I didn’t like the sound of that one bit, and the look on Mallory’s face told me that she agreed—probably one of the first things we’d been united on.
“Now, to put your minds at ease slightly, other candidates have gone through a similar requirement, though it hasn’t been done for quite some time,” Ashley said. “The True North Society is associated with a special hospital—a vampire-run hospital with human patients. I won’t get into all the nuances of the hospital here, but it is a unique training facility, mostly for new vampires, but on occasion it has been used for Society candidates.”
“Are you talking about Sisters of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital,” I asked, remembering the business card Matthew had given me when we’d first met, which seemed so long ago now.
“I should have known Matthew would have said something,” Ashley said, glancing over at Janice, who didn’t look overly pleased.
“He didn’t tell me anything about it,” I said, trying to backtrack and hoping I hadn’t gotten him in trouble. “He gave me a business card before I was even introduced to any of this.”
“Well, I am talking about Sisters of Mercy,” Ashley said, looking me directly in the eyes. “And if you want to continue your journey with the True North Society, then you will be voluntarily committing yourselves to the psychiatric hospital for however long we deem fit. You both will share a room and go through the experience together.”
“What kind of… experience… are we talking about?” Mallory asked.
“I’m not going to lie to you—it will be rather unpleasant. You will be at the mercy of the hospital staff, to treat you and feed on you as they wish. All I can promise you is that you will not be killed or suffer permanent physical damage. It will be a traumatic physical and emotional experience that you will endure—together.”
All color had drained from Mallory’s face, and from the queasiness I was now feeling, I probably didn’t look much better. This sounded like I was going back to the vampire club, but this time, no one would be coming to my aid. We would be thrown in as toys and food for the vampires as our punishment for disturbing the peace within our candidate class—all thanks to Mallory Fiennes. If I didn’t have just cause to hate her before, I sure as hell did now. I knew that wasn’t what I was supposed to be thinking—the type of vengeful thinking that landed me here in the first place.
“You can’t do this,” Mallory finally said. “The vampires are the enemy. My father wouldn’t allow it.”
“Your father was not given a choice,” Janice said, stepping up. “This decision was not made lightly but deemed necessary. You will remain committed to the facility until you can fully count on each other for support.”
“What if that never happens?”
“Then you’ll never be released. As I said earlier, if you commit to this path, then there’s no going back. You will see what few people ever see and live to tell about it. If you succeed, then you’ll be released and continue your journey with the society. If you fail, then you will become a real patient and be committed for life.”
“The human patients of that hospital are never released?” I asked, my throat now terribly dry—all the moisture left in my body turning to sweat.
“There have been a few instances,” Janice said, glancing at Ashley. “But they are exceptionally rare.”
“And if we refuse?” Mallory asked defiantly.
“You were so confident about continuing a few minutes ago. If you refuse, then the True North Society will become a distant dream for you. Your father and brother will be tasked with making sure you never speak about what you have seen to anyone, and you better believe they’ve made people disappear for the secrecy and security of our organization. So, the question becomes: how much do you really want this?”
It had all been hard, but I’d come so far, and didn’t know if I could live with myself if I quit now. I’d been looking for my father for years, and now I’d found where he was, how could I quit just before meeting him? For all I knew, he could have been one of the cloaked figures in the ceremonies. Matthew had told me numerous times earlier on that I couldn’t quit—he wouldn’t allow it—but he hadn’t said that this evening, which now struck me as strange.
“How is this going to work?” I asked. “Are we simply going to disappear for days, weeks—months? What do I tell my mother? We’re graduating in a few months. If we miss more than a few weeks of school, then we might not graduate with the rest of our class.”
“We will arrange for you to take your GEDs before committing yourselves to the hospital,” Janice said. “And you will tell no one about the hospital or the time you will be away. It’s a harsh thing to do to your families, but it’s necessary. If you perform appropriately, then you will see them again soon enough.”
“What about college?” Mallory asked. “I was all set to go to an ivy league school. Now just getting my GED will probably screw all that up.
“You’re not understanding the reach of the True North Society. Forget about what applications you’ve submitted. We have connections with the most prestigious schools in the country, as well as our own training and academic programs. Wherever you want to go, we can most likely get you in. But the truth is, you won’t be graduating from college… there isn’t enough time left.”
38
Fiona
“What does that mean?” Mallory asked, posing the exact question that immediately ran through my head.
“This is where I must insist you provide me with an answer,” Janice said, turning away from us and strolling toward the glass wall, looking out into space.
“It for all the world seems like we’re on a space station,” I said. “How is that possible?”
“I need your final answer, then everything else can follow.” Janice kept her back to us and Ashley went to join her.
“We’re just supposed to let the vampires take advantage of us until you say enough?” Mallory asked. “What’s the point?”
“To get us to bond,” I said.
“From torture?”
“Shared trauma.”
“And so, you come to fully understand and appreciate what we’re up against,” Ashley said, turning back to face us. “You will also come to realize that vampires aren’t that much different from us. They too have a spectrum. Their nature is predatory, not evil. Do we label the lion as evil for killing and eating the gazelle? Do we label ourselves as evil for killing and eating other animals? There are those who indulge in their nature, and those who fight it. You will not fully understand until you are submerged.”
“And what do you know about it?” Mallory challenged. “Looking down from your ivory tower? We’re going to be the ones locked and tortured in the dungeons.”
“I was reborn in that dungeon!” Ashley’s voice boomed throughout the room—much more commanding than I originally gave her credit for. “I have gone through what you will go through, and worse because my captivity wasn’t monitored as yours will be. There are worse things than the staff, whom you will not be forced to endure! And guess what, I was your age when I was captured. Eighteen. So, I know everything about what you’ll be going through. I’m the one who suggested the option to the Assembly, and that is the primary thing that’s saved you.”
“Saved us?” Mallory was as defiant as ever.
Ashley got right in Mallory’s face—she stood several inches shorter, so had to crane her neck—but drew herself in as close as possible. “Saved you from allowing your petty teenage drama to ruin this extraordinary opportunity you’ve been given. But the choice is yours whether you’re going to accept it. I will hand you the key, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to put it in the lock and open the door.”
“I accept,” I said, which got everyone’s attention. I thought of the nightclub and was petrified of what was coming next, but I trusted in the True North Society sufficiently to know they weren’t leading me to slaughter. It was going to be difficult, but they weren’t asking me to do something that couldn�
�t be done—something beyond my capabilities. As afraid as I was, I had to trust that they were testing me, but at the same time really rooting for me to succeed. As they all stared at me, I reiterated my statement, fully projecting this time until my voice consumed the room. “I accept.”
Janice left her place by the glass wall and approached me. “You are confirming to voluntarily commit yourself to Sisters of Mercy until we deem you are fit to continue your candidate training?”
“Yes,” I said, a little less confidently this time—afraid, but still as committed.
She nodded, giving me a small smile, then turned to Mallory. “How about you? Are you going to be shown up by your friend?”
“She’s not my friend,” Mallory argued.
“Then you’re quitting?”
There was a long pause. Mallory gave me an anxious and worried glance, then said, “No. I’ll see it through.”
“Then you accept?”
“Yes.”
“And you understand the terms?”
Mallory swallowed hard. “Yes.”
Janice stepped back to address both of us, with Ashley falling behind her. “I require your final answers right now. Do you accept?”
“Yes,” Mallory and I said in relative unison.
“And you also realize that there is no going back from this point—no reconsiderations, no appeals, and no evasion? Verbally, confirm you understand.”
“I do,” we both said together again.
“Then your test date is set,” Janice said. “And we’ll see how committed you really are.” Then she carefully sat down on the glass floor, which she had difficulty doing. “Please, join me.” Once Mallory and I also lowered ourselves to the disconcerting floor, she continued. “I offhandedly mentioned earlier that there wouldn’t be enough time for you to complete college. Your confirmations to the next step have earned you an answer—and the answer reveals the True North Society’s biggest secret, and where we derived the name from. It is the reason we have been able to accomplish what we have. It is the reason you are here. And it is the reason we know that the world as you know it will end in three short years.”
It felt like my heart stopped, yet couldn’t be certain I had even heard her right. But again, it was Mallory who spoke up first.
“What did you just say?”
“Your ears did not deceive you. The world as you know it will end in three short years.”
“How in the hell can you possibly know that?” Mallory argued. “No one can tell the future.”
“No, but we can recall from history,” Janice answered. “Look down at Earth. You’re not seeing what you think you’re seeing.”
“It couldn’t possibly be,” I said. “We couldn’t possibly be on a space station, not to mention journeying here and back within the same night.”
“Rockets can get into space in the span of a few minutes, so the timeline you’re thinking of is not the impossible part. But this does all revolve around timelines. Look down at Earth. That really is Earth and you really are on a space station. It is called ParallEarth—and this special room is called the Singularity Room—both of which are being built in the Nevada desert as we speak.”
I didn’t think my heart would ever restart. Now I was certain I was still trapped in a dream—in the hospital with Mom trying to reach my comatose mind from my bedside.
“What are you saying?” Mallory asked, apprehensively.
“You are on ParallEarth, looking down at your home planet from the year 2117.”
“What? You have a freaking time machine?”
“We have a time parallel portal,” Janice clarified. “So, we know what’s coming and have been preparing for it for decades.”
“Then you can stop the end from happening,” Mallory said, fully engaged now—if not a little panicked. “If you know what’s going to happen and you’ve been preparing for it, then you can stop it.”
“The future is not designed to be changed, but to come to fruition.”
“So, what’s going to happen?” I asked.
“Are you familiar with Vampire Nation yet?”
Mallory and I nodded.
“Good. Well, they will soon introduce themselves to the world, which will cause a large host of problems. They will eventually try to take over and we will retaliate by releasing the fires of Hell upon them. Members of the True North Society, along with a selected few more, will be safely in space by the time the nukes are launched.”
“Everything will be destroyed?” I asked.
“No; not everything. But the world as we know it now will be destroyed,” Janice said. “We’ll lose access to the ground when Armageddon comes.”
“We’ll have to spend the rest of our lives on a space station—essentially this space station?” Mallory asked.
“Twenty-seven years.” Janice’s eyes looked haunted and she temporarily dropped her gaze. “After twenty-seven years in space, a new portal will open, which will lead us back to 1949, and thus, the cycle will begin again. I may be old and potentially gone by that time, but both of you are young enough where you’ll have decades left to live, with the pleasure of enjoying a simpler time.”
“Wait a minute,” Mallory said. “So, if all this is true and the future can’t be changed, then you already know we’re going to get in, regardless of this new task of being committed to the hospital. And if we’re included on the space station, then you also know exactly how long we’re going to live.”
“Both logical observations, but this is where the aspects of time travel get tricky. The portal is some kind of a universe anomaly. Some higher power fights to limit manipulation of the past from knowledge of the future. As such, when the portal opened, all our records on the station were lost in an instant. Written information disappears when brought through the portal. Electronic devices die when going through the portal. Due to these limitations, an abundance of specific information has been lost. Though we can recall a number of larger events, many smaller events and details have been forgotten throughout the years.”
“So, you don’t know if we make it into the True North Society or onto the space station,” I said.
“No; our logs are incomplete,” Janice said.
“How many of these portals are there?” Mallory asked.
“We’ve only ever found the one.” Janice paused and glanced at Ashley. “Though we continue to look.”
I walked past them, continuing all the way to the glass wall. I felt more like I was floating than walking at that point. It would have been a lot easier to dismiss these new revelations if the True North Society hadn’t already rocked my world perspective with the existence of vampires and angels—tangible evidence of their existence in a world that believed them to be mythical creatures. I had very little reason to believe they were lying to me now—especially if they granted me one last request.
Gazing out at the brilliant Earth that was apparently not my own, I made my request. “Before committing myself to Sisters of Mercy, I’d like to see my father.”
The room was quiet for a moment, so I turned to face the elder members of the True North Society.
“It would mean so much. And if anything should happen to me while I’m in there, then at least I would have gotten the chance to meet him once,” I added.
The silence in the room was overwhelming as I awaited an answer. Even Mallory seemed curious as to how Janice would respond. My years of searching were culminating in this one simple request, and it was ripping my stomach to shreds. My hands were combing through my bangs to hide the scar on my cheek before I even realized what I was doing. There was nothing the vampires in the hospital could do to me that would be worse than the waiting in that moment.
“I think that can be arranged,” Janice finally said. And her few heartfelt words nearly brought me to my knees.
39
Fiona
When Janice had been talking about a portal, I hadn’t fully grasped what she was talking about. Upon reaching th
e ParallEarth control room of Sector 7, we were brought to the one operational transport portal. There were eleven more that no longer functioned. At one time, each one apparently transported travelers to different compounds around the United States. The one mysterious portal now transported its travelers to the Southern California compound—just ninety-nine years in the past.
Ashley went through the portal first, followed by Mallory. I glanced back at Janice, who ushered me forward. I stepped into the metal cylinder, looking at the back wall that appeared for all the world to be solid. But that was where the hidden doorway was located, one that had remained open since 1949—since the first travelers left the station and returned to Earth. I had watched Mallory disappear before my eyes by walking through the rear wall.
I stepped through and saw as a new world suddenly appeared. I landed inside a new metal cylinder, built to look identical to the one I’d left behind, but the room outside of it was new—long and narrow, like I’d entered a walk-in closet.
Janice was right behind and continued to push me forward. Built into one side of the wall were five-foot tall lockers. Janice briefly stopped and retrieved a handful of personal items. Once we exited the small corridor or closet, she closed a door, which completely disappeared into the exterior wall. A card reader and keypad were positioned in the middle of the section of wall where the door had just been.
Janice swiped her keycard and entered a code into the keypad, which caused a sliding door to the left to open. The room beyond was smaller, but similar to the control room we’d left in space. The room housed multiple wall screens, control stations, and one more metal cylinder.
“Does that lead to the station being built in Nevada?” Mallory asked, walking up to it and peering inside the dark cylinder.
“Yes; that’s where it leads,” Janice said. “Fiona, I want you to wait here. Mallory, come with Ashley and me.”
Angeles Vampire Page 19
