The Harbinger

by Candace Wondrak

  Dropping her arm and the sock to her side, her grandma shrugged. “Don’t care. You’re the one who left your kid to stay with me while you play director.”

  “I’m not playing director. I am the director. It’s a very serious position—”

  They began bickering like they always did, which was why Faith liked the nights when her mother wasn’t there better. She didn’t have a problem with her grandma getting some from Petunia from art class.

  “Have you looked at your daughter lately?”

  Penelope crossed her arms. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Look at her,” Catherine urged. Faith’s eyes, wide, simply flicked between matriarchs, confused as to why they were making such a big deal out of this. “Does that girl look happy to you? Does she? No. She’s not happy. She’s miserable.”

  Her mother laughed incredulously. “She seems all right to me.”

  “That’s because you don’t know her, Pen. You don’t know your own daughter because all you do is work!” Catherine dropped the sock, storming to Faith, pointing at her. At the rate they’re going, Faith would have to step in soon to calm things down. “Does the look in her eyes remind you of anything?”

  Look? What look did she have in her eyes? Faith got up, wanting to both look in a mirror and get out of this awful conversation.

  Penelope was silent for a moment. “There’s something I didn’t tell you, about the field trip.”

  “Besides the pack of missing kids?”

  “Yes. Faith was in the middle of a mess in their Court. They think she’s the Harbinger.” Her mother’s and grandma’s eyes turned to her, and suddenly Faith felt so very small. However, she was confused. What did either of them know about the Harbinger? She knew for a fact her grandma had never been to the Second, and Penelope was tight-lipped about her visit back in the day.

  “The…” Christine had trouble saying it, “The Harbinger, you say?” Her thin lips pursed. “Well that fucking sucks dick, don’t it?”

  Penelope was so shocked at her words that all she said was “Mom!”

  Faith couldn’t even remember the last time she heard her mother call her grandma mom. Like, ever.

  “What? It’s true. Just nasty no matter how you look at it. Something no one wants to do, but some are forced to.” Christine turned to Faith. “I’m so sorry, honey. Really, I am.” Then, in a whisper to Penelope, “We have to send her back.”

  Faith leapt on it. “Yes, I need to go back.”

  Her grandma moved beside her. “See? At least two of us here have brains.”

  “I have brains, but that doesn’t matter, because she isn’t going back! She—” An annoying ringing bounced from her backside, and she quickly pulled her thin phone from her pocket. “Director Blackwell. There’s a what? Are you sure?” Penelope glanced out of the window, at the city landscape, the eerie orange dusk that covered the outside world. “All right. I’m coming. Tell them to contain it—” She went towards the door, pausing as she took the phone from her ear as she glanced to Faith and Christine. “—I have to go. We’ll continue this talk later. Both of you better be here when I come back.” With the phone back to her ear, she walked out the door, slamming it hard.

  With a sigh, her grandma muttered, “Guess I’ll cook dinner.” She wandered to the kitchen. “What do we have to make today? Haven’t been food shopping in a while, kid, so it might be a ramen noodle kind of night—”

  “Grandma,” Faith said, demanding, “how do you know about the Harbinger?”

  “I’ve heard stories. Haven’t you?”

  “Not before this, no.”

  “Oh, well. I have.”

  She leaned on the counter, glaring hard at her grandma. “Have you ever been to the Second?”

  “No, I’ve never been there, don’t want to.”

  She was ready to pull out her own hair. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  With a shrug, Catherine pulled out two packets of noodles. “You ever thought about not sticking your nose into other people’s business?” She filled a pan with water. “Though, if you are the Harbinger, I suppose it is your business…” She froze in thought. “Hmm. Maybe I should tell you…”

  “Tell me what?”

  Just then, a knock on the apartment door cut into the questioning, and Faith ground her teeth as she watched her grandma saunter to the door and swing it wide open, before even peeking through the peephole to make sure it wasn’t a deranged stranger.

  “Wait right here,” Catherine told the knocker before returning to Faith’s side. She whispered, “Are you friends with any of those people who like to dress up in animal suits?”

  Faith blinked. Was her grandma talking about furries?

  “Oh, don’t act so innocent. I know you kids are into that kinky stuff,” Catherine went on, oblivious as the knocker—a man wearing a baggy jacket, hands in his pockets and a hood over his head—walked right into the apartment.

  Pushing her grandma out of the way, Faith quickly yanked off both bracelets that covered her Victi. Newly-purchased at the dollar store, they’d started to turn her wrists green, but they would do the job until the leather ones she ordered online came in. Gliding her fingers over her left wrist, a Victus formed in her hand. Wrist-to-wrist, she now held two magical daggers.

  Her grandma whispered something along the lines of hot damn.

  With a growl, Faith raised a dagger towards the man, now standing less than two feet in front of him. Her grandma was right; under the shadows of the hood, she saw hair. She didn’t know any furries and, after everything that happened in the Second, she knew there was no Earth explanation for this.

  “Who are you?” Faith demanded, heart pounding. Her arms held steady, even as the intruder shifted his weight. While she had a staring match with the man under the hood, Catherine went to close the door. “Grandma, what are you doing?”

  She waved her off as she locked the door. “Oh, if he hasn’t attacked us yet, I doubt that’s what he’s here for.” She wandered back into the kitchen. “Are you staying for dinner, stranger?” Was she offering to cook for him? Faith was incredulous.

  “You know, actually, after tracking your faint smell throughout this city, I do think I worked up an appetite,” a deep yet good-natured voice spoke under the hood. “If you can make it fast, that is. The pretty girl and I have somewhere to be. Start packing.”

  Pretty girl? She was no one’s pretty girl.

  “If you don’t tell me who you are and why you’re here,” Faith whispered, grip tightening on her Victi daggers, “then I’ll have to beat it out of you.” How good was he? Would she be able to beat anything out of him? She didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  He laughed. “Light told me you were a bit feisty, but I thought, he must be exaggerating. Yet here you are, so very feisty.”

  Faith blinked. “Light?” He knew Light? Did Light send him? How did he cross worlds, how did—

  “May I take down this hood, or will you attack me for the movement?” There was a pause. “Though I warn you: I believe I’d enjoy it a lot more than you.”

  Her arms and Victi lowered a bit. Faith didn’t know what to make of him. The way he spoke, as if everything was a joke. As if she weren’t dying a little inside each minute she was away from the Second, from her destiny.

  Ack. It sounded stupid, especially coming from her. She was always a firm believer in making her own destiny. Those words, those thoughts didn’t belong to her, did they?

  The man slowly withdrew his hands from his pockets—and that was when Faith realized that he wore a type of jacket that looked more at home in the Second than here, pants that were leather and boots that certainly did not come off a rack at a shoe store. By the haphazard stitching, it looked like he made his entire outfit himself. As he reached for the hood, she noted the pointed claws on his hands, the short, black fur that graced the back of them. When his hood fell, the Victi slipped from her hands, gone before they hit the floor, and Faith stood staring, in
shock.

  He was no Human. He was Malus, a race that hardly ever came to Earth. They preferred the wilds of the Second, and because of that, she didn’t know much about them. What their culture was like, whether they worshipped entities or nature, or even what their villages looked like. She could definitely see how her grandma thought he was a furry, though.

  Short fur graced his head, longer only on the top of his head in a strange black tuft of hair, lining his jaw and around his ears, which took a more feline appearance than anything. She could see the fur traveling down his neck, and imagined it covered most of his body. What it didn’t cover were most of his fingers and palms and his face. His face was Human-like, not as thin and angular as the Elven. And his eyes, they rivaled Light’s in blueness, looking brighter thanks to all the dark fur on him.

  “Jag’s the name,” he said, studying Faith like she was the one here who looked strange. “I will have to talk to Light. He didn’t mention how beautiful you are.”

  Again with the prettiness. Faith had a retort ready, but her grandma shouted from the kitchen, “No penises will be touching that girl!”

  Faith instantly grew mortified while Jag simply laughed. “I’m fast,” he said, giving her a wink that further ruined the situation, “but not that fast.”

  “Why are you here?” Faith asked, once she swallowed her embarrassment. Her grandma always somehow knew the best (and by best, she meant worst) times to say inappropriate things. Christine was a master at it.

  Jag smiled, his teeth at least more Human than animal, though his canines did seem a tad too long and sharp. “I came to your world in search of you, of course.”

  “Of course,” she echoed, crossing her arms.

  “Light says you’re the Harbinger, and if that’s the case, you can’t hide from fate here.”

  In the kitchen, her grandma nods along, muttering, “The dick is right, for once.”

  Jag smiled wider as he whispered to Faith, “Your elder is a peculiar one, isn’t she?”

  Faith inhaled, smelling a variety of scents: grass, wood, nature in general. It wasn’t a bad smell; she was sure there were artificial scents meant to smell similar on Earth, but she was too distracted wondering if he had a tail hidden under his clothes.

  “Grab what you need, if anything,” Jag told her. “We should hurry.”

  “Hurry?” She snapped out of her own mind.

  “Yes, we must return to the portal before your kind discovers its existence.”

  Shit. Was that why her mother ran out of here so fast? Faith glanced to her grandma, who offered her nothing except, “Go. I’ll handle your mother.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. You have to go back if you’re the Harbinger. I won’t have an entire realm falling because my stupid kid wants to suddenly act like a parent.” Christine waved her hand. “Go. And remember: don’t let any—”

  Now it was Faith’s turn to interrupt, “I got it. If Cara calls…tell her something.” She looked at Jag. If her mother had been called for an unauthorized portal, the one the man before her used, she didn’t want to waste any time. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jag wasn’t sure what he expected the girl to be. From Light’s descriptions, he expected someone different. Someone strong and able, someone who, just by looking at them, inspired loyalty and trust. Looking at her next to him, he knew she did inspire some things in him, just not those things.

  And she was a pretty one, wasn’t she?

  It wasn’t a wonder why Light left her looks out. Elves and their taboos. The only thing Jag smelled when near her wasn’t a bad smell. It was rather enticing, actually. And unlike the Elven, Malus did not have such extended lifespans. Their women were curvy, just like Faith, all the better to reproduce.

  Ah, perhaps he should not be thinking of reproducing right now.

  As they headed into the forest that lied in the center of their towering city—a city so impressive, Jag was kind of sad he had to leave it so soon—Faith asked, “You opened a portal in Central Park? That’s right where the Academy is!” She groaned. “They probably already found it.”

  Jag wasn’t so certain. He had confidence in Laureen’s abilities. “Want to make a bet?” he asked beneath his hood. His hood had gone up before they left her dwelling. Humans were not used to seeing beings such as he, though Faith hadn’t seemed bothered.

  They hurried past a pair of lovers who had their arms and hands entangled. Faith was silent until she said, “That depends. What is it, and what’re the stakes?”

  “If the portal is still there,” Jag said, giving her a lingering side-glance. With her long, brown hair, those vivid eyes, and that body—she was a perfect choice for a mate, though he knew Humans did things differently. They waited longer, and oftentimes they did not mate for life. “I get a kiss.”

  She let out a short laugh. “A kiss? Really? What are we, in fifth grade?” Her green eyes shot him a glare before she said, “And if the I.D.’s already there, what do I get?”

  “I don’t see how you have to worry about that, since you’ll be losing this bet anyways,” he ignored the chuckle and the cocky, aren’t you? remark from her, “but if you win, I’ll…be your personal servant for an entire day.” Women always liked to be waited on, didn’t they?

  Faith thought on it. “Fine. It’s a deal, though since I’m sensing you’re a huge flirt, I’m going to specify that if I lose, it’ll be a quick, closed-mouth kiss, otherwise I have a feeling you’ll take advantage.”

  “Of you? Never. Unless you wanted me to,” he said, his hooded head turning to her. Not like she could see the smile on his face.

  “Jag, you don’t even know me. Let’s save the hard-core flirting for another day, okay?”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Plus, if Light had anything to say about it, Jag would be sticking around, very close to Faith. He was a good fighter, and a better tracker than even Light. Who better than him to join the fellowship of the Harbinger?

  She’d fall for him eventually. Jag was a patient guy.

  After hurrying off the pathway, through the trees that were child-sized compared to the trees of his world, Jag and Faith saw the portal in the distance, rippling a reflection to his realm. Somewhere in the trees nearby, Laureen hid, not wanting to be found since she was also the official gatekeeper of the heavily-watched gateway. Unlike the more permanent gateways, this portal stood from nothing—no stone archways around it, no base at all.

  Since it was still standing, and her people nowhere to be found, Jag smiled. “Looks like I win.” He was about to say more as they neared the portal, but suddenly the cocking of metal alerted him to others’ presence. They were still a good ways from the portal. They had to get closer.

  “Shit,” Faith muttered, turning her back to the portal.

  Good idea, he thought, doing the same. Perhaps they could slowly move backward towards the portal, and the Humans wouldn’t notice? Okay, still sounded a little silly. Jag glanced to the team that had them surrounded. Clearly, they hadn’t found Laureen, otherwise the portal would already be closed.

  Men and women, tough as metal and stern as his tribe’s elders, held their weapons pointed at them. Jag knew enough about Human engineering to know that he did not want to be caught on the other side of one of those things. They each wore a similar ensemble. All these blasted Humans with their need for clothing…that was something he did not understand. He much preferred to be free of its restrictive nature.

  A woman emerged from the back of the group, not holding a weapon but still as deadly as the rest of them. Her outfit was unlike theirs, and she held herself as high as any Elf he’d seen. Her hair was pulled back, revealing a serious, grave expression, though that expression softened when she spotted the girl beside him. “Faith?” she asked. “What is the meaning of this? How did you—”

  “My mother,” Faith explained quietly before saying louder, “I think it means that it might be quicker for you to walk to wor
k instead of drive, Mom.”

  “This is not the time for jokes,” she harshly said. “You know what the punishment is for creating an unsanctioned portal. Why would you—”

  “She didn’t,” Jag said. “It was me, and a few of my friends.”

  Her eyes were not the vivid green her daughter’s were. They were dark and narrowed as she muttered, “And who are you? Take down that hood. Show us your face, criminal.”

  Jag was many things, but a criminal he was not.

  “Apologies, mother of Faith, but I must take your daughter back—”

  “No,” she shouted, and the men and women around her readied their weapons. “You will do no such thing.”

  Jag reached for Faith’s hand, grasping it tightly. “I’m sorry, Mom, but I have to go,” Faith said as they both took a step backward. Somewhere in the trees, he hoped Laureen watched. He hoped she’d be able to close the portal before any of the men or women could follow them.

  “Now,” he hissed, and together they ran for the portal, leaping through just as her mother shouted another harsh no. The cacophony of shouting behind them halted the moment they landed on the soil of his realm.

  As Jag threw a look over his shoulder, the portal was already gone. Laureen had good reflexes, especially for a Fae, and he hoped they wouldn’t suspect her of helping him.

  They were right where he knew they’d land: in the back of the house of the mastermind of all of this, the forest to their right. Without a warning, Jag started to laugh, his chest shaking with uncontrolled laughter. “That was a close one, wasn’t it?” He smiled, looking down at the Human girl he still held hands with.

  Faith muttered, “My mom is going to kill me.”

  “Nonsense,” Jag spoke seriously, leaning down as he added, “I wouldn’t let her.”

  She giggled. “Thanks. I think.”

  “Now, I do believe you owe me something, yes?” Jag questioned.