Always a Wanderer

by Danica Winters

“What’s going on, Ayre?”

  Ayre looked away from him. “I saw this. I saw her like this. But in my vision...” Ayre stopped, unable or unwilling to finish what she was saying.

  “What, Ayre? What happened?” he pressed.

  “In my vision, she never woke.”

  “What do you mean? She won’t wake today?”

  Ayre shook her head, and tears pooled in her eyes. “No, Graham. In my vision, she couldn’t breathe. She suffocated under the weight of her gift. She tried so hard. She’s fighting. She is, Graham. But sometimes—” She sobbed.

  “You’re wrong. You’re fecking wrong, Ayre.”

  Danny put his hand on Graham’s shoulder, but Graham moved away as his anger consumed him. Helena wasn’t going to die. She couldn’t. Not now. Not when he could do something about it.

  He turned to his brother. “You have to help her. She helped you.”

  Danny looked at him with wide eyes. “I don’t have the gift of healing. You know that, Graham.”

  “I don’t care if you don’t have the gift. She helped you. Now it’s your fecking turn. There has to be something we can do.” He could hear the desperation and anger in his voice, but he didn’t bother to check it. “What about you, Ayre?”

  Ayre shook her head. “There’s nothing. Nothing my gifts can do. I’m just a seer.”

  Rose gave a light cough to get their attention. “There may be something. But you’re not going to like it.”

  How could his mother say that?

  “If it saves Helena, I’m going to like it,” Graham said. “We can’t fail her. We have to do whatever it takes.”

  Rose lifted the bag on her shoulder and set it on the hope chest at the end of Helena’s bed. “Don’t be upset. If you don’t like my idea, we can try something else. But when you told me about what was happening...this was the only thing I could think of that might be useful.”

  She reached into the khaki-colored bag and pulled out a large book. It was covered in brown vellum, and the symbol of the Holy Trinity was emblazoned in dark red ink on the cover. Rose set the book down on the end of the bed and lovingly ran her fingers over the symbol.

  “Is that...” Ayre sucked in a long breath.

  “Yes, it’s the Codex Gigas,” Rose said, lifting her fingers and holding them against her chest in reverence. “I...I know it’s dangerous.”

  “Does John know you’re here with that thing?” Graham asked.

  “I didn’t whisper a word. He knows nothing,” Rose said, but her eyes were wide with fear.

  Ayre stepped closer to look at the book. She reached down to touch it but pulled her hand back, almost as if the book had sent a shock up her arm. “This is more dangerous than you can possibly know.”

  Rose raised an eyebrow. “I have some idea of the destruction it can cause, but with your help and Danny’s, maybe...maybe we can find a way to help her.” She motioned to Helena’s still body.

  “No.” Danny sat down in the chair in the corner of the room. He was pale, and a thin sheen of sweat had formed on his brow. “No. I won’t have anything to do with that cursed book. No good can come of using it. That thing stole years from me. No. No. I can’t.” He rocked back and forth, and his gaze never strayed from the book—almost as though merely being in the same room with the object terrified him.

  Graham didn’t know what to do, but he couldn’t let Helena die. He couldn’t let her fall victim to her gift.

  “Danny, you can go,” Graham said, motioning to the hallway. “You don’t have to put yourself in danger. Helena would understand.”

  “Graham,” Danny said, standing up, “you can’t do this. She wouldn’t want us to put ourselves in danger. The spells in that book are fickle. You know the power of the manor grounds. The land is an amplifier. There’s no telling what will happen if you open up the portal with this book again. Anything could appear. Demons, ghosts, spirits...think of all the people in the hospital. What will happen to them if you open the portal to the other world and can’t close it?”

  Logically, what his brother was saying was true. He would be putting many lives at risk if something went wrong, but emotionally he just couldn’t listen to Danny’s concerns.

  “We’re not going to open the portal to the other side, Danny. Don’t worry,”

  Graham said, trying to quell his brother’s fears. “We just need a simple spell, something that can bring her back to us.”

  “Where do you think she is?” Danny asked, panic flooding his voice. “When you have the forshaw, you already have one foot on the other side. In order to pull her back, you have to widen the portal. She has to be able to wiggle her way out.”

  “What are you talking about? She isn’t dead. She isn’t on the other side. Not yet. Not ever.” Graham picked up her hand and laced his fingers between hers. Her hand was limp, only making him want her back that much more.

  “I know it’s gotta be hard to understand, Graham, but Danny’s right,” Ayre said. “We walk in the realm between the living and the dead; we live in the valley, where there’s no time, no spatial plane, only what the vision provides. It’s all too easy to make a mistake, to open the portal to death all the way. And it would be all too easy for her to choose to go to the land of the dead.”

  “Then we have to do this to stop her. To bring her back.”

  “Any action we take might push her deeper.”

  “So you’re saying that if we don’t act, she’s going to die. And that if we do act, she’s going to die.” Graham walked over to the book and placed his hands on its soft leather cover. “Isn’t that the definition of damned if you do, damned if you don’t?”

  Ayre sighed. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Yes,” Graham said. “It is that simple. If we do nothing, there’s no chance of her surviving. If there’s even a small chance this will help her, then we have to do it.”

  “Her dying ain’t the only risk, Graham,” Ayre said. “It can change her powers. It can strip her of ’em, or amplify ’em, or change ’em completely. It’s a dangerous game you are playin’ at.”

  “Not as dangerous as doing nothing at all.”

  “If you were her,” Rose said, “what would you want us to do? Graham, you know her better than any of us. I think the choice should rest with you and what you think she’d want.”

  His mother’s words struck deeper than any of Ayre’s. What would Helena want? Would she want to risk amplifying her powers? Would she be willing to lose them? Or would she rather fall into the arms of death than risk opening the portal to the other side?

  He ran his hands over his face. Knowing Helena, she would fight the idea of putting others at risk for her benefit. She was so self-sacrificing. She would do anything to keep the ones she loved safe. Yet if he could have spoken to her, maybe he could have talked sense into her and made her understand that he needed her.

  What if she became stuck in the purgatory of her mind because they hadn’t done anything? The thought terrified him and nullified any of his concerns. To be stuck in limbo—to not know if you were alive or dead or in your own personal hell.

  “Danny, is that were you were stuck—in that purgatory realm?” Graham asked.

  His brother stared at Helena and chewed on his bottom lip until little droplets of blood pooled at the corners of his mouth.

  “Danny, tell me the truth. Where did you go? Were you stuck in the in-between?”

  Danny nodded, and let his lip go. It was raw and speckled with beads of blood. “There were times I was stuck, but other times I went into visions. Visions of my death. Or maybe it was simply me wishing to die. I saw others die. I saw what I thought was the end of the world.”

  “What stopped you from movin’ to the other side?” Ayre asked.

  “You mean why didn’t I give up and let death take me?” Danny asked, looking toward the woman with the thick dreadlocks. “I knew I couldn’t go. I had too much life left to live. I was young, and like you said, there was no time there.
It could have been days or hours or years, but I got lost in the nothingness, in the stream of blackness and visions. After a while, it was like that was reality, and everything that had happened before, that was purgatory.”

  “Would you ever want to go back to that place again?” Graham asked.

  Danny shook his head. “Between using the Codex Gigas or letting me die...today, I’d want to be saved. I’m not ready to die. Not now, anyway.”

  Rose reached down and opened the book. “I found a spell.”

  Ayre stared down at the pages of the Codex, and her face, normally full of life and color, faded to white. “This, Manyath’s Mwilsha—Heaven’s Trespasses. It will certainly affect her gift.”

  “But it will pull her back to this world,” Graham said, no longer willing to hear anything against bringing Helena back. “What do you need to make it happen?”

  Ayre ran her finger down the list of ingredients, which was inked in ancient Gothic letters and edged with gold leaf. “It’s a simple incantation. It will need the blood of one with the gift.” She looked at Danny. “And one who is of her kind. Me. And the blood of a lover.” She looked at Graham and raised an eyebrow. “Do you love her? Truly and above all others?”

  He didn’t even have to think about it. “Aye. Does it matter if she doesn’t love me?”

  Ayre frowned. “You don’t think she loves you? Are you daft, lad?”

  “We broke up,” he said bluntly. “She said she wanted to protect me...” He looked at her and realized the irony. “She wanted to protect me from having to go through something like this ever again. She thought the last vision was because of...you know. Us.”

  “Then it sounds like she loves ya, boy.” Ayre gave him a knowing smile. “She wouldn’t have wanted to keep ya safe at the cost of her own heart if she didn’t.”

  Self-sacrifice. It was Helena’s way. But that didn’t change the fact that things had been hard for them. She hadn’t said the words to him in so long. Maybe her feelings had changed. It had been months.

  “I don’t know, Ayre,” he said. “If she doesn’t love me, will it affect the spell?”

  “It might make things a bit off, aye. But I think her love ain’t in question in any place but your head.”

  Rose drew a knife from her bag. “Each of you, as Ayre reads, needs to pierce your skin with this.”

  “Aye,” Ayre said, nodding. “Let the blood drip on the area over Helena’s heart.” She reached down and opened the buttons of Helena’s blouse, revealing the pale skin of her chest.

  Not that long ago, Graham had been kissing that skin. Wishing to make love to her. And here they were, just a few days later, trying to save her life.

  Ayre read the words on the page and cut a long line across the center of her palm, letting the blood drip upon Helena’s unmarred skin. The crimson liquid contrasted sharply with the smooth skin of Helena’s chest. As the blood dripped downward, disappearing under her shirt and soaking into the fabric, Helena’s breathing deepened, and she took in a lungful of air like someone trying not to drown.

  Ayre motioned for Danny to follow suit, and he took the knife and slid it over his palm until rubies of blood dripped onto Helena.

  Danny passed him the knife.

  Graham pushed the blade into his hand, cutting deeper than necessary—he would give everything if it would bring her back. He let the blood rush from him and fall like refreshing raindrops onto her pale skin. As his blood touched her, Helena’s chest rose and fell rapidly and her eyelids fluttered like she was having another seizure, but her eyes remained closed.

  He pulled his hand up against his chest, but he didn’t feel the pain of the gash, only the agony that came with the need to have her healthy and back in his arms.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AT THE EDGE OF HELENA’S consciousness, she could hear Graham’s voice calling to her.

  “I’m here,” she called. “I’m here. Don’t leave me. I’m here.”

  But the tempo and cadence of Graham’s voice didn’t change, almost as if he couldn’t hear her.

  She could smell the smoky residue of the fire at the hospital, and it reignited her fear. Graham was okay, but for how long? And what about the other people in the hospital?

  Graham was there, at the edge of her vision. He was alive. He was with Ayre. He had to be okay. She tried to reassure herself and find the truth of the reality that lay just beyond her reach.

  “There’s a bomb,” she said, trying to call out to them once again.

  This time Graham’s voice seemed closer, and after a moment, his words became clearer, like a radio that had finally picked up a frequency.

  “What? What did she say?”

  Helena tried again. “There’s a bomb in the hospital.”

  At the edges of her vision, the light intensified, growing brighter, and she ran toward it.

  “I think she said ‘bomb,’” a woman, maybe Rose, answered.

  “Bomb?” Graham sounded confused. “She’s not making any sense.”

  Helena ran into the blinding white light. It felt hot on her skin, and for a moment she wondered if her mind had played a trick on her, and she was running toward the flames of hell instead of the warmth of reality.

  “Look,” Graham said. He sounded excited. “Her aura. It’s working. Helena. Helena, come back to me.”

  As he spoke, there was a burning sensation in her chest, like someone had poured boiling liquid on her skin and was letting it sit between her breasts. She reached up, but there was nothing there.

  Blinking, she could see Graham, Rose, Danny, and Ayre. They were standing around her room inside the cottage, all staring at a woman lying in her bed. The woman’s shirt was open and there was a pool of blood on her chest.

  She ran her fingers over her sternum, and as she watched, the woman’s arm twitched in the bed. She gasped when she saw the woman’s face and realized she was staring at herself.

  *.*.*

  Graham reached down and held Helena’s hand. It had taken nearly an hour, but as the blood they had spilled on her chest started to dry and the spell they had cast took effect, the rainbow color of Helena’s aura had grown brighter and brighter, and at its edges it had turned a brilliant white.

  “Helena, open your eyes, my love. Please. I’m here.”

  Everyone else had gone out to the dining room to get a cup of tea and wait, as there was nothing else they could do. Ayre had assured him all Helena needed now was more time, but the anticipation was agony. What if Helena came back different?

  Before, she had acted like a trapped animal, constantly looking for an exit. If she didn’t have the gift of clairsentience any longer, would she stay at the manor? Would she even consider remaining at his side?

  Graham doubted she would stay now that Seamus was gone. Helena had talked fondly about her memories of travelling as a child, so much so that he doubted she would think twice about leaving if given the option to go on the road with Angel and the boys. It would be Helena’s chance to reconnect with her culture and make amends for what she had always called the mistakes of her past.

  Would her sister’s pull be stronger than the promise of his love?

  Would she even want his love?

  He gripped her hand tighter and ran his fingertip down the length of each of her fingers. “Helena, I need you,” he said, taking advantage of the time alone.

  He doubted she could hear him; she hadn’t made a sound in the last hour.

  “You need to stay at the manor. If you leave, nothing will be the same. No matter how you come back to us, there will always be a place for you here. I want you. I want you to stay. I want...” He closed his eyes and laid his head on the bed as he trailed off, realizing how crazy he probably sounded, begging a woman who was in what was basically a coma to stay by his side.

  “Aye?” Helena’s voice was hoarse and raspy.

  He jerked up, letting go of her hand. “Helena?”

  Her eyes were open, and her rainbow aura had re
turned. She gave him a weak smile. “What else do ya want?” she asked with a light laugh. As she moved, she winced.

  “Are you okay? What hurts?” he asked, full of panic.

  Helena shook her head. “I’m fine, but my chest,” she said, reaching up and running her fingers over the dried, cracking blood.

  “We had to...” He wasn’t sure exactly how much to tell her, fearing that she wouldn’t approve of the choice he had made. “Here, I’ll get a cloth.” He stood up.

  “No. Don’t.” She reached for him. “We need to go to the hospital. There’s a bomb.”

  “A bomb?”

  She nodded. “’Twas in my vision. The HG, they planted a bomb. The grand openin’... What about the ceremonies? Are they over?” She sat up, and immediately moaned and reached up and touched her head, like she’d been taken by a migraine, thanks to the sudden movement.

  “Lie back down,” he said, reaching behind her and fixing her pillow. “The ceremony hasn’t taken place. Not yet.” He looked down at his watch. “We have an hour—I do. You have to stay here. We can’t risk you having another vision. You’ve been through enough today.”

  “I know where the bomb’s planted. You have to take me. I gotta keep everyone safe—and you.”

  “Helena—”

  “I know ya want to protect me, but trust me when I say I want to protect ya too.”

  Though her olive-toned skin was already pale from her ordeal, it seemed to grow even paler as she spoke.

  “What exactly did you see, Helena?”

  “Visions ain’t always right. Let’s just hope this one’s wrong.” She rubbed her temples and slid her legs over the side of the bed. “Help me up. We need to get out of here.”

  He took her hand and helped her to stand. Her legs were shaky and weak, but she held her body steady out of sheer determination.

  “Ayre, Rose, and Danny...we need to grab them. Giorgio is with them now.”

  “Nah, leave them here. They don’t need to be put in—” She stopped before she finished her sentence, and her pause made his apprehension grow.

  What exactly had she seen in her vision that she wanted to keep from him?