The Last Chronomancer (The Chronomancer Chronicles Book 1)

by Reilyn Hardy

  “It’s not like that!”

  “Then what’s it like? Because you’re not telling me anything!”

  “The hag is my mother,” he admits finally, like they are words he can no longer hold onto. He then shoots an accusing glare at Jace. “His brother and his father drowned her in the lake thirteen years ago. Ask him!” He points at him.

  Jace has a puzzled look at the accusation.

  “What are you even talking about?”

  “I told you I remembered you — how could I forget when your family was torturing my mother? My mother — Hennessy Thompson — she was a seer and they tortured her for some stupid prophecy about the cursed bloodline, and then they killed her.”

  Jace looks at me.

  “I don’t know what he’s talking about. We weren’t even here for very long —”

  “Because you guys killed her and left the next morning!” Coin says angrily, slamming his fists on the table. Rhiannon’s about to stand and Coin shifts his gaze.

  “Whose side are you even on?”

  She slouches back in her chair and folds her arms, averting her gaze.

  “So you’re just letting her plague the town because she’s your mother? Why not put her out of her misery?”

  “Don’t you remember? I said that no one can kill the hag. That is the only reason I got involved in all of this. Faustine and Malachi said the Reaper promised he’d let her go, he’d let her rest finally after thirteen years. But I failed because you didn’t get to Edgewick on time. You didn’t get him the stone. Faustine said he was angry, he said he’d never let her go now.”

  “How did he even know we’d come here?”

  He laughs, it’s the sound of disbelief.

  “Do you think any of it was a coincidence? David’s body going missing? The phoenix showing up in your town telling stories? You getting thrown off the train near here? He. Planned. It. All! The vampires used David’s body to track you down. They manipulated the phoenix and gave her new information. She poisoned Ferris to target you specifically because the Grim Reaper already knew how much he hated you. You were both supposed to die in Edgewick. You were never supposed to make it to Mithlonde.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Coin scoffs and shakes his head.

  “What was I supposed to say? You weren’t a chronomancer and from what I can see, you still aren’t. What could you do? Turn back the clock? You can’t do anything. She’s one of his creatures.”

  “Where’s Amelia?” I ask.

  “Who?” He asks, he seems confused. I don’t buy it.

  “David’s younger sister. Tall, red hair, legs for miles. Where is she?”

  “We think she stole the stone,” Vihaan says.

  “You mean you don’t even have it anymore?” Coin sits back in his chair now, pulling his hand from the table and into his lap, and laughs. I hate when he laughs. It always seems like he’s making fun of us. “Don’t you get it?” He asks. “Especially with your father missing, we don’t stand a chance. We’re all going to die. They’re going to find a way to release Drarkodon and that’s it for us all.”

  “Where is she?” I ask again.

  “I don’t know!”

  “I think she has to be here somewhere,” I say, turning to Jace. “If Coin was supposed to do something for the Grim Reaper and he failed, they would’ve brought her here or made her come here. He would’ve wanted to show him what his what his failure caused. What would have been prevented if he had succeeded.”

  I look back at Coin, who’s losing color in his face from my words.

  “You may not care about all of those people in Edgewick because you didn’t cause their deaths, but I’m sure seeing one happen right in front of you? That wouldn’t have if you succeeded? Yeah, you’ll feel that.”

  I know what it felt like to cause someone’s death. I know what it felt like to see it happen in front of you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Helpless, pathetic, weak. Everything is taken from you in an instant.

  I examine our surroundings. I know she’s here somewhere.

  “She has to be somewhere here because they know you always come back here and he would’ve wanted to shove your failure in your face.”

  “What?”

  “You travel all over the place, all over the world probably — but you always come back here, don’t you. He knows that and he likes to make a scene. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have had those vampires kill all of those people in Edgewick when all he wanted to kill was me.”

  I shake my head; I’m scoffing now.

  “Did you feel bad at all?”

  “I did, at first —” he nods, “I didn’t want to, you’re a kid but — but then I saw who you were friends with and I recognized him and I just… I got angry. I stopped caring. I remembered seeing my mother’s mangled body in the lake, I remembered watching it sink. I remembered the villagers scourging it for her but not being able to find her. I remembered the first night she emerged as a hag. I justified my actions in my mind. My mom would finally be free. It seemed like a small price to pay.”

  “My life?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.

  “His,” he corrects — acknowledging Jace. “You were just collateral damage. After what his family did to mine, it seemed like justice.”

  “I have no idea what you’re even talking about!” Jace snaps and gets to his feet. I try to hold him back but it’s a lot harder than I think it’s going to be. He’s a lot stronger than me, worse when he’s angry. “Don’t you talk about my family like that!”

  Coin sat wide-eyed in his seat, frozen like a deer — he’s scared of him. Maybe he has every reason to be.

  Rhiannon slips her hand into his and Jace takes a calming deep breath before he sits back down. I study each of them, one by one. Jace trying to keep his anger under control, I think that’s guilt on Coin’s face — maybe remorse. Rhiannon looks unsure and Vihaan looks annoyed, probably because we still don’t know where the stone is. I glance at the other patrons in the inn.

  Trapped in their homes — trapped there when night falls.

  I pull out my dagger and spin it against my palm before catching the handle in my hand.

  I get up and start for the door.

  “Mae, what are you doing?” Jace asks from behind me. I stop for a minute. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to kill her,” I say, and continue for the door. I’m not sure about it, but what choice to I have? I hear them muttering behind me about my inability to kill.

  “But it’s not murder. Not if she attacks him first. It’s self defense, releasing her from her misery.”

  Jace understands.

  “He’s not a chronomancer and I’m not going to let him get himself killed.”

  I hear him say as the door slams shuts behind me.

  I can always hear his voice in a crowd.

  But I want him to stay inside. I don’t want him to follow me.

  He’s done enough, he’s done so much.

  * * * * *

  I didn’t think about the possibility of me dying. Not at first. But I guess that’s not the first thing that comes to your mind when you think you’re doing the right thing. If I die now, the Grim Reaper won’t be able to kill me later.

  Maybe I can give Coin’s mother the peace she deserves in the process, maybe I can give the whole town some peace. Something good will come from this.

  The sky is dark. It’s still barely morning and the sun has yet to rise. It’ll be a long while before she comes.

  “You’re not doing this by yourself,” Jace says behind me. I don’t even have to turn around to know that Rhiannon and Vihaan are most likely standing with him. Standing at the doorway, near the barrel of fish skeletons that sit in front of The Wet Fish, right beside the secret door to the inn. I can’t even smell it anymore. I can’t smell anything, not even the way the whole town smells fishy. I can’t smell it. Maybe it’s the Winter, or maybe it just doesn’t bother me anymore.
>
  I still haven’t tried fish.

  “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he adds when I don’t respond. “This isn’t just your fight, you know.”

  I turn around.

  I see them standing there like I had pictured in my mind. Jace is the closest to me and farthest from the door. He’s standing in front of them with Rhiannon right behind him and Vihaan closest to the barrel.

  His scar stares me in the face.

  The one I gave him.

  I see them, and I think I have good friends. I don’t see them as the creatures they are, that haunt the minds of various individuals. I don’t see them as monsters.

  But I see myself as one.

  I have always been responsible for my own actions. I have been able to justify my actions, I’ve always been able to come to reasonable conclusions. Those with deeper understanding, those are the real monsters. We’re the real monsters.

  “What makes a monster?” I ask, and the three of them exchange glances.

  Coin’s mom isn’t a monster. She was turned into a hag, and she’s doing the only thing she knows to do. She’s trying to survive. Whether Jace’s family killed her or not, this isn’t her fault, nor is it his.

  She is doing the only thing she knows to do.

  Fear can turn people into monsters, and I’m scared to death. Fear changes us. I’m not really me anymore. Not Maestri of Newacre, not quite Artemis of Glasskeep either.

  I’m not sure what I am now or who I am.

  But I’m different.

  Maybe a grotesque distortion, maybe not.

  “Our choices,” Rhiannon says suddenly. She catches me off guard, I wasn’t expecting any of them to answer. “It’s our choices that determine who we are and who we’re capable of being.”

  “Sometimes a choice isn’t given though,” Jace adds. “And that doesn’t mean it’s their fault.”

  “I don’t blame Coin,” I say. “I’m mad, but I don’t blame him.”

  I look at Jace.

  “I don’t blame him either,” he says, taking a step toward me.

  “So let us help,” Rhiannon says.

  My focus lands on Vihaan, who doesn’t move from by the door. He still stands by the barrel, his arms loosely crossed over his chest. Jace and Rhiannon direct their attention onto him too.

  “I’m not giving into your peer pressure — I’m too old for this and I know I’m not a monster,” he says and a smirk slithers across his face. “And I think I’d probably level the whole town.”

  I agree.

  I take a step further away from the pub.

  The terror in this town ends tonight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  the last chronomancer

  I walk further to the lake and across the bridge. There’s something floating on the surface of the icy water, a broken piece of wood with someone on top of it. I squint — red hair shines under the bits of the distant sun that peek through the clouds.

  It’s Amelia. It has to be. But she’s too far out for any of us to reach.

  Except Rhiannon.

  “Rhiannon,” I start and turn to her while I point out to the lake. “Can you —”

  “I’m on it.”

  She is already looking out at the lake when I turn to her. I wonder if she’s reading my mind again. It saves time if she is. Large, bat-like wings tear through her skin, springing out from her shoulder blades. Gray colored flesh covers every inch of her body. Her sudden transformation beside him, startles Jace to the point where I think he’s going to change too, he jumps so far away from her. She swoops up into the air of the dark, early morning sky, and I can hardly see her now aside from her blonde hair. But when she flies down, aiming for Amelia, I see something moving in the water, moving toward her.

  Watch out!

  But it’s too late.

  The hag was lurking in the water, waiting for someone to just try and take its prize. It leaps out from the lake and grabs hold of Rhiannon, wrapping its rotting arms around her body, and dives back into the water with her.

  We rush to the fence of the bridge, trying to see her beneath the surface but we can’t, it’s too dark.

  There’s nothing. Even the water begins to still. Jace takes off his shirt and dives into the water before I can stop him, and Vihaan rushes beside me.

  “I thought that thing only came out at night?” He says.

  “That’s what I was told,” I tell him. “Unless it’s still night because the sun isn’t up yet… I need you to change.”

  “Mae —”

  “Don’t land,” I tell him, “just change and bring her to me. Please. There’s no way the hag can pull you underwater too.”

  He doesn’t wait for me to say anything else. He just inhales deeply and looks forward. He grips the railing of the bridge and heaves himself over it and into the water. Far, farther than where Amelia lays unconscious, ripples begin to form and the large head of a dragon pokes out through the surface before flying up into the air, water dripping from his body. Massive, he looks just like his father. I try to keep the visual of Nannu’s head dangling from his mouth out of my mind.

  Vihaan is not his father.

  Vihaan is not King Solomon.

  He swoops back down, his flapping wings cause many of the wooden structures in Nevressea to shake. With his foot, he hits the board that Amelia is laying on, sending her flying into the air. He flies low enough to catch her on his neck, but as he flies over me, she starts to slip.

  I drop my dagger and open my arms, but I know I won’t be able to catch her if he drops her from that far up.

  He flies higher and I don’t know what he’s doing.

  He goes faster up and she falls.

  “Vihaan! What are you doing!”

  I can’t catch her.

  He comes swooping down and clumsily crashes into the ground beside The Wet Fish, changing into his human form at the same time. He gets up, shakes his head and rushes back toward me to catch her. She lands in his arms, and he looks at me, barely out of breath without a scratch on his face. He’s drenched from head to toe.

  “Out of practice,” he grumbles. “Why am I always carrying women for you?”

  I smile a little.

  “Bring her into the pub?”

  He nods.

  I move back to the rail of the bridge and narrow my eyes while I inspect the water. I still don’t see Jace or Rhiannon. But the hag’s head breaks the surface of the stilling water, causing a disturbance once more.

  She’s staring at me now.

  My hand twitches for my dagger but I realize that I dropped it and hadn’t picked it back up.

  She isn’t taking her eyes off of me and I’m too scared to look away. The second I do, the second I look to see where my dagger is, she lunges at me right from out of the water.

  I jump out of the way and watch her get thrown back into the lake.

  I turn around to see Coin standing there with a splintered paddle. Broken from the impact of hitting the hag.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him as I get to my feet.

  “What are you doing!” He yells at me, still gripping tightly onto the handle.

  His hands are shaking.

  “Go back inside!” I shout at him.

  “No! She’s my mother!”

  “She is not your mother anymore, Coin!”

  Jace throws Rhiannon onto the bridge and pulls himself up.

  He pushes his wet hair out of his face and tightens his fist, raising it in the air.

  “Jace what are you —”

  He slams his fist hard against her chest and she coughs, water spills out of her mouth. He turns around just as the hag jumps at him and he leaps at her too, changing into his wolf form in midair. The two of them fall back into the water and submerge completely.

  I help Rhiannon up and she insists that she’s fine — but then she freezes. Her eyes are wide. I turn around. An unfamiliar voice speaks behind me.

  “Lerra?” The hag crawls
out of the water again and gets to her feet. “Is that you?”

  “Mommy?” She drops the paddle. The wind pulls the cap from Coin’s head and her curly hair falls down around her shoulders. “Mae, do you see that? Do you?”

  I see her, of course I see the hag, but I don’t see Jace.

  “Help me, Lerra. They’re hurting me. The wolves, they’re killing me all over again.”

  I stare at the hag; matted hair, decaying flesh; the putrid smell of rotten fish. I wonder if she sees her mom the way she remembers her — the way I saw two boys playing at the water that looked a lot like me and my brother now that I think about it.

  The time I opened my window.

  She must be able to create manipulations because there’s no way she sees what I’m looking at.

  But where’s Jace? I turn to Rhiannon and she nods. She tries to slip past the hag to get to the water, but Hennessy runs toward her instead, and shoves Rhiannon against a wooden post, right through her stomach. Rhiannon’s face changes for a second, a glimmer of what she is underneath the human face she wears, but then it returns back, pale face, eyes of Spring. I can almost feel my heart stop.

  It’s all happening again. All my fault.

  I look back at the hag and Rhiannon stops moving.

  She’s looking at us again.

  “Coin —” I say — trying to keep composure. I’m trying to stay focused but my mind is tormenting me. Plaguing me with my guilt, reminding me of everything that I caused, everything that I’m causing. I shake my head. I try to shake the thoughts. I need to focus, I need to reason with her. “Lerra, she is messing with your head!” I say.

  “No, it’s my mom!”

  She’s about to reach for her now.

  “Lerra — stop!”

  I jump forward and wedge myself between her and the hag.

  “No!” I hear someone yell.

  It’s Jace.

  He made it out of the water. I feel relief, even though there are people screaming now, at least I think people are screaming. But everything is fading. Everything is turning to nothing.

  I feel nothing.

  All I see is white, all around me in every direction I look.