The Midnight Strider (The Chronomancer Chronicles Book 2)

by Reilyn J. Hardy

  “Where’s Jace?" She's snarling. "I’m gonna —” she turns around and spots her brother, unconscious on the ground beside her feet. “Jace?” She crouches down beside him, pressing her fingers to his neck.

  “Is he alive?” I ask.

  She nods. Kina looks up at us and freezes. “What happened to all of you?”

  “Get us out of here,” I tell her, shaking my wrists in the shackles. She tries to take a step forward, but the same fire erupts.

  “I can’t!” she shouts, but then her eyes widen. “What about Antigone?”

  Nadia snaps her fingers again, and Antigone appears, kneeling down on the ground.

  “Now what?” Antigone crosses her arms as she looks up at us. She frowns. “Where’s Benny?”

  “We still have to find him,” Nadia says. “But we can’t do it hanging around.”

  Antigone gets to her feet, and brushes her knees off. The fire crackles as she gets close, but she manages to walk right through it, as it turns into steam around her. She looks back and puts her hand out to Kina to guide her in. She drags her brother toward us too. Kina helps me break my restraints first, and when she’s helping Nadia, Nova sets himself on fire. He turns a glowing blue, and the cuffs melt right off of him.

  “Couldn’t you have waited till I was free?” Nadia grumbles, rubbing the side of her reddened face, scorched from the flames.

  “Sorry,” he says, rubbing his wrists.

  I move to help my brother down, but when I see his cuffs, I notice they’re hooked to the chains, with the cuffs fused around his wrists. It must have been easy for Drarkodon to chain him up when he wanted to.

  His face is still bleeding, torn open from the scratch. It never healed. The memory of him receiving it still replays in my memory. His dirty clothes are damp with blood, and a putrid smell emits from him, forced to use the bathroom on himself.

  I harden my expression, and I get him down. He collapses onto the ground, and I slowly turn him over onto his back.

  “Try to heal him,” Nova says as he comes up beside me.

  I nod, and place my hands on his side.

  Apollo winces.

  “Sorry,” I say. I close my eyes.

  Think about healing him, a voice comes to my head. It’s not mine. It’s not Rhiannon’s. I don’t really recognize it. It’s soft, and it wavers in and out of hearing. Think about time passing, and the skin repairing.

  I steady my breathing.

  Press harder, you have to put pressure.

  Apollo winces again beneath my hands, I hear him groan, but I don’t move away.

  I open my eyes, and nothing happens.

  “It’s okay,” he tells me weakly. I shake my head.

  I press my hands against his body and I try again.

  Still, nothing happens.

  “Why isn’t it working?” I shut my eyes tightly again, digging my fingers into his side. I can feel his blood gushing against my skin. He groans, and tries to push me off, but I don’t let go. I’m not losing my brother. I didn’t come all this way to lose him now.

  Heal. HEAL.

  I feel it. Suddenly. Finally.

  The same thing I felt burning through my veins the morning I became a chronomancer. I feel it, the power streaming through my body, rushing to my fingertips. I tighten my hold.

  I open my eyes and everyone looks away, unable to stand the brightness of the light shining out of my sockets. I can feel the triskelion burning on my neck.

  I let go, and slouch away from him.

  Breathing hard, I blink a few times, and rub my face. I look back at Apollo. His face is healed, scarred, but healed. He’s pulling up his shirt, and his skin has mended.

  I sit back.

  “The Time Traveler will rise, but not without force,” Nova says, crouching down beside me. He turns his head to look at the back of my neck. “It was your brother. And it worked,” he says. “Your triskelion is repairing itself.”

  I touch the back of my neck before looking at Apollo.

  “Are you okay?” I ask him as he sits up. He looks at me and locks his gaze.

  “You dumb ass,” he says, pulling me into a hug. “You’re so stupid, Artemis.” He pulls away from me so he can look at me. “Let’s get out of here,” he says as he starts to stand.

  “Wait,” I say, glancing over at Jace. “Do you know where Drarkodon’s creatures go once they die?” I ask. “Is there a way to bring them back?”

  “The Wailing River,” Apollo says. “Why would you want to bring one of his creatures back?”

  “It’s Rhiannon,” I tell him and his expression falters.

  “She’s dead?”

  I nod. “She’s one of my best friends, Apollo, and we need her back.”

  He inhales deeply as he fumbles with the cuffs around his wrists. He looks at Jace. “What about him?”

  “He’ll be okay,” Nova says. He turns to Nadia and nods. She snaps her fingers and Jace and Kina both disappear in the usual blue smoke and into her lamp. “Where’s the river?” he asks, turning back to the two of us while Nadia readjusts the lamp on her shoulder. She glances at Antigone.

  “Not far ahead,” Apollo says, scratching behind his jaw, just below his ear.

  “But?” I know his habits.

  “Getting to it isn’t the problem,” he says. “Getting her out will be a little more difficult depending on how long it’s been since she died.”

  “Few hours?” I say, glancing at Nova. “She died right before I summoned the Midnight Strider.”

  “Then we better hurry before she gets too deep.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “It’s called the Wailing River for a reason,” he tells me as he stands up. I get up too. “All of his creatures go there and they stay in the river. What’s left of their tainted souls, is the river itself.”

  “We have to get her out of a river made of souls?”

  “Not we,” he says. He taps the center of his chest. “Me. I’m going to do it. Not you. They’ll try to pull your soul from your body and keep you in. Most of them wouldn’t even be in there if it wasn’t for Dad.”

  Chapter TWENTY-eIGHT

  the wailing river

  The Wailing River isn’t much farther.

  There’s moaning in the distance; the howls of those trapped, echoing against the walls of the Underworld. I inhale deeply and Apollo sweeps his gaze over to me.

  “Are you scared?” he asks me, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Of course not.” I readjust my collar. “I don’t get scared.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Apollo spent the last eight years down here, and I spent our childhood forcing him out of his comfort zone. The least I can do is act like whatever lurks in the darkness doesn’t frighten me.

  My best friend is knocked out, laying unconscious in a genie’s lamp. My other best friend is stuck in a wailing river of lost souls. Two of the strongest people I have ever known, and neither of them are here with me.

  “Don’t worry,” Apollo says, nudging my arm with his elbow. “The worst is over.”

  Is it?

  I look behind us and Nova walks beside Nadia and Antigone, while Kina sits with Jace in her lamp. Nadia’s large, piercing hazel eyes are looking everywhere but straight ahead, examining her surroundings, alert as she walks through the underworld unarmed. Antigone keeps looking behind us.

  Nova’s looking straight ahead, but not at me.

  I wonder what he’s thinking. He briefly makes eye contact with me, only to avert his eyes.

  I released Drarkodon back into Aridete. I need my friends now more than ever.

  “I can’t believe you knew Rhiannon too,” Apollo says from beside me. I turn to face forward again as I nod.

  “It’s because of Jace, actually..”
/>
  “Weird,” he says.

  “What makes it so weird? Everyone keeps saying —”

  “Because it’s not natural, Art. She’s a vampire, and he’s a werewolf —”

  “And you’re supposed to be evil,” I say.

  He sighs. “Who knows what I am.”

  “I do. Or we wouldn’t be walking to save Rhiannon.”

  “She was my friend too,” he says. “Briefly, but she was there when it mattered most.”

  “Yeah, she does that.”

  Rhiannon’s good, I can’t understand why Apollo doesn’t see that he can be, too. A curse is just a curse if you treat it like one. Maybe he needs to be told that too.

  “Apollo,” I start, and he interrupts me. He grabs the sleeve of my jacket before I can take another step forward.

  “We’re here.”

  I was too distracted to notice the shrieks and howls getting louder. Before me is the river. The surface looks like fog crawling across the gentle ripples of the souls, as they tirelessly fight each other to move.

  Apollo pinches the shoulders of his shirt, pulling his sleeves up in a ravel.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Nova asks. He takes a step forward, and a soul tries to grab his foot. He leaps back. “Because I don’t.”

  “They aren’t going to try to drown me,” Apollo says. He seems confident, until he looks at me. “I remember that look. That’s the same look you gave me in Valfield, Artemis, don’t look at me like that.”

  “You promise you're coming out?”

  He puts his dirt and blood caked hands on my shoulders.

  “I’m —” he glances at the river. “I promise. We’re wasting time, all right? We have to save her as soon as possible.”

  I take a deep breath.

  He’s giving me the same look too. Telling me it’s okay, telling me this is what he wants. I nod. “You got this,” I say, tapping his arm with my fingertips.

  He drops his hands from my shoulders. Apollo steps closer to the river and turns his head to look at me over his shoulder. “Whatever happens,” he says, “do not come in after me.” I nod and he shakes his head. “No, Art, I want you to say it.”

  “I promise I won’t come in after you.”

  He still knows me better than I do.

  Apollo takes another step and he goes feet first into the river. I take one after him, and Nova grabs my arm to make sure I don’t get too close.

  “How long do you think this is gonna take?” I ask him, trying to see through the wispy white and translucent movements in the trench.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But you heard him.”

  “I know. I won’t.”

  “Do you want to see Jace?” Nadia asks. “While you wait?”

  I shake my head. “I want to fix this. I told him I'd fix it.”

  She nods, adjusting the strap of her lamp on her shoulder. I pace back and forth for what feels like hours, though only a matter of minutes.

  A hand finally grabs the edge, and Apollo peeks over as he pulls himself up. He waves to Nadia to come forward and she helps pull him back over onto the ground.

  Apollo places a semiopaque Rhiannon on the ground, haze emitting from her barely visible outline.

  She doesn’t even have a solid figure anymore.

  She’s not even a ghost; she’s less than.

  “This is going to — not be pretty,” he tells us. “So if anyone needs to look away, I suggest you do so now.” I stare at him, every now and then glancing at Rhiannon.

  Nadia turns away. But Antigone stares at us, watching.

  “I’m going to need your help,” he tells me as he points to her translucent stomach. “Put your hands here. We have to reconstruct her body first before I can bring her back.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as it sounds,” he tells me. “It’s a natural thing, healing is natural. I mean you did it when we were nine. Remember Remacle? The brownie from when we were kids?” he asks me. “He got all burnt and we nearly killed him.” I close my eyes. Remacle was the brownie that lived with us in Valfield. I remember being the reason he got burned in the first place, considering I didn’t know how to use the stove and he caught on fire, but I can’t remember healing him. I just remembered him being healed. “It’ll be just like that,” Apollo says. “Come on, we can do it. Together.”

  I reluctantly placing my hands on her stomach, my fingers go right through her.

  “Gently!” he says. I rest my hands over her while he does the same beside me. “Now close your eyes,” he instructs. “Try to cocus on a happy memory you had with her. A strong and happy memory.”

  A happy memory. The best one I can think of is when I gave her the prism. I inhale deeply, thinking of how happy she was, but I feel nothing changing beneath my palms.

  “I can’t do it.” I pull my hands onto my knees.

  “Come on, Art, you aren’t even trying. Believe in yourself. You can’t rely on other people believing in you. Come on,” Apollo lowers his voice and stares me down. His eyes are dark. “Try again.”

  I put my hands back onto her stomach. I close my eyes. Apollo says it’s a natural thing. Nature.

  My happiest memory wasn’t seeing her able to feel the sun again. It was when I realized we were friends, when I realized she was my friend. It was when she tried to stand up against Coin when he was insulting me in The Wet Fish. The way she apologized to me in the Whispering Woods. It has nothing to do with me.

  “Remacle would be proud,” Apollo says and I open my eyes. A solid form of her lays before me.

  I pull my hands away. She’s back — but she’s still poisoned. Apollo runs his fingers along the wound on her arm which appears to be eating her flesh. He then moves his hand to her side, and sticks his fingers into the cut, while putting his other hand on her forehead, sliding his palm down the side of her face.

  He closes his eyes for only a second, before opening them. They’re pitch black. His sockets have sunken in, darkness creeping out of his eyes. I look away.

  I twist my body to face Nadia. “Can you bring us in?” I ask and she nods, snapping her fingers. We're all pulled into her lamp.

  I look back at Apollo and Rhiannon; his hand, stuck in her side, begins to tremble. Black veins appear on his arm, disappearing as they travel up toward his elbow. Her darkened face begins to brighten, as the poison drains from her body. Her face briefly flashes into her vampiric form, and fades back to normal.

  She’s pale again, looking near perfect.

  Rhiannon gasps for air, startling all of us except Apollo.

  He blinks, his eyes returning back to normal as he pulls his hand out of her side. “She’ll be fine,” he says. “She’ll need to feed, and her body will heal itself.”

  I reach for my dagger and cut open my palm. It’s barely scabbed since I carved the ouroboros into it. I tighten my fist and hold my hand over her face.

  “Rhiannon, open your mouth.” She presses her lips together and shakes her head. Her eyes are bloodshot. “Rhiannon!” I say, but she refuses. “Kina! Open her mouth.”

  She scoots over to us and forces Rhiannon’s mouth open so fast I think she nearly breaks her jaw. A few drops of blood bead off of my fist and onto her lips, some making its way into her mouth.

  “You give her your blood? Her kind?” Apollo asks.

  I wipe my hand against my clothes. “Well, her.”

  I look back at her and she licks her lips. Forcing herself to sit up. She’s about to speak, when she looks past me.

  “Jace.” She gets up, good as new. “What happened?”

  Apollo stands up.

  “Drarkodon threw him against the wall,” I say. “He lost a lot of blood.”

  Apollo averts his focus away from Jace and looks at Kina, narrowing his
eyes. “Are you working for Malachi?”

  She shakes her head.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Rhiannon sits down beside Jace, pulling his head into her lap. She brushes strands of his hair out of his face. We can all feel the heat beginning to emit from his body. He’s healing himself, or perhaps she’s healing him.

  “Did he really say —” she starts as she looks up at me.

  “That really happened, yeah.”

  “And you said it first,” Kina adds, she starts to smile.

  Rhiannon looks back down at him. She glances at Kina, returning the smile. Rhiannon turns to Nadia, and her expression falters slightly. “What you did for me, I was wrong about you.”

  “Actually,” Nadia sits down beside her. “You were right. At first, anyway. You guys were all so close, and I got jealous. I didn’t care if I saw my lamp again. I just wanted to be accepted instead, by all of you.”

  Rhiannon places her hand on Nadia’s arm and smiles.

  I stand up and Apollo looks at me. I nod my head toward the wall and he follows.

  “What’d you mean?” I ask once we’re standing alone. I know we aren’t out of earshot, but I hope they’re all too preoccupied to pay attention to us.

  “Something’s not right with the wolves,” he says, rubbing his arm. “Maybe I’m mistaken, I don’t know, I’ve never seen a wolf up close. They just — they don’t seem pure.”

  “Honestly, I don’t really know about Kina but Jace is far from pure.”

  Apollo smirks and shakes his head. He drapes his arms over me and pulls me into a hug. “Thanks for being a pain in the ass and not listening, again,” he tells me. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “Sorry it took so long.”

  He steps back. “Better late than never.”

  “Now we just have to find a way out of here,” I say. I glance back at Rhiannon and Jace. He’s awake now, his head is still in her lap. She’s touching his face, and a small smile tugs at the corner of his lips.

  “Are they a —”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. “Don't ask.”

  Chapter TWENTY-NINE