“What,” Ellie said, interrupting my parade of vitriol and sadness. “Are you telling me you have absolutely nothing to be happy about?”
“You tell me,” I shot back. “Mom and Dad have grounded me for life. They stopped short of telling me that I should break up with Michael. And to top it all off, he’s been moody and depressing to be around.”
“Yeah, I can see how that could suck, being around someone who’s all depressing and moody.”
I cursed under my breath. “Fine, make jokes at my expense. Mom is the High Priestess of Discipline. I think she forgot what it was like to be our age—er, I mean my age.” I felt so disrespected sometimes, like they didn’t get it, or worse, like they did get it but didn’t care. I was pretty sure my mom felt one of two ways—either she didn’t know how much Michael’s emotional support meant to me, or she knew exactly how much it meant to me, which was why she was trying to keep us apart. Didn’t she know she couldn’t stop me from growing up? I felt like she thought I was breakable, that I would shatter in stiff wind.
“You did break your curfew,” Ellie said in a whisper.
“Hey, whose side are you on, anyway?”
“I’m on my side, which is the right side, mind you. But we’re not talking about me. Tell me what’s up with your dad—missing Christmas is lame, especially with all the stuff that’s been going on.”
“Tell me about it. He’s been gone a lot. Especially lately. It’s like he’s on some secret mission for the government or something.” All I wanted was to move out early. Maybe then I would find out if my parents cared enough to notice if I was gone.
Ellie cocked an eyebrow at me. “The government? Do tell. Your dad work for the CIA or something?”
“Who cares? For all I know, he could be James freakin’ Bond.”
“He’s certainly bold enough, tailing your sorry butt halfway across the world. Anyway, my bet is he’s not a vacuum cleaner salesman.” She laughed and eyed me when I didn’t join her. “Oh. I see you’re going to keep this sunshiny mood going. Fun.”
“It’s lots of fun to be grounded,” I said.
“Well, you knew the consequences, right? And you blew right through ’em.”
“Still, though.”
“Still what? Your mum and dad are a little freaked out about you, and justifiably so, considering all that’s happened. They told you what they expected from you. You disobeyed. Punishment is how you learn.”
“Kindness leads to repentance,” I countered.
She laughed loudly. “Yeah, but only if that kindness means something to the person on the receiving end. From what I can tell, you’ve been right pissed off at your parents for a couple of months now, ever since you got back. You’ve an axe to grind, my friend.”
I glossed over the fact that she hadn’t been back as long as I had. Or had she? “So?”
“I know ‘furious vengeance’ when I see it. That’s all.” She made air quotes.
I stewed. I said though my teeth very quietly, “Don’t I have the right?”
“Psh. You’re a child, mate. What do you know?”
I was shocked and allowed my jaw to fall onto the carpet. I probed my mind for She, but all I got was a sense that I was being mocked by the whole entire world. I felt stupid and undignified.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ellie said, “even without trying to read your mind—‘How dare you?’ Am I right?”
I scowled. “I like you better when you act like a teenager; like my friend and not another parent. I already have two.”
“I know you don’t want any advice, but I’ll give you some for free anyway. Calm yourself. Nobody owes you anything. When your life stops being all about you, adulthood can begin. But it won’t until then. Try a little humility.”
I stared at her for a full minute, trying to come up with one word to say to her. Kreios is gone and now I get his daughter lecturing me. Yay, Airel. Finally I said, “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Gladly,” she said. “How about your little research project over there?” She pointed to my laptop. “Daydreaming about the climbing trip, are we?”
I wanted to ask her not to use such a condescending tone, but restrained myself. I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with her. “Actually, yeah.” Our climbing guru, who told us to call him Shane, was a real laid-back expert who had been working with us at the gym. He was cool. He was going to take our class out to the cliffs along Highway 21 in a few weeks right outside of town and show us how it was done for real. So yes, I was daydreaming. It was the last exciting thing in my life at the moment. I wanted to tell Ellie it wasn’t like there was anything else for me to do, but I was sure she would have more coals of red-hot wisdom to drop on my head if I tried.
“Well, I’m stoked about it, mate. I suppose I should have told you that I fully intend to crash your little field trip party.”
I was not surprised to hear it, and though I tried to conceal my joy, I actually smiled. “Really?”
“Really, girlie. I figure senior skip day’s in May, but I need an early reprieve. Besides, I hear Dirk will be there. I gotta keep him on the hook, if you know what I mean.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not even registered as a senior, Ellie, so never mind senior skip day, but you’re planning on skipping in the middle of January? Why? Just cuz?”
She looked at me like it was obvious. “I like being around you. Even when you’re grumps.”
“Try again.” But I smiled.
“I am bored out of my mind.”
I groaned and threw a couch pillow at her. I stood up. “All right, weirdette. Hot chocolate or tea?”
“You know me. Earl Grey all the way.”
I walked to the kitchen, and as I turned away from her, my eyes welled up. I was really glad I had her in my life. Even though she was exasperating, she was good for me. She was probably right about almost everything. She felt like family. And as I put the kettle on for her, I couldn’t help wondering when—or if—I would ever see Kreios again.
CHAPTER III
Arabia, 800 B.C.
URIEL WADDLED FROM THE fireside to the bed and eased herself down. Any day now, she would be a mother. There had been new pains in the womb that came and went in a quickening rhythm, faster and more intense and more often from day to day now. She knew it would be time for the birth soon.
She was filled to brimming with so many conflicting emotions about the baby that she wasn’t sure what to think. She was excited and terrified. She felt the most profound peace she had ever felt in her entire life, and yet she had never felt more vulnerable, either.
She smiled as she stroked the roundness of her belly, cooing at her unborn child. “You will be a boy,” she said.
She wished there was someone to answer her statement, that there was even someone to attempt to refute it, or someone to glow with it as she glowed.
But there was no one.
She thought back over the circumstances of her pregnancy, about how she had been daring and extravagant with a handsome young man just over nine months ago, how she had taken the ultimate risk on him, and how those few hours of surrender to feelings she had never before fully indulged had changed everything. She thought about how the child’s father, Yshmial, had so obviously—when it was over—not shared those feelings with her, at least not to the depth she had felt them. And indeed still felt them, from time to time.
She had given him everything. And he had taken everything she’d given and then left her, without remorse. He had at least given her a son, she hoped. If it wasn’t for her angelic abilities, he would also have given her a life of extreme poverty and shame. But hopefully she would be able to give her child whatever they needed, including security. I can take what we need, and if we are threatened, I can vanish with him into the air and make our escape. All that would remain would be the shame. Only she—she alone—would know of that and carry it.
That is an acceptable trade. I cannot change anything else.
She hadn�
�t tried to exercise her abilities since she had first felt the profound change come over her. She didn’t dare harm this new life by trying anything impossible, doing anything a human couldn’t do. It was too risky.
Memories of her inheritance haunted her. She wondered if she was doomed to die in childbirth, as her mother had succumbed. Was she cursed to follow in the exact same fashion? She didn’t know. And what of the child? Would he survive? How long would she be able to keep him, to be his mother, until she risked activating in him the same abilities that had been activated in her, thereby bringing so much risk and worry to both of them? There were certainly no guarantees now.
“He will be named Qiel,” she said. “That is what I shall name him.” And now, as if in response to his name, the boy began to move vigorously. Something burst within her and issued forth, soaking her. The baby was coming now. There would be no turning back from the pain, the struggle, the anxiety.
There was no one to help here. Here, where it has been safe now for these nine cycles of the moon… In a shelter near a high woodline in the mountains, where she had been safe all this time, where she had been preparing, as the day drew near, as everything became full and ripe and mature—and changed in ways she had never foreseen.
She was all alone—for now, she thought. Only for now. Soon there will be two of us.
Now, for the first time in a very long time, she thought of her father, Kreios, and longed for him. She was starting to understand how he must feel, must have felt always, toward her. Being a parent would change everything.
CHAPTER IV
Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho—Present Day
ELLIE HADN’T THOUGHT IT was going to be so uncomfortable, bringing Airel back to her father’s house. But it was. For both of them. She couldn’t quite place her finger on why. Or perhaps I’m not ready to admit to what I suspect. “You all right, girlie?”
Airel looked at her with haunted eyes. “Sure.”
Ellie chuckled. “You don’t have to lie to make friends.”
Airel wasn’t amused. “I’m not making friends. I already have you.” She looked around Kreios’s library, up to the high crenellated stone walls and the coffered ceilings they supported. “This place has too much going on.”
“What do you mean?”
Airel pointed to the blazing fireplace. “Did you light it? No. Neither of us did.”
“And?”
Airel exhaled heavily. “I don’t want to say.”
Ellie walked to her side and touched her arm. “Hey. This is my dad’s place. It’s safe here. I promise. Okay?”
“Promises.”
Ellie had to growl a little at that.
Airel turned around again, looking at the walls, the high wooden shelves holding volumes that were ten times older than she was, and scrolls, even. “There are ghosts here, Ellie. I feel them. The last time I was here, bad things happened, and Kim—”
Ellie could see that she was crying. She let her. She walked to a wingback chair near the fire and lounged on it, swinging a leg up over the arm and tucking her bright blue head into its deep corner. She listened to the crackle of the fire, burning wood for fuel, wood that was either never consumed or always miraculously replenished. What would be the difference?
Airel went on, speaking through her tears. “It’s just that it’s weird here now. Without them. Last time Michael was here, it was … different. And Kreios … do you know where he is?”
“Haven’t a clue.” Ellie nibbled a bit of dead skin from a fingertip and then spat it toward the fire. This dead skin thing had started happening again—in the past fifty or so years—and she figured she was starting to show her age now. In another couple hundred years, she might be aged enough in her appearance to be able to legally buy alcohol. Unless social mores changed by then. She had been given wine as a child quite often, though it was usually mixed with water. She snapped out of her reverie. “I imagine, though, that when he wants to show up, he’ll show up.”
Airel breathed, sitting down on the loveseat that faced the fire. She kicked off her boots and tucked her feet up under her and then changed the subject. “I wish I had coffee.”
“You and me both. Or a cup of Earl Grey.”
Airel grunted and fiddled with the seam of her jeans. “Thanks for breaking me out of my high tower, by the way. What on earth did you say to my mom that got her to agree to this little trip?”
“Oh, nothing. Just that ‘the world’s gone mad,’ and, ‘kids these days,’ and then I nodded sympathetically with a couple of her assessments and told her I needed some time in Sun Valley with my bestie.”
“Really. That was all it took? And you bought us three days?”
“Yeah. She seemed impressed with me. Well … and my car.” She was referring to her brand-new bright blue Toyota FJ 4x4. Ellie had told her when she first showed it off that she’d bought it because it went with her hair. “I guess she thought it was big and buff enough to be quote-unquote safe, and that it was part of the reason she figured you would be in good hands.”
“Whatever.” Airel crossed her arms.
“And,” Ellie continued, “I was pretty convincing, if I say so myself. I don’t know why Americans get all googly-eyed over a person who speaks the English language properly. But they do.” She dismissed the idea with the wave of her hand.
“Well, thanks. I needed to get out.”
“Yeah, you did. I wanted to get up here too. We both need to spend some time outside the bounds.”
“I know what you mean.”
Ellie cleared her throat. “Actually, you might only know a little bit. You may not know what you think you know.”
***
I WAS A LITTLE BLOWN away by Ellie still, even now. It was like being friends and hanging out with a rock star. Anything could happen. And it often did. “So,” I said, “what is it that I think I know?”
“I want to start off by telling you a little more of my story,” she said. I’d heard bits and pieces of her history over the time we’d known each other, but in true Ellie-style, she reserved all the juicy bits until the moment came along, inevitably, when she could shock me the most.
“Bring it on,” I said.
“As far as being outside the bounds…” She appeared to reconsider for a moment. “Let’s cover that in a minute. I wanna tell you a story first. Game?”
“Sure,” I said, wondering what I was getting myself into. I fluffed a couch pillow and gave her my “I’m ready” signal, and then she plunged ahead.
“It’s obvious I’m a mother, right? I mean, how else could the line have carried on if I wasn’t.”
“What?” I felt so stupid. Of course. And yet I made myself look stupider by shrieking my disbelief.
“Yeah, girlie. It’s hitting you, isn’t it?” She grinned. She allowed me a moment to let everything sink in, and then she carried on. “I’ve gotta say, I admire your commitment to sexual integrity with Michael. I know how difficult it is sometimes, especially when there are intense feelings involved.”
“Yeah, well … it’s not all roses with Michael,” I said, trying to voice my growing inner concern about the fact that something in regard to Michael was eating away at me. It was mostly formless and void, though, and now wasn’t the time to discuss it anyway.
“Oh. Well, it’ll get better in time. Right?”
“Right,” I said, barely able to believe myself.
“Well, in my case,” Ellie said, graciously moving on, “those intense feelings weren’t reciprocated beneath the surface, and I deceived myself. Or I allowed myself to be deceived, whatever the case. In the end, I turned up preggers.”
Echoes of Kim. More emotion. I nodded and blinked away the rapidly increasing moisture in my eyes.
“The father—his name was Yshmial, but that doesn’t really matter. What really matters is his lineage, which I’ll get to eventually. I went into hiding when I knew I was carrying a child. I knew right away, and I abstained from my gift entirely while I
was pregnant. I didn’t want any harm to come to him.”
“It was a boy? You knew?”
“Yeah. I knew it. I found a quiet place for us. Made a nest for us in the deep wilderness, in a high meadow near the edge of a wood. I built us a shelter from fallen branches and pine boughs, covering it with the skins of animals I harvested as I waited to come to term. I gave birth to Qiel alone, without any help from anyone.” There shone in her eyes a defiant pride mixed with heavy grief.
“And he was okay?”
“Yeah. He was beautiful.” She smiled, radiant.
“What happened then?”
She paused, and my question snapped her out of something. “He grew up too fast.” She stopped again, and it seemed like she was done talking about it.
“Okay…”
“Come on,” she said, standing. “I want to show you something outside the bounds.”
I stood and followed her out of the library and down the hall, the curving one with the torches hanging near the double doors that led into Kreios’s bedroom. This was the place I had come when I was playing ninja girl, trying to gather intel so I could escape from a psychopathic killer/kidnapper. “So what is it, Ellie? Are you planning on us playing dress up together or something?” I alluded to the closet where I had seen Kreios’s treasure trove of costumes, period fashions from every era.
“Not this time, but maybe someday when we both feel like being three-year-olds, we can.” She smiled wickedly at me. “I want to show you the Threshold.”
“The Threshold? What’s that?”
“You’ll have to see it to believe it.”
I laughed, thinking of the word and its meaning. “Should I have brought my boots?” I looked down at the socks on my feet.
Ellie walked to a steel door, resting one hand on its doorknob, and then turned and looked at me. “Actually, yeah. Maybe you should have, at least if we were to walk through this door.” She closed her eyes and turned back toward it, concentrating.
This was the room I had found that night, the one that was a little cubicle of concrete and nothing else. Before I could form an opinion on all this, she threw open the door.
The Airel Saga Box Set: Young Adult Paranormal Romance Page 72
