Centaur Legacy (4 page)

“And, this is what we’re looking for?
Nice. Why don’t we just see if we can find some plutonium to walk
around with? It might be safer.”

Drake laughed, “Plutonium might be
safer, but I’m not sure how much of a deterrent it would be for
Zandra.”

“If we are able to get the arrow,
what’re we going to do with it? We’re not going to kill her. I
mean, I don’t have any love for her, but I don’t want her dead,
either.”

“Just having it will be enough of a
protection. It’s Hercules’ arrow. No harm can come to us if we have
it – not from Zandra, not from anything.”

We drove in silence for a few minutes.
I didn’t know how we would find the pasture, or even how we’d know
when we found it. Lost in my own thought, I was jolted back to
reality when Drake pulled the car into what looked like an
abandoned gas station. A faded metal sign hung proudly advertising
“Petrol,” but from the looks of the place, no one had gotten gas
there in a very long time.

I stood looking at the terrain in front
of us. I’d always heard Ireland was the Emerald Isle and expected
it to be lush and green in all directions. What we discovered was
the terrain was rugged, areas were steep, and fields of rocks were
far more prevalent than the grassy fields I had expected. We walked
for over an hour across pastures, over rolling hills, through
ravines, before I asked, “Drake, how are you going to know when we
find it?”

He shook his head, “I’m not
sure. Dad always said that the field was magical. I’d like to think
I could feel the magic if we got close, or maybe
you’ll
be able
to.”

I rolled my eyes. “Defective. . .
remember?” He already knew I couldn’t read thoughts, see the
future, or anything else other Centaurides could do.

Drake stopped in his tracks, looked
down at me and said, “You’re not defective. You just haven’t worked
all the kinks out yet.”

Smirking at him, “Kinks? You mean like
I can’t read minds, see futures, move objects. . . Those are kinks?
Whew, here I thought there was something really wrong with
me.”

“You’re such a smart ass,
Cami.”

I playfully grabbed his shoulder and
leaned in toward him, “Just one of the many aspects of me you
love.”

A gruff voice echoed at us from off in
the distance, “What are you doin’ o’ this way?”

I froze. It was the first person to
notice us traipsing all over the countryside, and from his stance
he didn’t look pleased to see us. Drake picked up the pace and
began walking faster toward the man, “Hello, I’m Drake and this is
Camille. We’re looking for some long-lost relatives.”

The man had a light complexion and a
forced smile. He wore a gray wool jacket hanging open over a
flannel shirt, well-worn blue jeans and scuffed leather boots. He
grunted. “Americans?”

Drake nodded. The man continued his
interrogation. “Who might ya be lookin’ for?”

“Chiron. Zethus Chiron. We were told he
lived south of Dublin.”

“Zethus Chiron?” The old man took a
tobacco pipe from his mouth and spat at our feet. His eyes
narrowed, and I was thankful they couldn’t actually fire the
daggers that were staring back at us. “He’s been gone for years.”
The man turned his back on us and walked slowly in the other
direction.

After I was sure he was out of ear
shot, I asked Drake, “What do you make of that?”

He shook his head, “I don’t
know.”

That pit in my stomach that I’d had
while I was at Zandra’s began to form again. Zethus was her twin.
It wasn’t a stretch to think he would be just as ruthless as she.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”

“It was one person, Cami.” Drake took a
step forward in the direction we’d been traveling, “At least we
know we’re in the right country.”

Ireland was a whole different world
from the United States. The never-ending pastures stretched on
forever, and the rocky terrain caused us both to stumble. In my
mind I had pictured pastures like I’d seen in northern California,
lush and green. Ireland looked nothing like the nicely aligned
fenced-in pastures flanked by roads skirting nearly every fence I
had always seen in the US. We occasionally came across fences: most
were made of rock, some had gates to go through, others had rock
steps to easily climb over them.

I was still nervous from our first
encounter with the older man when we came across an older couple
crossing through a pasture perpendicular to us. The woman gave us a
welcoming smile. I returned her greeting and asked, “Excuse me,
we’re looking for a distant relative. Do you know where we could
find Zethus Chiron?”

The woman’s eyes widened and her smile
morphed into an angry grimace. She put her head down, reached over
to her husband’s coat sleeve, yanked hard, and scurried quickly
back the way they had come without a word.

“Wait, wait! Please, won’t you help
us?” She neither answered, nor did she look over her shoulder in
our direction. I stood there watching them speed-walk over the
field, and that pit in my stomach began to throb. Drake sensed my
fear, reached down and squeezed my hand, “We learned that we’re
close. We’ll find him, Cami.”

The words spilled out of my mouth
before I could stop them. “So, what if he’s just like Zandra? What
if we’ve escaped one prison only to be locked up in
another?”

Drake didn’t answer me. I waited for
him to reassure me that things would be fine, that these last three
people we ran into were flukes. He didn’t.

For the next few hours we kept up our
pace and only came across sheep, goats, cattle and the occasional
horse grazing. I looked at my watch; we’d been searching for almost
six hours.

A person walked our way off in the
distance. I planted my feet, waiting to see where he would go. The
man continued toward us. He was younger, late twenties or early
thirties, and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. As the man strolled
up to us, he gave us a happy greeting as he approached. “Well,
hello! Are you two los’?”

Since I had struck out with the couple
we’d met before, I signaled Drake that it was his turn to try to
strike up a conversation. “A little. We’re looking for a distant
relative. We were told that Zethus Chiron lived out this way, but
we’ve had some difficulty finding him.” That was an
understatement.

Looking perplexed, the man asked,
“Someone told you he lived ou’ this way?”

I liked his question much better than
the response we had gotten from the last three older people we’d
talked to. “Yes, in this area.”

“Not by anyone who knew anythin’,
that’s for sure. No Chiron family’s lived in these parts for as
long as I’ve been alive.”

I felt my heart sink. I couldn’t make
my eyes meet the man’s when I asked, “Did you say you’ve never
heard of Zethus Chiron? I was under the impression he was well
known.” No one had actually told me he was well known, but since
Drake knew who he was and the first three people we asked seemed to
have heard of him, I had to assume he wasn’t a wallflower. Judging
from the response we had gotten from the first three people we met
– I had an idea of what his personality might be like,
too.

The younger man shook his head, “No, I
can’t say that I’ve heard of him.”

I forced a smile, “Thanks. Sorry to
have bothered you.”

“You weren’t a bother, lass. You looked
like you mighta’ been los’. Sorry I can’t help.”

I looked at Drake; he wore the same
defeated look that I did. We walked back in the direction we’d left
the car. Drake’s fingers curled around mine. His touch reminded me
to put our adventure in better perspective. No one was chasing us,
at least not that we knew of. We were together on a mission to save
our future, and luckily, we were doing it together. Even if we
weren’t successful, this time together was a gift in
itself.

We found our rental car and went back
to the hotel. On the drive back I asked, “So, if that man’s never
heard of Zethus, maybe we aren’t in the right place? The first
people we asked were older, and one even sounded like he’d moved
away.”

Drake kept his eyes on the winding
road, “Maybe, but let’s give it a few more days. It was just one
man. The others seemed to know him.” He reached his hand over to
mine and gave it a gentle squeeze.

I was glad he had more faith than I
did. Even if we never found Zethus, spending time with Drake and
spending that time away from all the crazy Centaur rules was
something I couldn’t take for granted.

We logged mile after mile on the
winding roads on our way back to the city, and I savored each
minute.

(Camille – Southern
Ireland)

By our third day ambling over the
countryside, talking about our friends, families, dreams – I felt
like there wasn’t a person I’d ever known better in the world.
Maybe Daniel, but even he had never been this open with me. Drake
wasn’t secretive about anything. He never tired of my questions,
and the more I learned about him, the more I wanted to
know.

Drake wasn’t like
the
Stepford-Centaurs
I’d met at my brother Bruce’s wedding. He wasn’t trying to be
the guy I wanted him to be – but he was exactly who I had pictured
in my future. When the massive earthquake had hit Haiti a few years
ago, he didn’t send a donation to help; he got on a boat and was
digging people out of the rubble for days. Afterwards, he helped
with reconstruction for weeks.

Drake was wealthy by human standards,
but worked anyway. He said he liked the way it made him feel when a
house was finished – like a piece of him would be around for the
next hundred years.

A human neighbor’s house burned down
when a brushfire spread out of control. Their insurance company
wouldn’t cover the repairs. They were living in tents in their yard
because of the damage to the structure. Drake bought the supplies
and convinced his whole crew to give up several weekends making the
house livable again. His father fumed about his crew helping
humans, but Drake refused to back down. He volunteered for Habitat
for Humanity two weekends a month and had a hand in building more
than thirty houses. In a word, Drake was perfect.

Ireland’s landscape was breathtaking;
the rolling hills were grassy but didn’t feel overgrown. It looked
as if the land had somehow made a pact with the animals; it
wouldn’t provide them more food than they could eat, but none would
ever go hungry. There seemed to be endless streams and lakes
nestled between the shoulders of hills.

After cresting the top of another hill,
we came across a deep valley and looked down into a lake that was
completely still. It mirrored the sky perfectly, and I had to
wonder if a bird had ever flown directly into the water, mistaking
the mirrored clouds for the real thing. I stood at the top of the
hill, mesmerized by the image in front of me – if there were a
magical place, we had just found it.

Drakes fingers flexed around mine,
“Cami, are you okay?”

He was still holding my hand, but I
could sense his worry. I wondered if he saw it the same way I did?
“What do you feel when you look out here?”

His gaze looked out over the still
lake, just as mine had done. I felt his fingers constrict around
mine. “I feel it, too.”

When Drake told me we would feel the
magic when we found it, in my mind I had pictured the rush the
first time I’d seen a magician saw a lady in half as a child, or
maybe when a friendly neighbor had pulled a quarter out of my ear
and handed it to me. I expected that feeling of wonder that only a
child can feel – the one that ingrains itself in your memory as if
it’s actually a part of your physical make-up.

This valley didn’t feel like those
things at all. It was energy, a sense of oneness, in a word – home.
The terrain was vast; we had a clear view of the entire valley.
We’d been walking for hours; I was hungry and exhausted, but all of
that seemed to diminish – this was our destination.

I took a step forward, expecting Drake
to be in lock step, but he held his position at the crest of the
hill. “Not today, Cami. We’ve found it. We don’t want to get lost
in the dark. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

I’m sure the look I’d given him was
confused because, well, that’s how I felt. We belonged here.
Couldn’t he feel it calling to us, welcoming us home? Drake stepped
behind me, pressed himself against me, while his arms snaked around
both my sides and his chin rested on my shoulder. I could feel his
breath on my neck, “It’ll be here tomorrow, Love. We’ve found it.
Let’s get some rest.”

I’ve never been an outdoorsy person. I
had plenty of opportunities to camp growing up and found a good
reason to avoid each one, but walking away from this place felt
wrong. If this really was the pasture of Thessaly – I couldn’t
fathom why any Centaur would ever have left. The weather had been
rainy most of the day. I didn’t want to go back to civilization;
not even the lure of a hot bath or dry clothes was much motivation
to leave.

Drake looked down into my eyes, brushed
a stray strand of hair behind my ear and said, “I promise, we’ll be
back tomorrow. It’ll be dark soon. We’ve found it.” He took my hand
and gently tugged me back in the direction of the car. A twinge of
dread began to seep into my consciousness, beckoning me to stay,
but I reluctantly followed.