Sweet Legacy

by Tera Lynn Childs

  “Thane,” I whisper, leaning forward.

  He meets me halfway.

  The moment our lips touch, the dizziness slams into me.

  I cry out.

  Then I’m standing in an alley. My sisters are there, along with Sillus and a boy and a woman I don’t know. The boy, I would guess from the way Grace is grinning at him, is her crush—Thane’s friend Milo. He has the look of a cheerful soccer player. The woman looks like us, with dark blond hair and pale gray eyes—obviously our mother.

  Everyone is standing awkwardly, like it’s an uncomfortable reunion. Our mother steps forward and pulls Gretchen into a hug, and my sister tentatively pats her on the back. Grace looks up at Milo, joy and stars in her eyes.

  The little monkey kicks a pebble across the alley.

  I want to enjoy the moment, but the stench of fear soaks the air around them. My stomach lurches. In a flash I feel like I’m going to throw up, to vomit violently all over the scene.

  Something catches my attention—a movement or a sound or a flash of light. I turn to look.

  Everything slows down.

  Grace gasps, her face frozen in a wide-eyed look of shock.

  A knife floats through the air toward her.

  Gretchen dives in front of her, but it’s too late.

  The knife slips between Gretchen’s open arms, hurtling toward its target—toward Grace’s chest.

  “No!” I scream.

  The scene speeds up.

  From the omniscient perch of my vision, I watch Grace crumple to the ground, clutching at the knife sticking out of her chest. Milo kneels at her side, his hands hovering around the hilt, unsure what to do. Grace looks at him desperately, her face contorted with pain and confusion.

  Gretchen takes off after the assailant while Milo shouts at our mother, asking her what he should do. Our mother is frozen, her face drained of all color, like a ghost.

  Grace’s eyes look around wildly, desperate. Then they glaze over.

  All the tension leaves her body.

  Sillus wails.

  Our mother finally screams.

  “Grace,” I shout. “No!”

  “Greer, let me in!” Thane’s voice yanks me out of the vision. “What happened? What did you see?”

  I stare at him, in shock. I shake my head. I can’t make the words come.

  There’s no time.

  I shake off his grip and race out the door to save my sister’s life.

  Fear drives me. I don’t know how I know where they are, but from the moment I come out of the vision, I go on autopilot, like how I knew how to find Gretchen’s loft the first time. I race through the streets, heading toward Chinatown, as if I’m following a GPS beacon to my sisters.

  When I reach the alley, the group is at the far end. Grace is still standing, talking to Gretchen—introducing her to our mother.

  I nearly cry with relief.

  “Grace,” I shout as I sprint toward them.

  I have never run so fast in all my life.

  They turn to face me—Grace and Gretchen and Milo and our mother, and the little monkey—all five, just like in the vision.

  Everyone but Gretchen looks confused. She looks furious, probably because I’ve left the protection of the safe house—because I’ve risked danger to everyone, including myself, by leaving the safe house’s shield.

  Apollo is the least of my worries at the moment.

  “Get down,” I yell. “Hurry—”

  Before I finish the words, something catches my attention, just like in the vision. Only in reality, I can pinpoint the disturbance as the flash of a knife blade in sunlight.

  Am I already too late?

  “No!”

  I dive for Grace, desperate to knock her down before the blade reaches her.

  What I don’t take into consideration is that by doing so, I put myself into the dagger’s trajectory. At first it feels like a sharp bee sting in the chest, between my collarbone and my rib cage. Then the pain radiates out, overwhelming, and I collapse to the ground.

  No! Apollo’s voice roars in my mind.

  My last thought is that I’m glad it wasn’t Grace. I’m glad I could do that much for her.

  CHAPTER 19

  GRETCHEN

  Everyone always says that time drops into slow motion in the heat of a crisis. In reality, it all happens in the blink of an eye. One second, Grace is introducing me to our mother. The next, the world erupts in chaos.

  Greer gasps, a soft intake of breath.

  The knife speeds past my ear—small and shiny and glinting in the sun.

  I twist my head to follow its path.

  The sound of metal sinking into flesh.

  Another gasp from Greer, this one with a harsh gurgle at the end.

  Thane shouts something—in Greek—and then takes off, lightning fast, chasing down whoever did this, down the alley and out onto the street beyond. I almost go after him, terror and fury urging me to join him in the hunt. But Grace cries out, and I turn back to watch our sister collapse to the ground, a wide-eyed look on her face—wide-eyed, and vacant.

  “Greer!” I dive to my knees at her side, feeling my cargoes tear across the pavement. “Greer!”

  The blade sticking out of her chest shines like a gold coin in the sun. I grab her by the shoulders and pull her up, lifting her so I can cradle her in my arms, careful not to touch the knife, not to push it farther into her body.

  My arms are shaking, flooded with fear and adrenaline.

  Grace drops down next to me, her face eerily pale.

  “Is she—?”

  “No,” I insist. “No!”

  She isn’t. She can’t be. I won’t let her.

  My hands are wet and sticky, coated. I don’t look at them because I already know what I’ll see.

  “Here,” our mother—Cassandra—says, dropping to my side and wrapping her palm around the hilt of the knife sticking out of my sister’s chest. “Quickly.”

  “No!” I shout, grabbing her wrist. “It might be stanching the blood.”

  “There is no time,” she replies, placing her other hand over mine. “I’m a trauma nurse and a Sister of the Serpent. I’ve trained for this.”

  Sister of the Serpent? What? I can’t make sense of her words.

  For a moment, our gray eyes meet. I see confidence and determination in hers, along with the fear. I let her unwrap my hand from her wrist. Turning her attention to Greer, she slowly pulls out the knife. I stare at the flow of blood. It gurgles out of her like a bubbling brook.

  I struggle to keep from throwing up.

  “Give me your right hand,” our mother says.

  I just stare at Greer, shocked and numb. She can’t be gone. She can’t.

  “Gretchen!” Cassandra barks.

  Jerking up, I look at her.

  “Give me your right hand,” she repeats.

  With jerky motions, I lift my right hand and hold it out to her. She takes the knife—a small dagger, no more than a four-inch blade, with intricate gold carvings on the hilt—and holds it above my palm.

  “This will sting.”

  Like I care. All the emotion in my body—all the emotion I ever let myself have—drained away with Greer’s life force. I hear Grace sobbing in the background. I wish I could find release like that, a way to let it out. I wish I didn’t care so much that it feels like the knife landed in my chest.

  Sillus is wailing. “No, huntress. No.”

  Cassandra presses the blade into the flesh of my palm, but I scarcely feel it. I’m numb. I don’t feel anything.

  She tosses the dagger aside and yanks my hand forward, over Greer’s chest. Turning my palm over, she presses it to the wound.

  The action yanks me out of my disconnect.

  “What are you doing?” I demand.

  She doesn’t respond, just watches the spot where my blood and my sister’s mingle. Unmoving, she looks like she’s willing something to happen.

  “What are you doing!” I s
hout, practically screaming in her ear.

  I’m losing it, I know I am. But I’ve never lost a sister before. I’ve never lost anyone I cared about. I’ve never even cared about anyone before, and now all of a sudden it’s all happening at once—the caring, the losing. My brain—my heart—can’t take it.

  Grace’s sobs get louder.

  “Shhh,” Milo soothes

  I turn and see him kneeling at Grace’s side, his arms wrapped around her in comfort. As much as I don’t allow myself to care about many things, Grace cares easily and deeply for the people in her life. This must be hurting her even more than it hurts me.

  And that magnifies my pain.

  Sillus huddles against my side, his little body hiccupping with sobs.

  The tears come, flooding my eyes and spilling over. Beneath my palm, I feel . . . nothing. No movement, no breath, no heartbeat. She’s just gone.

  I don’t know what Cassandra thought she was doing, but clearly it wasn’t enough.

  I look up, and my eyes meet Grace’s. Hers are red and puffy, full of tears.

  I’m sorry, I mouth.

  Grace shakes her head. She doesn’t blame me—not now, anyway. Maybe she will later, after the raw emotions are gone. But I blame myself. I should have done more. I should have known something like this would happen.

  I hang my head. I’ve failed Greer. I’ve failed Grace, too. I was supposed to protect my sisters—I’m stronger than them, and I have more experience with monsters and mythology. I failed, and now Greer is dead.

  Everything is over: the Key Generation, the door, the prophecy, the war and the restoration of balance and the lives of every creature within the abyss. One less heartbeat in the world, and everything changes.

  Something pulses beneath my palm.

  I jerk back. I must have imagined it. There is nothing there. Greer is gone. She—

  It pulses again.

  “She moved,” I gasp.

  “What?” Grace asks, her voice barely a whisper.

  I look at Cassandra, who is smiling through her tears.

  “She moved,” I repeat. “There! She did it again.”

  “See it, see it!” Sillus cries.

  Cassandra sighs with overwhelming relief. “She did.”

  “Impossible,” Milo gasps.

  I ask, “How?”

  Grace scrambles to my side and presses her palms to Greer’s face.

  “Your blood,” Cassandra explains. “From the left vein it has the power to kill, and from the right it has the power to heal.”

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  “The healing blood,” she continues, “can—in very rare instances—also return life to the dead.”

  My mind reels. “What?”

  Cassandra smiles. “When administered within moments of death, your blood has the power to save a life.”

  Grace sobs. “Oh my god, she’s breathing.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask our mother.

  As far as I’m aware, Cassandra hasn’t been a part of our lives or the mythological destiny we carry since she handed us over for adoption. She shouldn’t know about the blood.

  “There is another legacy,” she answers. “The Sisterhood of the Serpent. From the moment of the prophecy, the women in our line have known this time would come. While we do not have your powers, we pass on the knowledge from generation to generation so the truth is not lost.”

  “That’s amazing,” I reply, trying to imagine how hard it was to carry that information forward through the centuries.

  “When you were born,” she continues, “I knew the time would come when my daughters would need even more from me. In addition to the knowledge of the Sisterhood, I’ve studied every piece of Medusa lore I could get my hands on. I went to nursing school, volunteered for the emergency room and the trauma ward. I’ve had sixteen years to get ready.”

  I shake my head, stunned. I thought she had abandoned us. All this time, she’s been preparing for this moment.

  And it paid off by saving Greer’s life.

  I feel frozen, like I can’t draw breath into my lungs.

  But beneath my palm, my sister is not having that problem. Her chest rises and falls with the steady rhythm of resting breath.

  If I were the kind of girl to cry at happy news, I’d be sobbing right along with Grace. Even so, I find it almost impossible to keep my act together. I wrap an arm around Sillus’s shaking body and hug him tight. It’s only the knowledge that my other palm needs to stay steady on the wound and my mind needs to stay focused on revenge that keeps me from collapsing onto Greer’s life-filled body.

  CHAPTER 20

  GRACE

  Greer is alive. I can’t stop staring at her, can’t stop watching the rise and fall of her chest, can’t stop my heart from pounding in my chest with unparalleled joy.

  A minute ago, she was dead. I didn’t have to feel her pulse fade away to know. The look on Gretchen’s face was enough to tell me everything. She was gone.

  And now she’s back.

  My brain can’t quite accept the reality of it. In the space of a couple of minutes, I’ve experienced just about the biggest possible roller coaster of emotions. My sister—my triplet—came back from the dead. And my other sister brought her back.

  Greer is still unconscious—maybe in another astral lock—but she’s breathing easily, and the wound has stopped gushing blood. There is so much blood. Her clothes are covered with dark red—she’s going to be upset when she wakes up. The ground, too, is soaked in blood, as is Gretchen’s hand—the hand that saved Greer’s life.

  Gretchen looks stunned, and I suppose I do, too. The idea that my sister is back from the dead—however briefly she was gone—is beyond comprehension.

  “You saved her,” I whisper.

  Gretchen glances at our mother. “Cassandra did,” she says. “I mean, our mother.”

  Cassandra shakes her head with a weary smile. “I only knew the lore, and hoped it was true.”

  “It’s still amazing,” I say.

  “It’s impossible,” Milo says, reminding me that he’s still here—that he witnessed all of this.

  If he wasn’t freaked out before, he is now.

  “We need to get her back to the safe house,” Gretchen insists.

  “Yes,” Sillus says. “Go.”

  Rough footsteps echo down the alley an instant before Thane comes running around the corner, covered in sweat and with a bleak look in his stormy gray eyes. “Bastard got away.”

  He took off after the murderer—well, attempted murderer—almost the instant the knife hit Greer’s chest, and it had looked like he and Greer had run all the way here from the safe house in the first place.

  He should be exhausted, but he doesn’t show it.

  Ignoring everyone else, he crosses to Greer’s side and drops to the ground. He reaches out, reverently tracing his fingertips over her brow.

  There is such sadness in his eyes—Thane has always had a bit of sorrow in him, just beneath the surface—but this is so much worse. He looks . . . bleak. As I open my mouth to tell him the good news, Greer coughs. He lurches back.

  “She’s—” He swivels to stare at me. “She’s not dead?”

  I shake my head. “Gretchen saved her.”

  Thane looks at Gretchen, uncharacteristic emotion on his face. He doesn’t usually let this kind of feeling show, but the gratitude is unmistakable. He looks like his soul aches with relief.

  “How?” he asks.

  “Our blood,” Gretchen says, holding up her right hand. “It . . . has that power.”

  He nods, as if that’s all the explanation he needs. I shouldn’t be surprised that he just accepts it. If his blood had been able to save Greer, to bring her back from the dead, I think he would have drained every last ounce to try.

  “Cassandra showed her how,” I tell him.

  As he turns back to face me, he sees Milo standing off to the side. He scowls and then turns to me. “Grace?”
r />   “Um, yeah, I . . .” I flick a desperate glance at Milo, but he gives me a helpless look. That’s okay; now isn’t the time anyway. “Can we talk about this later?”

  Thane considers it for a second and then nods. “Get Greer back to the safe house.”

  “We were just about to do that.” Gretchen looks at Cassandra. “Can we move her?”

  Our mother’s brow furrows. “Let me examine her.”

  While Gretchen, Thane, and Cassandra figure out how to get Greer off the ground, I walk over to Milo.

  “So . . . ,” he says.

  As much as I don’t want to do this—I want to talk to him about this and find out if he’s really freaking out—things are far too serious. I won’t put him at risk.

  “Milo, I—” I lower my gaze, because I don’t want my hypno powers involved. “I think you should go home now.”

  After a hesitation, he says, “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

  He doesn’t sound freaked out.

  “I don’t,” I say, “but things are very dangerous right now.”

  “I can help.”

  I look up, giving him a grateful smile. “I know. But for now, my sisters and I have to handle it.”

  He nods. “Okay. For now.”

  He casts a quick glance at Thane and then presses a quick kiss to my lips. “Just don’t forget you promised me answers.”

  “I won’t,” I say, smiling as he waves good-bye to my brother and heads out of the alley.

  Maybe things will work out between us despite all the crazy in my life. Maybe.

  As I’m walking back to my sisters, the glint of gold and steel catches my eye. I walk over to the dagger that our mother discarded after slicing open Gretchen’s palm and pick it up. Such a small, pretty thing to cause so much pain.

  It might have caused even more, if Cassandra and Gretchen hadn’t acted so quickly.

  “Shiny,” Sillus says.

  “Can I see that?” Gretchen asks.

  I hand her the blade.

  “Can you tell who it belongs to?” I ask. “Or maybe who sent him?”

  She turns the dagger over in her hand. The blade is short, double-edged—like the black ones Gretchen carries in her boots—and pretty unremarkable. The handle, though, is quite unusual. There are intricate carvings, swirling patterns of what look like antlers in gleaming gold, now covered in bright red blood.