Perfect, she thought. He’ll never notice. At least not tonight.
Zerah had never had alcohol, but she didn’t care. She knew people used it to numb their feelings, and that is exactly what she intended to do. She chose the box farthest from the wine cabinet, one that had another box stacked atop it. She lifted the top box, set it aside, and pulled a bottle up by its neck from the box underneath. It was a simple bottle, shorter than most, maybe stouter. The bottle had no label, and the cork at the top had red wax dried over it.
He’ll never notice, she repeated in her mind.
She took the bottle of wine to the cabinet, where she had seen a corkscrew, and began the process of opening it. Given that she had never opened a bottle of wine before, she fumbled with it. Adding to her ineptitude was the fact that the cork was very dry and brittle. After twenty seconds of struggle, Zerah popped the cork down into the bottle instead of out and cursed quietly. It didn’t matter though. She knew she would have to hide the bottle after taking from it. She’d worry about covering her tracks later. Right now she just wanted to drink the wine.
Like a girl dying of thirst, Zerah tipped the bottle up and began to drink the red liquid down. It tasted horrible to her, but it didn’t matter; she continued drinking voraciously—gulp after gulp, her breaths coming between each one and her eyes watering. The wine went down with the heartache of watching her mother suffer through her sickness; it went down with the frustration of her father sacrificing his own health to try to find a cure; it went down with the loneliness of her best friend, her brother, becoming stern and cold, his laughter vanishing into the past; and the wine went down with the pain of having lost every single thing that was good in her life. She came up from drowning herself with a gasp and looked through the green bottle to see she had consumed half of the contents. She burped and her mouth burned, coated with the thick wine, which tasted to her like a mixture of plum and garbage. She felt slightly dizzy and thought maybe the wine was working, so she rushed back to the box, hid the half-empty wine bottle, ripped a tilted bottle out of the wine cabinet, and rushed back to the dining room.
She handed the bottle to her uncle, who took it from her hesitantly with one raised eyebrow. Zerah pretended nothing was amiss and again took her seat. Rainart momentarily looked at the bottle he had been handed, and then he broke into a smile, causing his moustache to bend like a great black snake.
“It took a while to make a choice,” he said playfully.
“Sorry,” Zerah said, using a fork to poke at her now-cold plate of vegetables and tofu. She was trying to seem as though she had a purpose for not meeting his eyes. “I didn’t know which one to choose.”
Rainart stood from his seat with the wine bottle and turned to the table behind him. He found a corkscrew and talked as he opened the bottle. “Well, I like them all, you know, as I did choose them myself. I’d like to think I have a fair palate.” He turned back to the table and poured himself a new glass without sitting. “I’m always curious to know what others think, though. Tell me, Zerah, what did you think of my choice in wine?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zerah said. She picked her head up and felt suddenly that it seemed heavier.
Rainart smiled again and filled the wine glass in front of his niece. “You only had to ask. You don’t have to sneak. I know you’re underage, but honestly, I don’t really care.”
“But I didn’t—” Zerah protested.
“You didn’t drink a whole bottle, did you?” Rainart asked.
“Half,” Zerah admitted sheepishly. A tiny burp escaped her lips after she spoke.
“Did you at least recork it?” Rainart asked with a smile.
The teen scrunched her nose with guilt. “I accidentally pushed it in.”
Rainart roared with a laugh that made Zerah’s eyes pop with happy surprise. She was feeling the full effects of the wine now. Her cheeks were warm, and she felt she was just on the edge of giddiness. She slapped her face like a fool, now caught in what seemed like such a ridiculous stunt.
“It’s all right,” Rainart said, his laughter still coming between words. “You deserve to let some steam off.”
“I know, right?” Zerah said with an exaggerated gesture. She was now displaying the full repertoire of a girl who had had her first half bottle of wine and had done so in a span of thirty seconds. She licked her lips and breathed heavily. “It’s just—I mean, today, all day long…”
“Go ahead. Let it out,” Rainart egged the girl on.
“I just wanted to scream!” the girl said loudly and slapped both of her hands down on the table.
As Zerah’s hands hit the table, the gigantic wall of glass behind her shattered loudly and fell out into the night. The howling storm outside threw sheets of rain into the dining room, and Rainart held his arm up to shelter his face from the wind. Thunder rumbled loudly as Zerah spun and fell out of her chair. The shock of what had just happened registered on the girl’s face in wide-eyed terror. She stared out the open window and then crawled backward, under the table and away from the gaping hole in the house.
Rainart reached under the table and wrenched the girl up by her arm. He quickly ushered her out into the hall and slammed her upright against the wall. He looked into her eyes as if searching for a ghost in the darkness, his own face just inches from Zerah’s.
“What the hell is going on?” Zigmund said as he came down the staircase.
“Shut up,” Rainart barked at the boy, but Zigmund saw his uncle with his hand on his sister’s throat, and he rushed forward.
“Get off her!” Zigmund yelled.
As the boy came forward, Rainart threw his arm out and knocked Zigmund to the ground, keeping Zerah pinned to the wall. He looked back at the girl with a ferocious growl.
“What did the bottle look like?” he snarled. “The one you drank from. What did it look like?”
“I…I…” Zerah stuttered. “It didn’t h-have a label.”
Rainart looked hard into the girl’s eyes, and there he saw what he was searching for, as fleeting as it was. Like a faint shimmer, like smoke being blown by a fan, the emerald gleam was in her eyes. He caught just a glimpse of it before it disappeared.
Stepping back, Rainart released the girl, and she slid to the floor next to her brother. She was sobbing, her cheeks wet with tears. Zigmund regained his faculties and came to his sister’s side, hugging her close to see she was all right. The teens looked up at their uncle like beaten dogs, confused, hurt, and scared beyond reason. Rainart’s eyes darted from side to side, and he scratched his beard feverishly. Suddenly, he dashed back into the wine room. The twins could hear boxes being flung about wildly, bottles clinking against one another. The world was chaos.
Rainart came back into the hallway moments later with the half-empty bottle of wine in his hands. He stomped forward and stopped in front of the teens, heaped on the floor in a pile. Rainart was breathing heavily as he looked down at them, and his eyes were manic.
“Get up, now,” Rainart’s gravelly voice commanded, “and follow me quickly. If you don’t move now, you will die.”
The twins followed their uncle down the stairs, wondering the entire time whether they were willfully marching to their execution. The man said nothing and descended the stairs quickly, once again proving the limp that made him jerk unnaturally with each step was not a true hindrance. Zigmund wondered how Rainart had hurt his leg. Was it an injury suffered during some covert operation, the lasting memory of some fight to the death he just barely won, or was it simply the result of one too many glasses of wine that caused a precipitous fall? All these possibilities were on the table. Really, any possibility was on the table at this point.
Zerah was still crying but doing so silently as she descended. She was terrified, but not of her mysterious uncle. She knew the man had secrets, and she knew there must be dark things within him to make him drink as he did, but what truly terrified her was that it was plain she had caused the massive
wall-sized window in the dining room to shatter. Zerah had no idea how she had done it, but her instincts told her she deserved all the credit. Adding to her incriminating intuition was that her uncle had seemingly seen something in her eyes. A laughing, jovial, and pleasantly drunk man had snapped, and it was of her doing. She just didn’t know how or why. Zerah felt that there was a monster within her.
Rainart led the twins down three flights of stairs, and now they were making it a fourth. Their trek was revealing the house had underground floors. The teens hoped it wasn’t many more before they stopped. The suspense was unbearable. They feared what might come next, but the anticipation was eating at the linings of their stomachs.
Is this possible? Rainart thought to himself. Could she be this powerful already?
He reached into the back pocket of his black slacks and retrieved a small phone. He never looked at the device. The thumb on his right hand hit the correct keys as if programmed to do nothing but that one task. He lifted the phone to his ear and waited for a voice at the other end.
“You’re at home, aren’t you?” the voice asked.
“Yes,” Rainart replied, “but I need you here. I don’t have time to explain. Are you able to come?”
“You’re lucky,” the voice said. “I’m local. If you had called me yesterday, I—”
“How soon can you be here?” Rainart asked, cutting the voice off.
“Umm, fifteen. Maybe twenty.” The person on the other end of the line was beginning to sound worried. “Do I need to call Kadira?”
“No. No. Please just get here as fast as you can. I’ll explain then. I’ll be in the garage.” After that, Rainart hung up.
To the twins’ relief, they had now reached the bottom of the stairs. Rainart turned down an unfinished hallway, which was the only path available. Pipes and wires protruded from the ceiling, and the concrete walls were bare. The hallway was dimly lit, and at its end was a solid metal barrier with a device next to it. If Zigmund and Zerah were afraid they might be walking to their execution, this was definitely the type of place where it could happen. They continued to follow Rainart silently and stopped well behind him when he stood in front of the device next to the black metal door.
He pressed a button on the device that activated a sensor pad. Then Rainart put his thumb on the pad, and another small lens opened above, which immediately scanned his eye. After the retinal scan, a single electronic bleep was heard, and Rainart spoke clearly. “Eil Dragaredd.” The twins recognized their mother’s maiden name, their uncle’s surname. A heavy metallic clunk could be heard from the other side of the door, and then the black barrier slid upward, allowing them passage.
“Inside,” Rainart said, waving the twins through the door. They obeyed and entered the room. Rainart followed behind them and then pressed a button along the wall that closed the door. The metal clunk came again but this time louder and with reverberation.
If they were now in the garage Rainart had spoken of during his phone conversation, it didn’t look like any garage the twins had ever been in before. The room was immense and looked like the set of a science fiction movie. Four white walls went up at least thirty feet, with a muted gray hexagonal pattern across their entirety. The floor was adorned with the same hexagonal pattern, but the pattern was white against black metal. They looked to the high ceiling, which seemed nothing more than a series of long halogen bulbs, bathing the room in bright light. There were two cots against the left wall, the right wall was mostly bare with the exception of a large video screen, and along the far wall were a sink, a cabinet, and a door they thought might lead to a bathroom. Rainart walked into the middle of the room and told Zigmund and Zerah to follow him. Once they were all standing in the middle of the room, Rainart turned to Zigmund, held out the wine bottle, and told him to drink the rest of its contents.
“What?” Zigmund asked. “I’m not drinking that.”
“Boy, I swear on every nasty thing I’ve ever done that what I do to you will be the nastiest of them all if you give me any more trouble. Your sister drank the first half of this bottle, and now you’re going to finish it.” Rainart pushed the bottle harshly into Zigmund’s chest, and the boy reluctantly took hold of it. Then Zigmund raised it to his lips. “Now, Zerah,” Rainart continued, turning to the girl, “why did you choose that bottle? Tell the truth. It doesn’t matter whether the truth seems strange to you.”
“I thought I was getting away with something,” Zerah admitted. “I chose a bottle that looked like something you wouldn’t miss or notice, like something you might forget about.”
“It didn’t call out to you or seem mystically attractive to you in any way? Did you feel any pull toward it, any allure?” Rainart was looking at her with so much concern that Zerah started to shake.
“No. It wasn’t like that,” she said. “It was just plain. I didn’t think a lot about it. It was just plain and forgettable and…and…I don’t know.” Tears were coming again, and Zerah was visibly upset. “What is wrong with me?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Nothing is wrong with you,” Rainart said, his eyes widening. “Hell, I’ve met people who would literally kill to be able to do what you just did. I’ll explain more as soon as Zigmund finishes that wine.” Rainart pointed to the bottle in Zigmund’s hands, yet needing to be drained. “Sometime today, please.”
Zigmund grimaced and moaned but obeyed. He tipped the bottle back and guzzled all the liquid down. After he finished, he gagged but kept from vomiting anything up. When Zigmund straightened back up, Rainart pulled the bottle from his hands, handed it to Zerah, and grabbed Zigmund’s chin. He tilted the boy’s head up so he could look directly into his eyes.
Zigmund had thought of running away after his scene in the dining room. The only thing that stopped him was that his sister was still with Rainart. Now, as he stood in this insane science fiction room, having been forced to drink wine for the first time, his uncle staring into his eyes like a doctor searching for glaucoma, he resolved to run away with his sister the first chance they got. Rainart was obviously mad. Having to come here had been the twins’ terrible misfortune.
Rainart searched deep in Zigmund’s eyes and then mumbled some indecipherable words. He turned away, then turned back, kept staring, and continued searching. Zigmund wondered how many minutes he would have to endure this odd torture. Rainart uttered more words, frowned, and then released Zigmund’s chin and stepped back. He sighed, lowered himself to the floor, sitting in the lotus position, and asked the teens to do the same.
Zigmund and Zerah humored their uncle, sitting on the black metal floor directly next to each other. They stared at Rainart, waiting for something, anything. It seemed as though their uncle was weighing some grand decision.
“As I said earlier,” Rainart began, “there is a great deal about my life and me you will find impossible to take at face value. My only aid in convincing you will be time. Events will occur, you will meet new people, and eventually I will go from the way you see me now—which I’d bet is as a lunatic alcoholic—to the way you will come to know me.
“What you have to understand, without the aid of time, is I am in a very difficult situation. Assume you had to give someone a truth he or she would find unbelievable. Assume that because of this truth, certain measures had to be taken. The question set before you is, Do you inform those who will disbelieve you, and hope their inability to believe doesn’t harm what needs to be done, or do you simply execute the necessary actions without giving any explanation? I’ll be honest: the latter option would be easier for me, but I’m trying to be the good guy here. So I’m giving you the choice. Do you want to hear the truth, knowing you won’t believe it, or do you want me to just do what I have to?”
Zerah was no longer feeling the effects of the wine. Everything that had happened had squeezed the intoxication out of her. However, as she looked at her brother, she could see he was suffering from the fuzziness and had also had difficulty following Rainart’s log
ic. She put her hand on Zigmund’s and spoke for the both of them.
“We want to know everything you can tell us about what happened in the dining room. Everything.”
Zigmund looked at her with glassy eyes and nodded silently. Rainart sighed and began.
“Zigmund, after you left the dining room this evening, your sister went into a storage room to retrieve a bottle of wine. I foolishly let her do so without realizing she might stumble on something I would have rather she not stumbled on. Your sister was determined to consume a certain amount of wine without my knowledge, and before returning to the dining room, she drank half of the bottle I just asked you to finish off. That wine was made with something called zulis, and its powers can be quite formidable in the right hands. Apparently, your sister’s hands are exactly the type of hands the zulis likes. Without meaning to do so, Zerah used the power of the zulis to amplify a seemingly innocent expression of frustration, ultimately shattering a forty-foot-long window by slapping her hands against the dining table.”
Zigmund looked at Zerah with an expression that begged for confirmation of Rainart’s story.
“It’s true, Ziggy,” Zerah said. “I don’t know exactly how I did it, but I could feel the window shattered because of me.”
“That shattered window,” Rainart continued, “is obviously what caused you to come back down the stairs to see me staring into your sister’s eyes in the same way I just stared into yours. The zulis leaves traces in the irises of your eyes. It’s a faint emerald flickering, but it happens only to those that can be amplified by the zulis. It’s not something that happens to everyone. That’s why I had you drink the wine, Zigmund. I needed to see your eyes.”
“And?” Zerah urged Rainart to continue.
“The zulis amplified you, Zerah. Zigmund…” Rainart shrugged as if giving someone bad news. “Not so much.”
“Thank God,” Zigmund uttered.
“Now,” Rainart continued, “if you thought that was unbelievable, this is where it gets really good.” Rainart stood with a grunt and paced. “Forgive me. I can’t sit like that for long with my leg. I have to keep the blood flowing.”
The Hands of Ruin: Book One Page 6