Twisted Fate

by D. N. Hoxa

  “How the hell did you manage to take something from Vera, by the way?” Julie asked, but Mandar only shook his head.

  “Without the Eye, I have no control over her. She’ll turn this whole city upside down within the night,” he said, and his wide eyes begged me.

  I leaned closer on the table. “Without the Eye, those men will get to Gaena and kill every fae and every elf who lives there. They will spare no one.”

  He watched me for the longest moment, never blinking. I kept his eyes and I tried to stay calm, tried to keep my heart from beating so fast. The trust I’d had for this man sitting across from me now was the reason why I was so disappointed. I hadn’t been when I’d thought Julie had betrayed me. I had never trusted her to begin with. But Mandar hurt still.

  “I can’t,” Mandar said, lowering his eyes again.

  Anger coursed through me, awakening my magic. “Those men work with Bo-bo and Ari. When we find them, we find the siblings, too.”

  All he did was shake his head. I looked up at Julie, but she, too, was fascinated by the floor just now.

  “If you don’t give it to me, I’m going to take it myself, Mandar. I think you know already that you can’t stop me. Please, don’t make me,” The words tasted foul in my mouth. I reminded myself that they needed to be said. At least I faced him while I said them.

  “Elo—” he started, but Lola didn’t let him finish.

  “Here’s an even better suggestion: if you don’t give her what she needs, I’m walking out of here and you’ll never see me again.”

  If I’d thought Mandar was pale before, he was completely white now.

  “Pumpkin,” he pleaded. “Don’t even joke about it.”

  “It’s not a joke,” Lola said, and her voice rose with every word. “It’s been years, Dad! We’ve been after them for years, and what the hell do we have to show for it?! Nothing—that’s what.” She dragged her chair closer to her father and grabbed both his hands in hers. “I’m tired. I need to find them. I have to. Otherwise, I’m never going to find peace.”

  There was pain in her, but it was half hidden by her anger, by her disbelief. I’d thought Mandar was desperate, but Lola was worse. Her grief consumed her completely.

  “We will never find them on our own—you know that. And even if we do, we’re no match for them. They’re too powerful—but so is Elo. She can actually kill them. Or she can paralyze them long enough for us to get it done. Do you understand me? We need her, Dad. And we’re going to help her.”

  I held my breath, I don’t know what for. Maybe it was Lola’s pain or Mandar’s or the anticipation of his next words. I didn’t want to steal from him. I didn’t want to fight him or even put him to sleep.

  “This is all my fault,” Mandar said, bringing his daughter’s hands to his lips. “I should have never told you. I should have never put that burden on you, Pumpkin.”

  “I had the right to know,” Lola said. “But I’m so ready for it to be over. So fucking ready.”

  “And we’re ready to be on our way,” Julie said. “What’s it going to be, Mandar?”

  I watched him squeeze his eyes shut and finally nod.

  Something heavy lifted from my shoulders. I would have taken the Eye from him anyway, but I was so thankful that I wouldn’t have to. Whatever this world was doing to me, I didn’t like it, but I accepted it.

  “Where is it?” Julie said. “Can you find it fast?”

  “There will be no need for that,” said Hiss, who had been bundled up on the floor right next to the doorway. If Mandar had smelled him, he’d been too focused on Lola to comment, but now that Hiss spoke, we all turned to him.

  Slowly, he began to slither toward us, leaving behind a box made of glass.

  At first, I was confused. What had he been hiding with his body like that? And why? But then I saw what was inside the glass box, and I immediately stood.

  I had yet to see a stranger thing. The box was bigger than my fist, but not by a lot. It was perfectly square and transparent, and in it, there were eight thin metal pins coming from every inner corner of the box, holding something round between them in the middle.

  An eye.

  An actual eye.

  But that was not where the strangeness ended. I picked up the box to inspect it, and I noticed that the eye had two pupils and two irises opposite one another. The irises were brown in color, identical. It would have been disturbing had the eye not looked like a figure, instead of real. The white surface around the irises was shiny and smooth. The pins holding the eye in the middle could barely be seen. I turned around as Julie and Lola came closer to see it better, too.

  “How the hell did you find that thing?” Mandar was saying to Hiss, but Hiss’s response was only a chuckle.

  “The Seer Eye is an actual eye? Did someone pull it out of a person or something? Because it looks damn real to me,” Lola said. Her high voice said she was panicked, much more disgusted than me. Or Julie.

  “It’s a magically infused object, nothing more,” Mandar said from the table. “I don’t even know what it is. Nobody does. I’ve asked around.”

  Signora Vera hadn’t told me what it was, either, that night she ordered me to steal it for her.

  “It doesn’t matter what it is. This is what she wants, and she will get it, in return for her potions and spells,” Julie said, and she turned to Mandar. “I must say, I didn’t know you had it in you, Mandar. Maybe you’re not as big a fool as I think you are.” Pulling her large dress to the side, she stepped around me, kissed Lola on the forehead, and disappeared out of the doorway.

  “Thank you,” I said to Mandar, despite the feelings inside me. “I will meet with Signora Vera. I won’t give her this until the sidhe are gone.”

  “What about us?” Lola said. “Where are we going? Are we coming with?”

  “Not for now. I need to speak to other people first, before I make a plan to go after the sidhe. You will hear from me when the time is right.” I looked at the box once more, at the eye inside it that seemed to be looking right at me. The pocket of the jacket Julie had given me barely held it, but it would have to do. I already knew what I was going to do with it. “You didn’t throw away the clothes that I bought, did you?”

  “Of course not,” Lola said. “They’re in your room. Where are you staying? Can’t you stay here again?”

  “Thank you, but I can’t stay here. I need to be on my own for now.” I didn’t know yet if that was a lie or not. I was hoping to find out myself by the end of the day.

  While Lola went to get my clothes for me, the silence between Mandar and I weighed a thousand pounds. He wanted to say something, and I wanted to hear it as much as I wanted to walk away without having to hear his voice again.

  In the end, Lola came back with a plastic bag with the only clothes I’d ever bought myself and showed me to the door. Mandar never said a word.

  Chapter 8

  Chapter

  * * *

  Night fell way too soon. The Seer Eye was in my hand, and I didn’t know why I was having such a hard time letting go of it. It was just an object, like Mandar said.

  But my instincts insisted that that wasn’t entirely true.

  “What are you?” I whispered to the box, but Hiss answered instead.

  “It’s a Seer Eye. Go on, Elo. We’re expected back soon,” he urged, and he was right. Julie had already gone to speak to Signora Vera, to test the waters, as she’d put it. She’d insisted that she knew Vera for a long time now, and that she would know what to expect from a meeting with her, face-to-face. I agreed, only because I needed some time to hide the Eye first. I didn’t trust Vera. I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t raid Julie’s house, looking for it, if she knew I had it.

  That was why I’d asked her for a weapon, and she’d given me two knives. They weren’t big by any means, but they could kill just as easily as a bullet when used right. They sat uncomfortably in the back pocket of my jeans.

  And that was why I’d
found my way back to Manun’s Waterfall. The Shade had brought me here in record time. It no longer kept it away from me.

  Letting go of my breath, I put the box on the surface of the water, for a second thinking it wasn’t going to sink.

  It did. It disappeared from my view completely, as silently as if it had never existed.

  “Watch over it for me, will you?” I asked the Shade and Manun—the giant with the two heads. Pressing my hands onto the grass, I let out as much magic as I could in exchange for my request. The Shade was neutral; it didn’t take sides. It took magic, and it wouldn’t betray me. In it I trusted wholeheartedly.

  Now, I would meet Signora Vera.

  Julie said she’d invite her over to the pub for the meeting. I had the black shawl that she’d given me, wrapped around my head, but I still felt naked, like the eyes of every person in this world could see right through the fabric. That’s why I kept my head down and my eyes on the ground on the way back to Julie’s Pub.

  I never even made it near the neighborhood.

  The whoosh in the air was familiar, the sound of something moving too fast for the eye to see. I’d heard it before, in a different part of the Shade. There was a lot more light here and at least five people walking the street that I could see. I stopped in my tracks and waited for Hiss to climb up my leg, hiding underneath Julie’s jacket that now felt light on me without the box of the Seer Eye in its pocket.

  I moved closer to the wall of a house and waited, half sure that I’d imagined it. I could still hear music from somewhere far away, and the two teenagers walking on the other side of the street were talking and laughing.

  Still, I didn’t move until the street cleared and no other person was in sight. By then, my jacket was open, and my hands were around the handles of the two knives Julie had given me. A sword would have been much better, but I couldn’t ask Julie for hers. Until I found my own, the knives would have to do. At least I wasn’t completely defenseless. I had my magic, too.

  It wasn’t long before Signora Vera showed herself. She didn’t wear a jacket this time when she appeared across the street, shoulders pressed against a blue brick wall, arms loose by her sides. I could see her face under the Shade light over her head, and she hadn’t changed a bit. Her lips were painted bright red, and her black eyes gleamed with malice. Her red hair flowed down in waves, like she’d soaked it in blood just now. When she raised her black hand, I could see the tips of her claw-like fingernails gleaming.

  “Won’t you come closer?” I whispered into the night, knowing she would hear me. She was a vampire. Her senses were far superior to mine.

  Pushing herself off the wall, she made her way toward me slowly, as if she was trying not to intimidate me. I wasn’t scared of her. If it came to a fight, I’d either kill her or she’d kill me. I was more afraid of not knowing whether she’d help me. I was also afraid of knowing that if she did, I would have to prepare for a stab in the back from her from the beginning.

  “Careful,” Hiss whispered from under the jacket, but he didn’t need to be concerned. Julie had already spoken to her. She knew I had the Eye.

  “You just won’t stay dead, will you,” she said as she approached, swinging her hips like she was trying to hypnotize me.

  I held on to the handles of my knives tightly. “My job here is not done yet.”

  “So I’m told,” she said suddenly cheerful. “I must admit, I didn’t trust Julie one bit when she told me. It is such a wild tale, don’t you think? That’s why I had to come see you for myself. It took me a bit to find your scent, but here you are.” Pressing her hands together, she brought them to her chest. “More radiant than before.”

  “I need your help, Vera. I have the Seer Eye you want.” The words had not yet left my lips fully before I found myself against the wall, her claws digging into the skin around my neck.

  Both my knives formed a cross under her chin, too, without my needing to even think about it. My magic roared to life, demanding I let it out and inside her, but it would find nothing there. A dead heart, dead lungs, a dead brain. The best my magic could do was push her off me for a bit, and I was saving that energy for now. My knives could cut through her skin just fine.

  “You cheated,” she whispered, her cold breath blowing on my face.

  “It’s nothing personal, Vera. Think of it as business.” Those were the words she’d said to me when she’d threatened to tell Mace about me if I didn’t steal the Eye for her.

  “You’re almost cute enough to eat,” she said, wrapping her other hand around my chin, like she was talking to a little girl. I would imagine she’d looked little to me, too, if the roles had been reversed and I was a centuries old vampire.

  I pressed the blades of my knives deeper into her skin until it broke. Two thin trails of blood began to make their way to her neck. “I don’t want to kill you. I’d rather have your cooperation. Like I said—I need you. And you need the Eye. We can talk about it like grown women, can’t we?”

  “But you’re no woman, Elo. You’re barely a girl,” she said, but she still loosened her hold around my throat and stepped back, away from my knives. I kept them in my hands still. There was no telling when she’d attack next.

  While she’d been right at my face, I hadn’t noticed at all that Hiss was no longer wrapped around me. He was on the ground, right behind Vera’s feet, and he was staring at the back of her head in complete silence.

  Vera was surprised to see him there. “There you are!” she said when she saw him and stepped to the side. “You scared me for a bit.”

  For whatever reason, Hiss decided he didn’t want to reply to Vera.

  “The Eye,” I reminded her. “I can give you the Eye if you help me.”

  “But I’m in the mood for some elf blood,” she said, eyeing my neck so intently, I almost covered it with my hands. “Tell me, do you think you can come back to the living if I drink you completely dry?”

  Her lips parted slightly as she watched me. Her fangs came into view, and they extended until they reached below her bottom lip. They looked fake, almost like plastic, but I knew they were real. She’d let them out right before my eyes.

  And I didn’t want them anywhere near me.

  “It won’t really matter. Touch me again, and you will never find the Eye for as long as you live,” I promised her.

  “I’ll search every place you’ve stepped on if I have to. You know I will,” she insisted.

  This time, I smiled. “The Shade has the Eye, Vera. And unless I ask it to give it back, you and nobody else here is ever going to see it again—I promise you that.” She knew how Shades worked better than I did. She’d been alive for much longer.

  That was why her eyes widened and her fangs seemed to grow even larger. My palms were sweaty from how tightly I was gripping the handles of my knives. They ached for a sword handle, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  “What guarantee is there for me that you will give it back to me when this is over? If this is ever over,” she added bitterly.

  “There is no guarantee. All I can give you is my word. I will find the sidhe, and I will make sure they never make it to Gaena one way or another. And when I do that, the Eye is all yours.”

  “Words are worthless,” she spit. “Give me your blood.”

  “No.” The response was automatic.

  “Do you know what my Talent is, elf?” she suddenly asked, looking back at the street like she was now talking to a friend rather than an enemy.

  “No,” I repeated, but I didn’t tell her that I didn’t want to know, either.

  If she could tell, she chose to ignore it. “I can make anybody’s blood turn as cold as the blood in my veins right now, simply by drinking a drop of it.”

  Shivers broke down the length of me. Some vampires had Talents, too, though not all. I doubted Mandar knew about this, or he would have mentioned it.

  “They called it Transmutation while I was alive, and barely a Level One sorceress. It was consid
ered a Sacri Talent because I couldn’t affect a body then, only material objects. But when I was bitten, my Talent itself changed, too. Now, I can’t manipulate objects—only blood. But that’s enough, don’t you think? It is more than enough.”

  There was not a hint on her that said she was lying. All I heard was honesty.

  “If you were a Sacri sorceress, where is your familiar?” All Sacri sorcerers had familiars, no exceptions, as far as I knew. They were part of their sorcerers, inseparable. They couldn’t be away from one another, physically, and if one died, so did the other.

  “She’s long gone from this place,” Vera whispered. “Her heart stopped beating with mine, but she never woke up with me.” There was no emotion in her voice. If she’d once cared about losing her familiar, she didn’t anymore.

  “You want my blood as guarantee that I will give you the Eye,” I said. Every instinct in me demanded I say no, but I also knew whom I was talking to. There was no going back now, no hiding from the likes of her. She’d seen me with her own eyes. She knew.

  “Exactly. Think of it as a fee. You give me your blood, and I promise to help you with whatever potions you need, until you kill all the sidhe you need to kill. And when you give me the Eye, I give you back your blood.”

  I looked at Hiss still on the ground, watching her. What was he thinking? He gave me no sign that he’d decided.

  But what other choice did I have? I had the Eye. I could have potions, too. With potions, it was going to be so much easier to find everything else I needed. So much easier to fight the sidhe. I remembered what Bo-bo and Ari had done, how they’d collapsed an entire building with people still inside it. Potions could be just as powerful, if made right. And Signora Vera made them right. Of that, at least, I was sure.

  I put one of my knives back in my pocket and raised my hand up. “Take it.”

  She didn’t hesitate.