Guardian of Atlantis (The Children of Atlantis) (19 page)

“Wasn’t it your fault
that Medusa’s hair was turned into snakes
?” asked Raven, remembering the story of Poseidon and Medusa.

“Yes. I should have forced Athena to change Medusa back as soon as I found out what she did. But I didn’t. I was too consumed with gaining power. I waited…too long.” Poseidon sighed. “I love your mother. And I’ve found her and I’ve found you. We need to go. It’s not safe for you to stay here. You’re the child of the prophecy and Zeus will stop at nothing to kill you. He w
ill take the key codes from you
.”

Raven pushed his hand away from her face. “I’m not going anywhere with you or with anyone else until I’ve figured out who I can trust. You’re—you’re Poseidon, his brother.” Raven’s hand went to her mouth.
“Oh, my god!
He’s my uncle. That means Hades is—”

“Your uncle too.”

Raven wrapped her arms around herself.

“You are my daughter and you have to come with me. It’s the only way to protect you from Zeus and the others. Medusa, your mother, is at my home waiting for you. She has never seen you. She only held you for a few minutes when you were a baby, and then her sisters managed to send you to the future to keep you safe.”

“Actually, I don’t have to go with you or anyone else. There’s something called a legal adoption and termination of biological parental rights. You can’t tell me what to do.” Raven
walked around Poseidon.

He turned. “You will go with me. It’s the only way to keep you alive.” A strange wave of power rippled over Raven.

Raven stopped, but didn’t turn around. “No.”

“You have no choice. You will obey me.”

Raven felt the ripple of power again. She turned around, her hands on her hips. “I can choose to do anything I want, and you can’t stop me. You may be one of my biological parents, but you aren’t my daddy. You weren’t the person who raised me.” She turned her back on him and started walking away.

“But I am Poseidon, god of the sea. And I am your father. I forbid you to leave.” The tone of his voice was that of someone who was not used to having his demands ignored. The wave of power
grew
more intense.

“Let me make this as clear as possible. 
You.
Are.
Not. My.
Dad
dy
.”
The power tugged at Raven’s brain, but she shoved it aside like she would a pesky mosquito.

“You’ve made
it
clear. But the choice of raising you was taken from me. You are going home with me.” Poseidon closed the distance between them. An unreadable look flickered across his features, when the power he directed at Raven didn’t have the desired effect.

“As clear as mud.
I’m not going anywhere with you. It’s a little late to be playing the concerned dad.”

Poseidon grabbed Raven’s a
rm and jerked her closer to
him. “Zeus would have killed you if I hadn’t of stopped him. You are in over your head. I can help you.”

Raven jerked her arm out of his grip. “I’m so out of here.” She turned, took three steps, and abruptly stopped. Her mouth dropped open. A wall of water blocked her path. Raven looked up and to her sides. The water wall totally surrounded her, forming a cage.

“You will go with me,” stated Poseidon.

The water wall slowly closed in on Raven until it was just inches from her body. “You can’t hold me prisoner
.” Anger rippled through her
.

“You leave me no choice.”

The water carried Raven back to Poseidon. “No!” she screamed. She clinched her hands and shoved them through the water wall. Slowly she opened them and turned her hands until
her palms were facing down
. The water wall trembled and then crashed to the ground.

Poseidon stared at her. He felt the power surging through and around Raven.  “How is it possible?”

“I told you
I’m not going with you.” Raven swallowed. She felt the power surging through her too, and it terrified her more than anything else she’d faced.

Poseidon bowed his head at her. “For now,” he said and vanished, l
eaving Raven alone in the park.

12

I always loved watching the old black and white movies that came on television every Friday after the late night news.
The singing.
The dancing.
The elaborate costumes and sets.
I loved it all.

But my absolute favorites were the old horror movies.

You always knew the monster was going to lose, but you couldn’t help but cheer for him. Hoping that maybe, just maybe he would get the girl this time. But unfortunately, he never did. The girl was rescued by the safe, boring, good guy.

Thinking back, it now makes sense why I rooted for the monster.

             
--Raven Weir’s journal

Raven slumped down on one of the stone benches dotting the shoreline of the lake and stared out across the darkening waters. The glow of the streetlamps reflecting off the steam rising from the lake created an eerie effect. It made Raven wonder if she had somehow walked onto a movie set.

“
Hhmmphh
!” she snorted. “Now I know why I always cheered for the monsters.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Unbelievable,” she mumbled shaking her head. “I’m not just a freak, I’m a super-freak.
The daughter of Poseidon, god of the sea.”
Raven shook her head. “This can’t be happening. I figured Medusa was my mother, but Poseidon, my father?”

Raven listened to the water gently pounding the shoreline. The soothing effect calmed her nerves.

“I guess I should be thankful for small favors. At least I don’t have snakes growing out of my head. That would definitely be a bad hair day. No brushing out those tangles.” A shudder of revulsion rippled through her body. “How do you live with a headful of snakes?” Raven absent-mindedly played with her ne
cklace. “Okay, I guess I need to
get control of my abilities. I wonder if mom
knows?
”

Raven stared across the dark lake.
“What am I going to do? Where am I going to stay? I doubt the child protective people are going to let me live by myself.
And I can’t live with a normal human foster family. They’d be sitting ducks.
” Raven sighed. “Can my life get anymore messed up?”

“It’s not your life
you need to worry about. Well, it is your life, just not the way you think.” The cold, hard voice made the hairs on the back of Raven’s neck stand up. An icy chill ran down her spine.

Raven jumped up and whirled around to face Jay, the Hellhound. The same Jay she hoped she would never see again.

“Surprised to see me?” Jay moved out of the shadows. He sniffed the air.
“The sweet smell of fear.”
He sniffed again. “It makes me all warm and tingly inside.”

Raven stared at him, w
ondering how he managed to survived the fight with Meritus Myers. For some reason, she thought both of them were permanently out of the picture.
Obviously wishful thinking on her part, because if Jay survived, most likely Meritus survived too.
“Great. Just freaking great!” mumbled Raven. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”

“What did you say? I didn’t quite hear you.” Jay turned his face to his right, exposing a mangled ear barely attached to his head by a thin strip of skin.

Raven gagged. She closed her eyes and swallowed several times.

Jay laughed. He limped around the bench.

Raven heard the crunch of rocks. Realizing her mistake, she quickly opened her eyes and took a couple of steps away from Jay.

“I can kill you quickly. Or we can play this game of cat and mouse all night.” Jay smirked.
“So many choices.”

“Or we can just take you to the hospital. That’s a pretty nasty cut, and you don’t want it to get infected or anything like that.” Raven’s heart pounded. She was sure if she could look inside her ribca
ge, it would be covered with black and blue bruises
.

Jay’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Raven. “I clawed your leg really good. You shouldn’t be alive.”

“Not exactly the brightest puppy in the pound, are you?”

Jay growled. “Why are you still alive?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Raven grimaced again at the sight of Jay’s ear
, though his nose didn’t look much better
. “At least I look better than you.”

“Not for long.”

“Go home. Or better yet,
go to
the hospital. Either way, leave me alone. I’m too tired to play games with you.”

“We’re
gonna
play one more game.”

Raven shook her head. “No we’re not.”

“A game of Hellhound and mouse.
It’s so much fun.” He drooled in anticipation. “I like chasing my food. It makes it so much sweeter when I do catch it. Run! Run as fast as you can!” Jay turned his head to the left and he sniffed the air again. The whole left side of his face was shredded. Dried blood covered his neck. For a second, Raven thought she saw the flash of his teeth through the ribbons of skin.

“You really don’t look like you should be hunting tonight. Why don’t you get those wounds taken care of before you do anything
else.
You know, so you don’t get an infection. I’ll wait right here for you. Or we could meet back here, in a couple of years or so, maybe sometime after I graduate from college.”

“This is nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to rip off one arm and then the other.”

“Says the big bad Hellhound, before he gets the snot beat out of him again.”

Jay growled. “I don’t smell your blood. The little wound I gave you on your leg should be bleeding and filled with poison.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to disappoint you, but poison is so yesterday. And ripping off limbs, that’s just down right Medieval. You really need to get with the program and pull yourself into the 21
st
century.”

Jay snarled as he limped around the bench, stalking Raven. “The wound was deep. Poison should be flowing through you. You shouldn’t be alive,” he said again. “But I’ll remedy that little problem.”

Raven moved to keep the bench between them. “Guess I’m just immune to Hellhound poisoning and I heal fast.
Lucky me.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “You, on the other hand, you are a mess. Like I said before, you really need to go to the hospital.” Raven couldn’t think of anything else to say to stall for time.

“You guess you’re immune and you heal fast?” Jay snarled at her. “Humans don’t heal that fast. Either you’re lying or you’re not human.” The tips of his fangs rested on his bottom lip. He leaped over the back of the bench, landing on the seat. “I have an idea. Let’s test my theory.”

“Let’s not.
I don’t want you to get your hopes dashed. It would be devastating to you.” Raven took a couple of steps back. She had no clue how to call upon her powers to protect herself, all the other times had been a fluke. There was nothing lying around she could use as a weapon. Even her bag was out of reach under the bench Jay stood on.

“What’s wrong? Scared?”

“Scared?
Of You?”
Raven shook her head.

Jay leered at her. “You should be.” He enjoyed taunting her.

“Why?”

“Because you’re
gonna
die.”

“Yeah, so you keep telling me. But I don’t see that happening. The way I remember it, I beat the crap out of you.” Raven smiled.

Jay made a noise that was a cross between a laugh and a growl. “This is just the warm up. I like it when my food fights back. It’s so much more fun than when it just sits there as if it’s already dead.” He leaped off the bench.

Raven watched him arch through the air like an animal pouncing on its prey, except she was the prey. She dropped to the wet ground, making herself as small a target as she could.

Jay sailed over her head. His claws dug into the soft earth when he hit the ground. The momentum sent him rolling head over heels until he came to a stop several feet away.

Raven didn’t bother to watch or wait around. As soon as Jay sailed over her head, she leaped back to her feet and ran. A ferocious howl erupted somewhere behind her, but Raven didn’t dare look back.

She made it a few feet when something hard rocketed into her, sending her skidding across the wet ground on her stomach. Raven slid to a stop her head barely inches from one of the metal poles anchoring down a swing set. She tried pushing herself up, but her whole body trembled from the impact. Raven gasped, desperate to refill her lungs with oxygen.

Weird laugher drifted to her.

Raven managed to turn her head towards the noise, a pair of well-worn boots filled her
vision.

“Did you think I’d let you get away?” Jay grabbed Raven’s arms and lifted her off the ground. “This is so much fun,” he growled.

“Put me down.” Raven managed to get the words out, but it didn’t sound anything like her. She was still having trouble catching her breath.

“Why would I want to?” He shook her. “I haven’t had so much fun in a long time. Now which arm do I rip off first?
The left or the right?”
His eyes glowed red.

“No!” screamed Raven. She twisted her hands until the palms were facing Jay. Rain
water
from the ground rushed up between her and Jay creating a watery wall. The water suddenly expanded, ripping Jay’s hands off of Raven, and sent him flying through the air with the same force and arch of a person shot out of a circus cannon. He finally landed with a huge thud
causing
the ground to shake.

Raven, who had fallen to the ground, slowly pushed herself up. Her legs trembled but held her weight. She spotted Jay in an unmoving pile at the edge of the lake. She turned in the opposite direction
.
The first couple of steps Raven made were rough; her legs threatening to buckle with each one, but Raven pushed on. She needed to put as much distance as possible between her and Jay.

She wov
e her way through the metal poles
of several strategically placed swing sets, and was skirting around a dome shaped, metal structure, when she heard a howl rip through the night. Raven stopped. Slowly she turned in a circle, searchi
ng for
a weapon.

“Did you miss me?”

Raven screamed before she could stop herself when Jay suddenly popped up in front of her.

Jay made a sound crossed between a growl and laughter. “I think you did.”

Raven stepped backwards. She tripped and almost fell down in her haste to get away from him.

“How did you make the water
do that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jay’s nostrils flared. “Ordinary humans can’t do that. What are you?”

“Your worst nightmare if you don’t leave me alone. Now get out of here before something really bad happens to you.”

“Worry about yourself.” Jay rushed to grab Raven.

She knew Jay expected her to run, but she also knew there was no way she could out run him. There was only one thing left for her to do.

Raven’s right fist connected hard with Jay’s nose. She yelped as pain shot through her knuckles, but grinned when Jay grabbed his bleeding nose and stepped back. But her victory was short lived.

He growled, dropped his hands and charged at her again.

Raven struck out with her fists again. She managed to plant her right fist on his left jaw causing Jay to grunt, but her left fist never reached its target.

“Not again!” Jay roared. He grabbed Raven’s left arm and used it to swing her off balance.

Raven flew into the metal bars of the jungle gym; the side of her head bouncing off one of the bars. Her vision filled with sparkling stars.

“Human. Not human. It doesn’t matter. Soon you’ll be dead. Ethan will be dead. The packs will be mine.” He raised his right hand.

Amid the stars still dancing around her head, Raven watched the hand ripple and twist. Brown straggly hair sprouted into a thick coat. The nails at each fingertip turned black as they lengthened and curved into lethal weapons.

Raven blinked.

Vicious growls filled the night sky.

Raven touched the growing lump on the side of her head and laughed.

Jay stared at Raven. A surprised look covered his face.

“That really looks like the glove Mike brought to school last Halloween. He chased the girls in the halls between classes until Mr.
Pridmoor
took it from him. I wonder what he did with it.” Raven erupted into a fit of giggles

“You’re comparing this to a Halloween costume?” Jay sounded indignant.

Raven laughed. She tried to pull herself into a sitting position, but a wave of dizziness hit her. Groaning, she slid back to the ground. “Just give me a minute.”

Jay growled. He reached down. Grabbing Raven’s arm, he pulled her up until she was face to face with him.