Twisted Souls: Twisted Magic Book Three

by Rainy Kaye

  Occasionally, she glanced back at the portrait with a slight scowl.

  “It’s this whole…thing,” I said with a wave of my hand.

  She didn’t press the issue.

  We passed by trees, heavy with snow. With a shudder, I pulled my jacket tighter and braced myself for what would be waiting for us in the next few moments.

  It wasn’t difficult to see why New Hope believed Fiona was sick and possibly contagious—I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her either—but I doubted their means of handling the problem would be delicate. Were they going to try to sacrifice her, as they had done to me?

  Outside the window, the tree trunks up ahead bent at sharp angles. I squinted, comparing those trees to the ones with the straight trunks. The leaves, branches, even the bark were identical. They were the same species, so why had these grown so strangely? Even the enigmatic Crooked Forest of Poland had sloped trunks. These jutted at sharp, unnatural angles.

  The road gave way to frozen dirt and the van jostled side to side. In the distance, the smooth surface of the lake spread out, glistening like ice in the weak remnants of sunlight streaming through the clouds. The strange, bent trees jutted out of the water along the edge, submerged up their trunks as if they grew from the bottom of the lake, but spaced apart and only about four trees deep. I couldn’t quite make sense of why they had chosen to grow inside the water…and then stop. They didn’t seem like cypress, and definitely not ferns, or anything else that would make its home away from dry land.

  Glittering ice sprinkled along the scene, and my skin frosted over. The winter here did not sing of wonderland; it serenaded about death.

  The van slowed and pulled to a stop several yards from the lake.

  “There,” Randall said, pointing out the windshield.

  I leaned forward between the seats to peer in the direction he indicated. Farther along the bank, a pickup parked and several figures burst from the cab. They hurried around to the bed and, working together, heaved out Fiona.

  She jerked against the restraints tying her arms behind her back and her legs together. Her mouth wasn’t covered, but she made no noise as she protested their hold. It was not the flailing, squirming desperation I would have expected from old Fiona; this was the new version of her. She twisted from one side to the other, as if she were a strategic warrior, not my best friend who painted smiling suns on her fingernails every summer.

  A man on the end nearly dropped her, but he scrambled to catch her as they lugged her away from the truck.

  “What are they doing with—” I started, but the thought died in my mouth as they trudged toward the lake.

  As if on cue, we all busted out of the van and charged toward them. There was no time to plan, no opportunity for stealth. They didn’t even acknowledge us as they gave a heave-ho and swung her out into the lake. She hit the surface, and I thought maybe the lake had frozen over and she would be spared. Then, she began to sink and was gone before I could take another step.

  The scream stayed in my head; my chest wouldn’t expand enough for air. It was as if the cold shock had taken me with it as I stared, mouth gaped, at the spot where Fiona had been.

  A flurry of activity around me brought me back to the moment. Ever swung her kukri at one of the men. He jerked back, but the blade sliced diagonally along his shoulder. He pressed his hands to the wound as he stumbled backwards. Randall clutched a rock—I had missed him finding his go-to weapon—and Sasmita pulsed blue right before unleashing her magical wrath on the group.

  Without another thought, I began to pull up my magic as it tingled along my feet and wrapped up my calves. My attention swung back to the water.

  Fiona was in there.

  I took off past the others as they ducked and whirled and swung, my soles sinking slightly in the wet ground and patches of snow as I made my way to the lake. At the edge I came to a short stop, gasping for air, scanning the water for signs of her. The lake reflected the sky and a distorted angle of my face, and no matter how I blinked and shifted from side to side, irritation nipping at me, I couldn’t see past the glass smooth surface.

  Grimacing, I took a heavy step into the icy edge, water splashing up around my ankle. Something out in the middle of the lake caught my attention.

  I tilted my head, staring unblinking, as I tried to understand what I was seeing. A long piece of wood, like a narrow, knotted branch, stood erect in the water. From it, Fiona swung, still bound, upside down like a cocoon.

  “What for the love of flying monkeys,” I muttered, one foot in the lake.

  The mayhem around me had ceased, and the silence sent goosebumps up my arms and down my back. I couldn’t suppress the shudder as I turned, muscles stiff, toward the others on the shore. Randall, Sasmita, and Ever stood, mid-fight, eyes glued on the strange growth from which Fiona hung like an homage to spring. The people of New Hope exchanged stark, wide-eyed looks.

  They turned and bolted toward their pickup.

  I made a move to follow them but decided against it. We weren’t here to punish them. We had come here to save Fiona but it seemed that perhaps she had rescued herself.

  “Uh…” Randall began, taking a step closer to me from behind.

  Across the water, ripples fanned out, coming toward the shore. I followed them back to the source and found myself staring at the lone branch.

  “Anyone have any idea what is happening?” Sasmita asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “Bad,” Ever replied. “Very bad.”

  I turned to run but slammed straight into Randall. We tripped over each other as we scampered away from the lake and the four of us plowed back through the snow and mud.

  The ground rumbled, and water sloshed over my feet from behind me until it reached my ankles. My heart squeezed as my chest tightened, my shoulders hunched, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to look back.

  Shadows shifted on the ground, new ones. These did not belong to the trees or the heavy clouds.

  Behind us. There’s something behind us.

  I tossed out the thought as soon as it emerged, and then yanked it right back out of the trash.

  Nope. There was something behind us, no doubt about it.

  We kept running until we escaped the water rushing along the ground and then, slowly, as a group, we turned to face what had displaced the lake and cast a shadow over us.

  It rose up taller than a building, and none of the parts seemed to go together. The body was smooth but looked rubbery to the touch. The head rounded not unlike a fish but came to the front with a mash of barely discernible features—thin lips like cord, an underdeveloped and probably useless nose, scaleless gills that jutted out a bit like ears, and a round black eye on either side. The long spidery limbs were like bones or, as I had assumed a moment ago, like a branch.

  From one strangely jointed appendage hung Fiona.

  I nudged Ever. “So, you live here. I assume this is new?”

  “Explains a lot,” she said, barely breathing, kukri at her side. “One day, the lake had expanded, swallowed up trees. We thought it was excess run off from the snow, but the lake had ever been like this before.”

  “The creature had moved in,” I whispered, afraid it would hear me talking about it. “It caused the lake to overflow, like a bathtub.”

  “Eureka,” Randall murmured, deadpan.

  My magic tingled, low to the ground, as I had already started pulling it up without thinking. It traced a warm path up the back of my legs and shot up my spine, forking into both arms. My palms grew hot as I gathered the energy, and I scanned the monster, looking for the weak spot.

  Like monsters had those in real life. He was all underwater monstrosity from start to finish.

  Cringing, I darted forward and released my magic into the air between us. Blue bolts arched out from me—hands, wrists, forearm. It was like I was composed of lightning. It streaked through the air and struck its body and limbs. Vibrations pulsed through me as I fed the current into the monster,
little more than a conduit. The thought slipped away as heat filled me until I no longer felt the cold, until I was wrapped in a suffocating blanket. With a gasp, I pulled away and shut off the flow.

  I dropped to my knees, panting. Randall came toward me, but I snapped my head up as the bolts danced and flickered across the monster. My attention swung to the bolt making its way down the limb clutching Fiona. I could only imagine if the bolt hit her limp form, it would electrocute her.

  “No, no, no,” I moaned, scrambling up and toward the lake.

  My shoes hit the water. The monster jerked around to face my direction. Randall said something that cut off just as my foot went out from under me as the lake dropped unexpectedly. My arm shot up as I submerged below the surface. Icy water filled my jacket, and the thin undershirt only held the coldness against my flesh. I struggled to swim forward, to break the surface, but everything was dark. I couldn’t find my way upright even though my arm wasn’t in the water. I couldn’t breathe.

  Panic set in, warring with the chill settling into my bones. It might have been what death felt like.

  I sank farther down as I tried to kick my legs, but the shoes, the ones that had served me through the snow and ice, had become weights, ready to anchor me to death. Legs flailing, I tried to beat off the shoes, but I could barely feel as I managed to bruise my calves. My face went numb. The mask filled with water and as soon as I sucked in a breath, it would all be over.

  A distant, but familiar, sensation tingled across my skin. I couldn’t grasp onto it as my mind reeled for what to do, how to respond. In the darkness, long strands of blue light twisted and wove together, surrounding me. I jerked one direction and the other, but the light had encompassed me like a glowing net. The water inside this ethereal net shifted and moved. Then it rushed away from me, and I found myself suspended horizontally in…nothing.

  The orb of light moved upward, and I went with it, not touching the arches and no longer in water. It was if the net had trapped me in an air bubble as it ushered me toward the surface. My cries were muffled even to my own ears as water drained from my clothes, my mask.

  Was the monster saving me? That couldn’t be right. Why would it bother?

  Perhaps some benevolent magical entity resided in the lake too, but why would it even care to put so much effort into sparing me from drowning?

  I breached the surface, horizontal and face first, surrounded by the arches forming a bubble. Magic flowed through me, into the bubble, through arches that played off my skin and stretched around me like a web.

  It made no sense, but somehow, I had created the lightning bubble under the water. I had saved myself.

  With that thought, the lightning around me vanished, and I dropped back into the water. Gritting my teeth, I forced myself upright and swam toward the shore. Randall waded in up to his knees to meet me and stooped to grab my bicep, yanking me from the water.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked in a low voice.

  As soon as the air hit me, I shuddered so hard, I hunched over and all words vanished. With effort, I lifted my face to the monster. It still clung to Fiona, but it made no move to come for us. He barely seemed to acknowledge our existence, at all.

  His gills flapped a few times.

  My whole body shook until I started to lean, and Randall tugged me closer to him, keeping me on my feet.

  I swallowed hard a few times to clear the lump in my throat.

  “What do we do?” I asked between shivers.

  The monster’s head whipped around in our direction.

  “Shh,” Randall hissed.

  Sasmita started to move but Randall held up his hand to stop her. We both turned a questioning scowl at him.

  He put one finger to his lips to silence us, and together, we waited.

  The monster turned away.

  With a severe look at us, Randall shuffled forward, his soles sliding across the ground, careful not to make any noise, and worked a branch from under a patch of snow. Without a sound, he swung the branch back and chucked it far across the lake, away from us.

  The branch smacked the water, and the monster jerked around to look at it.

  Except…

  “It can’t see,” I whispered as the demonstration came together. “Some deep ocean creatures don’t have well developed eyesight, if at all.”

  Randall nodded. “We really can’t be surprised at this point.”

  The monster turned its head back to us, and Ever and Sasmita both shot us a look.

  We needed to get away from the creature, needed to develop a plan. I spun around, still hunched over, and trudged back toward our van. I couldn’t stand upright; I didn’t have the energy, or heat, to spare. My body shook so hard, my muscles throbbed. I needed to get out of these icy wet clothes, but I had a feeling I wasn’t done splashing around in the lake.

  At the van, we rounded to the side farthest from the monster and huddled together, as close as we dared with my soaked clothes.

  “We have to find a way to get Fiona,” Randall said. “If we go straight out into the water, it’ll hear us.”

  I nodded, but the movement was stiff and barely more than a spasm. “Right. I just…”

  The thought escaped me as I hunched farther over, afraid to move as every motion seemed to let in more cold air against my aching skin.

  “We need to get this figured out fast,” I said as my neck stiffened, my shoulders throbbed. “I need to get warm.”

  Concern flashed across Randall’s face, but he shoved it back down. “Why don’t you warm up in the van, and Sasmita, Ever, and I can get Fiona?”

  I tried to shake my head.

  “No, no,” I said with more impatience than I had intended. “We need a plan. Anyone got a plan?”

  I peered up at them from under my sopping wet hair. Randall made a move to brush it back, but I coiled away from him.

  “Please don’t touch me,” I said, and didn’t bother to explain further. I had to conserve energy, heat.

  Maybe I could conjure some magic to warm me. I had done so out in the snow earlier, when they had tried to make me the sacrificial lamb.

  I attempted to pull up my magic, but it was gone.

  Of course.

  “I think he’s right,” Ever said, looking at me. “You’re purple and splotchy, Saf. You need to strip out of those clothes before you get sick. Or worse.”

  I shook my head. “Please just come up with a plan. Please, you guys.”

  “Okay…” Sasmita smoothed her hair in thought. “Well, we can overwhelm him, right? Just keep throwing rocks and things at him until he lets her go and retreats.”

  “He’s going to get angry and attack,” I bit out.

  “It’s fine,” Randall said in a rush. “It’s all we got.”

  Before I could protest further, he headed back around the van. Sasmita hurried after him. I started to trudge in their direction, but Ever grabbed my arm.

  I hissed as my body flashed with agonies of many colors. Despite all the tumbles, knocks to the head, and monster fighting, I had never felt anything like this.

  For a moment, I had to wonder if I was actually dying.

  The concern creasing Ever’s face did nothing to reassure me that I wasn’t.

  “You look awful,” she said. “I have some clean underclothes in my bag you can change into. You can at least get warm.”

  I could barely open my jaw to respond. “No point. I’ll probably be back in the water before this is over.”

  With a grim expression, she nodded once, and we clomped in the direction Sasmita and Randall had gone. I slid my hands up to tuck them under my armpits, but it did nothing to warm me because I had no heat left. My muscles clenched and knotted as we joined the other two a few feet from the lake and stood staring at the monster.

  He faced straight ahead, gills occasionally flapping, Fiona still held up like a prized possession. She wasn’t moving, and though I couldn’t quite see her face, she appeared slack, as if uncons
cious.

  Or dead.

  I pushed down the thought and cast a look at Randall, prodding him to take the lead. He must have caught my drift because he straightened upright and scanned the ground to either side. Without a word, he pointed at Ever and Sasmita, and then in the direction of a rock jutting out of a patch of snow.

  Ever flashed a thumbs up and crept with Sasmita toward the rock, stooping to silently pull up a branch along her way.

  When the monster didn’t make any sudden moves, Randall motioned for me to follow him in the opposite direction of Sasmita and Ever. As he gathered short branches, I tried to bend my fingers enough to work a rock loose from the ground, but my hand kept slipping. My chest continued to tighten as the shivers did not improve.

  Weakness spread through me, and I wanted to lie down right there in the snow and mud, next to a lake with a bony fish monster, and sleep. Deep, dark sleep.

  I realized I had collapsed to the ground on my knees, body hunched forward. Randall’s feet came into view as he stepped next to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to move, not even just enough to look up at him. Without making a noise, he placed the branches into a pile on the ground and then shuffled closer.

  He couldn’t speak; we had to remain silent if we wanted to ambush the monster. As I continued to wrack with shudders that pulsed through my muscles, he hoisted me to my feet. We stood face to face, inches apart. I couldn’t lift my head, but remained bowed, wet hair in my face, afraid to move it and let in a new round of cold air.

  He reached between the strands and cupped my cheek. I wanted to melt into the warmth of his hand, and I leaned into it, as if I could suck up his body heat like I siphoned magic from the ground.

  Carefully, he placed his other hand on my other cheek, holding my face between his palms, and used his thumbs to caress up and down my nose and under my eyes along the edge of the respirator. I let my body drift, my eyelids closing, and as he worked his way to rubbing my ears between his thumb and forefinger, and then massaging the back of my neck, the shivering subsided a little. It wasn’t enough—I still needed dry clothes and heat—but it would do for now.