Page 168 of A Liar's Twisted Tongue

“You’re hard to find!” she exclaims, laughing. “Why ever are you so hard to find?”

“You know the school is in lockdown, right?” When there’s no response and I feel the phantom of fear sweeping over me, I turn the other way. I can just walk around the school.

There’s a hand on my shoulder, turning me, and I’m met by red eyes. My fingers dip to the sheathe at my side. “Come with us and we won’t do any more damage,” her voice is deeper now. Toneless the way Wendy’s was with the prophecy. Eleanora’s mouth smiles, but not the rest of her.

In one movement, I pull out my knife and shove it into Eleanora’s shoulder. The bottles of vesi shatter beneath my feet, and I’m careful not to slip when I push her away and run. But my feet fall asleep. Not the tickly kind that you can shake your way out of, but the kind where you’re scared you’ll never feel your foot again. For all I know, my feet aren’t even there.

I begin to fall.

Eleanora’s in front of me again and the others come behind me, four hands on my body holding me up. She pulls the knife from her body, blood spraying on my neck. She doesn’t even seem to be in pain.

The tip of my bloodied knife comes in contact with my face, grazing from my forehead to underneath my chin, pricking the skin and pulling blood while she pulls my face up, forcing me to meet her red eyes.

“Do you prefer pain?” Her soft and feminine voice is back. “From here, it seems it. Everywhere you go, you institute it.”

I grab the wrist of the hand that’s holding my knife and I twist as hard as I can, all the way around in a circle until her hand is facing the opposite direction than it should be. The knife falls to the floor. Still, there’s no sign that she is registering the pain.

My feet are still missing and I know I’m in a sore position for combat. With her wrist still in my grasp, I bite my free hand as hard as I can until the metallic taste of blood finds my tongue. Pain ripples through me like fire, and I shove my hand in her face.

This time, she screams, and it’s music to my ears. The pungent smell of burning flesh fills my nose, but I don’t move, even when I feel the cold steel of a knife to my throat, I keep forcing every ounce of heat in me into her.

Then my hand goes numb, just as my feet have, and I worry I’m going to be getting three amputations at the end of this fight. My penance for Jermoine.

Eleanora’s body is shaking while some kind of shadow pushes out from her skin. Like it’s trying to force its way out of her.

“Bacstair, Eaman!” she screams while her body seizes like an austec. The two behind me fall to the floor, and I fall on top of them.

I don’t feel them breathing.

Even though Eleanora is quite literally seizing, she falls next to me and manages to meet me in the eyes. “Power, dear meachair, is not your saving grace.”

Reality hits me with a stunning ease. “You’re an Arcane.” It’s not a question. Eleanora smiles, but it doesn’t feel like I’m looking at Eleanora anymore. Her face is burnt to nothing but boils and raw, red skin. “What do you know of my power?”

“What your mother never told you,” she hisses.

“I’ll go with you.” I hold out my hand, but she doesn’t take it, so I grab Eleanora’s. “Take me. I’ll go.”

“Can’t you see it’s too late for me, meachair?” Eleanora’s hand shrugs out of mine. “I happen to be the most benevolent of us. In death I will tell you. When you come, as we know you shall, you will be forgotten. But not by your mother. Now, finish me for my kindness.”

“Finish you?”

“Kill me. I no longer wish to reside in this wretched body.”

I blink, taking a deep, shaking breath.

“Do not worry of the Folk,” Eleanora’s strained voice says. “It is rare to survive possession.”

I freeze. I’m being asked to murder. I don’t know how.

I don’t want to know how.

It is not Eleanora’s voice that roars, “Do it!” And I am not sure if it is fear or power that compels me to think of her burning the way the other man with red eyes did, the orange and gray shadow that fell out of him in death, and to decide to do the same to her. White hot fire fills my body and I feel my feet again, my hands, as I watch what has to be some small part of Eleanora’s eyes go wide with the realization that she, too, is going to die.

The dark orange shadow falls from her body, becoming solid when it rolls on top of me. I wiggle out of its dead weight and look down at the massacre.

My massacre.

Eleanora’s face might be badly burnt, unrecognizable. There may have been an Arcane within her body. But in the end, I killed her. I wonder if I’m responsible for the deaths of the two students I was just lying on top of. I feel for their pulses, just in case. Nothing.

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