Chapter 13

Luke

When I opened my eyes, I hadn't even realized I'd shut them. I was somewhere in the dark. I couldn't quite tell where I was, but it looked like an abandoned crossroads. The only light came from the starlight overhead.

"Um, hello?" I called.

Silence answered me. I tried to remember how I had ended up here, but as much as I wracked my brain, I couldn't remember anything after I had met Rhuyin.

As if thinking of him had summoned him, I felt him take my hand. I turned and looked at him, more than a little startled as he appeared out of thin air. Behind him, as if lit by fairy fire the image of a fox rose over Rhuyin in green scintillating flame. He stood in the darkness, his emerald eyes gleaming in the torchlight.

Torchlight? I looked around and realized there were two women rushing up the road toward us, each carrying a torch. One was a younger woman, her red hair in a long plait over one shoulder. The other woman looked familiar. She was older, but it was hard to tell just how much older. Her red hair lay in waves around her face. Their faces looked serious, grim lines forming at the corners of their eyes.

Both wore jeans. The younger girl had a leather jacket slung over one shoulder. The older woman was dressed similarly to the young girl in jeans but wore a red t-shirt with a black leather vest over it. At her waist hung an old-fashioned keyring with three large skeleton keys. Around her neck hung a silver pendant that seemed to flicker in and out of sight. One hand held a torch aloft, the other was cradled to her breast.

Her blue eyes were piercing as they raked over first Luke and then Rhuyin before softening as she smiled at me.

"Luke. Rhuyin. We are so happy to finally get to meet you in person," she said. Behind them Luke could make out the outlines of large black dogs pacing the women. "I'm so sorry we're late, we were supposed to meet someone and she…she wasn't able to make it."

I looked at her in confusion. Her eyes looked so familiar, but it took me a moment to realize why: I'd never seen them look out at me from a female face. Just in my brother's face.

I looked at the younger woman, then back to the older. My mind whirled, taking in the details: crossroad, dogs, torches, magic. My thoughts flew like lightning as the pieces came together with an almost audible click.

"The person you were supposed to meet. She is your Third?" I asked.

They both stopped in their tracks, then the younger woman burst out laughing.

"I told you he'd figure it out!" She said.

The older sighed and pulled an ancient looking gold coin from her pocket and handed it to the younger woman.

"For the record, I fully expected him to figure it out, young one. I just… didn't think he would do it quite so quickly."

Rhu squeezed my hand and looked at me in confusion.

"I can hear them," he said.

I looked around in confusion.

"This is Our space," the older woman said. "This is a place between. We cannot control what happened in your world, but here, we set the rules."

"What are you called?" I asked.

"I am Kitty," the younger woman said.

"I am Kate," the older woman continued.

There was an uncomfortable pause, and I realized they were used to their Third speaking next.

"You are Hecate, Goddess of Magic," I said.

I felt Rhu stiffen next to me, our hands still clasped.

They nodded and Kate smiled, and something in my chest loosened. The love of every mother in the world was in that smile. I'd seen it so rarely in my own mother, I had treasured every memory of it.

"We are. And you are two of Our Sons," she said.

Rhu and I looked at each other then back at her in alarm.

"Not by blood," Kitty hastened to add.

Rhu squeezed my hand and chuckled.

"Good," I said grumpily. I had some decidedly unbrotherly feelings toward this man.

"What do You want with us, my Ladies?" Rhu asked, and I couldn't help but admire his composure.

"We do not usually interfere in the mortal world," Kate said. She began pacing around the crossroad, her boots occasionally kicking up a clod of dirt.

"But things are getting out of hand," Kitty continued.

"Elus has upset the balance of the world with his support of the Alexandrian kings. If we don't act, and quickly, your world will be destroyed."

The pronouncement echoed in the open air.

"Okay, back up a minute," I said, my mind chasing down trails of thought.

"Gods are real? Or am I hallucinating? It's got to be one or the other…" he muttered.

"If you're seeing things, I am too," Rhu interjected.

"That's exactly what a hallucination would say," I responded and was met by Rhu's grin. "But getting back to the point, if the gods are real…"

I paced a few moments, the anger building in me as I considered everything they had said so far.

"If the gods are real, what the fuck have you all been doing?" I demanded, fury surging through me. "War. Famine. Slavery. Why have you let all this happen?"

Kate looked at me, her eyes now filled with sorrow.

"We have been doing the best we can," she said. "We are limited in the amount of power we can exert in the mortal world. We cannot upset the balance any more than it already has been."

"How did Elus get around that?" I asked. "Sounds like he's not playing by the rules, so why should you?"

"I wish it were that easy," Kitty answered. "Elus is taking huge risks with the amount of power he has been pouring into the mortal realms. He has managed to almost eliminate Somas and Tesseris Mageia."

"Even as twisted as Elus has become, I never expected him to be willing to kill children," Kate said, her eyes shadowed.

"Think of it this way," Kitty said, pulling their attention to her. She held her hands up, a gauzy shawl in her hands that appeared to have a map of the world printed on it. I wasn't sure where it came from.

"Think of this as your reality, your world," she said. "When gods interject their power into the mortal realm, it pokes a hole in the fabric of your world. Imagine that this is the world. Every time the gods interfere, we damage your world."

She pushed a single delicate finger through the shawl, leaving a small hole behind.

"Doesn't seem too bad, right?" she asked. "It's generally not. If it doesn't happen that often, nature heals any holes. But what happens when the gods interfere over and over?"

Holes started appearing all through the shawl. Some began to overlap and small pieces of the fabric fluttered to the ground. Kitty reached down and picked up a piece of the cloth that had fallen. She smoothed it in her hand, the letters on it spelling out "United Kingdom".

"I miss London," she said, smiling sadly as she looked at it. It appeared to be part of a city. "And I miss English accents."

Kate wrapped an arm around the younger woman and pulled her in for a sideways hug.

"Release the truth. All shalt be freed by the Sons of Hecate," I whispered, the memory of the words I spoke to my father echoing in my bones.

"Sorry about that, sport," Kitty said, a half-smile on her face. "You inherited some of my oracle blood. It can be damned inconvenient at times."

"Understatement," I muttered. It had almost gotten me killed. "So where is your third?"

"We don't know, for sure," Kate answered. "We were to meet with her to come here, but her chambers have been abandoned."

"Abandoned? Like, she moved out?" Rhu asked. "Or was she taken?"

"We don't know. Either way, her absence wounds us. We have lost a third of Our power. It makes interference like this even harder."

"We will make this right. With or without Kathryn," Kitty insisted.

"Kathryn is your Third?" I asked.

Kate nodded.

"Kathryn is our eldest, and She is missing."

"We need your help to find Her."

"How are we supposed to help? I get that Elus is fucking with the world, but why are Rhuyin and I here? Why don't you just, I don't know, get a bunch of other gods together and kick his ass?"

"I voted to kick his ass a long time ago," Kitty muttered.

"We couldn't do that, and you know why. And the reason you are here is because we believe in giving people choices," Kate responded. "We need your help, but it must be willing. You and Rhuyin have the choice to Bond, or not, but you need to understand what that entails."

I felt a little nervous tingle dash through my nerves. I had a chance to Bond with Rhu? I flushed at the thought. He probably wouldn't want me. Especially if he knew everything about me.

Rhu squeezed my hand again, a shy grin on his face.

"Tell us," he said.

***

I opened my eyes and shook my head in confusion, images of two women fading from my memory.

The explosion, or whatever it had been, had flung them both against opposite walls, the ground beneath them buckling. Glass shattered and the lights flicked off, leaving them in darkness, but my power, guided by instinct, flowed around me and pulled a protective sphere of metal around them.

"Shit!" I exclaimed as agony shot through my leg and my hands seemed to burn. I smelled blood in the air, coppery and strong, and automatically reached out to where the pain was arcing through me. My hands came away sticky with it.

I felt what I thought were Rhu's hands on my leg, and saw a small glow, my leg suddenly feeling much better.

As the rumbling around them slowly diminished I heard Rhu fumble for something. Seconds later a light shown in the space between as he activated a flashlight at his belt. The cool blue light illuminated a smooth spherical metal surface around them. I watched as he reached out wonderingly, allowing his fingers to trail across the metal for a moment before yanking his hand back in pain, a soft curse escaping his lips. Was that why his hands had felt so warm moments ago?

"Are you okay?" he demanded, running his eyes over my body. Just to check for wounds, of course. Right. We'd go with that.

"What the hell was that?" I asked.

"No clue. Are you alright? There's blood." He held his hand up, bloody smears showing across his fingers.

"My leg. I—I thought something—" I looked down at my leg. Blood stained my pants and leg, but when Rhu knelt and examined it, there was only a long scratch and a nasty bruise.

"I think you'll be okay. Did you do this?" he asked, gesturing at the metal and stone sphere. "You're Earth Mageia, right?"

I shrugged self-deprecatingly. "Yeah. Kinda what I do."

I reached past Rhuyin and touched the metal. The walls flowed like water as I created an opening in the metal shield I had summoned to protect us.

And protect us it had. What remained of the hallway was dark, except where the flashlight shone. The walls were leaning at odd angles and parts of the floor gaped away into darkness, the dust floating thickly through the air, making Rhu cough.