The Scarlet Thread

by D. S. Murphy

  “So we’re all bastards,” Curt said.

  “Some of us more than others,” Matt said.

  “We’re not monsters,” Curt said. “Although, we can be. If we want to make an impression, we can just half shift. It’s usually impractical, but sometimes it can be cool.”

  “Is everyone out here a shifter?” I asked.

  “No, but to pure-bloods, even heirs are animals,” Priya said. “Present company excluded.” She said this looking at Sam, and he nodded back to her.

  “Not all pure-bloods are the same,” Sitri said. “Remember, the ones at Nevah are protecting everybody here. Even if they consider heirs inferior, they still believe in their right to exist.”

  “Unlike Zeus and his side of the family,” Heph said, coming up and joining the circle. He was carrying several large glass jugs and passed them out. Sitri greeted him with a pat on the back and several of the others shook his hand. He was popular out here.

  “Mead,” Sitri said, taking a sip straight from the jug and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He passed me the jug and I took a sip. It was sweet, like honey.

  “Zeus wanted to reform things,” Heph said bitterly. “He started by murdering half of his family, and then tried to get rid of his unwanted children by killing off all the heirs. We fled Europe when the persecution began. We came here, a nearly virgin continent, where we lived in the open for thousands of years.”

  “That’s how old this place is?” I asked. “Why doesn’t anybody else know about it?” I asked.

  “Able put up some charms and wards that keep it hidden to normal humans,” Heph said. “And I added some more modern touches recently. There are few powerful enough to find it without being brought here.”

  “But, don’t you have human parents?” I asked. “You’re descendants, right? What are you, seventeen, eighteen?”

  “If you mean eighteen hundred, you’re only off by a few thousand years,” Matt said.

  I almost choked on my food. I grabbed the jug and gulped down some mead.

  “Not everybody here is that old,” Alice said. “Many of them are heirs—descendants. And Zeus didn’t stop his antics a long time ago. Some of the ones here were born in the last few centuries, and have as much power as those sired thousands of years ago. And there are also some who were born by human parents, who got a bit of divine blood in their family tree centuries ago.”

  “Some of us are even older,” Sitri said in a low voice that only I could hear. “Chandler was fathered by Cronus, before Zeus overthrew him. So he’s actually Zeus’s half-brother, but not as powerful, because he’s half-human, whereas Zeus was born of Cronus and his sister Rhea—two Titans.”

  “Is he a shifter too?” I asked, looking at Cronus.

  “He’s the first satyr. Cronus took his mother in the form of a horse. Now you know where Zeus gets it,” Sitri said. “Like father, like son.”

  My mind was starting to get confused from the mead. “How can everyone here be so old, but look so young?” I asked.

  “Once our energy is activated, it keeps us looking young for a long time,” Alice said. “We age slowly, if at all—especially if we have reserves to draw on.”

  “That’s part of it,” Sitri clenched his jaw. “The other reason most of the heirs at Nevah look so young is because they were too young to fight when the hunters found them and killed their parents. At a certain age, magical parents get found by Zeus’s agents of death.”

  “Priya is your age,” Matt said. “Human parents. She barely escaped by using some of her power.”

  “I never knew my parents were special,” Priya said. “They hid it well. Then one day some men broke in. I knew something was off about them. They had tattoos on their arms and glowing eyes. My mother pushed me into a closet. I watched them kill her, and covered my mouth to keep from screaming. Then they opened the closet. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t see me. They looked right at me, then left anyway. I was on the street for a month before Sitri found me and brought me here.”

  She reached out and squeezed Matt’s hand. Then she disappeared. My jaw dropped and several people laughed. I could just see Priya’s eyes and teeth, they looked like they were floating.

  “Invisibility?” I asked.

  “Not completely,” she said. “That’s rare. More like very good camouflage. Like a chameleon.”

  “It’s common for abilities to trigger during extreme stress—that’s why Stephanie has been so rough on you,” Alice said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Though I think Mist just enjoys hurting me.”

  I heard music, and saw Sam holding an antique lyre that sparkled in the fireplace. He started to sing, and someone else joined him. I felt drawn to the music, so I went and sat next to him. The songs were from a different time, in languages I didn’t recognize. Each was more beautiful than the last.

  “I made this lyre for my older brother,” Sam said during a pause in the music. “But he died before I could give it to him.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “My brother died too.”

  “Did you try to save him?”

  “Yes,” I said. “With all my heart.”

  “I didn’t,” Sam said, with a sad smile. “I ran away and hid, to save myself.”

  “I’m sure there’s nothing you could have done,” I said. “You must have been really young.”

  “I was,” he said. “Young and stupid. I won’t hide next time.” His fingers were clenched the instrument tightly. I put an arm around shoulders and gave him a quick squeeze.

  Then I wrapped my fingers around my lego block necklace, thinking about my brother. Since the death of my brother, I’ve felt alone. Even after I had Jessie and Sarah, I longed for the holiday family dinners I remembered from my childhood. I had a sense of that at the house, but realized now how stiff and out of place I’d felt. Looking at the friendly faces around the campfire, my stomach full of meat and mead, I felt happier than I had in a long time. Even if everybody was suffering from their own personal tragedy—or perhaps because of it—I felt like I belonged.

  The sky was totally dark now. The stars twinkled through patches of gray clouds, and sometimes we could see the crescent moon with a halo around it. I wondered what Sarah and Jessie were doing back at JDRI. It felt like a lifetime ago I’d been there with them.

  “We’re heading back,” Alice said, interrupting my thoughts. Sam stood up to join her. “Kai, do you want to come with us?”

  I wasn’t eager to return to the house, as luxurious as it was. I wanted to savor the moment.

  “Do I have to?” I asked.

  “I can walk her back later,” Sitri said. I glanced over at him. Was he staying because of me? After seeing him and Alice together earlier, I thought maybe they had a thing. I met his eyes and I felt my skin tingle, with the thought of us walking home together, alone. Did he like me—or was he just protecting me? Maybe that was his job.

  “I’ll go with you,” Heph said, standing up. “Got to get back before the wife gets worried.”

  “Who are you married to?” I asked.

  “Tori,” he said. “Did I forget to mention that?”

  My breath caught in my throat.

  Heph and Tori are married? The image of what I’d seen through the keyhole flashed in front of my eyes. Did Heph know that Tori and Dion were sleeping together? Suddenly I felt claustrophobic. My palms were sweating and my chest felt tight. I needed some air. I pushed up and said something about going to the bathroom.

  I didn’t see Matt coming from the other direction until he was right in front of me. He grabbed me to keep me from running into him, his palms on my bare shoulders.

  “What’s the hurry,” he said, grinning.

  That’s when I saw him die.

  12

  “That’s insane,” Mist snapped, “they would never attack us here.”

  “She saw what she saw,” Sitri said gruffly, crossing his arms. Able held up his hand for silence. We were in the main dining hall, b
ut the table was clear—the wood was so polished I could see a reflection of the tense faces around it.

  After running into Matt I’d grabbed my coat and pulled Sitri away from the fire to tell him what I’d seen. We came back to the house and told Able. He called this meeting. The others had just arrived.

  “Why don’t you go through it one more time,” Able said. “Even the smallest detail could be important.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember.

  Pieces of the vision came back to me. Matt lying in a pool of blood. The blood soaking into the ground. Something shiny. Flashes of smoke and fire.

  “It was dark,” I said. “I couldn’t see the attacker.”

  “What about the ground beneath him?” Sam asked.

  “Dirt,” I said. “And grass.”

  “How soon will it happen?” Heph asked.

  “I don’t know. Usually within a few months.”

  “She’s worthless,” Mist said. “What are we supposed to do with that?”

  “What about the weapon?” Sitri prompted.

  I concentrated on the image in my mind. Blood. Darkness. Something shiny—a sword.

  “It was sticking up out of his chest,” I said, touching the place over my heart. “A gleaming sword. The handle was set in gold, with blue stones. And there was a symbol… a crown I think.”

  “The royal emblem,” Stephanie said solemnly. “All the hunters carry a sword like that. They think they’re protecting their one true king. There is no way she could have known that.”

  “She could have seen it when we were attacked earlier,” Sitri said. “Even if she didn’t register it consciously.”

  “Maybe Matt was planning on leaving the property,” Tori said. “He could have been attacked somewhere else. Outside of Nevah.”

  “So we just make sure he sticks around. That’s easy enough,” Dion said.

  Able sat in the chair at the head of the table and leaned back thoughtfully. The jeweled rings on his fingers sparkled as he stroked his beard.

  “Nobody has ever attacked Nevah directly,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean they never will. It’s inevitable that Zeus would want to finish this war.”

  “I didn’t see a war,” I said. “I just saw Matt.”

  “But Matt’s also the only one you touched, right?” Sitri said.

  I nodded.

  “So we have her do her thing with everybody,” Heph said. “Gather as much information as possible. Maybe she’ll see something that will tell us when the attack is coming.”

  I nodded, even though I was dreading it. Seeing just one death was a terrifying experience for me. I’d always tried to avoid it.

  “I think we’ll have to assume,” Able said, “that we are no longer completely safe at Nevah. Zeus has left us alone in the past, because he knows another all-out battle could shift things in our favor. Instead he’s been picking us off, one by one, whenever he could catch one of us alone.”

  “But why now? What’s changed?” Dion asked.

  “They want Kaidance,” Sitri said. “She’s important for some reason.”

  “Important enough to start a war? To challenge us here?” Heph asked, looking me over doubtfully.

  “If they’re after her, why don’t we just give her up? Or better yet, finish her off ourselves?” Mist flung me against the wall and lifted me up with one hand, her fingers digging into my throat. Her other hand pulled a dagger out of a sheath on her thigh. She’s going to kill me. Suddenly my vision became sharper, the lights in the room brighter. As adrenaline surged through my body, things slowed down, like they had earlier with the arrow. I could see Sitri jumping over a chair to grab Mist’s arm, and Able yelling at her to stop. Tori remained at the table looking on with mild interest. Dion reached for his wine glass.

  Then I saw the thread again. More clearly this time. The whole world blurred, and this single golden thread, floating gently before me, was all I could see. As it came into focus, it gave off a high pitched whine. It was singing—calling to me. I reached out with my gloved fingers, and it grew straight and firm as I neared. I plucked it like a guitar string and released it with a twang. Mist’s eyes rolled back in her head. She dropped the knife and fell to the floor like a ragdoll.

  There was a second when time seemed to freeze altogether, as everyone in the room paused to look at me with disbelief. Then life jolted back to regular speed. Stephanie screamed and charged at me. Able restrained her in his powerful arms.

  Heph and Alice picked Mist up off the floor. Her face was as pale as death, and she looked at me with a mixture of awe and terror.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” Dion said, sipping his wine.

  “What are you?” Mist asked, her voice trembling. I couldn’t think of a response.

  “Get her out of here,” Able yelled. “Take her to my study.”

  Sitri grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door. He wouldn’t even look at me, he just sat me down in Able’s office and left me there to wait in silence. I felt sick. The pleasant feelings from earlier had vanished. I’d gotten too comfortable. I’d started to believe that maybe I wasn’t a curse, a monster. Maybe I was a victim, like everyone else here. Now I knew the truth. I could see it in the way they’d looked at me, as Mist crumpled to the ground. The horror on their faces. After what felt like a really long wait, Able and Sitri came back in.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “She’ll be fine,” Able said.

  The knot in my stomach loosened slightly. I took a deep breath as Able sat on the couch across from me and fixed me with his dark eyes.

  “Have you ever done that before?” he asked.

  “I don’t even know what I did,” I said.

  “Tell me exactly what happened.” I explained how things slowed down, and I saw the string and touched it. Able didn’t look surprised.

  “Have you ever seen a thread like that before?”

  “Just once, after Mist beat the crap out of me.”

  “Did you know it would hurt her?”

  I shook my head.

  “My wife wants me to kill you,” Able said, frowning.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Sitri said. “She didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “She’s dangerous,” Able said. “That much is obvious. But to hurt Mist… heirs shouldn’t have the power to hurt immortals. I mean other than ganging up on one, holding them down and cutting off their heads or something. That rarely happens because they can’t be contained. Mist could fight a hundred heirs without breaking a sweat. I’ve seen her slaughter thousands of men. To think that an untrained girl like you—”

  “But how?” Sitri asked. “You must have some idea.”

  Able nodded. “I didn’t believe it at first, even after I saw her wrist.”

  “I don’t see how that’s related,” I said.

  “Then allow me to educate.” Able opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of brandy and several crystal glasses. “Let me start with the stuff you probably learned in school.” He handed me a glass. My hands were trembling when I took it.

  “I didn’t exactly get a formal education,” I said, taking a sip of the alcohol. It burned my throat and warmed my stomach.

  “But you’ve heard of the Olympians.”

  “Like what, the winter games?” I knew what he was getting at but I didn’t want to make it easy for him.

  “The gods and goddesses of Olympus,” he said.

  “Mythology, right?”

  “You should know better by now. After all, you’ve met some of them.”

  “You mean their descendants.”

  He gave me a grim smile. Wait, was he saying that some of the gods of Olympus were actually at Nevah? Able went to the bookshelf, opened his secret door, and returned holding a horned goat skull. He set it down on the table and handed me a magnifying glass.

  “Let’s start from the beginning. You can follow along with this visual history,” he said, pointing to the place on the skull that began t
he narrative.

  “Once upon a time, as you like to say, the world was ruled by the Titans. Chief among them was Cronus and his sister Rhea. Cronus heard a prophecy that one of his children would overrule him, so he ate them all, one after the other. Until Zeus. Zeus escaped, and he did overthrow his father and save his brothers and sisters, rescuing them from Cronus’ stomach. Zeus killed his father, divided up the universe with his two brothers, and for a time, there was peace.”

  Able swirled his brandy in its glass. I waited for him to continue. His brows furrowed, as if he were reminiscing, rather than recounting children’s tales.

  “But then Zeus got greedy. He didn’t like sharing power. He wanted to be the sole ruler. So he decided to kill his brothers, and all of his sons and daughters, and wipe out magic from the world, leaving his reign undisputed and unchallenged. He became paranoid, accusing everyone of plotting a revolution to challenge his rule. He started creating soldiers. He said it was for the protection of Mount Olympus, and all of the immortals, but they were really his own personal army.”

  “Meanwhile, no one was looking out for the race of men. The gods of Olympus used them like chess pieces, waging war against each other, for fun and spite. Zeus used the human race like his own personal harem. Zeus’s brother Poseidon, and his son Apollo were fond of humans, and they hatched a plan to overthrow him—but Zeus got wind of it. So he invited everyone to dinner, and he poisoned Poseidon. Then he killed Apollo, his favorite son. He hacked him into pieces on the dining table. At the same time, he had his daughter, Athena, assassinate Ares, the strongest of his sons. She asked to speak to him privately, then stabbed him in the back with a poisonous dagger.”

  I was trying to keep track of the story but my brain was getting fuzzy. I’d heard these names before and tried placing them. Poseidon, god of the ocean. Ares, god of war. Apollo, god of the sun.

  “Athena… goddess of wisdom? Why would she kill Ares?”

  “Mostly, because her daddy told her to. But also because Ares and Athena hated each other. Ares believed in brute strength. Honest combat. Athena loved military strategy—deception and manipulation. Ares was stronger, but Athena was more devious. Challenged to a fair duel, Ares would have won, no question. But he underestimated her. She proposed a truce and then stabbed him when his guard was down. Honor wouldn’t have let him do what she did.”