Destiny Calling (31 page)

Her smile chilled me to my soul.

“I thought he’d be a good investment, able to blend into both worlds without really fitting into either.”

Her brows pulled down into a sharp V above her eyes, and she whipped her head toward the exterior door with such power it buckled in slightly, then popped back from the impact. A thump echoed as Chance and Griffith were pushed away by its force.

“I gave you an army, all the power of the world, you bastard. And this.
This
is how you show me, your queen, gratitude?”

“Open the door, Hecate. Face me if you’re confident you can,” Griffith roared.

She studied her nails as if toying with me was boring her. “Seriously? Does he really think I would fall for that? I don’t fall for the proverbial ‘chicken’ taunt. Women aren’t that stupid. It’s so hard to find good help these days.”

“I’d say you could have him.” She shrugged. “But it won’t matter, will it? Since neither of you will be around for me to worry about.” She looked down at me. “What a waste of my time you’ve all been.”

Finally, Ruthie’s words clicked together.
“…many fairy tales start with a real story. Over the years they grow and get distorted, so truth becomes fiction. But the information is in there… It’ll come out. You’ll see.”

“Hecate? How could you come here in this form?” I squeaked before her hand-like appendage encircled my neck and pinned me to the ground.

She couldn’t come in an alley, or even the damn graveyard. Had to pick the bathroom, the most personal private place. That’s just rude. I may be hateful, sarcastic, and bitchy half the time, but at least I have manners.

“You will treat me with respect and address me so,” she said. “I shouldn’t have to answer your question, but since the people of your generation seem to have no respect for books and history—instead prefer to look it up on all your technology—otherwise you’d have known.”

She leaned in close. I had to close and reopen my eyes as the images of the masks emerged and faded where her head should have been. “Ebony moon, bitch.”

She twisted my head toward the window where the moonlight glowed through the pane. “So you get to see me in all my glory.”

“I wanted to make it more interesting this time around since you dimwits haven’t yet been strong enough to keep Enchantlings alive to age twenty-one, let alone been able to provide a challenge. So, I gave you some of my gifts, gifts the three of you don’t seem to appreciate.”

She pulled her hands back and placed them where her hips must’ve been, but I couldn’t tell with the blackness oozing around her. The reflection off the ghostly hounds provided the only illumination in the room. Their red eyes flickered in anticipation of the meal I might make. “Say thank you.” She smacked me in the face, and I fell against the side of the stall. “Say it.”

“Fuck you.” Blood trickled from my lip with the words.

“Didn’t you ever wonder how such powerful abilities came about? Why there was no rhyme or reason to how and when this occurs in your lineage?” She clapped her hands. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Happy birthday. After all these years, finally one of you weaklings has survived long enough to embrace all your gifts.”

She loomed over me, and the rankness of her filled my nostrils. “But what good was it? You still all suck. Not a worthy adversary amongst you.”

At this point, I almost welcomed the end of the pain and despair weighing heavily within me. I’d thought I’d built up a tolerance after dealing with the Oppressors, with Drake, but they were nothing, nothing compared to Hecate. I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.

“Those were my gifts. Guess I’ll have to give you a little education before you join your ancestors in their eternal pity party. That way, you might appreciate what you’d been given.”

She stalked around. The sound of her heels, or claws, though invisible in the blackness, clicked on the floor. “Appreciate it. Do not hide it and shun it like your keeper did, ashamed of what I’d bestowed. Instead, she should’ve been nurturing you to honor these gifts of mine.”

“Tessa?” I murmured, trying to pull myself up.

“Who? She was a nobody, a nothing to me. I don’t even know who I sent to off her pathetic life, running and hiding all the time. I didn’t even bother with a full-fledged Oppressor.”

She swung her arm out, and several black tentacles began slithering my way. “Now, where was I? Yes.” She nodded. “The lesson.
Farsightedness
. To see in several directions at once.”

She stood over me. “
Past.
”

The image of Tessa dead at the foot of the stairs filled my mind. I clutched my head and groaned.

“
Present
,” Hecate said.

As the image of Destiny’s body replaced Tessa’s, I squeezed my eyes shut, but couldn’t escape the demented slide show.

“
Future
,” Hecate roared, and my mind filled with visions of Griffith, Ruthie, Chance, and I lying lifeless and mutilated. Tears squeezed out from the corners of my eyes, and I pulled my legs to my chest in a fetal position.

“Now you see all she could’ve had. What I gave her. But that pathetic sister of yours could only stand to see what was within the four walls of that house.”

Hecate swung her hands upward, and the visions sucked out of my mind. I was brought back to my present, painful reality.

“Then just for fun, I thought I’d see what happened with a touch of my black magic by sharing some of my power to conjure dreams and phantoms.” She hunkered down by me and spit in my face.

“But that sentimental half-breed couldn’t conjure his ass from a hole in the ground without wearing himself out for a week. What kind of man is that?” she roared the words, causing my ears to ring.

“But you, Hope.” She said my name like it gave her a bad taste in her mouth. “You were a side effect. Figures. I try to put a male into the mix, and he screws up the whole combination.”

I cringed away from her.

“I’d saved the best for you. You could’ve been a queen. Then maybe I could’ve gotten a little rest. Loaning you my power. Mine.”

The stall doors shook and slammed with her voice.

“The power to give humanity anything they hoped for...or withhold it.” Her hand running over my head felt like a snake. “’Cause that’s what you should’ve been named, isn’t it? Hopeless?”

“Why?” I croaked.

“Because I was bored. Thought I’d make it a little more of a challenge. But apparently even you aren’t a challenge, are you, little Miss Hopeless?”

I heard her taunting within my mind. She eyed me, watching and waiting to see how I would end myself, offering me a multitude of suggestions without ever saying a word, except for the whispers crawling through my mind like oil saturating my brain.

“Think how refreshing the water in the bowl would feel as it filled your lungs. No more breathing in this thick air. How about the floor? A couple of good falls on the linoleum or against the concrete walls would end your pain and suffering. Think how good it would feel. You could be with your parents and the rest of your family. They’re all waiting for you.”

The pounding on the door intensified.

Hecate sighed and rolled her eyes. “Well, I’ll give you this much, you weak little ginger, you have a little more gumption than that twin twit of yours. She crumbled like a dirty tissue—like she could barely wait to leave this world. She practically thanked me for ending her weak, miserable, pathetic life.”

She shrugged. “That’s my job, ridding the world of one weakling at a time.”

I lifted my head, and my mouth gaped, but the blackness pulled back instead of rushing down my throat. “Don’t you dare talk about my sister that way.”

“What? You didn’t know it was me? Well, it was, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Sucking the last drops of life out of her body.”

She cackled at my furious expression. “Ha. Fooled you. I wouldn’t waste my time on that weakling. I sent my minions for that. I’m a goddess. I have more powers than you could ever imagine.”

I pushed up from the floor until I could stand. I realized then, she wasn’t much taller than me—perhaps even shorter without the heels. Her presence had loomed over me while I was on the floor, but it shrank back somewhat as I faced her.

She threw her arm back and all the faucets turned on, spraying water at a violent pace. The toilets began flushing repeatedly and overflowing onto the floor, surrounding my ankles.

“I can make a storm anywhere I please. Care to drown in your sorrows?”

I closed my eyes when the spray hit me in the face. Then I wiped it with my arm. “No one likes a show off.”

I walked toward her, sloshing though the foul water without slowing. The sparkling haze leaking from me was immediately absorbed by her cloud of hate.

“Oh boy, it’s been a long time since I had a good and mad coming at me,” she said with a twisted smile.

The water on the floor swirled and the restroom began to resemble a mini tsunami. Paper towels fluttered through the air. Soap dispensers flew off the walls, leaving gaping holes where they’d been bolted. I ducked as one nearly hit me in the side of the face.

After spending all that time wondering
what
I was, now it didn’t matter. All that really mattered was that I knew who I was and what I believed in.

“I don’t get mad. I get even,” I said, because I believed I could. I directed all my rage into hoping I could send this she-devil back to Hell. As hope rose within me, a small light glowed on each of the mirrors on the wall. Each mirror housing the reflection of one of my loved ones. Tessa, Destiny, Aunt Essie, and other members of our line I hadn’t gotten to meet.

Hecate followed my gaze, and all the mirrors shattered. “Looks like you’re on your own, Hopeless, same as you’ve always been.”

She cocked her head. “Ready to turn tail and run? Or better yet, lie down and die.” She bellowed at me with a gust of foul wind rising from the pit of her heartless body.

Griffith’s words resonated in my mind.
“You destroy hate with love, just like you destroy love with hate.”

Griffith has no one, but she wasn’t going to have him. She could have me.
I give of myself willingly what she doesn’t have and will never have—a heart.

I rushed forward and wrapped my arms and legs around her like a deranged monkey, and we tumbled to the floor. Pinning her arms to her sides and shoving my face into her neck to avoid her gnashing, pointed teeth trying to find a place to latch on to.

One of her teeth made contact. I winced as she pierced my flesh, but when my blood dripped on her, steam rose, and she cringed away as if it pained her.

“Didn’t you ever hear blood is thicker than water?” Despite the revulsion touching her caused me, I rubbed my ragged bloody flesh over her oily skin. It made me want to vomit. The tendrils of her hair darted around in a riot on her head, moving in any direction as long as it was away from me. The ends inched along the floor as if cable of escaping, but then ricocheting back to her scalp when they reached the end of their length.

“What is this?” Hecate’s hot breath burned the flesh on my head, but a quick glimpse revealed the black fog was already weakening and becoming sparser than before.

“Go back to Hell, bitch.”

She appeared to be pulling into herself. The tendrils absorbed into her skin and the water slowed until it lay stagnant. Then the water turned into a whirlpool flowing down the floor drain with intense speed and pressure. Hecate lightened and became more and more transparent, until finally she was sucked into the swirling water.

Standing against the wall, her hellhounds soon crumpled and disappeared down the drain after her.

As they disappeared, the door burst open. Griffith and Chance stood there panting, taking in the scene of me, face down on the floor with my arms wrapped around myself in a stagnant puddle of water. Debris lay scattered around the restroom, and toilet paper draped everything like a Halloween prank gone wrong.

I sat up, pulling pieces of wet paper towel off my face and brushing the glass from my hands. Then I stood to face the gaping men.

“Okay, I’m done freshening up.” I pushed past them, shoes sloshing with water, as I exited the rest room and walked to the parking lot. “I think I could use a cup of tea. Mrs. Shaw has a bunch of tea bags in her office, and I don’t think she’ll be needing them.”

****

Ruthie hurried out the back door as fast as her spindly legs would permit, to peer into the back seat of the car where Chance had positioned himself.

After replicating himself so many times in his attempts to get into the bathroom, he’d probably be depleted for a week.

Ruthie sighed in relief then met my eyes. “Thank goodness. I mean it’s not that I didn’t know he’d be fine. Of course, I knew everything would be.”

She nodded vigorously. “For the both of you, that is. But still.” She ran a hand over her frazzled hair. “I had to see you, to know you were both okay. I, oh…”

Griffith stepped around the car. “Ruthie.”

She fell silent and drew her lips tight. “Griffith.”

I watched their uncomfortable exchange. Ruthie craned back to look up at Griffith’s looming frame, and he peered down as if making an effort to not stoop to her level.

Ruthie nodded curtly. “I knew you’d make the right choice.” She smiled, displaying her huge pearly whites. Her full cheeks pushed up her glasses.

Griffith shoved his hands into his pockets like a scolded schoolboy and hung his head. “I’m sorry it took so long, Miss Ruthie.”

Ruthie wrapped her arms around Griffith, and his eyes widened in surprise. “No, you did just like I knew you would. You did good.”

She pulled back, nodding. “It’s like I’ve been telling, Hope. It’s kind of like on-the-job training.”

Griffith’s smile lit up his eyes. I’d guess it had been a long time since he’d had any affection besides mine. But more so I thought, it was the approval he longed for—approval he’d never gotten from either of his parents.

“Well, I’m outta here.” Ruthie untied her grease-splattered apron. “Do you think you’d mind locking up the bar, Hope? George will be waiting on me.”