Orion (31 page)

I meant to come here and announce my whereabouts, confront Borgon and find out who he works for, and tell father to stop whatever it was he was doing to solve it himself.
I realized in my solitude that being alone is harder than taking on the danger even with possible traitors amongst the day to day.  As long as I could predict their moves, I could control the situation.  How much control I had at the moment—very little.

Maze
’s hand still covering her mouth, she now went rigid with the scandalizing news,  “You like her?”

“I do.  Is that so hard to believe?  You seemed taken by her too as I recall.  And just because you thought she was a Hunter and not something else doesn
’t make her any less appealing.  Our world needs to change.  Why do we need to separate ourselves?  She is still a Hunter, just a blonde one with a few Supergirl powers.”  He smiled at his own humor.

“Okay!  Suppose I go along with this,” Maze placed one hand on her hip.  That was her switch in gears.  She would be just fine.

Lee raised his eyebrows and pointed to the car.

The other hand went to her hip, “I will help you.  And afterward, she will tell me all this herself and I will…”

“Come on!  Let’s just go!”  Lee pulled her arm tight and ran.  They edged the grounds until Lee stopped, pointed up, and started to climb.

“Is he crazy?  What is he doing?” Maze asked Calum.  They really were here to save me.

“He’s climbing,” Calum was stating the obvious.

She huffed.

Calum huffed back at Maze in a mocking tone, “Are you going?”

She stepped up to climb looking up at Lee
’s back end.  Hmm!  She had to put those thoughts away.  She looked back at Calum who told her smirking,  “Done gawking?”

Her mouth wide, she was thankful for the darkness hiding her cheeks.  She didn
’t miss a beat at climbing.  After all, she IS a Hunter girl!

Calum followed her up.  They scaled the wires with Lee
’s carefulness.  Hitting the ground hard, Maze looked around.  All she saw were trees hiding everything about the Valkyrie court and its secrets.  The boys stood now, whispering in the dark while I scaled the wall and hid to watch.

“This is the brook where
.…”  Lee stopped looking like he was in another place.  He was going down memory lane, torturing himself.

Maze got the feeling again she was left out of something and watched his pain grow like I did.

Calum stumbled over his words with a dark expression on his face, “...where you two met.  The past dude.  Leave it there.  Where is she?”

Maze clued into this kind of talk easily, Hunter, Valkyrie, or whatever.  “Did you…know Stace before?”

Lee twitched his mouth and looked at Calum, “I lived here for two years before I went to Greens!”

“The plot thickens!” Maze paused.  “And you are going to tell me you are a Hunter, right?” 

Lee answered Maze with a sly grin, “Wanna check?” 

Her O mouth answered, “Well, well, well.  Brave words.  At least we all have our own pants on this time.”

“Something I should know?” my voice sounded from the darkness standing it no longer.  If they’d known I’d heard everything back at the dorm and then some, they’d freak.  I’d left, but I’d also returned.  Mixed up in the decision making process was unbecoming of a Val princess/daughter of Anat/spy, but there was no one whom I could trust to help me make decisions on what the right next move should be.  I could tell Maze was in on some part of it, but I’d wait to see what was revealed.  The car ride over was the only thing I’d missed.

They all jumped into three different directions of a ninety degree angle with their backs to each other.  I stepped out dagger at the ready knowing there was no danger.  Calum moved out of his stance and ran to me throwing his arms around my waist, but I didn
’t return it making him stand back confused and hurt.

Maze, a little too loudly, “You have a lot of secrets
, Blondie.  I don’t know if I can handle all this so you better be glad I am too enthralled with your love life to step away.  I’ll have to see this through to know if the “love at first sight” theory I have is really true or if tall dark and Calum is somehow not a Hunter too.  For which I will find hard to believe since his father is—

I managed a smile stopping her and wanting to ask Calum about what might have been discussed in the car that I missed.  “You
’re not angry?”

“Yes!  I am.  But more angry that I couldn
’t be allowed to know.  But I understand why you never mentioned something like, ‘Oh by the way, I’m really a Valkyrie, I don’t think I want to murder you in your sleep, but I could, and I’m with the hottest Hunter boy in school who knows what I am and well, ewww! Sorry for that, still likes you.  NO!  I’m so over all that in the last five minutes and now onto why I’m fascinated to know why Lee lived with you, your sneaking into your own house, if this is in fact a house since it looks more like a castle, and finally why everyone is acting like we are being hunted.”

R
esponsibilities take over one's life.  I’ll face my suppressed list of responsibilities when they stop chasing me.  This is my crazy mixed up so-called life.  My very own unique death sentence.

Lee started clapping softly and walked to stand in front of Maze, “I
’m very impressed, Chestnut.  I can’t remember ever seeing you speak so passionately about anything before.  Will you tell me more in the dark car, tied up like you asked, later?”

“No, Lee.  Screw yourself.  You lied too.  And don
’t call me, whatever you called me.”

Chestnut?

Lee chuckled.  That made me even more mad.  And he knew it.

I turned to Calum, “Why are you here?”  Calum
’s confused look mixed with hurt made me reach towards his face.  Lately, I wanted to really spread the worry lines parted by a vein his brow seemed to form too much with the recent events. 

“I wouldn
’t leave you, why would you leave—

“I didn
’t leave because I wanted to.  It’s just, if I stay, they will kill you, Lee, and most likely, all of my friends.”  I looked at Maze.  “I’ve never had friends before.  I can’t lose what I just found.”

Lee spoke from behind me, “Then you are here not just to ask your father about the letters and what can be done?
I sense trust is an issue.”

“I am here to find out what he is not telling me.”

“And then where?”  Calum whispered.

“I wasn
’t sure.  But I’m fairly sure away from you will keep you safe.”

Calum held my squared shoulders and pulled my dagger away, in between us.  “I can
’t let you do that and you know it.  We do this together.  Apart is what they want, remember?  They win.  Whatever this is, we have to fight this, together.”

I didn
’t want to hear what he’d just said, but I knew I was about to crack.  I put my head on his chest.  “I know.  I just didn’t want to believe it.”  Maze and Lee had turned the other way I noticed out from the curtain of my hair.  They were holding each other.  Hmm!

Calum swung me back,
“Let’s see your father and head back.  We have only six days left.  Maybe daddy can shed some light of what is to come.  Lord knows, we need it.”              I nodded in his grip holding my chin.

The underground entrance proved stubborn since my father barred the entrance not knowing that was how Lee and I used it for years.  But he never thought his own daughter would be sneaking in with her Hunter friends in tow either.

We were through the palace tunnels and out into the kitchen crouched down behind the freezer door entrance.  I dared a look at Maze worrying about how she was taking all this.  She inched over to me and barely muttered in my ear, “So you live in a castle.  What, are you a princess or something?”  Her legs seemed to be doing some type of happy dance.  I stifled a small sound with a truly embarrassed smile.

“NO!  It can
’t be.  You’re the twin princess.  OH. MY. GOD!” She looked around the obvious opulence of the atmosphere.  Maze felt out of her league.  Chandeliers were sparkling above her in rooms that shouldn’t house such things.  The walls glittered in their light.  And we were still far from inside the main house!

“
Shhh
!  It’s not who I am, really.”

Maze glared at Lee, whose Hunter ears had no doubt, heard her.  He just smiled sideways and cringed. 

“You knew, you creep.”  Maze growled, I think, slapping him sideways.

We waited till the coast was clear and padded around the freezer through the back entrance to my father
’s rooms.  Once they were in, we stayed still waiting for something, but nothing came. Szar was supposed to be here, but wasn't.

I stepped in alone.

After a long almost minute, they followed me in the opened door.  We all sat down way too casually in Maze’s eyes.  Her eyes followed the paintings around the room.  Above her head stood a floor to ceiling painting of none other than me, me, ME!  My body was all shimmery with a floor length silver gown and crown on my head from one of the ball's held.  The brilliant glare it emitted almost makes one squint with awe but only because the artist made me look like a goddess, not what I am. 

“
Well isn’t this cozy,” Maze motioned the length of the painting.

All three of us shot our fingers up to our mouths knowing where we were at and the consequences noise may bear.   Maze fell backward out of fear more than anything onto the sofa, with us frozen where we stood.  There was nothing we could do now if the room registered the sound.  And my father always knows.

I could read my friend's face.  Maze’s eyes lingered on the other paintings.  The one of the twin Valkyries were like a legend coming to life.  We were real!  And we weren’t trying to kill her like her Hunter parents assured her would be their only intentions if she ever met
them
. 

After only about five minutes, my fathe
r walked in without shock and locked the door behind him.  He walked to his desk, wrote something while watching Maze.  No doubt wondering why yet another face was now involved.

The note said, “They know you came.”

I nodded.  Who is "they"?

“You have to leave.  They will come get you.”

I walked over to him and leaned up to his ear, “Not till you tell me about this.”  I pulled the letters out for him to see I had two now.

His eyes closed.  He walked over to the desk, opened the top drawer, his hand d
isappearing inside, and a picture on the wall clicked open.  All of our eyes glued to the space behind it. 

He
closed the drawer meticulously and turned to the space in the wall.  Inside, he pulled a pile of bundled papers and handed them to me.  And then he kissed my cheek and whispered, “I have to go.  You will return tonight.  The letters will tell you everything I’ve never told you.  Don’t hate me afterward.  I can’t bear to have you hate me too.”

What does that mean? 

He was gone and Calum was yanking my ponytail backward.

We were back in the car heading home with the boys sitting in the front.  Calum caught me up on his version of what was said in the car.  They were not happy to learn that I
’d watched them for most of the “coming to find me part” at the dorm.

I sat quiet looking at the added letters to my pile of crap in my life and then out the window at nothing at all.

Maze couldn’t take it anymore.  She belted out, “You better tell me everything before I get back.  I don’t know why I’m still here if not for the fact that I have no way to get back that doesn’t include hitchhiking with some psychopath killer or worse.”  No one answered.   “Don’t all start at once.”

Calum was shut up tight at the moment.

Lee waited for me to answer, but I didn’t.  I stared down at my lap.  Maze still seemed impervious to the obvious, so I let her remain so.

Lee began,
“Stace is the Valkyrie princess to the throne of her father, Lord Hathown.   Her twin brother Szar was taken captive, but we rescued him and he is now hidden in the palace.  There is a prophecy that two…that a Hunter and another will come together and unite the species from war.  Everyone seems to believe Calum and Stace are that magic two.”

He stopped to let her soak that in.  “They have the same birthday and all.  But what makes them this supposed magic
duo?”

Calum spoke up
moving in his seat for the first time since leaving my court, “There is more to it than that but Stace and I would prefer to keep some things to ourselves.”

“No Calum, I think it
’s time we trust someone else with this.  If we are going to survive this, we know now we can’t do it alone.”

Ca
lum gripped the dash straining, screaming, “Stace!  I’ve never told anyone else.”

“And for that reason, we should trust someone to help us figure this out.  We will drive ourselves mad and end up letting them kill us on Saturday if we don
’t.”

"Saturday?" asked Maze, but no one answered.

Calum moved his neck side to side cracking noises coming out from both angles.  I worried he’d smash the dash in with the way he was gripping it still.  “Stop the car.”

For that matter, I should have eviscerated all three of them before the car came to a stop.  Seriously!