Lifethread: McKenna's Story (An Excerpt)

Lifethread: McKenna's Story

Cast of Characters

The Fates: Children of Zeus (and either Nyx or Themis—no one knows for sure). The often disobedient sisters get away with most anything. They carry the power over life and death, and are part of the order of the universe.

 Clotho:The Spinner and the youngest of the three Fates. She spins the thread of life from her distaff onto her spindle. Clotho is also known as the daughter of night, to indicate the darkness and obscurity of human destiny.

Her Moirai priestess: Shea Ang

Lachesis: The Apportioner. She measures the thread of life allotted to each person with her measuring rod, and some say, she chooses destiny. Lachesis appears within three days of a birth to decide the child’s fate.

Her Moirai priestess: Merritt Eck

 Atropos: The Cutter, and the oldest of the three Fates. She cuts the thread of life. She chooses the manner of each person’s death; and when their time comes, she cuts their life-thread with her shears.

Her Moirai priestess: McKenna Fin

 Significant Human

Nathan Quinn:A mixed creation—Clotho began and Shea completed his design. Nathan has paranormal gifts, and has a thing for McKenna.

 Significant Former Priestess

Arlie: A former Moirai priestess, caught by demons during her transition to human.

Significant Feline

Oliver Biscuit: The Moirai green-eyed black cat.

Chapter 1

“McKenna Fin.” I snapped out the syllables of my name and a shimmer of energy coated the walls of the history classroom. The back of my neck prickled with unsettling intensity, and I couldn’t stop my fingers from rifling the pages of my textbook. Four times the substitute teacher from hell had called me by some other name. Count them. Four. Too many, even for an evil imbecile of a substitute unit. Not only was she unable to cope with a simple seating chart, but…uh-oh, her eyes were taking on the vacant stare that telegraphed “demon” in blossoming shades of red.

Dammit all to Zeus, I’d have to kill her and it was only third period.

No way around it seeing as I’m the Moirai Priestess, connected to the Fate, Atropos. There are three of us roaming the Earth at any given time, each assigned to one of the Fates. My boss just happened to be responsible for cutting lifethreads. Ending human life. Or in my case, ending demon life.

I fingered the glowing blade tucked into a special pocket on my backpack—the kind of blade made of Ouranian magick that didn’t set off metal detectors, or any other detector for that matter. Ripples of energy came alive under my fingertips as I stroked the glassy smooth surface, deftly avoiding the killer edge. I love my blade.

My fingers twitched with urgency. I had to kill it before its eyes turned completely red with demon strength. The thing is, Atropos gets all hinky when I draw attention to myself, and I seriously hate when she calls me in front of the Triad for behavior unbecoming a Moirai Priestess. Not good. It would probably mean another one hundred years being stuck in my senior year of high school. And seriously, the first fifty were more than enough. Immortality sucks. I mean, who can tolerate being seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty-five days old, for like forever. You’d think she could have created me with a birth date that came with voting privileges and didn’t require emancipation papers.