by Claire Luana
“Absolutely not,” I hiss. “No way. This is my problem. I’m not going to put you in danger.”
She looks away. “I hate this.”
I soften. I hate it too. But my hatred is old, hardened over, calcified like an ancient relic. This is all fresh to her. “It’s okay. I’ve been through this before. Many times.”
“I know, but this time you’re trying something different. You’re in uncharted territory.”
I nod. I have tried to intervene to save my sisters in countless lives. And in countless lives I have failed. They have died so many ways, more ways than a human could even conceive. The Fates are infinitely creative. Zeus. Orion. I don’t know who to blame, so I blame all of them. I’m sick of it. It needs to stop. So I’ve decided that this time will be different.
This time, I’m going to kill Orion myself.
Chapter 3
I’m barely present as I sit through history (my least favorite subject), Pre-Calc, and Spanish. I like Spanish, because the words float back up to me from my past lives. I always get As on the tests.
My stomach is tied in knots the whole afternoon, and when I put on my gear for track practice, I wonder if I will throw up.
Luckily, after some running drills (where lunch’s chicken fingers blessedly stay put), Coach Donaldson sends us to different stations and I get to practice with the javelin. I miss most of the time, but it feels satisfying to hurl the weapon. I imagine my target is Orion, trying murder on for size. It feels okay. I think I’ll be able to do this.
“I keep expecting you to yell ‘Sparta!’ every time you loose that thing.” Coach Donaldson approaches, his strong arms crossed over his chest. His short hair is flecked with gray, his lined face kind. He’s one of my favorite teachers. “Everything all right?”
“Just working out some frustration.” I trot over to retrieve the javelin, and he holds out his hand for it. I have a blister forming. Maybe I was a bit aggressive with my throws.
“Anything you want to talk about?” he asks, his blue eyes searching my face. He chuckles ruefully. “Though I’m sure you could talk to your mother anytime. Kinda nice to have the school psychologist at your house, eh?”
I snort. “Not as nice as you’d think. Thanks, Coach D, but I’m fine.”
He nods after a moment and walks away.
Practice is over before I know it and I’m riding home with Zoe. The air in the car is charged, and the music grates on my nerves. I turn it down. The hot air is blasting, making me sweat, but I leave it. Zoe is perpetually cold.
Zoe pulls up at my house and I suddenly I wish the ride home was longer. That I had more space between me and what was coming. She puts her Volvo in park and turns to me. “I’ve been thinking about it. You don’t have to do this. It’s awful to say, but…people die all the time. You don’t have to save all of them. It’s not your job. You don’t even know this girl.”
“But I do,” I whisper. “I’ve tried doing nothing, and it’s not better. The guilt…” I trail off.
“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I pull Zoe in for a hug. She smells of the little tangerines we split on the way home. The peels are strewn about the center console. “I’ll be careful. I’ll be at the lockers tomorrow, totally fine, with the most badass story. You’ll see.”
“Promise?” Her voice is muffled in my hair.
“Promise.” I open the door and get out hastily. I don’t want her to see my lie. I wave and smile. “See you tomorrow!”
I walk up to the door and fumble to put my key in the lock. When I finally get it open, Zoe’s still waiting.
She waves.
I wave back.
The house is dark and cool. Mom left a twenty on the counter for the pizza guy. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat.
I trudge up to the bathroom and strip out of my track clothes. The hot water from the shower scalds me, but I welcome the needle-sharp pains. They bring me out of the fog I feel shrouding me. I can’t believe it’s happening again.
I wipe the mist off the mirror and look at my reflection, standing in my forest-green towel. I rather like this iteration of myself. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but I’m not too shabby-looking. I have my mom’s thick curls coupled with my dad’s dark brown hair. I have a smattering of freckles across my nose and face that add to the whole picture. Long, dark eyelashes around hazel eyes. Good-sized boobs. With all the running I do, I can eat whatever I want and stay pretty thin. Which is good, because I love the food of this lifetime. I mean, most of it hardly counts as real food, but it’s still sooo delicious! Pringles and peanut butter M&Ms and garlic bread slathered in butter… Okay, maybe I do want that pizza.
I place my order and dress in dark skinny jeans, a black tee, and my purple hoodie. I’m wearing my silver bracelet with an etching of the Pleiades, which pretty much never comes off. It was a present from my dad when I turned thirteen, in honor of our astronomy seshes.
I walk downstairs to the den and open the closet, where my dad keeps his gun safe. I punch in the code (my mom’s birthday—our code to everything) and pull out my dad’s .357 revolver. It feels heavy and cool in my hand. Yeah, my dad has guns. He’s into hunting and wanted a hand gun for “security.” Bend has grown a lot since I was a kid, but it’s still kinda redneck at heart. Dad always says there’s a bit of the country in all of us.
I grab six bullets and close the safe. Even though the gun is unloaded, I can’t bring myself to shove it into the waist of my pants. I feel like it’ll go off. How do people in movies just shove loaded guns into their clothing? Worst idea.
The doorbell rings and I whirl around in a panic for a moment, looking for a place to stash the gun. I feel foolish a second later. It’s not like the pizza guy is going to come in and inspect the place. I put it on the couch and retrieve my dinner.
An hour later, I’m wheeling my bike out of the garage. I can feel my sister pulling me. It’s Electra, I can tell. The second oldest. I was always a little in awe of her. She was fearless and fierce. At least when I knew her. But that was a very, very long time ago. From what I’ve figured out, I’m the only one in this whole sordid cursed affair that actually knows what the hell is going on. My sisters don’t remember their past lives. They don’t remember who I am. They don’t even know what I’m trying to do for them. Maybe it’s better that way. They don’t know what’s coming.
The visions are like dreams, except sometimes they come when I’m awake. I see bits and pieces—images, sounds, faces. Sometimes I see my sisters before their deaths—happy and laughing—though it’s impossible to ignore the specter that looms over them. The fate that awaits. More often, I see their ends. Cries of terror, rending flesh, vacant gazes. This is the stuff of my magic. Trust me when I say I’d get rid of it if I could.
Oh, and I didn’t even mention. My visions come with an after-affect. They pull at me—in both space and time. These moments are like gravity to me. Try as I might, the force always wins. It’s the pull I follow now, my very own personal Spidey sense. It’s getting dark, but the evening is warm. It would be a nice night for a bike ride if my backpack weren’t weighed down with a gun. If my soul weren’t weighed down with the knowledge of what I must do.
I’ve thought about killing Orion before—I’m not an idiot. But the problem is that he’s just reincarnated. He’ll be back—the pattern will repeat. Maybe fifteen or twenty years will pass, but my sisters will still die, maybe even in that same lifetime. Or that’s what I always assumed. I’d only be delaying the inevitable.
It was Zoe who suggested that I was wrong about that, actually. That maybe killing him could break the cycle somehow. That if we didn’t rise and fall together, all eight of us trapped in the same lifetime, perhaps somehow the Fates would lose their grip on us. It was a novel thought. And one worthy of exploring. At the cost of only one murderous asshole’s life.
And maybe my freedom. Meriah’s freedom. Sure, we’re the same person, but sometimes it’s hard to s
eparate this life from the fragmented memories of the people I used to be. I shove down the thought. I’m fond of this body, this life, this century. Who wouldn’t be? Cell phones and Instagram and pumpkin spice lattes. What’s not to like? But she’s just a vessel, this body. I struggle to remind myself. If I have to sacrifice her future to kill Orion, to end this once and for all, I will. I will a thousand times over.
I ride out of the city limits, onto the back road. Tall evergreen trees block the twilight sky where stars are just beginning to emerge. But I know my sisters are up there, at least their bodies. I will put their souls to rest. This is the lifetime I’ll do it.
A visceral tug pulls at my chest and my bike wobbles erratically. I gasp in a deep breath and steady my bike, pumping my legs faster. It’s happening. It’s close. And I’m not there yet.
I pondered my plan on the way over, and the best I could come up with was to shoot out a tire. Orion’s car would swerve and stop, eliminating any accident. Then I would approach and end this.
My mind rebels at the idea of killing someone in cold blood. But this isn’t just anyone, I remind myself. It’s Orion. He’s not an innocent. He has about as much blood on his hands as a soul can. Jack the Ripper’s got nothing on Orion.
A squeal of tires pierces the calm of the night, followed by a tremendous crash that vibrates through my body.
“Shit!” I hiss, redoubling my efforts. I’m too late! The crash has already happened! How had I miscalculated? I thought I had more time, that it was going to be well after sunset.
Two cars are strewn cockeyed across the road before me. One car—some sort of sedan—has completely flipped and now sits smoking, its wheels spinning.
The other car, a massive old red pickup truck, looks like it came through the crash pretty well.
I throw myself off my bike a few yards from the crash and scramble across broken glass to peer through the window of the upside-down car. A blonde girl hangs in the driver’s seat by her seatbelt, her face a mess of blood and glass. My gut twists painfully at the sight and the smell—burnt rubber mingled with the copper tang of blood. My sister’s soul rests inside this body. Is she alive? Yes! She groans.
I pop to my feet and rip my backpack open, pulling my phone out. I start to dial 911 and then freeze as I see the revolver. As I remember why I’m really here. I need to act fast.
“911, what’s your emergency?” a perky voice asks.
“Accident on State Route 372. Send an ambulance.”
“Ma’am—” the operator says, but I hang up.
I look up slowly, my eyes focusing through the windshield of the truck. Where a head hangs low behind the steering wheel.
Orion. He’s unconscious. He’s defenseless.
I shove my phone into my pocket and reach into my backpack.
I know what I have to do.
Chapter 4
I approach the truck cautiously, the cold steel of the pistol in my hand, still half-hidden in my backpack.
Sweat pricks across my body. I feel like prey approaching a predator. Everything about this is wrong. I should be fleeing. I know how much destruction this soul has caused. How much death.
But when I see him, my feet still.
He’s my age. Seventeen, eighteen maybe? God, he could go to my school. He’s slumped against the driver’s seat, his head lolled back. Blood trickles down his forehead from a gash at his hairline—he has brown hair, spiked in front. He’s wearing a yellow and black plaid shirt. His long eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. Every detail leaps out at me and I hesitate.
Can I really kill this boy in cold blood?
There have been a few lifetimes where I’ve encountered Orion, where I’ve looked him in his eyes. Always, I’m too late. Once, in Constantinople, the jewel of the Holy Roman Empire. 1450, give or take. Just a few years later, the Ottoman Empire sacked the city, and I was killed in the fighting. But I remembered seeing him in the market. It’s one of my most vivid memories of him.
It was late, and I was hurrying home from a friend’s house. It wasn’t proper for women to travel alone at night unescorted, but my friend lived only a few blocks from my house, and I knew the way. I had never been much for rules in any lifetime. Our husbands were both merchants who were often gone for weeks at a time. My friend and I kept each other sane.
I’d had a vision of my sister’s death for days, but in that lifetime, I did my best to ignore them. It went in phases, you see. Sometimes I tried. And sometimes I was too heartbroken, too weary from my centuries of failure. So I endured.
It was a dark night, but for light from a sliver of moon. A night for dark deeds, it seemed.
I heard a sound coming from an alley—a sound like a moan of pain. I slowed, peering around the corner.
That’s when I saw him. He was dressed in the stiff, dark clothing of Constantinople, and on the ground before him lay a girl. I knew it was my sister Celaeno. She had been quiet and demure in the lifetime I’d spent with her, and it seemed she was still now.
For she lay on the ground, blood pouring from her chest. And Orion was kneeling over her, cutting open her corset with a wicked little blade. It wasn’t enough he had mortally wounded her, but now he was going to desecrate her body? The monster!
I slapped a hand over my mouth to keep from screaming in fear and rage. There was nothing I could do to save her. Her wounds were far too severe. Tears sprang forth, pouring in hot rivulets down my cheeks, as I fled the rest of the way to the safety of my house. I flung myself in through the door, slamming it shut behind me, collapsing against it, sliding down into a ball.
My servants tried to talk to me, ask me what was wrong, but in the moment all I knew was blood and the wound and the neat little movements of that psychopath as he carved a woman apart. And the fact that I—the consummate coward—had left my sister to her fate.
Orion groans and one bloody hand raises to his head. I pull the gun out of my backpack. I can end it all here. Now.
I cock the trigger, feeling as though my eternity rests on the edge of this moment.
I raise the gun, the barrel shaking as I struggle to hold it still.
Then his eyelids flutter. And open. He blinks groggily and I hastily lower the weapon. His eyes are blue. Deep blue, like the Pacific Ocean on a cloudy day.
“How—?” The word is slurred.
His head drops as he slumps back into unconsciousness.
I raise the gun again, muttering to myself angrily. “It doesn’t matter if he’s frickin’ Chris Hemsworth himself. He’s a murderer. He needs to die.”
Everything falls away.
My ragged breath and raging pulse. The gentle breeze that tousles my curls. Even my sister, bleeding and dying just feet from me. Orion and I have been dancing around this moment for the better part of two millennia. This moment is about him and me.
As I pass into a perfect calm, a faint siren sounds in the distance.
And I realize what a colossal fool I’ve been.
“Fuck!” I swear, un-cocking the gun and shoving it back in my bag.
I called 911 on my phone. If the police get here and someone’s been shot dead, they’ll certainly want to talk to the only other person who was on the scene. Me.
I shoulder on my pack and bury my hands in my hair, spinning in a circle. What am I going to do?
The siren is getting louder.
My chance to end this, to end Orion, is slipping away.
A plan comes to life in my mind and it’s crazy, but it’s all I got.
Springing into action, I sprint across the road and retrieve my bike. I heave it over the back of the old pick-up truck, throwing it into the bed.
I haul open the driver’s side door and reach over, unbuckling Orion’s seatbelt.
Once freed, he slumps forwards to the steering wheel.
I run around the other side and climb up into the truck, grabbing him under the armpits and pulling him across the bench seat towards me. It’s like hauling a lead weight, but I
manage to get him into the passenger seat. I buckle him in to keep him from falling out the other side when I step out. I try to ignore how, despite the blood and the accident, he smells fresh—faintly of hay and leather and night air.
Slamming the door, I run around the other side of the truck, pulling myself up into it. This thing is built like a tank. No wonder he wasn’t more badly injured. It must be from the 50s? An antique.
I struggle with the old clutch, thanking the Fates that I learned how to drive stick in my prior life. I lived in Wales last time around. My sisters died in the Great War. Dad “taught” me again last year, but I really just remembered.
I whoop as I finally get the beast into first gear and hit the gas.
The sirens are even louder now. They’ll be here in minutes. I need to be long gone by then.
When the police arrive on scene, they’ll think it was a hit-and-run. All I need to do is find a place to lie low, a place where I can think of a new plan, a new way to kill Orion without linking it to me. This just got way more complicated.
My mind is racing, but all I can hear is a rattle in the cab behind me. I turn and see a Rainier beer can vibrating on the floorboards, half-crushed.
I look back at Orion through narrowed eyes. He was driving drunk? The asshole. Resolve washes over me once again. Certainty that what I’m doing is right.
We pass a road sign and I slam on the brakes.
Orion jerks forwards, but the seatbelt throws him back against the seat. He groans and lifts his head, looking at me groggily.
Now he’s seen my face.
“What the hell?” he asks. He has a nice voice, deep and rich, though it’s scratchy right now. Of course he does. Apparently, the Fates want me to appreciate everything about this murdering bastard. It doesn’t matter, I think savagely.
“You were in an accident,” I say sweetly. “I’m taking you to somewhere safe. Just rest.”
“You”—he blinks rapidly, as if he’s losing consciousness again—“can drive stick?” And then his head drops to his chest. He’s out.