Centaur Rivalry (Touched Series Book 3) Read online

  When I was at my lowest moment searching for Drake by myself in South Dakota – Zandra knew he had transformed into a Centaur, yet her only concern was getting the Chiron arrow back. Zandra fed me a story about trying to protect me from my destiny – but I didn’t believe it. Mom hid from Zandra her whole adult life – regardless of her intentions, Zandra was evil.

  Katherine clenched her fists, “There aren’t many powerful Centaurides in the world, and Zandra’s the only one I’ve seen in the area.”

  I grabbed Katherine’s shoulder, “Wait, you’ve seen Zandra in the area? Recently?”

  Katherine looked at my hand on her shoulder. I let go but stood in front of her so she couldn’t dodge my question. “She was here a couple days ago and had Roscoe all in a tizzy. She left, but maybe she came back. It would make sense.”

  “What would make sense? Bianca and Jessica would stop communicating with me if Zandra were nearby?”

  Katherine chuckled, “You’re so clueless. How did ya make it this long?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, trying to follow my earlier advice to Brent: to be respectful and to remember she’s helping us.

  When I didn’t try to defend myself, Katherine continued, “Yer blood is like a homing beacon for Zandra, so as long as she’s within fifty miles, maybe a hundred, she’ll always be able to find ja. She’s the chairman of the Centaur Council – that’s not a job ya get because of congeniality. Bianca and Jessica are smart enough to know she’s looking for ya and ta mute their conversations with ya if she’s close.”

  “So, it’s just a matter of time.” I looked among the three of them, wondering if they’d come to the same conclusion I had. “She’s close, and if I don’t get out of here, she’s going to find all of us?”

  Katherine shook her head, “Yer with me. She may know yer close, but she won’t be able to find ja.”

  What did she mean? “With you? But you’re a human.”

  Katherine crossed her arms defiantly, “Think of me as a cloaking device.”

  Incredulously, I stammered, “A what?”

  “Zandra could be ten feet away from us, and she couldn’t find ja if I’m close.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Cami, I’m human, but I have a special ancestry, too.”

  Brent’s eyes went wide, and he was suddenly standing in between Katherine and me. He’d moved so fast I hadn’t even seen him flinch, yet all I could see was the back of him. His tone was accusatory, “Wait, are you telling us you’re a Lapith? But . . . Lapiths are extinct?!”

  Cockiness seeped into her voice, “You’re right. Lapiths are extinct . . . just like the Lost Herd of Centaurs.”

  I shook my head, “What’s a Lapith?”

  Brent stood tall, still blocking me from Katherine, and answered my question without so much as a glance in my direction. “The only natural enemy of the Centaur.”

  Blood iced in my veins. If she was our enemy, had we been dragged down here to our deaths? Had other Lapiths taken Jessica, Bianca and Gage hostage? I took a few steps away from her.

  She shook her head, “If I wanted ja dead, I’d have let Roscoe take ya at Jessica’s bar. Get closer to me before she figures out where ya are.”

  I wanted to believe Katherine, but if I’d learned anything from Phineas, trust had to be earned, not given freely. Instead of moving closer to her, I angled myself around the side of Brent so I could see her. “So when you first saw us at the motel, you knew who we were?”

  “No. I thought it was strange you were all drawn ta my motel. I didn’t learn who ya were until I went inta town with Brent.”

  Brent’s eyes went wide, “Hey, I never said a word!” His eyes danced between Katherine and me.

  Katherine smirked as she held up her index finger, “You tol’ me ya couldn’t go home.” Her middle finger sprang to attention, “You tol’ me you’d followed yer friends up from South Carolina.” Katherine’s ring finger joined the other two, “You said yer sister has a different mother. It’s not rocket science, Einstein.”

  Brent blushed. Had Katherine been who we all thought her to be – a normal human girl, none of those tidbits of information would have caused alarm with anyone. Since she had some insight into our world, it was easy for her to know who we were. “So who are we hiding from? Zandra?”

  “That’s the only Centauride Bianca and Jessica would be worried about. Neither of them have anything to do with the Lost Herd round-up going on all over the place, so there would be no reason for them ta be detained. It’s got to be Zandra.”

  “You think they’re being detained?”

  A regretful expression spread on her face, “That’s a stronger word than I shoulda used.” She was trying to pacify me, “Jessica is Roscoe’s sister. No way is she being interrogated without any proof she broke one of the Centaur Tenants. Bianca is from out of town, and her story about honeymooning with Gage is pretty believable.”

  “So what do you think is going on?”

  Katherine looked to Brent and Daniel, as if she were worried something she was about to say shouldn’t be said in front of them. She wasn’t a Centauride, so I couldn’t have a telepathic conversation. Her face flushed and she answered conspiratorially, “There are rumors that yer being protected by a Centaur.”

  Daniel threw up his hands, “Who is, once again, nowhere in sight when she needs him.”

  Katherine ignored Daniel’s outburst and asked me, “It’s true? Yer protected by a Centaur warrior?”

  I looked at Daniel who was seconds away from losing his cool. I nodded, “Yeah. His name’s Drake. He’s back at the motel. He’s my betrothed.”

  Katherine looked astonished, as if searching my eyes for a morsel of doubt. “A true Centaur warrior?”

  I nodded again. Brent, who had said remarkably little to Katherine since the “accosting” incident, belligerently asked, “Why Lapith? Do you intend to murder him?”

  Katherine’s glare was hard, her voice low and full of authority, “Watch yer tongue, Centaur.”

  Daniel all but ignored the insults flying between Katherine and Brent. “Her true,” using his fingers for quotation marks in the air, “Centaur warrior, you’re referring to, why are there rumors floating around about that? Wouldn’t it be more of a scandal if a human were protecting her?”

  I felt a blush, hoping Daniel was just speaking hypothetically and not volunteering for the job.

  I watched Katherine’s teeth sink into her lip. She didn’t know how much Brent and Daniel knew. I was sick of the secrets, because half of them I didn’t understand anyway. Rather than try to keep them, I started rattling off everything that was potentially important, “Okay, just so we’re all on the same page. Brent and I have the same Centaur father but two different Centauride mothers. The Lost Herd is the only bloodline who is capable of procreation out of wedlock.” So far none of the three looked surprised by this revelation.

  I looked directly at Brent; his back straightened as if bracing for the worst. “I’m sorry you’re in limbo. I’m excited for you for having been chosen, and I think it sucks that you don’t know if the betrothal is still on. When we get out of here, we’ll figure out how to call her without giving away our location. If we can’t get her on the phone, I’ll figure out how to contact your Centauride telepathically to see if she still chooses you.” Brent pressed his lips together; in that brief second he shared the turmoil in his thoughts with me and nodded a silent “thank you.”

  I gestured to Daniel with my hand, “Daniel is three-quarters Centaur. His father is pure-blooded and his mother is half-Centaur. I’m not sure what the big whoopy-do is, because everyone keeps calling him a half-breed when he’s obviously more than that.” Daniel grinned but didn’t move to interrupt me.

  “Drake is my Centaur. I chose him. He doesn’t care that I’m from the Lost Herd, and yes, currently he doesn’t look human.” Daniel was the only one with a confused expression, but he let me continue.

  “That’s everythin
g I know. Now, why in the heck do Lapiths not like Centaurs?”

  Katherine snickered, “It’s nice to have a Centauride who doesn’t mind laying her cards on the table.” Katherine gestured to herself, “Lapiths are the humans who inhabited the pasture of Thessaly before Kentauros decided ta procreate with our mares. The first Centaurs born on the pasture of Thessaly were Lapith property.”

  Brent’s reaction was loud and laced with anger, “My ancestors were not property! They were children of a god and protected from harsh treatment at the hands of the Lapith, by the very god who fathered them.”

  Katherine’s volume matched Brent’s, “Right. Protected? If that’s what cha want ta call it. You were creatures loathed by the gods. Zeus couldn’t stand ta look at you, so he re-created you in his image and gave you seven simple rules to follow.”

  “That’s not true!”

  I jumped in between Katherine and Brent, “STOP! Would you two give it a rest? Decisions made by gods thousands of years ago seem less pressing than the fact that we have Zandra and a pile of Centaurs looking for us right now.”

  I took a breath, exhaled slowly and did my best to sound calm. “Brent is known to be of the Lost Herd, so he needs a wing-man. Daniel – that’s your job. Katherine, use your cloaking powers or whatever they are to keep us hidden. We wait fifteen minutes, and I’ll try contacting Bianca and Jessica again. Until then, we keep our voices low and hang tight.”

  Ten minutes later, Jessica’s voice was in my head, “Come back to the bar. They’ve got patrols all over the place in the woods.” I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Relief looked back at me from three sets of eyes when I announced, “Jessica wants us to go back to the bar.”

  Katherine was quick to answer, “Wait, ask her what her favorite ice cream flavor is.”

  I didn’t understand what Katherine was up to. “What?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Jessica, Katherine wants to know what your favorite ice cream flavor is.”

  “Oh, right. Tell her, Lamborghini.”

  “Seriously? Lamborghini?”

  “Just tell her. Hurry up and get back here.”

  I cleared my throat, wondering if I’d heard her wrong. “She said Lamborghini, and to hurry up and get back to the bar.”

  Katherine was visibly relieved. “Okay, coast is clear. Let’s go.”

  I didn’t understand the little code between the two and wanted clarification before we took a single step. “What are you two – spies?”

  “No, just cautious.”

  Still suspicious, “Lamborghini flavored ice cream? I don’t remember seeing that at the grocery store. Is that a South Dakota thing?”

  “That was Jessica’s idea.” Katherine wrapped her fingers around my forearm and squeezed hard, “Always ask that question if she tells ya to meet her somewhere. If she’s being coerced in any way, she’ll answer with an ice cream flavor – chocolate, vanilla, rainbow sherbet, something. Don’t let on that ya know it’s a trap, and stay as far away from where yer supposed to meet as possible.”

  I couldn’t understand how they would have put together a code system like this one. “When did she tell you that?”

  Katherine looked off into the distance of the tunnel. At first I didn’t think she would answer my question, but when she did, her voice was shaky. “She and I used ta have a friend -- Gayle. She died because Jessica couldn’t warn her she was being led into a trap. After Gayle was buried, we came up with the code thing.”

  We had a long walk ahead of us, back to the bar through the tunnel. I wasn’t sure if we could trust them. For all I knew the code meant something else entirely. There was likely a bounty on my head, maybe Brent’s, too. I began walking, but kept my pace slow while I pressed for more information. “A trap?”

  Katherine’s gaze was far off in front of us, remaining focused on the dimly lit tunnel ahead. I couldn’t be sure what special powers a Lapith might possess. From Brent’s reaction to her identity, I needed to be cautious. She must have sensed my apprehension because words began pouring out of her.

  “We grew up together. Gayle, Jessica, and I grew up right here – in this town. We met in kindergarten, and everyone, even our teachers, called us the three amigas.”

  I expected to see images playing in Katherine’s mind while she spoke. When people talked about the past, life-like images played in their head. As Katherine spoke, hers was blank. The absence of the images was eerie.

  “When we were little we played tetherball together on the playground, hopscotch on the sidewalk in the sunshine. I can’t tell ya how many notebooks I went through in junior high, passing notes to ‘em in the hallway at school. We were inseparable.”

  She paused looking at each of us. Her brows pulled together and her complexion lost some of its color. She was wrestling with how much to share. When she found her voice, it was steady, maybe a little distant, as if she were trying to barricade her emotions up – away from us.

  “There aren’t many Centaur families in this part of the country – only a handful. I had always known my ancestry, and so on instinct alone – I knew theirs. We gave up the playgrounds and recesses as we got older. I remember endless Saturday afternoons at movie theaters, window shopping at malls for fancy dresses we’d never wear, sharing chicken nuggets in the food court long after the stores closed, studying together for classes none of us cared about, and even ice skating on Gayle’s pond, praying the ice would hold the three of us. We were natural enemies and here I was looking at ‘em like we were sisters.”

  The strength in her expression seemed to diminish. “Lying to them about who I was started eatin’ me up from the inside. We were supposed to be enemies. . . but . . . I loved them both.” Katherine’s voice lowered to barely more than a whisper, “They were my sisters, or at least the sisters I had always wanted.”

  She finally settled her gaze on me. “Centaurides can’t detect a Lapith – to them I was a human. I worried they would abandon me, ridicule me, maybe even send their family after me if they found out. But, I couldn’t keep lying to ‘em.” A thin smile formed on Katherine’s lips, “We were playing a game of truth-or-dare one weekend at Gayle’s house. We were fourteen, and I blurted out that I was a Lapith.”

  “How did they take it?”

  Katherine muffled a laugh against the back of her hand, “Gayle offered ta give me a blood transfusion.” She smiled at the memory and shook her head, “Can ya imagine?”

  My eyes widened, “What would that have done?”

  “Nothing. But it was sweet of her to think she could dilute my Lapith blood with her Centauride blood. Gayle tried ta convince Jessica that they should look for a doctor to do the transfusion, and they could each give me a couple pints. She reasoned that if they put more Centauride blood in me than Lapith, they could change who I was, or make me a hybrid. It sounds silly now, but we all wanted ta be sisters.”

  “So, did they?”

  “No, but they would have if I let them. They cared about me whether or not I was their sworn enemy. The two of them agreed never ta tell a soul.”

  Katherine’s bright green eyes went misty, she wiped them hard with the palms of her hands, and her voice began to shake again. “Centaurides don’t date, or they’re not supposed to. Gayle got asked ta some stupid high school dance by the star football player. He was gorgeous, built like a brick house, and completely wrapped around Gayle’s little finger.” She shook her head at the memory, as if she were still frustrated with it. “Gayle agreed to be his date.”

  “The football player killed her?”

  “No.” Katherine took a breath to steady herself, “Jessica’s brother did.”

  My heart stopped, then began beating like crazy. “Wait. Jessica’s brother, Roscoe, killed Gayle?” She nodded, “But why?”

  “Gayle’s parents were furious with her for agreeing to go on a date with a human. It was our junior year. Her father didn’t want ta take a chance on her getting involved with a human,
so he arranged a marriage to Roscoe. At first Gayle said she’d go along with it. She chose Roscoe. Gayle said it was her duty, and this way she and Jessica could really be sisters – at least by marriage.”

  Katherine began trembling. She wrapped her arms around herself and bowed her head. What little color she had drained completely out of her face. “The football player wouldn’t let it go. He brought her flowers. He gave her his jersey. He walked her ta class – anything to be close to her. He didn’t understand she’d already been promised to Roscoe, and Gayle couldn’t tell him about Centaur traditions. None of it would have mattered ta him anyway – he was head-over-heels for Gayle.”

  “The football player convinced her to break the betrothal?”

  Katherine’s voice was hollow. “Jessica didn’t know Roscoe intended to seek a Blood Debt that day. She found out just before Gayle arrived.”

  Katherine stood in the middle of the three of us. Her eyes met mine, and I wanted to comfort her. None of us made a sound, waiting for her to continue, but unwilling to prod her. When she spoke, there was a rhythm to her words, as if she were forcing herself to tell us. “Jessica’s mother told her she would know if Jessica tried ta warn Gayle. Her mother threatened a betrothal to a Centaur who would make Jessica regret the day she was born if she betrayed her brother and warned Gayle.”

  Tears streamed down Katherine’s cheeks, but she kept talking. “Instead, Jessica pled with Roscoe – begging him not ta kill Gayle. Jessica promised she could make Gayle change her mind and marry Roscoe. In the end, Gayle showed up at Jessica’s house, and Roscoe took his Blood Debt right in front of Jessica.” It was hard to understand Katherine through the sobs, but she couldn’t keep the story in, “Roscoe told her that killing Gayle may end their blood line, but it would be ended with honor.”

  The barbarism – the thought that my life could have been sacrificed for Mom running away all those years ago sent shivers down my spine. I remembered the desperation I felt when I was told I might have to pay a Blood Debt. The debt for me would have been far better than the debt paid by Gayle. I would have been forced to marry Gage – no one planned to kill me. Tears flowed freely down Katherine’s face, and the only response I could force out was, “I’m so sorry.”