20
Friday before the barbecue
Selena hears her phone start going off just as she sets the pot on the stove. Picking it up off the other counter she sees it is Bath calling, “Hi! How have you been?”
“Wonders never cease my darling, they never cease. I don’t know what it was you did that changed things with Apophis but oh, you have changed things. May I come over?”
Selena nearly drops the phone, “What? You never— I mean, yes, but—” she takes a breath, “Really? I would love that. Please do. When?”
“I was thinking now. I am eager to go places. I will explain when I get there. Ok?”
“Yes. Sure. We will be here.” Bath ends the call leaving Selena stunned. Bath and Zethes have never been out of their home as long as she has known them. What could have changed that she is eager to get out?
Twenty minutes later a knock on the door. Brighid comes out of Kya’s room to the end of the hall and watches the door as Selena opens it to Bath on the other side. She is stunning in the sunlight, skin the color of chestnut and dressed in her usual flowing white. Selena cocks her head to one side, “Bath, have you got wings? Are those wings I see?”
Bath grins, “I knew you would see them in the sunlight! Yes, they are wings. Now, can I come in and have some of your tea or shall we stand in the door and talk?”
“Oh! I’m sorry! Yes, come in. I am a little flabbergasted.” She steps back opening the door wide, Brighid nods at Bath who nods back and winks. Brighid grins as she turns to go back to Kya’s room and to enjoy napping with her.
A few minutes later Selena and Bath are sitting at the kitchen table with hot mugs of tea in front of each of them. Selena can’t wait any longer, “Bath, what happened? What made you willing to venture out of your house?”
Bath sips her tea, “It was never that I wanted to stay locked in that house. We had no choice. Shortly after your father found out you were dating Gabriel he came to the house and gave us an ultimatum. Either we force Gabriel to stop dating you or we would become prisoners of our home. I am the prophet angel of God, the One God as his followers call him. I just called him Je. I can see all of the past and anything currently happening if I focus on a person, I can also see the threads of possibility. I see the paths that it could follow. When your father made that demand, all the threads showed you dying. Every thread that had Kya in it was wiped out completely.” Selena puts her hand over her mouth, throat tight and eyes stinging. Bath reaches over and takes her hand. “I couldn’t do it. You were already so important to me and Kya was as real as if she been with us for years.” She looks down at her tea, “For a long time, much longer than I have known you, the threads of Gabriel’s life were short. So short for one of the long lived races like ours. He should live a few hundred years genetically. He won’t though. I can’t quite see why on any thread but the why doesn’t really matter. Keeping you and Kya in the picture was very important to me. I told your father I would never. He bound us in that house right then and there. But that isn’t the important part.”
“What? Bath, you just told me that my father held you prisoner in your own home for the past 7 years. How is that not important?”
“Because sweet girl, today he set us free. He showed up, apologized, set us free and invited us to a barbecue on Saturday, now tomorrow. He is changing everything and I am not sure why. I could go back and figure it out, but I have never been to your home and I wanted out of the house. Zethes and I flew! It was beautiful. He is still out playing in the wind. Now, what has happened recently?”
“Well,” Selena tilts her head a bit, “maybe the wreck?”
“The one with Gabriel? He didn’t tell me the truth about that, that was why we kicked him out. What really happened that put him in jail?”
Selena tells Bath all about the day that Gabriel rammed her truck in front of her dad, Bath listens intently, becoming very excited when she gets to the part about her dad running over to her door.
“Ah, so that’s it. He thought you were injured or killed. He realized how much he has to lose.“
“What are you talking about?”
“Your father suffers from the same thing many other men, especially the pale ones, do. Ego. They are quite sure they are in control of the universe which owes them for their presence, and for the most part that is how they are raised. Your father, being a god of sorts, has it worse. Much like the one that fathered me. So it doesn’t occur to him that you could die, especially not right in front of him. He thinks you are protected by virtue of being his daughter. So when he saw Gabriel ram your truck right in front of him and he could do nothing, it woke him up some. How much remains to be seen.”
She sips her now cold tea, “Setting us free, not going after your mother or sister, and his changed behavior in general are changing the threads of the future.”
“How do you know about his changed behavior but not the wreck?”
“Because of the boundaries of my ability. I can see anything and everything but it only moves in real time. If I watch someone chase their dog for twenty minutes that is twenty minutes of my time as well. There is no fast forward. I can skip through, but that is like trying to find the right spot in a book that lost its marker.”
“Oh, I see. So for you to see everything you would have to watch him all the time but you would only see him and those around him.” Selena grins, “Do you watch people in the shower? Or having sex? Or—”
“Selena Rose! I never! You are a dirty minded girl!” Bath laughs as she gets up and takes her cup to the sink. “I have to get going. Zethes is circling the house. He is impatient to fly with me. Don’t worry, no one can see us. I made sure he remembered.” Selena comes over to hug Bath, “I am so glad you are free and I am so sorry you were imprisoned by my dad. Enjoy your flight and tell Zethes I said hi. You will be there tomorrow, right?” She releases her and steps back to see her face, “I would love to get to hang out with you and Zethes and mom and Samara.”
Bath smiles big, “We wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
***
Saturday, Apophis’s house
The kids run through the kitchen narrowly missing the cook and the pot of boiled potatoes she was taking to the sink to drain. Selena turns from the onions she is chopping and yells, “Take it outside guys, you can’t run through here! You will get hurt!” A chorus of agreement follows her voice after the children, she looks at the others laughing quietly. Cook says, “We love seeing them but I am going to have a heart attack if they run under another pot like that.”
“I’m sorry, I think Dad gave them a bunch of candy. They are pretty extra right now.”
“It is fine. He probably did. He put bags of candy on the list this week.”
Apophis walks in, “Selena, it is nearly 7, wash up. You reek of onions. People are arriving.”
Selena sticks her tongue out at him, “How do you know that isn’t what I want to smell like? Onions are my new Eau de Parfum.”
Apophis laughs at her, “Well, that will ensure you get left alone.”
Selena laughs and wipes her hands on a towel, “I’m going, you and your reasons and logic.” She rolls her eyes with a smile and strolls out of the kitchen toward her room to clean up.
Upstairs Selena washes quickly before grabbing a black skirt out of the closet and a cute white tank top with the Pride logo in rainbow colors. Ready to be smelled again she leaves her room and skips lightly down the stairs to join her family and friends outside. Spying her mom and Samara talking to Bath and Zethes she weaves her way past her dad’s business acquaintances and friends to hug them all before wandering off to check on the kids. She finds them playing hide and go seek in the bushes with about ten other children of varying ages. They are so adorable, she doesn’t want to stop the game and they are safe here at her dad’s. Especially with all these people around. Satisfied she turns to rejoin the adults in hopes of finding her friends to introduce to her mom and Samara. Before she takes two steps she he
ars Kya scream. Spinning around she is just in time to see her daughter fly into the trees and disappear from view, screaming and fighting Gabriel all the way.
Selena screams in rage and terror, her father and Dwayne are next to her in an instant. “What happened?”
“He took her! He took Kya right out of the yard! HE took my baby!” Everyone is looking to see what is happening, parents are collecting their children with sighs of relief that it wasn’t their child that disappeared and concern for the child that was taken. Linnette and Hayden gather up Nathan and Aspen, both crying because they are scared for their friend. Apophis tells Selena, “I am going to get rid of most of these people quickly. You just hang on for a few minutes and then we will all put together our considerable talents to find your baby.”
Selena looks at him, hands clenching over and over, “I think I can wait that long before I go find him and tear him into little pieces.”
With a nod at Dwayne, Apophis hurries off to escort people out. Dwayne puts his arm around Selena, “We’ll find her.”
21
“The bastard won’t stop moving!” Luna drops the pendulum on the map in frustration, “He hasn’t stopped moving since he left here. I can follow the line of where he is going but who knows when he will stop? Zethes, these winds he is riding, do they get tired? Do they run out? How does that work?”
Zethes turns from the window, “No, they don’t get tired or run out. They move on. Some places are favored but the wind is not bound to a spot and has no worries for energy even when transporting two.”
Luna grabs the pendulum with more force than necessary and begins searching for him again. She finds him and the pendulum follows him as he circles the town. Selena watches from the cozy chair they think will calm her, fear and rage still at war inside her. None of them dare touch me right now with the magical current sparking all over my body. I can’t stop it. I’m not even sure that I want to stop it. What I want is to find Gabriel and take my daughter back from him. How dare he! He doesn’t even know her and doesn’t want to be her father, he just wants to own me. I think it was a mistake not dating all this time, it gave him the wrong idea. Wait, what the fuck am I thinking? I didn’t want to date anyone. The mistake is his in thinking that I am something to be owned. Fuck that noise. He needs to get himself together and sort out his thinking. What kind of person looks at someone else as something to be owned? Worse yet, what kind of person looks at a child as a pawn? I can’t keep going with that line of thought, it isn’t going anyplace nice. What is taking mom so long to find him? And why do I smell smoke? Oh…
“Mom, how’s the search going? I need to go find her. I can’t keep sitting here. The chair is starting to smoke.” Apophis looks at his chair in alarm and sees that it is indeed smoking.
“Selena, darling, that is a very expensive chair. Go back to pacing.”
Selena is out of the chair instantly and over to the table with a map of the town that her mother circling with her pendulum though she is careful not to touch it considering her current state. Luna looks up, “I can’t find him anymore. He disappeared and I can’t find either of them.”
Selena’s throat tightens. “I can’t lose my daughter. I just can’t lose her. He doesn’t know her or care about her. I love her! She is afraid of him!” The sparks along her skin are coming faster now, her voice rising with each word spoken.
Dwayne moves into her field of vision, “We will get Kya back. I promise. I have called my kin and they have wolf friends that would be happy to shift and track her down for you. We will find her. But you have to stay calm.”
“Oh Selena,” Luna says, “he is right. You are this child’s mother and it is up to you to stay calm so you don’t hinder the search.” She reaches across the table for Selena’s hand. Selena looks at her hand for a moment before grudgingly placing her hand in her mothers. “The best thing you can do is to put all that rage energy in a box and keep it till we find him. We will find him.”
Selena stares unseeing at the map for a few minutes. The crackling lights moving on her skin slow and disappear. Looking up she tells them, “We need to find her fast. Before I spring a leak.”
Zethes turns back to face the room again. “The winds say that he doesn’t have Kya with him now. They don’t know where she is but he is heading in this direction.”
Luna begins scrying again, “If I can find her then we can get her while he is distracted. You may have to be the distraction Selena.”
“If it gets my daughter to safety there isn’t much I won’t do.”
Apophis has been standing off to the side watching and listening. “How long before he gets in this area Zethes?”
“At least half an hour.”
“Luna, you lock on him and keep track of his progress. Selena, do you have any of Kya’s hair?”
Selena looks sharply at him, “I do. Why?”
“I can find her. I just need something of hers, hair is easiest.”
“Here,” she pulls a locket out of her bra cup and opening it she extracts a few hairs. Handing them to Apophis she asks, “How long will this take?”
“Not long at all. I will return shortly.”
“You can’t do it here?”
“No, this isn’t the kind of magic I share with everyone. Most would consider it dark magic.”
“Fine. Hurry.”
22
Selena and the others are waiting for Apophis to finish his dark magic to find Kya when her phone rings. She snatches it out of her pocket, “Gabriel.”
If the name hadn’t drawn everyone’s attention the venom in her voice would have done it.
“Gabriel, where have you gone with my daughter?”
“Oh, you mean you don’t know? Can’t find her? How sad for you. Maybe now you can listen like you should have before.”
“Where is Kya?”
“She is safe. And that is all you will know until you meet my demands.”
“Your demands? What demands Gabriel? Why not just give me my daughter back and call it a day?”
“Oh you would love that wouldn’t you? But you’re not getting your way today. Today it is all mine.” Gabriel laughs, “And you will be the one toeing the line.”
Selena puts him on speaker so everyone can hear him, “What are your demands Gabriel?”
“First, you are going to meet with me and we are going to discuss our future together. Your recent slut behavior with Dwayne means you don’t even get a say in the rules. But we will talk about that when you get here. Now, you get yourself to the back of the Main Street stores, I will see you in the parking lot. Come alone or you will never see Kya again. And wouldn’t that be sad? Poor little Kya all alone with no parents to care for her…”
“You bastard.”
“Ah, ah, ah. No calling your future husband names. Behave and get your ass over there now.” Click.
“He hung up on me. I have to go.” Everyone starts talking all at once about why she shouldn’t go alone. Selena shouts, “Quiet!”
Once everyone has stopped talking Selena begins, “I have to go. Someone has to stall him while Dad finds Kya. He will be finished soon and after you all collect her, message me. If he has me he isn’t hurting her to get to me. I am trusting you all with my daughter’s life. Save her. Because without her I can’t find a reason not to explode just to take him out with me.”
Selena leaves quick before they begin thinking up reasons for her to stay. She sees her father run out the door just as she makes the first curve in the driveway. I can’t let them focus on me. They have to save Kya. Every one of them has more experience using their magic than I do because of my powers having been bound for so long. They love me and want to keep me safe but my lack of skills makes me the weak link in saving her. I’ll make a damn fine distraction and they need time. I can buy time for my sweetling. Selena gets to Main Street, cruising slow past the closed shops to the alley that will take her behind them to another parking area. Making the right turn she creeps thro
ugh the alley and into the large parking lot. No other vehicles. Great. No witnesses. But where is he? She stops in the middle of the lot and puts her truck in park. She messages Dwayne- “Any luck yet?”
“Your dad got an address. You at the meeting spot?”
“Yes. No sign of him yet.”
“Your mom says he is there. Watch your back. We are on our way to the address”
Selena watches as Gabriel lands across the lot from her. “He’s here. Alone. GTG.”
“Stay calm and play his ass till we can get to you.”
As she gets out of the truck Selena shoves her phone in the back pocket of the jeans she put on while she was trying to wait at dads. Shutting the door of the truck she walks toward him. He hasn’t moved since he landed. Just stood there with his arms crossed over his belly with a smug look on his pale face. What the hell did I ever see in him? Did he ever make that stupid looking face he’s making now when we were dating? If dad saw what I am seeing now, no wonder he hated him and was willing to do anything to stop us dating. She stops outside his arms reach from him. “I’m here Gabriel. Now what?” He looks her up and down, “God you’re sexy. I missed that so much. Jemma is cute but she doesn’t have that something you have. None of them ever did. That’s why I kept you. That is why I am going to keep you. You are mine Selena and you will accept that or I will make you pay.”
“Why would you want someone you tossed aside years ago? Someone that doesn’t want you.”
Just like that he is in her face, his arms around her waist lifting and pressing her against his soft body. It is all she can do not to gag at his hot, shit-scented breath in her face. “Where is my daughter?”
Selena Rose: Daughter of the Moon Page 12
