Prologue
"Hey, Lynessa! LYNESSA!" I heard my friend Naomi calling to me as I slept under my parent's cherry tree.
"What do you want?" I asked slowly sitting up to notice that the sun had gone down.
"Your mom is back!" she hollered.
My mom had been locked up a long time ago. I think I was around nine or ten when that happened. My father had never been in the picture. I worked where I could and slept in alleyways until one day I was caught not attending school and Naomi and her family took me in. I was home schooled and was able to attain a full education by the time I turned 15.
It was odd; I wasn't particularly looking forward to seeing my mother. She was crazy from the early memories that I have and a drunk the other times. "Why is she out?" I asked Naomi as she drug me toward the entrance to what was now my house.
"I don't know. All I know is she's waiting in the parlor for you. She says she has some information for you about your father." Naomi said.
My father? What is going on here I wondered, she had only mentioned my father once or twice in my whole life up until I stopped visiting her, only about a year after she was put in a mental institute. But, though stiff through to my core, I went out to greet her.
"Hi, Margo," I said flatly.
"Are you really going to call your mother by her first name?" she asked standing to meet me. There was something off about her though.
"You stopped being my mother a long time ago," I growled.
"You little pest. How could you have known?" her voice had changed now. She looked as if she were contorting herself as she spoke and her eyes rolled into the back of her head, "You stupid new exorcist!"
"Exorcist?" I asked, "What are you talking about mom?"
"Lynessa, run!" a dark haired man appeared before me as if by magic. He was fairly old but quick. I wondered how he knew my name but decided to ignore my questions for later I wanted to know what was going on with my mother.
"Mom, did you check yourself out of the hospital?" I asked ignoring the man.
"You stupid exorcists! You'll all die by my hand! Oh the Earl will be so happy!" Margo said twisting her body until it looked completely inhuman. She was now no longer a she but an it. With a long twisted body almost like that of a snake but also like a monster from a story.
"Listen to me Lynessa, that's not your mother anymore. It's an akuma," the man said.
An akuma? Shivers ran down my spine. I'd heard that word way too many times before my mom was forced into the mental facility. She had said the words akuma, Millennium Earl and had mentioned a couple of my ancestors a couple of times over; Allen Walker and Lenalee Walker. "What are you talking about?" I gasped.
"Lynessa! What is that?" I heard Naomi's voice from behind me.
I heard the sound of gunfire and felt pain in my shoulder. I turned to look at Naomi only to see pentacles spread across her body and to see her body crumble to ashes. "Naomi!" I could feel the pain spreading through my body only to take a deep breath in as if it were my last and have the pain vanish. I spun around to face the thing that my mother had become, the akuma. "You killed her," I growled, "You killed Naomi! You killed my mother! For that you'll die!" I flung myself at the akuma willing myself with the power to kill it only to have my fingernails pierce it's flesh and send it exploding through my house.
I couldn't help but look down at my hands; my nails looked as if they had grown three or four inches instantaneously. But as I looked over my hands longer my nails shrunk back to their normal size.
"I was wondering why you survived the akuma's bullets," the man said.
"Who are you?" I asked sinking to my knees beside the remains of my dearest friend.
"My name is Benjamin Barley. I am the most recent in a long line of Bookmen. I am also your father," he said putting a hand on my shoulder. "But none of that is important, Lynessa. What's important is that you are an accommodator of innocence, and that it became present in you because of the akuma."
"Why was there even an akuma here?" I asked.
"Your mother fell in love with a soul seller. The Earl used him just like the man had used his patients, killing them off to use their souls to create an akuma army. I've been able to keep it under control for now, but what I would love to know is why the Earl is still around. In the ancient history I keep it was said that your ancestor, Allen Walker, killed the Millennium Earl back hundreds of years ago," he said.
"Wait, a soul seller?" I asked and then another thought entered my mind, "Wait, you said that hundreds of years ago the Earl was killed by my ancestor. Then why is he around today?"
"Well history says that he was killed once before Allen's time as well and we know of that as The Great Flood…" Ben was saying.
"Oh, but you've found an accommodator too late, Benny." A large man, if you could call him a man, said, "I've already gathered enough of my akuma to destroy the Earth. Who would have thought that this new America would have been the perfect place to start my work?"
As he finished speaking I felt the earth beneath me quake violently and before long I could hear streets start to crumble away. I looked to Ben with fear clinging to my eyes. "What do we do?"
"It doesn't look like there is really anything we can do. People should have listened to your mother twenty years ago. If the Black Order had been around again we might have been able to prevent this. I love you, I have always loved you, Lynessa Allyen Walker," Ben said as the ground beneath him crumbled and he fell into a pit of blackness.
"BEN! No!" I screamed before I lost my voice and it crumbled into a whisper, "dad…" Tears streamed freely from my eyes. I had never known this man before today and yet his death was devastating to me. So devastating that I was ready for the earth to consume my body as well. "Forgive me for giving up Daren," I whispered to the wind as I fell with the ground beneath my knees. The last thing I saw before giving into the blackness was the redheaded young man with those loving green eyes that I longed to see every day I left my prison of a house. Daren – my second best friend and the love of my life.
