Touch of Death(22)

"I'm sure you've noticed the eyes." Yeah, I'd noticed his eyes, since I'd referred to him as Green Eyes before I found out his name. He laughed and turned back to the road.

"What?" Did he somehow know about the nickname I'd given him?

"Maybe you should check out the mirror on the back of the visor." He flipped the visor down. In the small mirror, all I could see were my eyes. My green eyes. "All Ophi have green eyes. Now that doesn't mean that everyone with green eyes is an Ophi. Not at all. There actually aren't many of us in existence."

"Why not? Wasn't there enough Gorgon blood to go around?"

"Remember Mr. Quimby said Hades got upset that Ophiuchus was bringing back all the dead and the underworld was too empty?"

I nodded. "Yeah, so Zeus struck him with a lightning bolt and put him in the sky." Good old Zeus. I wondered if being an Ophi had anything to do with my strange hatred for Zeus.

"Right. Well, Hades isn't a big fan of us Ophi."

I squinted at him. "You mean, like now? Hades and the other gods are still around?" This was almost too much to process. "And Hades doesn't like you guys right now?"

"Yes, the gods are still around. And Hades doesn't like you, either. You're one of us, remember?"

"So, what does that mean? Is he going to have Zeus strike us all down?"

"No, nothing like that. Hades made it so that Ophi can only procreate at the age of twenty-five, and our children have to be born between the dates of November 29 and December 17."

"That's crazy. So, you're telling me that, since I'm an Ophi, I have to have a baby at twenty-five?"

"If you want to keep the Ophi line going. Do your part."

"You mean, if I have a child any other time, it won't be Ophi?"

Alex's expression hardened. "It'll be dead."

"Are you threatening the baby I haven't even had?" Boy this guy made it hard to like him.

"No. Ophi can't have non-Ophi children. If you had a baby outside of age twenty-five and without its birth occurring under Ophiuchus' sign, the baby would die the second it took its first breath."

"What? Why?" This just kept getting worse.

"Babies feed off their mothers. The child would have your Gorgon blood in its veins. Without being Ophi, the baby would die."

"But wait. My mom's not Ophi. If only Ophi people can have Ophi children, how do you explain me?"

He looked at me, raising his brows. I shrugged. "What?"

"You can't think of where you got your Gorgon blood from? Anyone else who might have passed it down to you?"

"My dad?" I'd never met my father. I didn't even know his name. "You're telling me my dad's Ophi?"

"He has to be."

"But how is my mom alive then? Wouldn't he have killed her when they-" I couldn't bring myself to finish that sentence.                       
       
           



       

"How old is your mom?"

"Why?" I couldn't help getting a little defensive. People always made comments about how young Mom was. It wasn't anyone's business that she'd been a teen mother. The reason I ended up being homeschooled for most of my life was to avoid the heckling in school, mostly from other parents.

"I'm going to guess thirty-three or thirty-four. I bet your dad was the same age because he couldn't have come into his powers when he and your mom …  got together."

"What do you mean?"

"You've kissed guys before, right?"

I crossed my arms, hugging myself. "I don't see why you need to know that."

"Come on. Don't be a prude. You're seventeen. You're hot. You've kissed guys."

I was hot?

"Oh, don't look so shocked. You own mirrors. None of those guys died because you hadn't fully come into your powers yet. It usually happens around sixteen, but your mom's not Ophi. Her blood is in your veins, diluting the Gorgon blood your dad gave you. And his blood wasn't fully Ophi yet either, so that might have something to do with it."

"Wow, that's a lot to take in." I sighed. "I guess it's good I'm coming with you. I'll be able to meet others like me. It must be harder for half-Ophi to get used to their power, right?"

"I wouldn't know. No other Ophi has ever had one human parent. You're the only one. And if the prophecy about your birth is correct, that makes you the Chosen One."

My insides tightened. How could I be the only Ophi this had ever happened to? "Chosen for what?"

"To save the Ophi race."





Chapter 15

"Whoa!" I put my hands against the glove compartment to steady myself, but all it did was hurt my cut hands. "Save the Ophi race? You have to be kidding me. Tell me this is some new kid initiation or something."

"Sorry, Jodi." Alex glanced at me quickly before turning down yet another road. "Believe me, after everything you've been through-today alone-I wouldn't joke about something like this. I hate to dump all of this on you at once, but I'm trying to answer your questions as honestly as I can."

"I appreciate that, but why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"How would you have reacted if the first time we met I'd said, ‘By the way, you're the only Ophi of your kind and that means you need to save the rest of our sorry behinds from Hades'?"

I turned to him. "From Hades? What do you mean from Hades? You said he made sure there aren't too many Ophi by controlling how we're created, when we can be born. What else does he want from us?" I was surprised how easily I was saying "us," accepting that I was one of them. It felt surreal and strangely comforting at the same time.

"Some Ophi overuse their powers. Bring back people and things that shouldn't be brought back. Hades doesn't like that. He tracks them down."

"You mean kills them."

"Yes. And it's not pleasant. Hades makes them relive the deaths of every person they brought back."

I felt the bile in my stomach churn and threaten to come up. I lowered my window and stuck my head out into the freezing cold night air. I couldn't help thinking about Hades being upset with me for all my accidental raisings. The deer, the squirrel, Matt. If Hades took my life and made me pay for all of them, I'd have to endure the torture of getting hit by a car, having a hammer smash my head in, and drowning by poison blood. Right now, Zeus and his lightning bolt were looking pretty good.

I finally pulled my head back inside the car. "Feel any better?"

"Not really. But I think your leather seats are safe for the time being. Still, I'll leave the window open for a while, just in case."

"Much appreciated."

"How do we know who we are supposed to bring back and who we're not, anyway?" I had to know how much of a problem I'd created for myself with Hades.

"Mostly, Hades doesn't want us bringing souls back from the depths of the underworld, a place called Tartarus-the lowest level of Hell. And believe me, you don't want to do that anyway. It's the scariest thing you'll ever see. Those souls are so tortured that shoving them back into their bodies is hideous and extremely dangerous. They're completely wild and animalistic. It takes a lot of concentration and power to control them."

"Why would someone do it then? If it's so difficult and it puts you on Hades' target list, why do it?"

"I can't really answer that for you." I was glad about that. If he had given me a good reason, I'd have thought I was trapped in a speeding car with a raging psycho. "The souls Ophi raise are usually in limbo or in some other part of the underworld where they aren't being tortured. They're still difficult to control, but it's nowhere near as bad."

I swallowed hard, not wanting to think about raising anything.

"Look, the drive is going to take a while and it's getting late. I know my parents are going to want to show you around and start on your training the second we get there, so you should probably recline your seat and get some sleep."

I wasn't entirely comfortable with that idea. I mean, I didn't know Alex, not really. Sure he'd saved my mom, which was the only reason I could hold it together right now after I'd been ripped from my life. But did I trust him enough to make myself that vulnerable? He carried a knife.

"Hey, why do you carry a knife? I thought only serial killers kept weapons on them at all times."

"Serial killers and Boy Scouts. I was a Scout when I was younger. Well, the Ophi equivalent, at least. I wasn't around humans much growing up."

Alex didn't have a normal life-ever. Not that my life had been so normal. Teen mom, homeschooling, and then the transformation to an Ophi. "What was it like growing up around other Ophi and not around humans?"

"Don't go feeling sorry for me, Jodi. I never knew any differently. To me, my life is normal."

"You can't miss what you never had and all that?" I wasn't buying it. "Were you ever around humans? I mean, you knew about the Scouts, so you must have been exposed to humans at least a little bit. Like the Ophi at Serpentarius."

"Yeah, some. Mom and Dad used to make me watch TV. They said it was research. I could learn about humans without actually being around them. And every once in a while, one of my instructors would take me on a field trip. Somewhere not too crowded, where I could observe humans. As I got older, I had to keep a safe distance." His voice trailed off, and his eyes glassed over. "I talked to a girl once. She was maybe a year younger than me. She was sitting on a bench in the park. It was early morning, and not too many people were there. My instructor got a phone call and told me to sit on a bench and wait for him. I did, but I stared at the girl, and she noticed me. She told me it wasn't nice to stare at people. That I should say ‘hi.'" I guessed he never learned to take her advice because he'd done the exact same thing to me. "But I'd never talked to a human before, let alone a pretty one. She came over and sat with me. My instructor didn't notice because he was still talking on the phone. I tried to get his attention a few times, but I finally gave up and talked to the girl." He stopped, gripping the steering wheel in both hands.