by Tracey Tobin
The Other World
Book Two
Tracey Tobin
Copyright © 2019 Tracey Lynn Tobin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781710287066
For those who have fought and struggled and defied the path set out before them in order to do what they felt was right.
We each have to make our own path, and whatever shall come, shall come.
Special thanks to Amy, Eric, River, and Marie for their efforts in ensuring this book releases in the best possible state. You four are my life-savers!
Prologue
“Wait... What did you just say?”
Tori felt as though her throat had turned to sand. She hadn’t expected a happy response, but the look on her boyfriend’s face in that moment was far more awful than anything she’d imagined during her mental preparations. She floundered, uselessly opening and closing her mouth in a desperate bid to find some other way to say it, some way that would calm him down and make the announcement less shocking. Nothing came. No matter how hard her mind struggled, it felt empty, but eventually she was able to swallow away the sand and repeat herself.
“I’m pregnant,” she managed to croak. She clutched at her abdomen, searching for a way to physically show him the evidence, although she was only a couple of months along and hadn’t begun to show yet. “We’re going to have a baby.”
She’d known, realistically, that there was a good chance he would be less than impressed with the revelation, but the glare of pure hatred that flashed in his eyes shocked Tori through to the core.
“No,” he said, seemingly to himself. He refused to look her in the eye. “No. This is not happening. This is not happening.” He turned, shaking his head back and forth violently, and began to walk away without a further word or even a glance in her direction.
Tori was more than a little disturbed by his cold, emotionless reaction and the way his eyes had burned, but she took a deep breath and, for a moment, found the courage to defend herself. “Hold on! This damn-well is happening!” she cried after him. “It’s happened, in fact! You can’t just walk away and pretend that you aren’t a part of it! We’re in this together!”
She knew in her heart that it was the right thing to say, but immediately regretted it because, a blink and a gasp later, she found herself slammed up against the wall. A large hand wrapped around her throat while another crushed her shoulder without restraint or even a hint of concern.
“You listen here, you stupid bitch,” he hissed. He was far too close to her ear, and she could feel the heat of his breath molesting her. “I am not having anything to do with a goddamn baby, you got that? I worked my ass off for three fucking years to get you to open your legs, and you go and get yourself knocked up the first time around? No. No. I am not going to let you ruin my whole life for one half-decent fucking lay!”
With the final word he slammed her against the wall again, even harder this time, and whirled around to leave.
Tori felt numb. She couldn’t begin to comprehend what had just happened, how her world had just twisted and become unrecognizable so quickly. Somehow five small words managed to escape her trembling lips.
“I thought you loved me.”
He stopped, hesitated, and turned to look at her. For half a moment Tori believed that he was going to come back, apologize profusely, and beg for her forgiveness. In her mind she saw visions of a happy future in which they raised the child together and still somehow achieved all their hopes and dreams for adulthood. However...
The look on his face was one that was drenched with disgust and loathing. “Well,” he spat at her, jaw visibly clenched, “I guess you were wrong about a lot of things, weren’t you?”
Tori watched him walk away and hadn’t a clue what to say, what to do, or how to react. As the door slammed behind him her shaking knees finally gave way. She sank to the floor, trembling, into a miserable ball of shame and shock, all visions of any kind of pleasant outcome dissolving around her in a puddle of tears.
She cried like it was the only thing she was capable of. Because, at that moment, it was the only thing she was capable of. She clung to her knees and cried until her eyes burned and went dry. Only then, when she had no tears left, did she notice - with a gasp of horror and a sinking feeling deep down inside - the warm trail of blood running down her thigh.
Chapter One
Victoria MacKinnon woke with tears streaming down her face as the dream faded away into the night. For a few short moments she forgot where (and when) she was, but the dark forest around her soon came into focus. The odd, multi-colored stars that peeked through the canopy were a sharp reminder that she was not, in fact, safe at home in her bed. Where she was couldn’t be further from that pleasant scenario.
She swiped the treacherous droplets from her eyes and lifted her head to peer over at her two camp companions. They hadn’t awakened, thank goodness. The glowing ashes from the fire cast gentle shadows across Jacob and Kaima’s faces, barely illuminating the soft rise and fall of their chests as they slept on.
It was a cool night, but Tori (as she preferred to be called) shrugged out from under her thin blankets and let the forest air wash over her skin. The chill helped to chase away the remnants of the dream and dry the sweat from her brow. Of course, reality still left her in a strange and terrifying place, sleeping in the woods in the middle of nowhere with two people she’d known for less than two weeks, so far from home that it was impossible to even comprehend the distance.
Or… she thought to herself, with a sardonic smile that was devoid of humor, am I actually home right now?
For Tori was actually in a world all together different from the one she’d grown up in and known her whole life. A parallel world, an alternate dimension… Whatever you wanted to call it, it was similar in some ways, and extremely different in so many others, to what Tori thought of as “her” Earth.
And yet…
This peculiar world that had evolved on a different path from the one she’d known was actually Tori’s birthplace, as well as her birthright. The rational part of her mind might struggle to deny it, but she was in all actuality a princess - the rightful heir to a stolen throne. She had been spirited away as a newborn to another dimension in order to keep her safe and hidden, and grew up knowing nothing of the circumstances of her birth. She had returned “home” quite unexpectedly and entirely by accident, at what could certainly be considered the worst possible time: soon after both her parents and her unborn child had been lost to her in an accident. Now, only a few weeks before her eighteenth birthday, the high school senior and former cheerleader had agreed to set out on a truly perilous journey. She and her two companions were seeking to strengthen the ancient blood magic that pulsed through her veins, so that she could challenge the evil specter who had stolen her family’s throne by imitating the murdered king and queen - Tori’s birth parents. No matter how many times she repeated the story over and over in her mind, it sounded like the most ridiculously cliché movie plot she had ever heard. Still, Tori knew that it was true. Thanks to the abilities of an ancient being known as Eden, she had watched a shadow of the past play out in front of her very eyes. Eden had shown Tori her infant self being swapped out for the stillborn parallel-world version of her, left hidden in a world where her ghastly evil ancestor, Iryen, could never find her.
She had watched it, and felt in her bones that it was true. Eventually she had even come to accept it, but no matter what she had already experienced, it never stopped sounding completely and utterly mad.
Tori’s gaze had been aimed upward to look upon those few multi-colored stars blinking down at her, but now she stared down at the palm of her hand, to the pale scar she had cr
eated by pressing a blade to her skin the night before. Jacob and Kaima had accompanied her to the location where she had twice now traveled between worlds, and although she longed to return “home”, she had instead used only a tiny drop of her blood magic to contact her friends. It was unnecessary, maybe even dangerous, but she knew she had to do it. Jared and Krista - who had witnessed her being whisked away from their world – would have probably never stopped looking for her, and she couldn’t stand the thought of that hanging over her head if she was going to go ahead with this mission. She had no way of knowing, after all, whether she would ever actually return. So she had opened a tiny window to let them see her face, to assure them that she was fine, and then she begged them to move on with their lives and not to worry about her.
Tori remembered the look on Jared’s face in that moment - the blatant fear and concern - and her gaze was drawn to the sleeping Jacob. The two young men were, in a way, the same person. They were parallel-universe versions of the same collection of physical atoms, separated and differentiated only by their individual environments and experiences. Tori couldn’t help but take stock of their similarities every time she looked at Jacob, but she certainly saw the differences as well. When she had contacted her friends, for instance, Jared had looked scared, desperately troubled, and could hardly conceal his overwhelming curiosity. However, Jacob was steadfast, confident, and determined in his new role as the princess’s one and only Royal Guardian. He looked at Tori with all the faith in the world and was nothing but optimistic that they would succeed in their quest.
Which was a good thing, Tori supposed, because she herself had absolutely no idea what to think or how to feel.
Doing her best to remain as quiet as possible, Tori pushed herself up from her uncomfortable patch of ground, tiptoed around the smoldering fire and the campsite’s inhabitants, and walked over to the pond they’d set up next to for their night’s rest.
The teenager who looked up at her from the water’s reflection was a pretty young lady with long, blond hair and piercing green eyes. She had always considered those eyes to be her best feature. But she closed them now, and for a long moment she concentrated, imagined the pulse of the blood flowing through her body, felt the growing warmth moving within her. When she peered down at the pond again, she saw something that her world - neither of her worlds, in fact - had ever witnessed before. It was a creature with the bodily proportions of a human girl, but with skin and hair as black as its fangs and claws were white. Long and lithe, the creature had pointed ears that wrapped toward the back of its head and a long, thin tail that swished anxiously behind her. This was a brand new being, something that had never existed before, something that had been born of blood and desperation. By accepting a donation of blood from one of the Maelekanai residents of this world, she had gained this miraculous ability to transform herself into something stronger and stranger than she could ever have dreamed.
Tori’s transformed ears, able to pick up so much more than they could when she was fully human, twitched as Kaima approached.
“Might I ask for your thoughts?” inquired the Maelekanai teen as she took a spot next to her companion.
Tori shrugged and watched as the Maelekanai’s reflection come into view. Kaima’s features were significantly more feline, particularly in the face and her shorter limbs, and although her body was also black, that blackness was actual fur, accented by a long plait of silver hair that fell back behind her ears and down between her shoulder blades.
“I was just thinking how I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around it all,” Tori admitted. She relaxed her body and mind, letting the magic flow away so that the transformation melted around her. A pretty, if not sad-looking, human girl appeared in the water once again. “I feel like… I feel like any moment now I’m going to wake up and it’ll all turn out to have been an extremely vivid dream.”
Kaima frowned and nodded slowly, examining Tori’s face in the pond’s surface. “But you do know, though, don’t you?” she probed. “I mean, surely you can feel it, right? That you’re truly here, and that everything around you is real?”
As way of response, Tori lifted the hem of her shirt to expose her abdomen to the reflective pool beneath them. An angry red scar looked back at them, marring the porcelain skin to the left side of Tori’s belly button. There was a matching scar on her right shoulder, but this one on her stomach bothered her the most. This was the one that had nearly killed her quite recently. She had come very close to bleeding to death when one of the Shadows - Iryen’s horrifying servants - had plunged both of its knife-like arms through her body. It had been trying to get at the Maelekanai child she had leapt in front of to protect. Not so long ago she had been saddened and embarrassed by the scars on her neck - gifted to her by the same car accident that had killed her family - but now the significance of those marks paled in comparison to the one she had received while conscious.
“I can feel it, you know?” she whispered, partially to herself. “I can still feel the pain and the way the world just…drifted away when I thought I was gonna die. So, yeah, to answer your question: I do know, because dreams fade, but trauma lingers.”
Kaima remained silent for a few moments, but she took note of the way Tori’s gaze lingered on her own scarred belly.
“They’re scars of honor, you know,” the Maelekanai whispered.
The hem of the shirt dropped and hid the scar from view. Tori coughed and ran the back of her hand across her eyes, hoping Kaima hadn’t noticed the tear that had just snaked down her cheek. “Of course,” she agreed in a quiet voice. “Any scar would have been worth Jiki’s life.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Tori saw a small smile play over Kaima’s face, for her little sister would not be alive today had Tori not placed herself between the child and the Shadow’s attack. That sacrifice, and the near-death experience that had followed, was what had lead to Tori’s conscious decision to bring out the blood magic that was hiding within her. She had shared a little of Jiki’s blood, felt the foreign substance pulsing through her body, and with the resulting strength she had been able to save not only the child, but what remained of the Maelekanai villagers as well.
“So you’re not having second thoughts or anything, right?” Kaima inquired.
Tori didn’t respond right away because she was busy fiddling with the prescription pill bottle tucked away in her hoodie pocket. As she rolled the cylindrical container in her fingers she could feel the absence of antidepressants inside. She’d popped the last of them in one go before the battle at the village, and now she had no way to get more of the prescription that had been keeping her afloat for weeks. She didn’t even know if drugs, such as she knew them, existed in this world.
“No,” she finally replied, and it was only a partial lie. “I’m not having second thoughts.”
I’m just trying to figure out how I’m gonna live with the first thoughts.
There was a rustling of blankets and grass from behind them that made Tori wonder how long Jacob had been listening in.
“It’s nearly sunrise, Princess,” her Guardian announced. “Would you like to get a bit more rest, or shall we start out for the day?”
Tori frowned as she turned to the young man - technically the last of her family’s royal guard after taking up his deceased father’s mantle - but she didn’t bother hissing at him to stop calling her “princess”. The request had been falling on deaf ears for days.
She was, however, going to scold him for eavesdropping, until their eyes met and she found the words dying in her throat. Prior to the battle at the village they’d had a conversation concerning her parents’ deaths, which she had been blaming herself for since that fateful day. He had said things to her then, kind things, truthful things, and ever since she had felt a strange flutter rise up in her chest whenever she met his eyes. Embarrassment, graciousness, respect… She wasn’t sure what it was, but it made her breath hitch and caused her to second-guess eve
rything she said to him.
“Whenever you’re ready,” she found herself saying, although she felt a deep desire to curl back up in front of the fire on her little, uncomfortable patch of ground. “I doubt Iryen’s sleeping in right now.”
Chapter Two
They walked most of the day in silence, each member of the small group caught in a world of their own thoughts and concerns for the journey ahead. That evening, just as the sun was beginning to get low in the sky, the three travelers crossed paths with a caravan of Maelekanai being lead by Kaima’s father and little sister. The teen ran to her family, meeting them with warm hugs and sad eyes. “You’ve decided, I guess,” she muttered into her father’s chest.
Tori looked to the group of villages with confusion and nearly opened her mouth to ask where they were all going. She clamped her lips shut as she caught sight of the packs on their backs and the tears in some of the children’s eyes.
“Yes,” the elder was telling his daughter, “We have decided to move on. Even with Eden’s magic helping to protect our village, the Shadows were able to find us. And though Princess Victoria was able to rally our warriors to defeat them, we have no way of knowing if others were alerted to our location. So we will go as far as we can and begin anew.”
Tori cringed at the use of her proper name and the title he’d adorned it with, but she mentally chastised herself afterward. These people were giving up the place they had made their home because Iryen’s Shadows had tracked her there. Just another of her many life-ruining screw-ups. The list was getting quite hefty.
Jacob seemed to sense her thought process because he was suddenly beside her, speaking low so that only she could hear. “It is not your fault,” he told her. “Without you there wouldn’t even be anyone left from the village.”
