Allegiance

by K. A. Tucker

  The dividers in the wheel—they now made sense! Four quarters, four Fates, four universes.

  “That’s right,” Terra explained. “Each one of these universes is identical. Each one has a planet just like yours.” Four universes, four planets. That meant there wasn’t just one parallel planet to Earth. There were four!

  “She catches on quickly,” Ventus chimed in, but by the irritation in his voice, I don’t think he saw that as a good thing.

  “Four versions of the same world times how many worlds …” Terra continued, ignoring him. “Don’t think you are unique or clever, or somehow you wish for things that others do not. The same spells come to us, over and over again. Immortality, wealth, beauty, youth, revenge …”

  “Blah, blah, blah,” Unda droned. “Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. The seven sins—over and over again. You’re such dull creatures. It becomes …”

  “Tedious after a while.” Terra completed her circle around the bowl, ending where she began to finish Unda’s sentence.

  “And you must answer them all?”

  “No … not in the least.”

  “So … why don’t you just ignore the requests, if they’re so tedious?” I pressed.

  “Yes, we do much of the time. But we can’t ignore all. What else would we do, then?” With hands widespread over the bowl and orbs focused, Terra stated, “This is our purpose.”

  My head was spinning by now. I’m sure there was a simpler way to explain all this. “We maintain equilibrium. Where there is life, there must be death. Happiness for sadness. Love for hate,” Terra explained.

  “For whom?”

  Terra’s brow quirked, the first sign of confusion I’d seen from any of them. “For whom?”

  “Yes. Who decided you needed to maintain the equilibrium?” Again, that bewildered look. “Is there a higher power than the Fates?”

  “We answer to no one!” Incendia features suddenly tightened into a savage glare.

  Well, I guess that’s a touchy subject. Whether there was someone or something higher was still unclear, though I had a feeling perhaps a higher power was in control, beyond these Fates. Incendia’s eyes narrowed as he read my mind.

  “So, you just answer us when you feel like it?” I asked.

  Terra smiled. “More or less. When one of you casts your spell, we decide how that spell will be delivered, how the course of fate will be changed. If it will be changed.”

  Change the course of fate … the blood in my veins suddenly sparked. “Yes, about that.” Now I remembered why I was here. What had driven me to demand to see these wretched things. I crossed my arms, leveling Terra with a stare. “I don’t recall asking you to bind a baby to a deadly curse, or resurrect my lover. Or kill him in the first place!”

  Four arrogant smiles answered me. I wanted to punch them all, but I knew they’d eviscerate me if I so much as moved.

  “The rules are simple,” Terra began. “Listen closely, for we’ll only explain once. If we answer your request, we must do what you wish. How we choose to do so is up to us. That’s part of the fun.”

  “Fun?” My voice turned shaky. Four universes, four games. Mage was right. This was all a game! I was their entertainment! “And of course you couldn’t ever simply give us what we want,” I added bitterly.

  Bewilderment flashed across Terra’s face. “I suppose we could but … how monotonous this burden would become for us!”

  “You killed Nathan because you were bored?” I shouted.

  Her composure was enough to drive someone off a cliff. “No … you killed Nathan. Remember?”

  Rage tore through me. I wanted to leap forward and attack her. I pictured doing it. The picture was immediately obliterated by a wave of crippling pain. My knees buckled and I crumbled to the pedestal, panting as it took its time to subside.

  “Finished?” Incendia purred with a wicked smile. “I am the one who decided to eliminate Nathan. That was my twist to the spell. That’s how the game works. Each of us has our chosen ones and we can grant the spell but not without council and input from the others. That way, no one is favored.”

  “So,” I said, still winded from my warning, “for every Causal Enchantment I come to you with, you will grant it but not without perverting it into something so skewed from what I asked for, it is more a punishment. To what end?”

  “We’ve already explained that,” Incendia answered coolly.

  I struggled to my feet. “Oh, yes. That’s right. For your entertainment.” I spat out each bitter word. “When will it end?”

  “When only one chosen is left standing.”

  “So one of you is supporting me while three of you are always trying to break me.”

  “Basically,” Ventus answered flatly, shrugging. “Nothing personal.”

  Yeah, right … “And so how many of these ‘chosen ones’ are left?”

  “Two,” Unda answered. “You and Incendia’s.”

  I’m in a competition and I don’t even know who my competitors are. A tiny part of me—the aggressive Sofie—swelled with pride over being in the final two. Whoever this person was, they were important. “So either I break or yours breaks,” I surmised. “And then what?”

  Incendia shrugged noncommittally. “We start again. We choose another planet. We find our players, and we begin.”

  How many of these “games” had they played? How many worlds destroyed? “And Earth? My world?”

  “We never grant the same request in the exact same way twice. That’s a rule,” Terra began to explain in an authoritative voice. “But, no matter how we choose to play the game, all paths will lead to one fate. Your world will end, my dear Sofie. That I can assure you.”

  A desperate numb feeling washed over me as I regarded Terra more closely. She was both my protector and my punisher. Without her gift of choice and her magic, I would not be a vampire. I would have died long ago, buried by Nathan. With her gift, I have suffered countless injuries, caused pain to others time and time again. And now they were telling me all of it was hopeless.

  “Can’t I buy some more time?” I asked, my voice hollow.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Ventus answered, that caginess back, indicating my time for asking questions had come to an end.

  “Now that we have given you some information, what is it you want from us?” Terra asked.

  What? Seriously? “You know exactly what I want!”

  “Yes, we do. But you must ask it and then we will decide how we will grant it. We cannot simply interfere with fate at our choosing. We have no autonomous power over the worlds. Our only mode of influence is through spellcasters and their requests.”

  I hesitated, this piece of information highly interesting. How on earth should I request them to reverse all that they had done? Any request I made would be poisoned seven ways from Sunday. The mess could grow more serious than it was today. A thought struck me.

  “And if I don’t? If I just stop casting spells? This game might never end, right?”

  Four expressions turned stony and I realized I had found a loophole. I smiled. If I didn’t cast spells, they didn’t have a game. If they didn’t have a game … Had I found a bargaining chip?

  A blur, a shift. Suddenly our surroundings changed. I now stood within Nathan’s gardens, crisp summer night air drifting across my bare shoulders. Out from behind the oak tree stepped a tall, lean, man. My insides melted. Nathan. Nathan as I remembered him. Nathan with chocolate brown irises. Nathan who recognized me, loved me …

  I pawed the air in front of me, my fingertips searching for his flesh. “Wouldn’t you like Nathan back?” Ventus cooed softly from an unseen location.

  Oh, to have Nathan back … To bury my head in that shoulder, to slip my hands around his neck, along his chest … to feel his soft lips graze mine again. For a long moment, I did nothing but stare at that beautiful face. It would be so easy to say the words.

  No, wait! No, it wouldn’t! They dangled Nathan in front of
me but I knew that what I would get would not be Nathan. Look what they had already done! No … I gritted my teeth, fighting against their wicked temptation. Like serpents, the Fates were using my weakness against me to keep their game moving.

  I’m on to you all! I laughed mirthlessly. “But you did give him back to me, remember? With a few extra bad habits.” My attempt at indifference to Wraith came out sounding strangled.

  I was back on my pedestal, staring at the four of them around the vessel. Terra offered a thin smile. “Well, then, what can we offer you, Sofie? Would you like your venom back? Would you like to stop this impending war?”

  Promises, promises. All just words. Words that would be twisted, tainted, mutilated into something grotesque and unrecognizable. Gritting my jaw, I shook my head stubbornly but said nothing.

  Again, my surroundings changed in a swirling mist. I now stood in a cold, dark room. I recognized it. It was one of Viggo’s cellars. A frail young woman sat huddled in a corner, her dress long-since stained, her arms bruised, her curly brown locks hanging limply around her.

  “Would you like your sister back in her tomb?” Unda whispered.

  I felt the blood drain from my face. I fought my rising panic. It’s not real. It’s not real. They’re desperate. The cell vanished and I was back on the pedestal yet again, facing Unda, her mouth warped into a toothy, taunting smile.

  “Oh, that’s right. You didn’t know. Your human girl has betrayed you …”

  14. Yellow Eyes and Blue Prints—Evangeline

  From the outside, all appeared tranquil at Viggo’s palace. No indication that the front gates were in shambles, blown up by witches’ fire; no hint that the scenic atrium was now a rotting battlefield; no signs that a young woman, guilty only for her choice in lovers, was being tortured mercilessly. But I knew better. I knew because I had seen it firsthand.

  The second we made the decision to come to New York, Ivan called Lilly on her cell. She suggested we take Kait’s jet. Vampires and their private jets … Kait’s jet was smaller and simpler than Viggo’s, but it had wings and it got us over the ocean fast—I hoped fast enough that we arrived before Bishop. That’s all that I cared about.

  Kait didn’t have a flight crew on twenty-four-hour call. Amelie quickly remedied that issue by compelling two nearby pilots to abandon their own planes and fly ours. We were in the air in less than an hour and landing in seven—the entire time shared between drifting off to sleep and fighting with Caden, Amelie, and Max over Julian and I stepping foot inside that place. Shouting turned to pleading turned to whining. Caden even tried persuading Wraith on the perils of me entering those gates. It didn’t work, thankfully. I was noticing that Wraith didn’t forbid me anything; he simply ensured he was one step ahead of me to destroy any potential threat.

  There were twenty of us stationed on the tenth floor of a condominium complex across the street from Viggo’s. It was a nice, modest space with functional living room furniture and a large table covered with blueprints. Lilly had purchased the condo forty years ago, she explained, as nothing more than an observation spot. To watch her mother’s killer. She claimed Viggo knew nothing about it. I highly doubted that. I’m sure Viggo knew the place down to the paint hues and the abstract print on the curtains. I’m sure he didn’t care. I’m sure he took great twisted pleasure in it all.

  “The streets are so quiet,” I said, observing Manhattan from my perch on the windowsill. It was about four-thirty in the afternoon and dusk was settling in. Traffic was lighter than I had seen in the past. The few passersby huddled within burly winter jackets as they rushed down the sidewalk.

  “It’s Christmas and it’s cold. Humans don’t like the cold.” I turned to find Lilly’s sharp blue eyes studying my face. She gave me a wary smile and I was suddenly overwhelmed with gratitude. Sofie was gone. Mage was gone. Lilly felt like an appropriate substitute.

  “And most are at home, enjoying a Christmas dinner. They’re not staking out a witch sanctuary.”

  “This morning’s church attack certainly can’t help,” Galen said from his outstretched position on the couch.

  “What attack?” Caden and I asked in unison. I felt him move in behind me, his hand sliding across my waist. Conflict churned inside me. I shouldn’t let him touch me anymore, that voice told me. Stop testing the Fates! I was lucky enough for that one thrilling hour back in France. Every second that I toyed with inevitability after that, I was guaranteeing doom …

  Eventually … I would kill him.

  But right now, I needed him. My willpower dissolved into a puddle at my feet as I leaned back to rest against him. In answer to Caden’s question, Galen grabbed the remote to the flat screen television. A mannish blond female reporter filled the camera screen, her backdrop a dwindling blaze in the night.

  “Police are saying this morning’s Christmas massacre was gang-related, though experts believe the brutality inflicted on the bodies was more that of a vicious animalistic attack. Most of the evidence was burned in the fire. However, the scant remains pulled from the catastrophe are being sent to forensics for further examination. Police believe as many as two hundred people perished in the church when the doors were barred and the building set on fire, in what is being called one of the most brutal Christmas attacks in United States history …”

  Blood rushed to my head and drowned out the reporter’s words. Two hundred innocent people, dead. Two hundred men, women … children. My knees folded. Caden’s grip held me up. Two hundred people expecting nothing more than a few prayers followed by a day of celebration with their families. Sickness tossed and turned and rose inside me. It was beginning. “How …”

  “Like baby chicks in a pen. Lazy hunting. The sign of a newly turned vampire,” Kait scorned, her bright orange mouth twisted with distaste.

  Newly turned vampires. Jonah’s army. I groped for Caden’s hand, entangling my fingers with his, grasping for support. This was a disaster.

  “Should we call Viggo and Mortimer? Let them know?” I asked absently.

  Kait’s responding snort filled the silent room. “You think they don’t know? Who do you think barred the doors and set fire to the building?”

  I was already shaking my head. “No … not Mortimer …” Mortimer wouldn’t have done anything like that.

  A wicked laugh mocked me. “You silly girl.”

  “Kait,” Lilly warned, her calmness laced with a razor-sharp edge, like her tongue could lash out and cut the flesh off bones. The arrogant smile slipped from Kait’s face, replaced with what one might deem a contrite expression. “Mortimer would be first with the chains if it meant eliminating witnesses,” Lilly explained softly.

  I nodded numbly. “No witnesses means no living proof that vampires exist …”

  Lilly nodded. “That’s right. As long as Mortimer and Viggo keep their faculties in check, we’ll be fine. I spoke to Mortimer already. They’ve killed a couple of Jonah’s troops. We can only hope they kill the rest before they do something that can’t be hidden.”

  “No witnesses.” Caden’s grasp of me tightened until I could feel the ripples of his chest against my back. “Just bodies. Lots of bodies.” I turned my head slightly to nuzzle my nose against the base of his neck.

  Lilly nodded, her throat clearing as she stepped away. It had to be so strange for her. I couldn’t imagine living in a child’s body for twelve hundred years. She had the beginnings of a woman’s figure but it would never mature. She would never appreciate what I felt at that moment with Caden. My heart poured with sympathy for the girl. She would never have this love. Her life, though long, would never be complete. For all her wisdom, she could never comprehend what she was missing.

  “I wonder how many buildings they can burn before it’s impossible to hide this,” Amelie said, the laugh lines in her face disappearing as sadness took over. An empty, distant look glazed over her eyes. Reminiscing over her own world’s doomsday, no doubt. My heart went out to her. She’d already suffered through t
his once.

  Julian responded with an arm around Amelie’s shoulder, pulling her to his chest in a loving embrace ... We needed to do this. Now. You and me, together again, Julian. This plan would probably get us both killed.

  “How do we get in there, Lilly?” I asked, no interest in wasting any more time dreading possibilities. Caden’s arms instantly tensed. I ignored the reaction.

  “Well … my informants say a dozen Sentinel come in and out daily. The witches have barricaded themselves in,” Lilly explained, taking a seat next to Galen. “I don’t know that they could even get out if they wanted to.”

  My attention drifted back to the window to survey the surrounding buildings and Central Park. Lilly had spies, Viggo had spies, Mortimer had spies. Spies everywhere and none of them knew what was going on inside. “I know vampires can’t get in. We’ve already tested some of the windows. The entire place is set with Merth.”

  “Well … why don’t we go in the same way we did the night we chased Jonah?” Amelie asked Caden. “We just need something that will pass our weight through the window. I’m sure there’s something.” She paused. “Or maybe Wraith can carry us in.”

  Lilly was shaking her head already. “We thought of that. We sent a couple of humans in through a broken window on the fourth floor but the witches have a secondary spell layered on.” Lilly’s face turned sour. “It set them on fire. Who knows how many more tripwires they’ve set.”

  Amelie’s shoulders sagged. “They’ve thought of everything, haven’t they?”

  “Well … no,” I said, smiling. “They didn’t think of a human who could walk through their spell and break it.” The Tribal magic was going to serve a purpose. It was going to help! It could work!

  “And what exactly do you plan on doing—launching yourself through a fourth-story window to break the spell?” Caden answered in a biting tone. “What if you get hurt? What if they’re waiting for you? What if breaking the spell warns them and they get hold of you before I can get in there?” He released his loving grip of me to whip me around, intensity in his eyes. “No, Evangeline. There’re too many things that could go wrong with this harebrained idea!”