Power Fluctuations
A scream bubbles up in my throat but quickly dissolves. Bloody footprints, like a breadcrumb trail leading from the side door where Nike and I had entered her father’s house, all the way to the bathroom door, fainter with each footstep and some prints not whole.
Mine.
I sigh loudly. The footprints are my own. They’re the stark remnants of my blister-ravaging boots, the crimson testament to the toll the day has taken. My heels must have bled into my boots and stained my soles, more on the right side than the left. I hadn’t even noticed on my way to the shower—I’d had too much on my mind.
Checking my freshly washed soles, I note that they’re only pink on the bottom and raw on the heels but no longer actively bleeding or hurting. My pulse reluctantly returns to its rhythm as I veer off to find the kitchen and a mop. The last thing I want to leave behind is a mess for Dr. Jung to find.
Well, no.
The last thing I want to leave behind is my DNA for a world-class geneticist and possibly evil genius to experiment with, especially one who commissions statues of chimera and other genetically altered half-human monsters. This, I remind myself, is the same scientist behind Project Angelseed, Aoife’s mother’s attempt to use DNA found in the tomb of a Chaldean prince said to be Archangel Michael, but the one we know as Daegan, our long-dead God who shall resurrect when the Last Priest ascends.
I grab my phone from the fancy little table where I left it so I can try Virgil one more time—all I dare before we pick up new burner phones in the morning, stashed discreetly behind books in the Huntsville library’s section 133.4. Drusilla’s idea, naturally, since she’s the one orchestrating our logistics and has a fondness for hiding resources behind the books on magic and witchcraft. It doesn’t always work in small-town libraries in the South where such books are banned, so she sticks to the larger libraries or the alternative, the mythology and folklore section, 398.
“Dewey-Decimal Classification is our friend,” Drusilla had joked.
In the future I remember, I never spent time in Dr. Jung’s house, only in his bunker, so I don’t know where the kitchen is located in this monstrosity of a home that I’m sure Aoife’s mother mandated for him. I follow the sound of Nike’s animated voice down the hall and toward the main foyer, a space larger than most apartments I’ve lived in.
The marble floor is cool under my bare toes as I step into the domed entryway flanked by curving staircases and several hallways situated like spokes on a wheel, each ending in a slice of window that overlooks the city below. The table in the center holds a slightly drooping bouquet of autumnal flowers, but far more interesting are the pedestals stationed around the foyer: more commissioned statues, each one some variation of Archangel Michael lore—a winged woman, a man with long hair and curly black beard, a thousand eyes in a blob of flesh.
Commissioned art? I vaguely recall Nike telling me in the car yesterday that her father fancied himself a sculptor in his downtime.
I shudder. I can’t help but wonder if these statues are from the artist’s imagination or the results of Dr. Jung’s experiments.
Listening for Nike’s voice, I no longer hear her, but the smell of…marshmallows?…beckons from the hall to my right, a spoke of the wheel adjacent to the one with the guest rooms. The smell greets me like a comforting hug and quells my frayed nerves as I follow it. Somehow, I always think of hot chocolate and marshmallows as an indicator of safety and life unfolding as it should—and that first evening in Vail with Shelby when we’d started with creamy hot chocolate and moved on to a fuller-bodied red wine with fruity notes.
Nike’s phone call has ended. She perches on a tall stool at the countertop of the most extravagant kitchen I’ve ever seen. She stirs two mugs of hot chocolate, the kind with a dozen mini marshmallows floating—melting—in the rising steam beside an electric kettle that is still hot. Wearing a robe like mine but shorter, she seems too lost in thought to hear me until I clear my throat.
“I thought this might help you to calm—I mean, that it might help us both relax,” she says, glancing at me. “I remember you telling me on the way here how much you loved hot chocolate as a little girl. My father’s wine cellar is spectacular, but alcohol probably isn’t a great idea considering how early we need to get up and get on the road tomorrow. We can toss our phones in the Tennessee River or something on our way out.”
She yawns, and so do I in response. For as exhausted as we both are, I doubt sleep will come easily, given the excitement of the lab burning, along with a book of secrets for using astrology to change the timelines. I don’t know if I can meditate myself into enough ease for deep sleep in a room with all the lights on.
Yawning a second time, Nike pushes a mug toward me. I’m used to the kind of cups you pick up in a thrift shop for a dollar or less, ones with pithy sayings, but this one is fine china with a tiny straw meant for hot coffee.
“Be careful, please.” Nike takes a tiny sip before making a face and scooting her drink away.
“Oh, I know. Only one more try tonight to call Virgil on my current phone, and if I still can’t get him, I’ll wait for the new phone.”
“No, I meant the cocoa.” She scrapes her tongue along the edge of her upper teeth. “It’s scalding.” She smiles slightly at my misinterpretation.
Beneath her casual demeanor, I detect a thread of worry. Its presence echoes in her hesitation before she continues. She stares at the marble countertop and her steaming cup. She picks up her phone, removes the SIM card, and places the phone and card face-down.
“I fucked up, Zephyr,” she confides in a hushed whisper.
“Don’t. It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah, it is. I don’t have your talents. Or Aoife’s. Or Raven’s.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re still very young.”
“Maybe, but…even at my age, I should be way more skilled than I am. Raven says I’m a late bloomer, but Aoife says I’m in the priesthood only because of my connection to her. Zephyr, I was careless. I wanted you to—”
To what? I wonder. To like her? To appreciate her when her big sister has turned her into a go-fer and go-between and intentionally never nurtured her little sister’s gifts?
“I wanted to impress you. Tessa had a couple of books about you, ones written by Daeganean priests for our libraries several hundred years ago. Lady Jaryx, the Queen of Wolves at the end of the last millennium. The one who left her body and never came back. Bound from reincarnating for a thousand years. The chosen one who would be resurrected to lead us through the real last days. You were fucking scary in some of those stories, how people you trusted betrayed you and killed your lover, and you fed the traitors to your wolves.”
I shrug. “I don’t remember any of that. Just the future. I promise I won’t feed you to my wolves.” I try to make a joke. “I don’t even have any wolves.”
Nike doesn’t laugh.
“I hadn’t heard much about you until this month. I know I wasn’t supposed to read those stories, just get the books that might help you, but I did read them, and now I know that you’ll take Aoife’s reign from her. I just wanted to do something important to help you, and I thought leading you to Terre’s remains would make a difference.”
“It has, Nike. It has. As long as Terre’s DNA hasn’t already been used to clone him, before we got to it, tonight’s fiasco was worth it.”
“Really?” Her face twists as if she’s just bitten into a lemon.
“Really.”
I won’t tell her that I’m worried that Aoife might try to take more DNA from Terre’s grave. Even if she tries to call him into a new body, he can refuse the resurrection. But then what happens to his clone without a soul?
“I heard you on the phone with Raven when I was fresh out of my shower. Any news?”
“Um, yeah. He’s…alarmed. The lab’s security system is down, and Aoife is aware of the fire there. Just not that you and I had anything to do with it. Whatever you did to fry the security system outside fried the one inside, too. Nothing was backed up to the cloud, and the local backups are toast. Well, ash.”
I climb onto a stool beside her to rest my feet. “Well, that’s a relief. I mean, that she hasn’t connected us with the lab fire.” We’ve both kept protective shields up, which has made it harder for other Daeganeans to find us.
Nike puts her head down, cradled against her forearms on the countertop. “Ugh! I don’t know! We should leave tonight, I think. After I grab a shower. I don’t want to get caught here. What do you think? We can head back to Florida to meet up with Raven. I know you can’t drive after dark, and I’ll need a fuck-ton of coffee, but if I drive all night—”
I nod, her urgent tone echoing my own rising anxiety. Barely does the weight of Nike’s words settle when a wave of fresh panic washes over me. My rendezvous with destiny in Vail—my first meeting with Shelby—is less than forty-eight hours away. The realization hits me like a sucker punch, leaving me feeling like I’m going to hyperventilate.
“Nike, I…I can’t…I need to fly to Denver tomorrow so I can be in Vail on time.” I stammer, the words stumbling over themselves. “Shelby, our meeting…it’s critical. It’s everything.”
How can I make her understand? Everything I’ve waited for with Shelby hinges on our meetup by the covered bridge over the creek.
Her shoulders sag. “It’s not safe to stay here. It was but now…now I don’t know. Not with the fire. I’m sure Drusilla can arrange a flight for you if I call Raven back. But Raven said Aoife has been calling the phone I left with him. When she couldn’t reach me, she called him to pass along the message about our father’s lab and that he’s safe in Europe. Raven told her my phone must be dead and that he’d let me know.”
“Maybe she just wanted you to know? You know, a sisterly thing?”
Nike waves away the thought. “Maybe. I know she’s really busy with State Department business, plus priesthood business, and her time is considered more precious than ours. You know how much Aoife hates it when she summons you, and you don’t answer instantly.”
Actually, I don’t. I’ve never denied her as the Ranking High Priestess. Like everyone else, I walk on eggshells with Aoife. She and I fought bitterly in the future she and I both once remembered, and I can wait for those events to unfold without intentionally accelerating them. The shame of it is, if Aoife is genuinely being kind to her sister, we both know Aoife too well to believe it.
“Your sister doesn’t know that you and I are together. She’s been no-contact with me since I told her that Terre’s next mother—or the person the stars said was supposed to be his next mother—wasn’t pregnant. She and I have ongoing recruitment business, but she hasn’t answered my messages. It’s like she’s ghosted me.”
“Well, shit.” Nike stares at the wall as she sips her hot chocolate. I can almost see all the scenarios twisting and turning in her head. “That’s not a good sign. How often did you hear from her before?”
“Mmm, once every few days, maximum. She’s always kept close tabs on me, even before I joined the priesthood.”
Of course, she has, I think to myself. I’m her rival to lead the priesthood a few years from now. She’s been keeping her enemies closer, even though I’ve never thought of myself as her enemy. Both of us remembered the future the same way other people might remember fighting with childhood playmates. It was something we remembered from the distant future, except that for Aoife, the Gift of Knowing had come with her Initiation into the priesthood and I’d been born with that gift.
“Oh, Zephyr, this is definitely not good.” Nike won’t even look at me. “I’ve seen Aoife do this before. When she cuts you off, she’s done with you. You’ve fulfilled your purpose in her life. Because, you know, narcissists. You might as well be dead or…you might as well be dead. That’s why she was messing with the timelines. You’re the biggest threat to her. I’m not sure if it’s worse to be on her naughty list or be forgotten. If she’s ghosted you, she no longer considers you a threat. Because you’re going to die tomorrow if we don’t change your future.”
Bzzzzzt!
The lights flicker. Nike and I exchange looks.
“What was that?” I whisper. I listen intently but hear nothing but Nike’s unsteady breaths.
“Oh, my God. Maybe I do need wine.” Nike’s voice shakes. She tries to laugh it off. “This place is a fortress. We’re probably as safe here as anywhere. I’m imagining things now. I need to stop letting it get to me because I’m not thinking clearly.”
She reaches underneath the countertop and unplugs the electric kettle. She points to the four other appliances plugged into the same outlet as she tosses the cord across the space between us. “It did that when I first plugged it in. Sorry, but I’m just really on edge.”
Both of us laugh nervously and sip our hot chocolate. Mine has cooled off enough to drink, but instead, I slurp down a few marshmallows on top.
She’s right. I feel it in my gut. Aoife’s experimenting with timelines has, Aoife thinks, gotten rid of me. If I die tomorrow, her path is clear for remaining High Priestess of the Daeganeans. Somewhere in Florida tonight, Raven is babysitting Nike’s phone and a librarian named Charlie is carrying mine around with him to make Aoife think I’m at least an eleven-hour drive from my actual location. Whether she has a hand in my attempted murder or simply is allowing fate to come through the path of least resistance, as far as she knows, I’m waiting for death in Florida.
I won’t be there.
“Anyway, Zephyr, if you think about it, there’s no way we can leave before daylight. Not if we’re going to change your future back to the way it was. We need to stay here where all the lights are on. Keep you out of dark rooms. I can’t promise that for you if we leave here now. It could be a dark car or stopping for a restroom. Once we leave here, a dark room could be anywhere. Besides, we have to pick up new phones at the library and it doesn’t open until nine o’clock.” Rambling, she gulps her drink and tries to speak our future into being. “We’re okay here, right? We…are…okay. Aoife doesn’t know you’re here. She doesn’t know I’m here. And in the morning, we’ll clean up after ourselves, and we’ll be at the library when it opens, and—”
I slide my hand across hers to reassure her. She may act without thinking sometimes, but I can’t take this infernal second-guessing. I also can’t blame her for it, given her family.
“It’s okay. We will be okay.” I can’t help but think of the Nike of the other future before she went mad. “I’m glad we’re in this together. Illyria is lucky to have you. So is Raven. And so am I.”
She smiles as if tears might spill down her cheeks at any moment. I can’t help but wonder if this timeline of death for me within the next twenty-four hours—unless I can avoid dark rooms—would be full of happiness for both her and Illyria. She has a family in both Aoife and her father, but she’s still only an appendage to them in the future I remember and maybe in this one, she’ll escape Aoife’s wrath. Maybe in this one, she’ll keep her love and her sanity, and her father won’t leave her behind when he flees to the newly terraformed Mars. Who’s to say that one timeline is better for everyone just because it’s better for me?
My hot chocolate sits abandoned on the counter as we lean against the marble surface, allies bound together against an approaching storm. Our time in Huntsville is dwindling, but the next move crystallizes in my mind. The pause button of the last hour will soon lift, and it will be time to act.
I gulp down my hot chocolate, licking a tiny marshmallow from the corner of my mouth. “Nike? I have an idea. You—”
Bzzzzzt! The lights flicker again.
This time, Nike and I both stare at the three-pronged cord to the kettle, limp and unplugged on the countertop.
You’re reading Altered Destiny free, right here in the Library. Want a copy to keep on your Kindle or e-reader? Buy the e-book direct from me →
© 2024 Lorna Tedder. All rights reserved. Free to read here — please don’t repost elsewhere.