Free Daughter of Gods and Shadows by Jayde Brooks Page A

world for Eden. There never would be.

 
    IN A SMALL TOWN
    After a while, Kifo had become numb to the sounds of their screams. It was different than it had been on Theia. Back then, he’d collected the bodies of Ancients who had fallen in battle—Weres, Valkyries, Guardians, and Shifters—and used the spells he’d learned from the mystics and transformed them into soldiers for Sakarabru’s Brood Army. Their bodies were strong, even in death, their resolve and discipline unmatched. A Brood soldier who could shift into a beast or who could fly was worth his or her value in treasure.
    Kifo’s spell not only reanimated the dead, but it made them physically stronger, their muscles and bones as dense as armor, and the beauty of it all was that they all became loyalists to the Demon. They were slaves to his will, and that was what had made the Demon the fierce conqueror that he was on Theia.
    Some of the people called out to him in Spanish, “ Reaper! Ll é vame! ¡Por favor! Reaper! Take me! Please! Let death relieve me of this torture!”
    They weren’t the first whom he had turned, and they wouldn’t be the last.
    The scent of disease, urine, and feces filled the air. Kifo donned another expensive custom suit, which he would later burn because the smell was overwhelming. The mystics knelt over each of the undead humans, performing their rituals that would change them and make them into the Brood soldiers of this world.
    He had started with the sick, terminal patients who were close to death already, but the transformation turned sick humans into weak Brood. He needed strong, able bodies for Sakarabru’s army. But like forging metal, the strong needed to be broken down before they could be made. The sickness he had released into the world was beginning to spread at an alarming rate, attacking the strong and the weak. The weak would die off. The strong would become soldiers.
    Kifo was a Djinn, his mystics were phantoms, and they all had the power to choose whether or not to allow humans to see them. Doctors and nurses rushed through hospital corridors and in and out of rooms tending to the sick who had come to them for help, unaware of the mystics hovering over patients, chanting their spells. There was a sliver of space between life and death, however, where the victims of these rituals could see them. But in the fever of their sickness, their claims of seeing ghosts and spirits fell on deaf ears.
    â€œWh-what…? Wh-why are you doing this?”
    He stopped in the doorway of the room of one patient, a large Latin male going through the transformation, who saw Kifo.
    Tears fell from his eyes as he swiped his muscular arm through the mystic at his bedside.
    â€œCalm down, Señor Gomez. Sir, you’ve got to lie still,” the nurse standing on the other side of the bed told him.
    He looked at her as if she were the crazy one. “Stop him! Don’t let him do this to me!”
    â€œ Declare your allegiance to Sakarabru, ” the mystic chanted. “ Deny your faith. Deny your God. Sakarabru will set you free, ” the mystic muttered over and over again.
    â€œ Medico! ” she called out as the man became more erratic. “Necesito un doctor aqu í !”
    â€œWhy are you doing this? Why?” His cries faded as Kifo walked away.
    â€œAre you obedient, Kifo?”
    Obedience was important to Sakarabru. More important than power or fighting abilities. It’s what he demanded of his Brood Army. It was what he demanded of Kifo.
    â€œAs always, Lord Sakarabru.”
    Why was Kifo doing this? Why had he brought the Demon back from the brink of destruction? Kifo had never known family or where he was from. He had been raised by Sirh Magi in the Northern Territory, and they had taught him the secrets of life and death and the infinite connection between all things.
    â€œThere is no end, Kifo, and there is no beginning. We are all who and what we