CHAPTER SEVEN

 

 

I paced Brigit’s office like a caged raccoon on speed. I hadn’t wanted to see her, but Quinn insisted, his cool, rational arguments no match for the blubbering mess I’d been after the last vision.

I didn’t understand why they were coming so frequently now, couldn’t comprehend if they were real or present or future. Whatever they were, I couldn’t ignore them any longer. Seeing my mom and the monster as BFFs left me no option.

I needed help, pronto.

“Thanks, Quinn. I’ll take it from here.”

Brigit waved toward the door, but Quinn didn’t move. He waited, concern creasing his brow.

Touched by the way he’d stood by me during my semi-freak-outs—at the party and this morning—I forced a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

“Sure?”

“Uh-huh. And thanks.”

With a funny half-salute at me, he nodded at Brigit and left me alone with the woman I now had to rely on.

I didn’t like relying on anyone. I loved Nan but had shielded her: from my emptiness, from my alienation, from my desire to demand answers to questions I’d had since I was a toddler. I’d never felt close to anyone but Nan, and thanks to an understanding guy who accepted me for who I was, visions and all, I felt closer to Quinn than I had to anyone at Wolfebane High. Maybe it was all the weird stuff happening to me, but I felt strangely vulnerable. I could use a friendly face for what would come.

Brigit slammed the door and I jumped. Her expression bordered on maniacal as she faced me. “What happened?”

“I had another vision.”

She squinted at me, carefully assessing. “Quinn said it was more than that.”

I wanted to tell her everything, wanted to blurt the entire crazy truth, but something held me back, a paranoid fear that saying it out loud would make it more real.

When I didn’t respond, she shook her head and squashed into a chair next to me. “He said you blacked out before the vision. And when he touched you, you were burning up.”

I nodded, giving her that much.

“Did you black out under an archway when the sun hit your forehead?”

I stiffened, spooked by her fanatical grin as she grabbed my hand, squeezing way too tight.

“You’re the one.”

Wriggling my hand out of hers on the pretext of smuggling a tissue out of my pocket to swipe my nose, I couldn’t shake my increasing foreboding. First Joss, now her. I couldn’t be the one anything. I was too ordinary, the girl nobody noticed, the girl nobody cared about. Being the one implied I was special, and that was so far from the realms of reality that it was laughable.

“There’s been a mistake. I—”

“No mistake.” Brigit leaped from the chair, no mean feat considering her butt had been wedged a second ago, and started pacing. “I’ve been waiting for years, and now you’re finally here.”

She stopped and considered me like I was Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy all rolled into one, and I didn’t like it. Those things were fictitious for a reason; they didn’t exist, just like Joss and Eiros and some make-believe monster called Cadifor.

“Arwen is within reach.” She sighed, then bestowed an ecstatic smile on me.

I still hadn’t figured out exactly what Arwen was. Too busy bad-mouthing Dream Boy and his ludicrous proclamations instead of asking questions. Proclamations now being echoed by my principal, proclamations becoming more real by the minute.

“You teleported, didn’t you? To Eiros?”

“How did you know?” The words were out before I could stop them. I’d been doing fine up until now, letting her do all the talking, trying to make sense of it. But something in her conviction, in the way she rattled off Arwen and Eiros as if they were facts, unnerved me. As long as I believed teleporting was a dream, I could handle it. If it became real … if I really could move between worlds, behind some creepy veil … no way, I couldn’t think about it.

Having the visions made me feel like enough of a freak. Add teleporting to the mix and I was likely to go off the deep end.

“You’re the Scion. Part of a legend.”

“I can’t be.”

“Ah, but you are.” She wriggled into the seat again, staring at my forehead until I squirmed. “I’ve been waiting for a descendant of Bel to walk through these doors. The stones in some of the archways are aligned a certain way, so when the sun hits your third ‌eye—” She pointed at my forehead. “—the Scion will be teleported to Eiros, home to the Cave of the Sun.”

Bel … Belenus. Cave of the Sun. She positively beamed while I made the connection. “Belenus, the sun god. Your family geis binds you to him.”

Every time she said something to echo Dream Boy, it made this uncanny situation all the more real. “Geis?”

“An unbreakable bond.”

I shook my head, refusing to process any of this.

“Let me explain.”

I knew I wouldn’t like what she was about to say, not one bit.

“You’re part of an ancient druid culture. Druids were keen observers and recognized that a child born in a certain season would develop certain abilities.”

Unfortunately, I was beginning to see exactly what abilities she was talking about.

“When’s your birthday?”

“August first.”

She nodded and gave me another ear-splitting grin. “Lammas, Celtic Lugnasad.”

I had no idea what she was raving on about but had a feeling I’d soon find out.

“Your calendar is different from the norm. It’s based on solar equinoxes and sabbat cross quarter festivals.” She pointed at me. “Even your name … among Celtic tree astrology, Holly has regal status. Those born under the Holly sign take on positions of leadership and power … you’re seldom defeated. … ”

Her body quivered with excitement like a giant mound of Jell-O. “We’ll have to add extra subjects to your study load.” She scribbled down a few additions to my schedule on a manila folder and handed it to me.

Unfortunately, lithology, semantics, and dendrology didn’t make any more sense than the rest of what she’d said. Smiling at my confusion, she ticked the subjects off on her fingers. “Lithology is the study of rock structure and composition. Semantics is the study of signs and symbols. Dendrology the study of trees. All valuable knowledge for your quest.”

“To find Arwen and save the world,” I mumbled under my breath. “Yeah, yeah, so I’ve been told.”

“You found your warrior already?”

I had two choices here: play dumb, learn nothing, and end up in a nuthouse for sure, or cooperate and hopefully understand the upheaval turning my life upside down.

Resistant to the end, I slouched and folded my arms. “All I know is when I walked along the corridor outside the dorm a little while ago, the sun poked through one of those holes in an arch. I got all hot and woke up in that Eiros place you mentioned. Some guy Joss said I was bound to him and a sorority had been expecting me.”

I hesitated, not wanting to tell her the rest for fear she’d think I was on some weird power trip. “He mentioned I was the Scion and that Arwen thingy would save the world.”

“Anything else?”

I twisted my hands, indecisive, and she slammed her palms on the desk. “This isn’t some game. Your worst nightmare is about to come true if you can’t do this.”

I didn’t like the obsessive glint in her eyes or her stupid scare tactics. Maybe Drake had been right? With her angry frown and compressed lips and crazy eyes, she certainly channeled psycho.

“Listen up. You’ve heard of Armageddon? The end of the world?”

I shrugged. Who hadn’t?

By her glower, she didn’t appreciate my silent sullenness, but she didn’t scare me. I had scarier stuff to face than one edgy principal, like that monster in the cave if this Scion stuff was true.

“If Cadifor finds Arwen before you do, he’ll reunite with Mider, Lord of the Underworld, and Nemain, Lord of Panic and War, and resurrect every underworld creature to cause a great war, the last for humankind. Demons, zombies, the undead, you name it, the Dark Trio will use it to battle humans, who don’t stand a chance against immortals.”

The corner of her right eye twitched. Nerves? Lies?

“Once they have total domination of the Inner and Outer worlds, darkness will prevail forever.”

She paused, and I half expected her to say, “Do you want to be responsible for all that?”

Like a guilt trip would work.

When I deliberately stayed silent, she continued, “In a huge battle many suns ago, Bel triumphed over the trio. Mider and Nemain vanished. Cadifor renounced the light, so Bel banished him to exist underground, powerless. Arwen is the only thing that can help him rise to full status again.”

She paused, her sideways glance shifty. “Your mother is underground too, you said, in your visions?”

She knew. Damn it.

On the walk over here I’d already started piecing together the coincidences of my mom being in an underground cave with a monster that just so happened to sound like this lord of darkness. What were the odds of my mom abandoning me in favor of a monster? And how much of a freaking sad case did that make me?

Not wanting to talk about the connection I’d already made between Mom and Cadifor yet, I stalled for time. “What’s Arwen?”

“A powerful biokinetic icon. It uses kinetic energy to rearrange or control genes in the body. If mastered, genetic reprogramming could produce superhumans.”

Brigit’s fanaticism made me want to rub the goosebumps off my arms. “Or in the wrong hands, Arwen has the power to produce indestructibility. Immortality.”

My doubt must’ve shown, as her fervor increased. “This isn’t fiction. There’ve been a lot of strange phenomena lately, indicating Cadifor is closer to finding Arwen. If that happens … ”

She didn’t need to elaborate. Even a novice-to-Weirdsville like me could figure out what the lord of darkness could do with an icon to create his own version of immortals.

Brigit fixed me with an intimidating stare. “You’re the only one who can stop him.”

“Me?” I squeaked past the growing lump of dread in my throat.

Brigit nodded, her expression solemn. “Druid legend says the Scion, a priestess, a descendant of Bel, will have the power to find Arwen.”

A chill skittered down my spine as she touched my forehead, the exact opposite of what had happened when Joss touched me there.

“And don’t forget, in doing so, you’ll find your mother.”

She didn’t play fair. I didn’t want any of this. This responsibility, this angst, this mindless panic—it was all some huge cosmic mistake. But having Mom tied in. … Did I have a choice?

If I found her, I’d finally get a chance to ask all those questions … to get closure … to find peace …

“You don’t have a choice.”

Her holier-than-thou tone made me bristle. “I do—”

“Breaking a geis can set in motion a chain of reactionary events. It will lead to misfortune, and in most cases, death.”

I’d initially thought my visions had to be karmic payback, the great cosmos giving me the finger. Now I had to accept the rest of this legend or face impending death too? “What if I refuse?”

Brigit stood so abruptly her chair slammed against the polished wooden boards and I jumped, startled by the flicker of fury in her eyes. She blinked, her usual benevolence in place when she picked up her chair and resettled it.

“You can’t. You’re the only one who can stop him.”

Some freaking responsibility, a responsibility I hadn’t asked for, a responsibility I definitely didn’t want, but if there was no way out of this, I’d have to feel the fear and do it anyway.

Glancing at her watch, she tsked. “I have a class to run. Help yourself to the Arwen texts over there. We’ll talk more as soon as I’m done.” She pointed to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, softening her brisk tone with a fake smile that creeped me out as much as the ridiculous fairytale she’d told. “I know this is a lot to take in and you’re scared. But you won’t be alone. I’ll help you every step of the way.”

Her offer didn’t reassure me as she swept out of the room, paisley caftan billowing behind her like a witch’s cloak.

I had to save the world or die.