Chapter 27
Why did it have to be six AM? I’m horrible at six AM, even when I’m not tired, groggy and anxious like I am right now. Even when I’m not being shocked out of sleep by the buzzing demon bracelet around my wrist.
It’s early February and the Academy grounds are still covered in snow, so when I come outside, my breath puffs in front of me. There’s no one else walking the grounds and it’s still dark, which is not surprising considering it’s, again, six AM.
I’m finding it more than a little weird, to be walking towards Bane, Alaric and Raven waiting for me in front of the garden Pull Chamber. I almost let out a groan when it hits me, that the three of them might not exactly get along.
But as soon as I get near enough to see that Bane has my coffee in his hand, I feel the first flutter of hope that this day might not turn out to be as horrible as I thought it would.
“Good morning, Anna,” Raven greets me as I come to a stop in front of the three of them.
“Morning, Raven. Sorry I’m late, everyone,” I say as I exchange nods with the other two, taking the coffee out of Bane’s hand. I’ll just down it and we can be on our way.
“That’s alright,” Alaric says just as I lift the cup to my mouth, “it wasn’t awkward at all.”
I lower the cup, fighting not to cringe, even though the remark doesn’t seem to hurt Raven and only makes Bane look at my blunt little friend with raised eyebrows and a curious smile.
Still, it all makes me rush to say, “Well, what are we waiting for?” And I motion at the Pull Chamber.
“We,” Bane says as he turns his focus onto me, “punctual as we are,were waiting for you.”
I fail to stop myself from complaining. “Do you know what hoops I had to jump through to get the equipment for this without anyone knowing? All you did was get us Pull passes for the day.”
“All I did?” he asks with a feigned frown. “Guess you won’t be needing this then.” And he takes the cup out of my hand, making me grit my teeth.
This is not a day I can handle without coffee.
“Um,” Alaric starts with a weird glance between the two of us. “What’s going on here? Am I in some lame teen show?”
“Let’s just go, alright?” I say, forcing myself to stay civil, but when I see Bane step into the Pull Chamber with the cup in his hand… “You’re going to spill it,” I protest.
“Maybe you would,” he replies with a smirk, motioning for us to get inside.
Yeah, this is turning out to be an even worse experience than I thought. But before I know it, all four of us are in the Chamber, Bane is saying the words and we’re getting sucked someplace else.
***
It’s frozen forest ground the four of us find ourselves on, no Pull Chamber to be seen. But when I glance around, it becomes so perfectly clear to me, why there’d be no need for something like that here. There’s only a sea of enormous leafless trees around us, this mist gathering around their trunks and their branches shivering in the freezing winter air.
Everyone else seems absorbed in the sight as well. For a moment, my eyes stay fixed on Bane. He has his back turned to me, this tension in his entire body as he surveys the surroundings in a way that gives a strong impression of complex calculations being carried out.
“Are we there?” I ask, my voice sounding more hollow now.
He takes a second longer. “Close,” he says somberly.
Then the only ex-military member of the group starts walking and the three of us just follow him like little ducklings. As we go, I can’t seem to tear my eyes away from the forest. I’ve never been this far north so it was perfectly clear to me I’d be going someplace that’s not familiar to me.
But it’s not the unfamiliarity that’s making me feel as if all my fears about this place are quickly becoming a reality.
It’s the fact that I’m finding myself instantly and deeply unsettled by it.
“Wow, this is creepy,” I hear Alaric say.
“Any other brilliant insights you’d care to share?” I snap before I even realize what I’m doing.
I feel all three pairs of eyes on me. “I’m sorry, Alaric,” I say as I shoot him an apologetic look.
And I don’t want to infect any of them with my own anxiousness, so this is what I choose to offer as an explanation, “Not that it’s an excuse, but I didn’t get much sleep.”
“With the schedule I have you on,” Bane asks with a frown, “how’s that even possible?”
“I really don’t want the third degree, Bane,” I snap, again.
“No need to bite my head off,” he murmurs, lifting his hands in defense.
“You are being unusually rude, Anna,” Raven says.
Damn it. But before I can even open my mouth to say sorry again, Bane cuts in, “This seems to be a group of highly blunt people. I think I like it. But don’t worry about it, Raven.” He throws me a side-long glance as he holds the coffee out for me. “I believe I know how to get her to show some manners.”
I ignore his smirk and take the coffee, if only to force myself to stop with the childish behavior. I take a sip, letting out a content sigh before I throw Raven a look filled with remorse. “I was being rude, Raven. I’m sorry.”
She gives me her small, tight-lipped smile.
“Bloody hell,” Alaric chuckles, “you’re really on a roll today, Anna. Soon you’ll be running out of people to apologize to.”
I blow a laugh through my nose, throwing him a grateful look.
There’s a moment of silence during which I feel relief at the fact that this might be the end of all the drama I’ve managed to stir up.
That would only leave the effect of this godawful place on me, I think as my eyes sweep over the silent trees once again.
“Still,” I hear Bane say, “you didn’t answer her question.”
I have to fight not to let out a groan.
“She didn’t?” Raven asks, the fact that she”s addressing him surprising me a little.
“She didn’t,” he explains innocently. “You were asking why she was being so unusually rude.”
“Was she really?” Alaric asks with this suspicion in his voice.
I throw Bane a scowl then let out a sigh. Just don’t get into how you’re feeling about this place and they’re bound to drop it. “Again,” I start, “not that it’s an excuse, but I spent all day yesterday juggling going to classes, doing homework, training, chasing Professor Tanyth to make the crystal for me, and working the shift at the Library.”
“Here’s an idea,” Bane starts in a serious voice, “quit the job no one’s forcing you to do and you might actually stop being too overworked to get a good night’s sleep.”
“What’re you talking about?” I ask with a frown. Then, softer, “It’s my dream job, I’m not letting it go for this very temporary, stupid Aurora shit.”
“Your dream job?” he echoes. “Really? Didn’t you say it was to be closer to magic that you wanted the job for in the first place?”
He remembers that? “I did.”
He throws me a sideways glance. “You are magic now. How much closer to it can you get?”
“Well,” Alaric says begrudgingly, “he’s got a point.”
It’s at the very next moment that Bane puts his hand out, making us all stop midstep.
My eyes land on the wooden stairs first, jutting out of the snow like broken bones. Then they drag up the staircase all the way to the house itself, a crumbling wooden structure with hollows instead of windows and doors, shooting high up into the sky and leaning a little forward, as if the holes are about to swallow us whole. The sight makes my breathing shallow.
“I think we’re at the spot,” I hear Bane say just as I spot the bit of red Authority tape showing under the fresh snowfall just at the foot of the stairs.
“So,” Bane snaps me out of it. He’s turned to me, hands in his pockets and a mocking little smile on his face, “now what, oh Chosen One?”
How does he always stay this relaxed? I throw him a fake smile. “Now we finally prove you wrong.”
Finally getting here is actually making me feel much better. We’ll just do this real quick and get the hell out.
Alaric and Raven come closer as I take the crystal out of my bag, holding it tightly. “You say this is Divine Magic,” I tell Bane, “not Nature Magic as the Authority claims or a curse as the Order claims.”
“Will you stop it with the smugness?” he asks with a scoff. “Or don’t you realize you haven’t earned it yet?”
“Khm khm,” Alaric says. He doesn’t even pretend to actually clear his throat, he just says the words.
It makes blood rush to my face, when Raven tugs at his coat sleeve and asks, “What is going on, Alaric?”
“Yeah shhh,” he says, but he’s looking at me. Knowingly. “I don’t want to answer that question.”
I roll my eyes at him, but I clear my throat and I turn serious. “The crystal,” I say as I lift it up for them to see, “it’s been enchanted to react to magical force fields. When I let it hang by its thread, if any magic has been cast here, it’ll start vibrating. If it’s Nature Magic we’re dealing with here, it’ll start pulling us in the direction of the source. If it’s Divine Magic, the source of the magic is a person that’s not here so it’ll just keep vibrating.”
“And if it’s a curse?” Alaric asks.
“Same thing, just vibrating.”
Bane frowns. “So how will we tell them apart?” Squinting at me, he grumbles, “You didn’t really think this through, did you?”
“You really didn’t,” Alaric agrees.
“No,” I insist, “you can’t tell them apart using just the crystal.” I lean a little forward, dropping my voice. “But there’s the feeling you get when you arrive at a cursed place. It’s creepy, get it?” I ask Alaric with a smile, referring to how he described the woods when we’d just arrived.
“Yeah, Novak,” Bane cuts in with an incredulous drawl, “we’re in the middle of a forest, in the dead of winter, with a heavily overcast sky. I’d say the creepiness could be called subjective, wouldn’t you?”
I roll my eyes. “Why don’t we get a move on.”
We do, climbing the stairs up to the house, Bane insisting on going first. No one objects.
Since there’s no door, we just walk inside, finding ourselves in a dark room with broken wooden beams blocking the way across the frozen ground littered with sad, dirty remnants of the life the inhabitants used to lead — a rusty old cast-iron pot, pieces of fabric, smudged paper, a doll head.
You shouldn”t be here, my wolf warns from the shadows.
“I thought you didn”t care,” I tell her.
Still, her warning makes blood curdle in my veins. Then my eyes land on it.
A wide-open mouth on a face in agony.
I stumble back, feeling the fear lodge itself in my throat. Glancing around, I see that the others have discovered the other two corpses.
They’re all sitting on the ground, their hands resting on their thighs with palms up, their heads thrown back and their mouths open in that same unsettling way.
There seem to be no bite marks, just as the Authority said, but their bodies are still unambiguously drained of all blood.
I keep staring at the one I’m standing in front of, transfixed by the very thought that this was the place one of four Baldur’s pieces lay dormant until not that long ago.
I can’t help but wonder which one it was and where it went once it was stirred from its slumber.
It makes my heart skip a beat, when the image before me flickers and I see these shadows creep across my field of vision. I hear a click of a tongue boom inside my head, followed by this deep, male drawl asking, “What are you doing here, my darling? Is it me you’ve come to see?”
Then I feel it all stop, as abruptly as it started, leaving my heart pounding.
For a moment, I keep staring at the corpse, then force myself to keep my cool when I sense Bane walk over to me with his eyebrows pulled down.
“Let’s be quick about this,” I say, trying to sound light. I squeeze the crystal tighter and, feeling three pairs of eyes on me, I lift it up and let it drop, slowly swinging on the thread until it gradually stops.
Of course, it’s vibrating, and not gently at that. It’s no wonder, that this is the effect of some magic. What else could it be?
I let the crystal hang for a couple of minutes, in complete silence. But it doesn’t seem to be trying to lead me anywhere. “It’s not Nature Magic,” I say, “that’s for sure.”
I look around the space once more, feeling its vibe seep into my bones like ice-cold tar. “A goddamn curse,” I whisper.
“It’s not a curse,” Bane protests, but he doesn’t sound too sure now.
“It is,” I hear Raven’s voice. All our eyes dart to her, the one who’d know. “I have no doubt about it,” she says in a strangely pensive voice.
I just look at her for a second, feeling the need to give her a hug and shrugging it off thinking I might make her uncomfortable. “See?” I turn to Bane instead. “I was right and you were wrong.”
“Some victory,” that’s what his look is telling me. Because he senses it now, too.
It does feel like a defeat more than anything else. I let my eyes sweep over the corpses once again. “So this is real.”
“Yeah,” Bane says in a low, serious voice, “this is real.”