Eternity

by M.E. Timmons

  Chapter 30

  Whites spots danced in my field of vision, and my legs gave out underneath me. I landed on my knees, and I lost all sense of sight and sound for a moment. I wasn't even aware of Heather trying to pull me up until she slapped me across the face. The sharp pain brought me back, and I realized that Melissa had caught up and she was asking why we'd gone the wrong way.

  "Come on," Heather was saying to me. She put my arm around her shoulder and pulled me to my feet, which were remarkably unsteady. "We don't know what's going on. We have to go find out. It might be something else."

  "No," I whispered. "It's him. We're too late." I didn't know how, but I could feel it.

  Heather almost had to drag me around the corner so we could see what was happening. The people were definitely running around the infirmary, and I could see that they were just bringing a stretcher in. Even from a distance I could see the trail of blood on the floor behind the stretcher. The people carrying it were running and someone was running alongside it with something white that looked like gauze bandages. As soon as I saw that it was really Jack I broke away from Heather and started running, having somehow regained the strength in my legs. Some of the teachers looked up and saw us approaching. Someone tried to hold me back before I could see him, but I pushed them away without looking to see who it was. Others stood aside and let me pass because they could tell I needed to see him.

  "Oh, Jack," I said through my tears when I was finally by his side. I grabbed his hand, which was pale and cold, but I had to stand away a bit so that Dr. Hughes, who was also still in her pyjamas, and a couple of nurses could work on him. I could feel blood on my hand where I was touching him, and it was all over the place.

  "We need to get him some blood!" Dr. Hughes shouted. "His blood pressure is barely registering! Somebody go to the west wing and find me a werewolf with the same blood type, or we'll never be able to save him." She worked quickly, trying to put pressure on his wounds to stop the bleeding, while the nurses worked to do the same. One of them had to leave to find a blood donor.

  He really didn't look good. He was unconscious, so his hand was limp in mine. There seemed to be cuts all over him. There was a bad one across his forehead, and one that was even worse on his abdomen, with the skin torn up. They were definitely claw marks, and I could also see teeth marks on his neck and arms. Blood seemed to be pouring from every opening, no matter how quickly the doctor worked. I was losing him.

  "What about Adrian?" I asked the doctor, since I didn't see him anywhere. "Is he okay?"

  "He's fine," she told me as she worked. "He had a few scratches, but nothing life-threatening. I think he was the bigger one of the two."

  I nodded and turned back to Jack. He stirred slightly and moaned, but he didn't open his eyes. I could feel my heart breaking, like someone was stabbing it over and over again.

  A hand gently rested on my shoulder. I looked up, thinking it was a teacher, but I was surprised to see that it wasn't. It was Anna. I had no idea what she was doing there at the time, but I found out later that she'd heard something going on and came to investigate. She looked at me sadly.

  I suddenly remembered that she was a vampire. At first I was worried that all of the blood in the room would cause her to try to hurt Jack even more, but she didn't seem to be paying attention to him. My second line of thought was not about if she would hurt him, but about if she could save him. I'd heard of vampires saving people by turning them. I hoped it wasn't too late.

  "Can you save him?" I asked. I could hear the pleading in my own voice.

  "I can't," she said softly, but it didn't help dampen the pain her words caused as they destroyed my last hope. "He's already a werewolf, so I can't turn him. It'd only kill him."

  "I can't lose him Anna," I sobbed. "He's the only family I have left in the world. He means everything to me, and it's probably my fault that this happened."

  "I might not be able to save him, and the doctor may not be able to save him, but you can if you hurry."

  "How?" I asked desperately.

  "You know what you have to do," was her reply. "You just need a little faith." She squeezed my shoulder and gave me another sympathetic look, and she walked away through the crowd of teachers.

  I was confused, and I had no idea what she meant. Her mention of faith made me think of the gods, and I remembered Sydney's story about them healing her sister, and I thought that was what she meant. I immediately started sending out my thoughts to them, hoping they were listening.

  Then I realized something. She thought I was a goddess. She wasn't asking me to have faith in the gods. She was asking me to have faith in myself.

  I loved Jack. While I was looking at his limp and bleeding form, my mind was going through all of the time we had spent together. I remembered the day we met, when I was sitting out in the backyard crying because some girls were teasing me, and he came up and tried to cheer me up with corny jokes. I remembered when he punched Dan in the face for making a pass at me, which got him in trouble. I remembered the first time he had lost his temper, and how scared he was afterward, and I remembered the look in his eyes a few hours before when I had pushed him away. He meant the world to me. When I had said he was the only family I had left, I meant it. He'd been in my life longer than anyone else, and he was always there for me when I needed him. In that moment, I realized that I would do anything to save him, no matter what it did to me.

  I leaned forward and kissed Jack's cheek in the one spot I could find that wasn't covered with blood. "Hold on just a little longer," I whispered in his ear. I let go of his hand. It was incredibly hard, but I turned away from him and walked away.

  I didn't have time to plan what I was going to do, so I decided to stick with the first plan that came to me. It probably wasn't the best idea, but I couldn't think of a better one at the time. I pushed back through the crowd in the infirmary and started running again, this time for the exit.

  I heard Heather shout for me to wait, but I didn't have time to explain, so I kept going. I heard her running behind me again, and Melissa was with her. It reminded me of the first drawing that I had done that night, and I finally understood it. I was about to make it happen. I didn't know it at the time, but Victor followed not far behind, under the orders of the headmaster, who had been in the infirmary with everyone else.

  "Juliet, where are you going?!" I heard Heather shout from somewhere behind me as I went out the doors of the school, after a quick glance at the portrait of Amun on the foyer wall. The night air was cold on my exposed arms and legs, and the ground was rough beneath my bare feet, but I ignored it because it wasn't important. I headed north and went straight into the woods.

  It was darker under the cover of the trees, so I could hardly see where I was going. I almost tripped a few times, but I kept up my pace, knowing that I had little time left. I heard branches rustling behind me so I knew Heather and Melissa weren't too far from me. I hoped it wouldn't be long before I reached my destination, but I didn't know because I'd never been there before.

  As I was running half blindly through the woods, I reached up and lifted the keys from around my neck. I held them in my hand and felt their unique textures, which was somehow comforting and gave me more strength and courage. I hoped that everyone had been right about me, and that I had been wrong. I was about to take a huge leap of faith, literally, one way or the other.

  I was glad I saw the cliff before I reached it because I didn't want to fall off of it accidently. I probably wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't seen the difference in the trees. I slowed down and stopped before I reached the edge. I could feel stinging cuts on the bottoms of my feet from running over sharp rocks and twigs, and my hair was probably full of leaves. When I stood on the edge of the cliff the wind felt stronger than it had under the cover of trees. It blew my hair and my nightgown around me. I held up my hand to look at my keys one last time in t
he light from the moon, which was visible there. I turned my head to look back, and I could see Heather and Melissa hardly ten feet from me. They had come to a sudden stop when they noticed the cliff.

  "What are you doing?!" Melissa shouted. I could finally see Victor, who was another ten feet behind the girls, but he was closing in. I smiled sadly at them all, and turned back around. When I peered over the edge, the bottom looked like it was at least a hundred feet away. I hoped it was more. I wanted to die instantly when I hit the bottom. It was the main reason I had chosen this plan. I dropped the keys onto the ground beside me so that they wouldn't be damaged by the impact, and they seemed to fall in slow motion.

  I heard Heather scream when I jumped, and it seemed to last a long time. I didn't scream myself, mostly because I was beyond caring what happened to me. I thought briefly about how falling felt so much different than I had expected. I thought it would be almost peaceful, but the air rushing by me was violent and strong, and made it impossible to breathe, not that it mattered much. I was about to die anyway.

  The way down seemed so long. I kept waiting and waiting to hit the bottom, but the open air seemed to go on forever. I hoped that it meant the bottom was farther away than it had looked. That was the last thought I had before I finally hit the rocks below. There was a brief moment when I felt my skin splitting and my bones shattering, and then there was darkness.