by Cara Wylde
I once again brought the map of the parallel universes to the front of my attention, and confirmed that I’d jumped very far, indeed, but not far enough. I was in a dimension that was far in the future, when few humans and supernaturals were left on Earth, and nature had reclaimed most of the planet. I liked to come here when I felt stressed or overwhelmed. But this was not the place I wanted or needed now. I had to try again.
Dream jumping was a matter of will. It wasn’t a skill that could actually be taught or learned from someone else. I was sure every dream jumper had their own process and technique that worked for them. In my case, wishing to be in a certain place usually did the trick.
I was in the mountains, the clear stream running a few feet away, then I was not.
I was somewhere else.
Night. Darkness. No streetlights, because I wasn’t in a city. A dog barked in the distance.
Shit. I doubt the Great Old Ones have dogs. If they kept pets, they certainly weren’t dogs, or cats, or hamsters.
I jumped a third time.
A busy street in the heart of a city where everyone spoke Spanish.
Not it.
Another thing about dream jumping was that space and time could both be relative. If I wanted to find myself in a specific location that I’d already visited before in another dimension, it could be done. I could jump right there. But if I hadn’t been to that dimension before, I could find myself in a city, in a forest, or underground. It was completely random. The dimension I was aiming for now was supposed to be completely different from anything I’d ever seen before. Aunt Katia had told me once that when she first landed there, she couldn’t recognize a thing. She could barely breathe the air, and barely make out her surroundings. It was as if there were buildings around her, buildings that rose toward the sky, but when she looked at them, her vision went blurry, like she couldn’t focus on one thing, she couldn’t distinguish the details. Her brain couldn’t gather the elements and stimuli available and come up with a coherent image. So, I knew that if I did manage to reach this distant universe, I’d recognize it in an instant by how unrecognizable everything would be.
I jumped again, and again… I failed.
It’s no use. This will take me forever, and I don’t have forever.
I made the next decision on instinct and crossed to Aunt Katia’s dimension. One of the interesting things about her universe was that when it was night in mine, it was always day in hers. She was slightly in the future, a few years ahead of my timeline. In her universe, Mila didn’t exist. I didn’t exist, either. Not anymore. Here, the storyline was significantly different. In short, Valentine Morningstar had never been an asshole, he’d married Katerina Angelov – the love of his life, – but she’d died giving birth to their baby – Mila Josephine. The baby didn’t survive, either. Heartbroken, Morningstar made a pact with the Valentine Morningstar of my dimension – evil Morningstar, as I liked to call him. Evil Morningstar had broken his scythe, so good Morningstar promised him his scythe if he could give him his Katia back. So, evil Morningstar tricked my Aunt Katia into crossing dimensions, and when she took over the perfectly preserved body of her counterpart, he destroyed her body in her home dimension. So, yes, Domina was right when she said Aunt Katia had been kidnapped. But the whole thing was too complicated to explain, and it was also very personal. Family business. Anyway, it was clear to me that Domina wasn’t worth trying to convince. She didn’t want to know the truth, she only wanted to stir drama and ruin reputations, so she could feel better about herself.
Back to the storyline. The most important things to retain were: Mila had never made it to Grim Reaper Academy, and that meant she’d never found me. Most likely, I spent the first part of my life in that awful orphanage in Bulgaria, then I was out on the streets, fending for myself. Maybe I made it, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I had a decent life, maybe I died young. I was a bit embarrassed to admit that I was afraid to investigate and see if I could find out what had happened to my counterpart in this parallel dimension. It was probably better to never know. It wasn’t like I could do anything about it.
I was standing in the middle of Aunt Katia’s garden, between her rose bushes. I leaned over and smelled them hungrily. The seasons here were different, too. Back in my world, we were in early September. Here, it seemed to be late spring. The rich scent of the blooming roses and freshly cut grass filled my lungs. I straightened my back and took my time looking around the garden, registering all the colors and shapes. It was like therapy for my soul. Aunt Katia opened the terrace door and smiled at me.
“What a wonderful surprise! Come in, Yoli. Had your coffee yet?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know it’s midnight where I come from.”
She laughed and waved me inside. “Tea, then.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“Out and about. You know how he is. Someone promised him apple saplings, and he went to get them.”
“Wow. You guys like keeping busy. Except everything you do is boring and for retired people.”
“We are retired!” She laughed as she put the kettle on the stove.
They kind of were. They’d been on this Earth for a long, long time, even if it didn’t show. On the outside, they looked like they were in their late forties. Morningstar was a nephilim – half archangel and half human, – so he lived a long life. He wasn’t immortal, but he wasn’t far from it, either. He aged incredibly slow. Since Aunt Katia had found the flower of Gilgamesh, she’d been able to keep up with him. The only reason I was still here was because she’d been generous enough to share it with me. Since Mila couldn’t dream jump anymore – the ability had vanished along with her humanity, – she rarely saw her daughter. Only when she dream jumped herself for a quick visit. But nowadays, Mila was too busy reaping, and Aunt Katia was more than happy to have me around and treat me like a second daughter.
“How’s school?” She asked the question so casually, as if I were barely sixteen and we were talking about my first year in high school.
“Not what I expected, but somehow… exactly what I expected.”
“In a good way, or a bad way?”
“Both.” I munched on my lower lip. When she didn’t say anything, I remembered she always knew when I was lying. “In a bad way, yeah. But it doesn’t matter. I can deal with it. It’s all noise, you know. I’m not there to graduate.”
“You will graduate, though. And become a Grim Reaper.” She turned to me, a huge smile on her beautiful face. “And we will be so proud of you.”
She poured the tea. Her long blond hair was as shiny as ever, and she had the same eyes as Mila and me. All three of us were blondes with sky-blue eyes, actually. It ran in the family. Mila was the only one who dyed her hair blue and kept it rather short. Even after all this time, she hadn’t made peace with her roots – metaphorical, but also literal, as in… her blond roots.
“Are you staying for lunch?” She checked her watch. “Valentine should be here soon. We’re having fish and veggies.”
Yes, I could eat and drink while dream traveling. It was insane, and I couldn’t believe it myself at first, but it was possible. For one, I could materialize a sort of physical body for a short time, if I focused hard enough. That way, I could interact with the world around me. I could touch things and people. I could consume food and drinks, and… this was even more insane! No one had figured out how it worked yet. Researchers from around the world – and not only from my universe – had been on it for years, and they still couldn’t understand how a dream traveler could consume things in a parallel dimension, and those things would be transferred to their actual bodies in their home dimension. As if our stomachs were… some sort of teleportation devices. Honestly, I myself hadn’t given this oddity much thought. I was only happy that I could eat and drink, because with my enhanced senses, everything I put in my mouth was simply divine.
“I can’t stay,” I said. “I have to get some sleep in.” If
I dream traveled all night, I’d wake up exhausted in the morning. And I’d already pushed myself by jumping so many times. “I came to ask you… To beg you…” I leaned over the table, took her hand in mine, and looked her in the eyes. “Please, Aunt Katia, please give me your map. I can’t find the cosmic dimension by myself.” We started calling it the cosmic dimension a while ago, after one of the names some devotees of the Great Old Ones used – cosmic spawns. “I don’t have much time left. I’m at the Academy now, and I found Yig’s nest. It’s only a matter of time before I figure out how to banish him. But I have to know where to banish him, when it comes to it.”
She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”
“But you’ve gone there so many times!”
“And it has taken a toll on me. Finding my way back gets harder and harder every time I cross. On my last visit, I picked as many flowers as I could. They will last us both for a while. I’m not sure…” She paused, looking over my shoulder. For a moment, she behaved as if she’d seen a ghost in the garden. With a sigh, she refocused her gaze on me. “I’m not sure I want to go there again. In three years, you will be a Grim Reaper, and you’ll be granted immunity from death. I will use the plant that I have, and for as long as it lasts… it lasts. When I won’t have any left, I’ll start aging, but I’m fine with that. I’ve cheated death long enough.” She chuckled. “The Grim Reapers are probably salivating for my soul. By the way, which cabal are you?”
“Merciful Death.”
She squeezed my hand. “I knew it! I’m proud of you, Yoli. It’s a good cabal to be in.”
I laughed. “Everyone thought I’d be Violent Death. I don’t know why. I mean, I do, but I’m so much more than what I did when I was a kid. They don’t know me, so they assume that if I killed once, constrained by the circumstances, I must add, then it means I’m okay with violence. I’m not.”
“I know. I know. If it makes you feel any better, I never wanted you to be VDC. I prayed you wouldn’t be sorted in that dreadful cabal.”
I smiled. “Because you didn’t want me to confront Mila and be the one to retire her.”
She nodded. “It’s better this way.”
“It is. So many people think Mila is going to turn into the new Morningstar. They say she’ll refuse to retire.”
“She won’t. She’s not her father. She won’t make his mistakes.”
“But what if…” I bit the inside of my cheek so hard that I almost drew blood. “We always avoid talking about it, but… maybe we should. What if I do manage to banish the Great Old One sleeping under the Academy, the monster who brought Mila back to life as a revenant, and once the creature leaves our dimension, Mila loses her… immortality?” Life. The right word was life, not immortality.
The revenants were immortals created and sustained by the various monstrous, cosmic beings hiding in oceans and caves, in the deepest, most impenetrable darkness. But the life, youth, and powers they offered came at a horrible cost – human sacrifices. That was why I’d accepted to attend Grim Reaper Academy – because it was the only place that I knew of where I could gain access to a Great Old One, to Yig, the Father of Serpents. Ideally, I would banish all the cosmic monstrosities hiding in our dimension, but to do that, I had to come into contact with at least one. I had to see it, study it, figure it out… Maybe, maybe not. I wasn’t yet sure I had it in me. The devotees said those who looked upon the Great Old Ones went insane. I was probably in need of a better plan, one that didn’t involve looking upon the Great Old Yig.
“Let’s not think of the worst,” Aunt Katia whispered.
“We don’t know what will happen. We have to take everything into consideration.”
She shook her head. We were silent for a few minutes. I sipped my tea. She played with her teaspoon.
“The map. Will you give it to me?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
I sighed. “I need it to move to the next stage. I feel like I’m stuck.”
“It’s too dangerous, please understand. If I give you the map and something happens to you, something bad, I will never forgive myself.”
“What am I supposed to do, then?” I pushed my cup away and stood up. I was getting ready to leave. As much as I liked Aunt Katia, she could be infuriating. I wasn’t a child she had to take care of. I was almost as old as she was!
“If you can bring me proof that the Old Ones can be banished without hurting anyone, then I will give it to you. Before I let you jump to their terrifying dimension, I need to know that you have a plan.”
“I traveled the world, read every fictional and non-fictional account of the cosmic spawns, and talked to every revenant who was willing to talk to me. I’ve exhausted the answers available in my dimension. I believe the solution is in their dimension, and you’re refusing to help me.”
“I’m not… I want you to succeed. I really do. Just…”
She didn’t finish her sentence, and it was better this way. Because I knew she was lying to me. No, she didn’t want me to succeed. Because neither of us had any idea how my success in banishing the cosmic monsters would affect her daughter. And I could understand her, I could empathize. It wasn’t that I wasn’t ready. She was the one who wasn’t ready. There was no point in getting into it now, though. Confronting her about her fears and insecurities would have only ended in hurting her. This was not the day – or night – to convince Katerina Morningstar to give me her dream map.
I thanked her for the tea and jumped back to my dimension. I opened my eyes and waited a few minutes for my body to shake off the sleep paralysis. I got out of the bed, opened the curtains just a little bit, so the sun would slip inside in the morning, then drank a full glass of water. It was 3 AM. Tomorrow, I would have to function on four hours of sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
I kept to myself all week, waiting for Friday. I’d signed up for the Literature class with Professor Lovecraft. It was an extra-curricular, and not many students were interested in it. It was great for vampires, especially since Lovecraft was a vampire himself. From what I’d heard, the class usually turned into a gathering of vamps who sat around, had coffee and talked about the classics. So, as expected, as I made my way to the back of the classroom, I noticed I was the only human there. Scarlett and Ivor from the RDC sat together, and the brunette sneered at me when I passed them. Her long canines promised murder. Why? I wasn’t sure. Maybe she was more than Domina’s best friend. Maybe she was in love with her or something.
Really? This place has messed with my head hard if my inner voice is now immediately coming up with stupid drama. I decided to ignore Scarlett. Ivor was harmless enough. He was best friends with Jace Merlin, and I rather liked Jace. He wasn’t perfect, but at least he was honest. He was the only one who’d had the guts to tell me the truth to my face.
Professor Lovecraft came in, gently placed his books on the teacher’s desk, then rounded it and leaned against its edge as he took in his new students. He was a tall, lanky man. For a vampire, he wasn’t particularly handsome. The way his dark hair thinned around the temples, I could guess he’d turned when he was already pretty old, maybe in his fifties. The first thing he did was to introduce himself in quite a bit of detail, then invite us all to do the same, one by one. When my turn came, I kept it short. He surprised me with a simple smile and a nod, which indicated that he wasn’t going to ask any questions or make me talk about myself more than I wanted to. Then, he moved on and started telling us about the beginnings of the novel as a genre. The first story that was considered a novel had been written in Ancient Greece, and it was called Daphnis and Chloe. Since it was a sort of bucolic romance, I personally found it boring, so I tuned Mr. Lovecraft out.
I didn’t do romance. It wasn’t because I’d had my heart broken countless times. Every time it happened, I realized that what I’d thought was true love had been, in fact, either lust, or a strong friendship, or the need to share my days, my nights, and my empty h
ouse with another soul. Looking back, I could safely say that most of my past relationships had been born of lack. I’d been with some great guys, and I’d been with some toxic ones, too. All humans, because love was such a delicate subject with me that the last thing I needed was a shifter who tried to convince me that I was his forever mate, or a possessive false god who wanted to own every piece of me – physically, mentally, emotionally. Vamps were possessive, mages were jealous and oh-so-capable of taking revenge if they even got a whiff of outside interest in their partner, angels were elusive, and demons were, frankly, pretty scary in their lust-infused love declarations. I didn’t want to consider revenants because, well… I might just become the cause of their extinction one day, and fays or other creatures from the pocket universes were out of the question. They guided their lives by their traditions, and I abhorred anything that was born of societal pressure. When I was younger, I had this dream scenario that I’d one day find a human man, a human knight in shining armor who would love me to the moon and back, who would adore me like no supernatural would ever be capable of, and then, when the time was right and I was one hundred percent certain of his loyalty and devotion, I would reveal to him who I was, what I’d done and what I could do, and then I’d share the flower of eternity with him, brew him a concoction that would lengthen his life, and he’d drink it and ask me to marry him. It never happened. Needless to say, there were no knights in shining armor in the human world. And now, fully living in the supernatural world for the first time, I could safely declare there were none here, either. Many thought phoenixes, and basilisks, and manticores were myths. No. Knights in shining armor were myths. Phoenixes were rare, but they could be found in the Alps, basilisks lived in caves around the equator – they loved hot weather, – and manticores dwelled in Hell, where many high-ranked demons kept them as pets.
The class was over, and I’d successfully zoned out for most of it. The vamps filed out, rushing to their next courses, and I stayed behind. I didn’t want to be late for Anthropology, but Mrs. Po was one of the good ones, and she’d allow a little slip. I needed a word with Mr. Lovecraft.