Chapter eight
When a knock rattled the wood of her bedroom door, Amaya didn’t flinch. She’d been awake for hours, going over the argument she’d had with Levi. He deserved her ire, but her words to him…
She sighed. Her mouth was reckless, always had been, but she did regret taunting him about losing his mind. It wasn’t fair, especially in light of the struggle her mother was going through. Glancing at the time on her phone, she rolled her eyes and stood. It was barely six in the morning.
“If you’re not coming to tell me I can go to work, you’re wasting your time,” Amaya said as she opened the door.
She gasped and stepped back, surprised to see a bulky shifter at her door. The dark-skinned male was handsome, locs pulled back into a low ponytail, his yellow gaze telling her that he was a wolf.
“King Levi says that you can work today,” he told her gruffly, holding out a shopping bag.
She eyed the bag suspiciously before grabbing it. “And you’re my guard?”
“Guard, driver, whatever you need. I’ll be downstairs at the door.” He left without waiting on her response.
She slammed the door in irritation. Not even work would allow her to escape Levi’s tightening grip.
Damn him! It wasn’t like she would attempt to escape; he had her mother.
In the past few days of her prison sentence, she’d been discussing it with her cousin, and Tracy had pointed out how much safer she was at Levi’s place.
It had pained her to agree, but her cousin was right.
To add to that, her mother had so many more lucid days here.
Stress and using their power played a big part in how the sickness progressed.
Did Anita do well here because she was less stressed and used her power less?
Their neighborhood hadn’t been the safest, but with her uncle watching Anita, her mother shouldn’t have had to expend that much magic to keep them safe. Had her uncle been leaving his sister alone more than he’d let on?
Anger filled her chest and her decision to save the jackass pissed her off.
Amaya finally opened the bag that the wolf had dropped off, surprised to find actual outside clothes.
She’d spent the time after her escape in pajamas.
Even without words, she’d known the king thought she would be less inclined to escape in them.
Little did he know, she would’ve tried to escape this compound butt-ass naked had Tracy not talked her off the ledge.
Despite her irritation, she was happy to be going to work.
She knew that her boss would only take the excuse of caring for her mother but for so long.
At one point, she’d been tempted to ask Ms. Sophia for help, but pitting her boss against Levi was selfish.
She’d gotten herself into this and she alone would get them out.
It was the same thing she’d told Tracy when her cousin had suggested telling the heads of their family.
Going against the King of the Bayi was a death wish. One she would not wish on anyone she cared about.
She went through her morning routine, throwing on the wide-legged jeans and the white button-down shirt that had been in the bag. The designer label on the clothes was something she would’ve never been able to afford.
By the time she made it downstairs, her shifter escort was waiting at the front door as he’d promised. He helped her into a high-sitting black SUV without a word and Amaya wondered if she could perhaps coax him to her side.
‘Remember what’s at stake, Amaya.’ Levi’s voice filled her head. ‘Have a great day at work.’
She growled at the intrusion and his mocking tone.
She hadn’t needed the reminder. The ride to the Archive was quiet, and security at the door took twice as long because of her new shadow.
The front desk security had greeted her warmly, asking after her mother, but they’d eyed the shifter warily.
They confiscated the wolf’s various weapons, promising to return them when he left the Archive.
Rolling her eyes, she motioned for her guard to follow her.
As they entered the atrium of the building, Amaya took a deep breath.
The ceiling was three stories high, wooden slats going from one end to the other.
In the middle was a huge skylight, giving a peek of the fourth floor where all the offices were and the glass of the Archive roof.
Greenery filled the area, from the trees that scattered the atrium to the ivy draped against the wall nestled among more wooden slats. Light filled the atrium from the floor-to-ceiling windows at the front and where the sun shone through the skylight.
“Wow,” the shifter next to her said.
Amaya smiled. “You’ve never been to the Archive?”
“Not this one. Never had reason to,” he answered.
She nodded. Shifters got their power directly from the moon, so they never had a need to come into the Archive.
It was reserved for scholars and elders mostly.
Sometimes they had the littles come through with a field trip.
Because this was the main Archive, there was still a lot of traffic, but people walking in off the street was rare.
Speaking of littles… In the middle of the atrium, at her favorite part of the Archive, a full class field trip stood in front of a six-foot black stone.
Etched into the marble was a rendering of the Leonid meteor shower that was responsible for the awakening of the Southern USA.
Amaya passed it every day on the way to the sacred garden and she always paused.
“Records of the meteor shower responsible for our powers were reported in human newspapers. Hundreds of meteorites fell that evening. So many that a lot of the plantation owners released their slaves in fear that the end of the world had arrived. The Leonid lit the sky as far north as New York, but the Celestials hid the Akachi stones inside of that meteor shower, directing them straight to us in the South.”
Amaya smiled wistfully and continued on to work.
She’d been equally fascinated by the story of their awakening.
The Celestials had blessed the populace that had come over on the ships with power to defeat their oppressors, and with that power they’d claimed the entire bottom half of what was supposed to be the United States of America.
After the war between the states, the country had been permanently divided, with the Northern USA full of humans who had not been gifted by the Celestials and the Southern USA completely taken over with supernaturals.
They shared the land with the indigenous humans who had chosen to stay in their ancestral lands, coming to a treaty that had held for centuries.
That’s not to say there were no supernatural beings in the North.
The Buru vampires who regularly plagued the South came from Europe, but the northerners had tried to use them to overpower the South’s inhabitants.
The Buru vampires had at one point worked to undermine the leadership here, but the rise of the Bayi and Levi, king of the vampires, had put a stop to that.
She rolled her neck, immediately tense at the thought of Levi.
They reached the interior of the Archive where Amaya worked and she prepared to explain again why she was accompanied by a shifter.
It wasn’t as if he could enter the sacred garden, but the security mages here had worked with her so long that they knew her and would ask more questions than the ones at the door.
“You’ll have to wait for me up there.” Amaya pointed to a set of stairs that led to a viewing room of the sacred garden. “You’ll be able to see me from there as I work. No one else is allowed inside. This is the only entrance and exit. No funny business, I promise.”
The shifter inhaled deeply, she guessed checking her for lies.
After a long moment, he nodded and walked towards the stairs.
Releasing a breath, Amaya used her badge to enter the front room of the sacred garden.
Magic filled the small, dark room. The only light came from narrow windows at the top of the wall, which were from the skylight in the garden.
At night, muted light would come in the form of the recessed lights built into the ceiling.
Power from the Akachi meteorite behind the iron door of the garden leaked into the space. The small piece that Levi possessed had nothing on the pieces stored here at the Archive. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, enjoying the feel of it on her skin.
A Mujaji guard stood at the door. Malik was one of the regular guards, his magic being able to withstand the energy from the garden. The guards rotated throughout the day, none of them in the room for more than an hour at a time.
“You in trouble, Maya?” he asked with a smirk.
She rolled her eyes. “What have you heard?”
He held up his walkie-talkie. “Heard you came in with a shifter?”
“Uncle Paul,” was her answer.
Malik shook his head. The two of them had worked together long enough for the male to hear stories about the trouble her uncle often got them into.
“If you need help…”
She waved off his offer. “I got it.”
The locker room where she stored her stuff was even smaller than the front room of the garden.
There were four lockers and a bench that went the length of them.
Going to her locker, Amaya stared at the four clean suits that hung within.
The staff there cleaned and replaced them once a week.
Though she called it hers, it was highly impersonal; there was nothing of Amaya inside of it.
Except for the size of the suits, her locker was no different than the others.
No pictures, no trinkets, jut a place to store her purse until she was done working.
Despite that, it was home, and she’d missed it. She loved her job.