Omega (10 page)

“
Hey, Niko?” I dropped the
curtain and moved towards the couch, peeking into the cracked
bedroom door.

He was on the phone, his back to me. My
instincts stirred once more, and I had the same urge I did at his
redneck friends’ – to leave him sooner rather than later, even if I
had nowhere else to go.

Tomorrow I’ll figure it
out.
I was too beat to take a shower and
slung myself down on the couch. I had spent two nights a week
sleeping on the ground; the lumpy couch was good enough for me. As
busy as my mind was, I was soon asleep.

Arguing voices pulled me out of a deep
slumber. I struggled to rouse my resistant body, lost the battle
then forced myself into a sit. I blinked rapidly and sighed. The
noises were coming from Niko’s room, probably from the television,
except …

Instincts. The ones that made me worry about
bears during fall and great cats during wildfire season. I rolled
off the couch and orientated myself quickly before rising and going
to the door to his bedroom cracked open.

“
Niko?” I
called.

Silence.

I pushed the door open to see him on the
floor, bare chested in sweatpants. The hooded figure I had seen
earlier stood over him, gun in hand.

“
Stay where you are,”
hissed the person in the hood.

Niko motioned towards my left, and I looked.
The top drawer of his dresser yawned open, and I caught the faint
gleam of a gun butt. I moved towards it.

“
If you try it, I’ll shoot
him,” the hooded form threatened.

“
You’d be doing the world
a favor,” I replied. “He’s kind of an asshole.” Snatching the gun,
I flipped off the safety and walked towards them. “But I need him
for now and I do know how to use a gun.”

The person was still for a long moment. The
tip of the gun lowered, and Niko knocked it away, snagging the
hooded person’s arm and shoving him into the wall. The hood fell
away, and I started to smile.

The figure who bested Niko was a pretty
woman with cocoa skin and a tattoo on her forehead.

“
You couldn’t stay away,
could you, Dosy?” Niko growled and searched her roughly.

“
I’m not here for you, you
arrogant pig!” came the saucy response.

I switched on the lights. The tattoo was the
same symbol on the Temple of Artemis: a bow. The woman wore a robe
of gray beneath the hood. “Wait, did a priestess just kick your
ass?” I asked Niko. I put the gun on the dresser.

“
I was sleeping!” he
retorted. “No one knows where this place is.” He released the
woman, angered and tense, and stepped back.

“
She probably followed us
from Marty’s,” I guessed.

“
I was in the trunk.” Dosy
turned to face Niko. With a glance at me, her cool gaze fell to
him, and her chin went up a notch in what I knew from experience
was defiance. “Not the first time I was relegated to a cold, dark
place at Niko’s hands.”

“
I had nothing to do with
that,” he replied.

“
Except abandoning
me.”

“
That was ten years ago,
Dosy, and you walked away!”

“
You can’t walk away from
someone if he’s already gone.”

“
You must be the smart
woman he hates,” I said with an uncomfortable laugh, uncertain how
else to react to their violent reactions to one another.

The two of them glared at each other. Niko’s
jaw was ticking, and he appeared ready to pounce. Dosy’s
unfaltering gaze was cold. The tension between them was so thick,
my cheeks grew warm. Whatever their history was, I was guessing it
was pretty personal.

“
I’m just gonna go back to
my couch,” I murmured and stepped back.

Dosy started towards me, and Niko grabbed
her.

“
I’m here to protect you
from him! Niko will sell –”

“
Holly knows you’re full
of shit!” He had her arms, and she pushed at him. “I should put a
bullet in you and leave you for your goddess to take care of. Oh
wait – the gods haven’t helped us in five years! They abandoned us
the way you did me ten years ago!”

“
It was
twelve
years,
idiot!”

My brow furrowed. Before I could pursue,
Niko reached over to grab the priestess’s weapon. “Wait!” I cried.
“You can’t just kill a priestess in your apartment!”

“
Oh, I can.”

“
He can’t hurt me,” Dosy
said calmly. “And since I know that … Holly, I came to give you a
message about your birthright.”

“
Shut up, Dosy.” Niko made
a show of putting the gun to her head. “You have no idea what I’ve
become.”

“
Wait, wait, wait!” I
scrambled forward and pushed Niko to keep him from hurting her. He
pushed me back. “I don’t know who I am or what I’m supposed to do!
If she does then –” I grunted and shoved him far enough away to
squeeze between them. “– then I need to know.
We
need to know.”

With me in the way, Niko lowered his gun arm
without releasing his grip on Dosy.

“
He’s already sold you out
twice by now,” Dosy said, smooshed between me and the
wall.

“
Stop stirring the pot!” I
snapped. “Just think about this for a minute. Both of you. You both
want something from me and if you’re fighting, I’m walking out that
door without either of you.”

“
I wouldn’t let you,” Dosy
responded.

“
Not happening,” Niko said
at the same time.

“
Oh, good. You’re agreeing
with each other. Niko, go over there. Now!” I ordered
him.

He gave me a look that said he wished he’d
left me with Marty but reluctantly moved to the other side of the
bedroom, near the door. I stepped away from Dosy.

“
Glad to see someone here
has sense.” Dosy straightened out her clothing. “For the record,
Holly, he wouldn’t have hurt me. He’s always talked big, acted
small when it came to me.”

“
In any case!” I shouted
over Niko’s objection. “Why are you here?” I asked Dosy.

She relaxed some, her focus shifting to me
instead of the man she had a history with. “I’d like a glass of
water.”

“
Oh, let’s. We must be
civilized.” Niko strode angrily into the living room, the muscles
of his thick frame rippling beneath the colorful tattoos covering
his back, shoulders and chest.

I shook my head and followed, as did Dosy.
When I reached my couch and sat down, I realized they were both
staring at me.

“
Um, what?” I asked,
unsettled by Niko’s fiery look and the odd expression on Dosy’s
face.

“
You aren’t what I
expected,” Dosy replied first.

I sighed and held my face in my hands.
Irritated at the latest person who wanted to belittle or insult me,
I rose and lifted my pack. “I’m out. You people have issues I can’t
fix.”

Dosy laughed softly. “You took that wrong. I
meant it as a compliment. I was expecting a scared, silly teen with
no sense. You can use a gun and hold your own with Niko. That’s
impressive.”

I lowered the pack, my ruffled feathers
smoothing out.

“
Herakles was rumored to
be with you. He taught you to have a backbone?”

I glanced at Niko, who was listening
intently. Uncertain what to think of Dosy or how she knew Herakles,
I hesitated to respond.

Dosy sat on the chair near the kitchen.
“Water, Niko,” she snapped. “How did you get through the checkpoint
so easily?”

“
They waved us through,” I
said with a shrug.

“
That doesn’t just happen.
I’m betting Niko’s made arrangements.”

He appeared ready to refute her but whirled
and went to the sink. He wasn’t kicking her out or trying to kill
her anymore, which made me think she was right. As badass as he
acted, he wasn’t going to hurt the woman he had feelings for at one
point.

“
Herakles,” Dosy prodded.
“Why is he not with you?”

“
He was captured,” I said.
“We’re here to rescue him.”

“
We’re what?” Niko
demanded.

“
Rescue?” Dosy’s eyes
widened. “If he was taken, it was by SISA. There’s no way for you
to get to him.”

“
I don’t believe
that.”

Niko brought her a glass of water. This
time, the look they exchanged was one of uneasiness.

“
Why is a priestess
looking for me?” I asked her.

“
High
Priestess,” Niko said, using air quotes in mockery. “What do
the gods want with some initiate?”

“
Not your concern, Niko,”
she replied.

“
But you came to find me,
right?” I asked.

“
Yes.”

“
And tell me …
what?”

“
I came to find and
protect you from people like Niko,” Dosy admitted. “People who
might figure out who you really are.”

Niko was studying me the way he had in the
forest when we first met.

“
So do you know what’s
supposed to happen next?” I asked.

“
Pardon?”

“
Where I’m supposed to go,
what I’m supposed to do. The priests at the orphanage seemed to
think I should go somewhere.”

“
You were raised by
priests,” Dosy repeated, surprised. “That’s not how this was
supposed to happen.”

“
Okay, first, what
is
this
?” Niko
asked and motioned to me.

“
Holly is of –”

“
Omigods. My name’s not
Holly,” I muttered. “It’s –”

“
Lisa,” Niko cut me off.
“And shut up.”

Dosy appeared taken aback for a moment
before she met my gaze. “Do you know what you are?” she asked
uncertainly.

“
Allegedly what I am? I
was told yesterday,” I replied. “Niko thinks I’m an
initiate.”

“
So Herakles isn’t with
you, you were raised by priests and you don’t know how to be what
you really are,” Dosy summarized.

“
Yes,” I said. “And I want
to rescue Herakles.”

Agitated, she rose and paced. “After hearing
all this, I think rescuing him will be the easiest thing you
do.”

Niko and I exchanged a look. We didn’t know
enough to share her alarm.

“
Okay.” Dosy drew a deep
breath and approached me. “First off, don’t take off the red cord.
If it is what I think it might be, it’ll keep people from tracking
you. Second …” She trailed off, at a loss for words. Blinking
rapidly, she shook her head. “I can’t even begin to imagine a
second. Just stay underground for a while. Niko, if you betray her
to you-know-who, I will gut you.”

It was a wonder either of them were alive,
given how often they threatened each other in the short span we
were together.

“
Hard to protect what you
don’t know you have,” he pointed out.

“
I’m an Oracle,” I said.
Whether or not I should have, I didn’t care at the moment. I wanted
to see what they did when I said it, to gauge how bad things really
were.

Dosy gaped. “Don’t ever tell anyone that!”
she yelled when she’d recovered. “Ever!”

“
A what? You mean … you
mean
the
Oracle?”
Niko was staring at me. “And those damn priests were going to pay
me the rate for a typical teen runaway? Now I’m glad I cut them
down before the security forces moved in.”

I gasped.

“
This is what I’m talking
about.” Dosy pointed at him. “This is why you’re better off with
me, Holly. Lisa. Whatever your name is.”

My ears were ringing from Niko’s
confession.

“
You do not walk into
–”

The two of them began shouting at one
another again, and all I could think about was the blood I’d seen
on Niko’s hands. It hadn’t belonged to the enemies. It had belonged
to the priests he let me think had abandoned me.

“
How could you do that?” I
shouted above them and pushed at Niko. “How could you
kill
them?” I reached for
his weapon, emotion boiling despite my exhaustion.

Dosy stepped back, and Niko grabbed my arms,
gaze dropping from her to me. He wrestled with me, finally wrapping
both arms around me and shoving me face first into a wall. I
struggled in a frenzy until it was clear I wasn’t going to best him
this way. I panted and went limp, my mind racing.

“
Look, kid, it was
–”

“
Don’t call me kid!” I
struggled to pull away, but he kept me in place. “You’re a
murderer!”

“
It was an act of
mercy.”

“
Bullshit!”

“
No, it was,” Dosy
seconded. “The secret police would’ve done unspeakable things to
them. Since the SISA chief, Adonis, took over, it’s been nonstop
carnage and oppression. They’re aggressive and harsh. If you’ve got
something to hide, suicide is a better option. It’s not something
that’s easy to explain, except that Niko did them a favor,
Holly.”

My name’s not Holly!
I blinked. My eyes were blurred by tears. A
tremor of emotion swirled through me. I could imagine no situation
under Zeus where the priests committed suicide. Was the world
outside my forest that bad?
Why
had they kept so much from me? Did I not need
this type of knowledge in order to help them with their plan to
bring back the Old Ways?