A Moment’s Pause
“It’ll be fine, Zephyr. Really. It’ll be fine.”
In less than two days, I’ve learned that Nike is a woman of action, but she doesn’t always think things through. Or maybe she’s a woman of faith, actually believing that everything works out for a higher purpose in the end. For now, I’m inclined to think that she does everything by the seat of her pants.
Nike parks our borrowed car in the side yard of the biggest mansion I’ve seen since we arrived in northeast Alabama. The porch lights—chandeliers—glow between tall white columns, and though lights are on inside, the heavy curtains are drawn. Crescents of lamplight shine over the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I vaguely remember this place from the future after The Shift. Not the house so much, but the small mountain it’s perched on, where I once gazed to the south with a telescope at the mangled expanse where The Wave had washed away buildings and cars and people as it rushed inland, damaging everything in its path. Then the retreating tsunami destroyed anything remaining, reshaping the land, taking topsoil with it, smelling of salt water and the dead for months afterward. Reeking of chemicals and garbage dumps and sewage carried along by the water coming in and the water going out, so that the land was no longer as fertile, and the water was too polluted to drink.
The Jung house had been destroyed in one of the massive hurricanes in Year Two, and the winds had stripped away most of the trees, leaving the entire mountain unrecognizable by tonight’s standard. The hills and small mountains had done their job of protecting Huntsville and the land north and west of it. Even the Saturn Rocket visible from the peak had been spared the catastrophe—but not its aftermath.
If I remember correctly, the far side of the house has a bunker built into it that could house fifty survivors for five years or more. Some of us had hidden there in the first months after The Shift before making our way to pre-ordained sanctuaries and simply trying to find one another in the New Dark Age. We were so lost at first—and Aoife took the priesthood’s resources and made plans to abandon us for a doomed experimental colony on Mars where only the super wealthy could escape. She may have had good intentions at first, but she’d failed all of us and saved herself. Or thought she had.
All the more reason Aoife can’t be the one we rely upon to save the human race.
I shake away the memory. Regardless of the timeline and who’s in charge, nothing can stop The Shift now. Fortunately, one of us white-blonde High Priestesses can make the future more survivable for non-billionaires, and it’s not Aoife.
“Hey, Nike? You’re sure your dad isn’t home?” I check my watch. Ten o’clock, Central Time. Biting my lip, I frown up at the towering show of old money in Alabama’s haven for scientists.
At the twelve-foot fence at the entrance to a winding road up the side of the mountain, Nike had punched a lengthy number into a keypad on the gate. Nothing as complicated as a DNA test, but if Dr. Jung didn’t know about our visit to his lab near Monte Sano, he’d surely know about his unexpected houseguests for the night.
“Please, Zephyr. Stop worrying. When I said, ‘it’ll be fine,’ I meant everything will be fine. One, we destroyed Terre’s genetic material so he can’t be cloned. Mission accomplished. Two, all evidence we were there was probably destroyed in the fire and Drusilla is providing us with alibis in Florida. Three, my father is out of the country. No one’s here. We’re safe tonight. This place is a fortress. I’ll erase all the security footage when we leave. He’s not going to know. Aoife’s not going to know. Everything will be fine.”
She presses her lips into a thin line, then sighs heavily. I guess I don’t look very hopeful, but I have serious doubts. About all of it.
“Look,” she says as she opens the car door, “we’ll figure it out. We don’t need the astrology book. We can change the future ourselves. You know, like normal people who don’t remember things that haven’t happened yet.”
“How?” The word comes out almost as a wail. “We don’t have the book that tells us how to meditate better timelines into existence as we shift between parallel realities.” I follow her to the trunk of the car where we have a small tote of clothes, all of them dirty at this point.
“Simple.” She throws the tote over her shoulder and then closes the trunk gently to avoid making unnecessary noise. Motioning to a side door—also with a chandelier—she leads me along a stone path flanked by lush hostas growing out of small boulders and reminding me that parts of Alabama are indeed beautiful and, for now, green. Nike pauses at the door to look at me. “You told me your death date is tomorrow according to the charts you cast. You and Raven have divined for your last breath, you said. You walk into a dark room, and that’s the end.”
“You make it sound so impersonal. We’re talking about the end of my life. Forty-five years too soon.”
Nike shrugs as she punches a code into the keypad on the wall near the door and waits for it to click. “So, we just make sure you don’t walk into a dark room after midnight tonight. Then, after you’ve had a long, hot shower and a good night’s sleep, tomorrow morning, I’ll get you on a private plane to Denver and you can make the drive to Vail before sundown. You’ll keep the lights on all night and just not fucking go into a dark room. See? Simple. Stay out of dark rooms! That’s all it’ll take to change your future, and you’ll have avoided the malefic in your astrology chart.”
She grabs my wrist and pulls me inside the house, then quickly closes the door and punches another string of numbers into the keypad on the wall inside.
“Oh, Nike. You make it sound so easy.”
Is she relying on divination I don’t know about? Or am I just so used to relying on memories of the future that I’m paranoid?
Sweaty hair plastered to her forehead, she grins back at me as she drops the tote. The dark circles under her eyes make her look closer to my age than to someone young enough to be the daughter I’ll never have. She smells of bleach and acetone. We both do.
“Now get out of those boots and clothes, Zephyr. I’ll start the laundry while you take a shower in the guest bath. A robe and clean towels—all there. Once we get you through tomorrow night, everything should be back on track. You’ll be the future leader of the priesthood, just like you remember. Not Aoife. And you’ll meet Shelby the day after tomorrow in Vail.”
She directs me to the bathroom at the end of a marble-floored hall. The room on the left is mine for the night. Her bedroom is elsewhere in the house.
She holds out a hand and looks the other way as I peel off my briar-torn lace blouse and vest and then wriggle out of my damp and sagging velvet skirt. I’m modest enough to keep my panties on until last, but then I ball up all my stinky attire into the skirt and press the bundle into her open palm. I remember my beanie at the last minute and add it to the mound of clothes.
My star map necklace and strand of Daeganean pearls hang between my breasts. At forty-five, they’re not as perky as they once were, but I remember my body at ninety and never feel “less than.”
“Um, Nike? Where will you be while I’m in the shower?” I can’t explain it, but I’m uneasy about her being out of my sight.
“Hmm. Kitchen, probably. Come find me. I need a shower, too, but first, I need to call Raven and let him know what’s happened.” She disappears in the other direction without looking back.
And I need to check in with Virgil.
I’ve tried to call him three times in the past day, but no luck. It isn’t like Virgil to ignore my calls, especially when he knows the stakes.
Wincing, I struggle with my boots as I lean against a rectangular, marble-topped table, one of several that line the hall. Each table holds a collection of statues, none over twelve inches tall. Some are lions with wings and human heads. Some are men with the heads and wings of birds. All chimeras. All genetic abominations from literature and art in the ancient world.
Or maybe from history, too.
I leave my burner phone on the table next to a statue of a man with three sets of wings and a curly beard as I pull my stinging feet from the boots. My blisters have blisters. I wish now I’d not chosen to spend the past day sockless after my only pair had gotten too wet for comfort. My hippie boots were meant for show, not work. My heels burn. So do the sides of my little toes.
Maybe I should try Virgil one more time?
I dial the number of his throwaway, but no one answers. I don’t leave a message. We have rules we follow, and if all else fails, we can contact one another through a service that Drusilla provides, something that Terre had helped her set up.
Maybe I should try Drusilla?
No. No, if Nike got through to Raven, he would update Drusilla, too.
I’m too tired to deal with it for now. Right now, all I want is a hot shower, and I’m already down to blistered bare feet and two necklaces and not a stitch besides.
I pass my guest room for the night. The door is cracked about six inches, the room dark inside. For all the lights on outside and inside this house and for how normal that apparently is, the room is dark.
Okay, so I am not walking into a dark room, even a day early.
Pointing my index finger at the mostly closed door, I reach out gradually until my fingertip makes contact with the wood. I give it a hard push, and the door swings inward with a slight squeal.
Pitch black inside.
Quickly, I reach out with my senses. I don’t feel any recent energy in the room. Illyria’s energy, but from months ago, maybe a visit home with Nike to meet Dr. Jung. Before that, strangers. Mundane strangers. Non-Daeganeans. Nothing now. No one.
I snake one hand around the corner until I find the light switch. A warm glow floods the room. And there’s not a corner anywhere for anyone to hide. Beautiful bed in shades of dusty blue, curtains to match. A closet but an open door with nothing but hangers waiting to be filled and a folded frame for holding luggage.
Relieved, I reach outward again with my senses, feeling for anything unexpected that might be in the house. I can sense Nike, hear her even from here. A tense conversation where I occasionally hear Raven’s name, but I don’t detect anything to worry about here on this mountain. There’s no one here but Nike and me.
I close the door but leave the light on. The guest bath, on the other hand, has an open door, a couple of recessed spotlights over a clawfoot tub, and a walk-in shower. I flip on every light switch I can find and then start the steamy shower while I close and lock the door behind me.
Leaving on only my two necklaces, I step into the shower and let the hot droplets seep into my hair. I close my eyes against everything. The water feels so good, except where it touches my blistered heels. Eyes closed, I reach for the bottles of shampoo and body wash attached to the wall and moan at how good it feels to wash the stench of the road off me, along with the sweat of crossing three miles of fields to and from the lab, and then the smell of chemicals. I wash it all off my skin, out of my hair, until every trace of this horrible day is gone.
I’m not sure how long I’ve stood here under the stream, but when the water starts to run cold, I hope I haven’t used up all the hot water before Nike can enjoy her own shower. I step out on the cool white marble floor and towel off. My wet hair plasters to my shoulders, but it’s dry enough for now. I slide into a plush terrycloth white robe that’s long on me and tie the sash around my waist.
Opening the bathroom door, I step out into the brightly lit corridor and stop cold.
Footprints. On the marble.
Bloody footprints.
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