Orion (30 page)

We sat very still and read the letter to Calum written by his own mother. 

Dear Son of Neptunia,

             
I am the Father of Neptunia.  My daughter was chosen for this task to bear you.  I was asked to help build a ruler who would prove strong and agile among the many.  I adhere to whatever Anat, the battle goddess and her children deem necessary until such time I should need to intervene and shut it down.  You do me proud.  Please do nothing else.  Beware of your enemies, for they are many.  Keep the girl safe from all harm, first and foremost.

             
              Father of Neptunia.

I thought of my own letter and what the end said about more than just me.  I repeated it in my mind.

The Hunter by day will take with him, a huntress, unlike his own.  She will bear the mark of Orion, as will he.

The Hunter by night will take with him, a huntress, unlike his own. She will bear the mark of the sun, as will he. 

They will bring forth a mighty nation of all who come together.  They will find Saiph at their right shoulder.  Rigel and his stinging adversary will rule like no other.   Cross will come between severed twins.  Let who stands in the way of fate perish and be no more.  In this great peril, the Anat goddess in human form will be the only light.

After I read his letter aloud, it felt like an applaud was in order, but Calum and I just sat and stared at it like it would catch fire or something else.  Finally, I told him some parts of my own letter and surprised him more.  Then I choked out, “This explains a few things.  You’ve read this before.  How come you didn’t freak out the night I showed you my mark?  Except for Saiph, Cross, and the stinging adversary it all makes perfect sense?”

He snorted as if any of this could possibly be funny, “How do you figure?”

He knew something.  He’d led me to the library and the information we found before.  His eyes gave him away.  “Easy, see.  We just have to find out who they are.”

“Oh, that kind of easy!  And then all will be solved with the world,”
he gibed.

I flicked my finger into his stomach, glaring.  He wasn
’t telling more.  “I’m in charge of the sarcasm bud.  So leave your smart mouth at the door.”

He glared back at me now.  How about that?

“Fine.  But that doesn’t solve anything.  So we both have marks and I’m the Hunter, you’re the hot Huntress chic, but who is the Anat goddess?”  He did tell me he’d known for a while that the Father of Neptune was some kind of old story in his family and that his father told him once that his mother descended from the gods.  He never gave merit to the story as a small child, but wondered lately if it meant something more.  I vowed to research Neptune as well.

We had a lucky break the next morning, if you can call it that.  Lee didn
’t come to breakfast.  Maze asked Calum if he knew where he was and if he was okay.  Calum shrugged and waited till she walked away before he whispered, “He claimed he was sick to his stomach.”

I wondered what it really was speculating a few hundred possibilities. When I went back to
my room to brush my teeth and get my books, my dorm door was wide open.  I pulled my dagger, the one Calum discovered after the fact and stood just outside the doorframe.  Whoever or whatever knew I was there.  I had stupidly become accustomed to my new recent Hunter life and discarded my stealth.  I needed to refocus.

I t
ook one tiny step into the doorframe, peeked through the door crack, and saw Lee sitting on my bed, staring at me.

“What?  You wanted the V
amp, maybe?  Sexier, but a bit crabbier when hungry!”

“Aren
’t all of you?  Male that is, when hungry?”  I smiled.

“Only when we don
’t get what we want,” Lee’s eyes were black with a mix of a cold stare wavering on the brink of something dangerous.

I dropped my knife to my side, stepped in, and closed the door.  Somewhere deep inside my brain I knew that the door closed would be a bad idea, but somehow that fact that he was in my room seemed just as equal.  So I cautioned on the side of secrecy. 

“What do you want?” I asked.

He cocked his head sideways raising an eyebrow.  I was still frightened by the thought of his re
ading on how I felt around the Vamp.  It was weird and so was Lee's ability to read so many emotions.

“Okay!  Rephrasing, why are you
here?”  I let out a deep sigh to show my annoyance.

He just smiled, condescendingly.  “You found something at your fathers,” he paused to watch me wanting a reaction, “and I thought you might want to analyze it aloud before…anyone else sees it.”

What in the world was he talking about?  What could it be?  I stepped closer.  I wished he wasn’t on my bed. 

“
Well?”  I put my hands to my hips to show my impatience had outweighed my annoyance.

He rolled his eyes at me.  “You know, you don
’t have to act like I’m repulsive to you.”

“You
’re not repulsive!”  I was outraged.

“Really?” he snorted.  He
really
thought that?

“You just insist on taunting me.  I can
’t give you what you want and you continue to make yourself sick with it.  Why can’t you let it go and move on?  I can’t be anywhere near you without you giving me your sneering looks or worse, the deep black-eyed looks you give me like right now.”

He raised an eyebrow and twisted his mouth up.  What was he thinking?

“Here,” he held his hand out.

In his hand
was the letter.  I wanted to slap it away.  Hide!

It was cold except for where Lee
’s hand held it.  I turned it over twice seeing it was white spoiled over time into a dingy yellow. “Did you open it?”

Lee nodded a solemn yes.  "A long time ago, when I lived in your court."

I swallowed thinking he was a natural born sneak or just always that unnoticed.          He held all this in secrecy and only now, chose to reveal it.   It was strategic and thought out making me doubt him more.  The envelope slid open with a swish louder than I anticipated and sheathed wide at the mouth.  Inside the paper matched Calum’s exactly.  His was missing the envelope.

“I know something else.”  Lee hadn
’t answered my question. “I went through Calum’s top drawer today where I knew he kept it.  I’d seen him looking at it once when he thought I wasn’t.”

And?  I was scared for really no reason.  Lee was hiding things too.  Everyone was.

Lee pulled something from his back pocket and dropped it into my other hand.  Another letter.  Identical to the one.

I held them beside each other.  Both the same.  I held the first one carefully as I pried the second open.  Inside was the letter I
’d read this morning. 

“I saw this early this morning.  So what do you think it means?  To have…for both of us to have
the exact print and paper…how is possible...there is something we don’t know and maybe it’s in these letters?”

“I think,” Lee began, “that your families knew each other somehow and none of this is a coincidence.
  Every detail is a step towards something greater.” 

I gulped louder than the clock on the wall ticked second by second.  Was he really guessing or leaking little bits of information at a time?

“If you will remember, we guessed this already.  If our families knew each other, and they were Hunter and Val—

“Yes!  That would cause quite the controversy.”

Cotton mouthed, I gulped again nervously needing a drink. I was feeling nauseous and my own spit couldn’t seem to move down my throat.  “So what does it mean?”

"I know more about Anat?"

I jumped to conclusions, "You were listening last night!"

His face didn't say one way or the other.   He told about what the goddess, Anat, did to Orion.

He shrugged when he finished knowing I knew this already, “I don’t know, but I think it’s time you tell Calum what else
you
know.  I just wanted you to know that there is more, I know more, and wanted, well…I don’t know what I wanted.”  He stood and opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t. 

“Will you come with me to tell him?”
He searched my face for why, I could tell.  “Because you found it, at my father’s, and I don’t want to explain to him how I might have come across them and made conclusions without the source.”

His face hardened.  “Oh, I see.” 

He left through my room door thankfully greeting no one.  I looked at the letters.  I put both of them in my pouch neatly and carefully.  They scratched together at first, then folded in a crease once and were silent.  Calum would indeed, at least, notice the two of us coming.

Lee
glanced my way in chemistry, but said nothing.  He nodded at Calum and reverted back into his “hanging with the boys” attitude when we weren’t thinking about the gloom and doom of our small little problem of impending death.

They laughed heartily around the others and joked as usual.  Girls giggled.  Boys smiled.  And all was hunky-dory!  But I, Stace, deceiver of everything I made myself to be in front of this entire room, was dying already inside.  They would all turn on me when they knew who I really was.  And what would they do to Calum and Lee? 

I knew what I needed to do. 

I went to all the necessary places the rest of the day, watching Lee give me signals and hints for when we would meet with Calum.  I never gave as much as a nod.

I went back to my room that night, dressed in my blackest of black, my fighting suit.  I packed everything on me that would not bulk, including the canteen like bag I’d stolen from the kitchen full of Gatorade.  I loved the stuff, and it loved my Valkyrie side of adrenaline.

I crawled out the window and was gone. 

Calum stood outside waiting for me to come out for breakfast.  I'd acted strangely distant most of the day yesterday.  He’d asked Lee if he knew, but he’d never said otherwise.

He nodded as everyone left coming out, giving him all kinds of different looks.  He
’d told one of the guys that he'd never understand girls, at all. 
They
were never easy to read.  Were we the same way to them. 

Finally Maze and Liz were in the doorway stopping his girl bashing.  Maze stopped and looked confused.

“She’s gone already, I thought.”  Maze looked back inside.  “I’ll check her room.”  She ducked in again.

Calum tightened his fists.  He didn
’t know why, but a flurry of doubt sprang up as he watched Liz watch Maze walk back to the first room on the hallway.

Maze knocked at first.  Then she twisted the knob with a strong hand assuming it would be locked but it opened.  She angled just enough to look back towards the front door from around the corner.

Her face said it all.  He raced past Liz and bolted in the room.  Everything was in perfect place. 

He looked at the dresser that mimicked his in design.  He didn
’t notice what was there, but what was missing.  None of my things he associated with me were there.  He turned back to the room and saw that an item or two lay strewn in odd places.  On the bed he found my trademark t-shirt and jeans combo lying across it.  Not thrown, but hastily put there.  He started searching everywhere else.

“What are you looking for?”  Maze was frantic now.  He went through my drawers now as I watched his panicked face.

Maze stared as the top drawer open and a few of my delicates flew up.  She yelped at Calum, “This isn’t the time for fantasies.”

He didn
’t budge.  He was in the third drawer down now and moved to the bed, looking under it.  After he’d covered the room, even under the mattress, he stood with both hands on his face turned upward.  He looked like he was crying.  He wasn’t, but his face was the worst kind of bad.  The worst.  He started to leave.

“
Oh, no you don’t.  You aren’t going to do all this, not let me know where she is, and just leave.  I want some answers.”

He didn
’t have time. “Fine, come with me.”  He looked at Liz.  His stare every bit the hard Hunter he had inside of him.  The Hunter
they
knew. “You stay.  Tell everyone we are off in the woods or something.  Lee is with me too.  All four of us are hanging somewhere or something.  Make it up.”

Liz opened her mouth in attempt to protest, but they were already out the door and flying across the lawn to find me. 

Calum prayed aloud Lee was still in the room.  He flew through the dorm with his hand holding Maze’s arm. 

“Ow!  You
’re hurting me.”

He let go.

“I can’t come in there.”

He didn
’t have time for this in his eyes so he yanked her on.  “COME ON!” he growled.  His determination to get me back scared me a little.

Lee was still there. “LEE?  LEE?” he called.

Lee jumped two feet and cycled his body around to defend himself to find Maze falling frontal against him.  “Sorry!” he sputtered when he realized where his hands had landed.

“It
’s okay!” she blushed.

"She left," Calum screamed.

Lee flew around the room grabbing things and shrugged out of his shirt. 

Maze turned abruptly.  “What ARE you doing?” she yelled.  “
You can’t take your clothes off right now!”

“You wish!” he growled.

Maze peeked.  He was wearing a black shiny shirt with all kinds of pockets, like what the Hunter teachers wore.  He reached for his belt and started to unbuckle.  She gasped and turned her back.  Somehow, no one would approve of all this, but he didn’t care.

Maze heard the shrugging of pants going off and a zipper of new one
’s going on. Gasp! 
“Are you dressed?”
she fussed at Lee
making her voice squeak
. 
I hated to admit, my eyes didn't blink.  I felt like a peeping tom.  All this happened in a matter of maybe ten seconds.

“What is it?” came Lee
’s voice toward Calum, holding Maze now by the shoulders from behind.  He’d dressed without knowing the full circumstances.

“Stace is gone.  She left,” Calum folded his hand through his hair several times.

“We are going after her,” Maze insisted moving frantically around them now that Lee was dressed.
              “No.  We are!”  Calum announced coldly like he didn’t like the idea of Lee being included but knew he needed him and had no choice.

Lee
’s eyes went wide and he glanced at Maze.  “And what does she know?”

“Nothing, but she
’ll probably want some answers now.  You better get ready and prepare her.”  Calum was piling weapons in every spare spot and then some. 

Lee looked at Maze with regret, back at Calum and vociferated, “You shouldn
’t have brought her into this.”

“I didn
’t.  She did.”

Lee screamed a cursed yelp of some kind and started changing the rest of his clothes.   His pants zipped and a belt buckle clasped closed before Maze let one shoulder relax.  Then Calum started in and in no way did I close my eyes.

Maze turned fast
, again
.  “This is extremely odd behavior.  While I’m extremely impressed with your abs boys, I don’t want a double feature show.  Where is Stace, and why are we going from naked man changing room into black spy battle mode in front of me?  And why do you seem to be hiding something extremely important that is going to really disturb me when I find out?”

“You can leave and forget, or you can help us.  Either way, you can
’t stand here, you’re in my way,” Calum barked at her annoyingly.

She seemed to be deciding, “I want to know where Stace is right now?”

“Then your decision is to help us.  Once you know, you’ll help us or die,” Calum beamed a laser death glare at her.

Lee shot a look of venom at him.  “
That
was tactful!”

"Like you are with Stace and your hard on for her."

Maze fell to the ground from his angry dress up routine before she heard the last part.   Fainted.  Lee let out a mad yelp again, picked her up, and they both took off out to where Lee thought I would be.  “Do you know where you’re going?” Lee yelled as they ran to his car.

“Do you?”

“Yes!  I know where she is,” Lee surprised him and seemed to love that he could. 

Calum stopped and turned making Lee almost dropped Maze who was limp in his arms. 
             

“How would you know?” Calum said suspiciously.

“Because yesterday I gave her something that would make her do something rash and impulsive.  I wish now we'd told you, or at least she should have.”

Calum grabbed Lee
’s shirt, which was hard for both of them with an Amazon Hunter girl wedged between them.

“Kill me later.  In the car.  We are running out of time.”

Calum stared like the villain he was at the moment.  He dropped Lee’s clothes from his grip and they shoved into the car.

Calum told me later what was discussed in the car, but I disappeared from my hidden shadows when they drove off.  I jumped into the car I was “borrowing” from the school and sped ahead of them.  Lee knew where I
’d be, so let him come.  I needed to see Szar first.  I only intended to see if they were with me…or against me.

Lee told him about the letters.  Calum was furious that Lee was in his things, but was more interested in the whys.  They were heading back to the Valkyrie palace where Lee knew I often hid to think.
  I would’ve gone back only because hiding at my court was the alternative. And that was out of the question.  I never wanted to go back. 

ℓℓℓℓℓ

Unbeknownst to them, the boys didn’t realize Maze had woken up and managed to keep herself still enough to hear all she needed to know they were in way deep with something to do with mine and Calum’s parents.  Something about the letters from the moms and they were headed to my house.

When Calum told me later, it was a stark contrast to the way Maze shared it with me the next day.

Maze listened without even opening an eye.  She said she felt the car starting to make turns like it was off the highway so she dared a peek out the window.  When she’d raised just enough to see where she might be, she had no idea.  She wondered, no doubt, where I was from and why she had to think it in the first place.

They pulled up to a fence and parked in some wooded area that Lee carefully hid in, but not too much considering the bumps throwing her everywhere.  He stopped the engine and opened the door, then Maze
’s, and stood there.

“I know you
’ve been awake for a while dropping the eaves all over the back seat.”   He seemed too cold, even for Lee.  She felt small for a second then realized she had no reason to feel that way.

“Where is Stace?”  Lee motioned for her to get out of the car but asked Calum.

“She is here,” called Calum from the back of the car leaning over into the trunk.  She heard clicking noises and assumed the worst.  “This is where she lives,” Calum said flatly.

She looked at the high fence, barbed wire bubbling above, and assumed the other wires could only mean electricity.  “Where are we?”

Lee looked at Calum with that great look of
thanks for this
, sighed, and whispered, “The quick version only if you promise I’m not going to have to tie you up and put you in the back seat until you calm down.”

Maze gasped, but managed a nod of the head.  She told me what her thoughts really pictured with his statement.

“Stace is in trouble if she is here.  Calum and I have been trying to help her solve a family problem that you, no doubt, will be privy to all too soon.  We have to find her before she blows everything.”

“That
’s not much to go on,” Maze reasoned with her head arched sideways.

“It
’s all I can give you right now.  Now, will you help us find Stace, or not?” Lee looked at the back seat.

She knew Lee was meaning the tied up alternative.  She nodded having serious trouble with verbal answers.

Calum’s hand closed the trunk quietly and they were inching around the perimeter of the high fence like structure.

“Is this a Hunter area?” Something was inching closer at the edge of Maze
’s brain and she needed to know.  She told me she thought I never looked Hunter anyway.  This is the point where I could hear them and heard the rest. Everything before was filled in by their very differently told renditions.  Calum's included heavy curses.

“No!” Lee said.

“NO!  And you are going to tell me where we are, right?” Maze yelled a little too loudly worried he would lock her in the car.

Calum spun around and launched himself with his knife to her throat.  Lee was there a second later with his hands around the knife
’s blade.

“If you so much as say one thing about what I
’m about to tell you, I will kill you.”

Lee spat at Calum,
“No you won’t.  You’ll be dead first.”  Calum’s eyes shot to Lee’s in confusion.  Lee barked, “Let her go.  She hasn’t even had a chance to show her reaction to the truth yet.  We owe her that.” The alarm in his voice was almost charming.  A change of heart?

“You brought her,” Calum reminded him. 

And Lee had no idea why he’d done that either by the look on his face.  Lee moved the blade away with the slightest tinge of blood running down his finger.

Maze watched it drip as Calum announced, “Stace is a Valkyrie.”

Maze’s eyes shot wide and she cupped her hand over her mouth to stop the scream.  Maze said she was thinking she should have taken the tied up offer.  She’d told me she’d never been out of the Hunter school grounds other than the bus rides to Summerville and her own home.  A very Hunter home!  Maze shuddered.

Lee placed his hands on both her shoulders as she tried to back away from
both of them.   Lee told her, “We are Hunters.  It surfaced that Stace was Valkyrie, or half, the other half human, a few weeks ago.  Someone is trying to kill her and Calum, and we need to find her right now.”

Maze shifted her eyes to Calum figuring out that he knew all this time.  “You kissed her.  Ewwww!”  She looked at Calum disgusted, but neglected the killing me part.

“I was shocked at first, Maze.  Believe me!  But I know there is more now than just our species.  She is a person.  And Maze, I would do anything for her, or die.”  Calum really believed this in his heart.  I was tired of hiding in the dark now.  I wanted to just have someone, anyone tell me all this would work out okay.  Listening to them fight about me and even show up here to help me was warming my cold heart, but I needed more.  Trust was first and foremost the number one thing of importance in my sordid life.  I had none.