Orion

by Cyndi Goodgame

  He said my name. And what I wanted to be called. Not my life I left back at a court where I was a first or second in line to a daddy throne for the Valkyrie court of justice and peace of our kind only. Here I was, favored one by Calum Green, the only person who had my attention. Not a Val. Not a Hunter. Not anything. Just a person.

  “Then I will too. Calum Green. I absolutely know with every electrifying part of my body and soul that we were meant to find each other. I can’t explain it. I’ve rationalized that I’m crazy. I’ve figured the species differences. I’ve even tried the daughter of the Val king angle. But I can’t find a justifiable reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to make my own destiny. So I gave up, tonight.”

  He looked lost at my sudden capitulation but wasn’t disregarding it as fictitious or silly. It was a huge admission for me to say that someone could dominate what I might do next.

  “I’m not fighting it anymore.”

  He looked at all the strategic parts of my body where I had my weapons lodged before I changed as if I were a tic-tac-toe board and he was drawing the lines together where each point meets. It made me feel exposed. No one had studied me that close before beside my enemy. And they were usually out before they could study me that well. But even Calum didn’t sense my last weapon.

  “Where was the other knife?”

  Puzzled. “What?” He wanted to know. Could he read my mind?

  “The last knife. You never pulled it.”

  Oh! “#6?” I patted my stomach. I had my seven back now replacing my lost one.

  “I knew.”

  I adjusted in my seat, “How?”

  He cocked his head sideways and gave a look like “You want me to say it?”

  “Yes!” I answered his unasked question. I hated to be bested by others.

  “I’ve studied every part of you since you arrived. I won’t shy away from that or hide it. I want every part of you Stace, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  No more words tonight. He walked me to my dorm. I’m not sure if I can give him what he needs, but at least I’m in charge of me.

  Chapter Twenty Eight ...without injuring eternity.

  We sat very still and read the letter to Calum written by his own mother.

  Dear Son of Neptunia,

  I am the Father of Neptunia. My daughter was chosen for this task to bear you. I was asked to help build a ruler who would prove strong and agile among the many. I adhere to whatever Anat, the battle goddess and her children deem necessary until such time I should need to intervene and shut it down. You do me proud. Please do nothing else. Beware of your enemies, for they are many. Keep the girl safe from all harm, first and foremost.

  Father of Neptunia.

  I thought of my own letter and what the end said about more than just me. I repeated it in my mind.

  The Hunter by day will take with him, a huntress, unlike his own. She will bear the mark of Orion, as will he.

  The Hunter by night will take with him, a huntress, unlike his own. She will bear the mark of the sun, as will he.

  They will bring forth a mighty nation of all who come together. They will find Saiph at their right shoulder. Rigel and his stinging adversary will rule like no other. Cross will come between severed twins. Let who stands in the way of fate perish and be no more. In this great peril, the Anat goddess in human form will be the only light.

  After I read his letter aloud, it felt like an applaud was in order, but Calum and I just sat and stared at it like it would catch fire or something else. Finally, I told him some parts of my own letter and surprised him more. Then I choked out, “This explains a few things. You’ve read this before. How come you didn’t freak out the night I showed you my mark? Except for Saiph, Cross, and the stinging adversary it all makes perfect sense?”

  He snorted as if any of this could possibly be funny, “How do you figure?”

  He knew something. He’d led me to the library and the information we found before. His eyes gave him away. “Easy, see. We just have to find out who they are.”

  “Oh, that kind of easy! And then all will be solved with the world,” he gibed.

  I flicked my finger into his stomach, glaring. He wasn’t telling more. “I’m in charge of the sarcasm bud. So leave your smart mouth at the door.”

  He glared back at me now. How about that?

  “Fine. But that doesn’t solve anything. So we both have marks and I’m the Hunter, you’re the hot Huntress chic, but who is the Anat goddess?” He did tell me he’d known for a while that the Father of Neptune was some kind of old story in his family and that his father told him once that his mother descended from the gods. He never gave merit to the story as a small child, but wondered lately if it meant something more. I vowed to research Neptune as well.

  We had a lucky break the next morning, if you can call it that. Lee didn’t come to breakfast. Maze asked Calum if he knew where he was and if he was okay. Calum shrugged and waited till she walked away before he whispered, “He claimed he was sick to his stomach.”

  I wondered what it really was speculating a few hundred possibilities. When I went back to my room to brush my teeth and get my books, my dorm door was wide open. I pulled my dagger, the one Calum discovered after the fact and stood just outside the doorframe. Whoever or whatever knew I was there. I had stupidly become accustomed to my new recent Hunter life and discarded my stealth. I needed to refocus.

  I took one tiny step into the doorframe, peeked through the door crack, and saw Lee sitting on my bed, staring at me.

  “What? You wanted the Vamp, maybe? Sexier, but a bit crabbier when hungry!”

  “Aren’t all of you? Male that is, when hungry?” I smiled.

  “Only when we don’t get what we want,” Lee’s eyes were black with a mix of a cold stare wavering on the brink of something dangerous.

  I dropped my knife to my side, stepped in, and closed the door. Somewhere deep inside my brain I knew that the door closed would be a bad idea, but somehow that fact that he was in my room seemed just as equal. So I cautioned on the side of secrecy.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  He cocked his head sideways raising an eyebrow. I was still frightened by the thought of his reading on how I felt around the Vamp. It was weird and so was Lee's ability to read so many emotions.

  “Okay! Rephrasing, why are you here?” I let out a deep sigh to show my annoyance.

  He just smiled, condescendingly. “You found something at your fathers,” he paused to watch me wanting a reaction, “and I thought you might want to analyze it aloud before…anyone else sees it.”

  What in the world was he talking about? What could it be? I stepped closer. I wished he wasn’t on my bed.

  “Well?” I put my hands to my hips to show my impatience had outweighed my annoyance.

  He rolled his eyes at me. “You know, you don’t have to act like I’m repulsive to you.”

  “You’re not repulsive!” I was outraged.

  “Really?” he snorted. He really thought that?

  “You just insist on taunting me. I can’t give you what you want and you continue to make yourself sick with it. Why can’t you let it go and move on? I can’t be anywhere near you without you giving me your sneering looks or worse, the deep black-eyed looks you give me like right now.”

  He raised an eyebrow and twisted his mouth up. What was he thinking?

  “Here,” he held his hand out.

  In his hand was the letter. I wanted to slap it away. Hide!

  It was cold except for where Lee’s hand held it. I turned it over twice seeing it was white spoiled over time into a dingy yellow. “Did you open it?”

  Lee nodded a solemn yes. "A long time ago, when I lived in your court."

  I swallowed thinking he was a natural born sneak or just always that unnoticed. He held all this in secrecy and only now, chose to reveal it. It was strategic and thought out making me doubt him more. The envelope slid open with a swish louder than I anticipated and s
heathed wide at the mouth. Inside the paper matched Calum’s exactly. His was missing the envelope.

  “I know something else.” Lee hadn’t answered my question. “I went through Calum’s top drawer today where I knew he kept it. I’d seen him looking at it once when he thought I wasn’t.”

  And? I was scared for really no reason. Lee was hiding things too. Everyone was.

  Lee pulled something from his back pocket and dropped it into my other hand. Another letter. Identical to the one.

  I held them beside each other. Both the same. I held the first one carefully as I pried the second open. Inside was the letter I’d read this morning.

  “I saw this early this morning. So what do you think it means? To have…for both of us to have the exact print and paper…how is possible...there is something we don’t know and maybe it’s in these letters?”

  “I think,” Lee began, “that your families knew each other somehow and none of this is a coincidence. Every detail is a step towards something greater.”

  I gulped louder than the clock on the wall ticked second by second. Was he really guessing or leaking little bits of information at a time?

  “If you will remember, we guessed this already. If our families knew each other, and they were Hunter and Val—

  “Yes! That would cause quite the controversy.”

  Cotton mouthed, I gulped again nervously needing a drink. I was feeling nauseous and my own spit couldn’t seem to move down my throat. “So what does it mean?”

  "I know more about Anat?"

  I jumped to conclusions, "You were listening last night!"

  His face didn't say one way or the other. He told about what the goddess, Anat, did to Orion.

  He shrugged when he finished knowing I knew this already, “I don’t know, but I think it’s time you tell Calum what else you know. I just wanted you to know that there is more, I know more, and wanted, well…I don’t know what I wanted.” He stood and opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t.

  “Will you come with me to tell him?” He searched my face for why, I could tell. “Because you found it, at my father’s, and I don’t want to explain to him how I might have come across them and made conclusions without the source.”

  His face hardened. “Oh, I see.”

  He left through my room door thankfully greeting no one. I looked at the letters. I put both of them in my pouch neatly and carefully. They scratched together at first, then folded in a crease once and were silent. Calum would indeed, at least, notice the two of us coming.

  Lee glanced my way in chemistry, but said nothing. He nodded at Calum and reverted back into his “hanging with the boys” attitude when we weren’t thinking about the gloom and doom of our small little problem of impending death.

  They laughed heartily around the others and joked as usual. Girls giggled. Boys smiled. And all was hunky-dory! But I, Stace, deceiver of everything I made myself to be in front of this entire room, was dying already inside. They would all turn on me when they knew who I really was. And what would they do to Calum and Lee?

  I knew what I needed to do.

  I went to all the necessary places the rest of the day, watching Lee give me signals and hints for when we would meet with Calum. I never gave as much as a nod.

  I went back to my room that night, dressed in my blackest of black, my fighting suit. I packed everything on me that would not bulk, including the canteen like bag I’d stolen from the kitchen full of Gatorade. I loved the stuff, and it loved my Valkyrie side of adrenaline.

  I crawled out the window and was gone.

  Chapter Twenty Nine Happiness and moral duty…

  Calum stood outside waiting for me to come out for breakfast. I'd acted strangely distant most of the day yesterday. He’d asked Lee if he knew, but he’d never said otherwise.

  He nodded as everyone left coming out, giving him all kinds of different looks. He’d told one of the guys that he'd never understand girls, at all. They were never easy to read. Were we the same way to them.

  Finally Maze and Liz were in the doorway stopping his girl bashing. Maze stopped and looked confused.

  “She’s gone already, I thought.” Maze looked back inside. “I’ll check her room.” She ducked in again.

  Calum tightened his fists. He didn’t know why, but a flurry of doubt sprang up as he watched Liz watch Maze walk back to the first room on the hallway.

  Maze knocked at first. Then she twisted the knob with a strong hand assuming it would be locked but it opened. She angled just enough to look back towards the front door from around the corner.

  Her face said it all. He raced past Liz and bolted in the room. Everything was in perfect place.

  He looked at the dresser that mimicked his in design. He didn’t notice what was there, but what was missing. None of my things he associated with me were there. He turned back to the room and saw that an item or two lay strewn in odd places. On the bed he found my trademark t-shirt and jeans combo lying across it. Not thrown, but hastily put there. He started searching everywhere else.

  “What are you looking for?” Maze was frantic now. He went through my drawers now as I watched his panicked face.

  Maze stared as the top drawer open and a few of my delicates flew up. She yelped at Calum, “This isn’t the time for fantasies.”

  He didn’t budge. He was in the third drawer down now and moved to the bed, looking under it. After he’d covered the room, even under the mattress, he stood with both hands on his face turned upward. He looked like he was crying. He wasn’t, but his face was the worst kind of bad. The worst. He started to leave.

  “Oh, no you don’t. You aren’t going to do all this, not let me know where she is, and just leave. I want some answers.”

  He didn’t have time. “Fine, come with me.” He looked at Liz. His stare every bit the hard Hunter he had inside of him. The Hunter they knew. “You stay. Tell everyone we are off in the woods or something. Lee is with me too. All four of us are hanging somewhere or something. Make it up.”

  Liz opened her mouth in attempt to protest, but they were already out the door and flying across the lawn to find me.

  Calum prayed aloud Lee was still in the room. He flew through the dorm with his hand holding Maze’s arm.

  “Ow! You’re hurting me.”

  He let go.

  “I can’t come in there.”

  He didn’t have time for this in his eyes so he yanked her on. “COME ON!” he growled. His determination to get me back scared me a little.

  Lee was still there. “LEE? LEE?” he called.

  Lee jumped two feet and cycled his body around to defend himself to find Maze falling frontal against him. “Sorry!” he sputtered when he realized where his hands had landed.

  “It’s okay!” she blushed.

  "She left," Calum screamed.

  Lee flew around the room grabbing things and shrugged out of his shirt.

  Maze turned abruptly. “What ARE you doing?” she yelled. “You can’t take your clothes off right now!”

  “You wish!” he growled.

  Maze peeked. He was wearing a black shiny shirt with all kinds of pockets, like what the Hunter teachers wore. He reached for his belt and started to unbuckle. She gasped and turned her back. Somehow, no one would approve of all this, but he didn’t care.

  Maze heard the shrugging of pants going off and a zipper of new one’s going on. Gasp! “Are you dressed?” she fussed at Lee making her voice squeak. I hated to admit, my eyes didn't blink. I felt like a peeping tom. All this happened in a matter of maybe ten seconds.

  “What is it?” came Lee’s voice toward Calum, holding Maze now by the shoulders from behind. He’d dressed without knowing the full circumstances.

  “Stace is gone. She left,” Calum folded his hand through his hair several times.

  “We are going after her,” Maze insisted moving frantically around them now that Lee was dressed.

  “No. We are!” Calum announced coldly like he didn�
��t like the idea of Lee being included but knew he needed him and had no choice.

  Lee’s eyes went wide and he glanced at Maze. “And what does she know?”

  “Nothing, but she’ll probably want some answers now. You better get ready and prepare her.” Calum was piling weapons in every spare spot and then some.

  Lee looked at Maze with regret, back at Calum and vociferated, “You shouldn’t have brought her into this.”

  “I didn’t. She did.”

  Lee screamed a cursed yelp of some kind and started changing the rest of his clothes. His pants zipped and a belt buckle clasped closed before Maze let one shoulder relax. Then Calum started in and in no way did I close my eyes.

  Maze turned fast, again. “This is extremely odd behavior. While I’m extremely impressed with your abs boys, I don’t want a double feature show. Where is Stace, and why are we going from naked man changing room into black spy battle mode in front of me? And why do you seem to be hiding something extremely important that is going to really disturb me when I find out?”

  “You can leave and forget, or you can help us. Either way, you can’t stand here, you’re in my way,” Calum barked at her annoyingly.

  She seemed to be deciding, “I want to know where Stace is right now?”

  “Then your decision is to help us. Once you know, you’ll help us or die,” Calum beamed a laser death glare at her.

  Lee shot a look of venom at him. “That was tactful!”

  "Like you are with Stace and your hard on for her."

  Maze fell to the ground from his angry dress up routine before she heard the last part. Fainted. Lee let out a mad yelp again, picked her up, and they both took off out to where Lee thought I would be. “Do you know where you’re going?” Lee yelled as they ran to his car.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes! I know where she is,” Lee surprised him and seemed to love that he could.

  Calum stopped and turned making Lee almost dropped Maze who was limp in his arms.