Destiny Defied (The Destiny Series)

by Marx, J. A.

  Halting in the middle of the room, Chiara arched an eyebrow at Sabio. “Come again?”

  “Yesterday. Snorkeling. You had a flashback of sentences marked over in your textbooks.”

  “She didn’t do … that.” Part of the exterior foundation crumbled. She’d seen only one child in the past seven years. Where had they gone? Who and what was the woman teaching?

  She was one of them. Swallowing a volcanic scream, Chiara strolled forward.

  “You didn’t go to school with the other kids.”

  She snapped her attention toward Sabio. “Why do you assume that?”

  He shrugged. “You don’t fit the demographics you described. You’re far too intellectual.”

  Squelching a roar, she aimed a furious finger. “Your logic is exceptionally annoying today.”

  “All I said was—”

  “I had tutors!” She exhaled an exasperated breath and ran her fingers back and forth through her hair until it tangled.

  Trained to extract facts, she’d been rigorously drilled to withhold personal data. Didn’t all educated, enlightened people operate this way?

  “Is the outer foundation crumbling?” Sabio’s logic, still at work, aptly applied her earlier word picture about the house and the foundations.

  Be nice. Resuming a mechanical march, she nodded. “Sorry.”

  Living with these guys had underhandedly taught her to divulge information. Impulsively. She had never shared this openly with anyone. If certain details accidentally slipped out, she’d die.

  “Hey.” Akiko’s peaceful demeanor now matched that of his companions. “We’re on your side. Not against you.”

  On my side? Another alien ideal she cradled like soapsuds. Curious as to what brought about such a perceptible change in so little time, Chiara also wondered at the Asian’s unnaturally blotchy complexion. “What caused the rash?”

  “I’ll have to see my doctor about it. Dr. Caedis. Do you know him?”

  She smiled at the ridiculous question, and at Isaac hurling the foot bag at him. Caedis must’ve been some global television celebrity. “I don’t know any doctors, Kiko.”

  Isaac collected the foot bag and returned it to the coffee table. “Why tutors instead of regular schooling?”

  “They had a destiny for me.” Careless answer. Speaking without thinking again lured suspicious looks.

  Don’t foul up your destiny, Miss Riki. Your life is mine to command. Master Samael had smacked his rattan wand against the desk so often it left notches. Why had they educated her privately?

  She paced again, mining deeper into that ill-fated night with Lord Vétis. He’s used a label …

  Phase I.

  A small portion of foundation crumbled completely away. Truth began paving inroads toward a conspiracy. Although the Lux’s ultimate objective remained nebulous, she was positive it amounted to evil. An evil not fit for publicity.

  Isaac donned that probing look. “What do you mean they had a destiny for you? Who are they?”

  Traitors. The schooling she once considered a welcomed hiatus from home life she now viewed as corruption and a pilfering of rights. Her rights.

  Desperate to escape her identity limbo and become someone with value, Chiara wrestled her mutilated history back into mental oblivion. “Next question?”

  Chapter 45

  Rolling the foot bag between his hands on the table, Isaac jotted mental notes.

  No gendarme or jails on Omeàla. That completely contradicted what Dr. Caedis had told Akiko about Chiara always being in trouble with the law, and it counterbalanced her evasive and ambiguous answers. Then came the triumphal moment—she didn’t flex an eyelash when asked if she knew a Dr. Caedis. Per Foursome agreement, no one could question her further on the subject.

  Now to delve into her alleged destiny.

  Jase remounted the icepack on his eye. “Who taught you to hang from trees? Leap high boulders? Rappel?”

  “And box?” Isaac beefed up the trivial question to help unearth her vault of vile information.

  Scrunching her nose, Chiara smiled in a way that sarcastically thanked him for highlighting her skirmish with the musician. “Physical education. What else?” Made sense. Running, weightlifting. “But my stepfather taught me to climb cliffs.”

  Her expression soured.

  Here we go. Isaac squeezed the foot bag.

  She flicked the bronze game piece off the peninsula and it clinked onto the kitchen tile. “‘Beat me to the top, and you can eat dinner,’” she said in a gravelly, mannish voice. “Max cheated on every game.”

  Her flat tone didn’t hint at whether Max’s game had come in fun or cruelty. She continued hollowing out an egg-shaped path between the kitchen and the back porch.

  “I would’ve protested,” Jase said.

  “Omeàlans didn’t protest Ma—” Something threw off her gait. “Anyway, I practiced for years until I could climb fast. It paid off.” Fiendish pleasure glimmered in her eyes. “I finally beat him home a couple years ago.”

  The hostility behind her casualness made Isaac wince. “How’d Max react?”

  “We played our other game. Lion and antelope.” She shrugged indifferently. “Next question?”

  Her emotions are wearing on her. Isaac pressed the foot bag against his palm. “You mean he chased you?”

  Jase threw him a harsh stop-trying-to-fix-her glance.

  Could he help it if his dad’s psychoanalyzing influence rubbed off?

  “Max hated me, Isaac. Use your imagination.” A sharp rotation aimed Chiara toward the porch. “Next question.”

  Her stepfather hated her. Isaac hurt at the thought. He’d have a word with Max Spencer.

  Chiara put on the brakes at the porch door.

  Don’t let it be Caedis. Anxious to see what she was looking at, he rose partway.

  “What time is it?” Her faint voice barely reached the couch.

  “Almost six thirty,” Sabio said. He, Akiko, and Jase were tilted the same direction, apparently just as concerned.

  Her hesitant rotation toward the kitchen put them back in their seats. “This is Tuesday, right?”

  “All day.” One Isaac would never forget. He deplored this mazy route through GI Jane’s identity, but at least she was confiding. “Who lives with you besides Max?”

  Straying from her egg-shaped path, she wobbled to the loft ladder. “My mother did.” Her dimming speech bordered on inaudible. “Max had been the ultimate antagonist, except aboard ship. There, he was Captain Congeniality.”

  That was random. Isaac blamed exhaustion for her misuse of past tense when referring to her parents. “Your mom’s gonna be thrilled to see you.”

  Slouching against the ladder, she shut her eyes and massaged her face. “I wish.” A rattling response.

  The signs of misery alarmed Isaac. He rose to his knees. Consuming concerns over Dr. Caedis gave way to a forgotten detail.

  The wreckage.

  Talking about Omeàla made Chiara’s insides feel swampy. Achy. She wanted to hibernate through the rest of this cross-examination, which measured up mildly to the inquisitions her tutors used to put her through. Propping herself against the ladder, she rubbed her face with one hand.

  “Your mom’s gonna be thrilled to see you.” Isaac’s words dismantled her wall of denial.

  Fatigue consumed her. Time deserted her. Had minutes passed? Hours?

  Repressed memories found language and rushed to her lips. “Mom was the only refined Omeàlan. She made us obey Max, no matter what he did. Yes sir, no sir … the first words I ever spoke. Including to Max’s clients.”

  Heaviness bore down, forcing out a sigh. Chiara hugged herself, trying to contain the unruly images blinking out of sequence in her mind.

  “Mom never fought him. Never ran away. She did everything he demanded of her. Which I never understood. Until that night.”

  Her mother had been obeying them, not Max. The more fatal of two curses.

  On the
ir last night together, a pelting, salty wind whipped at the Nave del Piacere. Distant lightning reflected off Jamila’s red glittering dress. Her drooping French twist. A roguish smirk. The small black box in her hand.

  Jamila outwitted the Lux.

  The denouement of her mother’s final act replayed vividly. Chiara drifted through a labyrinth of tastes, odors, bitterness. A museum of macabre figures. She strained to rewind history. And repeat it with an altered ending.

  Seeing Chiara slip deeper into a state of distress, Isaac denied his lungs a full breath. Her stuporous rambling pockmarked a trail to his heart. The implications behind having to obey her stepfather’s clients sickened him.

  He pulled himself off the floor. “What happened to your mom?”

  Twisting the hem of her shirt, she shuffled across the room. “She killed everyone.”

  Blood throbbed in Isaac’s temples. The suppressed trauma he’d detected earlier was not from the assault by the tree. “She what?”

  Chiara halted halfway to the porch and faced the couch, looking dazed. “Friday night. Mom shoved me off Max’s ship. She blew it up and everybody on it. I should’ve grabbed the detonator from her while I had the chance.” Her voice cracked. “Two bombs. A blizzard of fire. Everything’s gone.”

  Delayed shock. He pieced together her disjointed phrases. Two explosions shot debris into the air.

  “It felt like spiked hail.” She fingered the back of her head.

  He had doctored her cut arms and face. Airborne chunks of the ship must have caused the gash on her skull. She should be dead.

  “The waves tasted bloody.” She hugged herself. “I thought the mangled hand was a dead squid. It belonged to a charred body. Shark bait.” Her face puckered. “I climbed onto the table. I remember pain in my head. After that … nothing.”

  Merciful amnesia. Shaken by the gruesome tragedy, Isaac couldn’t get to her fast enough. He took her by the shoulders. “And the next morning, Jase and I found you unconscious on the beach.”

  She nodded. No tears, no visible anger. She just stood there, features buried in trauma.

  The death of her family on top of what presently threatened her put Isaac at a loss for what to do, except grieve with her. He couldn’t see them, but he sensed his friends within elbow space. “We are so sorry, Chiara.”

  Her vacant eyes looked through him. “You saw it. On the shore. Shredded reminders of a horrible life. Mom made the world a better place.” She swayed.

  He drew her close. Expecting a natural release of grieving emotions, he was surprised she was still standing.

  As she had two nights ago, she stiffened in his arms. Hands clasped together at her chest. She exhaled deeply, quivering on the inhale.

  His friends encircled them, hands in their pockets. Clueless, but supportive. Minutes elapsed in silent mourning.

  “Jamila Spencer was the only person who ever loved me.” Chiara pushed away from him and lumbered to the porch door. Leaning against the frame, she pressed her forehead to the glass and stared outside.

  How do I comfort you? EMT training had not prepared Isaac to handle a tragedy of this magnitude.

  Chapter 46

  They’d only known Chiara for four days, but Isaac ached for her as if she were a longtime friend. Stricken by her account, he left her at the porch door. He had to stabilize his own emotions before he could help.

  Sabio camped out in front of the bookshelf. Jase and Akiko started assembling an assortment of food from the refrigerator. Apparently, neither had the mental energy to bone and prepare the fish they’d caught earlier.

  Isaac ambled out to the deck, hoping a dose of fresh air would clear his mind. He idled near the cast iron table, trying to picture his mom blowing up … people.

  Awhile later, Sabio appeared. Eyes slightly bloodshot. “I realize she’s grieving. But we can’t let her isolate herself all night. Go talk to her.”

  “Why me?” Sprinkles kissed Isaac’s cheek, inviting him to run in the rain.

  “You’re the counselor’s son.” Sabio patted his shoulder. “And the only one with the stomach to press through a thicket of emotional malaise.”

  Was that an accolade or an assumption aimed at his EMT qualifications? Either way, someone had to take action. He followed his friend into the bungalow.

  Cornered between the wall and the glass door, Chiara’s tall, muscular frame radiated warmth as Isaac approached.

  Strong outside. Broken inside.

  Stationing himself right behind her, he gazed over her shoulder and out the glass door. A soft gray mist dulled the ocean’s appeal and smothered the drooping vegetation. Sadness sedated paradise. Only a hug from the sun could cure its sorrow.

  Wanting to hug away Chiara’s sorrow, Isaac settled for twirling her ebony hair around his finger. Her rejection of physical contact no longer mystified him. Her stepfather hated her, and Isaac supposed that side of her life had its own story.

  Waiting with hopes that she’d respond to his presence, he imagined a bomb dropping on his neighborhood. His family, obliterated. Everything he knew destroyed while he watched. Mutilated corpses. Slaughtered memories. Defenseless against it all. Nightmares forever recapping the event.

  He couldn’t fathom her pain. Despite his hunger to help people in crisis, he felt ill equipped. “I’m sorry about your mom and stepdad.”

  Turning to face him, she grasped his finger that twirled her hair. Her mouth moved without speaking.

  “Talk to me, Chiara.”

  “God is bigger than anything the enemy does, right, Wild Man? Right?” Her dire expression busted him.

  Desperate for a trustworthy answer, he resurrected his father’s wisdom from the recesses of his mind. “The war against our enemy is already won. It’s just the small battles we have to fight while on earth. Stay close to Jesus, and He’ll always protect you.” Isaac understood that now.

  Her fist tightened around his finger. “Is there ever a time we can’t stand up against the enemy? You know the armor thing Sabio talked about?”

  Ego had created Isaac’s barrier to strength. Her barrier was different. “If you choose to follow the enemy, God will back off. Otherwise, you can do anything when He’s your strength. He’ll never let you free climb a rock wall without offering a safety line.”

  “I can do anything when God is my strength.” Her breathing quickened. “And He’s bigger than any curses, or promises, or binding decisions that ignorant people, evil people, might make. Right?”

  Her urgency chilled his veins. “Knowing the truth will set you free.”

  “What truth?”

  His father’s counsel spoke again. “When we choose God’s way, He puts truth in our minds. Knowing His truth can set us free from anything the enemy does.” Unsure of the conversation’s direction, he added, “Certain situations take time.”

  “Time?” She strangled his finger until the blood flow stopped. Her entire visage begged for assurance. “I can do anything when God gives me strength. Know the truth and be free. He’s not a puppet master.”

  Her head dropped against his shoulder, and she loosened her crushing grip. She respired sporadically, as though having to think about taking each breath. Over and over, in hushed tones, she repeated what he’d told her. Strength. Truth. Freedom.

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, loosely, to avoid stressing her out.

  She was perspiring, felt almost feverish. Weighed down but not sharing. Or afraid to share.

  Questions stockpiled in Isaac’s mind, yet the timing wasn’t right to ask them. For now, he’d pour on as much tenderness as she’d receive. “Let God’s perfect love wipe away your fears, princess. You will win this in the end.”

  Chiara looked up at him, and a lonely tear carved a shimmering trail across her nose. “What time is it?”

  Chapter 47

  Mom’s dead. Chiara closed the bathroom door, shutting out the world. Refusing to cry, she avoided her reflection and ran water in the sink to mask the
silence.

  Fate gnawed at her sanity like rats at a bag of garbage. There was no running from it. No hiding from it. And she dared not speak of it. Part of her yearned for the amnesia to return. She paced the L-shaped room. Fretting. Sweating. Her tutors had not trained her to respond this way to crises.

  But this wasn’t a crisis. Wasn’t it victory in progress? What exactly had she gotten herself into up on that mountain? The experience was real yet surreal. That must be what the Ohioans meant by spiritual.

  Wishing tonight had already passed, she splashed her face to cool off and applied one of the boy’s deodorant tubes. A medley of Foursome comments patrolled the perimeter of her thoughts.

  We’re on your side. For how long?

  God has a perfect plan for you. So did Lord Vétis!

  We just want to see you come out of it on top. Why do they care?

  Setting the deodorant back on the ledge, she knocked over the lipstick tube, a cosmetic accessory of the past she’d never miss. Her mom favored pink lip gloss.

  Another urge to cry doubled Chiara over. She grasped the edge of the basin and let the rest of her crumple on the floor, head hanging. “Just stay close to Jesus.”

  How did one do that? She wasn’t even sure who Jesus was, just that His name had the power to cause pain and bring peace. To rescue and to conquer. According to what Sabio read two nights ago, Jesus was the Master who loved them. Nothing could separate the Foursome from that love.

  Does He love me, too? Any master loving Chiara Spencer would make history.

  Emotions unplugged, brain overloaded, body rundown … She pulled herself together, hoping not to self-destruct.

  Isaac accompanied the scholar on his strange undertaking. Apparently Sabio had done this to himself before searching for Akiko. Maybe strange wasn’t so unusual on Fletcher’s Cay.

  Near the porch door, Sabio opened the vial of lavender. He asked God to bless it.