Twisted

He led me away from the crowd, the fire and Listy’s trapped soul; his fingers were tangled in mine, as if our very souls were tangling together, two lives now entwined. The lullaby repeated over and over through my lips, turning into a dull background noise until finally drifting away into silence.

We eventually came to a stop in the middle of the forest, trees surrounding us on all sides. At some point, Blayze had taken the torch from me and started using it without me even realising it – so, the batteries hadn’t died after all.

We stood apart by maybe a metre and he stared at me with sadness in his eyes. It hurt me to see his green eyes downcast, no smile on his lips, and it made me want to know why he was sad.

He broke the silence before I did. “That was a beautiful song you were singing,” he said quietly, “and you have a beautiful voice to go with it.”

I shrugged, knowing the song was beautiful but the voice was plain, average. I didn’t even want compliments anyway. I wanted answers.

I hesitated before plunging in. “Is this really a Paranormal town? How many others are there? Is anyone here human? Why am I Mixed or whatever you call it, and why don’t people like that? What-”

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, holding his hands out in front of him as if to say, I surrender, now please stop attacking me with questions. “Let’s start at the start, one question at a time.” He lowered himself to the ground slowly, leaves crunching beneath him. I copied him.

He rubbed the spot between his eyebrows before answering anything.

“Yes, this is a Paranormal town, though not many people call it that,” he began. “It’s the only one left that is large enough to actually be called a town. There used to be so many before, when we didn’t have to hide. But humans became cowards, at least to supernatural stuff, and things began to happen that forced all of us into hiding. Stuff like burning Witches, though of course they killed many innocent people as well.

“No one in this town is human. We don’t connect with humans, not often anyway. As you know, we have our own hospital, supermarket, et cetera, even though we’re only a small town. The most common times we interact with humans are when we import stuff from out of town. And when we, you know, pay bills and all that.”

“So, my sister isn’t human either,” I sighed. I wished she didn’t have to have anything to do with this.

“That’s true, but she’s not as strong as you, and she never will be. You see, most Mixed choose one side or the other; most have to because they aren’t strong enough to hold all the power of both sides. They still have weak powers and weaknesses of the other side, but nowhere near as much as someone who can embrace both sides. That’s what your sister will have to do.” He leaned forward, his face alight. “But you don’t have to. That is a rare gift, though no one knows why some people can and some people can’t.”

“How do you know I can?” I narrowed my eyes, looking for a hole in his story, something to give away his lies. But it was a childish hope, I knew, one that was not going to survive against the truth in his words.

“It shows in your eyes or your hair,” he explained. “If you are strong enough, you are born with unnatural yellow eyes or red hair.” His eyes widened with wonder as he continued on. “You don’t wear contacts, do you?” I shook my head. “And you have both. No one knows why or what that means. There has only been one person before you in history that claimed to have both. And she is dead.” His eyes suddenly grew sad again, grief written in the features of his face. I didn’t understand but I couldn’t ask; I doubted he would answer any personal questions.

“So why are you acting as though I’m all important?” I asked. “The hair and eyes thing is a bit weird, I admit, but other than that there’s no reason for you to stick around after you’ve told me what I am. I can just ask Alex or Brian questions.” As I thought about them, I wondered what kind of Paranormal they were.

He leaned back this time, nervousness screaming from the way he started chewing on his thumb nail. Drawing his hand away from his mouth, he said hesitantly, “There’s this…this superstition kind of thing about you and…your daughter.” At my confused and slightly angry face, he backtracked. “Not that you have a daughter now! What I mean is, in the future.”

“What is this ‘superstition’ then? Tell me exactly what it’s about.” I gave him my best you-better-tell-me-or-else face and he scratched his nose, nervous again.

“Um, well…” He sighed. “It says that if you, you know, got together with another Mixed Blood, then your daughter, or at least the first daughter you have, will be really, really powerful. And it says that this daughter will be able to defeat the thing that made humans scared of Paranormals, as you call us, in the first place; she will be able to destroy the Darkness and stop it from taking innocent Paranormal girls and planting itself inside them so that they’ll give birth to children of the Darkness. Those children…they grow up to be monsters – people who banded together and created a different community that…” He shuddered. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what goes on in their little community.”

There was that word, the one used in the fairy tale: the Darkness. I stared at him and then asked, “So, what…This Darkness or whatever steals young girls and rapes them to get them pregnant? What happens to the girls after their evil babies are born?” My nose crinkled involuntarily; I didn’t like the sound of this Darkness.

“The mothers…” He hesitated by clearing his throat and then continuing. “Well, the babies…In the last week of the pregnancy, the baby inside the mother possesses the mother’s body, if that makes sense. And the baby then controls the mother to make her kill herself and after that, the baby is born. The Darkness babies have to take a life in order to be given their own. It’s horrible really.”

I stared at him, my thoughts racing with questions. Finally, weakly, I said, “And my daughter’s supposed to…defeat the Darkness?” My daughter. I wasn’t even planning on having kids, let alone bothering to find someone who I loved enough to marry and have children with. And I did not want to have a child before I’d married someone; that was something my parents had encouraged, what with them being old fashioned and all.

I sighed and thought about that fairy tale letter I’d received. “So, you call us Mixed Bloods. And you said this was a Paranormal town but we don’t really call it that. So what do you call it?”

“Our town is called Anima after a historical figure. Not many other towns have certain names.” He cleared his throat and bit his lip. The trees around us rustled in a slight breeze, and that was when I actually noticed we were alone in the middle of a forest, with only a torch light. It made me slightly nervous, to be honest.

I sighed and rubbed my eyes, tiredness itching in the corners. “Okay. So…What do you call us, like the groups? And how many of us are there, how many…I don’t know what you would call it. Species? Breeds?”

A flash of anger gleamed in his eyes before he spoke. “Definitely not Breeds. We call the different groups Bloods. There are many of us but if you compared us to humankind, there are barely any. There is the Vampire Blood, which is the Blood I belong to, and the Mixed Bloods, which you belong to. On top of that, there are also Witches, Lycanthropes or Werewolves, Faeries or Fey, the Spirits, Merfolk. There are more but those are the main Bloods. Oh, and the Fallen but no one talks about them. Ever. They’re called the Unknowns when they are talked about. No one wants to mention their name.” A glint of something like fear and disgust coated his face until it faded away into a clean expression.

“Um.” I almost felt like pushing it but something stopped me. Something about the way he spoke the name, as if he was breaking a law by mentioning them.

“Hang on.” I nearly startled as I suddenly wondered. “If you’re from the Vampire Blood, then why are you with me now, explaining all this? Isn’t it supposed to be Mixed Bloods? And I still don’t get why all the Mixed Bloods are going to want to be with me, just so they have a powerful daughter. I mean, what do they get out of it?”

The trees rustled around us as a whisper floated through my ears. One that did not come from Blayze’s lips, because his lips did not move. And it was a whisper that brought chills in my knees – I mean, who gets chills in their knees? – and almost sounded as if it were made by the wind. I jumped about a foot in the air as it trembled into my ears. “She’s figured you out, Fire-Keeper. Smart one, she is. Maybe we can have her…”

Blayze shook his head slightly, like he thought the voice was in his head, if he even heard it. And then, he answered me. “The leader of my Blood wanted me to see if you were suitable for the Dhampir. Our Dhampir is a mixture of human and Vampire, so he obviously chose Vampire over human. And the Mixed Bloods that will try to be with you, they'll get fame and recognition. What person doesn't honestly want that?”

So, now I was someone everyone wanted to marry off to someone. And then have a daughter with. And if I ever chose to be in love with someone, it had to be a Mixed Blood, at least until I’d had a daughter. Oh, this was just getting better and better.