Fury’s Kiss

by Nicola R. White

  “There are darker creatures than even you, infernal goddess, daughter of blood and night,” Ruby intoned. “It is for this that you are reborn.”

  Alecto shrieked her frustration through me. “How am I to fight an opponent I cannot sense if you will not name it?” I felt her bloody tears wet on my cheeks, and I wondered what Nora, Alex and Rachel were doing while this exchange was taking place. I wished Alecto would turn our head—my head—so I could at least look around.

  “Your destiny will be as the Fates weave it,” Ruby said, “no more and no less.” Her voice was firm.

  Just the facts and nothing but the facts, ma’am. Panic seeped back in and I stamped it down again. I had to pay attention if I was going to get something useful out of all this. Something other than the fact that I was expected to fight something worse than a body-snatching Fury.

  “Should we do something?” Alex whispered.

  “Like what?” Nora whispered back angrily. “Interrupt the angry Fury who could snap my daughter in half? Thanks for that, by the way, Rachel.”

  Shut up! Shut up! I shouted at them silently. I knew enough about Alecto by now to know that she wouldn’t—couldn’t—hurt Ruby, an innocent child, but I wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t punish an interruption from my friends.

  “Shut up,” Rachel whispered at Alex and Nora.

  Yes! Thank you! Since she was the one who’d instigated this little meeting of the ancient minds, the least she could do was try not to piss off the Fury. A thought occurred to me and I was horror-struck. Was Ruby going through the same thing I was? Was she trapped like this, shut up in her own mind, every time she went into a trance or had a vision?

  The little girl spoke again, addressing me now, rather than Alecto. “We are what we are, Tara Walker, but the child does not suffer.” Ruby turned to the doorway, where her mother stood with Rachel and Alex. “I will give you three questions,” she told them. “Ask wisely.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex said.

  “Alex, no!” Rachel shouted at her.

  Oh, my God. I was going to kill Alex, even if Alecto didn’t. We had three questions and she’d just wasted one. Nora clapped a hand over Alex’s mouth and held her still.

  “Rachel, you ask the questions,” she said, while Alex tried to squirm free. “I’m not very happy with you right now, but you seem to have at least half a clue about what’s going on here.” She released Alex cautiously, giving her a stern mom-type look. “And you—keep quiet.”

  Wonderful, brilliant woman. When this was over, I’d have to ask her if she was in the market for a new best friend. I could use one who wouldn’t sacrifice me to a Fury for the sake of knowledge.

  The oracle remained silent.

  “I don’t think Ruby means we should ask her,” Rachel said. She looked thoughtful. “I think she means that Alecto is bound to answer any three questions we put to her.”

  So start asking already. Seriously, did they not care if I was trapped like this forever?

  Alecto had been pacing my body around the room while the oracle addressed Rachel and the others, and I could feel my muscles vibrating with tension as she turned her frustrated attention toward them.

  “Ask your questions and be done with it,” she hissed. “Perhaps the oracle’s command will reveal answers even I am not aware of.” I tried to read her thoughts the way she’d read mine, but they were a confusing jumble of color.

  Rachel swallowed and took a step forward. “We know you’re a Fury, but the legends about you are unclear. What, exactly, are you?”

  The weird swirl of Alecto’s consciousness got even wilder, the colors sharper, and I sensed she was struggling to answer in a way we could understand. “I have been called many things. I was Erinys to the Greeks, Dirus to the Romans. I have been called goddess, mystery, creature and monster. I am all of these and none. Some say I was born of Nyx, goddess of the night. Others, that I was conceived of Gaia, mother of all, born of the blood and violence of gods. The truth is that the manner of my creation was so long ago not even I remember it.”

  “What do you know about what’s happening to you and Tara?”

  Good question.

  “I know nothing,” Alecto answered.

  OK, not such a good question. And now there was only one left. Rephrase, I shrieked inside my head. I was sure Alecto knew something about what was happening.

  “What do you suspect is happening to you and Tara?” Rachel tried again.

  Please just answer this one, I thought at the Fury. And I swear we will go out and get some serious revenge on someone who deserves it.

  “I know nothing about what is happening,” Alecto repeated.

  No, I moaned. That had been our last question.

  “But I suspect much.”

  Yes!

  “When man was young and I was already old,” the Fury said, “the world moved on, and I was forgotten. The old gods were cast aside and men began to rule themselves. But there was a price for freedom. Men are short-lived, shortsighted creatures, and so evil has flourished freely as well. I see things in this world, in Tara’s mind—terrible weapons, tragedy, destruction—that even the gods, for all their flaws, would not have dared to allow.”

  “That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here, right now,” Rachel said. “We’ve been destroying ourselves for centuries. Why now, after all this time?”

  Yes, keep her talking. Don’t let her waste the question.

  Alecto laughed, a hissing, awful laugh. “The oracle has spoken, and the oracle is never wrong. There is a darker creature than me who stalks the world now, and I am called to answer it. Not since Pandora’s Box was first opened has there been such chaos in the world. Apate, Eris, and Keres, the spirits of deceit, strife, and suffering, roam freely with their siblings—age, doom, and blame—and no one moves to stop them.”

  Why me? I asked Alecto inside my head. I still couldn’t understand why the centuries-old Fury had chosen me. I was a nobody, a twenty-two year old waitress from a broken home who took correspondence courses from the local community college and dreamed of opening her own restaurant someday. I had no special talents, and I’d never done anything remarkable. My biggest skill was taking large orders without having to write them down.

  My question calmed the Fury some, and she paused to survey the women gathered around her in my living room. Your greatest skill is not…waiting tables, she told me. Your greatest skill is them.

  My greatest skill was having roommates? I didn’t follow.

  The Fury began to pace again, frustrated with my lack of understanding. Your greatest skill is to love. You have found your own sisters, as you will help me find mine.

  Seeing that something was happening, Alex opened her mouth to ask another question, but Rachel shook her head at her, and I was grateful to be spared the interruption. This was the closest thing to a straight answer I’d gotten from the voice in my head since it had first appeared.

  What do you mean, your sisters? I asked. Are there others like you? Like us?

  But before I could make sense of the kaleidoscope that was the Fury’s response, I heard a scuffle of movement outside. It sounded like footsteps in the driveway, and I felt a sudden spike of fear. What if the man from DeVille had sent someone else after me? Or what if the mysterious evil the oracle spoke of had shown up, summoned by our talk of it as Alecto had been?

  Then another, almost equally terrible thought occurred to me. What if nice, old Mrs. Hadley from next door had come over to deliver a plate of brownies like she sometimes did? The shock of seeing Alecto would probably give the old woman a coronary.

  I concentrated harder on the noise on the other side of the door, willing Alecto to give me back control of my body. Or to at least hide. The doorknob turned and Alecto moved quickly, placing herself between the door and the wall so she would be hidden when it swung inward. She tensed, waiting to see who would appear.

  The door opened.

  Chapter 10

  “
I’d say you all have some explaining to do,” Jackson said as he stepped inside, “but I’ve heard about enough.” He looked better than he had in my dreams—bigger, badder, and sexier.

  And much, much angrier.

  “Nora, get Ruby out of here,” he ordered, striding into the room. “I don’t know what these girls are playing at, but I’d have thought you knew better than to buy into this fake, B-movie shit. And what the fuck have you let them do to Ruby?”

  He paced to his niece. The dark light had gone out of her eyes and she sagged limply against her mother, just a regular little girl again. Jackson gathered her in his arms and I felt Alecto’s hold on me loosen as Ruby slipped into unconsciousness. I rolled my shoulders, glad to feel my body back under my own control, but kept a firm grip on the furious energy humming through my body—it seemed the time had come for a little demonstration. I closed the door with a quiet click and signaled for the girls to keep quiet, hoping Alex would be able to restrain herself for a change.

  “I thought we were done with all this,” Jackson said to Nora. “Ruby is a special little girl, but that’s all she is. There is no oracle, no big evil.”

  “You don’t understand,” Nora tried to tell him. “I know what it looked like back in Texas, but there are things about Ruby that you don’t know.”

  Jackson cut her off. “We’ll talk about this later. Right now, I just want to get Ruby away from these freaks.” He looked around. “Where’s Tara? I assume she’s the ringleader in all this.”

  I stepped forward. “Looking for me?”

  Jackson turned to face me, holding Ruby close against his chest, out of my reach. His only reaction as he saw me in full-Fury mode for the first time was the slight narrowing of his eyes and a tenseness in his muscles—the man had nerves of steel. Either he had gone through some serious training at some point, or he was naturally ice-cold. And if I was a betting woman, my money would have been on the former.

  I knew from our encounter at the Stardust just how hot he could be.

  My point made, I closed the door on Alecto again and felt my hair settle into a heavy mass of tangles against my shoulders. The blood seeping from my eyes slowed to a trickle, then stopped, and my muscles relaxed. Jackson only tensed more as he watched my transformation.

  “What the hell is going on here?” He sounded like he would kick my ass to Sunday if I threatened Ruby, Fury or not.

  “I tried to tell you,” Nora put in, “but you didn’t want to believe it. Tara is a Fury, and Ruby’s an oracle. She sees things.”

  Jackson opened his mouth to give voice to the skepticism written on his face, but my stomach growled loudly, interrupting him and breaking the tension in the room. I took it as a sign that we should move on and try to confront the unknown with as much normalcy as was possible, given the circumstances.

  Besides, I was starving again and there was no way I was going to try to explain all this on an empty stomach.

  “We’ll be in the kitchen,” I said to Nora and Jackson, nodding for Alex and Rachel to follow me. “Feel free to join us when you’re ready.” I knew they had things to talk about before Jackson would be willing to hear me out.

  I gave him a wide berth as I passed, staying away from Ruby. I didn’t want to put him on the defensive and provoke him further. He had just witnessed something wholly unnatural, and I knew it was a stretch to ask him to accept it.

  “‘There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” Rachel murmured to Jackson, patting his shoulder sympathetically as she passed.

  “Come again?” said Alex as she followed us into the kitchen.

  Rachel sighed and shook her head. “Shakespeare, Alex, come on. You were there in Mr. Taylor’s class when we read Hamlet.”

  “Yeah, like five years ago. Give me a break.”

  I ignored them, immune to their bickering, though I could appreciate the look of bewilderment on Nora’s face as we left. We’d gone from supernatural standoff at the O.K. Corral to bickering about Shakespeare in about two seconds flat.

  “Come on, you guys,” I said, opening the refrigerator door. “Knock it off. You heard Jackson. We got some ’splainin to do.”

  Alex snickered at my I Love Lucy reference and settled herself on a bar stool at the counter. I could hear Nora in the other room, pleading with Jackson to calm down and hear us out.

  Finally, Nora lost her temper. “That is my child in your arms,” I heard her say, “not yours. No one here has done anything to harm her. And if you want to be part of what’s going on with my little girl, you will put her down and talk about this in a civilized manner. If you take my child out of this house, you can forget about seeing your niece again.”

  Jackson’s voice rose angrily in reply.

  “I know how it looked last time,” Nora responded, voice shaking with emotion. “When Cash—” She cut herself off, unable to continue. Whoever Cash was, Nora obviously had some painful memories associated with him. Ruby’s absent father, maybe?

  “I know how it looked back then,” she repeated, her voice quiet now, “but there is something going on that we can’t keep Ruby from. And believe me, I’ve tried. Why do you think I’m working at Spyder’s, getting paid under the table? Why Ruby and I move every six months? I’ve tried to protect her, but they always find her. We came to Hawthorne because Ruby knew this would happen. She saw Tara, Jackson. She says Tara is the only one who can keep her safe.”

  There was that business about Texas again. I had to find out what had happened before Nora and Ruby had come to Hawthorne. And what was I supposed to protect Ruby from?

  Alex and Rachel continued to bicker and I shot them a glare so they’d shut up.

  “What?” Alex protested.

  I ignored her and shifted my attention back to the other room. I didn’t want to miss anything important.

  “Shh!” Rachel shushed her. Finally, Alex caught on. She shut up and I carried on with my eavesdropping.

  “Who are these people, Nora?” Jackson’s voice was a low rumble now. “How do you know you can trust them?”

  “They’re friends,” Nora said. “And they’re dealing with something they never asked for, something no one would believe in a million years. Just like Ruby.”

  “What are you trying to tell me? That this is real? You really expect me to believe what I just saw in here?”

  “I’m not asking you to believe anything. I’m telling you.” Nora’s voice had gotten louder again, and though Alex and Rachel had to strain a little, they could hear her now, too. “Ruby is different, and I’m doing my best to keep her safe. If you’re not willing to accept that I know what’s best for my daughter, then the door is over there.”

  I wanted to applaud. Girl was badass when it came to her kid.

  Not waiting for an answer from Jackson, Nora joined us in the kitchen. Alex jumped up to give her a hug, not even pretending she hadn’t been eavesdropping. “She likes us, she really likes us,” Alex said, wiping fake tears from the corner of her eye with a manicured nail. Despite the joke, I knew she was really touched by the way Nora had stood up to Jackson.

  “I do like you.” Nora hugged her back. “But more importantly, I think you’re the good guys. And that’s what matters where Ruby’s concerned.”

  “Hear that?” I couldn’t resist saying to Jackson as he followed Nora into the room at last. “We’re the good guys.”

  He didn’t say anything, just looked back at me, sizing me up. His gaze was long and assessing, and I became suddenly conscious of the tangles in my hair and the dried blood on my cheeks. I grabbed a clean dishtowel, wet it under the tap, and turned away to scrub at my face. I dropped the cloth and my stomach let out another long, loud, insistent growl. I realized self-consciously just how ravenous I was. Unable to help myself, I grabbed the first thing in the refrigerator that came to hand and downed half a carton of milk.

  Jackson was still staring when I lowered the carton from my mouth.


  “What?” I demanded. “Haven’t you ever seen someone drink out of the carton before?” I felt the telltale heat of a blush creep up my neck and remembered the way I’d babbled at Jackson on Nora’s front steps. I was developing a real talent for embarrassing myself in front of him. Alecto snickered in the back of my mind.

  Shut it, I snapped at her, or we’re not getting revenge on anyone again until I’m eighty. We’ll see how scary you are when I’m wearing pastel tracksuits and using a walker.

  After being body-snatched, I was in no mood for her attitude.

  “Um, Tara? You’re lactose-intolerant,” Rachel pointed out.

  Oh. Yeah. I’d been so hungry I hadn’t even stopped to think before I’d reached for the carton. I waited for the onslaught of cramping that should have ensued after pouring such a huge amount of dairy into my digestive system.

  But nothing happened. “I guess…I’m not anymore.”

  I ignored Jackson’s eyes still on me and grabbed some lunchmeat, mayo, cheese and bread and started to build a sandwich. I wasn’t comfortable with his appraisal of my lumberjack appetite, but a girl’s gotta eat. Especially when she’s got a newly acquired, supernaturally amped metabolism.

  “Interesting,” Rachel said, watching me.

  “What?” Alex asked. “Alecto has somehow cured her lactose intolerance? That’s a nice side effect, but it’s not really the big picture here.”

  “Actually, it kind of is. Partly, anyway.” Rachel pointed at the sandwich I was about to bite into. “Tara’s also a vegetarian.”

  I stopped and looked at what I was doing. She was right—I was a vegetarian. Or I had been until about thirty seconds ago. A sick feeling crept into my stomach, brought on not by the couple liters of milk I’d downed, but the realization of just how much I was changing. I hadn’t eaten meat in years—was disgusted by it, actually. But I’d grabbed it from the refrigerator without thinking. Without even noticing. I tried to tell myself I had been temporarily blinded by my overwhelming hunger, but I was still dying to eat the turkey sandwich I’d made.