Orion's Kiss

by Claire Luana

Ryan seems ridiculously pleased with himself that he’s thrown such a fine little wrench in our grand plan.

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Maybe we’ll just let you pee your pants.”

  He calls my bluff. “But then it would smell in here, and it’s just unsanitary. I don’t think that’s the type of operation you’re running.”

  Damn it, he’s right. I don’t want to soil Zoe’s family’s cabin. Ew.

  “I have an idea.” Zoe nods her head towards the garage. I follow her in.

  “Are you thinking, like, just find him a water bottle to pee in?” I ask, grimacing at the thought of the rock-paper-scissors we’d have to do to figure out who had the misfortune of getting…things…into position.

  “Ew, no. And at some point, he’s going to have to do the other one, right?” Zoe says. “Dad’s, like, obsessed with safety. He thinks there are murderers and rapists behind every tree waiting to get us.” She rummages around on a shelf. “Aha!” She has an item in each hand. One I recognize as a container of pepper spray. The other, a black remote-control-like device, is unfamiliar to me.

  “It’s a Taser.” She waggles it at me.

  I let out a surprise laugh. “You guys have a Taser?”

  “Pepper spray is for running; Taser is for all other times.”

  “Your dad is hopeless.” I roll my eyes. But it will come in handy against one murderer.

  I take the Taser from her, examining its mechanism. Seems straightforward. Definitely preferable to getting into an armed shootout. We return to the living room and Ryan’s eyes are wary, tracking our movements. I take the gun and put it a drawer in the kitchen, so Ryan isn’t tempted to go for it in a mad bid for freedom.

  I return. “We have a Taser and pepper spray. Try anything and you’ll be in a lot of pain.”

  “You can’t hit me with that thing,” Ryan says of the Taser. He looks at it like I’m pointing the devil’s own pitchfork at him.

  “If you cooperate, we won’t have to.” I hand the Taser back to Zoe and she stands, double fisted, as I lean down to untie Ryan’s feet. It feels far too vulnerable; my mind races over all the things he could try. Kicking out at me, tipping the chair over on me, etcetera, etcetera. I know that we’ll only pull this off with Ryan’s cooperation. Because he doesn’t know what we actually have in store for him.

  He offers a half-hearted joke. “I always thought if a girl tied me up, we’d have less of an audience.”

  “Spare us the frat boy humor.” I scoff, moving up to the ropes around his wrists. His hands are free.

  Then the ropes around his broad chest go slack and I pull in a breath, standing quickly and backing away, retrieving the Taser from Zoe. “Move.” I nod towards the hallway with the bathroom.

  He stands, and I realize how much taller he is than Zoe and me. Almost six feet maybe. How much bigger. This little plastic device doesn’t make me feel very secure against the weight of our history, but I push my fears down with a vicious shove.

  He gets to the bathroom and I realize we didn’t clear it for dangerous items. There could be a razor blade or something in there…but it’s too late. He’s at the door.

  “Be right out,” he calls in a singsong voice, our ropes still trailing from his hands.

  “Can’t wait,” I respond in a matching tone. “Come right out,” I call after him. “No dawdling.”

  As soon as the door shuts, Zoe wipes one hand on her yoga pants, then the other. “Holy hell, Mer,” she whispers. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for this shit.”

  “You’re doing great,” I say, though I completely agree with her. “This’ll be great fodder for your college essays.”

  She lets out a genuine laugh at that. “Tell us about a time when your character was tested.”

  I answer. “Well, this one time, when I kidnapped an ancient reincarnated Greek villain with my best friend…”

  A flush sounds and a few moments later the bathroom door flies open and Zoe and I both jump, our weapons trained on Ryan. His hands are blessedly empty of weapons.

  “That was fast.” I narrow my eyes. “Did you even wash your hands?”

  “What do you think I am, a heathen?” he asks, outraged. Like that’s the most insulting thing that has happened to him all night.

  He walks towards us and we back up hastily into the living room, and again I don’t feel like the kidnapper. If he ran for it, I don’t know what would happen.

  But he returns to the chair like the well-behaved kidnap victim that he’s turning out to be. “You guys have any food? Or some water?”

  I quickly tie Ryan back up again, and when it’s done, I let out a shuddering sigh of relief.

  Ryan seems amused, which just pisses me off.

  Zoe and I briefly converse. We decide she’ll go home, and I’ll stay to keep an eye on him. I grab my phone and text my mom that I’m staying at Zoe’s. She’s going to go home, grab some food, and come back in the morning to pick me up. We’ll have to leave him here alone during the day. There’s no way I can miss school without cluing in my mom that something’s up.

  I walk Zoe out to the porch and we hug. “Be careful,” she says. “Don’t untie him alone.”

  “I won’t let him drink too much water,” I joke.

  She pulls back and looks at me, her hands resting on my shoulders. “If you’re going to do it, we need to end this soon. The longer he stays here, the harder it will be.”

  I nod. She’s right. I can already feel my resolve slipping. This guy seems okay. I search for the embers of my anger from before. The empty beer can. Blood dripping down my sister’s face as she hung upside down in her mangled car. My memories, surfaced from prior lifetimes. The coals are still hot. I just need to blow them back to life. Stay in control of the situation. Do what must be done.

  But when Zoe drives away and I’m left here alone with him, I can’t help the feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’m not in control at all. That there’s a puppet master jerking the strings of all of our destinies, twining us together yet again. That in this lifetime, the Fates have just found a more creative way to ruin the Pleiades sisters.

  I’m overcome with shyness as I walk back into the living room.

  “And then there were two.” Ryan offers a weak smile.

  I don’t respond, walking past him to the kitchen. I retrieve a glass of water and wet a paper towel.

  “Thelma?” he calls after me. “Everything all right?”

  I come back into the room and scoff at him. “I’m Louise, and no, everything is definitely not all right.”

  I hold the glass up to his lips and tip it back for him to drink. I’m a little over aggressive with the angle and water dribbles onto his shirt as he can’t keep up.

  “Don’t drown me.” He coughs as I take the glass away.

  I set the glass down and dab the paper towel at his forehead, where his blood has dried. He hisses and jerks away, but I grab the back of his head to make him hold still. His hair is downy beneath my fingers.

  “Why are you doing all this?” he asks quietly as I work to clean the blood from him. I’ll need to get some Neosporin from the bathroom to make sure it doesn’t get infected.

  I can feel his eyes examining me, but I can’t meet them. I don’t know why I’m doing this. If I’m just going to kill him, what does it matter if he gets an infection? But maybe I’m doing it to prove to myself that I’m not like him. That I can be kind, even when I have to be cruel. The thought melts a tension that was coiled within me. Yes. My goal will be to find the kindest way to end him. To give him a peaceful death, the kind of death my sisters never had.

  “Louise.” The word is soft. “I can’t stay here for long. There’s…someone who depends on me. My grandma. I’m the only one who can drive her places. Make sure she takes her medicine. Pay our bills. I have work tomorrow. I don’t know what’s going on with you and your friend, but it’s really important that it’s over soon.”

  I don’t want to know this—that he has so
meone who depends on him. But even murderers have families, I suppose.

  I meet his eyes then. That blue ocean deep enough to drown in.

  “I can promise you this much,” I say. My throat is scratchy and I clear it. “It’ll be over soon.”

  Chapter 8

  The next morning is a strange blur. Zoe comes with Pop-Tarts and we feed Ryan, give him some water, and untie him so he can use the bathroom. It’s like Zoe and I have adopted a pet murderer.

  He’s pretty pissed when I announce we’re leaving. I feel a little guilty, which just pisses me off. I need to be stone cold.

  On the way to school, I let Zoe know my new plan. “I’m going to find a way to kill him kindly,” I announce. “The gentlest way to go. Then we’ll dump his body in the lake.”

  She nods. “So like poison or something?”

  “Yeah, or drug overdose maybe? I need to google it.”

  “Well, they can trace your search history,” she says. “Don’t use your phone. Do it on one of the library computers.”

  And that’s why Zoe’s going to get into one of the best colleges. She’s a frickin’ genius.

  I wave to Mom as I pass her office on my way to my locker. I feel grimy from not showering and strung out from lack of sleep. A bacon breakfast sandwich from the school’s cafeteria helps that significantly, and I sink into my chair in first period history with relief. Here, I can veg out for a while.

  Brandon Cook slides into the seat next to me, and my senses blaze to awareness. I’ve always used my vantage point as his desk neighbor to get all the deets for Zoe—what he’s wearing, whom he’s texting under his desk, what grades he gets on his exams. Answers: well-fitting jeans and vintage T-shirts, usually Mindy Jackson or Lila Hernandez (they seem to be competing for the starring role of his girlfriend), and As and Bs, mostly. He’s a pretty good student. Today, I examine him surreptitiously out of the corner of my eye. I take it all in: his curly, dark hair; white teeth idly chewing on the end of his pen; black and gray baseball tee that looks as soft as cashmere and fits just a bit too well over his wiry biceps.

  I’m dying to ask him how he knows Ryan. I can’t, obviously. I’d totally make myself a suspect in any ultimate investigation into Ryan’s disappearance. But the pull is powerful.

  Thankfully, Mrs. Washburn, our perky bespectacled history teacher, comes in and begins teaching. We’re learning about the Spanish-American War this week. I want to tell her the textbooks get it all wrong.

  I do my best to tune her out, and I find myself thinking of my past lives. They blur together, but there are moments that stick out. Moments when I encountered my sisters or Orion. Marriages, births, deaths. These things are like mile-markers in the highway of my memories, making it slightly easier to remember the scenery at that particular point.

  I didn’t always know I was the reincarnated form of the ancient nymph/Titan Merope. In fact, until I was twelve, I was like any other girl growing up in Bend. I would read comics with Zoe. We were obsessed with Teen Titans, and then Runaways, then, Lumberjanes. I’d ski with my parents at Mount Bachelor in the winter, hike in the summer. I loved Disney musicals and drawing and Sour Patch Kids. During the warm summer months, Dad and I would stay up late in the backyard, looking through his telescope as he taught me the constellations. The Pleiades was always one of my favorite constellations. It was so small, but I could always find it up there, shining down upon me. I never liked Orion. It didn’t seem fair for him to take up that much of the sky. It’s like he was manspreading all across the heavens.

  When I turned twelve, things started to get weird. I started to have vivid dreams of the past. Tons of dreams. First it was the Industrial Revolution, then the Victorian Age, then Colonialism, then the Enlightenment, back and back like I had the History Channel on rewind. It’s like my mind had opened up the floodgates and I was trying to hold it back with my bare hands. The memories washed over me, lifetime after lifetime, strange clothes and languages and faces that I recognized were somehow mine.

  Mom and Dad kind of freaked out. I can’t blame them. Mom thought I was having some kind of psychotic break, and I went into practically daily therapy. I didn’t want to go to sleep, and when I did, it was like I hadn’t rested at all. I would wake up exhausted and crying from all those memories. I felt like I was going insane. Looking back, I’m surprised Mom and Dad didn’t put me in some sort of institution. I bet they came close. We don’t really talk about that time anymore.

  Zoe stuck by me, though. I told you she deserved the Best Friend Award. The other elementary and middle school friends I had up to that point totally vanished. Zoe was the only one who thought it was a gift, not a curse. Even I couldn’t be so optimistic about it. I wanted the memories out of my head.

  Two things changed that.

  One. My first glimpse of the future.

  Two. Remembering, finally, who I really was. Getting back to the beginning.

  I first saw the future the summer before eighth grade. Zoe and I were riding our bikes through the woods, and I fell. I had a flash. It was like a dream, but I was awake. My vision was of a mother black bear and her two cubs walking across the trail in front of us, looking at us, sizing us up. In the vision, Zoe and I were wearing the same clothes that we were wearing that day.

  When my sight cleared, I was shaking. I looked at Zoe, suddenly terrified. I knew that this was no dream. It was different.

  A thrashing sounded in the woods off the trail about a hundred yards in front of us.

  We both froze.

  “It’s a bear,” I whispered. “Two cubs.”

  Onto the trail appeared a black bear. Followed by her two cubs. She looked exactly as she had in my mind.

  My heart was in my throat. Zoe’s hand gripped mine.

  The bear’s head swung towards us, just as it did in my vision. Eyeing us. Evaluating the threat.

  And then she continued on, pushing into the underbrush on the other side of the trail, her cubs following like adorable little puppies.

  There was no doubt in my mind. It was more than déjà vu. I had seen the future.

  Zoe and I agreed wholeheartedly that I could never tell my parents. If I did, they would do more than just think about locking me away. I’d disappear forever.

  In class, I clench and unclench my hands. Remembering that day gets to me even now.

  Mrs. Washburn is talking about the explosion of the USS Maine.

  It’s another twenty minutes before the bell rings. I have a free period, so I head towards the library to do a little research of the murdering persuasion.

  Mom pops her head out of her office, scaring the crap out of me.

  I press my hand to my chest, sucking in a breath.

  “Mom!” I say.

  “Honey, would you come in here a minute?” She’s wearing her concerned face, which triggers warning bells in my mind. A daughter knows. Something is wrong.

  “Sure,” I offer, dragging my feet as I walk into her office.

  She closes the door and I see we’re not alone. A police officer turns to me. Double crap.

  I take his measure in a minute. He’s maybe thirty with close-cropped dark hair and a tidy goatee, and brown eyes framed by thick eyebrows. He has a round face, but he looks solidly built. He’s wearing a brown Deschutes County sheriff’s uniform with a pistol on his belt.

  “This is Deputy Romano,” my mother says. “He’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Chapter 9

  “It’s nice to meet you, Meriah,” Deputy Romano says. He pulls out one of the two chairs tucked against Mom’s desk and offers it to me.

  I sink into it gratefully—I’m afraid my knees might give out.

  He takes the other and Mom goes around her desk and sits in her chair. Her curly hair is pulled up in a clip today, and she’s wearing her reading glasses on the tip of her nose, like adults do without realizing how ancient it makes them look.

  “What’s going on?” I ask. My voice sounds small. Scared. I
feel small and scared. It’s okay, I tell myself. Better he see me as meek and innocent.

  “There was a car accident last night, out on Highway 372. A hit-and-run.”

  Oh god, here we go. My fingers are threaded together tight as knots. It’s the only way I can keep my hands from shaking.

  “We received a 911 call. We traced the number, and it came from your phone.”

  I lick my lips. They’re dry as a desert. I nod. “I called 911,” I admit.

  My mother leans forwards. “Honey, what were you doing out that far?”

  Deputy Romano glances at her, a look that seems to say, I’m asking the questions here.

  She sits back, chastised.

  “I was riding my bike,” I say, my mind racing for an excuse. “Cross-training, for track. It was pretty warm, so I rode farther than I normally would. I saw a car…rolled over. I called the police.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” my mom murmurs.

  Deputy Romano leans forwards, putting his elbows on his knees. “Was there another car there? It’s important. When the ambulance arrived, there was just one car.”

  I shake my head. I can’t believe I’m lying to the police. “I didn’t see another car. Just the one that had flipped.”

  “Why didn’t you stay until the police got there?” Deputy Romano asks.

  “I went to see if the driver was okay,” I manage. My voice quavers, and I’m not faking it. The image of Electra’s bloody face swims before my mind’s eye. “And there was so much blood. I…just got scared and I didn’t want to stay. I’m sorry. I’m a coward.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Deputy Romano asks.

  “I went over to my friend Zoe’s house. My parents weren’t home and I didn’t want to be alone. I told her.” Note to self: fill Zoe in on story before Romano gets to her. “I would have told my parents, but I didn’t have a chance.”

  My mom’s hand is over her mouth; she’s shaking her head. She clearly feels awful that she wasn’t there for me in my time of need. I want to tell her not to worry. I’ve been witnessing horrors without her and Dad for millennia.