Cursed

  But it wasn’t the coming punishment that made Charlie want to run bury her face in her grandma’s quilt and never look up again. It was her Daddy’s next words that did that.

  “Someday I’ll have enough of your horseshit and I’ll just up and leave you. Leave you to raise the girls alone—is that what you want, Maureen? You want me to leave and never come back?”

  Oh God, no Daddy! Please…please don’t go! Charlie’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. Despite everything, she loved her dad. He was the one who took her on his knee and read her books at night—if he wasn’t working the night shift, that was. Or out with one of his whores, as her mother often said. He was the one who bandaged her cuts and took her out hunting with him during deer season.

  Her mother was cold and withdrawn—angry and sullen at the way her life had turned out. But Daddy, though he wasn’t there nearly as often as she would have liked, was affectionate and sweet. He smelled like leather and clean sweat and cigarette smoke and when she climbed in his lap it was the only time Charlie ever felt really safe. The idea that he might leave and never look back terrified her.

  In that moment, Charlie was no longer a grown woman with a career and a mind of her own. She was eight all over again, crying and shivering as she watched from behind the upstairs banister as her parents fought and shouted and hated each other below.

  “No, Daddy,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself to try and still her shaking. “No, Daddy, please don’t leave me…please don’t leave…”

  “Hey—its okay. Don’t listen—don’t look.” Suddenly Missy was there—the ten year old Missy who Charlie had loved and looked up to. She put an arm around Charlie’s shoulders and led her away.

  “Oh Missy!” Charlie held her sister tight. “I’ve missed you so much. You’re the only one I could ever really talk to. I—”

  But suddenly Missy melted away, leaving nothing but a blank, black corridor.

  Charlie looked around wildly. “Momma? Daddy? Missy?”

  Everyone was gone. Did that mean the vision was over? Would she be allowed to leave the Temple of Regrets now?

  Charlie started walking again, looking hopefully for the exit.

  That was a pretty bad memory. Momma and Daddy always fighting all the time…maybe it was bad enough to count as my whole punishment. Maybe…

  She turned the corner and found herself in another familiar room—her bedroom.

  “Come here, you little brat.” Momma was standing there stone-faced with a long, stingy-looking switch in her hand. “Come here and get what’s coming to you.”

  And to her horror, Charlie found she couldn’t say no. Couldn’t do anything but walk towards the switch and the beating that was waiting for her…

  “Charlotte? Charlotte, where are you?” Stavros wandered through the maze of black corridors calling and calling for her. He was getting hoarse and yet still he couldn’t find her. Where could she be? He would swear she had been only a minute ahead of him in entering the Temple of Regrets but she was nowhere to be found. How had she gotten so far ahead of him in such a short period of time?

  “Charlotte?” he called again. “Char—”

  Suddenly he rounded a corner and came to a room he recognized. It was the living area of his childhood domicile back on Tranq Prime. The pale purple stream of super hot water that heated the underground home ran through the channel that subdivided the room and emitted soft clouds of steam.

  On one side of the stream his mother was pacing, her long tharp dragging the ground. Her lovely ice-blonde hair hung down her back in a river of pale gold and her white-blue eyes flashed dangerously as she looked at his father. When he was a child, Stavros had been convinced his Maman was the most beautiful female in the whole universe and indeed, she was truly lovely—as lovely and untouchable as a statue made of ice.

  His Patro was reclining on one of the soft low chairs covered in vranna hide. He listened helplessly as Stav’s mother berated him.

  “It’s your fault,” she said in a low, angry voice not meant to carry past the room. “Your filthy Kindred genes that brought this about! No pureblooded Prime has ever been affected by the Curse! Not a single male in my family has ever been marked. And now, look—our only son, ruined. And all because of you.”

  “He isn’t ruined, Landa,” his father protested weakly. “The Curse doesn’t mean immediate death—there are many who can live for years if they just—”

  “If they just what? Isolate themselves from everyone?” She gave a bitter laugh. “He’ll have to do that anyway. The other children will never accept him. He’ll be an outcast—a pariah. And what other mother will want to let him play with their child? He’ll have no friends—none.”

  Watching invisibly from the sidelines, just as he had when he was a child, Stavros recoiled at the tone of bitterness and anger in his beloved mother’s voice. The back of his neck, where the black mark had first started to show, itched and burned. The skin there felt suddenly raw, as it had when he was little and had tried to scrub the blackness off.

  He’d scrubbed until he bled and the tears came to his eyes but the mark remained as stubbornly black and ugly as ever. Still, he kept trying. He’d thought that if only he could get rid of it, his Maman might start loving him again. Ever since it had first appeared, she hadn’t been in once to tuck him in and kiss him goodnight. And when he tried to hug her, she pushed him gently but firmly away, keeping him at arm’s length as though he had some sickness that might be catching if she got too close.

  “The boy will be all right,” his father said, a little too heartily, Stavros thought. “He might have a hard time of it at first but he’ll learn to live with it—he’ll have to.”

  “But what about us? What about me?” his Maman demanded shrilly. “We’ll be known as the ones who produced a defective child. A Sin Eater for the Goddess’s sake! How can we ever live that down? How can I look any of my friends in the eye ever again?”

  “Are you worried about Stav’s fate or your own?” his father demanded harshly. “He’s the one who bears the mark, Landa, not you.”

  His mother made a face.

  “Of course you don’t understand. I never should have joined with you in the first place—or let you talk me into having a child! I should have terminated the pregnancy as soon as I found out I was carrying him. To think—a Sin Eater! It will mar our entire bloodline! Not that yours was all that pure to begin with.”

  They continued to bicker but Stavros didn’t want to hear any more. Standing in the shadows, he clenched his jaw and swallowed hard. Even as a child he’d understood what they were saying. That he never should have been born. That he ought to have been gotten rid of—thrown away like refuse.

  To hear his beloved Maman speak so of him pierced his heart like a poison dart. Part of him was once more only six cycles old, watching from the dark hallway and wishing he was dead. His breath came short and his eyes burned but he refused to let the tears fall. There was no point in crying—this was his fate from now on. And yet, it still hurt terribly. Overhearing this conversation was the first time he’d understood what he was—worthless. A burden. A freak unworthy of love.

  He’d wanted to hate his mother for that, but he never could. She was so beautiful—so untouchable. A goddess that he worshipped. He didn’t dare to stop loving her, even if she had stopped loving him.

  Cursed, he thought. I’m Cursed and Maman hates me for it. Hates me because it makes her look bad too. She’ll never love me again. Never hug me or kiss me goodnight or care about me and all because of this awful black mark on my back…

  The mark on his back. The curving black lines that sealed his fate. The hateful sign of a Sin Eater which his mother had avoided at all costs. In fact, only one female had ever touched him there, only one hadn’t recoiled from the ugly, revolting thing. Charlotte…

  Charlotte! I’m here to find Charlotte.

  He mentally shook himself and turned away from the scene. This isn’t why I??
?m here. I have to find her—where is she?

  With a huge effort, he managed to tear himself away from the gut wrenching scene between his father and mother and make his way down the black, twisting hallways again. He had to find Charlotte. If she was experiencing anything like what he had just gone through, she was going to be an emotional mess by the time he found her. If only he could find her…

  “Charlotte!” he called, raising his voice. “Charlotte, please—where are you? Where are you?”

  * * * * *

  Far in the distance, Charlie thought she heard someone calling her name. Could that be…Stavros? But what was he doing here? He was still asleep in the big bed back in their rooms, wasn’t he?

  She felt like she’d been wandering for hours but it might have only been minutes—time stretched like taffy in this house of horrors the Hossans called the Temple of Regrets. She had already relived so many awful things it seemed like her capacity for horror and sorrow must be exhausted and yet somehow the damn place kept pulling out new cards, showing her pieces of her past that made her angry or scared or horribly sad all over again.

  What else can it throw at me? she wondered tiredly. She had already seen her parents fighting, felt her mother beating her, and watched as her favorite childhood pet, a golden Lab called Sunshine, was run over by a neighbor’s pickup. Sunny lay crying with pain in the street until Daddy went out with his shotgun and made her stop and Charlie cried right along with her, experiencing the loss all over again.

  It was exhausting and awful and she was beginning to feel like she had no more tears left—she was all cried out. She wandered the twisting hallways in a haze, drugged with emotion. God, can’t take much more of this. Please, just let me out of here. Please just let me go home…

  Then she heard her sister’s voice coming down the hallway, calling her.

  “Charlie? Charlie, please…”

  “Missy?” Charlie picked up the pace, looking for her sister. Part of her knew this was all an awful illusion but it had been years since she’d seen Missy. Even seeing her briefly in a vision was better than nothing. If she could just hold her sister in her arms and tell her how sorry she was, tell her how much she missed her…

  She rounded the corner and found herself right outside her sister’s bedroom door.

  “Charlie,” Missy’s voice came more faintly this time. “Charlie, he’s coming for me. The Dark one…he’s coming and he’ll never let me go.”

  Suddenly Charlie knew what she was going to see when she opened that door, painted a cheerful butter yellow with daisy appliqués in the corners. She knew and she wanted to draw back the hand that was reaching for the knob but she couldn’t—it was already in motion.

  As if in a nightmare, she saw her hand turn the knob and watched the yellow door swing open. Inside, Missy’s bedroom was lovely—decorated in cream and pink and butter yellow. There was a canopy bed against one wall and set of French doors leading out onto a balcony covered with climbing ivy. Missy had loved this room—she’d spent hours getting it just the way she wanted it. The result was that it was the most cheerful room in the house.

  But something was wrong in her sister’s room today. Something was off.

  “Missy?” she heard herself call as she walked into the room. “Missy, please…”

  Then she saw her sister lying in bed. Just lying there, looking up at the canopy with its daisy and butterfly pattern as though she was thinking about life and wondering what she might like for breakfast.

  “Missy, quit playing around,” Charlie heard herself say, just as she had so many years ago. “Come on—Momma made waffles for once and you know how she gets when we let them get cold.”

  Missy didn’t answer. Her brownish-blonde hair was spread across the pillow and her big, china blue eyes were open wide but she didn’t speak, didn’t even stir.

  It was then that Charlie started to get the bad feeling in the bottom of her stomach. Missy had been so worried lately—the dreams of the dark Kindred warrior and his brother who were coming to claim her had been keeping her up night after night. She’d been telling Charlie just the night before how she feared them—mostly the dark warrior. She was so afraid that once he got her he would never let her go.

  “Missy?” she whispered again and that was when she saw the empty pill bottle clutched in her sister’s cold hand and saw the note lying on her chest.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, not wanting to go closer but unable to help herself. “Oh, no…oh Missy, no…please…please no.”

  * * * * *

  Stav finally found her when he heard her weeping down one of the long black corridors. She was standing in a bedroom—clearly one she remembered from Earth, judging from the furniture and decorations. Lying on the sleeping platform was a girl who looked remarkably like Charlotte except she had blue eyes instead of brown. Eyes that stared sightlessly up into Charlotte’s face as Charlotte wept and cried and begged her to get up, to breathe, to not be dead.

  This must be her sister—must be Missy, Stavros thought. His heart clenched as tight as a fist and he wanted to go to her. But something prevented him—an invisible barrier as impenetrable as the one that guarded the Circle of Oneness. It kept him out—forced him to be just an observer to the events unfolding in the room.

  Charlotte shook her sister and then pushed and pounded on her chest, clearly trying some kind of resuscitation method. When that didn’t work, she screamed for her mother who came running. She in turn called a man Stav assumed was Charlotte’s father. His face went grim and still and he made calls that resulted in men in official uniforms rushing in and out of the house. And all the while, Charlotte sat in a corner of the room, clutching the note she had found on her sister’s chest and crying.

  Then two new figures came into the room—males Stav recognized.

  “Commander Lock?” His eyes widened as he watched. “And Commander Deep?” The Twin Kindred came into the bedroom, Deep being led by Charlotte herself. She showed him her sister’s body, lying stiff and still on the bed. Then she shoved the note at him—the last thing her sister had ever written.

  “She wrote this?” Commander Deep asked, his voice shaking. “Before she…”

  “Killed herself. Yes,” Charlotte said flatly. “She was so afraid of what you were going to do to her. So afraid she would rather be dead than let you get her.” She ran both hands through her hair distractedly. “Miranda had her whole life ahead of her. She was in college—she was going to be a vet because she loved animals. Did you know that? Did you know anything about her except that you wanted her?”

  “This was never our intention,” Deep protested. “We’d been dream sharing for weeks. I knew she was frightened of us…of me. But I never thought—”

  “That she’d go this far? I didn’t either.” Charlotte’s got high and breathless and she sank to the floor beside her sister’s bed. “I knew something wasn’t right last night. I never should have left her. Never should have left her…Oh, Missy…Missy…”

  Commander Deep said that he bore the blame for the sister’s death but Charlotte was plainly past hearing anything he or Commander Lock had to say. She was weeping on the floor, crumpled in a heap of misery and pain.

  Stav’s heart ached to see her agony. He wanted nothing more than to gather her into his arms but the barrier was still in place and even if it hadn’t been, he doubted she would want him touching her. She would never want any Kindred touching her and now Stav knew why. Missy had killed herself to avoid being claimed—had actually taken her own life because she feared to be taken by Commanders Lock and Deep.

  No wonder Charlotte hates us, he thought grimly, looking at the crumpled note in her hand. I don’t blame her. I would hate any people I held responsible for the death of one I loved so dearly and so desperately too.

  But even if she hated him, that didn’t change the feelings he had for her. And right now, what he wanted to do more than anything was hold and protect her—if she would let him.
r />   “Charlotte!” he shouted, banging his fist against the invisible barrier. “Charlotte, it’s not real! Listen to me—it’s not real!”

  Slowly her head came up and she looked in his direction. Stav felt a splinter of hope. If she could hear him, maybe he could get her to see him too. Seeing someone who didn’t belong in her past might break the cycle she was stuck in. If he could just get to her, just hold her, he had a feeling they could get out of the Temple of Regrets together.

  “Charlotte!” he shouted again. “Listen to me—it’s Stavros. Come to me—follow my voice.”

  Slowly she rose from the floor and staggered towards him. Her eyes were wide and shocked like someone who has just survived the blast of a bomb but she kept coming towards him as Stav called her name.

  At last they were face to face with only the barrier between them. Stav pressed hard against it but it remained solid.

  “Charlotte,” he pleaded. “I can’t do this alone—you have to help me.”

  “I…I don’t know how.” She sagged against the barrier, looking almost weary enough to pass out. “I just…I can’t anymore, Stav. I can’t.” Her voice was a ragged whisper.

  “You can,” he urged gently. He tried to keep his voice calm but his mind was a frenzy of worry. What if she went unconscious with the barrier still between them? Would she be trapped here forever, condemned to repeat this awful scene every time she woke? The scenario was grim but not unlikely, he judged. Not unlikely at all considering how crazy and sadistic the Joined One had turned out to be.

  “Stav…” she whispered, sinking down the barrier. “I’m…I…”

  “Charlotte, no!” He crouched down to be near her. “No, listen to me. The events you were witnessing aren’t real. They’re illusions brought on by the Tempe of Regrets and the Joined One. Just tell yourself that—please!”

  “Not…real?” she whispered, looking up at him.

  “Not real,” he assured her.

  “Not…not real.” Was it his imagination or had her voice gotten stronger? “This isn’t real,” she said, lifting her chin as some of her old spirit and fire came back. “Those bastards made me live through it all over again but it didn’t just happen—it happened years ago. It’s not real!”