by Brea Essex
Ouroboros (Book One)
A Seven Relics Novel
Published by Brea Essex
Copyright © 2014 Brea Essex
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, people, or events are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, organizations, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Formatting and cover art by Joseph Design and Photography.
For my beautiful cousin, Brandy, who passed as I was writing this novel. You are greatly missed. Rest in peace.
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
One
They say that when you have a near-death experience, your life flashes before your eyes. Well, I guess my accident doesn’t qualify, although I certainly thought I was going to die.
One moment, I was slipping and falling, the ground approaching at an alarming rate.
Then… blackness.
I woke to the beeping of machines and tubes coming out of my arms.
Oh, and there was a guy I didn’t recognize, leaning over me... A seriously hot guy. His bottomless blue eyes immediately captivated me. The sandy hair tumbling across his forehead made my fingers itch to push it back. As I stupidly stared at him, the corners of his perfectly shaped mouth turned upward.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” was all he said. No introduction, no: “How are you feeling? Do you know where you are?” Nothing.
I stared up at him in surprise and tried to speak. My throat felt raspy and unused. I wondered how long I had been out.
“Your throat might be sore,” he told me. “They had a tube shoved down it for a while.”
My eyes widened. I tried again to say something, but all that came out was a pitiful squeak.
Random Guy looked worried, but only for a second. He glanced around, and found a pen and paper sitting on the table next to my hospital bed. Then he grinned and tried to hand it to me, but I waved it off.
“Wh-where are my parents?” I finally managed to croak out.
“Don’t worry, I got rid of them,” he announced. He must have noticed my panicked look, because he belatedly added a “temporarily.”
I tried to sit up, but the tubes pulled at my arms.
“Careful!” the guy exclaimed. Moving quickly, he helped me untangle myself. He wandered over to a cot set up next to my bed and grabbed a pillow, which he shoved behind my head.
“Thanks,” I murmured, my voice still low and scratchy.
Without saying a word, he poured a cup of water from a plastic pitcher next to my bed and offered it to me. Grateful, I took it and gulped it down. It felt good sliding down my raw throat. I asked him for some more, and drained that too.
“Not too much now,” he cautioned me. “You’ve been out a while.”
“Do you know how long?” I asked.
“Two weeks.”
Two weeks? My parents must have been in a panic. “Where did you say my parents were?”
“I didn’t. They went to the cafeteria. I’m with you. You’ll be fine.”
“And they agreed to that? No offense, but I don’t even know you. They wouldn’t leave their unconscious daughter with a stranger. What, do you work for the hospital or something?”
He laughed. “No, not exactly.”
“What did you do to make them agree to go?” I wanted to know.
“I’ve been kind of... hanging around lately. They’ve gotten to know me.”
“O-kay. Well, I still don’t know who you are.”
“The name’s Zac.”
I waited a moment to see if he would elaborate. When he didn’t, I rolled my eyes at him. “That still doesn’t tell me who you are,” I huffed.
“All you need to know now is that I’m a friend.” He reached out and pushed a button on the bed to call the nurse.
“What did you do that for?” I demanded to know.
“Gotta let them know you’re awake!”
The nurse didn’t waste any time coming into my room. If she was surprised to see me up and talking, she didn’t show it. In fact, she barely seemed to notice I was there. She was all business, checking the machines I was hooked up to and making notes on a clipboard. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
Finally, someone who had the common courtesy to ask! “Ummm… okay, I guess. My throat’s a little sore, but I guess that’s to be expected.”
“How does your head feel? Any pain?”
I hadn’t thought about it until then, but my head did hurt. “Yeah, I have a little headache.”
She reached over and put her hand against the back of my head. “Tell me if this hurts.” Her fingers probed lightly against my scalp, eliciting sharp pangs.
I yelped and Zac laughed. “Yes! That hurts!”
She stopped and nodded like she had expected my reaction. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she exited the room.
Zac’s shoulders were still shaking with laughter.
“I don’t see how my pain is funny to you,” I said, my words dripping with acid.
“Of course it’s funny. You should have heard yourself yell! You sounded like a cat whose tail got stepped on!”
I was in the process of rolling my eyes at him when the nurse returned. She pulled a syringe out of the pocket of her scrubs.
“Oh, no, I don’t want any medication,” I told her.
“You’re in pain. We have orders from your parents and the doctor to keep you comfortable. That means medication.” She uncapped the needle and briskly injected the contents of the syringe into the tube running into my arm. She left the room without another word.
The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness again was Zac’s face.
When I woke this time, my parents and my twin sister Aislinn were in the room. Their features slowly swam into focus. My mom looked as though she had been crying. Dad looked relieved. Aislinn looked... well, it’s always hard to tell what she’s thinking.
“Oh, honey, we’re so glad you’re finally awake!” My mom leaned over to hug me carefully. “I’m so sorry we weren’t here when you woke up!”
“It’s okay; Zac explained,” I reassured her.
A blank look crossed her face. “Who’s Zac?”
I looked around. He was gone. “Zac! The boy who was here earlier. He sent you guys to the cafeteria.”
“Honey, there was no one named Zac here. In fact, there was no one here at all, except for us.”
“No, really! He was here when I woke up. Ummm... a little taller than Dad, sandy brown hair, blue eyes... kind of annoying,” I told her.
My mom was starting to look like she feared for my sanity. “I think your fall and the medication is messing with you. There’s been no one here today except for us. Grandma’s been here, and Aunt Diane, and your cousins. But no boy. No one except for family.”
I needed to shut up before they stuck me in therapy. “You’re right. It was probably a dream,” I said, even though
I wasn’t sure myself.
Stretching as much as the tubes would let me, I feigned a yawn. I needed to process this. “You know, I’m still a little tired. Maybe I didn’t sleep off that pain medication. I should take another nap.”
“Of course,” my dad nodded. “We’ll just go for a walk.”
My mom tried to protest, but my dad grabbed her arm and steered her toward the door. “Come on, Eva. Let her get some rest. We’ll talk to her later.”
I closed my eyes to continue the charade, but opened them again when I heard a tentative voice say, “Hey, Rhiannon?”
My sister lingered behind. “I believe you about the boy.”
I gave her a wan smile. “Thanks, Ash.”
I closed my eyes again as she left to follow our parents. I didn’t get the quiet I wanted so I could try to process things, though.
As soon as Aislinn was out the door, I heard a male voice exclaim, “I thought they would never leave!”
My eyes flew open again to find Zac standing at the foot of my bed. “What do you want?” I asked, annoyed to find that I hadn't been dreaming.
“Well, I need your help.”
Two
“What do you mean, you need my help?” I asked incredulously.
“You have to agree before I can tell you,” Zac insisted.
“You expect me to agree to help you—someone who I just met—with something that I know nothing about? I don’t think so.”
“Don’t be difficult, Rhiannon,” he sighed, sounding exasperated.
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
“Your sister just said it,” he informed me matter-of-factly.
Oh. “You can call me Rhi. So, what are you doing here? Why can’t my parents and sister see you?”
“I need you to agree to help me before I can tell you anything,” he insisted.
I mulled that over for a moment. I didn’t know what he wanted or how I could possibly help him, but I was too curious to say no. I couldn’t explain why, but I wanted to trust him. Something about him intrigued me. I wanted to find out what he supposedly needed me for. It was probably just a line, but there was only one way to find out. “Fine. I’ll do my best to help you.”
A look of relief crossed his face. He pulled a chair close to the bed and folded himself into it. Then he grabbed my clothes from where they lay on another chair and threw them at me. “Get dressed.”
I glared at him, unhappy about the command, but I headed for the bathroom to comply. When I emerged, Zac was standing in the middle of the room.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I suppose. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to be ready for.”
He chuckled and motioned for me to come stand by him. He grabbed my arm and snapped his fingers.
Suddenly, we were standing in the middle of the sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard.
“What the heck just happened? How did you do that?” I demanded to know.
Zac just winked at me and chuckled softly. “C’mon,” he told me. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“Look, Rhi, you said you agreed to help me. Right now, that involves not asking too many questions. Besides, you might not like the answers. Now hurry up.”
He still had a grip on my arm, so I had no choice but to go with him. He pulled me after him and I scurried to keep up.
It was then that I noticed how tall he really was. I mean, I was pretty tall, but he towered over me. He had to be at least six feet, maybe taller. Good thing I had on tennis shoes; it made it a lot easier to keep up with him.
It was already nighttime and people were beginning to line up outside of various clubs. Traffic sped down the boulevard, threatening to plow over anyone who dared to step into the street. Zac stopped abruptly in front of a building painted black that had a black awning, which was painted with red letters hanging over the door. It simply read “Frenzy.”
“We can’t go in there!” I balked.
Zac stared at me. “What do you mean?”
“Look at how I’m dressed.” The clothes that Zac had thrown at me in the hospital were the very same ones I had been wearing the day of my accident: jeans, T-shirt, beat up tennis shoes. Each piece of clothing was torn and dirty. Plus, I had lost some weight in the two weeks that I was in the coma. My outfit hung loosely off my frame. I hadn’t showered, and my hair was tangled. I looked like a street person.
“No one’s going to care how you’re dressed,” Zac insisted. He pulled me into the line.
I looked around at the others waiting to get in. “Clubs have dress codes, you know.”
“Trust me,” was all he said.
To my surprise, we weren’t detained at the door. We slipped in with no comment from the bouncer. I pulled Zac close to me and hissed in his ear, “Why didn’t we have to pay the door charge?”
“That’s another question.”
“When, exactly, are you planning on actually answering any of my questions?” I asked.
“In good time.”
He guided me to a high-backed booth at the rear of the large room. It faced a stage at the other end of the room where a band was setting up. Music blared over the speakers hanging from the ceiling. I tried to get the attention of one of the servers, but every last one of them ignored me.
“You can’t order anything,” Zac told me.
“Why not?” I asked. “And don’t you dare tell me to not ask questions.”
“I wasn’t going to. I was actually going to say that they can’t see you.”
“What?”
“They can’t see you. That’s how we got in; despite the way you’re dressed. And that’s why we didn’t have to pay the cover charge. I guess you could say that, to them, we’re not really here.”
“I don’t understand,” I told him.
“It’s called a glamour,” he explained. “It makes that which is, not. It’s a spell used to blind the human eye to what’s really there.”
“A spell, huh? What are you, a witch or something?”
“No, Rhiannon, I’m not a witch. But you are.”
I stared at him, and then burst out laughing. “You have to be joking.”
“It’s no joke. You’re a witch. That’s why I need your help.”
By now, the band was running a sound check, and the floor couldn’t be seen amidst the sea of people gathered. We had to practically yell to hear each other. Our conversation wasn’t exactly conducive to yelling, but apparently no one could hear us, thanks to the glamour.
“Okay, say I really am a witch. I don’t know the first thing about magic, witchcraft, whatever you want to call it. How would that help you?” I asked.
He squinted at me as a strobe light turned on. It was hard to look at him in the flashing light, and was enough to make me want to throw up. I wondered briefly if strobes had ever caused anyone to have a seizure.
“I need you to find something,” he finally told me.
“What do I look like, a Golden Retriever?”
Zac glared at me. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re not the right person for this.”
“Well, I never wanted to get involved in—in—whatever this is!” I jumped up and headed for the door. There was a large, muscled man blocking my way, his back turned to me. I reached out to tap his shoulder to ask him to move... and my hand passed through him. I froze and turned toward Zac, wide eyed. “Am I dead?” I whispered, my voice trembling.
Zac was standing close enough that he heard me, despite the noise in the crowded room. “No,” he responded. “You’re not dead.”
“Then why couldn’t I touch that guy? Why did you say no one could see us or hear us?”
“Will you come sit down with me again?” he asked. “I promise I’ll explain everything.”
I nodded, not quite trusting my voice. Zac took my hand and guided me back to the booth we had vacated.
I plopped down on the bench seat and stared at him, waiting for him to begin. He looked distinctly uncomforta
ble. He kept running his fingers through his hair, winding locks of it around his fingers. The cocky attitude from earlier was gone now.
“Just say it, Zac,” I finally told him.
“Sorry; I don’t really know where to begin,” he admitted. “All right, the truth is that you’re not dead, but I am. I need you... well, I need you to find me.”
I stared at him. I didn’t know whether to laugh or run. I settled for fainting instead.
Three
When my vision cleared and the roaring in my ears stopped, I noticed that Zac was laughing.
“What’s your problem?” I snapped.
“I certainly wasn’t expecting that reaction. Do I make you weak in the knees or something?”
“You just told me that you’re dead.”
“And?”
“If you’re dead, how am I able to see you?” I asked. “And how can you touch things like the chair and the water pitcher?”
“Well, I’m not technically dead.”
“I don’t understand. You’re dead, but you’re not dead?”
“Exactly.”
“How is that possible?” I wanted to know.
“I’m dead,” he repeated. “For all intents and purposes, that is. I’m actually... well... away from my body at the moment.”
“So go back then.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that easy. I don’t know where it is.”
“O-kay. I’m seriously confused here.”
He nodded as though he expected that. “Ever heard of astral projection?”
“Yeah, but I don’t really know what it is.”
“It’s basically your spirit leaving your body. You can move around without physical constraints,” he explained.
“So, why can’t you go back?”
“Like I said: I don’t know where my body is. Usually, there is still a connection between your spirit and your body. If your body is moved while you’re away from it, that connection is broken and you can’t return.”
“So, what do you need my help for?”
“Well, you’re the only one I’ve found who can see me. I need you to help me find my body.”