by Tim O'Rourke
“With my hair billowing back from my shoulders and my entire body shaking, I broke free from Theo, throwing him back across the room. And just like he had that night out on the road, Theo sprang to his feet, his face livid with rage, eyes seething red and fangs drooling with venom. As he bolted across the room at me, claws raised, I threw my hands out, extending my fingers and let the magic stream from them. I watched as the sizzling bolts of light encompassed him, wrapping themselves around his throat, lifting him up off his feet and jerking him violently backwards and forwards through the air in my living room. And as I clenched my fists, those tendrils of magic drew tighter and tighter about him. Over the roar of his screams, I could hear his bones snapping and breaking beneath his pale skin. And as my magic crushed his throat and windpipe, his black tongue jutted from the corner of his mouth, eyes bulging until he finally slumped lifelessly to the floor.
“I had yet to come to terms with what I’d done when there was a knock at my front door. I raced down the hallway and let Pariac in. Shaking from head to foot with fear and magic, I gasped for breath as I tried to explain to Pariac what had taken place and what I’d done. And as if being wrenched back in time to that cold and bloody night out on the road, I once more heard the distant sound of approaching police sirens. Fearing that I would be caught with the dead vampire in my home and knowing the punishment that awaited me, I begged Pariac for his help. And because he was a kind and gentle man and loved me more than perhaps I deserved, Pariac lifted Theo’s corpse up from off the floor. He threw the lifeless body over his shoulder and, looking back at me just once, he fled my home and raced into the night.
“But he was seen making his escape and was hunted down by the police. When they caught him running toward the mountain with the dead vampire in his arms, instead of telling the police what had really happened, he confessed to murdering Theo. He took the blame for me.
“To my constant shame, and just like I had before, I kept quiet. I didn’t come forward and tell the authorities what really had happened. Pariac was put on trial for the murder of Theo. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He said not one word in his own defence throughout the trial. Even as he stood beneath the gallows, he remained silent and loyal to me. But I could not keep my silence any longer.
“Half mad with guilt, I confessed everything to my parents. I begged them to intervene and stop the trial. But they wouldn’t. They said if it was ever discovered that it was I who had killed the vampire, then not only would it destroy me and my life, but theirs also.
“But the death of a vampire at the hands of the werewolves enraged the vampires. The fragile peace that once existed between them gradually began to crumble away as they sought revenge for the death of one of their own. It wasn’t long before these acts of revenge spilled over into war, which in turn bled into the human world. And I knew that what I’d done had ignited the war in which thousands of Beautiful Immortals and humans would perish and die.
“With the vampires, werewolves, and humans at war, my parents disowned me. They told me that I was no longer their daughter. They told me that the world would be a better place if it had been me who had died that night and not Theo, for the Wicce would not have risked war for a wretch like me. My mother’s and father’s words broke what little remained of my heart. I had not only lost the two men I’d once loved but my parents, too. I was totally alone in the world. The overwhelming sense of guilt I felt for what I’d done – the war that I’d started – was unbearable and too much for me to bear. I felt totally and utterly broken.
“And perhaps my parents had been right after all and the world I’d come from would be better off without someone like me. So it was with these thoughts at the forefront of my mind that I stepped down in front of an approaching train, believing that the world would soon be a better place.
“But I didn’t die. No sooner was the train upon me, I found myself stepping from it and onto the platform of that railway station set high up in the Swiss mountainside. In my coat pocket, I found the spell book. Who put it there, I do not know. But one thing that became quite clear was that the world I’d just stepped into was at war just like the one I’d left behind.”
Without realising it, as I’d been talking, Calix had moved closer and was now sitting next to me. Using his thumb, he brushed away the tears that were silently trickling down the length of my face. I was unaware that I’d been crying. But why was I surprised by that? My heart broke every time I thought about and remembered what I’d done.
“I dreamt about that,” Calix whispered, wiping the last of my tears away.
I looked into his dark eyes and frowned. “What did you dream about?”
“Do you remember that night in the barn when I woke from a nightmare?” he asked me.
I nodded my head as I remembered it.
“I had a nightmare about you, Julia,” Calix started to explain. “And in that nightmare, you were stepping down in front of a train – you were taking your life – you were killing yourself and I was unable to help you.”
“Why do you think you dreamt about that?” I asked, surprised by what he had told me.
Calix shook his head. “More to the point, why do you think you survived and why do you think you are here?”
“I don’t know who pushed me into this layer,” I said. “But one thing I can be sure of is, I was sent to find a truce and peace between the vampires and werewolves.”
“You’re not responsible for the war in this world,” Calix said. “You come from another layer – another time – another where and when. This is not your war.”
Getting up and brushing dust from the seat of my jeans, I said, “We know the layers are connected in some way, and what happens in one happens in another. Whether this is my world or not – whether what I did was the cause of this war – doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is putting an end to it, and if I can do that here, perhaps it will put an end to the war in the layer that I’ve come from.”
Calix got to his feet and I could see that the bandage wrapped around his hand was now stained completely red. “Do you really believe that you can end this war? Do you think that you alone can do that?”
“It only took me to start it,” I said, before leaving Calix alone in the old outhouse.
I made my way back up the hill and headed toward home.
Chapter Ten
As I made my way home, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d done the right thing in sharing my secrets with Calix. But then again, I told myself, he hadn’t snaked on me to Rea about discovering me snooping around her bedroom, so perhaps I could trust him after all. And besides, I believed that I’d seen another side to Calix since the others had left Shade. There were times when it almost seemed that he could let down his guard to reveal a more sensitive kind of man. But what he thought of me now, I couldn’t be sure. Would my confession have changed the way he felt about me? Perhaps he would no longer see me as some kind of prissy know-it-all, as he’d described me to be. But he was right, in a way I was very much like him and his friends. I was not perfect.
Pushing open the front door to my little house, I stepped inside and went straight to the kitchen. My stomach almost seemed to lurch as if it were alive and I couldn’t ever remember feeling so hungry. As I waited for the stove to warm, I opened a can of the tinned fruit that Calix had brought me. Bending my forefinger, I hooked out a segment of peach and popped into my mouth. The sweet juices ran over my tongue and down the back of my throat. I hooked out another and another until I’d eaten them all.
Arming syrup for my lips, I flash fried several strips of meat. I felt so hungry that, even though the meat was still pink, I fished it out of the pan with a fork and placed it between two thick slices of bread. I wolfed the food down. Once I was finished, I sat back in the chair and patted my stomach with both hands. My stomach made a rumbling sound and I let out a sudden burp which echoed around the kitchen. Getting up, I went to the sink and poured myself a glass of water whic
h I took with me to my bedroom. The book I’d begun reading several days ago lay on the dresser beside the bed and I decided to spend the rest of the evening reading once I’d taken a shower.
Stripping off my clothes, I padded along the landing and into the bathroom. While I waited for the water to warm, which hissed and spat from the showerhead, I once more looked at my reflection in the mirror. Still no signs of any hairs growing back from what remained of the wound on my neck. My stomach lurched again. I felt a little queasy and I wondered that perhaps those rashers of meat I’d eaten had been just a little too raw. Glancing down at my stomach, I couldn’t help but notice that it was a little plumper than I remembered. I decided right there and then that if I was going to continue to cook for Calix to keep his silence, I’d have to make my portions a little smaller, however hungry I felt.
Once in the shower, I washed away the smell of gunpowder, grit, and dirt that I’d picked up from the brickhouse which now covered my skin and hair. Once I felt clean again, I wrapped a towel about me and headed back to my bedroom. There were no more night dresses that I could find, the last had been ripped to shreds by Trent the night he had come to visit me. So taking a clean T-shirt from the drawer, I slipped it on and climbed into bed. Lighting a candle, then pulling the sheet up beneath my chin, I plucked up the book and began to read.
I concentrated on the neatly printed lines of words on the pages before me, refusing to let my mind wander, fearing that it would only return to focus on Trent. I didn’t want to feel used and betrayed all over again, as since returning from my time with Calix, I felt happier than I had in a long time. I didn’t want to lose that feeling. So I continued to read the book until my eyelids began to feel heavy and I could no longer keep them open.
I sat up in bed and groaned. I blocked out the glare of morning light by covering my eyes with one hand and placing the other against my stomach, which felt as if it was on fire. Jabbing bolts of pain made my stomach muscles tighten, then relax. I felt the sudden urge to vomit, so I scrambled from my room and down the landing, dropping to my knees before the toilet. Gripping the bowl with both hands, I heaved. The vomit gushed up my throat and into my mouth like a burning stream of bile. My stomach cramped once more and I heaved again. Vomit swung from my lips and chin. With the back of my throat feeling raw and those pains in my stomach beginning to subside, I dragged myself away from the toilet bowl and propped myself against the bathroom wall. I cursed myself for being so stupid and eating so much of that raw meat the night before. Why hadn’t I cooked it for longer? And had the meat even been edible? I couldn’t remember how long ago Calix had brought the meat for me. It had been during the time I’d confined myself to the house. So was the meat a week old or perhaps even older? Perhaps the meat had become spoilt. After all, there was no refrigeration in the house as the electrics didn’t work.
Propped against the bathroom wall, making circular motions with the flat of my hand against my swollen stomach, I waited for the stabbing pains to fade. When they had, and taking hold of the sink, I pulled myself to my feet. I brushed my teeth until I could no longer taste bile in my mouth. Feeling a little better, I made my way slowly back to my bedroom where I put on clean jeans and a sweater. Despite having just vomited so violently, I was surprised that I had already started to feel hungry again. But despite the hunger pangs, I really couldn’t face eating at the moment. All I wanted was to take in some fresh air and clear my head.
Pulling up the hood of my sweater, I left my house, made my way across the park, and headed into Shade.
I wandered slowly through the cobbled streets, the heels of my boots snapping on the pavement, the sound ricocheting off the empty shops and houses that lined the streets. Reaching the narrow alleyway, I ducked into the darkness and walked quickly until I reached the other side. Stepping from the alleyway, I heard the nagging cry of the signpost above the Weeping Wolf pub as it swung back and forth in the wind. I looked at the pub and it seemed eerily quiet now that Rea and Trent had vacated it. Turning my back on the pub, I made my way up the hill and into the woods.
The fresh morning air had gone some way in making me feel a lot better. I no longer felt nauseous and I hoped that if it had been the meat that had made me sick, it had now passed through me.
Without any sense of purpose or direction, I meandered through the woods, enjoying the quiet and the solitude. For how long I walked I didn’t know but when I looked up, I could see that I had arrived at the spot where Trent had once pulled away the wooden planks in the fence and made a hole into the outside world. As I approached the hole, I could see the daylight passing through. It almost seemed to shimmer and glisten, and I knew that the magic I had created around Shade had yet to weaken.
With the sound of the twigs breaking underfoot, I made my way slowly toward the hole. Crouching low, I peered through the gap in the wall. I could see the fields that stretched away on the other side of it. I knew that if I wanted to, I could easily pass through the magic barrier that I’d created and head to Maze. But I wasn’t yet ready to go in search of a truce. I needed a little more shooting practice at least. I needed my own magic to strengthen inside of me, and I also had to think up of a way to prevent Calix tagging along. Despite my promise, I knew that I couldn’t take Calix into Maze with me. I knew I would stand a better chance of making a truce with Veronica Cabal if I wasn’t in the company of a werewolf.
Knowing that I needed more time to prepare before I left Shade, I turned my back on the gap in the fence and headed back toward town. But I’d only taken a few steps when I heard a sudden sound behind me. Spinning around, I looked back to see a man peering through the hole in the fence at me.
“Hello,” he smiled, revealing a set of jagged fangs.
Chapter Eleven
So startled was I by the sight of the pale face peering through the gap in the fence at me, I stumbled backwards and into the trunk of a nearby tree. Almost at once, I felt those magic tendrils flare-up inside of me but they were still too powerless to reach my arms and bleed into my fingertips. The best that my magic could conjure was a slight tingle that covered my skin with goose bumps.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” the man said, still peering through the hole at me.
“Who are you?” I stammered, my fingers twitching at my sides as I tried to will magic into my hands, just in case I needed to protect myself. But with the magic I’d cast over Shade, I knew that the vampire who was now staring at me through the gap in the fence was unable to harm me.
Still smiling, the man said, “My name is Sidney Watson and I’m a reporter.”
“You’re a vampire,” I said right back.
“Yes,” the man said, nodding his huge head at me. “But I mean you no harm.”
“Then why are you here?” I said, my back still pressed flat against the tree as if frozen to the spot.
“Like I said, I’m a reporter from the town of Maze,” Sidney Watson began to explain. “I heard about what happened at the human farm – news travels fast – and as a reporter I thought I would come out here – you know, have a nose around – come up with an interesting article for my newspaper.” As he spoke, the vampire stepped away from the hole in the fence, and I could see him take a notebook and pen from the breast pocket of the chequered shirt he wore. The sleeves were rolled to the elbows and I could see that his forearms, although pale just like the rest of his skin, were thickset and powerful-looking, as were his hands. He had dark, unruly hair and a square face with thick eyebrows which sat above two pale blue eyes. He wore blue denim dungarees and boots. Sidney looked at the wall then through it at me, and added, “I can see that there is some kind of magic surrounding Shade. Are you responsible for that? Are you a Wicce?” The tip of his pen was poised over his open notepad.
I slowly nodded my head. “Yes.”
“Yes you are Wicce, or yes you created the magic spell?” He eyed me.
“Yes to both,” I told him.
“Interesting, ver
y interesting,” he said, scribbling into his notebook.
“Interesting? How?” I asked him, stepping slowly away from the tree and toward the gap in the fence.
Sidney looked at me and with a warm smile on his lips, he said, “I heard stories that the werewolves had come with this powerful sorceress but you look like nothing more than a mere girl to me. I thought I was going to find some evil witch who fired laser bolts from her eyes and streaks of lightning from her arse.”
“You should never believe what you read in the newspapers,” I smiled back at him.
“Well, you see, that’s why I’ve come all the way out here to see if I can find out the truth – to see if you really are this wicked sorceress who has come with werewolves to slay all of us vampires,” Sidney said.
“I haven’t come to slay anyone and I’m not with the werewolves,” I told him. As I spoke, Sidney jotted down my every word into his notebook.
Without looking up, he said, “But there are werewolves living in Shade with you, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“And it was you, you say, who cast some kind of spell over Shade?”
“Yes,” I said. “I cast a spell to protect us until…”
“Until what?” Sidney cut in, looking up from his notepad and right back at me. “Until you attack?”
“Until I find a truce,” I said.
“A truce with who?”
“With you,” I said, staring right back at him. “With the vampires, with your leader, Veronica Cabal.”
With his pencil poised over his notepad, Sidney said, “And what makes you think that Veronica Cabal will want to form a truce?”
“Why wouldn’t she?” I shot back at him.
“I cannot speak for her…”
“But you know her,” I cut in. “You could speak with her on my behalf, you could tell her that you’ve met me and that I wish to meet with her so we can negotiate a peace.”
