by Nicole Thorn
“Okay,” I said. “Are you saying that the Furies can or can’t die?”
“Both. Neither. Well.” He blinked. “My theory is that they’ve reached a point where their sanity and views are… getting wonky.”
“Wonky?” Zander said. “Wonky how?”
“Shall I try and read some of this to you?” Mooz offered. “You probably won’t get a word, but you came to read it.”
Zander shrugged. “Shoot.”
The man cleared his throat as he began. “Really, this is the best I can do and I tried to put it in a way that was more understandable.”
“We get it.”
He started. “The demons from above cast fire upon—”
Jasper stopped him. “Are you just going to tell the story?”
“Um, yes. Why? Are you averse to violence?”
Jasper looked at me before the man again. “Maybe just tell us what we should know. We already know about the village and the people dying.”
“When one of these immortal creatures die, it rebirths them. They get a new body. The Furies are very, very old. And their minds are… going, I suppose. They spared the children, but that was the extent of their mercy.”
I took a deep breath. “Are you telling us that not only are Furies after us, but they’re nuts because they haven’t died in a while?”
“Um.” He looked away from me. “Yes. So it would seem. I do not know what you did to gain this punishment, but Aphrodite assures me that you are good people. So I think that if the Furies were a little less… old, then they wouldn’t have picked you as targets.”
Great. So we just got horribly unlucky with our timing. If we were more careful, then we would have been safe. Someone else could have killed the Furies and we would have been fine. But no. They were old and wanted us dead. Now there was no way to stop them.
“Is there a way to call them off?” Zander asked. “If they want justice, then they should see that that was what I was doing when I killed those people. Where were the damn Furies when my best friend was being abused? Why is she getting punished for something that wasn’t her fault?”
The man flinched back. “I do not know. I really don’t and I’m sorry for this. Currently, if I am correct, then the Furies can’t be reasoned with. They won’t stop long enough to talk, or to try and get remorse. They’ll kill you and anyone they decide are worthy if they’re in the way.”
“But if they were… fresher, they might be?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Zander looked at me and I swear I could read his mind. He looked intrigued and hopeful at the same time. “Kiz.”
“No,” was what I said. “No way. We cannot possibly pull that off. Not a chance. You’re insane.”
“No.” He smiled. “The Furies are insane. And shouldn’t we be the kind people that we are and cure them of that?”
“No,” I said again. “We’ll get ourselves killed.”
“We die if we do nothing at all. This is our best bet.”
Jasmine looked between us. “Are you suggesting that we try and kill them? All three of them? The crazy things that tore apart a whole village between the three of them?”
Zander smiled again. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
13: Accidental Truths
Jasper
The trip home was pretty quiet. Mostly because Juniper and Jasmine didn’t want to fight, so they chose not to talk at all. The fight would, of course, be about how stupid an idea it was to kill a bunch of Furies. Because they are the Furies. How do you kill mystical creatures that have been around for so long that you can’t even fathom what they have and have not seen?
Oh, right. You don’t. You die a painful death.
Zander seemed adamant about it, though and seemed well on his way to convincing Kezia. It’s not like we could let the three of them die a horrific, idiotic death by themselves, especially since we’ve already invested ourselves in it. So, since we all knew how that fight would end, we were just not fighting about it and contemplating our certain demise at the hands of insane, slaughtering machines.
Who said being a mystical creature was never fun?
By the time we got home, whatever good mood any of us had was mostly taken care of. It’s hard to stay in a good mood with the aforementioned slaughtering machines just over the horizon. I was surprised we hadn’t been attacked yet, if I was going to be honest with myself. The Furies had to know, if not where they were, a way to find the demigods. It’s not like three puny humans with second sight could really put up much of a shield for them either.
We had to come up with a plan and fast, hopefully before the actual slaughter. If they were the way I saw them in that vision, then it would get a lot worse before it got better. I wasn’t sure how often they cycled out, but if they acted like that every single time… I couldn’t see anything good coming. There had been so much blood and destruction. Pure gore.
I rubbed my eyes and we marched into the house one by one. Jasmine went over to Nemo and dumped some flakes into his tank. He swam towards the top, eating happily. Although, I’m sure he would have preferred the Cheetos that were his usual treat. Or the beer, but Juniper gets really snippy about that nowadays.
Zander and Kezia came in after us. Kezia looked tired beyond belief. I couldn’t blame her, after the bombshell that her brother dropped. We all sat down around the living room. Juniper folded her hands in her lap and said, “All right, you’re insane. You’re going to get yourself killed, in a violent, graphic manner. If you’re lucky you won’t piss off the gods and make them take action against you. If you’re really lucky, you’ll find peace in the afterlife and if you’re so unbelievably lucky that you live through this, I highly suggest checking out some lotto numbers. Now. How can we help?”
Zander grinned, like he was just waiting for her to say that. Jasmine grinned too and hopped up. “First! Popcorn, because it’s not right to have this kind of discussion without snacks. I shall be back!” She disappeared into the kitchen, with Zander on her heels, saying something about cookies and Juniper on his heels, saying something about keeping everything neat and organized.
Kezia looked at me. “You guys don’t really have to help, ya know?”
I shrugged. “We’d feel like crap if we didn’t, but more importantly, since I think it’ll help you understand, we kinda don’t have a choice. We’re already harboring you, knowing the Furies want to kill you. Yeah, sure, we’re pretty much useless against them, but we could still help a little.”
Kezia frowned. “Zander and I could leave.”
“Then Jasmine would be sad,” I informed her. “Do you know what Jasmine looks like when she’s sad? You might as well kick a puppy, because you’ll feel better about that than upsetting Jasmine.”
My friend smirked, almost against her will. “All right. If I can’t shake you, then I guess I’ll have to be okay with you being cannon fodder. Oh, wait, I’m not okay with that. In fact, it makes me stomach feel tight and makes me regret everything I’ve ever eaten, in my entire life.” She stared at me. Hard.
I smiled at her and leaned forward. “Are you trying to intimidate me? I hate to tell you this, but you’re just making yourself prettier.”
She drew back, in surprise I think. A pretty blush appeared on her cheeks. She crossed her arms over her chest, which just drew the eye to her chest and said, “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“Really?” I asked. “Because when you said I looked good in the suit, you probably could have taken my car to Mexico and I wouldn’t have minded. Hell, you could probably ask for the keys right now and I’d hand them over. Jasmine might be a little upset to learn that our car is on a vacation that she wasn’t invited to.”
Kezia was trying not to smile at me. I could tell. So I continued. “It was also one of the best experiences of my life, watching you get all up in Celeste’s business. I’ve never seen her look so shocked. At that point, you could have gotten literally anything. The house? Your
s. The fish? Take him. Nemo would probably like any algae that you grew for him anyway.”
She lost the battle on keeping a smile off her face and started laughing. “All right, you,” she said, poking me in the shoulder. I feigned offense, rubbing the spot. “You just cool it. I have a giant brother than I can sic on you. I mean, sure, he probably won’t do anything more violent than rolling you up in bubble wrap, but you won’t be able to get out for hours.”
“I’m trembling in fear,” I said.
Kezia sat back, still with a small smile on her face. She was really pretty… gorgeous, actually. I didn’t know why it could still surprise me. Her mother was a goddess. I doubt her father looked all that bad, because let’s face it, gods and goddesses are a little vain. The fact that Kezia was beautiful was a given. Yet, I continued to get caught off guard by it. When I entered a room. When she looked at me. When she smiled, I could almost feel my heart palpitating.
Our siblings came back into the room. Zander immediately plopped down on Kezia’s other side and offered her doctored popcorn. I’m not sure what he did to it, but Kezia looked mildly ill. She shook her head, but did take the buttery goodness that Jasmine offered. My sisters sat down in one of the recliners, hip to hip. Juniper only looked a little frazzled by the popcorn bowl’s proximity to the furniture.
“What can we do to help?” Juniper asked again.
Zander shrugged. “You’ve already done a lot.” He flopped onto his back, stretching his feet across the floor. He batted at Kezia’s hair, mostly to annoy her, I believe. It also worked pretty well, based on her expression. “You warned us about the Furies in the first place and told us that they were Furies. Gave us a place to stay. I’m not sure it would be right to ask more of you.”
Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease.”
Juniper nudged our sister with her shoulder. “If you’re going to be sarcastic, try to use more than one word. That way, whoever you’re talking to feels really embarrassed. I’ve noticed it works best on guys that way.”
“When have you spent time with guys?” Jasmine asked. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you? It would be cruel, since you’re my sister and also my best friend, to not give me all the juicy details.”
Juniper’s face was turning red. “I haven’t spent time with guys in that sense and you know it. Evil little social butterfly that you are.”
Jasmine grinned. “Just because I understand the opposite sex better doesn’t make me a social butterfly.”
“You aren’t allowed to leave the house anymore,” I said. Jasmine rolled her eyes. She hopped up, setting her bowl of popcorn down. “I know how we can help the two of them. Let me see if you’re future’s changed and Juniper can check to see if the Furies are near us right now.”
Kezia blinked. “I thought you weren’t good at controlling your visions?” She asked, then her face turned pink. “Not to suggest that you aren’t good with your powers, or anything. What I meant was—”
“Don’t worry about it, Kizzy,” Jasmine said. “You aren’t wrong. I’m terrible at controlling my visions, because there are too many futures for me to focus it. I see what’s most likely going to happen and I don’t know what triggers them. I haven’t ever really gotten the hang of it. Not sure I ever will.”
“Then how will you check?” Zander asked.
The three of us got a little quiet. Juniper shifted uncomfortably on her seat. “Jasper and I can direct her, if we focus on the same thing. I need Jasper to direct me and then I can direct her. Past, present and future.” She shrugged. She tried to make it look casual, but it didn’t quite work, coming off stiff.
The demigods glanced at all of us. Up to now, I think they were okay with letting us be, because they were messed up. However, the sidelong looks we got from them were increasing. The more we did something that wasn’t right, or typical. The more sidelong looks we got, the more they got worried. Not because of us, but for us.
Zander was the one to ask, “How’d you learn this?”
There was another silence. I looked at my sisters and they looked at me. We all silently agreed that we might as well tell them. They knew something was up and keeping it to ourselves would just make them uncomfortable. “It’s why we left our father’s house so soon after turning eighteen,” I explained.
“What do you mean?” Kezia asked, though Zander’s face had shut down. He was a very animated guy and the lack of emotion that just appeared was shocking and all the more frightening for it. Something told me he was perfectly aware of this affect too, but couldn’t help it.
I shifted around, feeling mildly uncomfortable. Not with the line of questions. I guess they had a right to know. More about the fact that we were talking about it at all. “Our mother left when we were really little,” I explained. “She took the family money and set it up in trust funds that our father couldn’t touch, so he had to figure out how to support all three of us and himself,” I explained.
“She was pretty young,” Jasmine said, with a shrug. “Probably shouldn’t have had us to begin with, but accidents happen.”
“Anyway,” I continued, “Dad always knew about us, our mother and her brother and sister.” I’m not sure if he ever put more thought into it than that, because he never spoke of the gods, or the old stories, or any of it. What we learned, we learned ourselves, when he wasn’t paying attention. He was opposed to us learning, because he always thought we had more important things to be focused on. “When we were a little older, he, uh…” I trailed off, unsure of how to put it.
“He asked us to check on the neighbors,” Juniper said. “He’d ask Jasper to see if they had ever done anything they didn’t want people to know about and he’d ask me what they were currently doing. If there was something he found interesting, he’d then ask Jasmine how’d they react if someone found out about it. Jasper and I had to direct her, otherwise she couldn’t see what he wanted her to.”
The demigods looked at each other.
“We didn’t realize it was an invasion of privacy for a long time,” Jasmine said, in a small voice. “We were pretty little when all of this started. When we stopped being comfortable with it, we stopped doing it.”
“What did he do to these people?” Zander asked like he already knew the answer and just wanted confirmation.
“He’d ask for money,” Jasmine said. “If I told him they would be very upset if someone found out, he’d ask for money. Just once to keep their secret. If they refused, then he blabbed and that person was usually pretty upset. Like… Come at Dad with a gun upset sometimes, or tell us that our father was going to Hell upset. That kind of thing. A few threatened to ‘ruin him’. I’m still not sure what that means.”
I shrugged, because I didn’t know the answer either. Juniper did the same thing.
Kezia bit her lip. “So, he just let you stop when you decided you didn’t like it anymore?” she asked.
“Well… no,” Jasmine said.
“What did he do?” Zander demanded.
All three of us got really quiet. I couldn’t say for my sisters, but for me, I felt a little ashamed. I didn’t want Kezia knowing about the punishments, because she already hated my father. Both of them already hated my father. I didn’t understand why, but I knew this wouldn’t help with their opinions.
A big part of me wanted them to understand that it wasn’t as bad as they thought, but I couldn’t make the words come up. I couldn’t explain to them why he wasn’t a terrible father.
“We were punished,” I said simply. When the demigods looked us then, they knew they weren’t getting anything else out of us on the subject. I jumped up and Juniper did the same. The three of us laid on the floor, my hand wrapped around one of Juniper’s and Jasmine’s wrapped around the other.
My visions were easier to access when I had an object to hold, but there was no way I was ever touching that scroll again. Not after the way it punched me out the first time. However, once I had a vision, I could always access it again. Unlike
Juniper and Jasmine, my visions never changed. They were of the past and the past is concrete, unlike the present and the future.
I reached into the back of my head, fumbling around until I came across the familiar feeling the vision had given me. I pulled it out, dusted it off and sank into it again. The smells of blood, rain, dust and fear sank into my nose. The feeling of being hunted stretched across my shoulder blades. The sound of children crying filled my ears. I took all of that, I focused on my sister, next to me.
I felt Juniper relax, her muscles turning liquid one by one. Distantly, I became aware of her voice, announcing what they Furies were doing now, or at least, what one of them was doing now. Part of me was happy that I couldn’t hear, because I didn’t want to know what the Furies were up to. I didn’t want to know they were hunting and slaughtering.
The power I had pushed into her hit Jasmine. I felt it stretch across all of us and into my sister. The sound of Juniper’s voice became dimmer, as the power looped back through us, like it always did. Juniper talked faster and then the power leaked back into me. The vision began to fade and change. It had been the starting point for us, but now it was directing us.
Jasmine was watching the future of the Furies, watching Kezia and Zander’s future.
Juniper was reporting on their present. Telling the demigods what they were up to.
And I was sinking into their past.
Images flew by, all of them clear, no matter how quickly they were gone. More blood. Atrocities that I had to witness. Both done by the Furies and ones the Furies found justice for. My heart pounded against my chest and my breath started coming in shorter. Blood. Death. Bodies. Men, women. Young and old. So many of them. Hitting the Furies over and over again.
Killing over and over again.
They remembered them all. Each and every one. What the perpetrator did. How they did it. How they felt. They remembered how they killed them. Who bore witness. The reasons for killing them. All of it in their heads, crowding their minds. Driving them insane until they had to.