Centaur Legacy (9 page)

“She set up a marriage between Gage
Richardson and me. Eadie said she was trying to strengthen the
Chiron bloodline. What did she mean by that?”

“My fool sis’er dreamed up a plan that
the Chiron blood with Winfield and Unice’s could have a powerful
effect. She’s had a lot o’ time on her hands since your mather
disappeared. Ne’er could figure out where that lass went, probably
for the bes’. So, lemme guess, you turn up out o’ the clear blue,
and Zandra swooped in an’ locked you up.”

He had put the whole situation together
without me having to relive any of it. “She did. Once we escaped, I
thought we’d be fine, but Drake and my dad think she’s going to
come after us.”

Uncle Zethus turned his attention to
Drake, “You’re a smar’ one. That deci’ful little bat will keep
chasin’ you. She gets somthin’ stuck in her craw and there isn’t
any gettin’ it ou’. What do you wan’ from me?”

“Zandra’s magic is much stronger than
ours. If we had Hercules’ arrow, we could protect
ourselves.”

He nodded, “Tell me somethin.’ How did
you and your mather stay hidden so long?”

There wasn’t any reason to withhold
information from him. “Aphrodite’s magic protected us. Kyle
Richardson gave his magic to hide us, but when my mom died, the
protection went away.”

He guffawed, “Well, isn’t that ironic!
The very magic Zandra was tryin’ to give to you is what hid you
from her all those years! An’ since this handsome fella isn’t a
descendant of Winfield and Unice, he can’t do nothing for ya. You
sure know how to pick ‘em.”

I could hear the pleading in my voice
when I asked, “So, will you help us?”

“I wish tha’ I could, Darlin’. Too many
Centaurs were power hungry. Didn’t think I’d see a very long life
with the arrow. Gave it to a bloke from the States.”

“The states? You mean the United
States?”

“Aye, he came to me o’er twen’y years
ago, tellin’ me he’d take care o’ the arrow. He’d hide it from the
Centaurs. He’d protect it.”

“Who was he?”

“I forget his name. Said he lives by
Crazy Horse.”

“Crazy Horse, the Indian?”

“I knew enough to know that Crazy Horse
was dead. But this fella says near Crazy Horse’s Mountain. I handed
it o’er and have no’ seen him since. Crazy Horse was a powerful
Centaur Warrior – but he adopted those Indians like they was his
own. Seemed like a good idea for the arrow to be near his mountain.
The fella needed it, so I handed it over.”

“You don’t remember the man’s name or a
way we can get in contact with him?”

“Robert or Roger. . . maybe, I don’t
remember. All I can tell ye’ is he isn’t a Centaur.” Zethus paused
as if there was something important he wanted us to know. “He’s a
man. He’s go’ that arrow. You tell ‘em I sent you.” Zethus stood up
to leave the room, “Good luck to you. If that fool sister o’ mine
shows up here – I’ll give her the what for.”

When we were alone in the room again, I
asked, “Did I hear that right? He gave the arrow to a man he didn’t
know, because the guy lived near Crazy Horse’s
Mountain?”

“That’s what it sounded
like.”

“We’re supposed to find the guy: no
name, no description, no clue who he is, and tell him Zethus said
we could have the arrow?”

Drake smiled at me, “Yeah, unless you
have a better idea.”

“We do this while we avoid my
grandmother?”

“He didn’t tell us that, but I think
that’s implied.” Drake’s smirk grew bigger. I was ready to give him
a smart aleck comment back when it hit me. It didn’t matter how
much danger we were in, we were together. My blood debt should be
forgiven – Bianca should have chosen Gage by now. None of those
things seemed possible on Friday; now less than a week later, my
life was nearly my own, other than the one little thing I still
hadn’t figured out how to tell Drake. Spending the night here and
talking to Uncle Zethus helped put everything in better
perspective.

As we emerged from the staircase, Eadie
was waiting for us on the first floor. “You talked to Jeb, did
you?”

“We did.”

“Don’t believe a word he says. He ain’t
been right since his sister killed their parents.”

“His sister? Zandra? She killed their
parents?’

“Aye, about thirty years ago. She was
convinced they were hiding that fool arrow from her. Jeb tried to
convince her that it didn’t exist. She didn’t believe him. If they
had it, they took that location to the grave with ‘em. He hasn’t
been the same since.”

It sounded like Zethus had hidden the
arrow from Eadie, too.

“Here, it isn’t what you’re looking
for, but it protected my family against her. He wants you to have
it.” She handed me the ugliest broach I’d ever seen. It was a gold
and metallic green spider with a torso that bubbled out and was the
size of a full-sized locust. The spider had large bulging gem stone
eyes, and I wanted to hand it back to her. When she pressed down on
the spider’s head, the abdomen opened to reveal a locket with hair
in it.

“It won’t protect you from any of her
people, but it’ll protect you from Zandra. This was Athena’s
locket.”

I remembered this story from the
endless lessons at Zandra’s house. “Athena was the goddess of
weaving. She got jealous of a mortal and killed her, but felt
guilty, then brought the mortal back to life as a spider,
right?”

“Yes. Arachne was the girl. Whoever’s
hair is placed in this locket cannot harm you. Zandra’s hair is
already in it.”

“But, what will happen to
you?”

“I’m an old woman. I don’t need
Athena’s protection anymore. Be on your way. Sides, if Zandra shows
her face here, Jeb won’t be so kind. She won’t leave this island
unless it’s in a box.”

If things didn’t go well, Ireland may
be a place that we could set up as a safe haven from Zandra. I
wasn’t sure what to call my uncle, so I asked Eadie, “You keep
calling him Jeb. I thought his name was Zethus?”

“Once his parents were killed by
Zandra, he said he didn’t want nothin’ to do with the Chiron name
anymore. Old timers around here still remember him in his younger
days; he was a wee bit on the wild side and didn’t take to humans
living in Thessaly. After she killed ‘em, he just up and changed
his name and stopped goin’ into town. Most folks assumed he died
the day his parents did, others thought he moved away. He told us
all Zethus was dead. When you two showed up, it was the first time
I’d heard his given name since the boys were kids.”

I gave Eadie a hug and thanked her
profusely. The broach hadn’t been what we’d come for, but it gave
us some measure of safety, and I was humbled by her gift. I was
excited to have met Zethus, and it was good to learn I wasn’t the
only one who wanted nothing to do with Zandra. Eadie had one of her
sons give us a ride back to our rental car.

As for Crazy Horse’s Mountain, I
wondered how we would find a person with a magical arrow, with
nothing to go on. Once we found him, would he be willing to give it
up? Zethus said it was a human. What would a human do with that
kind of power?

(Camille – Dublin,
Ireland)

Drake and I waved at the co-pilot who
had traded his Bermuda shorts for a navy blue wool coat and blue
jeans.

“Good to see you two. We were starting
to worry. Camille, your father wants you to call him as soon as
we’re airborne. So, are we on our way back to
Charleston?”

I looked at Drake. I could feel the
hideous spider in my pocket, my hands instinctively playing with
it. My home was in Oceanside, and I liked the idea of hiding in
plain sight, blending in with the millions of people. I worried
that Zandra would eventually zero in on us, even though I had the
awful-looking spider to protect Drake and me from her.

Eadie told us the locket wouldn’t
protect us from anyone she brought with her, but I was pretty sure
we could hold our own with everyone else. I thought of Will and
Gretchen. I hadn’t had much time to get to know them; I wanted more
time with them. Going back to their house, there would be strength
in numbers, and I doubted Zandra could do much against all of us,
but I wasn’t willing to put all of my family in her path on a
hunch.

I took a deep breath, reached down,
grabbed Drake’s hand and told the co-pilot, “No. We’re going to
Rapid City, South Dakota.” Drake gave me a reassuring squeeze back.
It made me feel good knowing he would have been willing to go
anywhere I chose, but I wanted to end this with Zandra. If we were
going to have a chance together, we couldn’t keep looking over our
shoulders.

Somewhere over the Atlantic the
excitement began to ebb. I thought about everything Drake and I had
been through. It was good he had magic in him because a regular guy
would have tucked tail and run by now. He had dozed off; it was one
of my few chances to really look at him. I had already memorized
his face. When I shut my eyes, I could picture every line, the
symmetry of his face, all of his facial expressions, I could even
hear his laugh echo in my thoughts. When I’d first met him, his
hair was impossibly short, but in the last several weeks, it had
grown out and was a little bit curly. I hoped he’d keep it this
length.

Why had I fought so hard against
marrying him? Maybe because my mom never had anyone, I had never
been in a hurry to fill a void that I didn’t know was there. When I
graduated from high school, all my girlfriends grew one track
minds. Either they wanted to go to college, get a career and settle
down, or they wanted to find a man, settle down and start a family.
I never understood the draw. I guess I secretly idolized my mom for
being the only woman I knew who didn’t need a man in her life to be
happy. A different thought occurred to me: maybe I had it wrong,
and she did want a man but couldn’t have the one she wanted so
chose to make a life by herself.

I was attracted to Drake. I loved him –
but was it enough? Even if I were sure I wanted to get married,
would he still want me? He was so set on all the Centaur rules,
when I filled him in on certain aspects of my human life, he might
change his mind about me. Those few weeks when I thought he was
dead, it was like losing my mother all over again – I wasn’t sure I
could take the pain if he couldn’t accept me.

I smelled my mother’s perfume, which
startled me at first. On sheer instinct I looked at the vacant
seats around us. Just to my right was her faint outline. I didn’t
want to wake up Drake, but I’d been trying to see her for so long,
I couldn’t help but blurt out, “Where have you been? How am I
supposed to learn things from you when I can’t hear
you!”

For the first time since
being in the garden with Phineas at Zandra’s house, I heard her
voice, “
Camille, I’m so proud of you, and
you’re as brave now as you were when you learned to ride a
bike
.”

It wasn’t my imagination: she was
talking to me. The image of my mom’s spirit came into sharp focus
for the first time, “I didn’t do anything differently. How come I
can see and hear you now?”

“You’re finally ready to
hear me. You’ve accepted who you are and all that goes with it. You
are leading and making decisions for yourself. Our race is full of
warriors who will fight to the death for whatever cause is thrown
at them. It is the women Centaurs, the Centaurides, who lead. Up
until now you let others decide your fate; you hadn’t embraced the
Centaur way, so you could not claim all that was yours to
take
.”

“So, you’re here, for good. You’ll stay
with me?”

“Soon, very soon, I must
go to the pasture. You have a family who loves you and your own
Centaur to protect you. I can leave you in good hands and go take
my place with the others
.”

I hated that I sounded like a child,
but the words flowed out of me before I could stop them. “But, I
don’t want you to go. I want you to stay.”

“I’ll stay as long as I
can, but you are stronger than you know. You don’t need me as much
as you think you do
.”

A thought occurred to me, “Will said I
need to ask you something about when you two met. What was so
important for me to know?”

“You do not remember your
dream? I thought you were able to hear me in your
dream.”

I did remember the dream. It was on
this plane during the flight to Ireland. The dream was so vivid I
actually looked for her after I woke up. “The other night, in the
dream, you said the Lost Herd found you anyway. You didn’t seem
that worried about your mom finding us, but you said the Lost Herd
was after me.”

“I wish your father would
have talked to you. William is a member of the Lost Herd, the Tak
bloodline. He tried to make me believe that our meeting was merely
a coincidence, but it was an impossible coincidence. The Lost Herd
is from the original pasture, but they were cast out by Zeus. They
have different abilities than we do
.”

“Different abilities, like
what?”

“There were so many
rumors, but the Tak Centaurs are supposed to be wild and unstable.
When I met William I knew he was a Centaur, but I never dreamed he
traced his bloodline to the Lost Herd. I knew Centaurs were looking
for me, but it was easy enough to evade them whenever they got
close. Kyle gave up much of himself to protect me. His protection
allowed me to make a life for myself and eventually for both you
and me. With the one exception of your father, no one ever found
me, or those who did were unable to bring attention to my
whereabouts.
”