To my mom for always believing in me
The Allotter:
The Threads of Destiny
By
Kimberlie L. Faye
The threads of destiny cannot be frayed or denied. Fragments of memories and knowledge, like shards of glass splintered in the rippling surface of existence, destiny awaits and churns inside of itself to reveal truth in nature, in being, in purpose.
Whether we like it or not.
The threads are delicate in appearance and nature, but strong and indestructible in its truth. The journey and awakening of the inevitable truth deserves and demands respect, but without it, ignorance and evil festers. Sometimes what you do not know will most definitely kill you.
Prologue
Las Vegas, Nevada
February 1, 2013
She walked amongst them with a confident and arrogant swagger, her long, lean legs scissored through the throngs of people. Her voluptuous body was clad in a small, tight-fitting emerald green dress, a dress looking as if the Gods themselves poured the sleek fabric onto her. . The lost souls like cattle in her mind, parted like the Red sea as she sauntered through them. Her gold colored, eight inch heels silently traversed the busy casino floor, slot machines dinging while people yelled and clapped a cacophony of sounds. Her appearance today was complete as a platinum blonde, with smirking red-stained lips and hair curled up like a nineteen forties pin-up girl. Her mischievous and shrewd cat-like green eyes perused the crowd. Her quarry was here somewhere. Momentarily distracted by her reflection as she passed the tinted glass windows of a high end restaurant, she paused to admire her perfection. She grinned with self appreciation at her semi-translucent image as she smoothed the thin fabric of her dress down her flared and sensuous hips.
Damn, she was hot!
Her self doting interrupted by the hoots and hollers of a passing group of young, testosterone filled men ogling her with open admiration and lust.
Stupid humans!
Always taking chances, gambling and hoping for something they would never have: luck, fame, riches…a beautiful woman. Unless, of course, she allowed it. She threw her head back and laughed, garnering the attention of dozens of people, including the group who had just passed her. She didn’t care one whit what anyone thought about her.
She continued her search as she passed the dealer tables, just a little miffed she couldn’t use her immortal abilities to hone in on her target. If she did, she would be tracked and found within no time. She fumed at her temporary limitations as she continued past a mixed and macabre group of people, some winning a little, some winning a lot, and most not winning at all. She thought of the power she held and the gifts she could bestow upon any one of them, if she found them to be worthy of her generosity.
As she passed the Craps tables, she spied a lounge to her left filled with alcohol, muted colors, and chesterfield sofas of various shades of brown. A place any man would be lured to, the lounge’s design offered a pleasing and enjoyable low-key experience. A swagger to her hips, she turned in the direction of the lounge, following the haze of expensive cigar smoke wafting from the open doors.
Her confidence wavered for a moment, as intrusive contempt for her father crept into her mind and darkened her mood. Anger clouded her vision as the memory of their last devastating altercation consumed her. She pushed him too far, her attempts to garner his respect resulting in his fury.
He had ordered her appearance before the high council and humiliated her in front of them all. Her nostrils flared at the memory. You must show more compassion, he chastised.
You have instigated too many reversals of fortune and I fear you enjoy it too much, he accused with narrowed eyes.
Her final straw had been when he stripped her of her ability to bestow or take away good fortune and prosperity. Her immortal abilities reduced, she was limited and it stung. Her punishment was to last a year.
It is a paltry punishment until you can learn to control your impulses, he said. She was humiliated more than he even knew. The realization that he thought she wielded no threat at all whatsoever had struck a nerve and a deep seeded resentment formed in her heart. She had bided her time.
Arrogant ass!
Father thought her ability was trivial to begin with. Now it truly was. The three were powerfully omnipresent, he said. Your sisters honor their powerful positions and treat their responsibilities with careful respect. She had not been included as a necessary force with them. As she stood before him, face reddened, fingers digging into her palms, he laughed at her, as if she were a small child.
How dare him! Time would tell.
His arrogance, however, would be his downfall. Once he realized her fury was no laughing matter, he went to great lengths to protect her three “perfect” sisters by hiding them away. Why hide them? They had a unique ability she desperately wanted and would just about do anything to acquire. If she was going to absorb their divinities, which included the ability to do him in, she mine as well get rid of him too. After all, he did kill his own father and assume power. She would only be following in his footsteps, right?
No longer will there be three. She had already found one of her sisters; she would find the other two in no time. She dispatched her best mercenary to retrieve her. She smiled with malevolent intention, her plans finally coming to fruition. No more hiding away for them. The cards, after all, were in her favor.
As she passed the craps table, her inherent and involuntary gift of bestowing or taking away good fortune tainted the luck of those around her due to her dark mood. The gift was something she could not control and thankfully, did not garner detection. Purposeful use of her power, well that was entirely different.
Her dark mood did not bode well for gamblers within her vicinity. “What happened?” A man in shocked disbelief stared down at the table. “I won! How could it just change like that!” panic stricken the man lunged for the money and chips left on the table before the dealer swiped it all away. Security swarmed upon him in an instant, pulling him away from the table.
“That was my last chance!” His shoulders drooping, head hanging down against his chest in defeat, his wracking sobs were muffled as he was removed from the casino. She felt no remorse at all whatsoever. She could not and would not change who she was.
As she smoothed her dress down, her eyes followed her hands in self admiration. Glancing up and furrowing her eyes in deep concentration, she studied the bar and discovered the perfect seat, a stool at the center of the darkened bar just a few feet from the man who did not yet know he was about to be of great value to her.
The bartender walked over wearing a welcoming smile as he wiped his hands on a towel, “What can I get for you, Miss?”
“I will have……” she scanned the bar as the word trailed off of her tongue. Spotting the stout and balding gentleman, his expensive brown suit snug about his waist, she pointed a slender finger in his direction, “I will have whatever he is going to buy for me.” she smiled a satisfied and devastating smile at the bartender and winked. He smiled conspiratorially and walked over to the portly fellow. She watched in amusement as his head jerked up from his gin and tonic, eyebrows slanted in irritation, his ruddy cheeks jiggling with the motion, and then in disbelief at his good fortune. Silly man!
After years of moving around and staying out of daddy-dearest’s detection, her painstaking research had paid off. Her query was the newly appointed Director of Health and Human Services in California. He was in Vegas for the weekend as a guest speaker at a conference on healthcare reform and he had the resources to find medical records that were crucial to her plan.
The bartender walked over to her with a glass
of red wine. “He would like to know for whom the beautiful young lady is he is buying this glass of wine?” the well spoken bartender stated with a smile.
She took a sip of the wine, letting the woodsy and spicy flavors dance upon her tongue. An inexpensive vintage, it would have to do for now. She snapped her fingers with delicate precision as Frank Sinatra’s ‘Luck be a lady tonight’ began playing, her favorite song since it was, after all, about her.
“You may tell him luck is his lady tonight.” as she winked at the gentleman, lifted her glass in his direction, and laughed at her sport. Tonight would be a good night.
Chapter 1
February 2, 2013
Evie Smith looked out at the night sky through her living room window. It was almost midnight, and a light snow had started, sparkling in the moonlight like pixie dust. The fine dust coated the ground, carpeting the earth in white. Pressing her right palm to the glass, the tingling burn of the cold was a mild deception compared to the brutal frozen reality of winter showcased outside. This winter seemed longer and more daunting than in years past.
As a home care nurse providing end of life care she was required to be on call overnight once a month. Tonight was her night, and the night she knew that a specific individual would finally lose her battle with cancer. A once vivacious and spunky sixty-three-year-old English teacher, Mrs. Engals was dying. The older woman had discovered she had pancreatic cancer in November and was breathing her last breaths in early February. Evie smiled a sad, ironic smile as she thought about how unfair life could be when someone so full of life could have it sucked right out of them in the blink of an eye.
Her empty left hand relaxed by her side as she glanced to her left at the book shelf where her cell phone was charging. Leaning towards the shelf, she grabbed her phone and answered it mid-vibration.
“Hello. This is Evie. How can I help you?” a false calm in her voice, she already knew the identity of the caller.
“Wow. The phone didn’t even ring on this end. Hi Evie, I think it’s time.” Lenora, Sylvie’s daughter said with quiet acceptance. A dedicated and loving daughter, Lenora always saw to her mother’s needs and comfort.
“Will you be able to come here, Evie?” the pitch of defeat evident in her quiet and exhausted voice.
Biting her lip, she answered, “of course. I just need to throw something on and I will be on my way. I should be there in no time at all.” Evie lied to her. Dressed in her pale blue scrub pants, cream- colored cotton long-sleeve shirt, she had been ready and waiting for the call for over an hour.
Lenora‘s relieved sigh was almost palpable, “I will see you soon. Oh, and Evie…thank you for everything.” the last said with quiet sincerity.
Slipping her phone into her pants pocket, she shoved her feet into her winter boots and her arms into a thick army-green winter jacket. Throwing her work-issued backpack over her shoulder, she opened the back door to her small house and stepped onto the back steps.
Clicking the lock to the back door, she turned and listened to the silence that welcomed her. The steady snowfall made everything appear so quiet and serene, which was the opposite of how she had been feeling over the past couple of months. Bizarre dreams and a lack of sleep began to take a toll on her as an urgency she couldn’t identify took up residence in her head. She felt that she was waiting for something and that time was running out. She just couldn’t figure out what it was exactly she was waiting for.
Taking a deep breath in through her nose and letting it out through her mouth, the cycle of cold air rejuvenated her enough to make the short trek in the driveway to her car. Ruining the flawless carpet of snow as her heavy boots trudged through without grace, Evie chewed her full bottom lip, troubled over how she knew or sensed that Lenora would call. Knowledge of the imminent deaths of clients had been happening on a more frequent and alarming basis. Of course she knew all of her clients’ timeline of life. Every individual she met came with an unwanted flash of recollection starting at their birth to the moment they died.
When the recollections began as a small child, she did not handle them well. As the years past, she was able to control her reactions to the visions and bury the recollections as if they were just bad dreams. The disturbing ability finally forced her to leave her nursing position on a busy cardiac floor and accept a position as an end of life nurse in the home care setting. At least as a nurse caring for individuals in their final stages of illness, she could finally release a little bit of tension with the knowledge that she and the client knew that death was inevitably earlier than naturally anticipated. She no longer had to carry the burden of knowing of their demise before they did. For that reason, she was able to flourish as the compassionate and caring nurse she knew she always could be, not the anxious and scattered nurse she had initially become. She felt that if she channeled her strange gift into caring for people who knew they were dying, she could provide the best care possible. She was very successful, until a few weeks ago when sleep became more and more elusive and when sleep did finally claim her, the bizarre dream she had, began to progress and evolve into what felt like a vivid memory, like déjà vu.
No matter she lived with the eerie and uncanny ability her whole life, the questions were always present in the back of her mind until circumstances forced it unwillingly upon her; How could she know of lives lived and lost from just a simple touch? How did she know Sylvie would die tonight? Why did she feel Sylvie’s energy, her drive and ability to live slowly slipping away?
Why?
Her car doors unlocked with a chirp as she pressed on her key fob. Opening the door, she slid into the driver’s seat and immediately pressed the seat warmer on high; it was her favorite feature. As she placed the key in the ignition, she froze on a skittered heartbeat, frantically looking into the rearview mirror. Had she forgotten her contact lenses?
Blowing out a breath of relief, she mumbled, “Oh, thank God, “as she discovered two ordinary, dark brown eyes looking back at her. She had remembered to put her contact lenses in after all. A sudden panic settled in as quickly as it left her; one of these days, she would forget them and then what? She would have to explain the strange anomaly of her eyes. They were not merely two different colors. One was green, the other a molten silver color that seemed, at times, to churn and swirl. Not exactly a common eye color. She shuddered as she thought of the last time she forgot to put them in.
Home schooled until she was fifteen, Evie begged her mother for her to go to high school, so she could make friends. She felt confident that she could suppress her gift and wear color contact lenses. Her mother reluctantly agreed. The experience had been great; she even had a few friends until in early December when she woke up late for school, resulting in rushing around like a maniac. Big mistake. In her rush to get ready, she had forgotten to put in her contact lenses. Other than the Goth kid who sat next to her, the other students, some she had considered friends, kept a safe distance, their discomfort of the unknown painfully clear to her. Sure, they were still personable, but it ended when the school day did.
She was again isolated and frustrated. Hell, not even she knew why her eye color was so different. She maintained distance from then on. It wasn’t like she had a choice, and trying to understand it was emotionally exhausting. Well, The fact that if she touched anyone she could see their time line of life and eventual death didn‘t exactly do well for her emotional well being either. She never forgot her contacts since that day, and she wouldn’t again. She shook her head as if she could physically remove the thought of exposure.
She blasted the defrost and got out of her car, scraper in hand. Vigorously scraping the ice from her windshield, she contemplated the changes she had noticed within herself. Sleep eluded her on many nights and when sleep did finally claim her, she would have vivid dreams, or to be precise, A dream. The same dream every night. Some nights she would be lucky enough to be too exhausted to remember it but lately, the dream was persistent.
As the ice began
to melt while she scraped, she thought to herself, or rather, convinced herself that she was going through a bout of insomnia which caused her imagination to go wild. Nothing to worry about, right? She shivered not only from the teeth rattling cold, but also at the prospect of something more profound happening to her, a fascinating reality masquerading as imagination and dreams.
Trudging to the back of her car, she brushed the snow from her wheel wells as memories sifted in rapid succession through her mind. As she tried to remember the pivotal moment that made her question who she was, only one stood out with vivid clarity.
At seven years old, Evie adopted a tortoise-shell kitten and named her Jezebel. Upon meeting the beautiful little kitten and looking deep into her large yellow eyes, Evie knew the innocent and sweet little creature would live a wonderful life with her, but for just over two years. Evie didn’t know why she knew it and didn’t care. She was in love with the soft purrs and even softer fur, enjoying every minute she snuggled with the little cat. So, she pushed the knowledge that her cat would die to the back of her mind, determined to ignore the small trickle of dread she felt in her heart.
A nine-year-old Evie was devastated but not surprised when Jezebel disappeared for almost a week. Awakened early one morning with a panicked sensation, her heart beating wildly in her chest, she knew the inevitable had become a reality. As the sun began to rise, she knew that Jezebel was dying.
“Oh no, please be ok. “She quietly cried as she padded barefoot with urgency, wiping her sweat soaked palms down her nightgown. Down the stairs and out the back door, she ran as fast as her small feet could take her to the looming weeping willow tree in the middle of her back yard. The trees limbs hung low, the wispy branches gently sweeping the ground in the warm, early morning breeze. Parting the branches with her hands, she groaned, “Nooo, “as her lips quivered and a cry escaped her. Jezebel was lying by the tree, one paw reaching out to her as if she had been calling to her, waiting for her. She sat down and crossed her shaky legs Indian style while she cautiously lifted her dying kitty onto her lap. Evie cooed to her words of love and devotion and with a last breath and Evie’s falling tears, Jezebel died in her lap. Her chest burned, throat constricting with pain as the lump of loss swelled with each racking sob that erupted from her small frame. How could this happen? How could her heart hurt so much?
The Allotter:The Threads of Destiny Page 1