Committed Chapter 20

Ariadne was nearly out of breath when they finally reached the bottom floor.  Taking over thirty flights of stairs was exhausting.  She’d almost fallen twice, Paris once.  Both times she’d been able to recover her balance.  Same with Paris.  But they were both winded now as they made their way down the final set of stairs into the parking garage.

            They burst out into the underground complex, cement walls and ceilings keeping the ground above them from caving down on her.  Ariadne saw cracks forming in the rectangular pillars supporting the roof, saw it in the walls.  Would the garage choose this moment to collapse down on top of them?  Or was she just imagining the imminent collapse.     

            “Over here,” Ariadne said.  She hurried over to what looked like a garage door just to the left of the stairwell exit.  There was a keypad next to the garage door.  She had the keys to her father’s car, which was just behind that door, but she hadn’t expected the key pad.

            “I don’t know what the passcode is,” Ariadne said.

            “Try your birthday.”

            “My dad has known his whole life that he’d eventually have to hand me over to Janus to be his wife-slave.  What makes you think he would choose my birthdate-“

            “Just try it!”

            Ariadne gave a sigh of exhasperation and quickly punched in her birthdate.  The screen above the pad blinked ACCESS GRANTED and the garage door began to rise.

            “See,” Paris said.

            Ariadne didn’t say anything.  The two of them ducked down under the door without waiting for it to finish rising.  Paris stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the car sitting there waiting for them.

            “Oh, no, you have got to be kidding me,” he said, eyes wide with amazement.

            “Get in,” Ariadne said, stepping around to the passenger’s side of the car and clicking the remote to unlock the doors.

            “Hold on Ariadne, we need to treat the lady right,” Paris said.  He took a step forward and lowered his hands to the hood of the car as though he were going to touch it, but kept them an inch above the surface of the car as though out of respect.  “Hello, gorgeous.”

            “Paris.”

            “Ariadne, I am about to climb into this car,” Paris said as he walked around to the passenger’s side, keeping his hands just above the car all the way.  “Do you have any idea how fantastic that is?  I have never even seen one of these in real-life let alone thought I’d ever get to drive around in one.  Let me take a moment to show my admiration.”

            The garage door had risen all the way up now.  The garage door faced out into the underground parking perpendicular to the opening of the stairwell door they’d come down from.  Ariadne was already inside the car, turning the key in the ignition when the stairwell door slammed open.

            She looked up and saw the same man from the elevator burst out and look around wildly for them.  Before he had finished doing a one-hundred and eighty degree scan of the underground parking area, Paris had yanked open the passenger’s side door, plopped himself down in the seat next to her, and buckled himself in.

            “Go, go, go!” Paris cried.

            The man’s eyes locked onto Ariadne’s through the windshield in front of her.  She felt a surge run through her, as though a secret message had been sent through the air between them.

            I’m going to catch you.

            Ariadne felt the coldness continue to spread out into her limbs from her heart as she put her foot down on the accelerator.  She wondered how long before the cold rendered he completely immobile.  Frozen.

Achilles locked eyes with Ariadne Helen, sitting in the driver’s seat of the car.  She had her hands on the wheel.  She was driving, not Paris.  Was that the normal behaviour for someone who had been kidnapped against her will?

            Achilles saw that Paris was seated in the passenger’s seat next to her.  There was no sign of any weapon pointed at Ariadne.  No sign at all that he was coercing her to drive.  Stockholm Syndrome perhaps?  Or was he looking at everything backwards, courtesy of the perspective his client had selected for him?

            The car they were in hummed to life and pulled out of its private garage.

            For a moment, Achilles just had to admire the sleek metal vehicle pulling out towards him.  Marble white metal with a slash of black ribbon just behind the door on either side.  A smooth, curved design for maximum speed and aerodynamic movement.

            A split second later, the Arthur Helen’s Audi R8 shot past Achilles like a blur, heading for the underground parking’s exit.  Achilles instantly took off after it, pumping his arms like mad.

            He chased the Audi up the ramp into the daylight, furiously propelling himself forward.  He had no delusions about catching it on foot.  Luckily, he had not wanted to leave any exit from Hellenistic Inc. unsecured and had parked his own vehicle in the parking lot behind the building.  His escorts, Officer’s Antenor and Seth, had parked their vehicle in the front of the building.

            The Audi shot down the rows of cars while Achilles slid over the hood of a sedan separating him from the vehicle he had selected from Janus’ private collection.

            He had left the Mercedes SLR unlocked when he’d entered the building and was behind the wheel, pulling out after the Audi in less than three seconds.

            He reached for the radio that his escorts had given him.  “Ariadne and Paris are in a white Audi R8 licence plate Hotel, Echo, Lima, Echo, November, Golf, Echo, November, Four, Eight.  We’re behind the building turning left.”

            “Got it,” came the reply from Antenor.

In the background Achilles could hear the voice of Officer Seth on the police radio.  “All officers we have a code three in progress, driver is suspect wanted in the kidnapping of Ariadne Helen.  Vehicle’s licence plate is Hotel, Echo-“

The radio cut out at that point as Antenor released the talk button at his end.  Achilles didn’t both to radio back and inform them that Ariadne was in fact the one driving, not Paris.  His instincts told him to keep that detail to himself.

Achilles dropped the radio back onto the passenger’s seat and cut the wheel sharply to the right, cutting into traffic behind Hellenistic Inc. HQ after the Audi.

The Audi handled like a dream, but that didn’t stop cold sweat from rolling down Ariadne’s brow as she cut left and right, dodging between the scattered vehicles on the street around her.  She was pushing the Audi as fast as she dared in the traffic, dancing the speedometer between seventy and ninety kilometers an hour.

            She cut left, screeching in front of a pickup truck that braked just enough to avoid a collision.  Momentum shoved her to the right but she held onto the wheel tight and levelled out, punching them forward up the new street.

            Paris was turned around looking back behind the vehicle.  “He’s in the Mercedes!”

            Ariadne glanced quickly into the rear-view mirror just before cutting around a SUV in their path.  She found herself suddenly in oncoming traffic, having lost track of which lane she was in.  A sedan sang out in terror, the horn like a scream, and Ariadne found herself blocked on her right.  Taking the only option available, Ariadne nudged the Audi to the left, missed the sedan by a hair’s breadth, before forcing them back over so the traffic was no longer coming directly at them.

            “If that’s how you plan on losing him, that’ll work,” Paris cried.

            Ariadne risked a glance at her side mirror and saw that traffic was strewn across the roadway.  Cars had spun out in attempts to break and avoid the Audi and were slowly trying to recover.  The road was pretty choked up as a result of her driving.

            But through a gap between two vehicles the Mercedes glinted into view, cutting across the asphalt like a gray spectre.  Just like the man behind the wheel.

            Ariadne whipped her gaze back onto the road.  Hair flicked across her vision and she cursed, slapping it out of the way.

            Suddenly, there was a dump truck directly in front of them.  Perfect T-bone collision material.  They had reached a four-way intersection and the Audi had the red light.

            “Hold on!” Ariadne had time to scream.  She pulled the emergency break and flipped the wheel to the right.  The Audi’s tires shrieked as they fought the opposing forces of the emergency break and her foot still planted on the accelerator.  The Audi lost just enough speed to let the dump-truck pass in front of it.  The rear end of the car drifted to the left and Ariadne dropped the emergency break.  She slammed her foot on the accelerator and shot through the narrow gap between the dump truck and the van that had been tail-gating it.  Horns blared and Ariadne felt her hands slip on the wheel.

            For one terrifying moment, it looked like they’d end up wrapped around a street-lamp directly in their path.   But Ariadne’s hands found grip again and she yanked the Audi to the left, skidding past the lamp post but catching some curb in the process.

            Paris grunted in shock, his head smacking against the roof of the car.  He barely seemed to notice as he yanked himself back into a position to see out the back of the car.

            “He’s still with us!” Paris cried.

            Sure enough, Ariadne saw the gray spectre slither through the same intersection, pulling a nearly identical move to slip between two cars.

            “Damnit!” Ariadne cried as she slammed a clenched fist against the steering wheel.

            A street appeared on her right and she cut into it.  She slid across the road into the oncoming lane and found herself almost nose-to-nose with another vehicle.  She jerked the wheel and shot past the vehicle, climbing onto the deserted side-walk alongside it.

            There was a heart-wrenching screech of metal against brick as the Audi rubbed shoulders with the building to their left.  Ariadne yanked the car back onto the road and shot back across the oncoming lane.  She cut straight through and turned right onto another road.  This road was wide, three lanes in either direction, a giant river through the centre of New Carthage connecting the downtown area to the adjacent universities and the student ghetto of apartment buildings and convenience stores.

            “Say something witty,” Paris cried.

            “What!?” Ariadne demanded.  She swiped a hand across her forehead to clear the cold-sweat but found her hands were clammy and did very little to help.

            “Are you still with me!?  Say something witty!”

            “Shut up Paris!”

            Ariadne cut right, squeezing between two cars.  Ahead, she saw the glow of red and blue police lights lighting up the windows on a building.  A moment later, two police cars leapt onto the roadway ahead of her.  The gray spectre of the Mercedes was still directly on their tail, having closed the gap to only a few meters as Ariadne weaved between cars.

            “Find the anger, Ariadne,” Paris said.  “Find it and let it fuel your need to fight.  Don’t give in to Janus just because a computer screen shows you a bunch of names.”

            “But those names were me, Paris!”  Ariadne screamed.  “Maybe you don’t get it but I do.  They were me.  I can’t get away from him.  Every time, every time I die and I come back, he finds me again.”

            “Then don’t let him get you again!  You are strong, Ariadne!  He can’t take you unless you let him!”

            “The ring-“

            “I don’t care about the ring!  I don’t care about the Curse of Cain or reincarnation!  What matters is that right here, right now, you scream it at the top of your lungs so that you never forget it, even if he gets that ring on you.  Because if you can’t do that, if you can’t keep fighting, then he doesn’t need the ring anymore.  That’s when he owns you, Ariadne.  Not before.  So scream, damnit, scream because I can’t let him take you away without a fight!”

            Horns blared around them, sirens screamed.  Ariadne felt the coldness almost reaching her fingertips.  She was tired.  She was sweaty. She wanted to give up.  She felt like any second it would end either with them getting pulled over or in a mess of metal as the Audi crashed into one of the cars all around them.  It all seemed to be pressing in on them from every side.

            Then, suddenly, her face felt warm.  She felt her cheek heat up, reminding her of Janus’ hand against her face, striking her.  The memory of the slap seemed to fill her face with heat again.

            Suddenly, the fire was shooting through the rest of her.  Her entire body light up, burning again with an unimaginable determination.  She would never let him strike her like that again.  She would never let him take her again, let him make her his again.  She would fight until her dying breath and even then she wouldn’t let him have her.  She would never be his.  Never.

            Ariadne screamed, letting the surging heat flow through her vocal cords as she shouted.  She drowned out the sounds of the cars and sirens around her.

            Paris was beaming next to her when she was done.

            “It’s starting to feel a little crowded,” Ariadne grinned.  Defiance permeated her body like a drug.  “I think it’s about time we lost these bastards.”

Committed Chapter 19

The bullet sliced through the air just over Paris’ right eyebrow like a knife-blade.  Paris flinched back, losing his grip on Arthur Helen’s arm.  Arthur began to bring the gun down but Ariadne was already in motion.

            She kicked her father in the knee, which caused him to stumble backwards against the table.  She chopped down on his gun hand.  The pistol fell out of his grip and clattered across the floor.  Paris leapt for it and pointed it at Arthur as he pulled Ariadne back.

            “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Arthur wheezed, clutching his arm with one hand and favouring the knee that Ariadne had not kicked.

            “Can you access the security cameras for the building from that?” Paris asked, gesturing to the touch screen behind Arthur with his free hand.

            Arthur Helen gave him a sharp look but said nothing.

            “I’ll check,” Ariadne said.  Her voice sounded hollow.  She walked around her father without looking at him and stepped up to the touch screen.

            For a moment she stood there with her eyes locked on the first name on the lower family tree.  Three question marks looked back at her where her name should have been.  Her first name.  She followed the bold line through the generations at all the names she’d had, all the lives she’d lived.  Hundreds of lives where she’d been given over to Janus.  She couldn’t imagine what her father had said was true.  How could putting a ring on her make her suddenly love Janus?  Was it even possible?

            She knew it was.  The sensation was uncanny to the point of being unnerving, but she knew it was true.  She knew that she had lived these past lives the same way she knew that gravity was holding her down and that she wouldn’t suddenly float away.  She knew it was true the same way she knew that the floor was solid beneath her and she wouldn’t suddenly sink through it.  She knew it with a cold certainty that was more terrifying than anything she’d experienced thus far.

            For hundreds of years, she had existed in an induced state of infatuation for a man she knew to be cruel.  What countless horrors had she lived through in those lives?

            “Dido killed herself,” Ariadne said.  Her gaze was locked on the bolded name DIDO on the family tree.

            “Yes,” her father answered.

            “We learned about this in history class.  After Aeneas left…for Rome.  That was when she did it.  She burned herself alive because he had gone.”

            Above DIDO on Janus’ tree was the corresponding name of AENEAS.

            “Did I kill myself because I couldn’t be with Aeneas?”

            “No,” her father replied, his voice grim.  “The myth says that Dido killed herself.  The truth, according to the records that our family and Janus’ family have kept, is that Aeneas…Janus couldn’t stand to leave you behind but he also couldn’t take you with him.  So, knowing that you would be reincarnated in the next life and he would be able to get you back then, he told you to kill yourself so that you wouldn’t have to live without him.”
            Ariadne felt like ice.

            “And?”

            “Dido followed through with this request so convincingly that the mythology records it as her committing suicide.  I suspect, at the time, you completely agreed with Aeneas.  He asked you to kill yourself so you wouldn’t have to be without him.  I don’t think it ever crossed your mind to even try.”
            Ariadne just kept starring at the name of her past life.  She wasn’t crying anymore, but she felt the paths that her hot tears had run going cold against her face.  She had willingly killed herself because Janus, Aeneas, whoever, had told her to.

            “Ariadne…” Paris didn’t seem to have anything to say to that.  What could anyone say to that?

            Ariadne reached forward and closed the image of the two trees.  She scanned the available icons on the touch screens desktop and found an icon that looked like a camera.  She touched it and a series of six squares showing various camera images from the entirety of the building appeared.  She scanned the six of them but didn’t see the two police officers from her house earlier.  However, the images that were shown were of the lobby, several hallways, and part of the stairwell.

            “Check to see if you can select the camera for the elevator,” Paris offered.

            Ariadne selected a drop down menu on the side of the camera view and scrolled through the list until she found one for headed as ELVTR-CAM and selected it.

            The top right screen switched to an image of the interior of the elevator that they’d been on earlier.  A single man stood in the elevator.  The image was full colour, but he was all blacks and whites.  His skin was dark as charcoal and his hair a thin layer of gray.  He stood calmly in the elevator, powerfully built, wearing civilian clothes.  But Ariadne could see the bulge under his right arm where his weapon was holstered.

            “I think he’s coming for us,” Ariadne said.

            “We need to leave Ariadne.”

            Ariadne just kept starring at the man in the elevator.  Who was he?  Somebody else that Janus had hired to hunt her down?  Was there really any point in running?

            “Ariadne!”

            Paris yell made her jump and turn around in surprise.  He was looking at her with eyes wide with fear.  But not fear of the man coming up the elevator.

            “We need to go.  I need you to stay with me, okay?” he asked.

            “Paris…”

            “You need to stay with me,” he said, emphatically now.  “We need to go.  We can’t let him catch you, right?”

            “Right,” Ariadne nodded.  But there was no energy behind it.  She felt empty.  What was the point anymore?

            Ariadne stepped forward and reached into one of the pockets on her father’s suit jacket.  She felt her hands close around his keys.  Right side pocket, where he always kept them.  Before he could grab her she pulled her hand out and stepped towards Paris.

            “Let’s go,” she nodded.

            “Say something witty.”

            “What?”

            “Show me that you’re still in this with me,” Paris said.  “Say something witty.”

            “Paris I-”

            “No, I can’t listen to you if you’ve given up,” Paris interrupted her. “You may have lost hope but I haven’t.  We can beat him.  Janus isn’t invincible.

            “Ariadne…”

            Ariadne ignored the plea in her father’s voice and stepped past Paris out into the officer without a backward glance.  “We going to take the stairs?”

            As if in answer she heard a series of shots fired behind her.

            Half way to the doors out of Arthur Helen’s office now Ariadne whipped around.  Her first thought was that Arthur Helen had somehow overpowered Paris and taken the gun from him.  What she saw instead was Paris pointing the gun at the window that the two window cleaners outside had just finished cleaning.

            The glass shattered outwards, reminding Ariadne of the sound the vase had made when she’d struck her mother in the head with it.  Her mother who was now dead.  Ariadne felt a new wave of sadness threaten to rise up and overpower her but she fought it down.  Now was not the time.

            “What are you doing?” Ariadne cried.

            “Improvising!” Paris cried.  “I know that sounds cliché but what the hell else do you call this?  Come on!”

            Paris used the suppressor of the gun to clear the shards from around the window and leapt out onto the platform the window cleaners had been using.

            Ariadne followed him.  The two window cleaners were still on the platform and looked at the two of them in utter shock as Paris pointed the pistol at them.

            “We’d like to go down please,” Paris demanded.

            Ariadne felt a rush of vertigo as she glanced over the side of the platform.  She gripped the rail tightly and tried not to think about how high up they were.  Part of her felt a pang of sympathy for the people down below.  She hoped nobody was hurt by the shards of glass falling down.

            One of the two window cleaners picked up the platform controls, which were at his end, and pressed the button to lower them down.

            “Ariadne!”

            Arthur Helen raced to the window but stopped short of jumping out at them as they began to lower.  Ariadne looked up at her father and held his gaze as they went down.

            “That’s far enough,” Paris ordered.

            Ariadne dropped her gaze back down from her father and looked through the window of the floor they were now on.  They’d only gone down two floors and were now looking into a deserted break room.

            Paris turned the pistol on the window.  “Cover your eyes,” he warned.

            Ariadne covered her face as he fired a few shots into the window and kicked the larger shards out of the way before jumping through.

            “Come on!” he cried.

            “Thanks for the lift,” Ariadne said to the two window cleaners and leapt through after him.  She didn’t look up at her father again.  Instead, she grabbed Paris’ offered hand and the two of them bolted out the open door into the hallway, making a beeline for the door to their left marked with the word STAIRS.

Achilles pushed through the double glass doors into Arthur Helen’s office, ignoring the frantic looks from the secretary.  Clearly she did not feel confident enough to go in and check on what had happened inside herself.

            Achilles found Arthur Helen standing at a shattered pain of floor-to-ceiling length window gazing down towards the ground.  For a brief moment Achilles wondered if Ariadne and Paris had shattered the glass and jumped to their deaths.  Somehow, that seemed an unlikely end to this particular hunt.

            Arthur Helen turned and saw him standing in the doorway.  The man’s face did not bear the expression that Achilles had imagined from a man of his authority and wealth.  He looked like a man defeated by something far greater than himself and fully aware of his own inability to overcome it.  Achilles was suddenly very curious to know what had happened in this room before he got there.

            “You said twenty minutes,” Achilles reminded him.  He’d waited in front of the building for the signal to come up and take Ariadne and Paris in after speaking with the Hellenistic Inc. CEO.  Now he wished he’d come up immediately.

            “There were window cleaners,” Arthur Helen explained as though he were in shock.  “She took my keys.”

            “Do you have a personal parking space?” Achilles asked.

            “Parking Garage.  Level 1,” Arthur Helen nodded.

            Achilles turned and bolted.  Ignoring the elevator, he raced past the bewildered secretary for the door marked STAIRS down the hall.

            His senses began to come alive.  It was like blood was finally starting to pump into his veins again.  As though he had been long dead, he was coming alive once more.  The hunt was on.  This is what he lived for.  This was his element.

            Ariadne and Paris wouldn’t get far.

Committed Chapter 18

Ariadne no longer hesitated on the threshold and stepped boldly into her father’s office.  The sound of his voice had filled her with a strange calm.  It was the same tone of voice he often adopted when he was about to pass on some kernel of knowledge.  Normally, Ariadne found this tone of voice a little patronizing.  But now, despite their foray to the library, Ariadne felt herself in an information vacuum.  She needed to know more information, and somehow she knew that her father was about to impart that info.

            But, she also realized, that meant that there was going to be no help to find here.

            She glanced at the digital clock on her father’s desk.  12:36.  Twenty minutes.

            “I assume this is Paris?” her father asked.

            “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Paris said.  He offered his hand.  Arthur Helen grasped it without hesitation.

            “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Paris,” Arthur smiled.  “Do not worry, I hold no ill-will towards you for what you and my daughter have been up to all day today, even though it has caused a considerable amount of trouble.”

            “How much do you know about what is going on, Dad?” Ariadne asked.  She felt like she should be more hurt by the knowledge that her father was working with Janus, just like her mother.  But the truth was, she’d been wondering ever since her mother had turned on her whether or not her father was in the same game.  It wasn’t a surprise.  The way they’d both acted at dinner when she’d mentioned meeting Janus.  No, she felt that eerie calm and nothing else.  She just needed to understand.

            “I know everything that happened at the field today,” Arthur explained.  “I also know about how you escaped from Janus at our house this…this morning.”
            Arthur turned away and walked into section of his office separated by a door-less archway.  This room had a conference table and a large touch-screen monitor against the far wall.  Ariadne followed him in with Paris in tow.  She didn’t say anything.

            At last, Arthur spoke again.  “Ariadne, I know you don’t understand what is happening, which is why I understand your reaction.  Maybe, if you understand what the stakes are, you’ll be more willing to comply with Janus’ request.”

            “She’s not complying with any-“ Paris cried, taking a step forward.  Ariadne put a hand out to stop him.  The moment Paris touched her arm he seemed to deflate and he took a step backwards.

            “What are the stakes, Dad?” Ariadne asked.

            “Take a seat.”

            Ariadne pulled out the swivel chair directly in front of her and sat down at the glass conference table.  Paris sat down next to her but didn’t say anything.  Arthur Helen double-tapped an icon on the touch screen and what looked like a gigantic family tree, dozens of stalks running horizontally across the screen, appeared.  Examining it more closely she saw that it was actually two different family trees with a timeline running between them.

            “I’ve no doubt that you’ve been confused by some of Janus’ references to knowing you before and being with you before,” Arthur Helen explained.  “But that is because he has memories that you don’t have.”

            “Memories?” Ariadne asked.

            “Yes,” Arthur nodded gravely.  “Of your past lives.”

            Arthur tapped the screen again and Ariadne saw the two names at the start of each tree turn bold.  Slowly, the lines connecting names began to turn bold, highlighting a name every three generations or so, progressing across the screen.  Ariadne watched with a strange sense of detachment as the names continued all the way to the end of the tree.

            The top family tree ended with Janus’ name turning bold.  The bottom one ended with her name.

            “Call it reincarnation, genetic memory, or whatever you want,” Arthur said, “But every three generations you and Janus are reborn in new bodies.  Our two families always know when you have been born because it occurs on the same day every time.  October 30^th for Janus and December 13^th for you.  Each time, when Janus reaches the age of seventeen, he is given a ring by his father.  This ring gives him access to his memories of his past lives.  And then he comes after you.”

            Arthur stepped over to the left side of the screen, to the first names on each tree.  “Of course, he isn’t always called Janus.  Many cultures have mythological stories that are references to you and him.  The story of Apollo and Daphne, Eros and Psyche, and Dido and Aeneas.  But Janus first name was Cain.”

            “Cain?” Ariadne asked.  She was starring wide-eyed at her father.  She could tell he believed what he was saying but it couldn’t possibly be true.  But it was.  She wanted not to believe it but she found she did.  Somehow, as though a part of her was already prepared for what she was hearing, she knew everything her father was telling her was true.

            “Yes, Cain,” Arthur nodded.  “As in the Cain of Cain and Abel.  In his first life, Janus, as Cain, was madly in love with a woman.  So madly in love that he killed his brother over it.  After that, the Bible tells us that God punished Cain and gave him a Mark.  The Mark of Cain, or the Curse of Cain, is how it is looked at in Christianity thousands of years later.  In actuality, there was a Curse but God did not inflict it on Cain.  Instead, Cain cast the Curse on himself and on the woman he loved so that they would be together for out eternity, continuously reunited in future bodies.  You were that woman, Ariadne.”

            Ariadne looked down at the second family tree.  There was no first name at the beginning of her tree.  Just three question marks.

            “What was my name?” Ariadne asked.  Of all the questions she could have asked, it might have been the least important.  But it didn’t feel that way.

            “Your name has been lost,” Arthur replied.  “But once you put the ring on that Janus has been trying to give you, you’ll remember.  You’ll remember all your past lives with him.  And you’ll remember how much you love him.”

            At those last three words, Ariadne felt her blood boil.  She was on her feet again.  She was screaming before she knew what she was doing.

            “I will never love him!”

            “Yes, you will,” Arthur said calmly, seemingly unaffected by her outburst.  “Once he puts the ring on you…you won’t be able to help it.  The rings are part of the Curse.  They bring back your memories, they bind you and Janus together.  And part of their effect is that after Janus puts the ring on you you’ll fall back in love with him…and you won’t want to take the ring off or understand why you wanted to be away from him.”
            Ariadne stood their in shock, thinking how close she’d had to having that ring put on her twice now.  “It brainwashes me?”

            “Who can call it brainwashing?” her father asked, taking a placating step towards her.  “Once the ring is on, Ariadne, you love him.  You will believe it and feel it as if it’s as real as any feeling you’ve ever felt.  You won’t understand what it was like to not be in love with Janus.  No matter what he does or says to you, you will always love him once the ring is on.”
            “Then I’ll never put it on,” Ariadne said through gritted teeth.  “This is me, this is the real me, Dad, and I don’t love him.  Putting a ring on me doesn’t change that.  It’s a lie.”

            “Maybe, but it’s a lie that you have to accept, Ariadne,” Arthur explained.  “And since you’ll believe that you love him it will be an easy lie for you to live.  You see, part of the Curse was a connection between our two families.  We are joined in prosperity by the Curse.  You have no doubt heard that Janus’ father is under investigation by the CRA?  For as long as you and Janus have been bound our two families have understood untold prosperity.  Not always as Hellenistic Inc. and Menelaus Industries, but always together.  But, the effect only lasts for three generations.  Think of it like a sort of luck that our two families have, but only so long as you and Janus are brought together every three generations.  If, for whatever reason, you weren’t to come together, our two families would fall into destitution and poverty.”

            Arthur took another placating step towards Ariadne, coming around the table.  “You understand now, don’t you?  This isn’t just about you, this is about everyone.  It’s about Janus’ entire family, it’s about your uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents.  All of them live the lifestyles they do, in safety and without want, because every three generations Janus finds you and makes you his bride again.  Would you really sacrifice all of us because of the petty feelings you feel now?  Once the ring goes on Ariadne, you’ll thank me.”
            Ariadne looked into her father’s eyes.  He believed what he was saying completely.  She knew everything he was saying was true.  But it was also wrong.

            “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Dad,” Ariadne said, feeling hot tears rolling down her face, though she could see clearly.  “This is entirely about me.”
            “Don’t be selfish, Ariadne.  I have known my entire life that I would be the father of your most recent reincarnation.  I did everything I could to give you a full and happy life.  Now, it is time to return the favour.”

            “I don’t owe you!” Ariadne snapped.  “You don’t own my heart.  You can’t just sell me to Janus like a bit of corporate stock!”

            “But I can, Ariadne,” Arthur said.  “I am thinking about more people than just you.”

            “Paris, we’re leaving,” Ariadne said.  She turned and started out of the office.  “I won’t sit around and listen to any more of this.”
            “Your mother is dead, Ariadne.”

            Ariadne froze in the archway.  She felt like her heart was going to burst in her chest.  More tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, flowing freely down her face.  She blinked, and her lashes became heavy with droplets.  But she could still see clearly.

            “Was it…”

            “Janus shot her.”

            Ariadne whirled on her father.

            “Then how can you stand here telling me I have to go to that man!”

            “Because without him this family has nothing!” Arthur thundered, losing his cool at last.  “This thing is older than you are Ariadne, but I am finding it hard to forgive your ignorance.  But you will be handed over to Janus and this family will continue on strong and secure!”

            “Again, Dad, you’re wrong,” Ariadne wept for her father.  “By the looks of things, this is just as old as I am.”

            Again, Ariadne turned to leave, and again her father called out to stop her.

            “Ariadne, I can’t let you go.”
            “Ariadne!”

            She turned back and saw that her father had pulled a gun from beneath his suit jacket.  Like Janus’ at the school, it had a suppressor.  He was pointing it at Paris now, who had been moving to follow her but now sat frozen with the gun levelled at his temple.

            “I love you, Ariadne.  But if you choose to be ungrateful then you force me to make the right decision for you.”

            Ariadne looked into her father’s eyes.

            “What gives you the right to make this decision for me!?” Ariadne screamed, too angry now to hold back.

            “Everything!” Arthur Helen screamed.

            At that moment, Arthur’s gun-arm shaking, Paris moved, reaching up to bat the gun away.  Ariadne dove forward, but it was too late.  There was a deafening crack and the gun in her father’s hand flashed.