“Then what were you doing on top of me?” I ask, rubbing my eyes. Of all the ways to wake up.
“I — um — I couldn’t help it. You look so much like him. I had to get a closer look to make sure you weren’t.”
“We are twins,” I say, rubbing my sternum.
“No, I don’t mean Apollo, I mean Drarkodon.” He lets out a loud laugh and slaps his knee before flapping his hand. “Nah, I’m just kidding! I swear,” he says, his hands go back up in surrender while his oversized sleeves fall to his elbows. “Please don’t hurt me.”
I frown and rub my face. Is this a dream? It has to be a dream. “Who are you?” I ask, peeking at him through my fingers. Nope, he’s still there.
“Benny Polk!” he shouts his name at me while he rocks back and forth on the stool he’s perched upon. “Sorry for what happened here, I didn’t think you’d actually come.”
“What?”
“I mean, when I showed you. Showed your spirit. I was actually trying to make sure you’d stay away —”
I furrow my brows. “Wait — that was you?”
“Well, of course it was me. Who else would it’ve been?”
I shake my head and stand up. “I thought — I don’t know. I’m not sure, I guess. Why do you keep disappearing?”
“He’s a specter,” Nadia says as she climbs over the debris and into the room from the hallway. “And an annoying one at that.” She glares at him.
Benny shrugs. “His friends wanted to know where he was.”
“Who?” I ask.
Rhiannon shoves the front door open, rubble from the caved in wall get cleared as she squeezes her way into my house. Miko and Nova follow after she comes barging in. Rhiannon looks relieved when she catches sight of me. ‘Oh thank the Immortal Ones.’
Rhiannon?
She frowns. ‘Artemis?’ I look over at Nadia as I move to hug Rhiannon. She said something about opening my mind. Rhiannon can hear my thoughts again. I take a step back, pulling her from me. My hands are clasped around her arms and I stare at her intently. ‘I missed you,’ she tells me, she doesn’t take her eyes off of mine.
I’m sorry.
She smiles at me and shakes her head, her blonde hair falls perfectly around her face as always. But then she looks at my hands and her smile fades. She inhales deeply. I turn away from her. Nova has his arms out, waiting for a hug too. He’s grinning and then it hits me.
He hasn’t aged. He still looks exactly the same as he had a couple weeks ago, when he should at least be in his thirties by now. “It worked?”
“It worked!” I haven’t seen him smile so widely, so broadly. His laugh is a roar as he hugs me, wrapping his arms tightly around my body, he picks me up and squeezes me tightly.
“Nova!” I tap his shoulder. “Put me down — I can’t breathe!” His arms are wrapped too tightly around my chest. He drops me back onto the floor and I take a deep breath, rubbing my collar bone.
“I thought you were dead,” he says, slapping the back of my shoulder with a heavy hand. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Look around,” I tell him as I pivot on my feet and rub my shoulder. “I had to come.”
“Not alone!” Rhiannon snaps as she grabs my arm and turns me around. “Any one of us would have come with you.”
“I can take care of myself,” I say. My hand moves to rub my arm.
“So can the rest of us,” Miko says, crossing her arms. “You could have been killed.”
“If Benny hadn’t told us you were with ghouls…” Rhiannon smacks Nova’s arm. “And you! Just letting him go off on his own.”
He rubs his arm and frowns at her. “It’s not like I could’ve stopped him.” He turns his attention to me, his hand is still resting against his arm. “How’d you get away, anyway?”
“It was the coolest thing,” Nadia says. As she steps closer, Rhiannon moves closer to me, defensively. Creating a barrier between me and Nadia. “He disintegrated them to dust.”
“You created a time bomb?” Nova asks, his eyebrows are raised. He looks impressed.
I shrug. “I don’t know, really. I don’t remember. I just remember light filling the room. Really bright light. After that — nothing.” I don’t look at Nadia. I don’t bring up the fact that I might have died again. Rhiannon’s staring at me curiously. I quickly let my thoughts go blank. “What’s a time bomb?”
“Aging something to dust, basically,” Nova says.
Rhiannon shifts her gaze over to Nadia. “So then why are you alive?”
She shrugs and points at me. “He spared me.”
Rhiannon crosses her arms and looks up at me. “You know what she is, right?”
“You know what you are?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. She narrows her eyes, challenging me.
‘Are you two suddenly best friends? You hardly —’
“Okay, tension, tension,” Benny interrupts, and thank the Immortal Ones for that. “Can we can all play catch up somewhere safe, please? Something’s coming.”
“What?” I ask.
“You don’t want to know,” he says, his voice is trembling more than he is.
I look back at Nadia and she shakes her head.
“It can’t be more ghouls,” she says. “They were all in there.”
“No,” Benny says. “Not creatures of the Underworld.” He looks around, keeping his gaze off of all of us. “Wolves.”
A wolf comes bursting in the front opening of the house, through door Rhiannon cleared. I take a step back — until I recognize him. His eyes; the left is discolored, gray and brown. There’s a scar lining his face.
I step in front of everyone, nearly slipping on the rubble as I walk to the door. “Jace?”
The wolf stares at me curiously, tilting his head.
“Get away from it!” Benny squawks, but I ignore him.
“Jace, it’s me.”
The wolf jumps over the rubble, and Jace stands up in its place. He’s still staring at me. It’s almost like he doesn’t think I’m real. For a while there, I nearly forgotten about the scar I gave him.
“Mae?” he says, he shakes his head then, but he doesn’t take his eyes off of me. He still calls me Mae. “You’re alive? But I — I saw you die.”
“Welcome to the club,” Nadia mumbles.
I shrug, ignoring her.
“They wouldn’t let me into the Underworld,” I say, trying to ease the tension. “Surprise?”
He's still shirtless. Not that it surprises me, but there's a wool sarong wrap tied around his hips. Nadia raises her eyebrows and bites on her lip, and Rhiannon just looks away. “How is this possible?” he asks, he grabs my shoulders and yanks me into a hug before I have time to react.
“I’m a chronomancer now,” I say, and frown. I take a step back from him and cross my arms. “Wait, you didn’t know I came back to life?”
He takes a step back too and shakes his head. “I’ve been distracting myself,” he says, scratching the side of his neck.
“But I’ve been in the paper —”
“I haven’t read any news. I’ve avoided most of the mun territories because of it. Think I wanted to be reminded about what happened there? I watched the hag tear out your throat, Mae.” His voice is shaky when he speaks. “Because I wasn’t fast enough. I watched you die — and I didn’t know how to deal with that. You were my family and I had no one —”
“You had me.” The two of us look at Rhiannon. Her arms are still crossed.
“It’s good to see you,” he says.
She presses her lips together as she narrows her eyes. Rhiannon just shakes her head as she scoffs, and climbs out of the house the same way she had come in. The same way he had come in. ‘Whatever.’ Jace looks back at me.
“You left her, Jace. Again.”
He just nods, th
en he freezes. “Rhiannon just went outside — the sun!”
I grab his arm when he starts for the door and shake my head. “She’s fine.”
“How?” he asks as I let go of his wrist.
“I gave her this — never mind — she’s fine.”
The roof above us cracks. We move to the outer parts of the crumbling house as it begins to collapse, and Rhiannon falls through a new hole in the ceiling. Jace shoves me out of the way and catches her. But she hits him until he puts her down. Her eyes turn black and her skin begins to turn gray.
“What just happened?” I ask as I get off of the ground.
“We have company,” Miko says, she has her sai out, and Benny disappeared. Nova’s hands blacken, resembling lava rock, with glowing red cracks running through them. Nadia’s crawling back through the rubble to get to the hallway and out of the line of fire.
Another wolf jumps right in with us, through the hole Rhiannon fell from. “I knew you were following me,” Jace says to the wolf. “Stand down.”
The large brown wolf growls, baring its teeth at Jace.
“I can take care of myself,” Rhiannon says, shoving Jace out of the way. Caught off guard, he falls hard against the wreckage, the wood pierces through his skin. Her eyes widen. He fumbles with the debris and yanks it out of his body. Jace tosses it to the side when he gets back to his feet.
“I know you can,” he says. “I don’t want you to hurt — my sister.”
“I’m sorry,” Rhiannon says, cupping her hands over her mouth. When she reaches for his wound, the wolf lunges at her. Nova steps forward and punches it in the neck, throwing the wolf backward. It lands hard on a broken cement block. It shakes its head.
“Kina, stop.” Jace stands defensively in front of Rhiannon while the wolf gets up. “I won’t let you kill her.”
The wolf growls at him once more. She leaps over me and jumps against the rubble to push herself out of the hole she had come in through. Jace goes out after her.
Chapter NINE
dare me
Benny reappears again, mumbling something about being lucky. Nadia is poking her head out through the rubble in the hallway and Rhiannon — she’s on the ground. “Are you okay?” I ask, kneeling down beside her. “You aren’t hurt or anything are you?”
She shakes her head.
“Not physically, no.” She looks up at me from where she sits. “Did you see what I did?”
“It was an accident.” I stand, reaching my hand out to her. “We all make mistakes. I mean —” I press my lips together and glance to the side, “ — look what I did to his face.”
She sighed. “He was trying to kill you.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Rhiannon looks down at my hand, she stares at it for a second longer than I think she will. I don’t think she’s going to accept my offer, but then she finally does and pulls herself to her feet. She brushes debris off of her skirt as Jace comes back through the front door.
“Wait, wait. Just wait a minute,” Benny says as he slides off of his stool when Jace comes back in. “You didn’t come here to kill us?”
He frowns. “No,” he says and looks at me. “I came here because of Mae.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
He points to his multicolored eye. “Remember when I said I was seeing things? About a month or so ago, give or take a few weeks, I saw Newacre — like this — and I didn’t know what I meant. So I decided to come and see for myself… I wasn’t expecting to run into you. But knowing you’re alive? Fuck, that explains a lot.”
“Like what?”
“I kept seeing my bed at the cabin and the snow — and Rhiannon.” He glances at her. His voice lowers at the mention of her name. She looks away from him and he looks back at me. “I think sometimes I can see what you see.”
“I think I saw your family,” I say. “My vision kind of blurred and suddenly I saw all of these faces. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.”
“Family?” Benny asks, his voice cracks.
“Yeah.” Jace says. “I have family — a large one too, ghost boy.” Benny clears his throat. “Turns out my family was alive and they thought I was dead. Kina — the one who followed me here — she’s the youngest. My only little sister.”
“Out of how many?” Benny asks before I can say anything.
“Well,” Jace starts, “There’s Champ, Dapper, Effie, Rev, Gally, Hal, Dylin, and Kina.”
He gulps.
“They have weird names,” Nadia says, leaning against the door frame. “Are they nicknames?”
“Our actual names aren't much better.”
“They don’t tell you their real names unless they trust you,” Nova says.
“You never told me your name, Jace,” I say, turning toward him. “Rhiannon did.”
“That wasn’t because I didn’t trust you,” he says. “I just don’t like it.”
“Jubilation,” Miko snorts. Jace pushes her and she falls back onto the couch, still laughing.
“How do you even know?”
“That’s what Rhiannon usually calls you,” she explains between laughs.
“Does nobody care that our lives were just in danger?” Benny asks.
“Jace?” A girl pops her head in through the opening of where my front door once was. Benny jumps at the sight of her and shifts to hide behind Nova, who tries to push him off from clawing his shoulder. She's wearing a wool wrap too. Covering her body, it comes halfway down her thighs. I recognize her. I’ve seen her face. She’s looping her long dark hair into braids, and I see Jace in her features. Now that I can see her clearly, she looks just like him. He scowls at her.
“I thought I told you to go home.”
“I know but —”
“Go home,” he says, before moving toward Rhiannon, but he doesn’t look away from Kina. “Dad will call for you before he calls for me.”
“No,” she says, stepping foot further into what was left of the house. “I spent thirteen years with them. I’m staying. I’m not losing you again.”
‘We all think that, don’t we.’
Stop it.
Rhiannon glances at me.
“Kina, you’re safer with them —”
“I don’t care!” Her voice is loud for someone so small. She's roughly the same size as Rhiannon, but bigger in build. “You really think I care about what’s safer? You’re my brother. I spent most of my life thinking you were dead. I’m not leaving.”
Rhiannon leaves Jace’s side and takes a step toward her. Kina stares at her with hesitancy, her eyes are wide, and she carefully watches every move Rhiannon makes but she doesn’t attack her. Rhiannon extends her hand out to Kina. “I’m Rhiannon,” she says. “He used to talk about you a lot.”
Kina doesn’t say anything though, she just stares at her before looking at Jace. He raises his eyebrows and nods toward Rhiannon.
“Looks like we feel the same way about you, Rhiannon,” Nadia says.
“You took care of him?” Kina asks, her gaze falls to Rhiannon’s pale hand. Even if Rhiannon wasn’t a vampire, she stuck out like a sore thumb. She was the palest person in the room, with Nova a close second.
“I did my best,” she says.
Kina pushes Rhiannon’s hand down and throws her arms around her. “He’s alive because of you,” she says, grabbing onto her tightly. Kina grips onto the material of Rhiannon’s dress that covers her shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Or maybe not.” Nadia sighs.
Rhiannon looks taken aback by the hug. Her jaw is slightly dropped, and it takes her a few seconds to wrap her own arms around Kina. She’s surprised.
“You’re just going to accept her, just like that?” Benny asks, appearing beside them. Kina jumps and lets go of Rhiannon. “She’s a vampire. You’re a —”
>
“She never did anything to me,” Kina says. “She protected my brother —” she turns to face Rhiannon, “— my brothers, they’re convinced you kept him from us.”
“I tried to tell them differently,” Jace says, looking at Rhiannon too. He’s searching for some kind of approval from her. I lean against the edge of the couch. “They just won’t listen to me.”
“I think they — well mostly Dad — just doesn’t like that he’s in lo —” Jace covers Kina’s mouth, and she pushes him away from her. “Get off of me!”
“If you want to stay, you shut your mouth.”
“Fine.” She plops down onto the couch beside Miko.
“Mae, things have been popping up all over the place,” Jace tells me. “Bad things —”
“We’re not things,” Nadia says.
“And I wasn’t talking to you. Who even are you?”
“Of course,” she says with a slight scoff. “Arthur would have sassy friends too.”
“Arthur?” Everyone says in union and looks at me.
I shrug. “That’s just what she wants to call me.”
“Why not Temis? Mis — Misty.”
“Anyway,” I say, ignoring Benny.
“You painted your nails?” Jace asks, looking at my hands which are resting against the couch. I get up from where I lean. I reach into my back pocket and pull out the blood stained bear. His expression falters.
“We weren’t here for her.”
His lips part slightly, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, he just nods, and chews on the inside of his cheek and turns away from me. I stuff it back into my pocket. He lets himself out and Kina gets up to follow.
“I’ll go,” I say, and she sits back down. I glance at Rhiannon, and she looks at me with a defeated expression. Her shrug is subtle.
I follow Jace outside and he’s standing near Mr. Jameson’s apple tree, looking up at the branches.
“I’ve never seen it like this,” he says, knowing I’m there. “Without the apples and leaves, I mean. Not once. Do you think it was because of Weylan?”
The Midnight Strider (The Chronomancer Chronicles Book 2) Page 9