1. Chapter 1
Chapter 1
I know they’d prefer it if I just forgot, so I sneak away every chance I get. In a haze that refuses to quit, I soundlessly pad down the deserted hallways until I reach the west wing. I’ve counted twelve rooms in the abandoned, rundown mansion we’re currently using as a hideout. But the one I always return to has a lock on its double door and an exit onto a crumbling terrace swallowed by the overgrown flora.
It’s early afternoon when I reach the door and push it open with the familiar creak on rusty hinges. I lock it behind me, the smell of stale air the first to greet me. There’s the ornate four-poster bed littered with rubble that at some point fell down from the caved-in ceiling. Then there are the vines suffocating the rest of the furniture, the large solid-wood desk the only one I bothered to set free, my equipment scattered across its surface.
And then there are the shattered French doors opening onto the terrace, glass strewn over the dusty floors.
It’s only here that I can escape my friends’ watchful eyes and conduct my experiments without them throwing me pained looks. That’s only half the reason I like it, though.
I walk through the French doors and take a moment to look across the terrace. The view is melancholy to say the least. Even on a summer afternoon like this one, the light barely filters through the overgrown bushes shooting up from the ground and the tangle of vines creeping down from the top floors. It’s darkness and decay intertwined, more fitting to how I feel than any other room in the mansion.
Like I sometimes do, I try to peer through the living wall, to catch a glimpse of the sky and imagine seeing the Academy. After all, we’re only a few miles away.
“Isn’t being on the run hard enough?” my wolf’s voice booms inside my head. “Do you really need to torture yourself like this?”
“I’m not torturing myself,” I protest, however gently. “I’m only keeping an eye out on my enemy’s headquarters.”
And what I’m saying is true, Baldur is currently occupying the Academy, but my wolf knows better.
She doesn’t say anything. She only quirks an eyebrow at me.
“Fine,” I admit, “I was torturing myself.” I turn around and move for the desk, making her let out a content little hum.
As I take my seat and start preparing to work, I half expect her to try to dissuade me. She doesn’t. Lately, it seems as if she’s given up, and I’m grateful for it.
I shift my focus onto yesterday’s notes, the world around me almost instantly falling away.
Today, my focus is fueled by a glimmer of hope. After all, last night’s session ended with me almost managing to breathe life into the single dead leaf lying on the table before me.
I don’t even care that it’s that bastard’s magic I’m trying to use here. Bringing Jericho back… It’s not just a wish. It’s a necessity, and I’d trade my very soul if it meant increasing my chances at succeeding.
The work is tiresome and painstaking. Probably mostly because I’m trying to do vampire magic without having awoken my vampire side. But I keep pushing, the day around me slowly turning into dusk.
It makes my heart start racing, when my focus and my current hand gestures make the leaf start trembling.
“Just be careful,” my wolf tells me.
I nod. Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes shut and keep pushing even harder.
Until this sudden, violent blast flings me out of my chair and back into the air. I come crashing to the floor with a loud thunk, my lower back exploding in pain.
Almost instantly, I hear Alaric’s voice in my head. “Anna,” he calls out, panic in his voice.
Normally, I can get them to respect my privacy, but never when they believe I might be in danger. Besides, judging by the fact I feel her presence in my mind as well, Jaeger has obviously returned from her supply run, so there’s no chance she won’t be coming to demand explanations.
“I’m fine,” I communicate as I pick myself up. “I’ll be right with you.”
My wolf is not pleased, but she doesn’t say anything.
“Thank you for bearing with me,” I tell her softly.
I dust my clothes off and force myself to leave my work station. I start making my way through the west wing and into the central kitchen, where we spend most of our time together.
It’s difficult to keep insisting on this when I know how many sacrifices they’re all making to stay by my side. They’ve saved my life on more than one occasion, even if you don’t count the fact that it was only because Jaeger miraculously came to my aid that I managed to escape that bastard in the first place.
So it’s with a heavy heart that I enter the kitchen.
I find both Alaric and Raven on their feet, fussing around Jaeger who’s sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace, cradling her leg with a wince she’s trying to suppress.
“What happened?” I ask as I rush over.
Jaeger lifts her scolding gaze to my eyes, confirming my suspicions when she says, “Do I even need to ask what that blast was about?”
I come to crouch in front of her, inspecting the gash along her outer thigh. “Why didn’t you come get me as soon as you returned?”
“That was the plan,” she snaps, albeit with pain, not anger.
I put my hands around the wound and start work on healing it.
“Someone could’ve been close enough to hear it, Anna,” Jaeger grinds out, “and then what?”
“Lilith forbid,” I hear Alaric say.
I look up. “I’m strong enough to protect us,” I try to reassure him. It’s true that they’re the reason I’m still alive, but I’ve saved them on multiple occasions as well.
“We’d still have to leave this place,” Jaeger argues, “and there’s no guaranteeing we’d live long enough to find another hideout.” She pauses before she adds, “He’s growing stronger by the day, Anna.”
“Tell her what you told us,” Alaric nudges her.
She lets out a heavy sigh. “We’ll have to find another way to get food because as of today, not even the Market Road is an option.” With the corner of my eye, I spot her motioning at her wound. “It was one of his hunters that left this as a parting gift on his way to the other side.”
“At this point,” Raven shyly and cautiously whispers, “it could be argued that his effect on Nature Magic poses an even bigger threat to us.”
I finish healing Jaeger’s wound and get up, thinking.
“Our main job is to protect you, Anna,” Alaric says as he catches my eye. “If we don’t, then everything is lost. And how can we do it if you’re insisting on putting yourself in danger?”
I let my eyes sweep over the three of them. Lying to them isn’t an option, but I don’t plan on stopping either.
And so far, they’ve refused every attempt I’ve made to get them to go back to their lives, but maybe this time’s the charm. “Should we separate then?” I finally ask, despite how much the very thought pains me.
For a moment, the four of us just keep looking at each other.
Jaeger is the one to break the silence, caution in her voice. “It’s been two years, Anna.”
True. And they’ve all been so patient and supportive, I don’t think I could ever thank them enough. Although…
Pressing them into finally letting go of me and my depressing mission could be a start.
I look at Alaric and Raven. Right now, they’re standing by the fireplace, his arms around her waist. As always, I don’t even wish to allude to loss and heartbreak in front of two people whose love is still in bloom, but… “My efforts to bring him back don’t have an expiration date,” I finally say, my voice sounding hollow.
It’s when I see the pity in their eyes that I look away.
“I understand that,” I hear Jaeger try to placate me, “but this is a conversation we’ve had already, and I was under the impression—”
“That I’ll just take your word for it?” I cut her off, a little more forcefully than I’d like to. I clear my throat and soften my voice. “Well, what if you’re wrong? What if his magic doesn’t necessarily bring people back like that ?”
What flashes through my mind is the image of Serra as she was when he… “What if I can do it better?” I insist. “It’s my only chance and I’m not giving up, no matter how much you’d want me to just forget.”
“No one wants you to forget, Anna,” Raven whispers.
I wince. “Well, that’s not how it’s coming across,” I whisper back, giving her a sad smile. “To you, it’s all about saving the world, and sure, the rational part of me gets it.” I shake my head. “Every single day, I force myself to get up and spend practically all of my waking hours trying to unlock my other powers so I can fulfill my duty.” I look up and away, fixing my eyes on the window. “But in my heart of hearts, he became my reason for living in the first place. Gods know I’ve done everything I could to change that, but without him, I just can’t bring myself to care.”
There’s a moment of silence before I hear Jaeger say, “I myself just don’t want you to keep taking routes that are doomed from the start.”
It’s the sound of rustling that makes me turn to look at her. She’s holding a yellowed paper out for me.
Frowning, I take it in my hand. Both Alaric and Raven come to look over my shoulder.
“What’s that?” Alaric asks, but I’m already recognizing some of the symbols done in faded ink.
“Something I’ve been trying to get my hands on for months,” Jaeger explains. “I remembered having a chat with this scholar once, he was obsessed with the topic.”
I fix my eyes on the symbol showing a simplified door with a star at the top. “Time portals?” I ask, looking up at her with a frown.
*
Jaeger nods. “I got this for next to nothing. It does make absolute sense, but the man who sold it to me didn’t exactly keep it in the Science section.”
Raven shifts on her feet. It’s in a voice filled with reverence that she says, “Because this is not magic any ordinary Original can do.”
I look down at one of the other symbols I’ve recognized. My tattoos. My heart starts pounding. “I could open a portal and go back in time,” I whisper without tearing my eyes away from the symbol, “to a point before I fucked everything up?”
“You can’t open a portal,” Jaeger explains, making me look up to find her shaking her head. “From what I could gather from this record, a time portal… it just appears, by Divine Magic or whatever it is, and it doesn’t stay open forever. But you could use it, that’s what you could do.”
My mind buzzing, I keep looking at her with unseeing eyes.
“Before you get excited, Anna,” Jaeger warns and breaks off, seemingly hesitating to continue.
It’s with a fierce look that I nudge her to talk.
“This symbol right here,” she says as she points at the simplified tree with a swirl at the center.
“Is the symbol for the Heart of the Academy,” I jump in. “That’s where this particular portal will open.”
“At the Academy?” Alaric spits out. “Bloody hell, you must be joking.”
“Entering that place would be a tremendous risk, Anna,” Raven adds.
But the extremely tempting nature of the idea is making it take root in my mind.
“How does it all work?” I ask. “What would we need?”
“Just your lovely self,” Jaeger does an attempt at humor.
I blow a soft laugh through my nose. Then I think for a second. “If I had to choose, I’d choose to go back to the moment Jericho and I met. It wouldn’t make sense to go any further back because nothing had started happening yet. But if I could go back to the day of the Opening Ceremony and do everything differently…”
Gods…
“Wouldn’t it be against the laws of nature,” Raven asks Jaeger, “if she traveled to a time in which there’s already a version of her?”
“You’d only have your consciousness moved to the body from that point in time,” my wolf’s voice booms inside my head, making my eyebrows shoot up.
“You knew about this option?” I ask as I gesture for the others to wait.
She doesn’t say anything, but the silence is apologetic. I shake my head, but I choose to leave the discussion for some other time. “How would I know how to get to the desired point in time?”
“You’d just know,” she replies simply. “There would be doors and you’d get the feeling which one you’d need to choose.”
I share this with the rest of the group. Then I shake my head and turn to look at their worried faces. “It’s a risk I’d be willing to take.” I smile. “But don’t worry, I’d never in a million years ask you to take it with me.”
To my surprise, they exchange a single loaded glance before Alaric asks Jaeger, “What would we need to do?”
She lets out a sigh and looks out the window before turning her focus back onto us. “We’d need to find our way into the Academy, locate the portal and give Anna enough time to do the ritual.”
She only motions at the series of symbols at the bottom of the record. Ritual symbols.
There’s a moment of silence before Alaric asks me, “You really want to do this?”
I almost say yes, but there’s one more thing I need to learn about this. “How do we know when the portal will be open?” I ask Jaeger.
“This symbol right here,” she says as she points at the circle of six interlocked circles, “it represents the Golden Conjunction. It’s the moment when Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mercury and Mars all become visible in the night sky. The next occurrence is in two weeks and it won’t happen for another couple of hundred years.”
I stare at the symbol. “Two weeks…” Then, with determination in my eyes, I look at all three of my friends. “It would be much faster than anything else I can do. And I really need to bring him back.”
The three of them exchange looks. For one long moment, no one says or does anything else. Then Alaric and Raven give me determined nods and Jaeger says, “Alright. Then we’ll start the preparations first thing in the morning.”
*
As soon as night falls, I excuse myself from the dinner table and go to my room, one of the few in the mansion without damage to the walls. I throw myself on my straw bed and fix my eyes on the ceiling.
Time travel.
None of us mentioned it, but I could tell from the looks in their eyes that they’re aware of it just as much as I am. If I do end up getting the chance to do it, this could be the death of me.
I don’t waste time contemplating it any further. I’ve never been more determined about anything in my entire life.
If I don’t die doing this, it could mean the end of the nightmare my life has become.
But more than anything else…
It could mean the chance to fix everything I’ve fucked up from the moment my wolf stirred from sleep, every single one of the countless things that have been haunting every moment of my existence since I saw his broken body lying on the floor of that gym.
Letting anger take control of me as if I was no more than a child.
Insisting on pushing everyone away from me, especially Jericho.
Telling so many unnecessary lies and hiding so many important things in so many life-altering situations.
It only makes it worse — the fact that, in every single one of those situations, there was always a part of me that knew.
When I looked into his eyes, I knew who he was.
When my wolf asked me who I was, I knew it.
When they told me about Baldur, I knew who he was.
I just didn’t want to know. I was so burdened with guilt of having fucked everything up in my previous lifetime that I chose to stay in denial, spending little time researching and even less picking my own brain in search of answers.
So, in the end, it’s the only conclusion I can ever get to — that it’s all my fault. That I’m to blame for Baldur, that I’m to blame for Jaeger’s, Alaric’s and Raven’s current situation, and that I’m to blame for the death of none other than the love of my life.
Sometimes, I feel as if all the sadness, guilt and regret will one day literally crush me to death.
And now… Now I find myself presented with the opportunity to make it so none of those irrevocable mistakes of mine ever happened. So even if this time travel thing kills me, I’ll still be able to say it was worth it.
With that, I pull Jericho’s lighter and my phone out of my pocket and start what’s become my bedtime ritual.
It’s something I’ve done every night for the past two years. It hurts more than anything else in the whole wide world, but the gaping hole in my heart won’t stop demanding it.
For a while, I just stare at the lighter — the only thing I have left of him. Then I pull up the gallery and start scrolling through the pictures he and I took in the brief time we were together.
It’s the most painful ritual I’ve ever had.
But it’s my only way to stay close to him as well.
And no matter how much time passes, the need to stay close doesn’t stop being so wickedly absolute and so relentlessly gnawing, I know I couldn’t resist it even if I tried.
So it’s with the phone still in my hands that I drift off, the images from my recurring nightmares starting to flash through my mind even before sleep fully takes over.