Touched by Fire (Atlantis Unearthed Series) (3 page)

“Do not forget your path Siria, find the others who bare the mark, together you will know what to do. I will help where I am able, until we meet again my dear Siria.” With that he kissed my head and disappeared just as I slipped completely into unconsciousness. 

Chapter 3

I woke up the next morning after
Keane stuck his head into my room and yelling at me that I had overslept.  And dammit to hell I had a bitch of a headache as well. I jumped out of bed and got dressed in that panic mode one always goes into when they over sleep.

I
grabbed the first presentable thing I could find in my closet and headed to the bathroom to take a shower. As I walked down the hall I tried to remember the dream I had had but it eluded me for the most part. When I reached the bathroom I turned on the water and jumped right into the shower. I didn’t even stop to look into the mirror, if I had I probably wouldn’t have made it into the shower.

As it was, I finished my shower, wrapped my hair in a towel, and went to brush my teeth. That is when I saw it. A design that looked like a tribal rendition of a sun was drawn on the middle of my forehead. I screeched in frustration that today of all days
Keane had to pull a prank on me. I snatched a wash cloth from the stand and scrubbed away. Nothing. What they hell kind of marker did he used. I kept trying, using every makeup remover at my disposal and cussed out Keane the entire time promising every horrible payback I could think of. Scrubbing my forehead raw was still not working so I tried the next approach of covering it up.

The damn thing still would not go away. I piled every concealer and miracle in a jar product I had on it and it didn’t even make it less noticeable. There was still this damn black tribal sun on the middle of my forehead.  If anything it seemed to become more noticeable the more I messed with it. Finally I stomped out of the bathroom and decided today would be a good day to call into work.

After talking to my boss and telling him I wouldn’t  be in I went to go kill Keane. I found him eating cereal and watching cartoons on the TV. I threw a couch pillow at him and almost made him spill his cereal.

“What the hell
Siria! Shit I woke you up it’s not my fault you over slept” he said as he turned to me. When he caught sight on my forehead he burst into laughter. “What the hell is that on your face? Oh my god, where is my phone I have to get a picture of this.”

“What the hell do you mean what’s on my face, you should know you put it there.” I screamed as he ran around looking for his phone. “I had to call into work you moron, what the hell type of marker did you use, this is nuts
Keane, it’s one thing to mess around, but you can’t keep doing stupid crap like this, it will get me fired. “

Keane
stopped looking for his phone and turned with a confused look on his face. “I didn’t put it there, you mean little miss perfect has a big ole tattoo on her forehead and dosen’t know how it got there, oh this will go viral, where the hell is my phone when I need it.”

“Tattoo it’s not a tattoo I said. It’s sharpie, or damned well better
be, and don’t pull that innocent shit, I know you did this.” I yelled at him and began looking for more objects to throw.

“
Siria, I swear I had nothing to do with this, but whoever did it gets one hell of a high five from me on pulling one over on you. “Keane kept looking for his phone and I began to wonder if really hadn’t done it, but then who else could have.

“
Keane, for real, you are the only other one in the house, what did some serial sharpie user break in and draw on my forehead in the middle of the night?” I asked sarcastically.

He gave up the search for his phone and came over to get a closer look at my forehead. “
Siria, I really didn’t do it, and that does not look like sharpie to me, it looks like a tattoo.”  He gave me a puzzled look, looked back at the sun symbol, then asked “Did you try to wash it off?”

“No….I just decided to keep it there as a new fashion statement. Of course I tried to wash it
off, I used everything I could think of and nothing, just tell me what you used so I can wash it off.” I was getting more pissed off by the minute that he wouldn’t fess up. Enough was enough already.

“
I.Didn’t.Do.It. Siria. I don’t know how else to say it. What about baby oil, I heard that can work on sharpie. But I’m telling you that’s a damn tattoo. What the hell did you get into last night while I was at work?” Now he was getting angry because I didn’t believe him. Great.

“I didn’t do
anything; I came home from work, watched some movies, and then went to bed. That was it, and then I woke up this morning with a killer headache and this on my forehead.” I motioned wildly at my forehead just in case he was missing it.

“Wait a headache, could you have been drugged?” he asked again with a puzzled look on his face

He was serious, he really though I had either lost my mind or gotten a tattoo on my forehead or that some crazy tattooist drugged me and practiced he trade on my forehead in the middle of the night.

I was tired, had a headache, and a huge black sun on my forehead. Today was turning into a real winner. 

“Come on let me help you wash it off” he said and drug me to the bathroom. For the next hour or so we tried everything we could think of and everything Google could think of to get it off. Nothing was working.

By this time I was crying because I knew any type of marker would have come off by now or at least faded. The sun was still as dark as ever.
Keane suggested calling the cops but I knew they would never believe a story like this, and even if they did it’s not like they could remove the damn thing.  I called a local tattoo removal specialist and set up an appointment for the next day and went back to bed. Keane was still looking worried and puzzled over how I could get a tattoo and not know it but he left it alone for the time being.

It was while lying in bed that the first wisps of my dream began to float back to me, but I ignored them and fell asleep.

The next morning I got into the car with Keane, who insisted on driving, saying that if I couldn’t remember getting a tattoo, I definitely didn’t need to be driving.  An hour later I sat in a chair with the tattoo consultant who was looking extremely puzzled.  Which given the circumstances was not a great sign. At last the consultant sighed. “Well I give up, I have seen thousands of tattoos in my life, but this is not any type of tattoo I have ever seen before. It’s not even ink, or at least any type of ink used to my knowledge. I ran an analysis on the sample I took.  It came back as some type of carbonate and resin, almost like it was made out of amber and ashes mixed together. I will tell you though, I have never seen the like, but I am afraid that we cannot remove it. I apologize; I did set up an appointment with a dermatologist to see if they could find out more than I could. The receptionist will give you the information.”

As we left the office both
Keane and I were speechless.  So some unknown thing had left a permanent mark on my forehead, and now I was stuck with it. Great. How was I going to explain this to my boss, let alone my mother?

We got back to the apartment and sat down
on the couch still not talking for awhile. Keane got up gave me a hug and told me everything would be okay, but I had the distinct feeling nothing was going to be okay.  He left for work a little bit later and I went and layed down in my room. It was then that I finally began to let the fragments of the dream come back together.

Slowly the horror of my dream came back to me, as well as the images of the warriors, or guardians as Helios had called them, and of course Helios himself. He burning touch as he marked me with his symbol, that of the sun, right in the middle of my forehead. The jerk, why couldn’t it be on my arm, or butt, or anywhere easier to hide?

I still didn’t want to believe any of it was true, but after two days of scrubbing, a very confused specialist, what else could I think. But if Helios had really marked me, then it meant all of it was true. It meant Circe was real. That she was going to walk the earth again, and with her came the plague of darkness and evil. That was the thought that haunted me for the rest of the night.

I stayed awake the rest of the night doing research on Helios, Atlantis, Circe, and Vampires.
Along the way I learned many things. For instance, Circe was the legendary witch who kidnapped Odysseus but was really Nokto is disguise, but the name Circe tended to stick even knowing the truth, it was just easier to say. I also learned that Helios was actually a titan, not a normal god even though that’s how we referred to him. Also he was the God of oaths and the gift of sight. He was also supposed to have the gift of pretty much knowing everything. I guess this explained how he could know what was going to happen.  This reminded me of his promise to make me be able to convince people of the truth. That’s when it hit me, if I couldn’t convince Keane of the truth then I was in fact going crazy. But if I could, then everything was about to go to hell in a hand basket.

I
decided to wait up for Keane to get home to test out my theory. I ambushed him as soon as he walked through the door. I made him sit down and told him everything that I have told you so far. At first he kept laughing, but then he actually started to listen. I finally ended the story where I woke up with the mark of being on of Helios’s chosen on my forehead and waited to see what he would say.

Everything in me wanted him to laugh and say I was crazy, or something of that nature. Anything to let me know he didn’t believe a word that had came out of my mouth. But he didn’t. He sat there without saying a thing and at last he grab
bed my hand.

He hand was shaking, and that scared me. Here was a man who had seen death and war in person, and his hand was shaking. He looked up at me and with his next sentence I knew my fate was sealed.

“Where do we start?”