In the Beginning

Chapter 3

Ro stormed off, shoving her phone in her purse.

"Wait," commanded Jax, slinging his knife back into his belt. He grabbed her by the wrist and swung her around.

"What?! What do you want?" hissed Ro, eyes livid. "My dad could be dead, my brother as well, and you're telling me to - "

"I can get you where you need to be quicker."

Jax put two fingers to her forehead. Ro's stomach jerked like she was free-falling, tumbling through feathery darkness, with the sound of wings fluttering in the distance.

Her feet landed solidly on white marble floor. People in green scrubs raced past, shouting and wheeling someone past on a stretcher. A hand tumbled off the side, and Ro's knees grew weak. The tiny jagged scar on his palm from accidentally closing it in a car door, the fine blonde hair on his arms. It was her dad.

The busy corridor seemed to flash by in slow motion, as Ro's heart thudded in her ears among the frantic voices. As if in a dream, she followed the nurses down the hallway, led on by their bright green scrubs like a lantern in the darkness. They wheeled her father into a room. Critical. Ro heard the word over and over again.

Then everything snapped back to clarity, and Ro got a grip. She ran, ran faster than she ever had in her life, towards the man her life had revolved around since she was six. The one who had taught her how to load a gun, how to fight a stranger, how to pick pocket if she ever ran out of money. Who used to have soft, kind eyes that life had hardened over time, who used to read her fairy tales - fairy tales? Jax had said something about fairy tales... - and would watch over Ro and Jacob while they slept in the car, sometimes not resting at all himself.

She pushed past the doctors, vaguely aware of her voice yelling shrilly, "He's my dad, he's my dad!" She saw him, laying still on the stretcher with an almost peaceful expression. They locked eyes, and Ro stopped running.

"Dad."

"Ro," he said hoarsely. The doctors shook their heads, murmuring to each other as they hooked him up to a machine. Unsteady beeps filled the room.

"Can you gimme a minute alone?" he asked the staff quietly. They nodded, somber expressions on their face as they filtered out. Ro stood by the bed, trembling.

"I need to tell you something, Ro. Everything."

"No, don't talk like that," whispered Ro, her voice shaky. "Don't talk like you're dying."

"I should have told you everything while I had the chance. I just wanted you to live a normal childhood, away from all this - this bullshit that your mother and me carried around. I'm so sorry."

"No!" shouted Ro. "Stop that. Stop this."

"Can't stop the reaper, sweetie."

"Don't make jokes on your death bed. It's not right."

"You listen to me, Ronan Elizabeth Hayes." Her father stared at her with intense eyes. He took her hand. "You come from an ancient line of very powerful hunters. You are a descendant of one of the first Legend families, and you are the twentieth granddaughter of Sir Gregory Hayes. You have inherited his Element of Fire. You have your own destiny. And I'm just sorry I won't be around to see you fulfill it."

Tears welled up Ro's eyes, light flickering through her blurry eyelashes. What Jax had told her seemed to match what her father was saying.

"Look in the back of the trunk. Those boxes, the ones I've told you over and over not to touch, you remember those?"

"Of course," Ro said, a cross between a sob and a laugh escaping her. "I remember Jacob opened one once and you took away his DS for two months."

"I want you to open those boxes," her father said, gripping her hand tight. "I want you to read the journals, sharpen the weapons, and prepare yourself. Hell, Jacob too. Because what killed your mother, what's killing me now, is coming after you next."