Always a Wanderer

by Danica Winters

  No. Not now.

  She’d waited so long to feel this with him.

  Gray clouds swirled in her vision. She tried to focus on Graham, on his mouth, on the way his tongue slid over her, but his touch began to fade as her vision took hold.

  A whine escaped her lips as she found herself standing naked in a swirling mass of gray clouds. Why had the Fates played this trick on her? Why couldn’t she just have one moment to revel in her womanhood? One moment to escape the world? Or was that what this was? Was her subconscious playing tricks on her? Had her body become overwhelmed by the need to escape, so much so that she had accidently triggered a vision?

  The clouds started to pull apart, clearing away to reveal a darkened room. Old hospital beds and extra medical equipment filled the space. It was the old infirmary, the one tucked away in the bowels of the manor.

  The place stank of fetid sickness and damp. She’d always hated the infirmary, but never more than now, standing there at the center of its ruins as the shadows of her vision pulled at her and called her into the infirmary’s depths. She resisted, since somewhere deep within she felt that if she gave in, she would never return.

  From somewhere in the darkness, she could make out the sound of a woman’s faint cry. For a moment she thought about not following, about sticking to the place the vision had brought her, but her feet moved as though she were a puppet on a string. Her movements were jerky until she gave in, following the lead of whatever was pulling at her center.

  Standing at the back of the infirmary, where the two wards came together, was Rose. She was wearing the same Chanel suit she’d been wearing at the meeting earlier in the day, but the edges were torn and plastered with dirt and blood.

  “Rose?” Helena asked, forgetting for a moment that this wasn’t reality or even the present.

  Rose looked up. She glanced in Helena’s direction, as though she had heard her voice through the waves of space and time. Though Rose was facing Helena, her eyes jumped from one position to another, glazed with a madness that only came to those of their kind.

  What was happening? What had happened to Rose? Why was she here, tucked away once again in the place to which she’d said she never wished to return?

  “I know you’re here. I can feel you,” Rose said, her voice hoarse and low, nothing like the light, airy tones the woman normally used.

  There was something very wrong.

  Helena wanted to run. To leave this place. To escape before it was too late.

  Yet the harder she willed herself to end the vision, the more the shadows at the edges of her sight seemed to become real, and pull her deeper.

  No. No. This wasn’t how it worked.

  “I know you are here, Helena,” Rose repeated. “You can’t stop me. You can’t stop this. Some things are greater than us. Some things are fated. We must listen to the gods. We must do as they order.”

  “No! Stop!” Helena said, as her body was jerked forward by whatever pulled the strings that controlled her. “I don’t want this! Stop!”

  Rose turned back to what had formerly been the nurses’ station. Sitting open upon the counter was a large book. She started to chant words Helena didn’t recognize. As she watched in panic, Mr. Shane formed from the ether of the shadows, materializing in front of her eyes.

  Rose smiled as she looked upon her husband. “Have no worries, my dear, we’re almost there. Together we will make things right. We will stop them. It’s time.”

  Chapter Seven

  HE TRIED NOT TO PANIC. Graham stroked her cheek gently. “Helena? Wake up. Please,” he begged.

  It had been six hours of no movement, just her steady breathing and open eyes, which stared into nothingness. With her eyes open, it made everything worse. It didn’t seem as though she were asleep or just out of it—rather, she looked like she had crossed over the rainbow bridge.

  He should never have let her come up to his room. He shouldn’t have done what he’d done. This had to be his fault. Maybe it had all been too much stress. Maybe it had pushed her into this condition.

  All the memories of Danny’s early days in the catatonic state came flooding into his mind. What if that had happened to Helena? They both had the gift of seeing the future—it was more than possible they could suffer from the same affliction.

  The guilt gnawed at him. Stress and emotional weight were Achilles’ heels for their kind, for supernatural beings. He knew this, yet he’d overlooked it all for a moment of pleasure—a stolen moment in which they could finally be together. As much as he wanted her, nothing was worth seeing her like this.

  The nurse moved around the side of the bed. “Graham, if you want, you can leave her with us. We’ll take right good care of her.”

  He had no doubt the nurse was speaking the truth—they loved her here—but he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her alone in the hospital. Not with Neill’s death unsolved. For all he knew, they had an enemy within these walls.

  And what if she woke up and he had gone? If that happened, he wouldn’t blame her if she resented him, and he already feared what she would think when she awoke.

  That was, if she awoke.

  He tried to push the thought that she would be just like Danny from his mind—trapped in her body with nowhere to go, seeing only the darkest of human nature.

  Danny had come back so different, so changed by his experience. The thought of Helena going through the same thing terrified him.

  There was a soft knock on the open door, and he turned to see Danny and Rose waiting just outside.

  “How’s it going, my love?” his mother asked with a thin, comforting smile. “Have there been any changes?”

  Graham shook his head as all the feelings he’d been trying to repress attempted to bubble to the surface. He just had to get through this. He couldn’t concentrate on his feelings. He had to focus on getting Helena through this—any way he could.

  Danny stepped beside them and slid his hand into Helena’s without saying a word—and Graham loved him all the more for it. Right now, the last thing Graham wanted to do was talk. He wanted solutions—a fix for the agony he was going through—and if anyone could help, it was his brother.

  Danny closed his eyes as he moved his thumb over the back of Helena’s hand. He whispered something unintelligible as he stroked. Seconds turned into slow, painful minutes. It felt like an eternity as Graham stood watching.

  Helena remained motionless, staring upward. She didn’t move or respond.

  Graham wanted to shake her, to pull her into his arms and make her wake up. Yet he knew there was no fixing her, not in the human way. No pulling her back to reality with a simple splash of water or archaic smelling salts.

  “Can you see anything?” Graham asked, unable to control himself any longer.

  Danny opened his eyes and stopped moving. “She’s in deep.”

  “What does that mean? Where is she?”

  Danny gave him a look—the look—that told him he probably didn’t want to know, and Danny sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him. His brother had spent so many hours in therapy and working with Ayre in the havari, and yet in all that time Danny had barely told him the ins and outs of what he’d experienced—only that he would never go back. That he would die if he were ever pulled back in.

  Hopefully Helena wasn’t thinking the same thing.

  Could a person choose to end their life in a state like hers?

  Another thought he couldn’t handle. Not now.

  “Aye,” he said, nodding. “How can I help her?”

  Danny put Helena’s hand down on her belly, over the white blanket the nurses had pulled tight around her. “You can be here. Just like you were for me.”

  “Can you heal her?” Graham pressed, as he looked from Danny to his mother.

  Rose bit her bottom lip. “Graham, son, you and I both know Danny isn’t a healer. Don’t put that pressure on him. He’s gone through enough already.”

  Graham could almost hear the
growls and see the snapping jaws of the caged wolf within him. She and John had been the cause of all this. If they hadn’t brought them here, to this place, if they hadn’t gotten greedy, if they hadn’t used his brother, Helena wouldn’t be here.

  There were so many reasons to hate.

  Danny reached over and put a hand on his shoulder, as if he could see the anger roiling within him. “She’ll be okay. She’s stronger than I am...than I ever was. She’ll make it through this. You just need to—”

  Keep his shite together.

  “Aye,” Graham said, not waiting for his brother to finish. “I know.”

  “I called your gypsy friend, Ayre—the one with the foreshaw,” Danny said. “She’s on her way. Maybe she can help.”

  “She can’t heal.”

  “Nay,” Danny said, his face falling. “But she holds a great deal of magic. I thought maybe she could do something.”

  They had to try something, anything that could make a difference in Helena’s condition.

  Ayre strode into the room. She smelled of herbs, perhaps lavender or mint; he couldn’t quite make out the exact scent. It would have been soothing in any other venue, where IV pumps weren’t beeping and nurses’ voices didn’t echo into the room from the hallway.

  “’Ello, my dear. It’s been a long time,” she said, with a slight dip of her head in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry it has to be under these kinds of circumstances we keep seein’ one another.”

  “Aye, but I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  “How’d this come about?” Ayre asked.

  A faint heat rose in his cheeks as he thought of what had been happening and where they had been when Helena had fallen away. He could hardly admit it in front of his brother and mother.

  “Would you mind excusing us for a moment?” he asked, moving to the door and motioning gently for his family to step outside.

  They moved to the hall, and his mother gave him a questioning look as he closed the door behind her.

  He didn’t need any of her inquiries right now—at least, none that would pry into his private life. Helena had been hesitant enough to take things to the level they had; she would be mortified if she came to know he’d told the entire world about what they’d done.

  “Am I to be thinkin’ you’re not proud of how she came to be like this?” Ayre asked, her tone serious and dry.

  “It has nothing to do with my pride.”

  At least not in the sense in which she meant it.

  “Then?”

  “We were...exploring each other when she just...I don’t know. It was like when she has a vision. I thought she’d come back. I waited. Then, when she didn’t come back after thirty minutes, I got her dressed and I brought her here. I still don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

  “Exploring...” She rolled the word around on her tongue as if she were trying to find a spot where it would fit against her cheek. “Aye, I see.”

  She walked to the side of the bed, where Danny had been standing. Rather than touching Helena, she raised her hands over Helena’s chest and took in a long breath. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she exhaled.

  Dropping her hands to Helena’s chest, she stood silent and still.

  A smile overtook her face, and she looked up at Graham.

  “She’s okay.”

  “How do you know?” he asked in a single breath, afraid that if he believed her, even for a moment, that everything would turn to dust.

  “I caught a glimpse of her future. Your future,” Ayre said, reaching up and pushing a hair from Helena’s forehead. “She and you...you’re a good match. The Fates have done well. But nothin’s gonna be easy for the two of ya. You are always gonna have to work. Complacency will only bring resentment. But I’m thinkin’ you already know this...”

  Sometimes having someone around who had the gift of sight wasn’t as great a thing as he would have imagined—they saw everything, even the things that everyone tried to hide.

  Maybe he had grown complacent.

  “Is that why this happened? I’ve been too inattentive?”

  Ayre shook her head. “Ach, the fault doesn’t rest on your shoulders alone. Stress can be hard on any relationship, especially a buddin’ one.” The beads in Ayre’s hair fell over her shoulder, clicking together as she leaned forward and drew in a long breath. “What happened in this place?”

  Graham frowned, not following her rapid change of thought. “What?”

  “Someone died here.” She took in another deep breath, scenting the air. “A man. Murder. What happened?”

  “We don’t know.” And honestly, at the moment, he didn’t care. All he cared about was Helena’s well-being. “It’s fine, though. Everything has been taken care of.”

  “Disposing of the body will hardly solve your problems with that man.” Ayre looked up at the ceiling and started to walk toward the window at the far side of the room.

  What did she know about it?

  She turned to face him. What, did she have the ability to read minds as well?

  “Okay,” he said, afraid maybe she could read his mind, though he knew it was unlikely.

  “Whoever was behind that man’s death is gonna kill again. They wanna kill many. Their soul is black with hate. You need to be careful.”

  “Who’s behind it?”

  Ayre smiled. “My vision isn’t perfect—you know I’m only given what the Fates and the gods wanna show me, and even then what I see ain’t always exactly what comes to pass. I don’t hold the answers you are lookin’ for, no matter how badly you’d like me to.”

  “Who does the person want to kill?” Graham asked, trying to ignore the dull ache in his gut.

  “I...I dunno. They’re driven by rage. By some feeling of injustice.”

  “Did John kill him?”

  “No, I don’t get the sense that he did.” Ayre shook her head. “I wish I could give you more...The shadows are holdin’ more, but they won’t let me in.”

  He nearly laughed as he thought about the position he was in—with one woman who couldn’t reach far enough into the shadows, and another who couldn’t escape them. The Fates were cruel.

  Until that moment, he’d never really thought about the fact that the Fates must have enjoyed the pain they inflicted, the strings they pulled, and the madness they caused.

  “They, the killers or the Fates or the gods or whoever, they don’t want to hurt Helena, do they?” Graham asked, once again terrified by the future.

  “She’s in danger. I can feel it upon her. You need to pull her from the depths. She needs to leave this place.” Ayre peered up at him. “You all need to leave this place. No one’s safe. The veil...it’s bringin’ danger upon us all.”

  “What veil?”

  “The veil that rests upon these grounds. It’s always thin, but thanks to the alignment of the planets, it’s even more thinly stretched than usual. As you know, there be great power here, and there are people who know that and want to tap into it. They’ll stop at nothin’ to get what they want and need. Even if it means killin’.”

  “Let me get this right. Someone wants to use the psychic power of this place? For what?”

  “Ach, I dunno. But with a black soul, you can assume they ain’t plannin’ on makin’ a positive change.” Ayre shook her head. “I don’t normally subscribe to the idea that there are two types of magic. Magic be magic. There is good; there is bad, and there are times where it can be both—it all depends on the perspective of the practitioner. Yet, in this case, I got no doubt that they want to burden the world with their black magic.”

  He thought of the Codex Gigas, still hidden within the manor. Did this person’s hunger for power mean that they knew about the book? Was that part of the reason they had descended upon this place?

  “Are there other places in the world like this, with a thin veil?”

  “The closest is in England, and there are many places on this planet that are sacred and used to access the ethereal
realm. You’re not alone.”

  “Then why here? Why now?”

  Ayre shrugged. “I’m not one who can claim to understand the workings of this world. Lotta things are a mystery to me. If I had all the answers, I would no longer be human—I would be a god.”

  His thoughts still on Neill, Graham took out his mobile and pulled up the picture he’d taken of the man’s brand. “Have you ever seen this marking before?” He was grasping at straws, but it was the only clue he had to work with.

  Ayre took the phone and stared at the image. “Huh. I can’t say that I have.” She scrolled to the next picture, one with Neill’s face in full view. “Is this the dead man?”

  He nodded. “Know him?”

  “I wish I could say that I do, but nay, he’s a stranger to me.”

  He hated this feeling of powerlessness. She had warned him Neill’s killer would strike again, but he was to start his investigation with nothing to point him in the right direction.

  “Have you asked them?” Ayre pointed toward Graham’s family, peering in from the other side of the safety glass.

  John stood with them now, looking in at Helena. The manic edge he had carried during their meeting with the therapist had disappeared, and his stoic nature seemed to have returned. And, as he noticed Graham looking, he gave him a firm nod.

  A note of anger roiled up from Graham’s depths at his stepfather’s appearance. John had made it clear that he cared nothing for them—especially Helena. His presence was nothing more than a show for the hospital staff.

  Graham sighed, letting the anger melt away. It wouldn’t help for him to be angry right now. And going by John’s display with the therapist, maybe now wasn’t the time to put any more stress on the man. Regardless of how pompous and strong he seemed, or the show he put on, he was clearly dealing with something.

  Graham looked to Ayre. “Have you been talking to John?”

  “No. Why?”

  He didn’t want to tell her how he had seen his stepfather acting. It didn’t matter—at least not to her. And maybe it was nothing more than a momentary break for the normally well-put-together businessman. Everyone had their moments.