Fate: California Obscura

Another tremor shook the house. There was nowhere to run or hide, so I said, “I want to see who we’re up against,” and headed to the front door.

So far, the wards were holding them back. I had to wonder, though—were they just toying with us? It seemed a bit like jailers rattling their prisoners’ cell doors just to mess with them.

The seven of us stepped out the front door and squared our shoulders as we stared down our enemies. Ten newly made vampires were pacing and growling, totally bloodthirsty and inhuman. Beyond them stood two tall figures dressed in black—the brothers. Cain, the white-haired man I’d glimpsed when we were speeding away from the compound, smiled at me. It sent a shiver down my spine.

Abel had a slim build, unruly, golden-blond hair, and dark eyes. I whispered, “Oh god,” as I met his gaze. Then I told Elias, “That’s the man who came to my house and pretended to be Logan.”

Anger welled in me. I stepped forward, stopping a few feet from the invisible barrier, and yelled to Abel, “How did you find me?”

He answered me by letting his memories play through my mind. I saw him meeting an informant, someone Elias had hired in the past to search for me, who gave him a sketch of what I looked like. That sketch was then distributed throughout Southern California, by hundreds of people brainwashed to help the brothers. In just a matter of days, someone spotted me at the liquor store, so they staked it out and discovered I showed up there most Friday nights.

Abel himself was waiting for me in the parking lot the night I went to buy the wine, hidden behind an invisibility spell. He read my thoughts and decided to intercept my date and take his place, just because that seemed like fun to him. He followed me home, waited at the foot of my driveway for the real Logan, then bespelled him and read his mind. Abel left him standing on the side of the road while he took his car. Then he cast another spell to assume Logan’s identity and make sure I only read him as a warlock, not a demon. The plan was to find a way to lead Carter to my house, because they’d learned he was looking for me, and they knew he’d take me right to Elias.

A sick feeling twisted my gut when I saw how he’d tracked us to the island, then to this house. During our “date” Abel had planted a kind of psychic gateway in my brain, so he could monitor my thoughts and, to some extent, see through my eyes. It wasn’t foolproof, and the concealment spell I’d cast on myself before I left for the compound made it cut in and out. But it had given Abel enough information to be able to piece it together and find us here.

I felt his smug satisfaction and wanted to punch him in the face. Not only was he proud of himself, this was all just a big game to him. Tracking me down had been fun, the way someone might work a puzzle.

“I feel sorry for you,” I yelled, across the twenty feet that separated us. “You’ve spent all of eternity never caring about anyone but yourself. Now you live among humans, but you don’t understand them. You don’t understand anything—not love or compassion, happiness or sadness. You like to pretend you’re better than us, but being stronger doesn’t make you better. It just makes you a bully, a thing to be hated and feared.”

He locked eyes with me, rage building in him as I continued, “Actually, you’re not even that. You’re just Cain’s puppet. His errand boy. He sent you to fetch Elias in Maine because he couldn’t be bothered, right? That’s why the task of finding me fell to you, too, because it was beneath your other half. Your better half. Cain calls all the shots, doesn’t he? And for millennia, you’ve always just done what you’re told, too much of a fucking lap dog to think for yourself!”

A low growl rumbled in Abel’s throat, and he raised a hand. The ground began to shake so violently that my friends and I fell to our knees, and Tinder called, “Um, maybe stop poking the bear, Mateo.”

“What difference does it make? He’s going to kill us anyway,” I said, as I stood up again and met Abel’s gaze. “We don’t stand a chance against two demons, and they know it. As soon as these wards fall, their vampire pets are going to try their damnedest to rip us to shreds, which will be so fucking amusing, won’t it, Abel? Then when they’re good and ready, the brothers will finish us off.”

I lowered my voice, my eyes still locked with Abel’s, and said, “People call you the brothers, Cain and Abel. But you know how that story ends, right? Spoiler alert, Cain kills Abel. After you’ve burned this world to the ground and there’s no other way for him to amuse himself, how long will it be before he turns on you, Abel? How long before making you suffer becomes his entertainment?”