Rifts

by Nicole Hamlett

  "Can we be serious for just a minute?"

  "Whoah!" I held my hand up and gave him a perplexed look. "I just had a flashback to me being married. You're getting all stuffy on me AND we're not having sex. Wiggy."

  He rolled his eyes and continued. "Look - I'm about to drop a couple of bombs on you, so I really need you to be serious for a couple of minutes."

  Unease crept up between my shoulder blades. I didn't want to be serious. As much as I bitched about it, I wasn't sure if I wanted to know all of the stuff he had to tell me. What if it was too big? What if my brain exploded from the weight of it all? There's really only so much serious shit that you can take before you've had enough and the last six months of my life had been pretty damn serious.

  I mean, first I found out that I was the daughter of Diana the Huntress. Then I learned that my father had kidnapped, raped and nearly killed her before she trapped him in the Earth's Core. And then he found out about me and tried to have ME killed but not before leveling Los Angeles. I mean… really… shit was serious enough without Drew adding to it.

  "Am I going to need a drink for this?"

  He paused and then nodded. "Probably."

  I leapt over the side of the chair and headed to the kitchen for a glass of wine. "Hold that thought. I'll be right back."

  He followed me into the kitchen and started talking. "Your mother had Hope after my father wiped out half of Europe with the Black Plague – which is why she was named Hope. It was before they got married, actually. She'd come upon a village that was hanging on by the skin of its teeth and met a young man who she quickly became fascinated with. It wasn't until after she'd become pregnant that she realized the man had contracted the disease. She wasn't affected by it of course, but she had to watch as the beauty and creativity that she saw in this man wasted away with the black pus that erupted from his sores.”

  "Gross," I murmured.

  "Yeah, she was devastated. It's probably why she agreed to marry my father. Not long after, she created his comfortable prison. At first, it wasn't just the lab. He had free roam of Olympus in those days - he just couldn't leave the Sanctuary. Then the madness took hold and he was limited more and more to chambers where he couldn't strike out at unsuspecting Hunters."

  "Did he know that she was pregnant?"

  He smiled, "Of course. His imprisonment took place gradually. It was fifty to a hundred years before he was confined to his lab and their chambers."

  "Did… did he know that Hope was another man's?"

  His face took on a grim countenance and he nodded shortly. "Yeah, he knew. Hope was a reminder to him of his failure. He didn't have much to do with her and I think that Diana was relieved."

  "I can imagine that it would have been hard for him to see a daily reminder of the destruction he'd caused."

  Drew just nodded.

  "How long was she alive before Geb took her?"

  "I think that she was with us... Oh… for three or four hundred years? It's hard to remember the timeline exactly. She was taken right before your Revolutionary War."

  My mouth dropped open. She'd been 425 years old - give or take a year - when she was taken and thrown into another dimension. Coincidentally, she'd been trapped there for the last three hundred years. No freakin' wonder she was loony bins.

  "What kind of life did she live?"

  "Hmm, I think that if you were to compare her to anyone it would have to be Wonder Woman. She was grace and beauty and had a fierceness that made my heart ache." He paused and took a deep breath. "She was everything that was good of your Mother and more. It was nothing but devastation when Geb took her."

  His description made me want to gag. Was I jealous? N- Maybe. Probably. Okay, most likely yes. I was jealous. I also had a feeling that there was something more he wasn't telling me. It was this wiggling parasite of a thought at the back of my brain that wouldn't shut up. I didn't get these usually with Drew so it threw me off.

  "Can I interrupt this expounding upon the ultimate Paragon of Virtue for a moment?" I scowled. The woman had beaten the shit out of me and stabbed me through the heart. She wasn't that good and kind. "She's not that person anymore, Drew. She was crazy and wild and she would have murdered me if she'd been able to. Besides, how did she get in through a Rift now and not during the three hundred years she's been exiled? These are all questions that we really need to ponder."

  He threw an assessing look at me before grabbing a glass and filling it from the water bottle. "I wish I knew why she didn't come back sooner. All I know is that we need to help her if we can."

  "Right, I'm not disagreeing with you here. I'm just telling you that she probably isn't the person that you knew. I got big bad vibes from a Rift and it makes me sick that I may have killed an innocent creature in her stead."

  He nodded and took a long drink of water as if it would wash away the ugly taste in his mouth. Nothing was washing this one away. I felt dread. What if that creature had been screaming at me in a language I didn't know? What if it had been begging for its life? The pit in my stomach grew larger and I sank to the floor with my glass of wine, taking a deep gulp.

  Killing in any form wasn't easy. I was the kind of girl who would scoop up the bugs and let them back outside if I could. I was the kind of girl who bought humane mouse traps because I couldn't bear to know that I'd killed even a rodent. This was heavy.

  Drew picked up on my thoughts and sank down beside me, drawing me in close into his side. "You couldn't know. This is one of the reasons that kids end up at Olympus. They learn this stuff from a young age so they don't make these mistakes. I know that you're completely against it, but Dylan needs to go there. You don't want him feeling this."

  "You know I—"

  He cut me off. "Yes, I know you think you can't. If you'd just let us take care of Brandon - and NO, I don't mean killing him - we could make this work."

  I sighed. He wasn't the only one arguing for this. Athena - who'd helped with the transition and had become closer to me than Rose had ever been - also argued for our relocation to Olympus. If for nothing else than for our own safety.

  That brought me to Rose. Oh how my mind skipped. Since that night when she'd come to Brandon's house, we'd grown further apart. It was one thing to see Drew transform into me and accept the changes in my life. It was another to realize that her family could become collateral damage.

  That had hurt more than anything. Her friendship growing up was the one rock I'd had. I could feel that rock being chipped away by the currents in this raging river of my life and it made me sad. I couldn't blame her. Dylan was the most important thing in my life and if I'd had to choose, I would have chosen him too.

  Yeah, I didn't want to think about that anymore. Honestly, I didn't want to think about any of this. I just wanted to drink a few more glasses of wine and close my eyes. Oh, wait… a shower would have been exceptional.

  "So if you're not going to kill my ex-husband, what are you planning to do? He's pretty adamant about maintaining his relationship with Dylan," I sighed. "I wish he'd just get Clarissa knocked up so he'd butt out."

  "That's not very charitable, Grace."

  "Yeah, but neither is banging your receptionist while you're still married. I think I'll survive the karmic backlash of this one."

  Brandon (the ex-husband) wasn't entirely aware of the changes in our lives so he still thought he had a modicum of control. He wasn't wrong. I lived in constant fear that he'd find out and take my son away. It didn't matter that he would have been eliminated almost immediately. Some fears you just can't throw out with the bath water.

  I shouldn't be afraid though because Dylan still spent every other weekend with him, and since that fateful night he'd made it snow inside the house, nothing else out of the ordinary had happened.

  I'd like to think that it was because we were becoming a stable family unit. I wish I could say ordinary but there was nothing ordinary about a mother who could create earthquakes or a kid who could make an indoor
blizzard.

  Lost in my thoughts, I didn't hear the doorbell ring the first time. It wasn't until Dylan was pounding down the hall yelling "I'll get it!" that I even registered that someone was at the door. Three months ago I wouldn't have let him answer it. Now, however, I had some wicked strong wards protecting my house and nothing bad was getting in.

  "Hey there, is your Mommy home?"

  I sat up and gasped as I heard the words, dropping my glass on the tiles. You hear about stories where women who are mothers or grandmothers perform amazing feats in order to protect their children. I was already extraordinary but I don't know that I'd ever moved so fast.

  I wasn't fast enough. She'd laid her god damned filthy hand on my son and was stroking his head. He stood there mesmerized, like a deer in the headlights. Her smug smile turned on me full force as she ran her fingers through his downy soft hair. "You should have been mine," she murmured.

  "What are you doing here?" My voice was cold. I spent what felt like an eternity trying to figure out how to get Dylan's fragile body away from her before she could hurt him. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to die. I begged to every God in existence not to let her hurt him.

  "Oh, hello. I was hoping you'd be home. I feel like there is so much we have to say to each other and we simply didn't have enough time before."

  “Well right, because you stabbed me,” was what I wanted to say. Instead, "Step away from the child," left my mouth. My voice was even, which surprised the hell out of me because I was shaken to my core.

  "He's lovely and looks so very familiar. Where have I seen his face before?" Her voice was coy as she cocked her head. A smirk played around her mouth, curling her lip.

  "You haven't. I won't tell you again. Move your hand before you lose it." My kukri materialized on its own. I don't even recall thinking about it. Suddenly, the weight was just a comfortable presence in my hand.

  She didn't move her hand and within a blink I was in motion. One hand grabbed Dylan and pulled him behind me as the other slashed down with my weapon, slicing open her wrist. She'd jerked away at the last minute, but not fast enough to escape the sharp edge of my kukri.

  I raised an eyebrow and smiled slowly. She hissed at me in return. Okay, that was weird.

  "What are you, some kind of cheesy B-movie vampire?" I asked.

  "You're going to regret that. You just don't realize how much yet." Her eyes changed color, darkening as she smiled evilly at me.

  "Dylan, go find Scooter and stay with him," I said, never taking my eyes off of her.

  "Wha—what's going on here?" It sounded like he'd finally come out of his trance. It made me nervous that she could put him into that state so quickly. I made a mental note to ask Drew what her powers were.

  "Dylan, listen to what I just said and move it." The air was getting colder as he became more agitated. I didn't need a snow shower in my entryway so I deepened my voice with all of the parental command I could muster. "Now."

  I listened for the sound of him scrambling down the hall and through the basement door, feeling a wave of profound relief pound through my body. Okay. Now I could kill this bitch.

  "You know, I felt sorry for you. I was prepared to do the whole 'Welcome home, Hope. We love you!' speech. But yeah, you don't get that anymore. Threatening my child in any form cuts off any kind of sympathy you could have gotten from me."

  She sneered at me and laughed. "Oh I'm so hurt. Whatever will I do without my little sister's love and understanding?"

  I rested my weight on the balls of my feet, preparing to strike when Drew's voice interrupted my momentum. "Grace! Wait!"

  Hope's head snapped up and her eyes for that one moment looked almost human. There was pain in that gaze and longing so terrible that it made my chest ache. It would have been the perfect moment to strike, but I couldn't bring myself to lift the sword. "God damnit, Drew!"

  "Adonis," she breathed and struck at me with her fist. I didn't have time to sneeze before I was on the floor blinking away the stars. She stepped daintily over me and moved toward the traitor at my back. I was going to kill him after I was finished with her.

  "Hope, it is so good to see you alive. Where have you been, honey?"

  "Adonis, you're living with this abomination?"

  Whoah, nobody calls me an abomination in my own house. Did I have a bit of a self-esteem issue to contend with regarding my parentage? Maybe. That didn't give her leave to insult me in my Sanctuary. My body flew upwards without conscious thought. Suddenly, I went from sprawling on the floor to standing and moving in for the attack.

  I am sad to report that my arm was on the upswing and I simply cut a few strands of her honey gold hair before she turned around and flattened me again. She was powerful and the only clear moment I'd ever had in taking her out, Drew ruined.

  "Stay down, little doggie," she crooned.

  "Grace, please. Let me just have a conversation with Hope and we'll work it out."

  I growled at him and I heard an echo growl from the stairs that made my hair stand on end. Scooter was on the other side of that door. If I could get to it, he'd come out and rip her ass to pieces for me. She whirled on me with wide eyes. "Is—is that Zeus' golem on the other side of your door?"

  "Yeah, bitch; are you acquainted with my dog? It sounds like he doesn't like you so much."

  She paled and looked to Drew for help. She found no comfort there. He crossed his arms and stared at her perplexed.

  "Hope, you're better than this. What is going on?"

  "Have you missed me?" She sidled up against him and ran a finger down his chest. I was pretty sure that I was going to throw up.

  He opened his mouth to answer and she pressed her forefinger against his lips. "Shhh. I can see that you haven't missed your wife so much. You must be so proud – a son who is your very image. You must be so happy that the spawn of hell's daughter could give you what I could not in three hundred years."

  She was his WIFE? "Hope, it's not what you think," he murmured around her fingertip.

  My mouth dropped open and I could only stupidly stare at them. She thought that Dylan was Drew's kid? I got the wife part. But her brains were obviously scrambled beyond repair. No king's horses or men were going to fix this one.

  "Lady, you're barking up the wrong tree. I don't care if you are my sister. Get the fuck out of my house and don't come back." I paused, connected with the earth and the wards around the house and called loudly, "You are a danger to my life and that of my family's. You are not welcome in this Sanctuary."

  I still smile when I think about what happened next. As if pulled by a string, she flew backwards out of my house and into the street where she was dropped unceremoniously onto the asphalt. Drew followed her out and turned around to gape at me.

  Smug smile pasted to my lips, I rolled over and climbed to my feet. Drew started to talk and I whipped my hand up cutting him off. "Oh we're going to talk but not just this second. You stay there. I'll deal with you in a moment."

  I walked to the door and poked my head out. Smirking, I couldn't help but stick my tongue out at her before shutting the door. It would have been so much more satisfying if she hadn't called, "Grace! Ask him why he hasn't told you that he's the father of your child!"

  If I could have un-heard that, I would have. I jerked the door back open and stared wide eyed at Drew.

  Chapter 3

  Fury. Shock. Rage. Bewilderment. Every single one of these emotions rocketed around in my head, fighting each other for dominance. The ground began to vibrate.

  It was fairly well known to everyone except Dylan and Brandon that Brandon was not Dylan's biological father. The problem was that I never really knew who was. It had been a girl's night out gone bad. A few too many Cosmos and too little common sense resulted in the best thing that had ever happened to my life.

  I knew that Drew could glamour, but it couldn't have been him. I would have known, right? I would have fucking known.

  "All you have to do in this second
is say that it's not true. I'll believe you. That's all you have to do. I mean I'd never met you before. Right? Right??" My look was encouraging and I found myself nodding. I really wanted him to say that it wasn't true. I simply couldn't think of what it would mean for our relationship if he said otherwise.

  "Grace, we need to—"

  "Oh. Wrong words."

  The ground erupted around him, spraying dirt and rocks before collapsing in, bringing him down with it. I could see it in the way his eyes tightened. He had lied to me. He'd never said he wasn't Dylan's father, but lying by omission is still lying. Fury enveloped me in fire.

  Literally, I was on fire. Flames licked up my skin with a delicious caress.

  "You lied to me. You've been lying to me all this time." My voice was dead and my heart hurt. It made me angrier. I was tired of being constantly hurt. The fire grew hotter and the foliage around my door withered in the heat.

  Something in the back of my mind told me that I needed to reign in the anger. I didn't want to be my father and this was the path to that level of crazy. When did my mantra become “Don’t turn into your father?” Luke…Luke…

  "Mom?" The voice was scared and filled with confusion.

  "Bubby, go back downstairs and call Athena. Tell her that we need a ride to Olympus. I'll be right there." I couldn't look at him. I was afraid of what he'd see in my eyes. The kid could look right into my soul and he didn't need to know what was going on in there right now.

  "Oh… okay. Mom, I love you."

  "I love you too, Bubby. Everything will be fine." The fire that had been licking up my body, surrounding me with the physical manifestation of my rage died down to a glow as I walked to Drew's half-buried body. I knelt down so we were at eye level.

  "I don't understand how this happened or is even possible. But you could have told me the truth and we'd be okay right now. If you'd said something before I would have been pissed or confused, but I really believe that we could have worked through it. But you just can't share, can you? Everything has to be a damned secret. Does it make you feel more powerful? Do you think you're protecting someone by holding your cards so close? Well, you're wrong if you do. Drew, you fucked up."