Unborn

by Natusch, Amber Lynn

  “This is perfect, Drew,” I said, moving toward one of the rickety-framed beds. “I will stay here.”

  “Khara—”

  “Truly. I am fine here. There is no need to change your arrangements.” He looked confused by my choice, but let me be.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to share my room?” Kierson asked, coming downstairs to join us with a plate of food piled high enough for five of Father’s men to eat from.

  “This will be satisfactory, Kierson.”

  “Do you want some food?”

  “No. I think I will sleep now. I’ve had so little recently that I may not wake for days.”

  “Then we will leave you to it,” Drew said softly, pulling a blanket off a nearby shelf and handing it to me. “Sweet dreams, sister.” His confounding smile appeared again, and I was as at a loss as ever how to respond.

  “You as well, brother.”

  Uncomfortable with his engagement of me, I turned and walked to the bed, lying down while I tried to unfold the blanket and arrange it over me. Thankfully, they left without any further display of joviality. Perhaps they knew it made me uneasy.

  I was not accustomed to such warmth from others, and, in the chill of my new room’s air, I realized that I was about to be surrounded by it on a very consistent basis until I found a way home.

  Perhaps Oz and Casey’s s

  urly ways would prove more welcome than I had originally assumed.

  3

  When I awoke the next day, I had no concept of time. The exhaustion I felt infiltrated every ounce of my being, and it took me three attempts to raise myself from the bed before I succeeded. With a sluggish gait, I made my way to the stairs that would lead me up to the main part of the home, the light, and my new family.

  “She’s up!” Kierson cried when I slowly opened the basement door. “I got you some stuff while you were sleeping. I figured you didn’t have anything with you other than what you were wearing and thought you might like some fresh clothes.”

  Before I could object, he thrust a bag of sorts into my hands—he seemed overly pleased with himself. Surely procuring garments was not a difficult task in the city. I rummaged through the noisy bag, pulling out various shirts and pants, all of which were black in color. As I eyed them, he looked on, attempting to read my reaction. Was he waiting for a particular one?

  “Thank you, Kierson. I am certain these will serve their purpose well.”

  “I figured you liked black since it was what you were already wearing.”

  “I do. It’s highly practical.”

  A smile overtook his face at my reply.

  “Go try them on,” he encouraged, ushering me into another room. A bathroom of sorts. “I think I got the right sizes . . . I know a thing or two about a woman’s build.”

  “That’s because you’ve seen thousands of them naked. You should have learned something by now,” Pierson groused from the other room.

  “Ignore him. He’s just grumpy. You try them on and see what you think.”

  “I really don’t see the need to—”

  “Just go,” he said with a tiny shove, closing the door behind me. Thankfully he was on the other side of it once it shut.

  I sighed, already more exhausted than I had been in decades. I lacked the energy necessary to placate the childlike being awaiting my emergence from the bathroom. Knowing that there was no alternative, I pulled on an outfit from the bag he provided and availed myself to him. His smile was still in place when I opened the door, and it grew impossibly larger upon seeing me.

  “Like a glove,” he exclaimed, forcing me to turn around once for his inspection.

  “Are they not too tight? They feel rather restrictive . . .” I replied, looking down.

  “That’s how the ladies wear them.”

  “And what if I should like to actually move in these pants? I feel as though they are in great jeopardy of tearing.”

  “Nope. I thought of that and made sure to get you jeans that had a little spandex for stretch. Stick with me, kid. You’ll be well dressed and able to fight.”

  “I do not see how that is possible, but I shall take your word for it. For now.”

  “Ah, fuck,” Casey lamented from the other room. “She’s already buying his bullshit.”

  “Screw off, Casey. I don’t see you being especially helpful to her at the moment.”

  “I’m not trying to sleep with her,” he quipped in response. Kierson seemed offended by the remark and stormed into the living room where Casey presumably sat sprawled across some piece of furniture as he had at the club. I followed, if for no other reason than to observe their interaction. I needed to learn as much as I could about those who were housing me. My brothers.

  “Just because I’m trying to help her doesn’t mean I want to sleep with her, I’ll have you know.”

  “And how many times did you think of her naked last night?” Casey asked from his reclined position on one of the two dark leather couches, just as I had envisioned him.

  “Twice,” he blurted out in response before wincing at his own admission. “But that’s not entirely my fault. I’m not used to having a sister. Especially not a hot one. I’ll get my head around it soon enough, asshole.”

  “I’m more worried that you’re going to get your head in it . . .”

  “Enough!” Drew yelled, descending the stairs from the second floor to join us. “You will not disrespect your own flesh and blood in my presence or hers. Is that understood?” His cheeks were flushed as he spoke, and his eyes were sharp and hardened. There was a prickle of energy in the room, making the tiny hairs on my neck rise only slightly. Drew was clearly angry with them, though over what affront I could not tell. “Is that understood?” he repeated, stopping to hover over Casey.

  Casey shrugged in the most ambivalent way. I wondered if he had spent time in the Underworld. His actions and mannerisms would have been beautifully suited for a life there.

  “And you?” Drew asked, staring Kierson down. “Do I need to be worried about your antics?”

  “No,” Kierson replied quietly. “I was trying to help. It’s not my fault she’s really pretty. But I get it, I get it,” he said, his hands flying up in a gesture of surrender. “I get that she’s family. I don’t really want to sleep with her; it’s just . . . well, you know. Old habits die hard.”

  “Well, see that they do die, and quickly, Kierson. I have no patience in this matter.”

  Kierson nodded once, his head hanging lower than normal. He, unlike Casey, would not have survived long in my father’s home. His emotions would be perceived as a sign of weakness and would have been exploited at every turn. To survive in the Underworld, one could show no vulnerability.

  I had mastered the art of indifference centuries ago.

  “Khara,” Drew called, softening his tone slightly. “Are you hungry?”

  “I am.”

  “Kierson, why don’t you go make her something to eat while Casey and I fill her in on a few things. She’s going to have questions, I’m sure, so we might as well start with the basics and go from there.”

  “How come Casey gets to do that and I have to play housewife?”

  “Because you make a way better bitch than I do,” Casey purred.

  “I’m going to beat your ass,” Kierson spat, lunging toward an utterly unfazed Casey. Drew jumped in to stop the fight before it startectire it sd. I looked on, thinking that it was a familiar scenario, yet another reminder of the Underworld. Fighting and violence had been the way of life for those I grew up around. And though I may have been somewhat protected from the bulk of their barbarity, I was not immune to it.

  Both found me often enough.

  “If this is how it’s going to be now with her here, some of you are moving out. I will not have a complete breakdown of order,” Drew warned, still holding Kierson back from Casey.

  “Fine,” Kierson snarled, yanking himself out of Drew’s grip to stomp past me toward the kitchen.

/>   “That goes for you too, Casey.”

  “Whatever you say . . .”

  “And Pierson, you’re not exempt from this either,” Drew continued. Pierson merely looked up from whatever he was reading in acknowledgment, then dropped his eyes back to his thick and weathered book.

  Drew once again turned a softer expression to me and gestured for me to come and sit beside him on the sofa. As I did, he launched into an explanation of anything and everything I could have possibly wanted to know about who I was, who they were, and what exactly it was they did—who they hunted.

  “I didn’t wish to overwhelm you last night with details, but you need to know more about who we are,” Drew informed me, turning slightly to better face me. “You called me a warrior last night. That’s exactly what I am. What we all are, you included. We were born of Ares, all of different mothers, to form what we now refer to as the PC, which stands for Petronus Ceteri, or the protectors of others. Our sole purpose is to maintain the balance between the natural and supernatural worlds. And that’s exactly what we do.”

  “So I, too, am a warrior?”

  “It is your birthright,” he replied, looking less sure of himself than he had previously. “But there’s really no way to be certain. We’ve never had a sister before. There’s no way to ascertain what traits you inherited.” Drew paused a moment, allowing me to process the information he so willingly provided. His transparency was disarming. I was not used to important details being so freely shared. “I know you were tired when I found you last night, Khara, so I don’t know how much you remember of our conversations, but I mentioned something about there being no females born of Ares still alive. I feel I need to explain that further.

  “Ares once had a daughter, Eos. She was his everything: a fearsome war goddess, ruthless supporter, and, from what has long been rumored, his lover as well. When she died, part of him changed, or so I was told. I was not alive when this occurred, but some of the others were. They said he was never quite the same after he lost her. From that point on, he declared that no female born of him would ever be suffered to live. That none shall walk the Earth when his beloved Eos was unable to.

  “At first, we all took this to mean that he would somehow make it impossible to create a female. However, it came to light a few centuries ago that this may not have been the truth . . . that, more likely than not, if a female was created, she was immediately destroyed. This, Khara, is why you should not be,” he continued, hesitating slightly before delivering his final statement. “You should have been killed at infancy—most likely the day you were born.”

  “But I was not,” I offered, stating the obvious incongruity in his story.

  “Clearly,” he said with a grin. “What I cannot understand is how. How did you escape him? If there had indeed been ’indeed others before you . . .”

  “They were found and destroyed,” I said, saying what he so clearly did not want to.

  “Precisely, though not by Ares’ own hands. He lost the ability to kill long ago, but he is still cunning and ruthless. He finds ways around the rules when it suits his purpose. So that leaves me to wonder exactly how you escaped his all-knowing radar.”

  “The parents I have always known were not my own. Perhaps my mother gave me to them to keep me from Ares, therefore preventing my otherwise imminent demise.”

  “That is the assumption I am making as well, but someone out there has to know more about the who and why in order for that plan to have worked. That concerns me. Loose ends make for messy situations, Khara. If you are to survive, we need to tie them up.”

  “I do not know if Father is fully aware of my parentage, but he is not a concern. He loves me in his own way. As for Demeter, I cannot be certain. We do not talk much, though I would wager she knows more about this than anyone else.”

  “We need to find her . . .” he said, his eyes willing me to see the depth of his plan.

  “You would kill her if she knew how dire my circumstances were?” I asked, my voice emotionless. He did not answer. “I do not believe that she knows anything. She would have been rid of me by now if she had. I am nothing but a burden and a bargaining chip to her. She would, however, sell me out if it would get her what she wanted most. Unfortunately for her, she’s already gotten all that she can in that regard, so there is no more to be done. She needs me, and she knows it. My death would only ensure the loss of her daughter. That is not something she would risk.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Casey asked, leaning forward as though my words held an interest to him that hadn’t been present earlier.

  “Because I am her ticket to Persephone. Without me, Demeter would never see her again. I am the reason she is able to leave the Underworld at all. For six months of the year, Persephone is traded for me. I stay underground while she and her mother walk the fertile earth, enjoying spring and summer. When her time is up, she is brought to Father and I am ejected into the death and cold of fall and winter. Demeter’s sadness causes the change in the weather. I would watch as she wept and wallowed, her depression shaping and fueling the harshness of those seasons. She does nothing but pine for the day that the daughter she lost to Hades can once again return home.

  “Her life would be intolerable without those six months she shares with Persephone. She would not risk losing them. Demeter is many things, but careless she is not. Had Hades not agreed to take me in trade for his beloved Persephone, I do not know what she would be like now.”

  “So she leveraged you for Persephone . . .” Drew said, his mind clearly working to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “How could we not have known this? Persephone is a wretched being who loves nothing more than to gossip and meddle. How has she not spread this information? Even if she didn’t know who you were, she would surely say why she was let out,” he contemplated aloud. “It was long thought that Hades eventually saw her for what she was and wanted to be rid of her, but Zeus would not allow it. He made him keep her, the concession being that Hades could be rid of her for half the year.”

  “She is unable to say anything. That is why you do not know the truth,” I replied simply. “She is bound by whatever agreement was made. If she breathes a word about it to anyone, it is forfeit and she is relegated to the Underw amo the Uorld forever.”

  “Then how is it that you can speak so freely of it?”

  “I am not bound by it as she is. As Father explained to me, it was not a condition put forth. It matters not at the moment, anyway. I fear that the agreement has been nullified in one way or another, as I am here and she is there—neither of us where we should be. Spring is my time to return to Father. That was taken from me by the Dark One.”

  “The Dark One?” Casey asked, his eyes widening to bottomless pits of black.

  “She was taken by a Dark One and abandoned in the alley I found her in last night,” Drew explained. “He probably left her for dead. Who knows what information he was privy to before her abduction. Perhaps he knew that she had never been left to fend for herself. That may well have been his intention.”

  Casey’s chest rumbled violently.

  “I should very much like to meet this winged one,” he grumbled, his low, menacing tone promising pain. “I have a blade I would like to sink deep into the cavern where his heart should be.”

  “What do you know of the Dark Ones?” I asked earnestly. “Father would never tell me details, only that I should avoid them at all cost and fear them terribly. I did my best to comply.”

  “Too much. I know too much,” Casey returned, offering nothing further.

  “That is yet another discussion we will have when the time is right,” Drew said, changing the subject. “There is no need to inundate you with anything more at the moment.”

  “What do you know of this agreement?” Casey asked, his brows furrowing in a suspicious manner. “Who is it with? Who governs it?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Who is left to enforce the consequences if it is broken?”
/>
  “I do not know.”

  “How was it broken?”

  “I do not know.”

  “What do you know?” he asked, his frustration growing. Casey suddenly seemed far less composed than he had proven to be. Something about the Dark One and my circumstances had him agitated.

  “I am afraid I know too little to be of any help.”

  “Did the Dark One say anything to you?” Drew asked with far more tact than Casey.

  “No, but Father said something strange as I was taken from him. He said that he feared that day would come—as though it wasn’t a question of if but when I would be taken from him.” I directed my response to Casey, hoping he would see it as something of worth.

  “Sounds like maybe it’s a meeting with Hades we need to arrange,” Casey muttered.

  “That is my wish,” I replied, “but I am not certain how it can be achieved. I cannot travel to the Underworld any more than you can, unless you are withholding your ability to do so from me, and it would not be safe to send word to him. Messengers are unreliable, and their favor often lies with those who may benefit from the message the most in the moment. I think it unwise to attempt such correspondence.”

  “Agreed,” Drew concurred.

  “Maybe we can get him to come to us somehow,” Kierson offered, entering the room with four gigantic plates full of various foods. I had almost forgotten him entirely in his absence.

  “That would be highly unlikely,” I replied. “In all the years I’ve known Hades, he has only left once, and that was th=nd thatthe day he came to escort me personally to the Underworld—though he will be beside himself with grief, knowing that he cannot come to find me.”

  “But you just said that he technically could leave.” Kierson looked befuddled as he tried to sort through things he could not possibly understand.