by J. S. Carter
I dragged my legs across the ground in the opposite direction as random faces ran past on either side of me and bumped into my shoulders. I struggled to break through the frenzy and pushed them out of the way with a single hand while the other pressed against my bleeding stomach.
I stopped at an intersection as gunfire splashed against the walls to my side and sent people scrambling for cover. I reached down and picked up a pistol from a corpse torn in half and looked back over the corner to see an empty street. I quickly walked out onto the road and stepped over another dead body. I had to make things right.
I had to find Jeremy.
The thought barely crossed my mind as I turned another corner and a claw dug itself into my chest, forcing me to fall forward into an arm. I struggled to breathe as the piercing pain shot itself through my body and I was gently lifted up so that I could peer into the cold dark depths of her eyes.
Juno.
She smiled and rows of her red stained teeth parted.
“There you are.” She threw me face first onto the ground and my gun skidded a few feet away from me.
I struggled to stay awake from the pain as I dragged myself across the ground. I had almost reached the handle when she kicked me over onto my back and I swung my knife up, only to have her block the blade with the palm of her hand. I labored to get air into my lungs as I watched her effortlessly pull the piece of metal out of her flesh and shake her head.
“No...” She grabbed my wrist and snapped it like a twig, the pain reverberating up my spine and out as a scream into the night. She knocked my other hand to the side and straddled me, bringing her face inches from mine so that I could smell the iron on her skin and hear the soft whisper part her lips past my ear.
“I know where mother is...” She grabbed my throat and pressed the rock hard nails into either side of my neck, the necklace burning against my soul. “Do you want me to show you?” She squeezed and drew blood, pressing even harder until she tore out the pendant and my entire throat from in front of me in a cloud of red.
I reached up to feel the current flood over my hands while I drowned in my own blood. The overwhelming warmth seeped across my neck and enveloped my body. I struggled to breath and only choked. My vision began to fade. I began to slip over into the void and my heart moved for the last time.
The Last Revenant
“Breathe.”
I opened my eyes and leaned on my elbow to cough and sputter as air rushed into my throat and back into my lungs. I put a hand underneath my chin and wrapped my fingers around the soft, bone-chilling wet and cold skin, fully expecting gaps among torn flesh, but I was surprised to feel it whole again. I felt my damp chest and it still took me a moment to realize my bones weren’t broken and my blood wasn’t soaking into the ice around me.
Ice…
Startled, I looked around and started to panic as I realized I had been pulled out of the water in the middle of a frozen lake.
“Emma.”
I shot up to stare at the source that called my name, a familiar pair of deep blue eyes barely distinguishable from the dark sky behind them.
Nathan...
The word barely made it past my throat. I put a trembling hand against the side of his face. I could feel the stubble brush up against my palm as he managed to smile and I started to cry. “They tried to kill me.”
“It's okay.” He set his sword down onto the clear blocks and pulled me closer, hushing my sobs as I buried my face against the warmth that radiated from his chest. “You’re okay. You’re safe.”
I turned my head to see a pair of bodies as motionless as the moonlit night that gleamed off the blood seeping away from the gaps within their flesh. The only other sign of movement shot itself through the numbness of my bones and rattled my words as they escaped into the still winter air. “I-I’m sorry—”
“Stop.”
I looked up to see him peer down at me and I started to tremble.
“It’s not your fault.”
But it was. I couldn’t control it before and now I couldn’t even control the shaking. A spasm shot through my hands and I finally let go of a small bloody dagger to hear a metallic clatter. Something was wrong. I could feel the fading pulse through my veins as if they were my own, the sharp stabs of pain barely making it past my frozen nerves.
Nathan slowly hunched forward, a soft cry of torture slipping away from his lips as he struggled to stay upright, his breathing shallow and labored.
“Nathan...” I leaned over his body and stared into his eyes as they gradually tore into the sky and then back into my own. I lifted the hand from just below his chest to see his suit garment deeply soaked and shaded crimson. I put a trembling palm on the wound, but it was all I could do as the steaming blood flowed around my numb fingers.
“Nathan!” I started to cry. My tears hit his chest. I didn’t even have to focus. I could already tell it was too late. “You’re—”
“I know.” He put a hand on my face, a soft smile forming on his lips as he transfixed on something that only he could ever see. “And you’re beautiful…”
I closed my eyes and I could feel myself losing control again. I started to slip away, my consciousness slowly fixing itself back into the right time and place. I held myself until I could feel the hard cement against my back, until I could smell the sweet summer air hit my lungs, until I was back in Arrino.
I dared myself to crack my eyes open and looked up to see Juno still standing above me with a snarl on her face, but she was frozen in place. The bloody heart necklace dangled from her hand above my nose and everything else had remained the same except for the unnatural stillness that hung in the air. I was back, but I was still alive.
Time had stopped moving.
“You saw it, didn’t you?”
I recognized the voice, the darkened smooth words reminiscent of molten glass. I recognized the feel of her mind plastered against my own. I swung my head around to meet a woman in a corset with straight jet black hair that hung loose below her shoulders. Her face was radiant, yet sharp and fierce. I wobbled as I got back onto my feet and took a step back from her. I was too afraid to say it out loud. Even then, the thought was still cut short. “You’re—”
“Emma.” She was the one that had haunted my dreams and split my reality in two as I relived moments of her life. There was no mistaking it. She was the witch. She took me in for a moment before walking towards me in steps that poured utter confidence. “And you’re Tess.”
I shook my head and closed my eyes. I didn’t—
“Understand?”
No.
I didn’t want to. She was in my—
Thoughts. Telling me exactly what I was thinking.
I urged myself to see her stop a few feet in front of me. She must have known.
“About the dreams?” She took another step forward and I continued until my back hit a wall. “They’re real, Tess.”
It was impossible. They couldn't have been real. She shouldn't even have been real, but now she was inside my mind, a concept so foreign and overwhelming that I thought I was going to throw up again. It forced me to think about the bodies that she had left in her wake. I had seen the trail of death and despair that followed her everywhere she had been. “You killed all those people...”
“They were suffering. So I brought them peace.” She took another step towards me and lifted a hand, only to stop as I flinched. She smiled politely before continuing, gently running her fingers through my hair. “I know you’re well on your way to understanding.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? I immediately grabbed her wrist and glared at her. The circumstances were different. I wasn’t anything like her. She already knew what I was thinking, but I let it loose anyway. “You don’t know shit.”
She managed another smile, amused. “Look at you, all grown up. Where was all this confidence when your mother died?”
What?
My fingers slid off as she slowly pulled her
arm away and walked back towards the street. “You’re a monster, Tess.” She stopped at Juno and gazed into her dark eyes before turning back to look at me. “Trust me, I know my monsters. I created them.”
My thoughts bounced back to what the real monster had said. “You're mother...”
She put a hand on Juno’s face, smitten. “She always did have a problem getting along with others. She was the first.”
I watched as she admired Juno's hair. I had almost died at her hand. I had felt myself letting go, but for some reason I was still alive. I double checked my throat and looked down to poke a finger through the hole above my stomach, only to feel baby smooth skin. The wounds were gone. Emma had saved my life.
She smiled at the thought. “You're not going to die.” She took another step forward, making sure to keep the full force of her eyes barring my soul. “Not yet. This is my story, not yours.”
I tried to say something, but nothing came out. I didn’t understand.
She crept closer. “You're beginning to wake, but you need to become stronger.”
I almost trembled at the thought. How could anything good come from it? “I don't want to.”
“I don't care.” She stopped in front of me and put her fingers against my chin, tilting my head up, surprising me even further by leaning in and pressing her lips against my own.
I closed my eyes. I didn't pull back. I fell into the warmth.
She let go and put a palm on the side of my face, the cuts and bruises now gone. “You're mine now, do you understand?”
I slowly nodded. I gave in to the feeling, into the seduction to belong to someone else—something else bigger than life itself. Nothing would be for me anymore. It would all be for her. It was like a switch had gone off inside of me and I knew I'd kill and die and go to the ends of the earth just for her.
She let go yet somehow kept me still. “You've been so strong...” She pulled a bang back over my ear and I instantly felt so tired that I wanted to cry.
“I have so many questions...”
“I know.” She paused again, bringing my full attention to her eyes. Nothing else existed. “But you need to be patient. You've been strong enough to see my past, but you need to become stronger. You need to wait a little while longer. You need to learn. You need to work against me to gain their trust.”
The idea felt so foreign. “I don't want to hurt you.”
Emma smiled. “You can't.” She began to walk away and I reached out for her like a baby, all the emotions swimming up with an intensity that I had never felt before.
“Please, don't go.”
She held still and graced me enough to turn around, a perfect smile on her lips. “Wake up, Tess.”
Tess, wake up.
An intense heat instantly filled my body and I could hear somebody shout my name. The voice urged me to blink and Emma disappeared, only to be replaced by a man with fierce blue eyes that took his hand off my face and grabbed my shoulders and shook me until I finally snapped out of my daze.
“Tess!”
I stared at him as sight, sound, and feeling flew back into my body. Time was flowing again and the witch was gone. I looked down to see dull metal forearm guards mounted above his wrists until he forced me to turn my eyes.
“Hey! Look at me! I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Nathan Grey.
“Nathan...” The word slipped out of my mouth and seemed to catch him off guard for a moment.
Behind him, Juno had already gotten back onto her feet with a new light to her voice. “Grey! Mother was here! Can’t you feel it?”
He gently pushed me back by the arm. “Stay behind me.” I stepped into his shadow and watched as he turned to face her, his trench coat billowing around him as two sheathed swords weighed the rest down against his back. He reached up and grabbed a handle, but stopped short as Juno squared off against him. “You're not taking her.”
She smiled. “She belongs to me. She belongs to mother.”
“Your mother was a whore and she’s dead, just like you should be.”
Juno screamed and lunged at him, only to miss as he effortlessly stepped out of the way to draw a hidden machete, the blade slicing through the air like a whip that opened up a long gash along her arm with a flick of the wrist. She recoiled back and hissed in protest.
I immediately bolted in the opposite direction and ran away as fast as I could. I could feel the soles of my worn feet start to tare each time they pounded onto the smooth pavement in front of me, but I couldn't stop moving. I didn’t know what they were or what they wanted and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to find out. I didn’t get too far before Grey noticed.
“Tess! Stop!”
I glanced back just as I tripped over my own feet and hit the dirt. I quickly rolled onto my back and brought my arms over my face, closing my eyes and trying to brace for the pain to hit again, but it never came. I slowly lowered my trembling hands and peered through the cracks of my skin to look at Juno’s claw hovering a foot away from my face, her muscles tense as an invisible force held her back. I could only stare as she bared her fangs and pressed onward, the skin around her knuckles peeling back as she shred them against the hidden grate that was saving me from death.
“Get up.” I silently screamed at my limbs and forced them to obey Grey as he made his way to me with a hand in the air, his open palm facing Juno and constraining her to stay still. “Stay behind me.” He gently pushed me back and dropped his hand abruptly, almost making Juno tumble over herself out of breath.
She looked up at him and barred her teeth, the sound of the air rushing through resembling a wounded animal. “Someone’s been practicing.”
Grey pointed the tip of his blade at her. “Well we can’t all be as pretty as you, now can we?” I watched as the skin around her hand mended itself in a matter of seconds while she stood. Grey shook his head. “Don’t try it.”
She smiled at him again, the curve of her lips barring the points of her teeth. “Who do you think is faster?”
He held his palm up and my ears began to pop from the sudden drop in air pressure. “You won’t…”
She waited for a moment, the smile on her face gradually bending into a snarl. “You should know better.” She lunged and Grey threw his hand forward, instantly generating a shock wave that billowed out and threw both of us away from him in an explosion of dust.
I gasped as the immense force pushed all the air out of my lungs and flung me back into the air, completely weightless and unprepared to meet the solid brick wall that stopped me in an instant. My head fell back a split second later and swung into a window, the small pieces of glass raining down on top of me as I fell back down and hit the ground motionless.
Truths
My dreams were filled with death.
Unseen faces swam in front of me, each one paralyzing and full of fear in their own right. I felt the nameless boy with pale eyes and trim hair, then the aftermath of a rifle explosively excavating the back of his skull. The gore ran down walls that surrounded me in a tight box, only to give way to pale skin and rubies as Juno peered up at me over her freshest victim.
Then Emma.
Her being surrounded me like a dense fog before assimilating into the familiar shape. She placed a hand on my chest and an immediate pain of regret shot up through my stomach. I wished she had never left me. Her palm began to glow and vibrate until a shining light pierced through my heart to give way to a perfect wound through my body. I gazed back up into her eyes and wondered why she had made me feel so empty, but she only smiled. Her lips brushed against my ear and the whisper was hushed just as I was pulled back into life.
I slowly woke with an ache and peered at the familiar, white, dull pattern of fabric back lit by the sun that wouldn’t go away. My head felt like it was still stuck in a daze and a familiar pain throbbed through the base of my skull as I turned and lifted it off my cot.
I managed to sit up and look at the small tent around me a
nd finally realized it was almost exactly like the one that I had been in at Camp Maxwell. I threw my face down into my hands and wished it away as soon as I recognized it. Everything that had happened to me over the past few hours could have been a long and vivid dream, but I couldn’t convince myself that it was. I didn't think my own mind was creative or hurtful enough to be able to come up with the things that I had seen.
Chris was dead.
I slowly pulled my face away and was surprised to feel it stick. Every bit of my hands was stained red. I bent my fingers to see dry specks underneath bent nails, evidence of a past life, though I could only guess whose. None of it was a dream. I wouldn't be waking up again. The reality was beginning to make me sick.
I stood up and almost fell over as my head continued to throb and threatened to pull a blanket over my eyes. I had to wait a few seconds before the wave passed and I was finally able to stand on my own and look around my new little home. The only thing worth noticing was a long wrapped piece of cloth resting on an otherwise empty cot just next to mine. I gingerly pulled back a corner of the heavy bundle until a pair of polished swords rested in front of me, one just shorter than the other, though both held strong cross guards and leather pommels. They made the last one I had used look like a toy.
I preferred a gun to any stick—no matter how sharp—but none of my own weapons were in sight. I couldn't even remember what had happened to them. The lost familiarity of my palm curling around a grip left me vulnerable. I almost didn't know what to do with my hands. I ran a finger down the length of a blade to feel the cool surface push back. I wouldn't know how to use it, but the metal in front of me would be better than nothing. I carefully wrapped the bundle back up and stuck it under an arm before knocking the front flap to the tent away and walking outside.
I had to hold a hand up to block the glaring sun. By the time my eyes finally adjusted to the light, I had stopped dead in my tracks. The tent I had woken up in was secluded on top of a hill overlooking a field filled with what looked like a giant spider web. Hundreds of white tents like the one I had just walked out of were laid out in front of me along with an interweaving chain of movement as hundreds of people flowed in and around temporary homes and dirt covered vehicles. I had trouble taking in the sight. I must have been frozen for a good minute when I realized I wasn't alone anymore.
