence waltzed in and completely annihilated them."

"Right in front of us," Ellis said. "While we were standing right there. And they completely ignored us."

"As if sending a message—we see you but you're not a threat worth acknowledging," Maryn added, crossing her arms.

"It's dangerous when Silence has been silent for long periods of time," Iker said. "We know that. But they've had generations to prepare and they're almost always one to eight steps more advanced than we are. We're not just playing a game of catch up, but we're also trying to stay alive since everyone within these walls is on their hit list."

"Oh," Rue said. "You're safer together."

"Exactly," Javan confirmed. "When we're split up, we're still strong, but we can be overwhelmed. Even if they know where we are, we're the size of a very large army right now. And nearly every single body within these walls has been made enemy number one because we're considered a species too powerful to live."

Rue was quiet for a minute. She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. "What do we do now?"