The Soul Mate

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Did you see Gerik today?” I asked Xan after dinner as we walked back to the living lot.

He shook his head. “He’s been MIA, but so has Onyx.” He shrugged and cocked one of his shockingly black eyebrows at me. “Why? Miss him?”

Ignoring that, I continued, “I’m just worried that he’s going to do something crazy.” And I really was. I didn’t want all that unstable magic loose on Xan. Or me.

As it turned out, it wasn’t Gerik we had to be worried about. Waiting for us in front of Xan’s trailer was Drina, her hands on her hips, her mouth set in a straight line.

“Come with me,” She said, not bothering to mask her unhappiness at the sight of our clasped hands.

“What’s this about?” Xan asked her.

She glanced first to her left then her right. “Not here fiul meu. There are eyes and ears everywhere.”

She gestured for us to follow as she began walking away. Xan, although rolling his eyes, obeyed.

“She is so over dramatic,” He whispered.

Drina’s RV greeted us with the strong scents of Blessed Thistle, Calamus and Fennel as well as many others I couldn’t yet put a name too. I had begun to recognize a lot of the herbs and roots used for protection around camp. Drina would wrap them in cloth and tie them to strips of leather for people to wear around their necks or put underneath their pillows and trailers.

Ducking the strands of dried vegetables hanging from the ceiling, Drina sat down at her work table, immediately picking up her pestle and mortar which she began to vigorously grind.

I sat down across from her, waiting patiently for her to speak but Xan remained standing, his expression conveying annoyance.

Drina’s eyes went glassy as she continued to work on her mixture and I got the feeling we had been forgotten.

Xan, slammed his fist on the table, finally gaining her attention. He glared down at her. Drina glanced up, her equally dark gaze matching her son’s.

“You cannot see her,” She snapped, pointing a long bronzed finger in my direction.

Not only the camps healer, Xan had told me his mother is clairvoyant, like a fortune teller only much more powerful. Drina was able to do cold readings on people, ascertaining their pasts, presents and futures without having to even touch them.

Xan shook his head, angry. “Stay out of my business,” He replied.

Drina ignored him. Instead she focused on me, her pupils, barely discernable from her from irises as it was, began to expand until only a small amount of white remained. She looked like a demon.

Xan, unfazed by this, grabbed my hand and pulled me out my chair.

“She’s taken!” Drina yelled. “Born with a destiny and meant for another!”

“Shut up!” Xan roared, kicking the table. The entire structure shook and the pestle and mortar fell to the floor, shattering.

“Don’t you know what she is?” Drina screamed at her son. “What she is to Gerik?”

The table was suddenly flying across the room. A crack in the wall appeared where the table had hit. The small table bounced back across the floor, stopping at Drina’s outstretched foot.

Drina cursed. “Stupid boy.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her, “What am I?”

“You’re a gift for the chosen!” She snarled, “Given only to the most powerful, the most revered of Nature’s children!”

She shook her fist at me. “You have the other half of the boy’s soul, you foolish fată!”

“I… I’m a gift?” I’d heard the rest, but I seemed to be unable to get past the part where I was a gift.

“Yes!” Drina snapped at me. “Gerik’s gift! Stay away from my son!”

“But…how? Why?” I asked, still having a hard time processing the fact that I was a gift.

“But why?” Drina mocked. “Gerik’s affinity for all the elements comes at a price. As he grew, so did his magic. All that power cannot be contained in his body alone.”

The urge to throw up was promptly my biggest concern.

“Am I even a real person?” I asked her, feeling very odd. I had a fleeting thought that maybe none of this was real and I was locked up in an asylum somewhere. Sadly, that would have been infinitely better than this reality.

“Yes,” She said, giving me a strange look. “What else would you be?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I murmured. “A fairy, maybe a werewolf? Anything would be preferable than being forced into magical slavery.”

“You ungrateful child!” Drina stood, peering down her nose at me. “You were made for Gerik! There is no other path for you!”

I jumped when the door behind me slammed. Ignoring the rest of Drina’s ranting, I followed Xan outside.

Leaning against Drina’s propane tank, arms crossed, he refused to look at me.

I blew out a slow breath. “It’s not like I knew.”

“No?”

“No!”

He snorted. “Right.”

“Wait, you’re upset with me? I just find out that I’m some guy’s gift and you’re upset? How is that fair? I haven’t done anything!”

“Yeah, not yet.”

Taken back, I was at a loss for words.

“Yeah! Not fucking yet!” He repeated, his voice raising. “It’s only a matter of time, Trin. You’re his…his…his soul mate!” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus Christ, she said you were made for him! Made! For him!”

Pushing off the propane tank, he turned abruptly and punched the side of trailer.

“You said you were going to help me!” I yelled. To think I had been worried about Gerik acting irrationally.

I took a step toward him but he halted me. “Go be with your soul mate.”

I froze. All of the anger I had felt toward Gerik suddenly reared its ugly head at Xan.

“Xan! Screw you!” I cried out as he walked away. He paused but didn’t turn around.

“That’s Gerik’s job!” He bellowed back. “Always has been!"

Hours later, I was still fuming. A Gods damn gift, Drina had said. And I had half of Gerik’s soul to boot. It seemed the Viking had more than some Neanderthal claim on me. As it turned out I was his birthday present for being extra special good boy.

When in all the Gods and Goddesses had this happened?

My father had told me, in the form of a bedtime story, that mankind long ago had two heads and four arms. At some point in time they did something that offended a God and that God punished mankind by splitting them down the middle. This resulted in the creation of humankind. The punishment was that we as a race were now condemned to spend our lives searching for our other half, our soul mate.

Was it all true? Did I only have half a soul? Was that why being with Gerik made me feel so… complete?

Are people actually made for one another?

I’d asked my daddy, when I was still pretty young, why he hadn’t stayed with my older sister’s mother. He chucked me under the chin and said, “Our connection just wasn’t strong enough to last through the both the good and the bad.”

I asked him then if he was going to leave my mom too. His handsome face turned very serious as he knelt down in front of me and cupped my cheeks. “No my heart, your mother and I are not just connected, she is the Aphrodite to my Ares.”

But were they soul mates? Everything inside of me screamed yes. I’d seen the way he looked at her. The way they’d kissed each other when they thought no one was watching. But there had been no force of Nature, no magic behind their joining, had there?

Or had all the events that led to my birth been predestined just so Gerik and I would end up together?

And then all the events after that?

I lurched up in bed feeling sick again.

I’d just barely reached the swimming hole, towel and clean clothing in tow, more than ready for a good long soak, when I realized Gerik was standing behind me.

“I miss you,” He said, his deep voice trembling.

I closed my eyes and sighed. The last thing I wanted to do right now was tell him that I knew what he’d been hiding from me. It was a fight waiting to happen that I didn't have the energy for.

He ran shaking hands through his unbraided hair. “I... the thing with Onyx, I can explain it all. I can stop Trinity. I just need you in order to do that. It’s complicated. But it’s you I want…please try and understand?”

He reached for me and I wasn’t quick enough to avoid him. As he pulled me forward I waited for the onslaught of hormones but they never came, he hadn’t touched me skin to skin. Looking up into his blue, beseeching eyes and I felt a stab of regret for how harshly I’d been treating him.

It wasn’t his fault we were connected, it was something we were both born into. However, I still wasn’t ready to forgive him for the many times he’d refused to use restraint when it came to touching me. He’d been careless, blatantly so.

I sank into his embrace and let his presence wash over me, comforting and soothing me in a way no one else could, not even my own mother.

A loud, thundering crash had both of us glancing toward the chicken coop. Xan had just dropped an entire armful of logs next to one of the smaller fire pits. One by one they toppled over each other. Xan didn’t bother picking them up or straightening them. He just stood there for a moment, staring at the fallen wood then lit up a cigarette. He took a long slow drag and blew it out equally slow.

Then with a hateful glance my way he strode off, disappearing behind the trailers and tents.

Tobar, Jericho’s grandson and the Popa Clan heir, was standing a few feet away watching the whole mess over the rim of his coffee mug, thoroughly amused.

Gerik looked back at me, his expression stormy. “I’m not blind, yeah? You think I don’t know what’s been going on?”

I said nothing. I didn’t feel I owed him an explanation for anything.

“With Xan!” He exclaimed, the tone of his voice suggesting that he’d felt what I had done was right up there alongside cold blooded murder.

Agitation mounting at my silence he again raked his hands through his hair. “I’m hurting! Can’t you see that? I’m sick of needing you and not understanding why you don’t need me back. Why would I get cursed like this, bound to someone who isn’t bound to me? It’s not fair, yeah?”

I raised an eyebrow at his slip up. “Cursed, Gerik? Bound?” I twisted in his grasp, freeing myself. I didn’t bother to hide my sarcasm. “Why whatever do you mean? I thought we were simply special.”

His eyes flashed white. “You know.” He bit out.

“Yeah, I know! And I have no idea why you look so pissed off. You had no right to keep that from me. Telling me we were special and that was all! Gods it was so much more than that and you… you had the nerve to tell me magic had nothing to do with it! All lies!”

“How could I tell you?” He shouted, “You were grieving Trinity! You watched your sister die! The world had been destroyed! Magic had just been introduced into your very sheltered, very Gaje existence and what… you wanted me throw this in as well, yeah?”

Well… I had to admit that sounded reasonable.

“Exactly how was I supposed to do that? Good morning Trinity, and by the way you’re my other half, literally! You were made especially for me and my magic! You would have thought I was crazy!”

Some small part of me knew he was right and could rationalize why he would keep such an incredible secret from me. But I couldn’t forget everything else he’d done. That while he was keeping this secret from me he’d still been breaking promises, promises to refrain from touching me, to give me space and let me keep my wits about me.

Why couldn’t he just give me my space? What exactly was he so hell bent on?

It’s not going to work you know?” He said. His expression turned brutal. “You can’t be with Xan. You can’t be with anyone, except me. Ever.”

Gerik was watching me expectantly, hoping this information was going to get some sort of reaction out of me. Too bad for him, but I’d already known, and wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of showing my anger.

“I’ll be with whomever I want Gerik and rest assured it will never be you.”

Whatever control Gerik had been holding onto instantly broke. I watched the change in him happen. He went ridged, his skin seemed too tight for his body and his eyes too large for their sockets.

I was stepping backwards when the earth began to ripple beneath my feet. It was just a small tremor at first then the ground began to shake so furiously I could no longer stand and had to brace myself on my hands and knees.

“You will be mine,” He told me. His voice had changed, had deepened enough to carry over the groaning earth and the creaking trees that were being uprooted before my eyes.

A vicious wind swept through camp stopping to circle around Gerik and I. It blocked out the light from the bonfires and engulfed us in darkness.

“Gerik…” I tried to speak but my words were swept away, unheard, by the wind. I doubted he could even see me now through the thick fog of wind currents.

“Gerik!” I screamed over the noises of the unnatural storm.

Long minutes passed until the trees began to settle as the ground stilled. I scrambled to my feet. Still seething, Gerik glared down at me.

“You don’t have a choice in the matter. I have my full powers now, Trinity. I’ve had them since I was twenty five and can barely contain the energy inside of me anymore.”

He closed the distance between us and gripped my shoulders. “I need you. If we don’t complete the bond I don’t know what will happen to me.”

I could only gape at him. Complete the bond? And give me magic?

“Our soul will never stop trying to come together! Don’t you get it? It’s forcing you to me! This is beyond you and me! You don’t have a choice and neither do I! ”

If he wanted to hurt me then he’d done a sufficient job. Everything was about him. His powers, his energy, his need for me and the fact that I was made for him, to house his excess magic or whatever. Gerik could wrap this package up in a pretty bow and call me his “other half” but that didn’t lessen the fact that what he was trying to force on me was purely selfish and sounded clinical.

I was obsolete in this. Gerik was sick and I was his cure. Who I was or what I looked like had never mattered. He didn’t even know anything about me or me him. He’d never before asked about my life, or attempted to share his with me.

Ours was a relationship based on single-sided need, if anything he had a more functional relationship with Onyx than he ever did with me. I was just a means to an end, a backpack really, to store things in that he didn’t have room for on his person.

I wondered if he even cared for me at all.

“Gerik,” A deep voice boomed.

Belatedly I realized that Jericho was calling out to us. He looked wary, undoubtedly because Gerik had just started hurricane in the middle of his camp. Most of camp had gathered behind him. I’m guessing they were all prepared to try and control him if he hadn’t gotten control of himself.

“Son, in this clan, nothing will be forced on a person. Gaje or Gypsy.”

The two men stared at each until Gerik released my shoulders and took a step away from me. I took a sideways step toward the living lot, then another, and then I was running as fast as I could to my trailer.