Tattoo Read online

  “Can't you tell us what we know?” Zo asked. “You seem to be good at that”

  Annabelle shot Zo a long, warning look, and then turned back to Keiri. “We know that we've been given these powers for a reason” Annabelle lifted one eyebrow in question. “I assume you know about our powers?”

  Keiri inclined her head slightly.

  “Adea and Valgius, they've been appearing to Bailey since the first night. She hears their voices. We know that there's some kind of evil Sídhe out there, and she's got some kind of grudge against the others. We know that Adea and Valgius want us to stop her. We know that it's dangerous for us to be out after dark”

  “We know that her name is Alecca,” I said. Just saying the name made me nervous. “She's getting stronger, and the others are getting weaker. I think she wants to kill Adea and Valgius and …ummm …maybe, you know, get rid of us in the process”

  After I spoke, there was a long silence.

  Way to be a downer, Bailey, I thought.

  After a few seconds, Delia picked up the slack. “We know that all three of them—Adea, Val, and this other chick—are Sídhe, and that Sídhe are some kind of royal fairy warrior witches”

  Keiri arched an eyebrow at the description. “That is all?” she asked.

  Were we supposed to know more? I thought we'd done pretty decently for being new to the whole World of Freaky scene.

  “To begin with, rid your mind of your ideas of fairies. The Sídhe aren't, and have never been, the creatures you imagine them to be. They're human enough in appearance, but magical energy that no mortal mind can truly comprehend runs through their blood. Imagine the ocean during a storm: waves crashing, wind beating down against the water, lightning ripping through the air. That's the kind of power that flows through Sídhe veins.

  “Theirs is a power of life. Their life. Our lives”

  Keiri looked at each of us in turn. “And it is with our lives, human life, that our story truly begins, because Sídhe power feeds off life”

  My tattoo throbbed, and the moment my fingertips brushed over it, my mind echoed with memories of words I'd heard before.

  To fight, to live

  “To be Sídhe is to have life itself flowing in your blood” Keiri paused.

  For a long while, we waited. Keiri said nothing. I felt more like I was taking a fairy philosophy class than like I was actually learning anything useful.

  “What do you know about Olympus?”

  Talk about an abrupt subject change. One moment it was all “to be Sídhe is to.” and the next, boom.

  “Greek mythology” Zo sounded about as thrilled as I felt.

  “Myths seldom get things right,” Keiri said, “but they never get things entirely wrong”

  “What myth are we talking about here?” Annabelle asked, always the one to ask the right question at the right time.

  “You tell me,” Keiri said. “It goes a little something like this” Suddenly, she seemed much more like a normal person, and much less like a crazy oracle-type. “Once upon a time, in a world not that far from our own, there were three young and powerful Sídhe children: two sisters, and a little boy whose life and destiny was tied to theirs. Some would call them fairies; some would call them gods.

  “They were born in a time when fairy power was diminishing. The barrier between the worlds was becoming harder and harder to cross, and human life and Sídhe life were becoming so vastly different that the lines that connected them, the lines through which Sídhe power ran, were becoming thinner and thinner.

  “And so these three children were born into the momentous task of closing the gap. They could see from their world into ours, and they were to know human life, to know humans, and through their knowledge, the power inherent in all life was to return to the Sídhe.

  “The two girls were as different as night and day. To the one went the task of knowing human life, and to the other, that of knowing human death”

  Well that certainly sounded ominous.

  “And so one watched humans live, and the other was with them in their moment of death, and as time went by, they crossed farther and farther from being observers to being something else altogether. Sister Life, as she was apt to call herself, began to weave the lines of human life, the very lines through which she got her power. It started with small things: making this person's lifeline cross that person's; lengthening this line or that; weaving together the lives of those she watched”

  “And death?” Unlike me, Zo didn't squeak at all when she asked a question.

  “Sister Death, who never called herself that, but nonetheless maintained the title among the Sídhe, was not enthralled with the lines the way her sister was. She knew the human race in death, knew it in war, and when the time came, she cut lifelines, undoing her sister's weaving and releasing the tension of life into the nothingness of death”

  “What about the third?” I asked, managing a relatively squeak-free voice. “You said there were three”

  “Birth,” Delia said, answering for Keiri. All of us turned to look at her. “Duh,” she said. “Was I the only one awake during Greek mythology? This is totally the fairy tale version of the three Fates” The three Fates?

  Adea.

  Alecca.

  Valjjius.

  Somehow, I'd never thought the three names together before, and the moment I did, the world around me blurred into a mess of colors and sounds, and then, there was nothing.

  “My love”

  I turned in the direction of the bone-shattering voice. A man and a woman stood next to each other. His lips were so close to hers that I had to wonder if he was going to eat her alive. When she moved hers toward him, I grimaced and turned away. “Devour” probably would have been the appropriate word for what her lips did to his.

  “I shouldn't be surprised”

  At the sound of the new voice, I whirled around and found myself staring into startling blue eyes. I should have gotten used to eyes like those by now, but they weren't the kind of thing you could get used to.

  “We spend our days with them, watching their lives, their deaths, their births, connecting ourselves to them so

  that our people may maintain their power, and this is what comes of it”

  The two lovers broke away from each other.

  “We know their loves, their hatred,” the angry woman continued. Her hair was so blond that it shined like white silver in contrast to the lovers' darker hair. His was black, almost blue, and hers was a deep red, bordering on black.

  Recognition shot through me, but I said nothing as I watched the drama before me unfold.

  “We know what it is to be human, and our knowledge is the root of our power, and now, the two of you think you are human” The blond-haired girl plowed on. “You think you've fallen in love”

  “We have,” Adea spoke up, taking a step away from Valgius, her chin held high.

  “We are not human, Adea. We do not love” There was something in her voice, in her tone, that made me wonder whether or not she really believed that; made me wonder if she'd ever loved.

  Valgius stepped forward next to Adea. “We are Sídhe,” he said simply, answering the allegations the third one had thrown at him. “We do that which we will”

  The blond woman grinned, and though she was beautiful (totally centerfold material), it was a horrible sight. “You do your will,” she said, “and I'll do mine”

  “Alecca, we have not betrayed you” Adea's voice dropped to a whisper.

  “No?” Alecca continued smiling. “There are three of us. There have always been three of us”

  For a moment, I sympathized. She'd just found out that her sister and her best friend (possibly also her love interest?) were getting it on. Talk about being the third wheel. I tried to imagine Zo or Delia hooking up with Kane behind my back and physically shuddered.

  “We were three,” Alecca said, her tone for the first time almost sad. “And now?” She shook her head. “Now you have their love, and
I have their hatred” Alecca laughed, cold, dry laughter that nearly split my head in two. “But one day, I'll have it all, and you, Adea, and you, Valgius, will bow before my power. You will have nothing, and I will have everything, and both worlds will fall at my feet”

  “Not while I live,” Adea said quietly.

  “No,” Alecca agreed. “That would hardly be an ending worthy of lovers such as you” She sneered. “Tragedy would suit better”

  “You cannot kill us” Valgius sounded sure on this point.

  Alecca held her hands up, and her whole body glowed with power. “You know each other,” she said, taking a step forward with each word. “I know only them. How much more powerful, then, am I? I know them. I will absorb their lives into mine, and with their power, I will destroy you”

  Adea and Valgius joined hands, and I had to look away from the light shining off their bodies.

  Turning around and squinting into the light, I could see Alecca take a step backward.

  “It doesn't have to be this way,” Adea said softly. “Sister. “

  “You will weaken without me,” Alecca said through clenched teeth. “You will weaken and fade away. Without me, you will be nothing, and your love won't do a thing to save you. And just when you're most vulnerable, just when the balance of power begins to shift, there I'll be”

  Startling blue eyes surged with fury, and though her voice was low, Alecca's next words sent a shiver racing up and down my spine at high frequency. “I will end you”

  Alecca lashed out with one hand, and blood trickled down Adea's face, leaving a blue-green line in its wake.

  “To destroy us would destroy the balance. Both worlds would be thrown into chaos. Sídhe, human.”

  Alecca threw her hand through the air, cutting off her sister's plea. Valgius flew backward. He regained his footing, and made his own appeal.

  “We are still three,” he said.

  Alecca stared at him for the longest moment, her blue eyes piercing his. “No,” she said, and the quiet word screamed of betrayal and vengeance. “Never again” She advanced on them. Adea and Valgius began speaking in low tones as Alecca continued her onslaught, her fury slashing across their bodies, marking them with trails of blue-green blood. The lovers joined hands and continued chanting primal-sounding words I couldn't understand.

  Alecca shook, but whether it was with anger, in fear, or from the power of their words, I couldn't tell. I could feel the magic in the air, sizzling, pushing me back as Alecca began her own chant.

  “To earth I go

  From air I breathe

  I command myself

  Unto the sea

  For time unknown

  The hate you've sown

  Shall live in me

  Until your weakness

  Sets me free

  And as I will

  So mote it be”

  Adea and Valgius kept chanting, the words persisting against Alecca's in an odd rhythm. Power surged, light flashed, and the world around me shook violently, spastically.

  And then they were gone.

  “She does this sometimes”

  As I came back into consciousness, I became quickly aware of the fact that every inch of my body felt as if it had been beaten from the inside out.

  “My grandmother used to do this”

  I opened my eyes. “I hate my life” I paused. “And my body” I felt like throwing “and your grandmother” on the end of that to Keiri, but somehow, that didn't seem like the best idea.

  The first thing I saw was Keiri glaring at me, and I remembered a second too late that she was psychic.

  “I saw them again,” I said, more than ready to change the subject. “Only this time, they didn't see me”

  I tried to sit up, but pain shot through my body, and a cry escaped my mouth.

  “Bailey” Zo, Delia, and Annabelle were at my side in an instant.

  “What's wrong?” Delia asked, panicked. “Are you hurt?”

  Zo cursed under her breath.

  “What did you see?” Annabelle and Keiri asked at the same time.

  Great. Synchronized psychics.

  “It was weird,” I said, my voice hoarse from what I'd seen. “It was Adea and Valgius, and they were …kissing” That seemed like a nice way to put it. “And then “ It took me a moment to spit out her name. “Then Alecca saw them, and she was beyond ticked off, like they'd been doing it behind her back or something. And the way she looked at him, at both of them, it was like she'd been majorly betrayed. So Alecca goes off on this whole rant about how they aren't human and they're not supposed to love that way, and she threatens to kill them, even if it means destroying both worlds in the process. Or something like that”

  “Wait a second,” Delia said. “Are you telling me that this whole apocalypse-y ‘our lives, your fight, both worlds' thing started because of some kind of twisted fairy love triangle?”

  I shrugged and nodded at the same time. “It's looking like a definite possibility”

  “Sweet,” Delia said.

  All of us looked at her.

  “Sweet?” Annabelle asked. “Sweet?”

  “Not the whole whatever-it-takes, murderous part, but don't you think it's just a little bit cool that we're caught in the middle of some passionate cosmic affair?”

  “Trust me,” I told her. “It didn't feel cool”

  “Soap opera” That was Zo, who folded her arms over her chest, still keeping an eagle eye on me lying on the sofa. “I told you. Greek mythology: one giant soap opera”

  “It doesn't seem that much like Greek mythology,” Annabelle, who was in all likelihood an expert on Greek mythology, said skeptically.

  “Myths,” Keiri said, shaking her head. “If it wasn't for people like my grandmother, and Bailey, we'd probably never have known”

  “This is just a temporary gig,” I said. “It came with the tattoo, and believe me, if I'd known what I was getting myself into “

  “You mean you don't know?” Keiri asked.

  I stared at her.

  “That's Bailey's clueless face,” Delia clarified for the older woman.

  “I assumed that you knew. There are so few Guardian lines left these days, and—”

  “Guardian lines?” all of us asked at once.

  “Blessed Ones,” Keiri said impatiently. “Those touched by the Sídhe, chosen to guard their heirlooms and powers in this world to maintain the great balance”

  I stared at her. Great balance? Heirlooms? Blessed? As if.

  “Your dreams are Sídhe-blocked,” Keiri told me. “I can't read them, and I'm betting your friend there can't, either”

  I purposefully didn't look at Annabelle, who'd told me from the start that my dreams were a mystery to her.

  “But you can't read Annabelle, either,” I said in my own defense.

  “Right,” Keiri said, as if I'd just made a point in her favor. “I can't read Annabelle at all, which tells me there's some kind of external magic at play. I'm far too strong for a noninitiated mortal to block me completely”

  Was it me, or did Keiri say “mortal” as though she …well, as though she wasn't one?

  “The women in my family were once priestesses at the Sídhe temples” Keiri answered the question I hadn't had the guts to voice. “Guardians of their secrets, owners of objects that they passed from their realm into ours”

  “Blessed,” Annabelle said.

  Keiri nodded. “The Sídhe smiled upon the Guardians and blessed them. Touched them. Trace amounts of their power leaked into our blood. My daughter and I are the last of an ancient line of Guardians. We are blessed. Short of some kind of Sídhe magic intervening, I should be able to read all of you”

  “That's Bailey's clueless face again,” Delia piped up. I was starting to wonder if I had any other face.

  “Annabelle isn't blocking me” Keiri spelled it out. “Something else is blocking me from reading Annabelle. A totem, a spell, I don't know what, but Annabelle's mind is well hidden b
ehind some kind of outside mystical veil. Bailey, you, on the other hand, are an open book” She smiled at me. “Your thoughts practically broadcast themselves over a loudspeaker, and yet, when it comes to your dream-visions, the voices you hear, I get nothing” She paused. “It's not a broad enough block to be coming from outside magic. You're blocking me”

  “Maybe someone else doesn't want you to see the dreams, and they're blocking you,” I said reasonably. I was being the reasonable one here. Tattoo mojo aside, people just weren't descended from fairy-touched Guardian chicks, and even if they were, I certainly wasn't. That was crazy.

  This coming from the girl who heard voices, I reminded myself.

  “Besides the blocking, there are other clues” Keiri plowed on. “Your hair, for one”

  “Not my actual color,” I said quickly. “And for the record, not my shirt either”

  Keiri turned to Delia. “Could you change her hair back?” she asked. “I've gotten a visual of her natural color from your minds, but I'd like to be sure”

  With a surprisingly small amount of grumbling, Delia lifted her hands to my head and changed my hair back to its normal color.

  “It's bicolored hair,” Keiri said. “Not one color streaked with another, but actually two different colors in one”

  I fingered my not-blond, not-brown hair. I'd always hated it.

  “It's the mark of the Sídhe,” Keiri said, “and those chosen from birth by their ancient magic”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but a strong visual hopped into my mind. Adea, with her red-black hair, arm in arm with a blue-black-haired Valgius. I chewed on the inside of my lip. Alecca's hair had been silver-blond.

  It's in the blood, it is. Things of power always are.

  “Bailey?” Annabelle spoke up. “When did you say the first time you heard the voices was?”

  “When I saw the tattoos” I said without thinking. “Sídhe blue, blood green” I remembered the words I'd heard, saying them out loud.

  “And the room went all funky-like when I put on my tattoo, right?” Delia asked.

  I nodded. “So?”

  “Bailey, that was before you put on your tattoo”