Son of Sun (Forgotten Gods (Book 2)) (5 page)

Without the crowd to block me, my feet hit the ground harder, with more purpose than before, no longer concerned about catching Mattie, but now chasing the hope that Dayne was hiding somewhere in these woods. A slightly delusional part of my brain thought I could run fast enough to catch him. Maybe he had come back for me.

My eyes adjusted, and the woods lay before me, bathed in silver light like those long ago nights in Clonlea. The way the moonlight lay bright white on the ferns, only to disappear the moment I rushed passed, had my feet hitting the ground harder, hoping that if I ran fast enough, I might be able to catch those memories long enough to hold onto them for a while.

The woods came alive around me, the crowd of runners to my left had disappeared. With every heartbeat and panting breath, the forest seemed to find its way deeper into me, until I could
feel
it coming to life around me.

I no longer needed to keep my eyes open to see where I was going. My skin prickled, the hairs turning to goosebumps, like an internal sonar device, telling me when I needed to shift my path to avoid colliding with a tree or a stump. The gentle rustle of fern banks perked my ears, telling me when to lift my legs and jump over them. I was no longer running by sight, but by feeling the woods. My magic was waking up, here in the darkest of places, where no one could see me.

For months I had tried to run from this inevitability happening, but clothed in the night’s shadows it was finally safe, and if it brought me one step closer to him I was ready to embrace what magic lived in me.

“Show me,” I whispered in the darkness, my head thrown back to the moon like a coyote ready to howl. Closing my eyes again, I drank in the forest smells and called Dayne back to me. Straining my brain for the tiniest memory of him, the tiniest hint he may have given me that would show me how to harness the great magic he feared lay within me.

“Faye!” Mattie called out, searching for me in the darkness, but I couldn’t stop. Faster and faster I ran, trying to catch a memory that might show me where to start, and afraid if I stopped I might lose whatever was taking over my body. Trees flew by me, and I ripped the glow necklace from my neck, no longer wanting to be found or visible to human eyes.

Faster, harder, stronger. My body began to transform in ways I didn’t know it was capable of. My muscles felt stronger, invincible even. I suddenly feared nothing. My senses were so heightened I would’ve taken on a starving grizzly bear, certain I could beat it. I took a deep breath, held it and exhaled with all the force I could manage, kicking up a strong wind that blew the branches from my path.

That’s when I found him.

Dayne was sitting at Rose’s table. It was the night he had rescued me from death. The night I learned his secrets. He was just as irresistible as ever and my heart ached to see him so plainly before me. Happily joking with me, the way I was dumb enough to think our life would always be.

“I just think about it, really hard. Concentrate. It’s telekinetic.”

He had offered this explanation with a bored shrug as if it were the simplest of things in his world. But for me, it was proving impossible.

“Show me, Dayne. Show me how to do this,” I pleaded in the dark.

Dayne still sat at Rose’s table, but the scene in my mind changed. I was no longer in a memory, but in some new reality where he had actually heard my plea.

He took my hand, and kissed it. As he released it to the table, he looked at me, his eyes heavy with regret.

As I stared into his warm gaze, our hands felt slippery, and when I looked down I saw they were covered in blood. Bright, red, deathly blood, dripping from my hand and mingling with his. The vision morphed again and he was in a silvery white tunic, an outfit he wore only in LisTirna. As my worst nightmare began to unfold before my eyes, his bright white shirt soaked with blood. His blood, and he fell to the ground. Slowly, I turned my hands over, staring at their red stain, and then fell to my knees beside him.

“The only way I can love you is to let you go,” he whispered in a barely audible voice.

My mind exploded with the unexpected rage of what I was seeing. I slapped my hands against my face, trying to make it all go away, but it didn’t budge.

In one last effort to stop the horrific visions, I cut loose a scream that echoed in the woods, reverberating off the trees, shooting through the night like a bullet. My throat burned with the effort, but the vision vanished.

I opened my eyes just in time to see the actual earth disappear from under my feet, and my heart fell to the watery depths swirling beneath me in automatic panic. Arms and legs flailing wildly in the air, I barely had the tip of my big toe still on the ground when I saw how far away the other riverbank was. I could never make a leap like that, but I had too much momentum to stop.

Focusing every ounce of strength I had on my toe, I pushed off and sailed through the air, coming to land in a graceful, squatted position on the other side of the bank as if I had planned it all along.

What?

I stood slowly, disbelievingly, eyes wide as the moon, and walked to the bank, staring down into the river that I should’ve landed in. Shaking all over, I wrapped my arms around my waist, hugging myself as I tried to comprehend what had just happened.

Dayne had come back to me. Though his message was the last thing I wanted to hear. My magic was waking up, and in my quest to find Dayne, I had stupidly welcomed it, running way faster than any human possibly could, and leaping over a bank that only an Olympic pole vaulter could traverse.

I was stuck, incapable of leaping back across the river when I had time to think about it.

“Faye!” Mattie slid to a stop on the opposite side of the river, rocks sliding down the bank and plunking into the water. “What are you doing over there?”

“I jumped,” I answered, not able to lie to her, and too confused to come up with a better answer.

“How?” Her eyes were wide with fear and shock and maybe a touch of admiration.

I stood dumbly staring at her, shaking my head back and forth.

“Well, do it again. We aren’t supposed to cross the river,” Mattie was now looking all around, mainly behind her for the rest of the group to catch up to us.

The forest began to rustle and Thomas popped out of the trees behind Mattie.

“Faye!” He yelled when he saw me. “You’ve got to get back on this side, right now!” His insistence seemed odd, and I shook my head helplessly. A few more runners popped out of the woods, all stopping in their tracks when they saw me on the far side of the bank.

“How did she…?” No one could figure out how I had managed to cross the river without getting wet.

“She was running too fast when she came out of the trees. Her only option was to jump. Luckily she made it,” Mattie offered an answer to the runners who stood gawking at me on her side of the bank. I wasn’t sure if Mattie thought she was lying to cover for me, or if she honestly thought it was normal for me to have leapt the bank like a gazelle.

“Faye, you have to get back across,” Thomas said again, this time more urgently than before.

“I can’t!” I yelled over the roar of the rushing water.

“Climb down the bank. I’ll swim out to meet you.” Thomas offered, taking off his shirt and shoes. I peered down the bank to the river, not seeing an easy way to get to the water. The moon shone against slick grey rocks, their flat faces too smooth to get a toe hold in all the way to the water.

“Uh-uh,” I shook my head, not trusting my magical body at that moment, fearing I might suddenly fly, or something worse, if I started to fall.

“Do you have a better idea?” Mattie snapped as she helped Thomas down the bank. When her head popped back up to me, her face blanched ghost white and her eyes went wide as melons. Goosebumps immediately prickled along my body.

Mattie was no longer staring at me, but into the woods just behind me, utter and total fear washing her features down her face. My eyes filled with tears of fear as I noticed every other face was frozen on the woods behind me as well. Other runners started to back away, fleeing into the safety of the woods behind them.

Slowly, I turned to face what held their attention.

I didn’t see it at first, staring deeply into the woods, thinking maybe they were playing a joke on me.

Only they weren’t.

A mist began to develop in the woods several yards away. It looked like fog rolling in off the ocean at first, only it was pitch black in the forest, and fog wouldn’t have been visible, even in the full moon. The longer I stared, the stronger the light became, rushing through the woods toward me.

“Faye, run!” Mattie screamed, all the other runners jumping and yelling behind her.

I didn’t bother to look for the best way down the bank this time. Instead, I launched my body, feet first down the slope, rolling and falling, scraping and tumbling my way down to the water. When the mist reached where I had been standing it evaporated, as if it was only interested in me.

My blood ran cold again, heart pounding in my ears so loudly I could hardly hear Thomas calling to me.

He was wading out in to the water on the opposite side, grabbing onto rocks as he went to keep himself out of the cold water.

With the mist gone I could focus again, and all I wanted was to get out of the woods.

“Try to stay out of the water as much as you can, Faye. Jump from rock to rock. This river is really deep in places,” Thomas instructed as he looked for his next foot hold.

Moonlight painted the black rocks silver, the backs slicked with algae and breaking water. Normally, I would’ve taken my time, but I was too bothered by whatever was hunting me to be careful. I plunged in and started swimming to Thomas.

He was yelling at me to wait, but I didn’t care. I had always been a strong swimmer, and I was ready to get out of there.

Halfway across the river, I knew why he had wanted me to be careful. An undertow swirled around my legs and began to pull me off the straight line I was swimming toward Thomas. Paddling harder, I pulled my body through the water, but try as I might, the undertow wrapped further up my body. It wasn’t long before I was struggling to keep my head above water.

“Faye! Grab onto this!” Thomas yelled and tossed a long branch my way. I lunged for it, only to have a wave swell overhead and crash down on me the second my fingers found rough bark.

Water burst into my nose, searing a path straight to my lungs. My chest constricted with the need to cough, which would only have pulled more water into my lungs. With every ounce of strength I could spare I fought against the instinct to breathe. Thomas was so close. If I could find my way to the surface, he could pull me from the undertow.

I opened my eyes, trying to find which way was up when I saw her.

She was inches from me, glowing the same way Dayne and Arabette had in LisTirna. Graceful and sinewy, ethereal in her own pelagic way, flowing ropes of navy hair dancing on the current.

Her lips pulled into a serene, siren-song smile, but her grip held tightly to my legs. I no longer struggled to free myself, too awestruck by the magic before me, wondering if she was an answer Dayne’s memory had led me to.

With leisurely movement, possibly slowed by the water, her delicate face turned to the surface, the moon light dancing on her angelic features, all tinted a surreal grey-blue. She released a school of tiny bubbles from her hypnotic smile. Swimming beside each other, they raced for the surface, and she inhaled deeply from the water. It was then that I noticed a row of gills lining her neck.

She made it look so easy, and my lungs craved the relief a deep breath would bring, but I knew I couldn’t. Her smile faded and she gazed again at the water’s surface.

It barely registered in my brain when two strong arms circled around me and began pulling me to the surface. I looked down to find the navy haired woman frowning as she reluctantly let me go.

I broke free to the surface, gasping for air and coughing water from my lungs. Thomas held me firmly in a lifeguard’s clutch. Seth gripped the other end of the branch that guided us back to shore. Mattie was halfway down the bank, preparing to dive in if she had to, and Sam shouted incoherently from above.

My life had been spared and the bank erupted in cheers as Thomas and Seth dragged me ashore like heroes. But celebrating my rescue was the furthest thing from my mind.

The blue lady waited for me in that water. And when she got tired of waiting, there wasn’t a human alive who could stop her.

Fire lapped against ancient stone walls, casting gruesome shadows on the long faces gathered before it.

The common area in the boys dorm where everyone gathered was identical to the one in my own dorm. An enormous circular fireplace rose from the center of the room all the way to the ceiling. Runners lounged on the couches and chairs scattered around the room, talking about the night’s events, their tales growing bigger with each retelling. I chose to sit alone.

751 bricks lined the chimney from the fireplace to the ceiling. I knew because I had counted every one of the them...twice...trying to keep my mind occupied. But it was no use.

The image of Dayne’s blood on my hands stained my brain. It was all I could see whenever I closed my eyes. Warm. Red. Death. It consumed me, hurtling my thoughts to the brink of insanity. As I saw it, I had two options. The old Faye Kent would be happy to continue on with her pathetic fake life and hope Dayne’s promise to come back was kept sooner rather than later. But I wasn’t the scared little girl I was pretending to be anymore. Before my life was turned upside down, I had made a promise to myself. A promise that I would find my way back to Dayne if it was the last thing I did. But taking matters into my own hands would mean waking the magic that slept in my veins. Magic I had come to fear. Was the world prepared for the dangerous magic that lived in me? Was I prepared to harness all that power without the first clue how to use it? The mind was willing, but I wasn’t so sure the body was able.

After all I had seen that night, there was one thing I was sure of: I would lay down my own life before I would ever allow a final breath cross Dayne’s beautiful lips. If I had to charge into LisTirna and face a Sidhe army all by myself to save him, I would. If my death insured his life, it wasn’t a question. What good was a world without Dayne?

My clothes clung to me, still damp, despite the blanket draped over my shoulders and the fire roaring in front of me. I kept my back to the crowd, knowing their thoughts would all be on me.

My super human ability to leap raging rivers was forgotten after my near drowning and the ghostly apparition that appeared in the woods. It was my first time running the redwoods, and I was pretty sure everyone was secretly hoping I didn’t make another appearance. What had happened to me had never, in all the history of St. Anne’s, happened to another student. A fact that had to give some credibility to Meghan’s rumors.

Mattie and Sam sat on either side of me, staring as blankly into the fire as I was. Thomas had brought us steaming cups of peppermint tea, but I was too shaken to drink it. Blocking the vision of Dayne’s blood on my hands was impossible enough, but it was obviously a future vision I still had time change. What bothered me more was the magic that hid in the woods around St. Anne’s. Dark magic that hunted me just as it had in Ireland.

“So are we going to talk about it, or just act like we didn’t see it?” Mattie finally said, breaking the silence that loomed over the room.

“I’m still not exactly sure what it was I saw,” a random voice behind me offered.

“We all saw it, right? There was something glowing in the woods behind, Faye. It was coming right at her.” Mattie shivered as she thought about it.

“It was foxfire, Mattie. There’s moss in the woods that reflects moonlight. It’s completely harmless, except for all the ‘haunted forest’ tales it has started around here,” Thomas, who had been scrambling down the bank and not witnessed the glow in the woods, assured everyone. They nodded, agreeing with him because no one wanted to think about what else it might have been.

Had I never tumbled into the water that night, I probably could have believed Thomas’ reasoning. After seeing the woman in the water, I knew something more was out there, and just like in Ireland, it obviously wanted me.

Dayne had told me there were others, demigods like him, but not entirely the same. He had also told me there were darker forces at work in the world. Which one the blue lady was, I didn’t know.

The woman had seemed innocent enough, smiling the way she had, almost sad to see me go. Was she an answer Dayne was leading me to? When I had finally let go and welcomed my magic in the woods, it was like he was right beside me, holding my hand, trying to tell me something that might help me understand what was happening to me. Then the woman appeared to me in the water.

“Faye?” Mattie rubbed my shoulder, startling me from my own depressing thoughts. “The pizza’s here.”

I looked down at her hand on my shoulder and sighed.

“At least we didn’t have to buy the pizza, huh?” I joked, hoping my act was convincing.

“We better hurry, Thomas and his friends inhale pizza.”

Mattie never asked me about that night. Just like she had never asked me about Dayne. Somehow, she understood I needed to keep my secrets. All anyone could talk about was the foxfire, and now that I was officially “in the club” I learned that what happened in the woods stayed in the woods. Even if they remembered, the students who had witnessed the events of that night were bound by a code of honor to keep it quiet.

Even if that night was never spoken of again, nothing could change what it had awoken in me. A plan began to take shape in my brain that night. A plan that was beyond dangerous. It would take patience, and I would have to bide my time until my plan could be put into action.

“Again?” I asked tossing
my bag in a chair and shrugging out of my fleece. Sam sat sprawled across my bed, buried in text books and flash cards. Finals were a week away and campus was uncharacteristically quiet as students crammed a semester’s worth of knowledge into their brains.

Sam put her finger on the page to hold her place and looked up at me with an exasperated scowl. “Tell me about it. When I told her to get a room I was meaning
his
room, not ours.” Sam shook her head and slid a flashcard into her book as she closed it.

“Well, I’m kinda glad your roommate’s boyfriend moved in. Mattie insists on ruining our pizza with vegetables.” I smiled as I pulled a slice of cold cheese pizza from the greasy box beside my bed and flopped down on the air mattress that had become Sam’s bed. “I’m starving!”

Sam raised her arms to stretch and yawned. Her movement shifted the pile of books surrounding her, causing them to slip and slide as they threatened to fall. She grabbed at the stacks, saving all but one. It slid from her grasp and toppled to the floor, falling open at my feet.

As if in slow motion, my eyes ticked down to where the book spread its pages. As I focused on the full-sized picture staring up at me, the slice of pizza I was about to bite into fell from my hand.

My flesh chilled. My blood boiled and the room began to spin until I saw nothing but a woman coming to life on the paper spread over our checkerboard carpet. Deep at the base of my spine a fiery sensation burst to life and seared its way up my back and into my brain. What little color remained drained from my sight, and it was just me and her, locked in a spinning vortex of grey.

From the text book page, she called to me in a way I heard only with my heart. As its beating picked up speed, it swelled in my chest, pushed against my ribs and throbbed at the base of my throat. Before I realized it, a cold tear washed over my lash and down my cheek, streaking its way to her until it landed with a drowning splash that covered her chest.

Who was this woman?

No goddess I had ever seen before. Yet I knew immediately that’s what she was—her power was undeniable. She was a young woman, not much older than myself, hair loose and flowing like the Sidhe, but more radiant in all her splendor than Queen Daoine could ever hope to be. Her face appeared faded, hidden behind soft flames that engulfed her beauty, yet were not strong enough to stifle a resplendent smile. Fire obscured her flesh wherever it peeked from under a shimmery blue tunic. A bright red cord looped her slim waist, its ends spilling down her thigh. Although her flesh burned with flames of ethereal light, not a single inch of her was charred. She remained painted in all pastels, soft as a summer breeze.

“Faye?” My name came from far away and a gentle hand rested on my shoulder. “Faye?”

I said nothing, still entranced by the photo. Two careful hands moved into my line of sight and slowly closed the book. When the woman disappeared, I snapped out of it.

“Is it your PTSD?” Sam asked in a halting voice as I looked up into a pair of worried eyes. I shook my head, trying to play it off and wiped a hand over my cheek, catching the tear’s cold trail in the palm of my hand.

“Who was that?” I asked, my voice near a whisper.

Sam looked at me for a moment, obviously wondering if it was a good idea to pursue a topic that she assumed triggered the post traumatic stress disorder my parents insisted I had. She fumbled with the book in her hands, flipping through pages until she found my tear wetting a page.

“Her name is Seraph. My mythology professor talked about her in his Forgotten Gods lecture.” Sam slid over to sit beside me on the mattress and lay the book in my hand. “She was Hera’s daughter, born of Hades. Zeus blessed her with great power in the womb before he knew she wasn’t his daughter.”

“I’ve never heard of her.” My voice sounded hollow and far away as I stared at the fiery woman.

“Most haven’t.” Sam ran her fingers over the page, drying my tear with her thumb and wiping in on her jeans.

“Tell me about her.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Faye?”

I nodded my head and forced what I hoped was an indifferent smile to my lips.

“It all started over Zeus’ many indiscretions. Eventually, Hera had enough and decided to get even with Zeus. Hera snuck into the underworld and lay with Hades until she conceived, knowing that carrying a child by Zeus’ most hated brother would be the ultimate revenge. Zeus assumed Hera’s child was his and blessed the unborn baby with the power of his lightening bolts in the womb. On the day Seraph was born, the skies darkened and the earth rained fire into the heavens. Zeus was furious over Hera’s betrayal and banished the baby girl to the underworld with her real father.”

“Why punish the child instead of Hera?” I asked, my brow knitted in confusion.

“Seraph wasn’t banished as punishment. Zeus couldn’t rescind his blessing once it was given. He knew anything born of fire that carried such a gift was much too dangerous to live in this world. He imprisoned the child, just as he had her father, and sealed Hera’s womb for her betrayal.”

“Why have I never heard this before?”

“Zeus forbade Seraph’s name from entering the histories of Olympus. Her existence was wiped from the earth and anyone who dared mention her name found themselves face to face with one of Zeus’ bolts.” Sam flipped the page to reveal a picture of a mortal meeting that very fate.

I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. Seraph. Her name sounded almost lyrical to me. Its intonation somehow familiar to my tongue. A spark flickered to life from the depths of my consciousness and my mind began to open some long forgotten door. The light that shone through that door brought with it such a simple clarity I felt like an idiot for not thinking of it sooner. No wonder Dayne couldn’t understand the language he heard in my soul. It wasn’t from his world, but from somewhere else entirely. Somewhere much darker, according to Seraph’s tale.

“A forgotten goddess?” I asked in a distant voice.

“I personally think Zeus was just jealous. It sounds to me like Seraph would have been way more powerful than he was. You know men, can’t stand to be bested by a woman.”

“Yeah, you know men,” I echoed her chuckle and forced a smile to my lips again. Looking down at Seraph, I knew she held a key to my past. And, as much as I hated to admit it, there was some niggling part of me that feared she still had a role to play in my future.