by Tim O'Rourke
“So why didn’t you use this gift of yours when we were being chased through that tunnel?” Rea asked before blowing a throat full of smoke up toward the ceiling of the chamber.
“Magic isn’t an exact science,” I tried to explain. “There are different spells for different places and different times. I couldn’t have cast such a spell in the tunnel, it was too confined down there. Sometimes a witch will draw on nature, on the darkness and the light, the wind and the rain to cast a spell. If you would only trust me, I know I can get us into that warehouse.”
“But what if you don’t?” Rea asked me.
“Like I said, Rea, you’re just going to have to trust me,” I said. It wasn’t a challenge I was setting her. I wasn’t baiting her in any way. I really did want Rea to start trusting me – perhaps even believing in me. I really didn’t want to be at odds with her. I needed her as much as I needed the others if I was ever going to achieve what I had come to do in this layer.
“I think there is little point in discussing the matter any further,” Trent said. “Tempers are more than a little frayed and I think we could all do with some rest. We should get some sleep, and when we wake tonight and under the cover of darkness, we head for Maze and this human farm. Are we all agreed?”
The rest of the group said nothing but Trent seemed to take the silence as acceptance of his suggestion.
Standing as his bones and joints made that awful popping sound, Morten said, “I would suggest that we go up into the church to sleep but it is far too dangerous. Although the vampires do not know of my existence, they still come out this far on occasions and I see little point in taking such a risk of being discovered by them. And by what you have already told me of how you escaped the vampires at the farmhouse, it would appear that they already know you are here and will, of course, be looking for you.”
Chapter Four
The others found a suitable place to sleep in the corners of the chamber. Calix thought it very amusing and seemed very pleased with himself to discover an empty coffin he could sleep in. I wanted to be alone, so once my companions had settled, I crept from the room and back into the passageway. Not far away, I came across another chamber, this one very much like a crypt, with its ancient stone walls and arched ceiling. But unlike the other chamber, there were no candles and I had to make do with the flickering light that came from the passageway outside. Taking my rucksack from my back, I placed it on the floor in the far corner of the room. Using it as a pillow, I pulled my coat tight about me and lay down. With my knees pulled up so they were almost touching my chin, I cradled myself. It wasn’t long before I had slipped into a fitful and troublesome sleep.
I felt the first hot flush of tears on my cheeks. The guilt that crushed my heart was overwhelming. But there was more to it than that. There was something else that made my heart ache so much. It was loneliness. Since the war had started, I’d never felt so alone. I had been abandoned. And there seemed little I could do to change what had gone before – to make amends for the mistakes I had made. But how did anyone ever put right such catastrophic mistakes? Mistakes that not only deeply affected my life but the lives of so many others?
So it was with a pain so very close to grief that I stood on the platform at the remote railway station. A howling wind blew along the barren tracks and up onto the platform. It swept my long, black hair across my face and it felt like I was wearing a mask behind which I could hide myself away. Become the person who should have listened to the advice that their elders had given them. I really had nowhere else to hide. I had nowhere else to go. Who would have me? The one person who had truly loved me was now dead. And however hard I tried to convince myself that his death hadn’t been my fault, I knew that it had. All of the Wicce had let me know that. Not one of them would dare let me forget what I had done. But how could I possibly forget? Everywhere I looked, I could see a constant reminder of what I had done. And it was those reminders that had become far too painful and I could no longer bear. For everywhere I looked, I saw the result of the foolish and selfish mistakes I had made. So I was only left with the choice I was about to make. I hoped that it would bring some peace, not only to myself but to all those I had hurt.
I glanced back at the clock fixed to the waiting room wall. I knew there would be a train along soon. I knew that the train would be an express and wouldn’t stop at such a remote station as this. I knew that it was almost time. The cold wind continued to blow the hair about my face. My fingers felt like little sticks of ice. They no longer felt the warmth of the magic that had once flowed through them. But did I deserve to feel such magic ever again? Was I responsible enough to wield such power? It hadn’t brought me peace or peace to those I loved and cared about. My magic had only ever brought sadness, heartache, and death.
The whistling sound of the wind came again. But this time it wasn’t in fact the wind but the sound of something else. I took a step closer to the edge of the platform. I glanced right along the tracks and could see it was the approaching express train that was making the sound. As it raced toward the station, the metal tracks whined and groaned. I thrust my hands into my coat pockets – not to keep them warm but to prevent me from pulling back from the decision I had decided to make. The pockets of my coat were empty. I had brought nothing with me to the station. No note or explanation as to why I was going to do what I was about to do.
The hum of the approaching train grew louder and louder. The wind got up, causing me to sway on the very edge of the platform. But it was too soon – there were still some seconds to go. I suspected the tears that continued to run the length of my face weren’t shed for the many lives I had wrecked and destroyed, but were for my very own self-pity. I despised myself for feeling that. I didn’t deserve pity from anyone, not even from myself. I was nothing more than a pathetic wretch who deserved what was now racing toward me.
A sound so loud and shrill separated me from my thoughts. I looked up to see the train race into the station. The driver blew the horn on seeing me standing so precariously close to the platform edge. Closing my eyes, I took one step forward. And as I did, I heard someone shout my name. As I stepped off the platform edge and down onto the tracks, I glanced back just once to see him standing there. I cried out to him. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry. But my cries were muffled by the blast of the horn from the train, which the driver was so desperately sounding in an attempt to warn me off the tracks.
Dragging myself to my feet, I looked back once more at the platform where I’d seen him standing. But he was no longer there – if he ever had been. How could he be? He was already dead. So slowly, I turned and faced the approaching train and the oncoming darkness…
Chapter Five
“Hey, don’t cry,” I heard someone say.
So he had come after all. He had been waiting in the darkness for me all this time. I wrapped my arms about him and buried my face into his cold, hard chest. I sobbed against him, my body shuddering with deep and agonising sobs. I was so glad and grateful to be back in his arms. My death had not been in vain after all. For reasons unknown to me, I had been rewarded in this new layer by waking and finding myself in the arms of the man I had once loved – however much that love had been forbidden.
“Why are you crying?” I heard him ask me.
But his voice sounded slightly different. His voice wasn’t as I remembered it to be, yet it was familiar. I knew that voice. I recognised it.
The voice came again. “Julia, wake up. You’re having some kind of nightmare.”
Slowly, I opened my eyes. Peering through my tears, I could see I was being held not by him – but by Trent. I pulled away at once. Not because I didn’t like being held by Trent, but because it stirred too many memories inside of me. Memories I longed to forget but wondered if I ever would. As I eased myself from Trent’s arms, he looked at me.
“What’s wrong, Julia?”
I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the backs of my hands. “It’s not you holding m
e that has upset me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Trent said. “I heard you cry out in your sleep. The sound of you crying woke me so I came to see what the matter was.”
“I had a nightmare, that was all,” I explained.
Trent pulled me closer to him once more. With his cheek almost next to mine, he said, “What was the nightmare about?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters enough that it has made you cry,” he said, his voice soft and caring.
I pulled myself away from him once more, creating just a small gap between us. It didn’t bother me that he was so close to me. It didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. In fact, it was quite the opposite. But I feared I liked the sensation too much. Such thoughts and feelings had got me into trouble in the past. It was the very reason that I was here now.
“So are you going to tell me?” Trent pushed.
I looked away. “There’s nothing to tell.” But I knew that wasn’t true. I had plenty to tell. I had plenty of secrets. But did they matter now? What mattered was finding a truce between the vampires and the werewolves and trying to put right what had gone so very wrong. I felt one of Trent’s hands close over mine. I recognised the sensation at once. The hand no longer felt humanlike, but rough and coarse like that of a claw. I looked at him and gasped, snatching my hand away and covering my mouth with it.
“Do I scare you?” Trent asked me. “Because if I do, you have nothing to fear.”
“You don’t scare me,” I shuddered staring at his face. He no longer looked like a man but a cross between a wolf and human. His hair was thicker and coarser somehow. It was darker, matching the colour of the side whiskers that now sprouted from his face and beneath his chin. Where he once had a nose and mouth, Trent now had a snout and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. His ears looked stretched and pointed. It was hard to describe how Trent looked – how these fantastic creatures looked – without making them sound hideous and petrifying. But Trent didn’t look grotesque or frightening just like none of the other Beautiful Immortals did. All of them – vampire and werewolf looked blindingly beautiful. Was it something about their eyes? The way they seemed to radiate, pull you in and mesmerise you? I’d been mesmerised by such a creature before. And as I looked upon Trent, he seemed almost unrecognisable. He looked too much like a man I had once loved. Wasn’t that the real reason I was so now incredibly drawn to the wolf-man who sat just inches from me? Was it because he looked so much like the other?
“If I don’t scare you, why do you flinch away from me?” Trent asked in a voice that was deep and guttural and no longer like his own. “Do I make you feel uncomfortable in some way?”
“No, it’s not that,” I said with a shake of my head, unable to take my eyes off him. “You remind me of someone. In fact, you could be him, you look so much alike.”
With his blazing eyes fixed on mine, Trent said in that low, throaty growl, “Who is this other that you speak of?”
I looked away again. Lowering my head, I said, “It doesn’t matter.”
Very gently, Trent took hold of my chin with his hooked thumb and forefinger. He slowly turned my head so I had to look at him. “Nothing seems to matter to you.”
“What do you mean by that?” I whispered.
“You said your nightmare didn’t matter. You said your tears didn’t matter and now you tell me that this other – this person that I remind you so much of – doesn’t matter either,” he said, leaning in to me again.
To look at him stirred so many memories and feelings deep inside me. Feelings that however intoxicating, I didn’t ever want to feel again. And however much I tried to bury them it was as if they were now unlocked from the box I had buried them in deep inside my heart. However much I tried not to cry, fresh tears welled in my eyes and were soon trickling down the length of my face.
Seeing these fresh tears, Trent wrapped his arms about me and pulled me close once more. I wanted to push him away, I really did. But I didn’t. Apart from Calix trying to spoon me on the boat and grab my arse in the tunnel, this was the first contact – real contact – that I’d had with anyone for as long as I could remember. Was it wrong for me to want to be comforted – to feel a connection with someone or something? So instead of pushing Trent away, I let him hold me and I held him back. And as I did, every part of me was flooded with a wave of memories. Some of those memories were good but most were bad. Yet still, I clung to him, a part of me never wanting to let go, another part of me clinging onto the past and one of the men I had once loved there.
With the sting of tears burning my eyes, I slowly opened them. I peered over Trent’s shoulder and stifled the gasp that threatened in the back of my throat. I went rigid at once in Trent’s arms. Sensing that something was wrong, Trent slowly released me from his hold. Following my stare, Trent looked back toward the open doorway that led from the passageway and into the room. He looked as shocked as I felt to discover Rea standing in the shadows watching us.
“How very touching,” Rea said, before turning her back on us and walking away.
Although I had done nothing wrong, I couldn’t help but feel that I’d been caught committing some murderous act. My pale cheeks flushed scarlet with embarrassment at being caught by Rea being held by Trent. If I’d believed that Rea no longer had feelings for Trent, I sensed I wouldn’t be bothered at all. Why should I have been? But deep down, I suspected that Rea still had strong feelings for Trent – feelings of love for him.
“Don’t you think you should go after her?” I said to Trent.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, standing up and brushing dust from the seat and the knees of the jeans he wore.
As I looked up at him from my makeshift bed on the floor, I could see he no longer looked like the wolf-man but Trent once more. Without saying another word nor looking back, Trent left me alone and went in search of Rea.
Feeling rattled inside and embarrassed at being caught by Rea, I lay back down resting my head against my rucksack. I knew Rea already disliked me, so any hope I had of us perhaps becoming friends or reaching some kind of understanding was now dashed. I knew however hard I tried to explain that Trent had only been trying to comfort me because I’d woken from a nightmare, Rea would not believe me. And as I closed my eyes and turned my back on the door and passageway, I feared I had now made an enemy in Rea. And if I was going to succeed in my mission, I knew I needed friends and not enemies.
As sleep inched closer and closer toward me once more, I couldn’t help but wonder why Trent had changed – shifted – in my company. Why had he felt the need to lose his human form and become a wolf-man in my arms? Had he been hoping I would be blinded by his beauty just like I had been blinded once before?
Chapter Six
At sunset, we crept once more above ground and set off in search of the human farm on the outskirts of Maze. Before leaving, Morten had cooked us a meal, which consisted of rabbit and vegetables. We ate in silence and I wasn’t sure whether the lack of conversation was due to my companions’ ravenous appetites or the frostiness I could feel in the air. As we sat in a circle around the small iron pot containing the meat and vegetables which stewed, I couldn’t help but notice how Rea sat glaring at me. Her stare was as cold as the temperature in the crypt below ground. Trent sat next to her. I wondered what he had said to Rea, to explain away how and why she had discovered us together locked in each other’s arms. If he had told her exactly what had happened, there was no reason for Rea to have taken offence. But I guessed that Rea’s feelings were still strong for Trent. Therefore, I feared it would take more than a brief explanation from Trent for her to understand that she had nothing to fear from me. Sure, Trent was attractive and there was a small part of me that enjoyed being comforted and held by him. But he was a werewolf and I had made a similar mistake before. It was a mistake I planned not to repeat any time soon – if ever.
Once we had finished eating, we gathered our rucksacks together. I could see that
my companions’ rucksacks were bulging at the seams, filled with the ammunition and guns that Morten had hidden in the coffins. Calix had a shotgun thrown over his shoulder and both Trent and Rush had what looked like a rifle slung across their backs. Rea was wearing that belt of bullets about her waist, with pistols strapped to each thigh.
“Ready?” Trent asked.
We nodded and then let Morten lead us through the labyrinth of tunnels and passageways that snaked beneath the church. Unlike the rest of my companions, Morten didn’t seem to be carrying any weapons. He’d confessed to us that he hadn’t fought in the war between the werewolves and vampires, so perhaps he was as unfamiliar with firearms as I was. It was freezing cold above ground and there had been no let-up in the snow, which continued to rain down in thick powdery flakes. Driving my hands into my coat pockets, my fingers brushed over the spell book I had brought with me into this layer. But I’d had no such spell book with me when I’d stepped down off the platform and into the path of the oncoming train. I could only guess that someone had seen fit to make sure I had such a book in this world I had stepped into.
Morten continued to lead the way, his shoulders rounded and the collar of his threadbare black suit pulled up about his throat. We walked single file, hunched forward against the driving snow as we made our away from the church and into the woods. Trent walked ahead of me, close to Rea. I wanted to find out what he had said to her but I knew now wasn’t the time. I sensed that I should give Rea some breathing space as I recalled the icy stares she had given me as we’d eaten our meal. So I dropped back behind the others. The night seemed to be quiet, the only sound was the soft crunch of our boots as we trampled through the snow underfoot.
