The Last Chronomancer (The Chronomancer Chronicles Book 1)

by Reilyn Hardy

  I frowned. That couldn’t be. Drarkodon was trapped in the Underworld. But the way those bodies were practically frozen after being killed, when they should have been decaying like she had said, had been unusual to me. Even then. But how could he do anything from there? Unless he was getting stronger. She averted her eyes and I tried to follow her gaze, but I didn’t know what she was looking at.

  They looked one place, then another.

  I couldn’t follow.

  “He doesn’t know, does he.”

  It took me a few seconds to realize she was talking about Jace.

  “Know what?” I asked. I knew, I just wanted to be sure.

  “Who you really are,” she said as she laid back on the floor of her cage. “I won’t tell him.”

  Thank you.

  “Why won’t you help us?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  She sighed as she stretched her arm along the floor, brushing the tips of her cracking fingers against the iron bars.

  “If he really wanted my help I wouldn’t be trapped here.”

  “You said no.”

  “And that makes this okay?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean —” I didn’t even know what I meant. “He has his reasons,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

  She didn’t seem convinced and I didn’t blame her. I didn’t sound very convincing at all.

  “You know what sucks about immortality?” She asked, turning her head so she could gaze at me from where she lay.

  “What?” I asked. I stepped forward and wrapped my hand around the cool bar.

  “You’ll never die, but everything you love will.”

  “There are things you love?”

  I didn’t realize how stupid it sounded until it left my mouth.

  I couldn’t believe I just said that.

  “We were all human once,” she said and turned her head away from me. “But the line blurs between what’s right and what isn’t. What used to be right — is no longer right for you and you have to make a choice. Do you continue to follow your old beliefs even though they don’t feel right anymore? Or do you adapt and change to what everyone else thinks is wrong?”

  She sat up.

  “I don’t do things because they’re the wrong things to do. I do them because they’re right to me. I do what’s right for me.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  Rhiannon crawled closer toward me and wrapped her hand around the same bar, just below mine. Tilting her head back, she stared up at me with wide green eyes, and the gold specks seemed to sparkle without light shining upon us.

  “I didn’t choose to be a vampire,” she said. “I didn’t want to be this way, but I’m not sorry for what I’ve become because I’ve learned from what I’ve done.”

  She didn’t take her eyes off of mine.

  ‘Are you sorry? For what you’ve become?’

  She stopped talking, and forced her words into my mind again.

  “For what?” I asked out loud.

  ‘Living a lie.’

  “How do you even know? You don’t know anything.”

  Now it was annoying me, her invasion of my privacy. She had no right to my thoughts, my history. She had no right to any of it.

  She tilted her head down and moved her eyes to look up at me. A smirk appeared at the corner of her lips and they cracked a little more. Dark blood rushed from them, filling the spaces.

  “Really?” I could hear the disbelief in her voice. “I know all about you and your brother. The Grim Reaper was obsessed with you two when you were born.”

  I didn’t want to hear this.

  “He kidnapped my brother.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you mean you know?”

  “I met him. Apollo. You look the same, well, you have more freckles and his voice was deeper.”

  Was?

  I frowned a little, but it faded quickly.

  I wanted to ask her if he was still alive but I couldn’t bring myself to find the right words to say. I couldn’t bring myself to ask, so I didn’t. I think I was scared to know the truth; or maybe I was just scared to think he was gone because of me.

  I hoped she would invade my thoughts again and just tell me anyway, whether I asked or not, but she kept her lips tightly pressed together. She was looking at me, her eyes wide, it felt like she could see every thought I was thinking and everything I had ever thought about. All of my experiences, all of my memories. Exposed like a flesh wound.

  I felt like she saw it all, while I saw nothing, aside from the obvious look of sadness.

  She frowned instantly and turned away from me.

  She was still reading my mind.

  I leaned against the cage.

  “What do you care about?” I asked, I was curious. She had brought it up, maybe she wanted to talk about it. “Did you have family?”

  “I do,” she said, still avoiding my gaze. “We were all turned.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Hopefully somewhere far away.”

  “Did something bad happen?”

  “People change,” she said, then shook her head. “My family was everything to me and just when I thought I’d do anything for them, when I thought there was nothing that would make me betray them... I couldn’t watch my sister murder a child. Not him. He was just a boy but he was different.” She sighed. “It didn’t matter what I was or what he would become. It was still wrong to me. He was defenseless, and I realized then that things weren’t as black and white as I thought.”

  “You’re talking about Jace, aren’t you?”

  “A vampire with a conscience,” she forced a laugh. “How stupid.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Easy for you to say when your actions haven’t landed you in a cage.” She looked down and traced her finger in the dirt that rested on the floor of where she sat.

  “I’m telling you, he has his reasons,” I insisted.

  “He told me if they don’t kill me, he will.” She examined her finger and then looked at me. “What’s his reason for that? Do I deserve to die just because I’m a vampire?”

  Days ago, I would have said yes without a second thought after that encounter in Edgewick with the revenants. Days ago, I wanted them all dead. All of his creatures. I wanted that for so long, for my whole life. But now I was conflicted. She saved his life — more than once — one of those times being very recently. Just as she said, things weren’t black and white. He was my best friend and she cared about him, clearly that counted for something.

  “No,” I said.

  “Do you mind telling him that? He of all people should know what it feels like to be judged for what you are.”

  She had a point.

  “Can’t you just get into his mind and find out what he’s thinking? I mean, you keep invading mine, so —”

  “He’s a werewolf. It doesn’t work with other — types. Only humans; it helps us pick our prey easily. Who will scream, who won’t.”

  I tried not to react to her words. It bothered me somewhat, considering she was talking about attacking and biting humans. Feeding on them. I tried to ignore it.

  I didn’t try hard enough.

  “I’m sure it’ll be the same once you become a chronomancer —” she said as she wiped her finger on her dress.

  “I’m not,” I cut her off.

  “Whatever you say —” she sat up suddenly and turned her head. I’ve seen that same reaction from Jace before; she was listening for something. “Mae,” she started, her voice was warning. “I think you should go back into the — Mae!”

  Talons latched onto my shoulders and lifted me in the air. Rhiannon moved toward the bars of her cage and tilted her head back to look up at me.

  “Faustine!” She shouted.

  I didn’t want to look up. I didn’t want to see the monster named Faustine. The monster who murdered an entire town. I didn’t want to.

  But I di
d. I looked up.

  Why did we always do things we knew we shouldn’t? When we knew we wouldn’t like it, we looked anyway.

  Then we couldn’t look away.

  I was terrified by what I saw and yet I couldn’t stop looking at it.

  What yanked me away from the bars, what lifted me in the air — flapping its large bat-like wings — mimicked something straight out of a nightmare. This creature stemmed nightmares. Its chalky gray body pulled me higher while its monstrous face hissed at me, baring fangs.

  Rhiannon was yelling below me but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Not at first, though eventually I snapped out of it. I gripped at his feet and struggled to try to get him to release me but his hold was too strong. I reached for my dagger and sliced the top of his foot open. He screeched in pain, and dropped me right on top of the cage in the middle of the town square.

  A large wolf came out of nowhere. He lunged at the creature before it had another chance to attack me. It took a few seconds for me to register that it was Jace. I should have known from the start, but he looked so different now than he had in Edgewick. He was more of a wolf than man, nearly fully.

  “Get down!” Rhiannon shouted at me, motioning for me to climb off of the cage.

  “What is that thing?” I asked, my back was pressing against the side of the cage now after my feet planted on the ground. I watched as Jace clawed into its flesh.

  “It’s a vampire,” she said. “Faustine.”

  I turned around suddenly and backed away from her cage.

  “That’s what we really look like,” she told me. “Older ones, anyway. Newer ones can’t transform within the first few decades — will you please stop that — I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Can you turn into that?” I asked, eyeing my dagger. It had fallen into her cage.

  “I’m a lot older than a few decades,” she said, eyeing it too. She picked it up and stuck the handle out toward me.

  I stared at it, I didn’t know if it was a trick for me to move closer to her or if she was being genuine. How did I know she wasn’t working with the vampire trying to kill Jace? That just tried to kill me?

  “I do what’s right for me,” she said softly.

  I don’t know why, but I believed her.

  When I took the handle, she let go.

  “Don’t put it away just in case he comes back for you,” she instructed and turned to the sky.

  My gaze followed.

  Faustine had thrown Jace so hard that he fell through the wall of a building. He broke right through it. Faustine looked at me then, but before he could come closer, Jace leapt onto his back and ripped through his wing with his massive claw. They were spinning now, while Faustine tried to shake him off.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t help in Edgewick, I had to help him now. I gripped the handle of my dagger tighter and took a step forward.

  Rhiannon grabbed my shoulder.

  “Let him do this,” she said. “He needs this.”

  “I have to help him! I — ”

  “You are, by staying out of the way.” She didn’t take her eyes off of the two of them. “This was what werewolves were created to do.”

  So we watched. My back pressed once more against the bars of Rhiannon’s cage and the two of us kept our eyes on the sky. On Jace and his brutal fight with the vampire, Faustine.

  “Why did he try to attack me?” I asked, rubbing my shoulder. The one Faustine had latched onto, the one Rhiannon had grabbed. She was surprisingly strong for being so small.

  “I told you, Drarkodon must know.”

  “So take us to Mithlonde, Rhiannon.”

  I turned my head slightly to the side, but not enough so that I could see her. I just wanted to make sure I heard her when she answered me.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  Jace had always felt like he had something to prove. I wonder if the same thing rang true for her. Before I could think any further on it, Faustine’s head dropped at my feet.

  His black eyes stared at me — glassy and coldly. His face slowly relaxed from a scowl. I looked away just as Jace jumped in front of me, still the size of a bear.

  He growled.

  I gripped the handle of my dagger tightly again. Don’t make me do this, Jace. I don’t want to do this. But I noticed he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at Rhiannon.

  I hope you would’ve stopped me before I made a mistake.

  He took a step forward.

  I didn’t move from where I stood. Our eyes were locked with each other’s and I slowly shook my head.

  “You and me, Jace. Don’t do it.” My voice was shaky, and barely audible. Softer than a whisper.

  His head tilted slightly. He was listening to my words, and then he took off, running out of the town square when others began to emerge. Looks of fear, etched onto their faces.

  I sighed in relief.

  I turned to look at Rhiannon, who was still looking at the spot where he once stood, frozen like a statue. She was petrified.

  The man who locked Rhiannon up, Tobo, poked at the vampire head at my feet as he turned to find the body, before looking at me.

  He pointed his meaty finger in my face and again, I backed up against her cage. “You —” he said accusingly, “you’re luring them back!”

  “What?”

  “That’s why you’re out here, ain’t it? With this creature — you’re tryna help them take back their town!”

  “That’s not true!” Rhiannon shouted from behind me. “If he wanted to do that, he wouldn’t have brought a werewolf with him! Or did you not see that?”

  “Werewolves are just as bad as you are, creature. We’re going to find him and we’re going to kill him. They’re —”

  She pointed at the decapitated head.

  “They’re not on our side.”

  “She’s right, Tobo.” A skinnier man said as he approached us. His knees were shaking. “Why else would he have killed it?”

  Tobo was an oversized man and there was a small part of me that considered he might be part ogre. He was huge, with arms too big, he probably couldn’t lift them high over his head or reach behind his back. The sleeves on his shirt were going to burst at the seams.

  “Fine,” he said. “We won’t hunt him.”

  I gulped and he shoved me so hard against Rhiannon’s cage that it rattled behind me before he walked away. He picked up the decapitated head while a few others picked up the body. I didn’t want to know what they planned to do with it.

  “Go find him,” Rhiannon told me as I turned around. “Remember where we met? Make sure he didn’t wander into those woods. He was headed that way.”

  “Why?”

  “Just find him,” she said. She sounded worried which put me on edge. He got her locked in there and if something was bad enough to put that expression on her face nonetheless — the uncertainty and fear — then I knew I should be worried too. “Keep your dagger out,” she continued. “You may have to defend yourself — even against him.”

  No, I wouldn’t.

  * * * * *

  Though I was in denial about having to use my dagger against him, I kept it in my hand like it was glued there. Those are the Whispering Woods, she told me. They swayed without wind and whispered in the silence. Even when you’re alone, it won’t feel like it. It’ll feel like you have a million eyes on you, watching you, and maybe you do.

  Things lurked there. They lurked, they hid, they waited. Bloodthirsty and starved, with terror in their eyes, maybe their looks alone could kill. Malnourished bodies and rotting skin. The woods would whisper. They would tell you things. They would drive you mad.

  Keep yourself sane, she warned me. Think of a positive memory and don’t let go.

  At first, I thought that maybe she was just trying to scare me. You know, prepare me for the worst so when I went in, if I had to go in, I wouldn’t be as frightened. That I’d go in with confidence because once I’d get there, I’d see tha
t it wasn’t so bad.

  But it was bad like she said; and so much worse.

  Nerwenye had come out and brought me a blanket for him for when I found him. She seemed like the only person in Thealey who gave a damn about us. Jace wasn’t an old werewolf, he didn’t have experience that others did, and now he was wounded somewhere after risking his life for people who hardly cared at all. Who were willing to hunt him only moments ago.

  What happened to Aridete? What happened to its people? I thought of Ferris again, and the man who threw me off the train. All of those people in Nevressea. I wondered if they all just believe that hope was lost. Things had been at a standstill, not getting worse but not getting better either. It was nothing but negativity that surrounded us, engulfed us. It was crushing us whole, smothering out any bit of light we had left within ourselves. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to restore it.

  That just meant we had to get to the land of the dragons that much faster.

  I was lucky that I spotted him before I had to enter the woods. I knew right where to go rather than needing to roam around and possibly get lost. By the way Rhiannon made it sound, that wasn’t a place I wanted to get lost in.

  I could feel the sickness seeping out of it. It was like you’d find anything and everything dark festering in there. I didn’t remember it giving off this energy before, but it was daytime then, and I was a little preoccupied by Jace’s vampire-angel-girlfriend.

  He was back down to his human form and I draped the blanket over him. His breathing was heavy — breathing was good — and he wasn’t as injured as I thought he would be.

  There were a few deep cuts on his arm, and one on his side, but nothing he couldn’t come back from. When I crouched too close, I felt like I was sitting right next to the sun.

  His body temperature was rising and his eyelids fluttered.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, trying not to get too close.