Twisted Karma Read online

  Twisted Karma

  #6, Rhyn Eternal

  Lizzy Ford

  Cover design by Lizzy Ford

  www.LizzyFord.com

  Twisted Karma copyright ©2017 by Lizzy Ford

  www.LizzyFord.com

  Cover design copyright © 2017 by Lizzy Ford

  www.LizzyFord.com

  Photography copyright © 2013 by @ Evgenia Tiplyashina via Fotolia

  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.

  ISBN: 978-1-62378-265-8

  For Whitney Westfall, a long time rabid fan. Thank you so much for all your support over the years. Readers like you make my job the best in the world! Keep reading, and I’ll keep writing!

  * * *

  With love,

  Lizzy

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Also By Lizzy Ford

  About the Author

  One

  Two months later

  * * *

  Had Karma been born in the current human era and dimension, she would have been the little girl with unkempt hair and dirt-streaked cheeks who sat at the back of the class punishing toys for misdeeds they may or may not have committed. The other children would have instinctively known to avoid her, the teachers hesitant to discipline her, and the parents would have warned their children about the wild girl no one should invite to birthday parties or sleepovers.

  In any era or dimension, Karma would have been lonely. Classified as a soul-eater deity, she had no friends and only one member of her family remaining, a brother named Fate, a deity with no concept of love, boundaries, or discipline. He could not teach what he did not know, and the little girl he was left to protect was more troublesome than the hundreds of billions of lives he was charged with managing. Even so, he cared for her in what ways he knew how to, and she worshipped her big brother, the only person who didn’t back away in fear when she tried to talk to him.

  She listened to him alone, but without the boundaries and discipline children needed, she didn’t always understand his perspective or why he could meddle with humans and deities and she could not. She held the power to judge the soul of anyone and everyone, and she determined what punishment would be meted out for sins or wrongs committed. In the hands of a child, unlimited power was nothing short of a nightmare. Because she had yet to try to balance a god or goddess, Fate was content to sit on the sidelines and let her do as she pleased.

  It wasn’t until she officially came of age and her power manifested that Karma charged into the dangerous, highly political world defining the deities’ relationships with one another. Karma didn’t just try to balance one of the many gods or goddesses, she challenged the oldest reining deity, the Dark One. If she could balance the most evil, depraved soul in existence, then wouldn’t that help balance every other sinner in existence?

  Fate, fearing for his sister’s life, stepped in to prevent the destiny he foresaw, should she confront the Dark One. With the help of Death, he exiled his sister to the only place the Dark One couldn’t reach her – a cold, dark cell at the bottom of a cold, dark palace in the one domain the Dark One couldn’t enter: Death’s Underworld.

  Karma sat in a cold, dark dungeon, in a domain where night made up most of the day, and each day ranged from minutes to hours to years to decades. She interacted with no one, aside from the occasional visit by her beloved brother or Death, and learned nothing about self-control. She sat in her cold, dark cell for a millennium before she was discovered by the queen of Hell, Deidre.

  Deidre was the first person in existence Karma balanced only to discover a woman so pure and good, she could murder a hundred Immortals and still have room for more evil on her scale. The queen of Hell helped Karma escape, and the goddess re-entered the world wild, eager, naïve and ready to balance every single soul she crossed. What she hadn’t yet learned: even if the original Dark One had been replaced, the oath she swore to balance him had transferred over to his successor. One day, Karma would be forced to confront the one being in any world capable of destroying or enslaving her.

  But that was not this day, when she sat struggling to understand the youngest deity, Peace, explain the concepts of compassion and understanding.

  Peace was an Ancient Immortal whose ascension to a god was considered by most other deities to be a scandalous accident. Fate alone knew Andre had always been destined to take on his new role, for no one else had the personality required of his position. Fate’s favorable view of Peace was the only reason Karma trusted one of the two deities younger than she was.

  “How can you tell me someone who murders others deserves to live himself?” Karma asked.

  “My point is that no person is fully good or truly evil. No one is bad or good. No one is right or wrong. We are all rainbows of infinite hues, not black and white,” the Immortal-turned-deity formerly known as Andre replied with patience. He sat across from Karma in the study of the rebuilt castle in the French Alps belonging to the Council That Was Seven. Currently under the control of his father, Wynn, the castle and Council were hostile to everyone else in the family except for Peace, who was welcomed wherever he went, with the exception of Hell. “You can see good in bad people, can’t you?”

  “Yes, but they must pay for their misdeeds,” she insisted. “Karma can do it with some level of compassion, but Karma still must do it.”

  Peace raised an eyebrow.

  Karma sometimes slipped back to talking about herself in the third person. She caught herself most days, but when her thoughts were preoccupied, she did it without realizing it.

  “I can do it with compassion, but I still must do it,” she corrected herself. “I must balance him.”

  “So we are talking about one person in particular,” Peace said. “What if this person is trying to redeem himself?”

  Karma frowned. Her thoughts were on the one soul she’d tried to balance who epitomized what Andre was patiently telling her. Light and dark had been intertwined in this person, bad deeds for good purposes, good deeds for bad purposes. She’d never met anyone as complex, and she’d spent weeks struggling to understand whether or not he deserved to die for his misdeeds or live to champion his cause.

  “If someone commits evil, repents, and then intends to spend the remainder of his life doing good, but you kill or damage him first, are you causing more evil or more g
ood by ridding the earth of him?” Peace swirled the brandy in his glass, legs crossed at the knee and warm, dark eyes on her features.

  “Intentions shouldn’t matter. Actions do,” she replied, unconvinced. Troubled, her hair and eyes were both rotating through colors, black then white then every hue in between.

  “You’re still interfering,” Peace said.

  “I’m doing my job. I’m balancing. It’s for their own good.”

  “Without compassion, without clarity, without fairness. Without justice.”

  Karma was silent. Occasionally, Peace said something that resonated within her, and she wasn’t certain what to do about it.

  “I can see your mind working,” Peace encouraged her. “You’re not one to hide your thoughts. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “You’re right. I am talking about someone in particular,” she said slowly. “Someone … perplexing. I can’t make sense of him or what I should do.”

  “You want me to tell you it’s okay if you don’t balance him.”

  She gazed at him, hating that she was incapable of hiding anything from anyone. Her brother was a man of secrets, whose mind and duty were too complicated for him to reveal the truth and his thoughts. If he weren’t careful, he could alter the Futures of billions with a misplaced word.

  She, on the other hand, couldn’t lie or suppress her feelings. If her expression didn’t give her away, her chameleon hair did.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I can’t see the rainbow you’re talking about when I look at someone’s soul. I only see good or bad, light or dark.”

  “From my experience mediating, the rainbow isn’t visible on the surface. It lies somewhere beyond the black and white. It’s the context of why someone chose good over evil or evil over good,” Peace explained. “That’s why you’re confused about this person, because you sense there’s something deeper than what you can see on the surface.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “That’s one reason. But I’ve judged others for far less, and I never tried to look at the context of their deeds.”

  “You’re evolving. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “Guess I need to watch more movies.” Fitting in with others was not something Karma innately understood how to do. Movies filled in the gaps in her limited understanding of interacting with others.

  “Try dramas instead of romance,” Andre advised. His eyes went to the door of the study. “You should go, before Wynn finds you and traps you in the catacombs again.”

  “Wynn,” Karma hissed. “There has never been anyone who deserves to be balanced more.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t done it yet.”

  Wynn was the man vexing her, and she wasn’t about to tell anyone that. She’d tried to balance him and failed for reasons only she and Wynn knew.

  Wynn had committed the ultimate evil.

  Wynn had also committed the ultimate good.

  Far from balanced, he was too layered for her to determine the best course of action. If context was the issue, then she needed to understand more about him and how he thought. That, too, was complicated, given the reason behind her inability to judge him.

  Wrestling with herself, Karma stood. “I’m not coming back tomorrow,” she told Peace. “These talks are giving me headaches.”

  “You know where to find me.” Unfazed, Peace sipped his brandy. “I’m on house arrest until further notice.”

  He was entirely too calm, too gentle. Karma possessed no such traits, but she did feel better around him, less conflicted, less anxious. “Why do you bother with me?” she asked. “You must have better things to do than talk me out of murdering bad people.”

  “When you put it that way …” Andre laughed. “I believe everyone is worthy of a second chance, even those who don’t seem to be salvageable on the surface.”

  She eyed him, suspecting he was talking about her as much as any of the humans, Immortals, or demons she balanced.

  The door to the study started to open.

  Without another word, Karma summoned a portal to the place-between-places, a cavern whose floor was covered with a thin layer of mist, and left the study. She didn’t shy away from confronting anyone, but Wynn was a different kind of animal. A healer who used his gift to kill, Wynn was the only Immortal to have earned the respect of deities near and far, even after his resurrection weakened him. He’d been able to trick her into prison the first time, where he could use his power, and that of the castle built on sacred ground, to prevent a deity from escaping.

  She possessed raw power, and he never resorted to anything other than his mind. Somehow, it didn’t make him any less dangerous. It wasn’t in her nature to manipulate anyone, and she didn’t have the benefit of the lessons learned over thousands of millennia that Wynn had. Robbed of the one power she held over everyone else, she didn’t know what to do when it came to Wynn.

  Peace’s calming effect quickly wore off. Karma stood in the place-between-places and gazed in the direction of the one portal not open to her: the black gateway that led to Hell. She’d tried many times to enter it to rescue her brother, who was imprisoned by the Dark One. The portal wouldn’t open for her. With no experience navigating the lethal world of deities, and no collected favors she could trade, she – one of the strongest and most universally feared goddesses ever to exist – was completely helpless. Her brother had all but forbidden her from trading her own favors. After weeks of struggling to find any other way to help him, she began to think this was the only path that might help her reach him. She couldn’t ask him if he’d forbidden it because granting a favor would change the Future for the worst.

  Afraid to fuck up the worlds, afraid she’d lose her brother if she didn’t do more, Karma had been warring with herself since her brother disappeared.

  There was one person who claimed to be willing to assist her, the only person she’d never consider asking. She’d march into Hell and confront Dark One before she’d go to a twisted politician with a polluted soul for help.

  “Karma hates feeling like shit,” she murmured.

  Two

  Wynn stepped into the large study that smelled of sunshine and books. He recognized the trace of power remaining and touched his damaged wrist, the permanent reminder of how dangerous the loose cannon of a goddess was. In her attempt to balance him, Karma had nearly severed his hand from his arm. He’d stopped the worst, but all his healing abilities couldn’t reverse everything she’d done.

  A man of vision, foresight and control, Wynn hadn’t determined the best means of handling Fate’s little sister, who had come into her power a millennium ago. She was a baby on the grand spectrum of deities who wielded their power for millions and millions of years. Strong enough to cause chaos, too feral to care about collateral damage, Karma was raw power without the will to control it, a lethal combination that clashed violently with Wynn’s usual calm, methodical approach towards life.

  “I still don’t approve of you setting her free,” he said to his eldest son, Andre, also known as the deity Peace, who remained as a voluntary prisoner to watch over his brothers and sister. The other surviving members of the Council That Was Seven currently resided in Wynn’s dungeon, and his daughter was restricted to the castle.

  “She spent her entire life as a deity in prison,” Andre replied. “She won’t learn if she’s confined. She needs guidance.”

  “A hopeless endeavor, I imagine.”

  “She’s smart. She’ll understand one day.”

  “But not before she gets herself and everyone around her killed.”

  Andre turned towards him, curious.

  Wynn checked the anger in his tone. “I don’t like deities trespassing without permission,” he said coolly. “Especially not that one. If she plans on visiting daily, she can return to the catacombs.”

  “You could block her access to the grounds, like you do most other deities and demons,” Peace said with a smile. “Or, if you were ten seconds earlier on any of the
past few days, you could have told her yourself. You haven’t taken any of the steps within your power to banish her completely.”

  “Our first interaction did not go as either of us planned,” Wynn replied vaguely. “I imagine she is preparing for our next encounter, as am I.”

  “Karma is pure emotion. She does not plan, Wynn.”

  Karma was a headache. The best Wynn could do when it came to her was hire a death dealer to assassinate her. But she’d recognize an assassin a mile out, balance him, and send the body back in pieces, if Wynn had to guess. In all the scenarios he’d devised over the past few weeks, since he imprisoned his sons, he hadn’t found one where he successfully managed Karma. He was even reluctant to renew the offer of the original deal he had almost convinced her to take. Her favor was one of the final ones he needed for his collection, and he hesitated to pursue her for reasons only the two of them understood.

  Andre was right. Wynn didn’t want Karma anywhere near him and simultaneously hadn’t taken the steps he could have to banish her from the property. He’d been in a state of conflict since he’d seen the true damage to his forearm and wrist.

  His eyes went to the diaries lining the wall behind his desk. He’d read through every one of them, seeking information about Karma, one of the few deities he hadn’t met in either of his Immortal lives. There was nothing, except one anecdotal piece about the origins of her real name. The next step in his plan was to study what he had written, observed and heard about her brother Fate, her father – Past-Fate – and her mother – Past-Justice. If there were a familial weakness, her relatives could lead Wynn to it.