Twisted Fate (5, Rhyn Eternal)

  Twisted Fate

  #5, Rhyn Eternal

  By Lizzy Ford

  www.LizzyFord.com

  Cover design by Eden Crane Design

  www.EdenCraneDesign.com

  Smashwords EDITION

  Published by Kettlecorn Press

  Twisted Fate copyright ©2015 by Lizzy Ford

  www.LizzyFord.com

  Cover design copyright © 2015 by Eden Crane Design

  www.EdenCraneDesign.com

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events; to real people, living or dead; or to real locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Stephanie finished unloading the back of the SUV with a grunt. They were late, and the festival’s private security had refused to let them drive to the stall where her roommate was exhibiting.

  “Last one!” she called and straightened. Already her lower back was stiff from the combination of a long drive down the coast and lifting boxes of handmade journals.

  Her friend, Olivia, waved her hand out the window of the car and drove away from the sawhorses dividing the festival from the parking area.

  Stephanie arched back – and ran into someone. “Oh, sorry,” she murmured and turned.

  “I’m cheating on my wife with the babysitter,” the man said and continued walking. His dog shied away from her, staring at her over its shoulder until they were swallowed by the crowd.

  She rolled her eyes. Dogs hated her and people … well, they went weird around her. They’d always just told her things. She’d never understood the dynamics of her life except that she had a strange effect on everyone she met. Tall, trim and dark haired with eyes that appeared teal or aqua, depending on what she wore, she didn’t draw crowds like her blond-haired sister or looks of appreciation and envy like her fashionably perfect mother. She was, as far as she could tell, normal.

  Maybe that’s why they tell me strange things. I look harmless. Boring, she thought, gaze lingering in the direction the handsome man and his dog had gone.

  “Next time we’ll bring a dolly,” Olivia, said, joining her. She bent to lift two boxes and began walking through the crowd.

  Stephanie followed her lead, and they quickly found the small booth reserved for them. Olivia sprang into action the moment the boxes were down, and Stephanie stepped out of her way.

  “You need help?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Nope!” Olivia’s possessiveness and OCD meant Stephanie was there mainly for companionship and lifting purposes. “You want to get us some water?”

  Stephanie left the booth and began wandering through the festival towards the small section of food vendors. The book festival featured an eclectic mix of small, local presses with niche publications and larger, polished displays by major publishing houses. Libraries, used books shops, rare book displays, and tables filled with artwork lined the street. Authors’ booths ran along the backside of the main strip, near the food vendors.

  The festival was already crowded, and guitar music spilled out of the open doors of a studio. The seaside town of Carmel was a mix of wealth and art, ocean and towering trees, hills and beaches. She found herself liking the place she’d never visited before.

  She barely registered the people who bumped her as she walked the packed streets. At least, not until someone smacked straight into her and knocked her onto her behind.

  She landed hard enough for her teeth to slam together. “Hey,” she grumbled, looking up.

  The woman was staring down at her, as startled as she was. “I am so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I hope you don’t notice I’m missing a hand.”

  “What?” Stephanie asked.

  “I said, I’m sorry about running into you.” The blonde offered her hand.

  Stephanie accepted it and let the tall woman pull her up. The beautiful blonde with striking green eyes was toned, willowy and perfect in every way. She was also missing a hand. Stephanie did her best not to look.

  “Are you okay?” the blonde asked.

  “Yeah. Happens a lot,” Stephanie replied.

  “Does it?”

  “Yeah. No problem.”

  “We can’t let him find you.”

  Stephanie met her gaze. “Come again?”

  “Sorry again.” The blonde smiled. “Nice bumping into you. Have a nice day.”

  Stephanie watched her maneuver through the crowd, perplexed by the interaction. She dusted off her backside and thighs. The growl of a dog drew her focus from the strange woman, and she instinctively moved away from the sound. She didn’t bother looking at the animal. It only seemed to antagonize those that went so far as to growl or snap at her instead of avoiding her.

  She loved the idea of dogs and cats as companions but had never been able to get one, because they all hated her.

  With a shake of her head, she continued towards the food vendors. Her gaze skimmed over the exhibits and rested on one of them. A psychic had a table displaying books she wrote about the mind, future and universe. Stephanie stepped out of the throng of people passing down the street to the table.

  She picked up a business card.

  “That’s not for you.” The woman seated behind the table snatched it back, brushing Stephanie’s hand. “If he finds me, he’ll take my daughter away.”

  “Um, okay. I’m sorry.” Stephanie stared at her. Today is weirder than usual. Maybe the upper class, enlightened hippies of Carmel were more in tune to whatever vibes she gave off. Or maybe, she hadn’t been out in too long and forgot how people seemed to like to trust her with personal details that made her uncomfortable.

  “Keep walking,” the psychic said.

  “Actually, I need one of these for my friend,” Stephanie replied and picked up another card. “She likes this kind of stuff.”

  “You will take nothing of mine with you.” The psychic snatched the card once again.

  “Look, just a word of advice, but you can’t come to a festival and refuse to hand out your cards! I mean how can you possibly sell anything with a business model like that?” Stephanie retorted. “I’m taking a damn card, and I’m giving it to my friend.” This time, she swiped the card and started away before the crazy psychic could take it back.

  “If you hex me, I will find you!” cried the psychic.

  What is it with this place? Stephanie made her way to the food vendors to buy a couple bottles of water and started back towards the booth where Olivia was waiting.

  “Excuse me,” said a male voice behind her. “You dropped this.”

  She turned, patting down her pockets as she did so.

  The tall man behind her had chiseled, Asian features, turquoise eyes and an expression that appeared serious to the point of grim. He held out a wadded up dollar that could’ve been hers or not.

  “I don’t think I did,” she replied.

  “No, you did.”

  “Fine. Keep it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Because …”

  His eyes slid to the side and he shifted feet. “I just can’t. Take it back.”

  “I’m never coming back to this place,” Stephanie muttered and grabbed the dollar from him. As she did so, he gri
pped her wrist with his other hand and tapped the meat of her palm with a tiny needle. “What the hell?” She yanked away.

  “Please don’t be her,” he said.

  Don’t be who? She almost asked.

  He handed her the money once more. “Here’s your dollar.”

  She shook her stinging hand and shifted away. “Keep it.” She watched him slide away into the crowd and turned in the direction of Olivia’s booth, determined to drop off the water and report the psycho who just drew her blood.

  Olivia’s booth was hopping, and Stephanie soon forgot the weird interactions with strangers to help her friend sell journals. The mad rush lasted until the four boxes of journals were gone. Stephanie sat down several hours later to relax while Olivia hurried to the car to retrieve another box.

  Her gaze fell to the pinprick on her palm, and she sighed. She was used to people acting weird around her but no one before today had drawn her blood. Was her own uniqueness amplified in a place that prided itself on being eclectic?

  “What’s wrong?” Olivia asked cheerfully as she plopped another large box on the table.

  “Nothing. This place is so you.” Stephanie pulled the psychic’s card from her pocket. “This lady is super crazy. You might like her.”

  Olivia took it with a good-natured smile. Everything about her was the opposite of Stephanie. She was bright, happy and loved by everyone she met. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked to sit in the car yet,” Olivia admitted. “You’re too goth for this place.”

  Stephanie glanced down at her dark clothing. “Not goth. I just don’t believe in the same stuff you do.”

  “Someone needs to meditate.”

  “I do like meditating,” Stephanie admitted. “It helps me relax. But I don’t see the things you tell me I should in my head.”

  “It takes time and imagination, one of which you have plenty of and the other none!”

  Stephanie smiled. “You got all the creativity.” In truth, she often envied Olivia’s carefree attitude towards life and her ability to design and mold journal cover designs out of thin air. She lifted one of the treasures and ran her fingers over a pattern made from no less than ten different kinds of material. “How do you make these?” she asked a little enviously. “I have no creativity, no imagination whatsoever.”

  “It’s my thing,” Olivia said with a shrug and sat down beside her to watch the crowd. “Your thing is …” She cleared her throat. “Well, you’re special.”

  Stephanie laughed.

  “And not in a bad way!” Olivia retorted. “You’re definitely a lot more uptight than I am and too analytical about everything. You have no aura but you’re a good person. From what I read, you’re an anomaly. I’m just learning to be more psychic. I can’t figure you out but I’ve made you my mission to help.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Stephanie said. “I’m your charity case.”

  “You know that’s not true. My live-in experiment maybe.”

  Stephanie smiled once more, hurt even her new roommate thought she was weird. She’d moved out of her mother’s apartment in the hope of being like every other college student.

  “Maybe you should talk to this lady.” Olivia motioned to the business card.

  “No, thanks,” Stephanie replied, not wanting another confrontation with the crazy psychic lady. “I know I’m different. I want to be creative like you but …” She shrugged. “Maybe my talent is to make everyone around me look good. I’m surrounded by such gifted people. You, my sister, my mom, even my dad, wherever he is. He was the lead neurologist in the world before he disappeared two months after knocking up my mom.”

  “No,” Olivia objected. “I think you’re working off some sort of karmic debt from another life. It’s why you have all these issues.” She waved a hand at Stephanie’s non-existent aura.

  “I don’t believe in past lives,” she reminded her. “I believe in what I can see, hear, and touch. None of this aura business. I’m more like my dad than my mom and sister: total left brain with a knack for physical stuff instead of art. I’m a normal, boring person who graduates with a Masters in engineering next year, whose name no one ever remembers, who dogs can’t stand, and who gets yelled at by psychics at book festivals.”

  “Oh. You had another incident?” Olivia frowned. “Are you keeping a log like I told you to? I wanted to take your issues to my reiki teacher.”

  “It’s constant. I can’t track all of it,” Stephanie said. “Anyway, moving on to a happy topic, you sold, like, fifty journals so far!”

  Olivia’s face lit up. She began describing ideas for future projects. Stephanie half listened, disappointed to have had her day ruined by the local crazies. This was supposed to be a mini-vacation, and she was already looking forward to going home to the apartment she shared with Olivia and hiding away once more.

  Chapter Two

  Fate knelt beside the homeless man who reeked of body fluids and alcohol. The passed out human’s features were obscured by an unkempt beard and dirt, and his home consisted of a soggy box recently collapsed under the spring rains.

  “You have a point zero, zero four per cent chance of making your life better before Death comes for you,” Fate said to the unconscious man. “I wish you luck.”

  “My brother, the optimist,” said the woman with curly red hair and bright eyes behind him.

  “On the contrary, I wish him a speedy death,” Fate said and rose. He tended to focus on the chains of events that interested him the most rather than the likeliest. “There are days when I wonder if tolerating so much free will is a disservice rather than the alleged respect for their decisions our father claimed we must honor.”

  “You killed Father. I assumed you knew he was full of shit.”

  “And there are moments when I’m reminded the fate of humanity is better left in their hands than ours,” he said pointedly. “Deities are generally assholes but at times, they have a point.”

  Karma rolled her eyes. “Which was why you locked me up for a millennium. To teach me a lesson.”

  “True,” he said with a quick smile. “You failed to learn the other lesson I took away from Father. Timing is everything. You can’t just balance whomever you want at a whim. You have to choose the right time to interfere in the life of a human, Immortal or deity.”

  “Or, I can do whatever the fuck I want,” she replied and looped her arm through his. “What does timing matter when everyone has something coming to them?”

  Fate chuckled, always amused by his reckless sister. “You want another thousand years in a tiny cell in the Underworld?”

  She made a face at him.

  They left the alley and joined the crowd in the streets, which had been closed off for a street festival. The scent of the ocean was in the air and its blue waves peeking through trees at the bottom of the town built on a hill. The pricey boutiques lining the main street of wealthy Carmel, California, had thrown open their doors to welcome the visitors.

  The moment they joined the throng of humanity, Fate absently began calculating the destinies of everyone around him. It wasn’t a conscious doing, and he rarely paid the business of his mind much heed, unless there was something truly interesting about someone he ran across.

  Which was rare anymore. The seventh oldest deity in existence, he’d generally grown bored with his job and safeguarding the fate of the entirety of humanity. Humans did what they wanted – and he had long since stopped caring.

  Only two chains of events were capable of arresting his attention for long. Whenever he thought of the first, his focus went to Karma, and he became concerned about his inability to shift her Future.

  The Immortal society had been dangling over the edge of a pit filled with demons for too long. He’d seen the tiny thread holding them in place snap, and the demons begin to rampage as they had many, many ages before. Neither his manipulations nor his brilliance had corrected the destiny the Immortals were barreling towards. There was always a way to change the Future, but sac
rificing his sister to do it – the only solution he’d seen thus far – was out of the question. He had to keep looking, keep tweaking. The Future was a combination of many variables. He just had to pluck the right thread and alter the chain of events.

  The second chain of events seemed both inevitable and indecipherable. Some part of it was obscured from his Sight, and he’d already done all he knew to do in order to prevent it from occurring. Vexing, this Future was impossible, at least for now, leaving him free to help his sister before it was too late.

  “Ohhhh!” Beautiful, lethal Karma came to life beside him the moment the energy of humanity reached her. Her eyes and hair began to shift colors, depending upon how well balanced the people nearest her were. The darker their past deeds, the darker her hair and eyes.

  “Watch yourself, sister,” he warned her, holding back a laugh as the people nearest them stopped to look twice at her rainbow hair. “Your true colors are showing.”

  It took her some effort to rein in her almost rabid urge to balance anyone who crossed her path. Her eyes glowed with predatory curiosity, but she managed to quell the physical changes caused by her inherent power. Her self-control had come a long way in the year since she’d managed to escape the Underworld. She no longer shorted out in public.

  “She loves this soooo much,” she growled in a voice barely human.

  “Don’t start with that Gollum shit,” he chided. “Be civilized. Or pretend to be anyway.”

  Since seeing the Lord of the Rings movies, she’d gotten worse about talking in the third person. Now when she did her best Gollum impression, she scared people off.

  Not that he left much of a better impression. Those nearest him, either sensing his energy or simply noticing he was very different, tended to move away quickly. Just over six feet tall, lean with light brown hair and eyes that turned from white to black to every hue in between, Fate was by no means fully ordinary in appearance. He wore dark sunglasses when he visited the human world, though it was next to impossible for him to pass as a human, which he often found disappointing.