“Ah, but you did…and yet you didn’t. You’ve accepted that side of yourself, but you need to embrace her fully, to welcome her in and you need to take off the leash now.” Hecate looked up at the stars overhead. “You see the sky? How vast it is?”
I nodded, gazing up. “I do. It seems so impersonal at times, so cold and barren. Yet, I really do love to sit beneath it and just breathe.”
“Does the cold side of it bother you?”
I wasn’t sure why she was asking, but I stopped to think, mulling over her question before answering. Hecate wasn’t prone to asking random or inconsequential questions.
“I honestly don’t think it does. It seems so…alien, yet it comforts me. It takes the weight off my shoulders. I don’t have to be anything, not beneath the vastness of the universe. I can just breathe…just sit and be exactly who I am.”
“What if I were to tell you that you need to be as comfortable with yourself all the time, as you are when you look to the sky. You need to step aside from the judgement and just allow yourself to be who you are. What you are. You were brought up to think of yourself as human with an aberration, but you are not. There’s a side of you that is feral and ruthless, cold and aloof, and you need to just let it be what it is, without trying to change it. That doesn’t mean you lack control, but you have to be able to exist without judging yourself constantly.”
I thought about it. While I’d embraced that side of myself and let her in, I still was nervous—I didn’t fully trust myself.
“What if you were to just go about your day without overthinking everything you do? Because you’re going to reach a point where you have to trust your instincts.”
“Isn’t that like telling a serial killer to trust themselves, the side of their personality that’s?—”
“It’s not natural for a human to become a serial killer. Likening your demon self with the personality of a killer isn’t normal, either. At least for your clan. Demons—some—aren’t any more evil than some humans. Colder? Maybe. More decisive? Definitely. More temperamental? Yes. But any more likely to kill someone just because they’re a demon? Not really. Not unless they’re one of the lower demonic creatures, and that’s another matter entirely.” Hecate frowned. “Perhaps I’m not explaining this as well as I should be.”
“No, I think I get it. You’re telling me not to assume that I’m any more dangerous because of my demonic side than I would be if I were fully human. To accept the aspects that worry me as just part of the whole?” Sometimes, it seemed that the gods talked in circles, but I thought I understood what she said.
Hecate nodded. “Correct. Every human is a potential killer. Every demon is a potential killer. It’s up to the individual which path they choose to walk. Creation must always go hand-in-hand with destruction, or the balance of the universe would be off. Death is necessary for life to continue. Shadow cannot exist without light, and light must have shadow to temper it. The balance is everything. And so we accept both sides because both are necessary.”
“Then what crossroad am I facing? What’s my fork in the road?” I asked. “It can’t just be choosing to accept who I am?”
“It’s not,” Hecate said. “But accepting that sometimes your actions may necessarily align with forces you actively avoid. Sometimes, you have to be the karmic facilitator.”
And that…was it in a nutshell. Choosing not to act on a whim was one thing, but choosing to harm was another. And I knew this had some connection with my father.
“I get it,” I finally said. “Sometimes I’ll have to play the bad cop. I can’t overcompensate for my nature.”
Hecate laughed. “Succinct, but accurate.”
I didn’t like that—not one bit. But I understood. “What happens if I don’t, though? What if I actively avoid making decisions that haunt me?”
“Then, my young friend, you chance making the situation worse. Capiche?”
I sighed. “I do. The old riddle…what if you had a chance to kill Hitler when he was young? Before he became a madman, mass murderer?”
“You forgot genocidal maniac. And yes…if you had the chance, knowing what would happen when he grew up, would you take it?”
I thought long and hard. She was actually waiting for an answer. The question hadn’t been rhetorical. “I guess…yeah, I’d do it. To save millions of lives? I would.”
“Then you have your answer. Not every situation you face will come with a guarantee, just as the Hitler one doesn’t. But sometimes, you have to make decisions based on the best of your knowledge, not a sure bet. Remember that, Kyann. It may save your life—or your friends’ lives—in the future. Your demonic heritage will hone your instincts. You have to trust her.”
I nodded, thinking over everything we’d discussed. “All right. I’ll let that side of myself lead, when necessary. I won’t leash myself in.” And with that, everything went dark, and when I opened my eyes, Penn was staring at me, frowning.
“Okay, where’d you go? I know you weren’t in there, because I shook you a couple of times and you didn’t respond.”
“Believe it or not, you catapulted me out onto Hecate’s Crossroads, where we had an interesting conversation about my choices in life.” I told her what had happened.
“Sound advice, if you ask me. So, do you want to hear what I found out from the watch and the flier? When you didn’t move, I sensed something important was going on so decided to leave you alone and just finish up with the psychometry.” Penn handed me the items. They felt warm to the touch.
“Yeah. What did you find?”
“The watch—the owner is still alive but…he’s not the same. There’s something different about him. You said he was human, correct?” She shook her head, pointing to the watch.
“Right,” I said, looking at the timepiece.
