Parker Evanss, me, Sam me, Genevieve 719 ~ I just wanted to thank you all for sticking with my fic. It really means a lot. .
Myrrhine~ I'm so glad you're enjoying it. My first fic jumped the shark so I'm this one stay on tangent a little better. Max had no idea who that Liz is the oracle. He doesn't realize who she is until he starts to warm her up, which he does then freaks slightly from. As for Max and Liz, they were quite familiar with each other. Even though the pod squad leaves in the pilot, their paths do cross again, and that's all your getting from me at the moment J . All I can say about Tess is she does have a clear agenda.
DreamingNik, Gwerty, Julieanna ~ Thanks so much for your reviews.
I wanted to apologize for the delay. I got sick, then I got writer's block and then I got sick again.
Blurring and stirring the truth and the lies
So I don't know what's real and what's not.
~ Evanescence
Chapter 9: The Truth and the Lies
Physics states that all movement requires an impetus. Whether it is a slight breeze that ruffles the heads of pansies or a hurricane like wind that uproots trees, stasis is simply not an option. Objects either give into the sway, or they break. There is no middle ground.
Despite this fact, chaos still whips my insides into a frenzy, because adaptation is simply not a good enough reason to explain why I gave Max the gun or why every boundary I construct he somehow crosses.
It's almost like I want him to.
I bite down on my bottom lip hard in response to the ridiculous thought. I would never be that vulnerable or that stupid. Shutting my eyes tightly, I try to block out the image of Max sliding the gun's clip out and reducing it to a useless metal shell incapable of protecting Tess or me.
"It's going to be ok.
His voice replays over and over in my head.
Like hell it is when he holds all the control, and I have nothing.
Absentmindedly, my fingers trace around one of the many burns that line my forearm.
"You still think you have a say in this matter." Khivar says with a cold intensity. "Perhaps it's the ape brain of yours, which means I need to phrase it in more simplistic terms."
A red crimson bolt hovers over my arm.
"I'm stronger. I have the power, and you don't. "
Stop.
Khivar isn't here.
I catch a pair of amber eyes studying me over the passenger seat. Abruptly, I look away and trace the stands of frost lining the van's windows. One thread becomes two. Two becomes four. Four becomes an infinity of snakes crawling across my skin. I jerk back, but the sheer intensity of this sensation causes the puss, blood, and guts to break through their stitches. Out of this mess, a noxious flower blooms in my mind.
Her legs unaccustomed to standing give out. She falls hard on the dirt floor creating a cloud of dust. She blinks trying to adjust to the darkened cell. In a shadowy corner, two yellow eyes open and a slight rustle sounds.
Using the wall, she pulls herself up nearly gagging on the rotten odor that assails her.
A spear shaped head slides into the light trailing a serpentine body behind it. Stopping momentarily, its bottom half wiggles out from the remnants of a decaying torso. Pink tendons and muscles sticks to the pulsating skin.
Frantically, she bangs against the door.
The snake's bloated body reaches the room's center. Opening its wide jaws, a long forked yellow tongue spills out on the ground. Seconds later hundreds of smaller red versions pour down it.
She only bangs harder. Blood drips from her knuckles.
A board moves away from the door's small opening. Two pink puckered lips fill in the space, "You know I expected more from you considering the resolve you shown up to now. Why don't you save us all the trouble and open the connection to him."
"I can't," comes her strangled reply.
"Have it your way then Miss. Parker. They say the first time with Serena is always the worst, but without it you will never become my beautiful obedient butterfly. Now fall."
Her body crumples to the ground. A line of red stands just beyond her head. Looking up, thousands of yellow eyes stare at her in hunger.
She should move. Every muscle demands it, but she can't.
The snake throws back her head and lets out a high pitched wail. Almost immediately, the smaller creatures advance.
Pushing air through her lungs, she tries to form one word, but a wheeze comes out instead.
Hundreds crawl up her neck and sink into the flesh. Hysterically, she brushes some away, but there's just too many. Their razor sharp teeth rip holes into her flesh and burrow inside. Crawling underneath her skin, she can literally feel her bones dissolving. A loud shriek bounces off the walls. She closes her mouth, and the sound stops.
The mother snake wraps around her legs. Looking down, she sees the spear shape head move up her body. A tongue shoots out and slides across her cheek.
She closes her eyes. Her mind instinctively reaches out for him, but only a suffocating silence answers her. For a split second, every atom in her screams in panic unable to account for the sudden change until a single fact silences their terrified voices.
He is lost to her.
She had made sure of it.
Her head falls back as a warm body forces its way into her mouth.
Some unseen censor jerks the picture away from me as I swallow the scream in my throat.
"Oh God," I breath against a hard chest that for some reason I know is Max. Taking several deep breaths, I try to get my racing heart under control while my mind attempts to understand what just happened. I look down at the smooth skin that lines the back of my hands. Relief washes over me. "It wasn't me. It was a vision," but for some reason fear and panic still slur my words.
Max's arms tighten around me while his he opens his mouth to say something but stops when his attention lands on something behind me.
It dawns on me that we're both sitting between the seats, and I'm practically clinging to him like he's the only one that can safe me.
I don't cling.
I unwind myself from him, but he seems reluctant to do the same. "Let go."
His arms fall away.
Quickly, I get up and notice Kyle staring at me. My cheeks turn bright red. "I'm sorry for..." scaring everyone, acting like a complete psycho, for not being able to control my emotions better, the list is endless. "I'm just sorry," I finally say.
"You have nothing to be sorry about," he replies.
I slide back into the seat next to Tess. Fear encompasses every faucet on her pale face. "Are you ok?"
She answers by throwing her arms around me in a hug, "I can't believe you're asking me that right now when you were the one screaming like someone was torturing you."
Maybe if I concentrated hard enough, I could disappear right into the tan upholstery.
"I was having a bad vision. My control is off a little because of…."
"Being abducted at knife point and being dragged through the woods," she breaks our hug and her voice grows ominous. "Whatever mind game you're playing with her I suggest you stop it Max. It's sick taking advantage of her like this."
"Why would you do something like that to me?" I demand.
He doesn't respond. Instead, he glares at Tess, "while you're handing out suggestions, let me make one. I don't won't to hear that whining sound that some more generous people would call a voice again. Do you understand me your majesty? " he pauses for dramatic effect, "tell me have you heard from Zan lately?"
A blankness comes over as her mind no doubt cycles through every one of Nasedo's lectures concerning her supposed Destiny and her failure to live up to it.
"Do you have to be such a jerk?" I ask barely containing my fury.
Surprise surfaces in Max's eyes before a cold detachment displaces it, "I can't believe you don't see it. The way she's using you."
"Using me," I repeat. "I'm an intergalactic Ouija board that everyone wants to control. So don't talk to me about Tess using me, I know what it feels like to be used, and she isn't doing it."
"You don't trust me do you?" He asks barely getting the words out.
"I don't know you."
"Do you want to?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"We're in range to call the threader, " Kyle interrupts.
"Fine," Max concedes rubbing the bridge of his nose while mumbling something under his breath about taking the wrong approach. " If you try anything Tess…"
"Yes, you'll kill her and you'll kill me. Khivar has been feeding us the same line for years," I finish.
"Are you going to completely misconstrue everything I say to her as a threat to you?"
"Threatening Tess is threatening me."
"It isn't the same thing at all."
Kyle grabs his shoulder, "the threader . In about fifteen minutes' we're going to have some very angry depositors down here. Work first then we can all make nice later."
"She's given you her loyalty, which is a very valuable gift. I hope you understand its worth Tess," Max says just before he, and Kyle slam the doors.
I let out a shaky breath that I didn't even know I was holding.
Curling up into a ball, I want nothing more than to go sleep, but a guilty weight settles in my stomach. Instead of letting up, it seems to be trying to tell me something.
"Trust me, he isn't giving what you said a second thought," she links her fingers in between mine.
"What is between you to? Glancing out the window, I can see a white light begin to twinkle around Kyle and Max. I turn back to Tess unable to handle anymore alien weirdness for the moment. "What is between you two? You fight like you were married."
"Me married to him I'd rather be dead. Max is connected to the royal four." She looks away from me.
"I know there's more."
Tess presses her lips together, "He poisoned Zan against me. If it wasn't for him they would have accepted me. Nasedo thought he had found something on Max to force his hand, but then he died," she stares down at the floor while I repress the urge to tell her that Nasedo doesn't deserve any of her pity.
"I always thought that when you met Zan there would be some sort of connection," I venture trying not to upset even more.
"It's like some great cosmic joke," she laughs bitterly, "because of my pod being damaged, I can only recognize other Antarians, which gets me no where since Earth is crawling with them."
"If Khivar is any indication of what Antarian kings are like, you're better of not knowing Zan."
"But it what she wants," she says in an uncharacteristic emotional outburst. "Ava's always buzzing around in my ear, and I can't make her go away. She wants Zan. She wants the family that was supposed to be hers. She wants power. Want, want, want it's all she does. It's never about what I want or who I want." Her gaze fixates back on the window.
"What do you want then?"
"I wanted you out of the palace. You should of told me what Khivar was doing."
I swallow the lump in my throat.
"Zan may not see me as his queen and Khivar may see me as some pawn but that night I decided had to do something. You know the weird thing is I didn't do it because the Antarian queen is supposed to protect the oracle, but I did because I wanted to protect a friend. It was the first thing I ever did, because I wanted to and not because Ava wanted it."
"I may not be much, and spend half my time seeing things that aren't there, but you have me."
"I know." Looking out the window her attention settles on Kyle. Water appears in her blue eyes. "A couple months ago I got a flash him from him. It was the first flash I ever got from anyone, and I thought this is it. Here's someone who wants me because for me to get a flash him had to trust me somewhat. It couldn't be a complete lie right?"
"Yes," comes the bare inaudible reply as I remember the flash I got from Max.
"I was able to piece together that he was with the resistance. He didn't like lying to me at all. I was sure he felt something for me at least, " she presses her lips together, "I told him that you gave up Isabel to Khivar."
"I didn't"
" I had to. It was the only way I could get their attention, but I thought Michael would come." She shivers in revulsion, "I never thought it would be Max. You can't trust him," she stresses. "Something happened a while a back, and it changed him. He'll hurt you just to get back at me. That's why you have to try and find Zan. If you can explain things, he'll listen. I'm sure of it. "
I rub my temples, "you know I can't see Zan."
"You're his oracle you'll sense him if you close enough. It's a pretty combustible attraction so I've heard once it gets going. It wasn't uncommon for kings to have children with their oracles. Many even married them."
Angrily, I get up from the seat. A bad taste fills my mouth. "I'm not having a child with Silas, Zan or anyone else. As for being your husband's whore, it's not happening. I may not be able to control anything else in my life at the moment, but I'm definitely going to exert little control over my own body.."
"You're going to be drawn to him regardless," she states firmly.
"No, I'm not."
"What you choose to do with the connection is up to you? Very few Antarians are actually monogamous. If it comes down to it, I rather it be you than someone else. At least then he would be emotionally invested enough to protect you."
"Do you know how messed up this sounds? This isn't normal."
"I'm the reincarnated essence of a queen that died nearly sixty years ago. I have feelings for a human that genetically I should not be having, and you see the future. We're not actually living the most normal of lives here, and it's just a lot more strained today. We need to think tactically to ensure our advantage."
"I can't think tactically. I need normal right now Tess," I stare down at my hand expecting to see something moving underneath my skin. "I need it more than anything."
"Look at me. Are you willing to get your hands dirty to achieve this objective?"
I lick my suddenly dry lips, "how dirty?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
