by Wren Emerson
Coach Carter was nearly shaking now with rage. "Of course, you ungrateful little bitch. Turn your back on our traditions. Those traditions are the same ones that will pay for some fancy private college. You aren't a First Daughter, you're a Bastard Daughter!"
I backed away slowly, never taking my eyes off of this woman who looked like she might attack me at any minute. I risked a glance around for a teacher, but there was nobody around to help me if Coach lost it.
She managed to calm herself slightly. "Why don't you ask Jack what he knows about your father? If no one else is willing to confess to their sins, maybe he'll be the one to tell you what you ought to know."
I saw a chance to dart around her so I did, sprinting away at full speed. I heard her call after me, "Tell him that Cousin Julia sent you."
My mind was whirling as I walked home. My head ached fiercely and I couldn't banish what Coach Carter had yelled after me. What does Jack know about my father? I know he used to run around with my mother when they were younger. He must know who my father is.
By the time I got home I felt frenzied. I didn't shut the door behind me. Instead I lurched to the kitchen where I could hear voices. The adults and Darcy was sitting around the table, eating an early dinner.
"Good lord, child, what's gotten into you?" Ramona asked me.
I looked at Jack, "Why does your cousin Julia think you know who my father is?"
He shot a panicked look at my mother and then at Ramona. "Now Thistle, I don't know what she's been saying, but Julia Carter has been extremely unstable since she was a child. We need to call the school and let them know that she was bothering you before she becomes a danger to the other kids."
His voice was soothing and it wasn't hard to imagine Coach Carter having mental issues.
Marla shattered my feeling of security when she said in a flat, toneless voice, "Jack, stop being ridiculous. Nobody is going to believe your story that Julia is crazy because everyone already knows how you had an affair with Vanna and got her pregnant."
"What?" Darcy and I exclaimed in unison.
"Mom?" I asked weakly, hoping that she'd deny everything, but her head was bowed.
Ramona sighed. "Really Marla, that was almost twenty years ago. Are you still dwelling on that?"
Marla threw her napkin on the table. "There were days I was able to forget, even weeks at a time when I could pretend that my husband didn't fall for my sister's seduction. I could pretend that my own mother didn't support her actions. It got a lot harder to do that when you moved back into my home and I had to watch my husband trying to bond with his illegitimate daughter."
I now understood the awkward conversations with Jack. With my father. He was trying to make a connection with me, a daughter who'd left his life when I was only three years old.
Darcy was glaring at Jack now. "I was toddler by then. How could you cheat on mom with her." The contempt in her voice was matched by the hateful look on her face.
Jack shook his head. "I don't know. I never dreamed of cheating on you, Marla. I never expected that I'd marry a Second Daughter, but I fell in love with you and I was happy. I didn't understand at the time and I don't understand now how I messed up so bad. It was nothing I planned."
He reached out to touch Marla's bare arm, but she jerked it away.
Ramona leveled a cold gaze at Marla. "Why don't you tell him why he loved you."
Jack's face looked pained. "What is she talking about, Mar?"
She glared at Ramona. "I should have known you'd do this to me sooner or later, you old bitch."
I rubbed my pounding temples and leaned against the kitchen island. I was almost entirely forgotten now as history unfolded here in the kitchen.
Ramona, heedless of Marla's insult told Jack. "I've always wondered how it is that you never realized it. Maybe she suggested that you never think about it."
Jack looked shocked. He swiveled to face Marla. He pleaded, "Please tell me that it's not true. Tell me that you didn't use your powers on me."
Marla didn't speak, her face was heartbreakingly sad.
Roman seemed positively gleeful when she continued. "Of course she did, Jack. Probably the first time she was close enough to talk to you she stole her sister's boyfriend by telling him he was in love with her. And you couldn't resist her power of spoken persuasion. In your mind it was true. You loved her just as passionately as she told you that you did."
Now Darcy looked angry at her mother. "Is that true? Did you use your powers on Dad?"
Marla glared at Ramona. "I didn't steal Vanna's boyfriend. She was stringing Jack along, as well as juggling four or five other boys. Jack couldn't seem to see that she was just toying with him." She looked at Jack. "I loved you, for years, you know. I watched you at school and when you came over to our house. I spied on Vanna's parties and watched her flirt with other boys while she sent you off to get her a drink."
She stood up and started pacing behind her chair as she talked. "She treated you terribly and you still tried to get her attention. Not because she was prettier than me or smarter or funnier. You wanted her because she was a First Daughter and I wasn't."
She kneeled in front of Jack. "I found you one day sitting on our porch. You looked shocked. I asked you what happened and you told me that you proposed, but she laughed at you. Laughed. You were devastated that that silly bitch didn't have the sense to know what a catch she had in you. But I did. I knew I could treat you better than Vanna or any of her friends so I told you that you didn't care about her anyway. I told you how much I loved you and yes, I told you that you loved me too. And then you did. And until you cheated on me, it was true."
He shook his head in denial. "Forcing your will on me doesn't make a real love. How can I trust a woman who supposedly loves me, but uses her powers against me?"
Ramona waved her hand dismissively at Jack. "You sound like a naive fool. There isn't a single woman in this town that hasn't used her powers on someone to get what they want." I thought miserably of James again. "You linked your fortunes to our Family and it's been a comfortable life for you. And you still had the opportunity to father the next Matriarch of the Madison Family so what are you complaining about?"
My mom finally spoke up. "I would never have married you, Jack. You were a nice boy from a good Family, but I never loved you. I never loved anyone."
I clutched my temples in an attempt to keep my brain from exploding. My unease was growing. But nobody was ready to drop this conversation.
Jack's face was drawn when he said to mom, "You told me you loved me when I had my affair with you. It's the only way I've ever been able to live with the knowledge that I did something so horrible to my family. I've had the solace of knowing that even if it hurt my wife, at least we had a child together that was conceived in love and desire."
My mom shrugged. "When the Hunters announced that Darcy had a very strong power, I knew that you'd make a good father and give me a daughter strong enough to become Matriarch in my place. With our history, I knew that seducing you would be easy to accomplish."
Jack whispered, "You... bitch."
He turned to Marla who was standing behind him with her thin arms crossed over her chest. "I've been so wrong all these years. I couldn't give you all of myself because I was caught up in an illusion that Vanna and I shared something during that affair. I realize now that I shouldn't have looked any further for fulfillment than my own wife."
Marla looked like she might be softening, but then Ramona said, "Just let it go, dear. I know it stung a little at the time, but the air has been cleared and he's willing to overlook that you forced him to love you."
"Mother, why is it so hard to think that maybe a man can love me for who I am and not let my status as a Second Daughter interfere with his feelings?"
Ramona narrowed her eyes. "If that's the case then why was he so eager to climb into bed with your sister?"
The negative emotions that surrounded me seemed to have crawled inside my mind. I though
t I might be sick. I bolted toward the back door.
Jack yelled, "Thistle, wait!"
Before I slammed the door behind me I heard Marla say icily, "You'd be well advised to tend to your own family and leave Thistle's parenting up to her mother."
I made it into the screen of the trees before I finally sank to my knees and was sick.
***
Chapter 8
After I threw up, I sat there for a moment, just hugging my knees and rocking back and forth. The accusations bounced back and forth in my memory. Jack was my father. My mom seduced her sister's husband away from his wife and child so that she could conceive me. Ramona knew and seemed to approve. Now I finally understand why Marla despised me. Just looking at me must bring it back for her. My dark hair and eyes and deeply tanned skin were all the same as Jack's. Now that I saw the resemblance I couldn't believe I never noticed before.
Even before I was born people were manipulating me. Everyone expected me to take Ramona's place as Matriarch when she died. My mother planned my conception so that I'd be powerful enough to fill that role. Then they spent my whole life lying to me about who I was, giving me the impression that the whole world was mine to explore when the entire time they planned to bring me back here and cage me with responsibility that I didn't want.
I want out. I don't want this life. I thought about how Ben said they'd never let me go. I wondered how they'd make me come back if I used my powers to wish them away. I was willing to bet that there was nothing that they could do if I really set my mind against coming back here.
Cheered, I finally stood up and brushed the leaves from my pants and started walking along the familiar trail. As always, being in the woods comforted me. My head still pounded, but my stomach was more settled than it had been all day and I considered that to be a minor victory.
I walked for a couple of miles before I heard the crunch of leaves behind me. I whirled around, heart in my throat. Nobody was there. I looked back along the path, but all I saw was my own trail of churned fall leaves. My eyes darted back and forth, looking behind trees, trying to figure out where Lydia was hiding. I began walking again, slowly, listening intently. I was determined to flush her out this time and handle her on my own terms.
I was on high alert, but even that wasn't enough to save me from the familiar shove that knocked me onto my knees in the moist dirt. I leapt to my feet, fists raised, ready to fight, but she was still hiding. I spun in slow circles looking for a flash of clothing or a pale hand resting on the dark bark of a tree, but there was nothing.
Frustrated, I screamed, "Come out and have a fair fight, you bitch! Your cowardly hide and seek is getting old!"
A blaze of pain spread across my shoulders and started down my spine. I was on the ground again, this time flat on my stomach and catching my breath was hard. I fought to roll over like an overturned turtle, but not nearly as quickly. I saw a thick branch hovering in midair, like an invisible baseball player was getting ready to bat. With no warning it sliced through the air towards my head.
I will never know how I managed to roll out of the path of the branch before it crushed my skull, but somehow I was on my feet, bruised and wheezing, but alive. It swung at me again and this time I managed a clumsy evasive roll.
My breath was coming easier and being able to focus on the branch gave me something to avoid. My training with Shep had prepared me for being attacked by a swung object even if it hadn't exactly covered what to do when the enemy was wielding it telekinetically.
When the branch whipped toward me again, I met it with a kick and it went flying. I realized this was a huge mistake when an invisible fist crashed into my cheekbone. It was followed by several other blows to my face and shoulders. I traded a visible branch for fists I couldn’t see.
I raised my hands up to block my face which left my midsection open and the attack immediately centered to my vulnerable midsection. I was grateful that Shep had hit me as many times as he had over the years. If nothing else, I could take a punch. Shep's punches, even when he pulled them as much as he did, were still a lot more powerful than this flurry. But even if my attacker couldn't hit me as hard as he could, I couldn't see to block them.
Even in the midst of this attack I couldn't help, but marvel at the amount of control Lydia had over her power. So far she'd only ever pushed me or pushed other objects at me. I assumed that her power didn't extend much past that, but she was able to concentrate it into a person shaped force. An energy fist hit me in the mouth and split my lip against my teeth. That is so cool.
After a particularly vicious kick in the ribs I braced myself against a tree, panting. The lack of sleep, my persistent headache and my inability to see what I was fighting had combined to render me almost entirely unable to defend myself. I thought bitterly about how Ramona had forced me into all those self-defense classes over the years. I could hot wire a car or evade a pursuing vehicle by executing a series of dangerous maneuvers I'd been taught at an elite driving school, but I couldn't even save myself in a fist fight. I swiped my arm across my nose and it came away covered my blood. This was bad.
When the next jab caught me in the jaw the world swam out of focus, but I noticed that I could see the ground depress where a foot would be on a person. Since Lydia had yet to show herself, I decided that the only thing I could do would be to defend myself against her power the way I would against a human attacker. I kicked as hard as I could in what should have been the side of the knee. Unfortunately, that wasn't very hard, but it bought me a couple of minutes to catch my breath and regroup.
I remembered what Shep told me a few weeks ago before we ever came to Desire while we were practicing fighting blind. "I can see you. I can dodge you if I can see it coming. You can't see me so you don't have that advantage. You need to use whatever other information you can gather. Listen for my breathing. Hear the leaves and sticks being crushed under my feet. Smell me sweating if you have to. When I move in close your body knows it, it feels my heat and the air I disturb around you. Listen to what your body is telling you."
When I quieted my own ragged breathing and listened carefully, I discovered that I could, in fact, hear not only the sound of rustling dead leaves, but the rapid panting of the other. It was coming at me quickly from my left. I spun away from the tree I'd been leaning against and met it with a kick to the midsection. I couldn't tell if the thing I was fighting was short or tall or male or female so there was no way to know where my kick had connected. But it gained me some space.
I planted my feet and readied myself for another attack. I wasn't disappointed. The energy entity rushed me and I stepped aside while landing several rabbit quick punches in what felt like the head. It appeared to be around my height. A female then? I had no way of knowing, but I didn't know how effective a groin attack would be on a non-human anyway.
We sparred for an uncertain length of time. We seemed to be about evenly matched once I was able to anticipate most of the attacks. If I weren't already weakened I thought I still might have been able to overcome it easily regardless of its invisibility. As it was, being punched in the face repeatedly did little to ease my headache, which felt as if I had dumped shards of glass into my brain and they were slicing it up every time I moved.
I thought it might be getting tired since the charges were happening less and less frequently. I was expecting another charge at any second when an arm slipped around my neck from behind. Somehow it had circled me without catching my eye as it stirred up the dirt around its feet.
I tried every evasive action I'd ever been taught by Shep or any of my other teachers over the years, but I didn't have enough strength behind my counter attacks to dislodge my attacker. The feeling was very similar to the attack in my room a few nights ago. It seemed that Lydia was finally going to finish what she started.
My muscles loosened completely and my knees unhinged. I was dangling now from the thing's grip around my neck, which I knew was only going to speed things up, but I couldn't sta
nd. My frantic clawing at its arm first slowed and then stopped completely. My head drummed louder than ever, but my vision was narrowing as blackness crept in around the edges on all sides. It was like rushing backwards into a tunnel.
When the arm loosened around my throat, I didn't even notice. The froggy intake of breath didn't register as mine. My attention was totally fixated on the way the darkness that had nearly overtaken my entire field of vision suddenly pulled away and the world was creeping into view again. The colors were muted and blurry, but joyfully bright after the darkness of moments before.
With renewed strength, I grabbed the arm that was now dangling down my chest instead of choking me and used it to execute a flip that Shep would have been proud of. The strain of this most recent attempted murder and the stresses of the past few days clouded my mind and without thinking it through I croaked, "I can't take this anymore! I wish you were dead!"
The effects of this newest wish on top of the one I'd made earlier were nearly crippling. I collapsed on the ground, grabbing my head as I experienced this newest time line. In this one everything went as the events had in the original until I flipped the entity. In this new sequence of events, it landed on the protruding ragged stump of a sapling and it pierced its heart. And I saw, to my dismay, that it wasn't some non-human entity as I'd assumed while fighting it. Death rendered the corpse of Julia Carter visible at last.