by Jay Barnson
The castle seemed deserted. The Royal Guard hadn’t yet been fully replaced by guards loyal to the queen. That, or they were all busy on other errands in the chaos of the king’s murder. The escapees slipped down the main hall and up the stairs. The garden, too, was empty. Rumela helped them all over the wall before pulling herself up and over.
Bachan turned to the rest of the group. “This is where we part, for now. My duty is to the crown, your highness. I must rescue the rest of those sworn to serve you. While I’d prefer to protect you personally, you will be in the best of hands.” He offered a salute to the group. Zeke returned a salute so quickly that it came at the same time. Then Bachan vanished into the pre-dawn darkness.
Zeke pointed to the southeast and said, “We should try and find mounts. We’ll need the speed once they discover we are gone. I am sorry, Miss Rumela. I don’t know if we have anything large enough to carry you.”
Rumela grinned. “Ain’t a problem. I can run as fast as any horse.”
“Food will be a problem,” Jack said. “For us and the horses.”
“There’s a manor three miles south that will be loyal and can provide enough for us all. From there, I don’t know where we go.”
“We can’t go south,” Jack said. “We need to get across the river, and then head east-by-northeast along the road. That’s the direction Zainus is heading. Know anyone you can trust along that way?”
Zeke looked incredulously at Jack and then turned toward the princess. Delcina nodded. “We’re going after Zainus.”
Zeke shrugged. “Okay. I have an uncle up that way a few miles, I guess.”
They found horses. Zeke and the Delcina set up their own mounts, and then one for Jack. This time, Jack was able to assist them somewhat, unlike when he was being escorted to face Korak. The sky beyond the eastern hills was glowing by the time they rode toward the bridge.
Jessabelle-the-girl’s entire plan had been to return Around the Bend and give warning to those watching the crossroads of the Coven’s efforts. Now the people she’d tried to warn were dead, and she was lucky not to be dead herself. Without the potion, she probably would have died on the floor. Or she would have been shot trying to escape as a cat. Or she would have died from a wound that hadn’t healed in her transformation. Or...
Jessabelle-the-panther had a much simpler plan: Survive. After that, everything else could be negotiated. The bullet wound still burned and tore at her with every stride, but she couldn’t tell if it was getting better or worse. The part of her that could still think through the pain and fear forced her to continue the original mission, following the unlit road toward what should have been Morgantown.
The nighttime cacophony of insects and small animals was in full force. The Milky Way blanketed the sky more clearly than she’d ever seen. It was easy to imagine safety and security in the warm calm of this clear night, even with death only a couple of miles behind her. It would be so easy to hole up and sleep. Just sleep. Hadn’t she done her part already? Just because the people she tried to warn were idiots and got themselves shot up was no reason for her to take responsibility for them. She couldn’t warn an entire world, after all. Especially not this strange one. She couldn’t even warn her own world.
No. Her family needed her.
Three more miles passed by in a painful haze. She lurched to a halt, unsure if she could muster the will to walk any further. Forcing herself to look up, she spotted lights from the city ahead. Morgantown, or whatever they called it here. It was either much, much smaller than her Morgantown, or they just didn’t stay up late on this side. The pain in her side grew. She ignored it as she pushed towards the distant, flickering lights. The lethargy was much harder to ignore. She wanted to sleep. The air grew chilly, even against her sleek fur. Chilly in July? It was still July, wasn’t it, or was it August already?
She couldn’t think straight. Focusing on the road in front of her, relying on the pain spreading across her side to keep herself conscious, she kept moving her paws forward, concentrating on their placement so she wouldn’t trip. It would be silly for a graceful panther on four legs to trip and fall over, wouldn’t it?
Jessabelle found herself surrounded by buildings, instead of trees, but couldn’t remember when the transition had happened. With a shock, she realized she must have been walking half-asleep for some time. Who knew panthers could do that? But then, she rarely gave this form a test-drive back home.
The feline instincts warned her, but either the panther or the girl was too muzzy-headed to think straight. There was a great building ahead. It was a magnificent stone fortress, brilliant under the light of stars, the moon, and dozens of lanterns mounted over the walls and windows. Movement took place around her, and her feline brain warned of predators or prey. Her legs shook. She wobbled and stumbled. That was weird. She never stumbled. Oh, she had once. Yes. When she was drugged. Had she been drugged again?
A woman stood before her, flanked by two men with guns. Jessabelle approached her, her vision swimming, making the two men appear as several. No, there really were several, and they all had weapons of kinds. Had the Coven beat her to Morgantown? They were afraid. They smelled of fear. Jessabelle knew that smell, especially as the panther. However, the woman did not smell of fear. She smelled of power. Jessabelle couldn’t tell if she smelled of good power or bad power. It was so hard to tell. Maybe she was the daughter of the man in the white suit. If so, Jessabelle’s warning would be really, really stupid.
The panther could not warn them, but she didn’t want to change. Ever. She had to become that stupid girl again, the one that was weak, and slow, and clumsy, and not pretty, and her mother didn’t love her anymore, and everyone wanted her dead. Besides, the girl didn’t have fur, and it was getting so cold. She’d freeze to death.
Why did she need to warn anybody again? Why did she care about these people?
Oh. She needed to protect her grandmother. And her cousin. And Jack. And the pretty lady standing in front of her. And the scared people around her who really should just be prey. Them too. Someone had to warn them, and there was nobody else who could.
She transformed and then screamed. It had never, ever hurt like this before. Not even when the ogre had torn deep bloody gouges in her flank had it hurt this bad. Jessabelle-the-girl fell onto the dirt road, surrounded by townspeople armed with knives, swords, spears, and even rifles. They gasped in confusion. Someone in an elaborate costume stood in front of Jessabelle flanked by guards and assistants. Jessabelle tried to stand and screamed again. She reached back and touched her shoulder, and felt new, warm blood seeping from the wound through the hole in her wonderful jacket.
“Her back!” a man said. “She’s been hurt, bad.”
“What is she?” another asked. “Is she a demon?”
Jessabelle pushed herself up to a kneeling position, which took a lot more effort than she expected. Sweat poured from her forehead even though she shivered with cold. Feeling over her shoulder with her right hand, her fingers came back sticky and wet. Whatever the healing potion had done, her long walk had undone it. Her father’s jacket had a hole in it. She felt bad about that.
The world swam. The lanterns and stars grew dim. She wanted to sleep. But not yet. She had one more thing to do. Not because it was her responsibility. Just because she was the only one there was.
“The Coven came through the gateway,” Jessabelle said, trying to force her mind to think about the message. “They’re coming for his daughter. They killt everyone at the fort. They’ll be headed south. Toward...” She struggled. Landmarks, anyone? “Toward the other crossroads. We have to stop them.”
That would be good enough, wouldn’t it? Too late now. The world went dark. Except for her father, George Rose. He stood where the woman had been. How had he gotten here? Had they lied about his death? Had he simply gotten lost in the crossroads, in that moment of darkness between worlds?
The pain faded, and she felt loved again.
Jessabelle di
dn’t know how long she was in the comfortable darkness. She was disappointed when the image of her father faded, and she cried out for him to come back. He didn’t return. Then she found herself pulled to another place, completely black but warm, safe, and cozy. She was lost in another place where there were no men with rifles, no Coven with their schemes, and nobody to betray her or abandon her anymore, except as flitting thoughts and dreamlike images.
She felt the sensation of being rocked. She could almost believe that she was a little girl again, being rocked by her mama. Her papa hadn’t died in some distant country, and she hadn’t discovered that she was secretly some kind of monster. Nothing else mattered.
The memories slowly returned to her, unwelcome. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. Her mother had betrayed her—out of fear, and maybe even out of love, but Jessabelle had been betrayed. Her father was long dead. She enjoyed becoming Jessabelle-the-cat and Jessabelle-the-panther, even if it scared her. And finally, some things really did matter: Jenny, Grandma, and Jack had no warning a group of paramilitary murderers were coming for then. That wasn’t all that mattered, was it?
No. What about Josie and Burke? She’d foolishly jumped in after Burke and would do it again if she had to. Maybe better prepared next time, but she’d do it. They mattered. And Leon, if he’d survived. And all those poor soldiers at the fort. Maybe their commander was an idiot, but they didn’t deserve to die. Their deaths should matter. Had she warned the right people? Had they understood her warning? A lot of people beyond her family and closest friends mattered a great deal, and they depended on her.
“I don’t know. It might not work. It might even kill her,” a distant voice whispered somewhere on the wind. A wind she hadn’t noticed until now.
“Do it anyway,” another voice responded.
Why wouldn’t the voices leave her alone? She liked it where she was.
In the distance, a light intruded, beckoning her. She squinted. She knew it would lead her back to pain. Back to where she’d have to think about things and remember things that hurt. Everything was spiky there. Wasn’t she done? Hadn’t she warned the Morgantown people? Couldn’t she rest now?
“No.”
She wondered who had spoken and realized it had been her voice. She wasn’t done, and she couldn’t rest any longer. A lot of people were in danger, and even if she was a monster, she was a monster who could help. Reluctantly she stood and walked toward the irritating point of light.
She found herself in the back of a covered wagon, resting on some kind of mattress. A lantern filled the space with light. A boy and a woman sat beside her. The boy she didn’t recognize, but he looked to be her age, brown-haired and freckled but with serious eyes. The woman seemed both strange and familiar, blonde and dressed in robes. The woman was the one she’d seen in town before Jessabelle lost consciousness.
The pain returned, and a new throbbing in her head hurt more than the throbbing in her shoulder. The boy held a bottle to her and said, “Sit up if you can and drink this.”
She sat up and regretted it immediately. Impossibly, her head hurt even worse in the vertical position. She took the bottle in her good hand and drank. The drink tasted terrible, but it had an alcoholic base to it and went down warm. Why did people in this world keep trying to give her booze? She decided not to tell them she was too young to drink. There was a lot more to drink, and none of it tasted good.
“Sip it slowly,” the boy said. “We don’t want it to come back up. It burns worse on the way up.”
Jessabelle lowered the bottle. “I reckoned I was dead.”
“Very nearly,” the boy answered. “You lost a lot of blood. Another minute or two, and you would have been too far gone for me to bring back.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Owen Murphy. This is Lisbet Crane. We’re both with the Wardens.”
“Like them men from the fort?”
“Yes.” He looked at the woman. “I guess you can ask your questions.”
Lisbet stared at Jessabelle with piercing blue eyes. “Who are you?”
“Jessabelle Rose, ma’am.”
“Why did you come here?”
Jessabelle tried to move her left hand to her temples, but her shoulder still ached. Owen motioned to the bottle, and Jessabelle took another sip. It tasted even nastier now that she was more awake. “I came here to warn y’all about the Coven so you can stop them.”
“Who is the Coven?”
“They are an organization that supports Thadeus. The man in the white suit.”
Owen and Lisbet looked at each other, and back to Jessabelle, not comprehending. Jessabelle sighed. “That asshole you tossed out into our world a long time ago. That immortal guy.”
That got their attention. Lisbet narrowed her eyes. “They are the ones who did this?”
“This?”
“We are at Fort Zellan. Everyone is dead.”
“Oh.” Memories hit Jessabelle. The blood, the gunshots. She was getting very, very tired of gunshots. “Yes. I reckon once they found out I came ‘Round the Bend, they grabbed their guns and piled in after me.”
Owen spoke up. “You did a brave thing, coming to warn us. You were badly wounded. It may have partly healed when you changed form, but that was a long walk. I believe you reopened the wound and were bleeding internally.”
Brave? More like stupid and desperate, Jessabelle thought.
Lisbet asked, “The Coven—what are their plans?”
Jessabelle inhaled deeply to combat a moment of light-headedness. It worked, but it made her headache worse. She explained, “They are trying to reach the crossroads near Maple Bend and take it from this side. It’s a big one protected by my family over here in ‘Round the Bend to the south. I reckon the Coven will try to kill my family here so they can hold the crossroads and then go fetch the daughter of the man in the white suit and bring her through.” Talking was surprisingly exhausting, Jessabelle realized when she’d finished.
“And you said they were heading south? That makes no sense, Jessabelle Rose. Certainly they’d come for Lilah first. Perhaps you are lying to us to protect Lilah.”
“Huh? Why would I do that?”
“We know you are of her bloodline.”
“Huh?” Jessabelle shook her head. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Owen spoke up. “We tested your blood as I healed you. You’d left enough of it laying around. Lisbet determined that you are of the same family line. The human side, at least.”
Lisbet spoke, “As the Wardens charged with protecting Lilah’s corpse, we know all there is to know about her, to a level far smaller than the human eye can perceive.”
“Like, with her DNA?” When Owen and Lisbet again shared clueless expressions, Jessabelle decided to keep going. They didn’t have much time. “Look, sometime in the past Thadeus got busy with one of my great-something aunts which led to a daughter. What about the Coven? Are they gone?”
Lisbet nodded. “We found tracks heading south, but they are difficult to follow by night.”
“Y’all got a map?”
Lisbet nodded. She opened the flap at the back of the wagon and gave an order. Several seconds later, a man returned with a map, and Lisbet held it out to Jessabelle, under the lamplight. It was difficult to decipher as there were no political boundaries that she recognized. West Virginia had always reminded Jessabelle of the shape of a pipe. Without that, she had to go by other references, mainly rivers and lakes. She struggled to remember an old unit from elementary school. Finally, she pointed her finger near what she thought would be central West Virginia, just outside the designated national forests. “Right around there,” she said.
“That’s across the border, isn’t it?” Owen said.
Lisbet nodded. “Just barely. Technically, the treaty allows it, but if we run into Sanguine forces, it could cause great delays. I’d say this is an emergency that allows it. One last thing, Jessabelle Rose. How many of these Coven people came t
hrough?”
“I counted at least eight before they shot me. Probably more.”
“Only eight? Eight men slew a fort full of trained warden guardsman?”
“Or more. They had military-style guns. And bulletproof vests.”
Lisbet nodded. “Okay. Owen, take care of her. Get her healed up as quickly as safety will allow. We may have need to consult with her farther down the road. We need to catch those Coven soldiers or all will be lost.”
A hazy morning fog had settled around the river as they reached the bridge, granting the group a little extra concealment as the darkness faded. The same guard who had refused passage to Jack and Rumela days earlier was guarding the bridge at the dawn hour. He’d stepped out to greet the group and took several steps back when he spotted Rumela. Two other guards emerged to join him.
“Hold!” The man said, unable to mask the quiver in his voice. “Stop in the name of the queen.”
Zeke spoke with a force and confidence in his voice that Jack had never heard from the young guard. “Then you speak in the name of usurper and the murderer of King Ferik and thereby declare yourself an enemy of the throne.”
“The princess and the outlaw known as Jack murdered him,” the guard stated.
Zeke’s eyes narrowed, and he stepped toward the guard, heedless of the weapons trained on him. “Is that what you have heard? Is that the lie being spread about the kingdom while Taliel centralizes her power?”
“Yes. I mean, no. The Royal Guard is not to be trusted and all are subject to immediate arrest. You were the ones who arranged for the king’s death.”
Zeke scowled. “After generations of service, do you seriously believe we’d violate our sacred duty and our honor? You cannot be that foolish. You can smell the stink of that story even out here.”
One guard bent his head down and lowered his weapon. He stepped to the side. The other two stood resolute. The toll-collector shook his head. “Foolish or no, it is our duty to take you back in. Please come quietly. I would not wish to hurt any of you.”
