by A. P. Jensen
“Maybe we should go to a voodoo lady or something,” Jackie said.
“That’s how we got in this mess in the first place!” Happy grouched.
Harvard paced with his pen tapping the paper faster and faster. “Incense, salt, cleansing bath, sweat from a scarlet woman, holy water..." He paused and shot Bam Bam an accusing look. “Unless it’s not fucking holy water.”
“Hey!” Bam Bam jabbed his finger at Harvard. “It was fucking holy as shit.”
“I’ve done everything I can think of,” Harvard said. “We even have the cat that absorbs evil.”
“Maybe it’s her,” Luester said with a chin jerk at Raven.
The cat’s eyes opened and fixed on Luester with such intensity that he took a step back.
“I never said I was the woman from the prophecy,” Raven said irritably. “All I know is I’m an Unmemorable. That’s it. I never said I could cure us. Don’t you think if I could, I would have done it for myself?”
“You have to be it,” Jackie said in a fierce voice. “You’re the only female Unmemorable there’s ever been. That has to mean something. What other woman would care about freeing us from the curse unless you’re like us?”
“Maybe there’s another female Unmemorable. Maybe the prophecy is bullshit,” she said.
“It’s not.”
She looked around at Cain’s quiet statement. He had his arms crossed and his eyes were trained on her face.
“My great-grandma’s the one that said the prophecy,” Cain said.
There was a long silence.
“What if Rich put out a false prophecy to reel us in?” Raven asked.
Ace let out a low whistle.
“Good point, babe,” Bam Bam said.
“My great-grandma would kick Rich’s ass if he lied about something as important as a prophecy. She believes prophecies direct us to our destiny.”
“So, the prophecy is that one day a woman will come along and reverse the curse on the Unmemorables? That could be anyone!”
“The prophecy says a woman can control the Unmemorables. That’s why the Battalion and Council want us,” Ace said.
“I heard she could start a war,” Happy said and shot Raven an accusing look.
“And change the tide of humanity,” Luester put in.
Raven turned to Cain. “What exactly does the prophecy say? What if we spend all this time trying to break the curse and I’m not even the woman from the prophecy?”
“I don’t know what the exact words are,” Cain said.
“I say we keep Googling curse breakers,” Harvard said.
“Why should we when I may not be the woman from the prophecy?” Raven demanded.
“You are,” Jackie insisted.
“The woman in the prophecy is trouble no matter which version you heard. Sounds like you to me,” Happy said.
Raven swung her fist and missed when Jackie pulled her back at the last second. Happy sneered until her eyes dipped down to the gun in his waistband. Things escalated quickly as they tried to keep Raven from getting her hands on a weapon and they argued about what to do next. Harvard sprinkled holy water and whore sweat over them to get their attention while the black cat licked his paws and kept an interested eye on the commotion. Cain, watching from the sidelines, thought the Unmemorables didn’t look so different from his own family during the holidays.
“If you want to know the original prophecy, you can hear it for yourselves,” Cain said, getting everyone’s instant attention. “We can see my great-grandmother. She lives in Utah. We can be there in a couple of hours.”
Chapter Six
“How the hell did I get stuck in the same car as you?” Raven snarled at Luester.
He gave her a patronizing smile. “I’m here to make sure Cain doesn’t pull anything.”
“Pull anything?” she repeated, insulted on Cain’s behalf. “You don’t even believe in the prophecy, so why are you here?”
Cain smacked her butt since she was perched on the middle console between the two front seats of the SUV. Part of the reason for her position was the panther that took up half of the passenger seat. She wasn’t keen on shooing the beast.
There was a frenzy of activity after Cain’s announcement about his great-grandmother. She had tossed some clothes in a duffel and they cleared out of the house and stopped at the store for cat food. She was so focused on their mission that she didn’t pay attention to who was in the back of their SUV until Luester began to mumble under his breath. Bam Bam tried to take selfies even though he knew it was pointless and Jackie was watching a tutorial on how to make homemade bombs on his phone.
“I don’t want to hear the prophecy secondhand,” Luester said, “and I don’t know what to think about you and all this crap.”
“Crap?” she shouted and stiffened when the cat hissed.
“Just move the cat to the side and sit,” Cain said.
“What are you going to name him?” Jackie asked without looking up.
“He’s not mine and he’s not staying with me so I’m not going to name him.”
Raven moved the cat cautiously and settled in her seat. It took more muscle than she anticipated to settle the cat on the console. He circled a few times before he curled up in a big ball of black and drifted off to sleep.
“If you take him back to the humane society, they’ll put him down,” Bam Bam said from the backseat.
“Well, you can take him after this is done, then,” Raven retorted.
“We can’t have a cat at headquarters. We need mastiffs and Rottweilers!” Bam Bam said.
Raven relaxed as they headed out of Vegas. She’d been on the road most of her life and getting the hell out of Nevada sounded like a great idea. She was relieved that they were doing something proactive. Seeing Cain’s great-grandmother would settle once and for all that she wasn’t the woman from the prophecy. Of course she wanted the curse to be lifted, but being responsible for the Unmemorables fate as well as her own wasn’t something she wanted on her shoulders.
“Why are you letting us see your great-grandma?” Luester asked Cain.
“I’m doing it for Raven.”
Luester’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “It must be her Miss America personality.”
If Raven wasn’t so wary of disturbing the cat, she would have chanced throwing it at Luester to see if the cat would claw his face or balls.
“If this will help Raven break the curse, I’ll do whatever I can,” Cain said simply.
“You’re risking your connection to the Council for her?”
Cain didn’t respond to Luester’s taunt. Unlike other men, Cain didn’t try to convince anyone of anything. His silence agitated Luester who leaned forward.
“If Rich finds out that you’re trying to help us, he’ll put a stop to it,” Luester said.
“I know,” Cain said.
“Just because you don’t care about anyone but yourself, doesn’t mean everyone’s like you,” Raven said scathingly.
Luester scoffed. “There has to be another reason Cain’s doing this besides you, sweetheart.”
“What do I get out of this?” Cain asked. “I have more at risk than you do. I could be worried about the fact that you’re capable of killing or kidnapping my great-grandmother, but I’m still taking you to see her.”
“We wouldn’t...” Bam Bam began heatedly from the back seat.
“I don’t know any of you,” Cain said and his eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror to eye each of the Unmemorables in the back seat. “You’ve had years to monitor the Council and Battalion. I don’t care about alliances or any of you. I want Raven, and if that means giving you access to my great-grandmother, so be it.”
Raven’s heart flipped and even while his words sent a fizz of warmth through her, there was a thread of panic.
Cain so firmly made his point that Luester relented and didn’t ask any more questions. Raven flipped down the child’s safety mirror to see the guys in the back seat.
/> “Where’s Big Daddy?” she asked.
“He has business to take care of,” Jackie said absently.
“Because of what happened yesterday with Angel?”
“Partly.”
She turned her head so she could see the real Jackie instead of the stretched reflection. “Is Gerald always such an asshole?”
Jackie smiled and set his phone aside. “He can be, but there’s never been a better leader of the Unmemorables. He’s proud and strict.”
“So strict that he allowed you to knock off the power on the Strip?” she asked sarcastically.
Bam Bam slapped Jackie’s shoulder. “You didn’t ask me to come with? What the hell, dude!”
“It was spur of the moment,” Jackie said. “And Gerald knows we need to blow off steam every now and then.”
That night was memorable for several reasons. She’d been attacked in an alley by Cain’s mother, skydived off the Eiffel Tower and witnessed a gun battle in the middle of the Strip.
“Can one of the Unmemorables fly?” she asked, remembering how Jackie slid through the protective metal cage at the top of the Eiffel Tower and dropped five hundred feet.
“There’s a guy in the Battalion who has that power,” Jackie said with a shrug.
“So you can blend whatever powers you want?” Cain asked.
“Yeah,” Jackie said proudly, “its pretty fucking wicked.”
Raven rolled her eyes. “Are you and I Gerald’s only kids?”
“As far as I know. He may have other daughters, but they’re not like you.” He hesitated and then said, “He has someone tracking down the other girls to make sure they’re not Unmemorables and that they’re taken care of.”
She opened her mouth to say something like ‘too little, too late,’ but settled for, “he's never heard of condoms? Why doesn’t he get neutered?”
All of the guys shifted uncomfortably. Cain tossed her an inscrutable look, which she returned blandly.
“Dogs get neutered, not humans,” Luester informed her.
“So, why doesn’t Gerald get neutered?” she repeated and Luester scowled.
“Several generations ago, the leader of the Unmemorables went to a psychic who said that a child from our family line would reverse the curse,” Bam Bam said from the back seat.
“Because of the first prophecy, the Unmemorables fathered many kids,” Jackie said quietly. “But when Pop became the leader, he changed the direction of the Unmemorables. We stopped believing in reversing the curse, got vasectomies and got on with our lives.”
“There hasn’t been an Unmemorable born in twenty-six years,” Luester said grimly.
“The Unmemorable curse is supposed to die with us,” Jackie said. “We didn’t want another generation of men to grow up like us. We live like kings, but we only have each other. None of us can have a woman, and unlike Cain, what woman would want to wear our hair or drink our blood on the first date so they can remember us the next day? I have to believe in the prophecy because I can’t accept that this is it for me.”
Hearing the Unmemorables’ history sent a chill through her. It seemed so cold-blooded, but how far would she go to break the curse? The women that got pregnant from the Unmemorables couldn’t be more than one-night stands. These women would never know who the father of their children was. What a nightmare.
“We heard about the second prophecy a couple years ago from someone who was shadowing Angel,” Luester said. “Mostly, we thought it was bullshit, because no one could figure out how any woman would remember us.”
“Why does Angel keep coming up in all this?” she asked
“Angel and the Battalion are closely entwined,” Luester said and for some reason his eyes shifted over to Cain.
“I’m not surprised, considering there’s only a couple thousand in the U. S. with super powers. In some ways, I think we lucked out by being invisible to both sides,” Raven said.
“So we finally agree on something,” Luester drawled.
“Then why do you want to break the curse?” she asked.
Only silence greeted her question.
“My grandpa and parents fucked up,” Cain acknowledged grimly, “but they’re still a better bet than Angel. He’s insane.”
Raven remembered the way Angel bit her neck with such relish and felt her stomach clench. She wasn’t sure which was the lesser of two evils. If the Unmemorable curse broke, how could she and Cain have a life independent from the constant battle between the Battalion and Council?
***
Raven fell asleep on the drive and when she woke, found the cat curled up in her lap. Her hands were burrowed into his soft fur. When she pulled away, the cat opened his eyes and gave her a chiding look.
They were high up in snow-covered mountains. There were no houses in sight, just a forest of monstrous pine trees. It was beautiful and really brought home the fact that it was winter. She wasn’t thrilled about the snow.
She glanced at Cain with a frown. “How old is your great-grandma?”
“Around two hundred.”
Raven blinked. “You’re kidding me.”
“We live longer than normal people,” Cain said.
“No shit. What’s she doing up here all alone?” Raven was paranoid. Living in a forest by herself would drive her insane. She’d probably get fifty dogs and an arsenal of guns and explosives if she lived out here.
“She’s very sensitive because of her power. She needs the isolation,” Cain explained.
The sun began to set as they reached the end of the road and stopped in front of an A-Frame house with a glass front. Through the glass, she saw that the house was two stories with a staircase that led to an upper loft. The interior was lit and furnished with couches and plush rugs, but there was no sign of the two-hundred-year old.
More than ready to stretch her legs, Raven jumped out of the car and instantly crossed her arms when the cold hit her straight in the chest. The other SUV with Happy, Harvard and Ace stopped beside theirs. The Unmemorables looked around with watchful eyes, very aware that they were in Council territory.
Cain grasped Raven’s hand and pulled her to the front door. Before he could knock, the door swung open and a tiny woman with white hair and misty green eyes looked up at them. She could pass for a woman in her seventies.
“Cain! Right on time!” she cheered.
Gnarled hands reached for Cain and he leaned down. The old woman closed her eyes as she hugged him and there was such love on her face that Raven shifted uncomfortably. Raven had no concept of family and seeing her adoration for Cain made something shift in her chest.
“You’ve aged well,” the old woman said as she examined Cain’s face.
“So have you,” Cain replied.
She smiled and turned her withered face toward Raven. The smile dropped off the old woman’s lips and she closed her eyes. She waved her hand over Raven’s face and chest like the baton the TSA used to detect metal objects. Raven glanced at Cain who shook his head and watched his great-grandma without comment. When the older woman’s eyes opened, they were filled with tears.
“Oh, it’s you!” she exclaimed and grasped Raven’s hands. “I’ve been waiting so long! Come in, come in! You too!” she called to the Unmemorables without looking.
Raven and Cain followed her into the warm house, which had a lot of open space. The glass showed off the natural beauty surrounding them and Raven felt better looking at snow rather than standing in it. The little woman who couldn’t be taller than four foot five gestured them over to a sitting area. Raven stopped when she saw the steaming cups of coffee. There were eight mugs, one for each of them. For the first time it hit Raven that if this woman could tell a prophecy, that meant she was a Seer like Rich who was her son, apparently.
Cain pulled Raven onto the love seat beside him. His great-grandmother sat on a second couch and extended her hands to Cain like a child who wanted reassurance that they weren’t alone.
“It’s nice to see you
again,” she said and then her face changed subtly. She turned wide eyes to Raven and a tear trickled down her cheek. “You’re in love.”
Raven crossed and uncrossed her legs and couldn’t meet her eyes. Cain snorted, sat back and placed a hand on her thigh.
“Yes, we are,” Cain said.
The older woman clasped her hands together and stared at them as if they were a beacon of hope. “I’m so glad. And your name, darling?”
Raven hadn’t been called darling in her life. She licked her lips and couldn’t stop the nervous bouncing of her leg. “Raven.”
“Ah, lovely. You may call me G-Ma. Get it?” she chuckled and gestured to the cups. “Please, drink.”
Raven grasped the cup and hesitated. Cain drank deeply and then gave her a level look. She flushed and sipped. Cain wouldn’t allow anyone to poison her. It was instinct not to trust. Was that an Unmemorable trait or something she learned through years of isolation and survival?
Bam Bam, Jackie, Harvard and Luester stood behind her, eyeing the old woman impassively. Happy and Ace were standing guard outside. Maybe caution was an ingrained Unmemorable trait.
“I never thought I’d see this day,” G-Ma said.
“What day?” Luester asked when the woman didn’t continue.
“Unmemorables associating with the Council.”
“How did you...?” Jackie began, a dumbfounded expression on his face.
G-Ma tilted her head to the side and grinned like a mischievous child. “I know I won’t be able to describe you when you walk away, but my power recognizes what you are.”
The Unmemorables shifted uneasily and Cain smiled.
“We’re here because . . . ” Luester began.
“Because you want to hear the prophecy yourself,” G-Ma finished. “I know.”
Silence fell and G-Ma’s misty eyes were a green so pale, they were nearly gray.
“Unmemorables are a legend in our world, a secret weapon that both sides have coveted for centuries,” G-Ma began. “Many years ago, on a day similar to this one, I had a vision.”
G-Ma looked at Raven and she felt as if the ancient woman’s gaze could see straight through to her soul.