I struggled to breathe, trying to force air in past the pain. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was shake my head and wrap my arms around myself as I laid on the floor, gasping for air. It was like a hundred knives were stabbing me, twisting and turning and wrenching.
"Macy, what is it? Do you need an ambulance?" Her eyes were flooded with panic as she was shoved out of the way by her sister. Jenn peered into my face worriedly.
"Macy, oh my God. Are you alright?" Jenn turned to the audience and screamed,
"Someone call an ambulance!"
Gavin jumped onto the stage and sprinted to where I was lying. He dropped to the floor and picked up my hand as he loomed over me.
"Macy, look at me," he commanded. "Please, sweetheart, breathe. It’s okay."
And I realized with a start that I still wasn’t breathing. The pain wracking my body was preventing me from drawing a breath. I was still gasping like a fish out of water. And just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, the pain spread to my temple, exploding into a million shards of light.
My last conscious thought was hearing my own scream.
Chapter Two
When I opened my eyes, the lights were blinding. Loud noises and rushed voices swirled around me and I squeezed my eyes closed again to shut out the dizziness.
"Macy?" A strange male voice asked. "Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand."
I squeezed his hand, but didn’t open my eyes.
"She’s responding to commands!" the stranger yelled. Suddenly, my right eye was wrenched open and a light shone into it. Then the left.
"Her pupils are equal and reactive to light!" he announced.
Something firm was strapped around my neck and I couldn’t move my head. But I kept my eyes closed. My insides were on fire, a burning, gut-wrenching pain. If I just kept my eyes closed, I could focus on staying conscious. If I opened them, I might fade away. The pain was that intense.
And then I was moving. Someone was rolling me on a stretcher. It was a jolting ride.
Every time they hit a bump, my insides screamed. Where was all this pain coming from? I’d never felt anything like it. Appendicitis, maybe?
All of a sudden, I dropped down as they unlocked the legs of the stretcher and then I was lifted back up manually. I opened my eyes.
The night sky yawned over my head, huge and black. Twinkling bright stars winked at me from the darkness and I stared silently at them, trying to focus on anything other than the blinding pain. I was still at the school in the parking lot. And they were lifting me into an ambulance. I could hear Jenn’s nervous voice and I summoned the strength to speak.
"Wait," I murmured. No one heard me in the melee. "Wait!" I croaked louder. Everyone paused and the man in charge looked at me.
"Where’s Hasani?"
Everyone looked around in confusion and I realized my mistake. Oh, god no. My thoughts were so jumbled that I had called my boyfriend by a two-thousand year old name. I rushed to fix it.
"I meant Gavin. Where’s Gavin?"
Gavin stepped into my line of sight and laid his hand on my arm. I focused on his face, which was calm in the midst of the swarming chaos around me. The familiar warm presence of his hand on my skin was calming.
"I’m right here, Macy," he answered quietly. "I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I’m going to follow the ambulance and call your mom, okay? You’re going to be alright. Do you understand?"
I wasn’t sure if that was a directive or meant to be soothing but I nodded as best I could with the neck brace on. I felt his hand slip away from my arm and I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t. He was gone and I couldn’t see him anymore. They hoisted me into the ambulance and slammed the doors shut. A female EMT knelt beside me, cleaning my arm for an IV and talking to me in a soothing voice.
As I stared into her face, it morphed into the dark scary face of Annen, the high priest who had caused me so much trouble in Egypt. As the EMT murmured, all I could see were Annen’s jagged teeth and I gasped, shrinking back into the stretcher. Just as soon as the sound came out of my mouth, though, her face returned to normal. Blonde hair, blue eyes, freckles on her nose.
White teeth. Not the face of the high priest. She stared at me in concern.
"Are you alright?" she asked, with medical crispness. "Here, this will make you feel better."
She injected something into the IV and the walls of the ambulance got blurry as warmth spread quickly throughout my body. I closed my eyes.
* * *
I was suddenly standing in front of three women. And my pain was gone. The room we were in was cavernous and plain with white mist hugging the ceiling and swirling around our feet, clinging to my skin. I had no idea where I was and my disorientation only grew. There were no windows and I could see no doors, yet there was clearly a breeze blowing through, disturbing the strange white mist. It was curious. And I had no idea how I had gotten here.
But no sooner did I even have the thought than I realized that I must be dreamwalking. This entire place was real, but it was appearing to me in a dream. It was disorienting.
The three women in front of me were sitting at a massive white marble table, each in an ornate carved chair. The woman sitting in the middle was glaring at me sternly, her thin lips pinched together tightly. Her skin was like parchment and I could easily see the blue veins in her hands and temple. Her pitch-black hair flowed to her waist, like an ebony river, pooling in her lap.
The woman to her right was small, very small. She had mousy brown hair, light brown eyes and a soft, heart-shaped face. She wasn’t pretty, but she wasn’t ugly, either. She was watching me sympathetically, her eyes liquid and soft, but something about her put me instantly on edge. Looking at her, I felt like I should feel comfortable, but it was exactly the opposite. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.
And I knew the woman on the left. White blonde hair, ice blue eyes, skin so pale it was almost transparent. She was scowling at me. It was Lachesis. The middle sister of the Fates and the only one I actually had previous interactions with.
I was face to face with the three Moirae sisters. I gulped. This couldn’t be good. Usually the Aegis stood in front of them and carried their wishes to the Keepers. I had never been summoned. Until now.
I took a step forward.
"Stay where you are," the woman in the middle commanded. "If I want you to come closer, I’ll let you know."
She was clearly in charge which meant she must be Clothos. And that left the mousy little one to be Atropos. The one who controlled death itself. No wonder I felt uneasy. She was called The Unavoidable. And I suddenly realized what the mist was. It was my life force.
Whenever any mortal was in the near vicinity of Atropos, their life force becomes visible. If she chose, she could inhale it which would kill me instantly. My foot faltered as I instantly stepped back and stood still.
A small smile lingered on her lips and I wondered briefly if she could read minds like Lachesis could.
"Yes, I can," she confirmed in a soft voice. Everything about her was so delicate and feminine, it was hard to believe that she could wield death with a mere whim. I cringed.
"Don’t worry, little one," she assured me. "It isn’t your time yet. I have no wish to harm you." Clothos scowled.
"Speak for yourself, sister. I myself am quite agitated with her."
My head snapped up. What in the world had I done? I rattled through every possible thing that could have offended them, but came up empty.
"Now, now, sister," Lachesis said smoothly. "This situation isn’t Macy’s fault. That is your name in this life, is it not?" She stared at me coolly. She knew that it was. I nodded.
"You need to know that the Keres are gathering around you." Clothos explained, in the least gentle tone I’d ever heard. "Things are about to change, in a way so enormous, it is hard to comprehend." She sounded slightly excited about that last part, which seemed odd.
My confusion grew. I vaguely remembered Annen saying something a
bout the Keres when I was in Alexandria. It was right after I had saved Hasani when he died saving my life.
What had Annen said? The Keres won’t stand for this, Lachesis. I will try again and next time, I will not fail. Afterward, I had asked Ahmose who the Keres were, and he had replied that it wasn’t time for me to know.
I was guessing it was time now.
"And you would be correct," Lachesis nodded. I sincerely hated the whole mind-reading thing. Nothing was private from them.
"The Keres are our sisters. Our youngest sisters. They used to work with us, or rather, for us. They carried out the punishments of those who earned the worst deaths. But many years ago, they rebelled. They have been working against us ever since."
I stared at Lachesis, trying to make sense of what she had just said. If the Keres had carried out the worst punishments possible then they must be very scary people. At my thought, I saw Lachesis’ lip curl slightly.
"Yes," she confirmed. "Our sisters shouldn’t be taken lightly. They are fairly heartless."
Well, I suppose years of carrying out heinous executions would do that to someone. I tried to stop my imagination from running away with me, from trying to picture what they looked like and from wondering what these scary creatures wanted with me.
"So, the Keres have rebelled against you? What do they want?"
"Oh, who knows?" Clothos asked airily, waving her hand. "They wanted their independence and then they wanted to be seen as important in their own right and now ... who knows? They are deluded. That much is certain."
She stared harshly at me.
"And they are inordinately interested in you, Keeper. Do you wonder why?"
I met her stare and tried not to flinch. Her eyes were as black as night.
"I don’t know, Clothos. I didn’t even know they existed until recently."
She cocked her head and examined me, probably rifling through my stored memories.
Oddly, I felt nothing. Not even a tickle as she probed deep into my brain. After a few minutes, she nodded.
"Very well. I believe that you know nothing. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing to know. Your Daedal has always been of integral importance and it is truer now than ever. This time, she really does have the power to change everything. All will be revealed to you when the time is right. Until then, be on your guard, Keeper."
The Moirae suddenly started fading away, becoming more distant and more distant from me, until I could no longer see them. The mist swirled around me, clinging to my arms, legs and face and suddenly everything around me was consumed by the wispy whiteness.
And then there was nothing.
* * *
I was lying in a hospital bed, in a quiet dark room. After a startled gasp, I did a tentative once-over. I touched my arm—I was definitely here. This was real. And my pain was gone and this time it was for real. I was hooked up to an IV machine and I was wearing a hospital gown, but other than that, I seemed to be fine.
My mother was sleeping in a chair next to my bed. I briefly wondered where my father was, but then shook that thought from my mind. I already knew the answer. He was with his new girlfriend, of course. The 23-year old bleached blonde who used to be his receptionist. She was only six years older than me and had fake boobs that my father had probably paid for. It turned my stomach. I had told him that, too, a couple of weeks ago- a fact that probably explained his absence now.
I sighed. Oh well.
My mom stirred in her sleep and woke up with a start, her eyes instantly finding mine in the darkness. She sat up in a hurry.
"Macy! I didn’t know you were awake. How are you feeling, honey?"
She brushed my hair back and her hand was cool. My life might be surrounded by supernatural craziness, but my mom was the same. Cool, comforting and always calm. She should’ve been an emergency room doctor instead of a dentist. She had nerves of steel.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. It was confusing to be somewhere in my mind surrounded by supernatural beings and magic and then to return with no aplomb whatsoever to a perfectly normal hospital bed. It took a minute. I sucked in another breath. The air was so medicinal that I could taste it ... iodine, peroxide, ointments, cleansers. Why did hospitals all smell the same?
"Macy?"
My mom was staring at me with her eyebrows raised.
"I’m sorry, mom. I’m just a little disoriented. What happened to me?
She stroked my hand as she answered.
"We aren’t really sure, sweetie. You were having unbearable pain and you were screaming and they sedated you. Your pulse was out of control ... around 130 beats a minute. And then all of a sudden, you were still. And they haven’t been able to find a source for your pain. Your blood work came back fine."
"How long have I been here?"
She looked at the clock and so did I. It was 3:30 am.
"About four hours. How do you feel now?"
I considered that. I wiggled my toes, bent my knees, flexed my fingers. I was fine.
"I’m okay. The pain is gone. That was so crazy."
"You’re telling me. Don’t do that to me again!" she wagged her finger at me and I rolled my eyes.
"Trust me; I would rather not have done it this time."
She smiled. "I sent Gavin home. He was right here by your side, but I knew his parents must be worried, so he left around an hour ago. Unwillingly, I might add. He’ll be back first thing in the morning. Which will be any minute now." She was only slightly exaggerating. In a couple of hours, the sun would come up and I knew Gavin wouldn’t be far behind.
"When can I go home?" I asked hopefully.
Mom shook her head. "I don’t actually know. The doctor will come back in the morning.
So, why don’t we get a little more sleep and see what happens?"
I nodded in agreement and settled down in my bed, while Mom curled herself back up in the chair. My hand stung from the IV stuck in it, but I attempted to ignore it as I tried to force myself to go back to sleep. At the same time, I was a little scared to slip off into dreamland. I didn’t like dreamwalking. When I woke up, I didn’t feel rested and I always felt somewhat foggy. Not a pleasant feeling. Plus, facing the Moirae was terrifying.
After a few minutes of being wide awake and listening to the quiet footsteps of the nurses, I knew sleep wasn’t going to come. There was just too much to think about. What had caused that horrible pain? Why were the Keres surrounding me? Where the heck was Annen in all this? The last time I had seen him had been in ancient Alexandria, when he had tried to convince me that the Moirae were just using mortals for entertainment. That there was no real purpose to fate.
I couldn’t believe that was true. I just couldn’t. If it was ... then everything that I stood for was a lie. I was a lie. I purposely tried to avoid thinking about the other thing that Annen had told me.
I could be normal. I could renounce the Order and live just like a normal girl ... never having to guide my Daedal into choosing decisions that would hurt her so much in the end.
Because her decisions might help the world, but they certainly weren’t all that good for her. Or for me. I sighed as I fingered the phoenix birthmark on my wrist.
My Daedal. The image of the curtains fluttering around her at the dance suddenly consumed me. She had moved them without touching them. How the heck had she done that?
Clearly, something was drastically different this time. It was no time to bail on her. She would need me.
And besides, who knew what consequences such a drastic action would have? And what would happen to Jade if I quit? Although the idea of normalcy was so, so tempting. One of the strangest things about being a Keeper was that after my memories were restored, while I might not remember the details of past lives, I still kept the wisdom and experience that I gained from them ... which made me a VERY unusual girl, a thousand (make that two) times older than my real age.
A nurse interrupted my musings, thankfully, as she came to take my
vital signs.
Apparently, my blood pressure was back down to normal, which she assured me was a very good thing. She poked and prodded at me for a few minutes, taking my temperature, chatting a little. I actually welcomed the company because I was afraid of my own traitorous thoughts.
As she bent back down to check my IV site, I glanced absently over her hunched back toward to door. It was standing open and I could see the nurse’s station situated right down the hall. A nurse in yellow scrubs and a really bad haircut sat with her hands propped under her chin. It looked like she was trying desperately to stay awake. Every few seconds, her head slumped and she jerked it back up. I had to give her credit.