Fury’s Choice

by Brey Willows

  Troubled by thoughts of what-if, things far beyond her control, she could only wait and see. In the meantime, she and her sisters found that while the gods were run off their feet busy, the furies had time on their hands. There was still the occasional serial killer or wife beater to deal with, of course. Religion didn’t stop the assholes or the mentally deranged, so they still had jobs to go to. They always would. There’d been crazy people, and angry people, and desperate people, since the beginning of time, and believing in a god or an afterlife didn’t change that. But it could mean a world that looked a hell of a lot different than it had over the last several centuries.

  The phone rang, and she ignored it, as usual. Kera had left several messages, but she wasn’t ready to talk to her yet. If they’d had a normal conversation about the limitations of the gods, on a more philosophical level, she could have handled it. But Kera’s anger wasn’t just for those suffering. She’d wanted to be left alone by immortals—all of them. She seemed to forget Tis was one of them, and by saying they had no right to judge, she was saying Tis herself shouldn’t exist. It echoed too closely how Tis felt about herself, and she’d spiraled into a pit of confusion and sadness.

  She listened to Kera’s latest message.

  “Okay, I know you live in Laguna. But I don’t know where. I’ve driven around, looking for a house that looks big enough to house your wings, but the people who live there don’t seem to like me knocking on their doors. And then I realized your house might be like your car, some invisible superhero thing, and I could probably drive around here for years and not find you. So, I’m going to park down at the harbor at Dana Point, and I’m going to lie spread-eagle on top of my car, possibly naked, until you come save me from the seagulls and the police, whichever comes first.”

  Tis couldn’t help but smile, and the heavy feeling on her chest lightened a little bit. She grabbed her keys and headed out.

  She found Kera exactly the way she’d said she would. Fortunately, she wasn’t naked, though her shorts and tank top exposed plenty of skin. Shading her eyes, she grinned at Tis from the top of her car. “I knew you wouldn’t let me be seagull fodder.”

  “I’m not here to save you. I just wanted to see you naked and handcuffed.”

  “Baby, you can see that anytime you like. Just say the word.” She slid down off her car and moved to stand in front of Tis. “Thank you for coming.” Her voice was soft, her eyes serious.

  “You’re welcome. Lunch at Wind and Sea?”

  “Yes! Anywhere. Lunch at McDonald’s is fine, if you’re with me. But please don’t make me eat there.”

  Tis took Kera’s hand, laughing. She felt like she could breathe again. “I live on La Senda, on the cliffs. The one with the lighthouse.” She shrugged slightly. “For future reference.”

  They walked to the restaurant, hand in hand, the sun warm and the area quiet. They got a table outside, and Kera took Tis’s hands. “I’m sorry. More than I can say. I was upset about the state of things there, and I really, really hate not being in control. It pisses me off, and this whole religion thing has gotten under my skin. I took all of that out on you.” She kissed the tops of Tis’s hands. “Will you forgive me?”

  “If I held grudges against people who were emotional, I’d have no friends, and I’d have killed my sister Meg long ago. I appreciate your passion.” She looked out at the water, considering her words. “I won’t say it didn’t hurt. You have a problem with the gods, with immortals in general, and I’m one of them.” She looked at Kera. “I am one of them. And I’ve got conflicts and issues I can’t begin to explain in that region. But I won’t apologize for what I am, either. I hope you understand that.”

  Kera nodded thoughtfully. “I would never ask you to apologize for who you are. You’re amazing, and exceptional, and beautiful, and the best sex I’ve ever had, and it didn’t even kill me.”

  “Fortunately, I’m more level-headed than that. Usually. I only thought of destroying you for a second, if that.” Tis grinned to show she was teasing. “But seriously, if you can’t handle who I am, what I am, then we can move on. No hard feelings.”

  Kera gave the waitress a distracted smile when she left their drinks, and Tis didn’t miss the inviting, slightly too long glance the waitress gave her in return. She wondered if the girl’s mind would withstand a snake or two…

  “The thing is, I don’t want that. I really enjoy spending time with you, when we have it.” She wiped at the condensation on her glass with her thumbs, clearly thinking. When she finally spoke again, her voice was soft. “Do you know much about Haiti? Or Mexico?”

  “I’ve done a little bit of work in both, although both countries have their own departments that handle my kind of work, so it’s been rare.”

  “Then you know what it’s like. You know that Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, with an average income of four hundred dollars a year, and a life expectancy for both men and women of somewhere in the fifties. And Mexico…well, it’s not a haven of fun either. My mom managed to scrape an education and go on to college in Florida, something unheard of there. My dad got into a culinary school in Mexico, the first in his family to finish high school. They both clawed their way out of poverty, and they met when my mom was on a research trip to Mexico. He was their camp chef during their expedition to learn more about medicines from rainforests. They fell for one another right away, and he proposed to her before the end of the expedition, six weeks later.”

  “That’s remarkable. You obviously get your drive from your parents.”

  “They taught me that there isn’t a single thing that can’t be done, if you’re willing to make it happen. My mom got me interested in science and medicine when I was a kid, and my dad taught me about people. He loves learning about people, and after they’d made enough money to be comfortable, and to keep me in school, he invested in his home town in Mexico and built a library and a youth center for the kids.”

  “So, you get your business acumen from both parents and your social conscience from your father?”

  Kera picked at her salad, moving pieces around but not eating. “They’re both amazing people. Were amazing. My dad still is.” She looked at Tis, her expression haunted. “But you see why I get so angry at the gods. I didn’t think they existed, so that was no big deal. Now that I know they do, I’m angry. I mean, I’m really angry. All those people in Haiti who died during the tropical storms, who die in boats trying to get to America…I just don’t understand.”

  Tis hated feeling so helpless. She couldn’t explain about the gods, about the way things worked, without revealing their limitations and putting the organization at risk. It wasn’t her place to do that, even with a single human. “I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be. I’m so sorry. I suppose all I can say is I’m not a god, and I can’t speak for them or what they do or don’t do. I hope, with time, they can start to fix the many things that are wrong. But if you want to be with me, around me, even if it’s just as friends, you can’t take your anger out on me. It’s not fair, and although I appreciate you have a right to your feelings, you’re choosing to be around me. However all this plays out, you have to play fair.”

  Kera pushed her plate away. “Yeah. I get that, and I’m sorry. I’ve never been known as a patient person, and my parents taught me to let go and express myself. That’s not always a good thing.” She closed her eyes and stretched, shaking her hands as though shaking away the feelings. When she opened her eyes again, she looked more like her usual playful self. “Tell me, who gives birth to fury triplets?”

  Tis laughed, glad the tension of the moment seemed broken. There’d be plenty of time to talk about the heavy stuff later. Hopefully. “The earth herself. Gaia mated with a Titan, Ouranus, and we were born of their union. Creatures of the sky and the earth, meant to watch over those who lived between. When we were children, my sisters and I loved to fly and play in the waves, hiding from our mother in caves and trees. Obviously, she alw
ays knew exactly where we were. When we got to adulthood, we simply stopped ageing. What you see is what I’ve been for nearly five thousand years.”

  “You’ve aged all right, I suppose.” Kera grinned. “What about your father?”

  Tis shook her head. “Have you read anything about the Titans? They weren’t really paternal people. One of them, Zeus’s father, used to eat all his children to make sure none of them overthrew him.”

  “And why would he think they would?”

  “Ah. That would be because of the Fates. The Wyrd women, who weave every person’s fate, even those of the gods, sometimes. They often hand out little fortune cookie oracles just to mess with people. They tell them a piece of a puzzle, a tiny aspect of their lives, and then sit back and watch the chaos.”

  “That sounds rather bitchy.”

  Tis laughed, thinking about the many names Selene called them. “That’s one way of thinking of them.”

  The waitress came and took their plates. When the girl had left after lingering, once again, a little too long next to Kera, she reached over and took Tis’s hand once more.

  “I want to ask you something. And it’s absolutely, one hundred percent okay if you say no. I mean, I’ll be heartbroken and devastated, and my ego will never recover, but it will be fine.”

  Tis’s pulse sped up at the serious look in Kera’s eyes, even though her mouth was smiling. “Go on.”

  “Will you come to Haiti with me in two weeks? It’s my mother’s year and a day ceremony, and it would be really amazing if you’d come. You could meet my dad, and my million aunties will be there too. What do you say?”

  Tis considered. Work was slow, certainly slow enough that Alec and Meg could take care of it, and she was supposed to be out “finding herself” anyway. Spending more time with Kera sounded perfect, even if it meant being surrounded by people. Did she want to risk getting closer to Kera, though, knowing how she felt about the gods? It’s better than sitting at home moping about being lonely. “Okay. Yes, I’d like to come. Thank you for asking.”

  Kera punched the air. “Yes! There’s a week of celebration beforehand, lots of food and family stuff, lots of ceremonial things.” She tilted her head. “Do you need a plane ticket? Do I get to ride on your back or something? And if I do, can I have reins?” Her grin was wicked.

  “That’s obviously not the way I prefer to be ridden.” Tis bit one of Kera’s fingertips. “Yes, I’ll need a plane ticket. I can fly that far if I have to, but I’d rather not if there’s an alternative.” She hated to ask, but she needed to, given the gravity of why they were attending. “Do you need me to stay in my daytime form?” She was in it now and was beginning to understand why Alec didn’t mind using it so often now that she was with Selene.

  Kera thought about it for a moment. “Maybe initially, that would be a good idea. You know how superstitious the Vodun culture is. If they meet you first, and I explain who you are, they’re more likely to accept you in your natural state. I don’t know how things are going there, with the gods visiting and whatever uproar that’s causing, so it’s probably better to ease you in.”

  They left the restaurant hand in hand, and Tis felt better than she had in days. There were issues and potential pitfalls of varying kinds. But she was looking forward to the weeks ahead, and that was something special in itself. Kera headed back to work, and Tis headed to Afterlife to see if Meg or Alec were around. If Aulis wasn’t available, her sisters certainly had enough experience in relationships between them to help a girl out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You’re joking, right? Or are you really this moronic? You’d rather have them living in tents on the streets than in housing?” Kera threw her pencil across the room, completely fed up.

  “The mayor feels that by building the homeless permanent housing, we’d be creating a slum area and would be giving complicit acceptance to the homeless situation.”

  “Has the mayor ever been to Skid Row? You’re telling me he really thinks the city’s image is better with twenty thousand homeless actually on the street than in buildings?” She squeezed her stress ball so hard the side split and goo started spilling out. She needed to figure out how to spin the situation so the mayor saw the benefit to himself. “Tell him this. Tell him that image comes from visibility. Right now, those twenty thousand homeless people are completely visible, out in the open. If he gives me the leases on those buildings, the homeless move inside, out of view, and it looks like he’s done a massive cleanup of the city. He’ll look like a big hero, and people will stop talking about his massive truck compensating for other things. Tell him that. I’ll call tomorrow for his answer.” She hung up and rested her forehead on the desk. She’d spent the entire week trying to work through the mountain of paperwork to get the LA project underway. Some of it had been easier than she’d thought it would be, like the youth center. The current social welfare offices “weren’t available,” so she decided to start her own job center, and procuring the building for that had been simple too. She had staff working on getting renovation teams in to set it up, along with those for the youth center.

  But when it came to housing, it was like firing a water canon into a tornado. Even though she was willing to buy the buildings outright, because they knew she wanted them as long-term housing and shelter, they were refusing to sell them to her. All the buildings large enough for her plans were owned by the city, mostly reclaimed through forfeiture.

  Ajan knocked on her open door. “Hey, boss. How’s things?”

  She got up to give him a hug. “Same shit, different government. No one wants the poor in their cities, but no one wants to do anything about them, either. I suppose we can just be grateful we’re not contending with bombs on top of it all.”

  “Well, if anyone can do it, you can. I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

  He was rarely totally serious and almost never reticent to say what was on his mind. That he looked both now set off alarm bells. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nah, not wrong, really.”

  “Wait. Do I need a drink for this?”

  He shrugged, not looking her in the eye. “Yeah, maybe we both do.”

  She punched his shoulder on her way past him up the stairs. “Beer first.”

  Once she’d popped two open for them, and they were sitting on the deck watching the sun go down, she said, “Okay. Go.”

  “You remember that little girl, from Nigeria? The one you took from her mother’s body?”

  “Of course I do. How is she acclimating to the orphanage?”

  “Not great.” He took a sip of beer and looked away from her again. “The thing is, when I went over there to check on her and give the instructions you gave me, I sat with her a while. And I’ve been going back whenever I can, you know, just to check on her. She’s a sweet kid, just a bit messed up from it all.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “I want to adopt her.” He blurted it out and looked relieved the moment the words were out of his mouth. “She doesn’t have a soul in the world, and because of what you pay me, I could give her a really great life. I always wanted kids—”

  “Ajan, stop. It’s okay with me if you want to do it. Hell, you don’t need to clear it with me at all.” He looked so excited, she hated to say what she needed to. “But you know what our lives are. How long we can be gone. Are you okay with adopting her and then going away for three, six, eight months at a time? You know the areas we go aren’t safe for children.”

  He looked like he might cry. “I know all that. I’m going to hire people to help me out and to take care of her when I’m not here. She might not have me around all the time, but she’ll have a way better life than in an orphanage or in foster care. And when I am around, I’ll treat her like she’s my own.” He finally looked at her squarely. “You know, I’m not getting younger, either. I’m not going to be working forever.”

  The thought stunned her. She’d never considered what the business would look lik
e without Ajan. She looked at him and really saw him for the first time in ages. There was more gray in his hair than not-gray, and fine lines weathered his face like the veins of a leaf. She tried to smile past the fear of losing her bulwark against the world. “So you’re going to be Daddy Warbucks, huh?”

  “A Haitian one. That’s a story no one would believe.”

  “Just give me plenty of heads-up before you go, okay? I’ll want you to train my next you.”

  He looked at her sheepishly. “Well now, I’ve been thinking about that. There aren’t many people out there I know for a fact would take a bullet for you the way I would. Someone whose loyalty you could really depend on. But there is one person…”

  Kera wracked her brain, trying to figure out who he could possibly mean, but she came up empty. She gave him a baffled look.

  “Petra Skinner.”

  She scoffed. “Petra? You barely know her. Hell, I barely know her, although I know a ton more about her than I used to. Did you know she—”

  “Is one of those immortal folks? Yeah, I know. I have for a while.”

  “How did you know?”

  He sighed, leaned back in his chair, and put his hands behind his head. “You know, in all the years we’ve been doing this crazy business, you never asked me why I came with you.”

  She shrugged. “I assumed it was because I offered you more money than you’d ever seen and a chance to get away from our little shanty town. Not to mention my remarkable charm.”

  “You can call it charm if you want to. And the money? That didn’t hurt.” He grinned at her, but his expression was serious. “But you and your parents didn’t live there anymore. You’d been gone for a while, just coming back to see family. What you don’t know is, on one of those trips your mama asked me to look after you. She said she’d been watching you grow up, and she didn’t know why, but you had trouble letting people in. You had lots of friends, plenty of people around you, but you never let them get close. God knows, your mom and dad weren’t that way, so she wasn’t sure why. But she said she knew you were destined for something big, so she was hoping it meant you would find that special someone when your destiny came for you.”