Oppression by Jessica Therrien Page A

paused, reassessing a bit. There was a brief moment as she flickered her eyes toward William, finding the same cold look as before, only this time I picked up on the hesitant tension between them before she continued. “Five, actually. They are descendant of Zeus, Hera, Hades, Demeter, and Hestia, and their abilities are nothing to sneeze at if you know what I mean.”
    William quit trying after his several subliminal attempts to steer the conversation. Instead, he listened as Rachel explained things to me, things that as a culture, they were not proud of.
    It was hard for me to see him worry. I could almost feel the gut-wrenching ache I knew he had in his stomach just by reading the tight lines on his face. It made it difficult for me to concentrate when he looked like that, but I wanted to know.
    “Christoph is the worst of them all,” she continued. “He has Zeus’s bloodline, so he thinks he should be the most powerful. He is more eager to punish than the others.”
    “So what can he do? Throw thunderbolts or what?”
    “The whole bolt thing was an alias. There is a bloodline that can manipulate electricity, but Zeus only used him as a cover. It was actually pretty smart. It kept him protected. The ability of Zeus’s bloodline is as good as it gets. He can take your power away like it was nothing with a single glance, or if it is in his favor, he can amplify it ten-fold.”
    “Only for men though,” William corrected, giving in a little to our conversation. “Adrianna is his counterpart. She’s of Hera, and she can do the same but only for women. Nature’s way of balancing the scale, I suppose.”
    “Unless they’re both corrupt,” I added.
    “They are,” he said with shame in his voice. “The truth is, if that girl at the beach remembers anything, and somehow they find out, none of the consequences are good.”
    “Christoph could take away his ability. Antec, who is descendant of Hades,” Rachel added, “could send him to the underworld for who knows how long—”
    “Wait, underworld?” I asked surprised. “You’re telling me that is real?”
    “It’s a prison for our kind,” William answered. “Antec controls it, and if that is your sentence, he can make you disappear right on the spot.”
    “What’s it like?” I asked, picturing a fire-filled hellhole.
    “Nobody really knows,” Rachel said. “One second you’re here, the next you’re gone.”
    There was obviously another punishment, one I was pretty sure I could guess at. Nevertheless, the details came as a shock to me.
    William sighed with remorse. “Dimitri is another unhappy scenario. He’s descendant of Demeter.”
    “Goddess of the harvest?” I asked. It was hard to imagine the goddess of the harvest causing any harm, but then again, nothing had turned out like the Greek myths I was familiar with.
    “Yes,” William answered, “but the ability passed down through her bloodline is much more lethal than you would think.”
    “Dimitri can make any living thing grow and flourish, or die. Including us,” Rachel explained.
    “For plants, the ability isn’t much, but growth for us means that he can make us age, take away centuries of life even.”
    “Or, he can just kill you with a touch of his hand,” said Sam’s voice as he approached the table.
    We all jumped. He had snuck up on us so easily, and I wondered how much he had heard. Was he listening from a distance as we discussed the possibilities of his potentially dismal fate?
    “You okay?” William asked.
    “He’s going to be fine, bro,” Paul said, slapping a guff hand to Sam’s back. “Nobody saw anything.”
    “What’s with the decade dialect, bro ?” Nics asked mockingly as she walked up beside him.
    They all seemed much more light-hearted about the situation than we were.
    “Times are changing. You’ve got to roll with the punches, dude,” Paul continued with a grin. Rachel rolled her eyes and shook her head, but an endearing smile flashed quickly