Blood of the Fae

by Tom Mohan

  The sound of her front door opening spurred her to action. She ran, not toward her car but straight to the street. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the men coming, and the footsteps of the other thudded behind her. She felt the jaws of the trap snapping shut. She turned down the street away from her pursuers and ran. She felt them behind her, closing in, felt the fingers in her mind pulling her back. She stumbled—fell.

  Her instincts forced her body into a tight roll, but the hard pavement still knocked the air from her lungs. She found herself bathed in light as tires screeched almost on top of her. She screamed and wrapped her arms around her head in a futile attempt at self-preservation.

  A siren interrupted her scream, and flashing lights turned the scene around her red.

  Brianna’s something had arrived.

  Do you feel any better this morning? You fell asleep in the middle of talking last night.”

  Manny Lepe placed a steaming mug on the coffee table in front of Liza before settling himself into his worn recliner. The scent of his favorite Peruvian blend filled the room. He watched patiently as Liza picked up the mug and allowed it to warm her hands. She had shown up at his front door after midnight, shaking terribly and babbling about someone trying to kill her.

  “More like this morning,” Liza said. “I’m exhausted. Thank you for taking me in at such an hour.”

  “Did you think I would turn you away? We are family, yes?”

  Liza smiled. “Yes, we are. You’re my only family.”

  Manny hoped he managed to keep the disapproving look from his face. The last thing she needed from him this morning was another lecture about her mother. Besides, he’d be lying to himself if he denied how nice it felt that she would come to him with such a problem. He loved this young woman as his own daughter and was proud that she felt the same way.

  “I told you more last night than I’d intended,” Liza continued. “You probably think I’m crazy.”

  “I don’t think you are crazy,” Manny said, though the story was quite strange.

  “Well, at least I had the presence of mind not to tell the police that my phone continued working even after I disconnected it. When they asked about it, I told them the intruder must have unplugged it.”

  “There was nothing missing from your house? Nothing stolen?”

  “Nothing. The only thing to prove I didn’t imagine the whole thing was the broken wine glass in the kitchen and the disconnected phone.” Liza shook her head. “I don’t understand, Manny. I always lock the front door when I come home, but there was no evidence of forced entry. It’s like they had a key to my house.”

  Manny sat in silence. He had always been a quiet man, preferring to think through his words before speaking. Especially when speaking English.

  He watched as Liza sipped her drink and gazed around the small room. Manny had moved into Pacific Colony Retirement Village almost four years before after succumbing to the inevitable fact that, at seventy-seven years old, he could no longer keep up his duties as gardener for Liza’s mother. Her mom was paying the steep cost of the place, for which he had great appreciation. During Liza’s childhood years, he had done his best to be there for Liza as her parents fought and eventually split up. Even then, they had used Liza to hurt one another. As much as it pained him, he and the other household staff had often been the closest thing to a family that Liza had.

  “The woman on the unplugged phone and that dark feeling you had, these are strange things, yes?” he said, gathering his thoughts.

  Liza nodded. “I’d call them strange, yes.”

  Manny smiled. “My abuela—my grandmother—used to tell stories of such strange things in her village in Mexico. Her people believed that there are spirits all around us, some good, some not so good.” He stared at the ceiling as his thoughts drifted back over seventy years. “Many stories to scare children to behave. We huddled beneath our blankets, so frightened but listening to every word. To us, the spirits were very real. To abuela, too, I think.”

  “My parents would have called your grandmother crazy,” Liza said.

  Manny smiled and nodded. “Most Americans would. This culture has lost its sense of wonder. Too much to distract. They only see what is before them.”

  “I don’t understand any of it. What happened last night is impossible.”

  “And yet, it happened, yes?”

  Liza placed her coffee cup on the table and slumped back on the couch. “When I woke up this morning, I tried to deny the whole thing, to put it off as exhaustion and an overactive imagination.” Her eyes met his. “It didn’t work. I could remember every detail. I have no idea how that woman did what she did, but it really happened.”

  “And you have no idea why someone would try to hurt you? Or maybe just scare you? A joke, maybe?”

  “No,” Liza said, her voice rising. “I’m no one, nothing. No one would go to that trouble over me.” She sat up and picked up her mug again. “Besides, there was no faking that feeling I had when the intruder was near. My skin still crawls when I think about it.”

  The clock on the wall chimed 8:00 a.m.

  Liza yawned.

  “You need rest,” Manny said. “You are welcome to stay here. The ladies are coming at noon for coffee and cards, but you can sleep in my room and we will be quiet.”

  Liza smiled. “The ladies are coming for cocktails and gossip. You’ve become quite the popular bachelor around here. I don’t want to be a bother.”

  “It would be no bother at all.” He paused. “You should tell your mother about what happened last night.”

  “Why would I do that? She doesn’t care what happens to me. She’s never cared what happened to me.”

  Her words pained Manny. He would never give up hope that Liza and her mother could reconcile.

  “Wait a moment,” Manny said. He pushed himself from his chair and moved nimbly to his bedroom. He opened the top drawer of his dresser and removed a box that had long ago contained a watch his late wife had bought him for his birthday. He removed the contents and put the box back in the drawer. With a deep breath, he muttered a short prayer that he was doing the right thing.

  Instead of returning to his recliner, Manny sat beside Liza on the small couch. He took her right hand in his left and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  “Manny? Are you all right? Your forehead has those lines that say you’re concerned.”

  He shrugged. “I’m old, that’s all.”

  The worry did not leave her face.

  “I’m bien, fine.” He took another deep breath. “We have never much talked about that night.” Liza’s face showed that she knew which night he spoke of—the night she was conceived.

  “No, we haven’t. Nor have I wanted to.”

  Manny smiled and squeezed her hand again. “This time, we must.”

  He could see the emotions flit across her face: anger, denial, self-loathing. These things they had spoken of often but never the reason for them. She had always refused to speak of that part of herself.

  “You know the story already, so I will speak only of what I have not told anyone.” Manny shifted on the couch but did not release her hand. “Your mother called him the Dark Man. This you know.”

  Liza nodded. “That’s where I got my dark complexion.”

  “Not her meaning, though, I do not think. Dark, but not skin.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  “Your mother could remember little of him, little of that night.”

  “She was drunk,” Liza said.

  “She says no.”

  “All she does is drink. That’s her life.”

  Manny could hear the anger in her voice. “Now, sí. Then, no. She was a lovely woman. We on her staff could not believe the stories.”

  “Yet she never denied them. She never denied any of it.”

  “No. Still, it was not like her.” He sat up straighter. “But this is not what I wish to tell you. When she came home that night, she was wearing somet
hing different. Only Maria noticed and then only by chance. You did not know Maria.”

  “No. I don’t think I’ve heard about a Maria.”

  “She died soon after that night. It was not good.” He paused, his mind lost in the past. “Maria noticed the pendant on Mrs. McCarthy. She later found it in the bathroom trash can when she emptied it. She dared not ask your mother about it. Maria did not like the pendant—she said it was maldito.”

  “Cursed?”

  “Close enough. She wanted to put it back in the trash, but I took it from her. I think it was from your father. Your real father, the Dark Man.”

  Liza’s mother had forbidden any mention of Liza’s biological father. Her husband at the time, technically Liza’s stepfather until the couple divorced when Liza was four, had never forgiven his wife for her infidelity and had refused to have anything to do with Liza.

  Manny held out his other hand and opened it to reveal a necklace. He held it up so that the pendant that dangled from it was clear to see.

  “That looks really old,” Liza said, her gaze studying every detail.

  “I believe it is. Very old.” The pendant took the shape of two interlocking rings, like plain male wedding bands, one silver and the other deep black. Symbols that looked almost familiar, and yet completely foreign, decorated each ring. It hung from a heavy, masculine-looking chain.

  “The night after this was given to me, I had a dream that I was giving it to you. You were all grown up in the dream, but I knew it was you. You looked just as you look now. I kept it. Now, I give it to you. Why? I do not know, but it feels like the right thing.”

  Liza grasped the necklace by the chain. As her hand came in contact with it, her face paled, and for a moment, Manny thought she might faint. Then she blinked twice and looked as though nothing had happened.

  “Liza? Are you feeling not well?”

  “No. I mean, I’m fine.”

  “You looked like you were gone somewhere else.”

  Liza smiled, but it looked forced. “Just wondering where this could have come from. Thank you. If it was my dad’s, I’d like to keep it.”

  “It is yours to do with as you wish.”

  Liza’s phone rang on the coffee table. She picked it up and gasped. “I think it’s her—the woman from last night.”

  She held the phone up so he could see it. The screen was dark, as though no call were coming in. It rang again.

  “I’m going to put it on speaker. I want someone else to hear this.” She touched a button on the phone. “Hello?”

  “Go home. I promise it’s safe. They rarely come out during the day, and I don’t sense any danger around you at the moment. I’ll call you again when you get there.”

  “Wait, what do you mean you don’t sense any danger around me?”

  “Hello, Mr. Lepe,” the woman said. “You are looking very dapper today.”

  “Where are you?” Liza practically yelled. Her eyes darted to the one window in the small room. The curtain was only half open. “How can you see us?” The phone was quiet.

  Manny’s heart pounded in his chest. Who was this woman, and what did she know of him? “It was the woman from last night, yes?”

  Liza nodded. “Part of me hoped I had imagined the whole thing—hallucinated or something.” She looked at the phone again. “That was her, though. Just like last night. How did she know I was with you?”

  Manny waved a hand. “That is beyond my knowing.” His brown eyes stared into hers. “She said you should go home. Will you?”

  “The police said they would drive by regularly for a couple days, and it’s a bright, sunny day out. It seems much less scary now.”

  “I can go with you. You should not do this alone.”

  Liza took a deep breath. “No, I’ll be okay. Besides, the ladies will be terribly disappointed if you cancel.”

  Manny smiled. “That is true.” His mirth faded. “Still, I worry about you, mija.”

  Liza wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. “If I can stay another night, I’ll be back by dark. I don’t think I can sleep there tonight.”

  Manny returned the hug. “You know you are always welcome. Please, be careful.”

  A few minutes later, Manny stood on the front lawn of Pacific Colony and watched Liza drive away. Had he done the right thing? Should he have advised her to stay and forget this whole matter? He had not told her all of his dream. He’d left out what had happened after he had given her the pendant. It was only a dream, and I am a silly old man.

  Still, the image would not leave his mind.

  • • • • • • •

  LIZA’S PHONE BEGAN to ring almost as soon as she walked through the door of her house.

  “Why doesn’t my phone light up and show your number when you call?” she asked in place of a greeting.

  “Well, I don’t really know,” Brianna said.

  “How can you not know?”

  “I don’t get out much. I don’t even know what your phone looks like, but I would guess it’s nothing like mine.”

  “Okay, whatever. Why did you call me last night?”

  “To save your life, for one. You could act a bit more grateful, you know.”

  Liza realized that Brianna’s words held some truth. If this was not all some elaborate joke, the woman had saved her. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Thank you for last night.” She blew out a breath. “This is all so weird. Nothing like this ever happens to me. My life is so boring even nuns think I need to get a life.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, nothing like this ever happens to anyone outside of my family, which makes me wonder—why you, Elizabeth McCarthy?”

  “Believe me, I’ve been asking myself that same question. How did you know I was in danger, anyway?”

  “I don’t have time to go into that right now. I will tell you all I can when you get here.”

  Liza wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “Wait. When I get where? I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes, you are.” Brianna’s voice never wavered. “Marcas needs you. I’m not sure why or what your part is, but I do know that you have to come here.”

  “Where exactly are you?”

  “Halden’s Mill. It’s a small town in northern Missouri.”

  “Missouri! I’m not going to Missouri. I’ve never even been out of California.” She waited for a response, but the line was quiet. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m here. Yes, Paulie, that was you a few years ago. Sorry, Liza, I have a visitor who needed my attention. Where were we? Last night I had to contact you in a way that would get your attention. I believe that worked out quite well as you are still alive today. Something is going on here, something out of the ordinary that affects my family. Somehow you are involved and, believe me when I say, you will come here.”

  The sudden fire in the woman’s voice alarmed Liza. “I don’t know who you think I am. I haven’t heard from Marcas in months. He told me he couldn’t see me anymore and disappeared.”

  “I don’t like this any more than you do. You’re an outsider and should not be involved. Yet somehow you are, and I don’t know why. I do not like not knowing.”

  “Oh, and I guess you know everything, huh?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. It’s my gift. Here’s the deal—Marcas’s brother is missing. Marcas has practically disappeared himself searching for Conall. Most paths lead to death—theirs and yours. Only one path leads to life, and on that path, you are here with us.”

  Liza struggled to make what she was hearing fit reality. “That makes no sense at all.”

  “To you, I’m sure it doesn’t. It is not something that I can explain long distance. You must come here. To say it is a matter of life and death may sound overly dramatic, but it is very true in this case.”

  Liza hesitated. She couldn’t just leave, could she? Why not? She had vacation time, and it wasn’t like she had any social life to miss out on. There was the play to consider. But auditions w
ere still going on. It wouldn’t be that hard to replace her. The idea was tantalizing and terrifying at the same time. She had never traveled. Had never been anywhere. She’d spent most of her life practically locked in her mother’s house. Could she really do something like this? You felt it when you put the pendant on. You knew then that your life was going to change.

  “Let me think about it,” she said.

  “You do that.” There was amusement in Brianna’s voice. “But according to the paths, you already know what you are going to do. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  Liza stared out the window of the plane as it made its final approach into Kansas City. She had been a nervous wreck the entire trip. Manny had enlisted one of his lady friends to help her make the arrangements, and a group of them had escorted her to the Los Angeles airport to help her navigate the massive installation. She had felt foolish needing the help of a bunch of senior citizens to get through an airport but had been grateful for their help.

  At the security checkpoint, they had shared hugs and well wishes. Tears had flowed as she hugged Manny goodbye. They’d held each other tight, as though it might be the last time. “You are strong, mija. My love goes with you,” he’d said.

  Liza watched the ground grow closer as the plane descended. The sun was setting over the western horizon, but there was still plenty of light to illuminate her destination.

  There’s nothing down there, she thought. She had been born and raised in Los Angeles. Millions of people crammed into one huge city. And all she saw below now were trees and open green spaces. And water! There was water everywhere—rivers, lakes, ponds. It all looked so alive compared to the dirty dryness of Southern California.

  Liza clutched her boarding pass in sweaty hands. She had held onto it the entire three-hour flight, like clutching a lifeline to her own world. The Delta Airlines imprint on the pass reminded her of the argument she’d had with Janey Collins while planning her flight. Janey was ninety-two and had traveled the world with her husband before his passing a decade before. She was also very frugal about the price of airfare.