I woke up with my cheek pressed to an ice-cold surface and could see the bottoms of massive columns and the strange light that flowed through their floors. It was definitely Paddy’s home. There wasn’t a marble or granite supply on Earth that carried something of this variety.
The sound of footsteps echoed around me and I didn’t think they were Paddy’s. Thankfully, I’d gotten up for water in the middle of the night and thrown on a t-shirt and shorts or I’d be lying there naked before my host.
Of all the possibilities I hoped for when I looked up, Fia standing above me, and alone, was my least favorite. Paddy was willing to kill me, but Fia gave the impression she’d enjoy it. So of course it was Fia.
“You could’ve just invited me over for tea,” I said as I got to my bare feet, not feeling comfortable lying prone and helpless anywhere around her.
She narrowed her eyes as she looked me over. “Don’t talk. Just listen.”
She was already pacing away from me as she spoke, which was a good thing, so I did as she asked. More distance played in my favor. I might not be able to outrun her but damned if I wouldn’t give it a shot.
“On September 14, 1186, according to astrologers at the time, the five known planets aligned. In actuality, every planet in the galaxy aligned. If the significance of this eludes you, due to your lack of knowledge, Genghis Khan, arguably the greatest Mongol leader ever to live, was born that day. I stress the fact that he was born, not created. To give you scope. Genghis had already lived several lives before that one and had an essence of greatness about him, but still had never amounted to much. It was being born on that day that instilled him with the final ingredient to become what he did.” She finally stopped walking to nail me with a stare. “Do you have any idea what you share with Genghis Khan?”
I hated pop quizzes. As far as I was aware, no one liked them. Figured it would be her style. “Shiny dark hair?”
Disdain was probably the most accurate description of her reception to my answer. I wanted to tell her it was her own fault for quizzing me on material I wasn’t prepared to be tested on but didn’t. I was actually quite curious where she was going with this.
“The date, September 14, 1186, is what you have in common. Except instead of simply being born, you were created that day. No one new was supposed to be created that day. Certain dates are strictly recycles.”
“Recycles?” I had a feeling I knew what she meant but I wasn’t leaving this place to only think later shit, what did she mean by that? I was certain if I got out of here alive, I wasn’t going to get a do-over.
“Old souls being reintroduced. As if that weren’t enough, it happened at the location of one of Earth’s most powerful chakra points, in Glastonbury, England. Some drunk slob tumbled a barmaid in a pile of hay. That was your lofty beginnings. It lasted all of two minutes and this is the mess I end up with.”
She flittered her hand toward my messy self. She was the one who’d dragged me out of bed, but again I held my tongue, wanting the information she had.
“You were always meant to exist but the when and where you came into existence was an accident. It gave you a pull in this Universe that should never have happened. That’s why you can bend things to your will. Why even Paddy’s essence is being drained by you. There is a weight to your being that acts almost like gravity. It’s why the guards react to you as they do. They think you are part of the Universe.” She snorted after this statement, marring her refined demeanor and it made her seem oddly human, if only for a second.
“Why did Paddy never tell me any of this?” I asked. And why couldn’t I beam myself out of here if I was so special? This might have been the most uncomfortable biography ever, and the orator wasn’t making it any better.
“Because he doesn’t know why you are the way you are. He thinks you’re some sort of miracle toy he amuses himself with. Only I know the details because you were my mistake.
“Every so often, windows of opportunity arise. We each took turns guarding against this,” she tilted her head toward me with a lemon face, “happening. The night you were created was my responsibility. But so many other windows had come and gone with no issue, I grew complacent and bored of safeguarding, the way only time can make you.”
She shook her head and I thought I saw some self-disgust there this time, which was a nice change in direction.
“I didn’t even realize it had happened until you’d died and been reborn a few times. I tripped over you a century later, by accident, and then put the pieces together. It was too late to kill you at that point, since you’d already been created.”
I weighed the pros and cons of interrupting again but decided the question merited it. “Why couldn’t you kill me?”
“You were already made. Once created, a soul never truly disappears.” She paused, as if her next words were much weightier than anything she’d previously said. “Except in one circumstance.”
Holy shit. The pieces started to fall into place and the larger picture was alarming. “If I were recruited. You were the one that wanted me to be Karma because it was the only way to get rid of me.” The implications made the strength disappear from my legs and I wasn’t sure how I remained standing. “The train wreck. That was you?” Shock had stolen my voice and the words came out more of a whisper.
“Yes. It was the only way.”
This whole thing from the beginning had been her. She’d stolen my life, not Malokin. If I had found out this information a couple of months ago, I would’ve tried to rip her apart even if it meant the end of me. But as I stood there, as much as part of me mourned my human life, I wasn’t as angry as I’d thought I should be. Part of me felt compelled to attack her simply on principal but then I could lose Fate.
She moved about the massive hall like structure, oblivious to my thoughts, as she started speaking again. “When Paddy was willing to bring you here, I thought that alone might kill you but he’d given you a piece of him. That was a critical mistake but he’s always had a soft spot for you. Even now that you are draining him, I doubt he’ll be able to go through with killing you, not that he could if he wanted to. And my only shot was if all four us tried. I thought I might have had Paddy convinced but it didn’t last. After the initial fear of dying himself sank in, he started rambling on about having an even stronger connection to humans because he was experiencing the fear of his own mortality.” Her hands fluttered in the air as she got disgusted. “Or some utter nonsense he was spewing. I had a hard time listening to the whole tirade.
“As if I didn’t have enough issues, Fate took a liking to you. He’s Fith’s child, if you didn’t know, conceived when Fith was going through his Greek goddess phase. It was some minor strumpet, long gone now after Hera had found out she’d moved in on Zeus. The point is, Fate kept stepping in to protect you as well and he’s no slouch himself. You shouldn’t have made it past the transition. Yours was deliberately bad on purpose. But if it wasn’t Paddy, it was Fate.
“You kept gathering up steam and I kept covering up what was going on. The longer I hid the secret, the harder it was to come clean. I’ve had to hide and cloak things about you the last twenty times you’ve been born. Burying your natural energy under tragedy after tragedy. Century after century of compounding the lies made it even harder. It was my final act of trying to hide you that threw off the balance. I’d been tweaking here and there, messing with things that I shouldn’t have, and it finally thinned the balance enough to allow Malokin to exist.”
“So you created this mess?” All this time we’d been looking outward for the problem.
“And the girl wins a prize. Took you long enough to figure it out.”