Lies and Legends

by Logan Keys

  “Nemesis!” he barks, and I jump. “That’s who you are. A goddess of revenge. You’ll make all the humans pay for their lack of sacrifice to us.”

  He smiles, but I can tell he’s only half joking.

  I busy myself with putting my arms through the leather straps with shaky hands before winding it around my torso. Snapping the buttons until it’s fitted, the sword and her sheath hug Spirit tightly between my shoulder blades.

  “Perfect,” Cory says once I am finished.

  The tank top is cut off so that my back should be frozen solid with the wind hitting it dead on, but I feel fine, and with Spirit there now, I feel as though I’ve got a guardian to my rear should any attack. As if she would warn me.

  At least my shoes are practical.

  The man steps forward as if waking from a dream. “You two get warm and then leave.”

  The eldest girl’s eyes flit to mine then away like a bird that’s been shooed one too many times, and so is wary to land any one place. Her bones too, birdlike, thin and frail, but what keeps my attention is her fading gaze. Glazed over, not quite right. Then I notice the scar across her forehead.

  “This is Nora, she’s not all there, mind you,” the father supplies. “She fell and hurt herself a long time ago, and we don’t exactly have a doctor on call. Sadie, and Cameron, these are the smart ones.”

  I don’t think I imagine Nora’s stiff shoulders at her father’s words.

  Pain.

  That’s what I see, and I look to Cory who nods subtly. He’s proud of his pupil: me.

  “I’m Liza,” I try softly, but the middle girl looks at me and I flinch from the glare.

  Rage. Pure, animalistic rage, and then it’s gone.

  Anger. Leagues of it.

  What’s wrong with them, I wonder, but Cory doesn’t answer. Not inside my head or out loud.

  “Name’s John,” the man says, but he’s lying, as if by knowing his name would give us some sort of control over him.

  Little does he know Cory can influence him to tell the truth.

  The littlest glances at her father then away. So, he’d given their real names but not his own.

  The man, eager to search the pack, sits and digs through it. He begins to eat but doesn’t offer any to his children.

  My body stiffens much like Nora’s had.

  Hunger.

  Starvation.

  I see so much of everything all at once.

  With a furious movement, I snag the pack from his grip and turn and hand it to the middle girl who takes it reluctantly. She checks her father who finally nods his okay, he’s got his food.

  She can’t open the can. She’s too weak.

  When I reach over to help, she flinches back so hard, she trips over her own feet away from me.

  Bruises.

  I see so many bruises on her arms. I have to breathe through my nose, loudly, as I work at the can, to avoid unleashing pent up anger, and frustration, and hatred, I’ve felt while locked back in Bodega out on this man.

  I glance up. Cory watches me, a small smile on his face. He’d wanted me to see and I am seeing far too much.

  My hands begin to shake so hard that I drop the can twice. Looking into Sadie’s eyes, there’s deep sorrow there that threatens to swallow me whole. Like salt to a wound. Cory decides it’s time to show me more.

  She’s not a person anymore, not as she should be. These children are a shell. It’s one thing for a person to harm you who would be put on this earth by one evil or another, but to be afraid of your own father? He’s starving them. He eats first and beats them if they try to take any for themselves.

  He’s brutally vicious.

  The eldest has hit her head so hard that she’s never come back to herself fully… I watch her fall in my mind---images from Cory---the cracking sound of her skull hitting the ground as her father throttles her…

  “Enough,” I scream, and Cory lets me go.

  Spirit clings to my back, only, instead of warmth there, it’s an embrace of the cold and deadly.

  Protection she pulses, justice my hands throb longing to grab her, revenge the letters burn brightly from their place across my arm.

  It is as if they’re not synonymous things, but choices, rather.

  Cory rises. He turns to leave.

  When I try to follow, his hand goes up, motioning for me to stay. “You’re free, Liza. Free as a bird. Do you run from me now, or do you give these little ones another chance at life?”

  “What’s the catch?” I ask.

  “You promise me here and now that you will never leave my side, and I’ll give you something no one else can.”

  “If I refuse?”

  He smiles. “You never help these. You never help the others. But if you choose me, we go to Anthem together. You swear to me, and I can see if you’re lying, remember that, but you will swear a loyalty to me above all else.”

  “Why? What do you want?”

  “Because the rules are only what we make them to be now.”

  “Couldn’t you just make him go away?” I motion at the father.

  “I could.”

  “Then…”

  Cory comes over to me in long strides. He places hands on my shoulders. “Because, Liza, it’s time you act on your blessing. Or curse. Whichever. I’m not sure what these powers are, but we’re no longer part of their story. See how separate we are? And how easy we can shift their fate? We are above it. And we determine their lives now. Why waste an opportunity such as that? Embrace it. It doesn’t have to all be evil.”

  “Why the island?” I ask, pulling away, hugging my arms around myself. “What does it have to do with this ‘embracing’.” Cory knows I am asking why I’d been mentally imprisoned there for so long. What purpose did he have making me relive it so many times?

  “I am trying to show you. Help them. Help these. Help everyone. Liza, what if I told you that it’s all connected? Join me. I will set them free.”

  My mouth drops open.

  “If you do as I ask,” Cory says. “This is a test. If you do it, without question. Without hesitation. I will give you a gift no one else can. I will give your island people their freedom. You know I can do that.”

  I’m stunned. His gift is the most gruesome of gifts. Because it has strings attached, long and bloody, making me a lifelike marionette, him the puppet master. Life and freedom for those on the island is the prize.

  Death at the hands of Spirit for this man. Feed her, he’d said. See, he’d said. See evil that is far worse than Cory, is what he must want.

  Cory nods at my thoughts.

  “The islanders would be completely and totally free?” I ask, hating myself for every word that is a step closer to doing what this person demands of me. “But first, I must concede, agree to murder?”

  Cory sighs. “You make it all sound so deviant. Are these not suffering? Are the ones on the island too, not suffering?”

  I steady myself. “How can I trust you? That you’ll keep your word?”

  “You can't. Devil’s in the details. And the devil’s deal is all you can make, hoping he sticks to what he’s promised. But, Liza, I can swear to you that this is real.”

  I huff a laugh of no humor. “A deal with the devil. But you’d once said you were just a man. And you lied then, too.”

  “Can a man not be worse than a devil? Here is what I’m trying to teach you. There are other things for us to join together to fight. We can do good. Even if you don’t think it, I can see a point in saving your fellow prisoners.”

  And with those last words I feel myself agree. I sense it before my brain understands because there can be no other way.

  I nod agreement.

  I step into action, pulling my sword.

  I hold her in front of me, pointed at Cory. “You better keep your side of the bargain.”

  Cory steps back into the woods. “Touché.”

  Chapter 56

  Dallas

  The night is awash wi
th blood and chaos. The specials who didn’t want to follow Joelle, most of these were quickly subdued by the angry male vampires who’d been forced into hiding before. While our own ranks fell immediately under an assault of weapons and artillery, they too fell swiftly under teeth and claw.

  Vampires can die if they are burned long enough, and flamethrowers were aplenty on the men’s side. They have blazed a trail through the street of charred carnage. What were once my brothers and sisters of darkness, now they had finally found a resting place be that heaven or hell. It was for God to decide.

  But those who chose to fight back in their human bodies, they were not ready for the wave of the dark hearts that overwhelmed them despite their firepower. And I got a bird's-eye view of what it had been like to swarm Ironwood and rain madness down on its people.

  It did not pass me by, the hypocrisy of this decision on Joelle’s part. Had Pike not attacked all of us and demanded our fealty?

  Despite this, our leader is ravaging soldiers, moving so fast she’s a black blur weaving around the fires below. She strikes out at one who is running toward the larger group in retreat. His backup fires at her zig-zagging form, missing. She beheads the one with the largest gun, biting another on his right. Death in the form of a girl. Do they know it to look at her?

  I drop from the second story building with a soft thud. Flanking my leader, I let my darkness take over and squash my conscience down as far as it will go. I won’t let them hurt Joelle.

  My vision becomes flashes, a reel of the fight. My teeth sink into their first victim, and he screams out in pain from the poison running through his veins. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, but am caught in the shoulder with a bullet that will only remove itself if I feed.

  And I do. I fill myself full as a tick on the blood of those who don’t wear the scarves or carry a flag of surrender.

  I watch Joelle work her way to the one holding the flamethrower. He smiles and opens what looks like the bowels of hell to these sore eyes onto her form. The orange blaze is nearly blinding. But Joelle does not pause. She gets singed all along her arm, her dress catches fire, and still she walks into the flames.

  “Joelle!” I cry, watching my leader go up in sparks.

  But like a phoenix rising, out of the smoke, she glides. Joelle grabs the weapon and thrusts it aside. She lifts the one who’d burned her by his jacket---burns that are healing even now---and she holds him high up toward the moonlight. “Our fight is not of flesh and blood,” she says. “but against the powers of this dark world.”

  I shudder as she casts him aside. She does not claim him or make him ours. Joelle has broken his neck.

  That single kill slows the momentum, and the fight is over within minutes. Since the majority were wise enough to wear their ribbons/scarves around their arms, we had a force that was triple the size now thanks to this evil night. I’d even helped Lotte surround a group of men I recognized as Shade’s infamous Raiders.

  “You’ll join us?” I ask.

  “We have the red fabric,” one replies.

  There are nine of them total.

  The Raiders watch me with the glare of the defeated, and it is true, before the end they too will be under our rule.

  After losing half our numbers, we’d still taken out enough of them with bites to grow our army into an endless stream of vampires awakening with new eyes. They were given some of Joelle’s blood to complete the transition. Despite the great loss it was a heavy win.

  The carnage of bloodied streets put me in a frenzy, but I forced it down, and the specials mostly accepted their fate. I tried to ignore the guilt I felt for this assault. But when those who were bitten changed, and if they were too out of control, they’d be destroyed. Joelle saw this as a mercy.

  Every part of the men’s side was filled with gore from the fallen, but we’d held onto success.

  Success isn’t the right word.

  We conquered, ransacked, and pillaged the male forces. We did everything we hated others for doing at the fall of this civilization we call humanity. They all will be under our little queen’s control.

  After she was sure Shade, a special, could be changed, nothing could stop us. If specials even could be transformed, then so be it… is her thought.

  Most of the specials, lucky for them, had chosen to wear a ribbon or scarf, or whatever they could find. Most had not falling under our teeth. They wouldn’t risk their powers. Somehow it spread that while Shade was now a vampire, he’d lost his special abilities.

  Or so they believe.

  And when the sun sang that song of its rising in the distance, those that were bitten were helped into the darkness…forever.

  But I wasn’t there to aid them.

  I left Joelle now.

  I ran for the tower before it was too late.

  Guilty, knowing he probably hates me now, I still thought of him even while I was covered in blood of the vanquished. Even regretting my part in the massacre, I sought his forgiveness, and his alone.

  I may be a walking nightmare, but even nightmares want love.

  Chapter 57

  Dallas

  Shade had escaped the tower. The other vampires had lost him during their watch. I had searched and searched, but the sun was starting to rise. It had burned, but soothing myself physically is not what I crave.

  Shade was nowhere to be found.

  And it was when I’d given up, when I’d finally sank down in a barren alleyway, that I’d accepted my fate. That I had made my own peace with the fact that I, Dallas, now feeling all of my true name Daisy, the same failures as before, gave over my life to the sun.

  It was perhaps a type of karma. God punishing me for all I had done.

  Shade would live, but I was not so deserving of this life, or any for that matter.

  I had whispered my goodbyes, then prepared to pay my ransoms in burnt flesh. Pound for pound.

  And I had realized that this might have been what was right all along. For me to end myself. Had I been brave enough before, it might have occurred to me. For what is better than to walk from this path and go onto the next---meet Tommy at the pond?

  And so, I let go.

  Chapter 58

  Liza

  The night is a sad one.

  I lose a sort of virginity. Maybe one that means more than sex. People should consider a moment in time when they have done something they would not wish upon their enemy as more important an experience than sexual knowledge.

  I’ve killed before. I’ve killed Reginald, the zombies, the guards.

  I’ve killed.

  But not like this.

  Not with a premeditated desire to kill for more than justice or self-defense. Instead, to make a deal with Cory that when we get to Anthem, he sets the captives free. And the payment? One life. No matter the kind.

  The others died in a fight with me, or thinking I’d die first. But this is pure madness. A man screaming for mercy as I bring the blade down upon him in front of his own children is not only about justice.

  This is an execution.

  I’m an executioner.

  Judge and jury.

  Revenge as it says on my arm.

  Is this why Spirit found me? Why Pretend Man made me? And Cory merely finished his work by giving me a motive. Is it true we are here to settle a score for humanity?

  The father had tried to run. He had gotten as far as the wood line before I’d cut the bastard down. I feel no guilt for what happens to him after life. No guilt that he is the one I should kill first with my precious blade. But I do feel guilt that it is to be this moment on this plane of existence that he should be punished over a promise that might never come to fruition.

  Over a pact made between two strangers that his life might be given for empty words even if he deserves every inch of my sword inside of his belly.

  However, the thought remains that it is possible his life, and what he chose of it, is not worth more than that: a false agreement.

  In the end, af
ter the shock of warm blood upon my new clothes and my face wears off, I feel only quiet and resonating justice. In this age, where men and women do what is right in their own eyes, I have Spirit as an answer to the depravity. And she glows as she works, deciding that he is guilty as well, finding more power in the wrongs made right.

  She is fed. I can be happy in that. Her power is restored.

  I can assuage my guilt that if Spirit agrees with this act, then I am somehow absolved of evil. I can pretend that I am not like Cory, wishing to harm humans on a whim.

  I’d expected his children at least to cry, the youngest to weep. She had not, none of them had. The eldest had come to take the backpack, suddenly sharp-eyed, aware, and not at all dull-witted as we’d been led to believe.

  She’d taken the pack, and her sister’s hands, and she’d nodded to me before leaving.

  It had all been an act. Clever.

  I may be their angel of mercy after all.

  Chapter 59

  Dallas

  “Is it supposed to hurt?” But that’s not Tommy’s voice. It’s Shade’s.

  “Death? I’m not sure,” I whisper. Inside of my thoughts, I cry out at the injustice. He’d met me in my afterlife, it seems.

  “Dallas,” he murmurs.

  I open my eyes to the darkness. “This isn’t heaven,” I say. But it doesn’t look like hell either. “Am I dead?”

  His laugh is dry, and it tickles my ear. “No. But I wish that I was.”

  “Where are we?” My voice sounds so far away.

  He puts a hand to my cheek. “I found you in the sun,” Shade says, with a soft sadness. “These are my rooms,” he adds, and finally I see him through the shadows.

  He’s a whole person now.

  Shade rises and moves toward the window.

  I sit up and hold out a hand to stop him. There is a strip of light that’s pushed its way through the curtains. It’s hurting my eyes.

  Yet Shade walks up and puts a hand through the light, letting it dance along his skin.