He chuckled tiredly. “It is a bit much to think about on too deep a level.”
“I must be crazy to want to put myself through all I’ve been through. Okay, yeah, I got to stop trying to make sense of it.”
There was a knock at the door and Sebastien called out, “Come in.”
It was Robert.
“Seeing as it seems to be centered around them, I put in my two cents, now I’m vacating so they can talk amongst themselves.” He eyed Meghan. “Don’t worry about it, Red. We all knew ending this war would not be easy. And might not go fast, either. Of course, I think we were thinking months, maybe years, but not hundreds of years.”
“I wish there was some other way. I could be wrong.”
Robert shook his head. “I don’t think you are. You want to be.”
“I wish I was wrong. It’s almost easier to think of destroying the Stone and ending my life, rather than knowing the various levels of hell those two have to suffer through to get to my time.”
“But we don’t know how to destroy the Stone,” Sebastien reminded as kindly as possible.
“Right. And that problem.”
“So, I’ve seen most of what’s in your head at this point, but I have to ask, Red. You didn’t meet me in this future, did you?”
“No. Sorry. I can’t with any honesty tell you what your future holds.”
“Better off not to think about it. And Jasper, he doesn’t make it.” Statement, not a question.
Meghan sighed. “No. Which really sucks. We could use him. And you. My brother, he doesn’t have anyone to help him. And my other brother, my blood brother, Colby, he’s probably going to need some help at some point too.” She went on to tell Robert how exactly Jasper’s death went down. It only felt right to tell someone. She’d let Robert decide if Jasper should be told or not. He was already struggling with the loss of Aloyna. It would be hard to talk him into a life where he had no future to look forward to, at all.
“I’ll give it some thought,” Robert told her after she was done. He glanced at the door, eyes pinching inward. “They’re about done out there.” He flashed back to Meghan, then to Sebastien, and back to her, and gave a short laugh. “You should just kiss the boy, and put him out of his misery already.”
She choked out a series of words that made no sense, refusing to look at Sebastien who she was certain was ten shades of red himself.
Robert winked, and made to leave them.
“You’re a brave young woman, Red. What you’re doing, it takes guts.” He nodded in a manner meant to show great respect for that.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The entire house and ground shook all around them.
Sebastien dove, with Meghan, into the mattress. Robert balanced in the doorframe and Aloyna and Jasper shouted from the other room.
“C’mon.” Robert ordered them to follow. He got them to the front room as another series of booms pounded outside. “Looks the war has come to us.”
“They know we’re getting too close,” surmised Jasper.
“We can’t stay here. It’s not safe.” Aloyna passed her gaze to Meghan and Sebastien. “We can’t let anyone see you two. No one can know you’re here.”
That would really mess things up they imagined.
Robert waved his arm around and a translucent shield went up around Meghan and Sebastien.
“The three of us are the only ones that can see you. Where to?” he aimed at the others.
“Let’s go see what’s going on out there?” Jasper and Aloyna and Robert readied themselves to fight.
“What about us?” Sebastien asked. “We can fight too.”
“No. We cannot chance you changing the future. Not now.” Aloyna, it seemed, was accepting her fate. “Just stay close.” They left together, with Jasper and Aloyna at the front, and Robert bringing up the rear. Meghan and Sebastien took center in the magic cloak, feeling rather useless and cumbersome.
“Wow,” she mumbled. “Looks like a few bombs went off.”
Buildings were blown apart. There were townsfolk running for their lives. A few, fighting. A few who recognized Aloyna, Jasper, and Robert and were glad to see them joining the fight. This must be some of the others helping, Meghan and Sebastien assumed.
There was a loud whistle of movement overhead. Meghan looked up and gasped at the giant fireball closing in. Robert reached up his hand and first, stopped it in mid-air, and then flung it back to wherever it had come from.
She lowered her head to see Jasper putting protection shields around those on their side. Robert joined him a minute later. While Aloyna shot off spell after spell toward anything flying in their direction.
Soon, they were back near the alley in which she and Sebastien had first come.
Robert peered at them, and nodded curtly. “Stay here. You’ll be safe inside the cloak.” He laughed then, which seemed odd. “If this is somehow my end, then it was a pleasure to meet you both. I wish you all the luck in the world.” He winked as if he really didn’t care whether he lived, or died. Was just excited to play the game.
A strange and lovable sort of fellow. It was refreshing in a way. Someone who held nothing back and let the world roll off him, ready for the next blow.
Jasper and Aloyna were arguing, in the middle of the battle.
Meghan deflated a little. She realized what moment was about to happen. Jasper was about to give in to his fate, and accept what was about to happen. Accept that the prophecy had to happen.
The moment took place just like in her blood memory. He and Aloyna argued, she took on the stance of, this is what’s going to happen, we must accept it. A fireball flew over their heads into the wooden cart still sitting there. Jasper froze the moment, and caved in, agreeing to do it. But refused to call it a goodbye, just a temporary, although a long and painful, separation.
Meghan gasped and clutched her chest.
Jasper and Aloyna spun to make sure she was okay.
Sebastien grabbed hold of her. This was it. Meghan knew it. She’d done what she’d come to do, the rest was now up to them. And her, once she got back home. To make sure all of this sacrifice was worth it.
“We won’t let you down,” Jasper promised solemnly. “We’ll be ready.”
She wanted to yell out to him about the day he died. To try to do something that would stop it from happening. But it was too late. The silvery light entombed her and Sebastien again. She hoped, to bring them home to their time.
CHAPTER 16
Meghan and Sebastien hung on for dear life as they were hurled through time once again.
She heard gasps and voices and they opened their eyes to see Aloyna and Isabella, Ivan and Nona, rushing them.
They were back. They were really back. And at first glance, everything was as it should be.
Meghan got herself stable and standing, and proceeded to connect her gaze with her grandmother, who was looking for confirmation that the final piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.
Ivan made to get up and demand to know what happened, but the stare going down between Aloyna and Meghan was hard. Unbreakable. Speaking a hundred different silent topics. Reading the acceptance all the years had brought with it.
She approached her grandmother, one short step at a time.
“Now, at last, you understand,” was all Aloyna said. Albeit, sympathy was thick in her words.
Meghan nodded. She slid her gaze to her mother.
“My brave daughter. I’m sorry, I didn’t come clean about everything.”
Meghan held up her hand, stopping her.
“You couldn’t, because this hadn’t happened yet. If you’d told me you always knew I was alive, my father would know this too. And he needed to believe the lie. That he was the only one who knew I was alive. He could never find out about what I just did.”
“From here on out, Meghan,” Isabella began, “we are walking on new ground. No one knows the outcome.”
“B
ut because of your bravery,” Aloyna added, “we have had many long years to prepare for this moment.”
“Are we ready?” Meghan asked them both.
Another figure materialized into the room.
Meghan and Sebastien gasped at the sight.
“How?” she cried out.
Jasper Thorndike joined Aloyna’s side. They cast each other a loving gaze, they were together again, at last. He gazed respectfully, and yet sadly, at the two young people just returned.
“Robert.”
His one-word answer held so much emotion. Meghan had told Robert what happened, but still…
“My friend never told me about my death. The one secret he kept all his life. Robert did live. You never saw him in any of your visions, or in the present, because he was in hiding. With me. Up until a short time ago he’d been helping me prepare for this battle. And then a few years ago I met Colin at the Blue Moon Festival. Just like I was meant to. And I saved him and Catrina, just as I was meant to. And began his training.”
Jasper took a minute to let the emotion cool itself down.
“The day I was supposed to die, Robert contacted me. Claimed it was urgent. I went. It was early, before Colin or Catrina were awake. Robert tricked me. Hard to do, seeing as I’m a Projector and all, but he did have a few hundred years to prepare for it. He knocked me out good and cold. Took my place on that boat. Used himself as a decoy. Took on my appearance. And they’d never question that it wasn’t me since he was also a Projector, and that’s what they were after.”
Meghan dropped her head, overwhelmed.
“He thought you needed me, more than him. Robert was, in some ways, always looking for a way out. Definitely not afraid to find one.”
“Perhaps,” thought Meghan. “But I think it was you, and Aloyna. He loved you both. He was broken when I told him you didn’t make it, and you never got to see her again.”
Jasper handed her an envelope. “He left you this.” Meghan took it. She’d read it later. But she paid the mind-reading teddy bear a silent moment of respect. She’d known him such a short time. It was strange how sometimes someone could enter your life for such a short period, and yet change you in some major way.
There was a massive sense of relief that Jasper was here. Maybe there was hope for Colin yet. She’d give almost anything for her vision of him not to come true. She did not want to kill her brother.
“I’ve been tracking Colin,” Jasper revealed. Her eyes widened. “In secret. Until this moment had passed, and I could come out of hiding again. He’s being hunted. I, um, intervened on an attack by Tanzea Chase not too long ago. But he’s okay. Catrina too.” The worry in his tone was noticeable, however. He wasn’t completely certain, either.
Meghan nodded. “Thank you. Thank you both. All of you. For agreeing to my harebrained idea of a prophecy. And seeing it through.”
There was another moment of silence in respect for reaching this moment.
“So…” she wasn’t sure where to start. “What have you and Robert been up to all these years?”
“We have not been idle. We’ve been preparing for the war. Starting with,” he held up a vial, “what we hope is an antidote to the Mazuruk Stones’ power.”
“Seriously?” Sebastien blew out.
“We hope so. It needs one final ingredient.” He eyed Meghan. “A bit of your blood. You’re immune. We hope adding your blood to the mix will make others immune as well.”
“Take what you need.” She offered a vein, freely.
“There’s more,” Jasper warned, a grin widening.
They waited. Breathlessly.
“I know how to destroy the Immortality Stone.”
“What?” came out of everyone.
“A well-kept secret I’m not even sure Fazendiin is aware of, that took me many long years to figure out.” He eyed Meghan. “It’s you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you recall that part about fire, purifying the Stones?”
“Yes. But it’s a really, big stone. You couldn’t even destroy it.”
“No. And that’s saying something. There’s few things I cannot do if I really put my mind to it. However, destroying that Stone would have destroyed me, and most likely, a lot of other things too. It would have brought out a serious amount of uncontrolled magic. Fazendiin is a precocious and bloodthirsty opponent. However, in leaving the Stone in my possession for such a long, in his mind, me on Stone-sitter duty, Robert and I were able to do a lot of experimenting.”
“Okay. And what about the me, part?”
Her mother came forward then. Jasper had already explained this to them. “Why do you think it had to be a Firemancer who was your mother? It wasn’t just about the visions Jasper had to show me.”
Meghan thought on that for a minute. Her breaths a little ragged as it all came together. “My fire can purify the Immortality Stone? Is that what you are saying?”
Is it possible the answer was so obvious, all along?
“Yes,” Isabella answered. “And only your fire. Because the Stone is a part of you. And you, of it. It was also vital that one of the Grosvenor be your father. We assumed Fazendiin would do as expected, and bring you into the world, himself. And because he did, you are also Vetala. Vampyre.”
Aloyna took over. “It’s a power that is only beginning to rise inside you. You’re young yet. But I can teach you how to access it and use it, now. Because you will literally suck the power out of Stone, just as the Vetala did, to make themselves immortal. Then it will burn up in your veins.”
“Um, hold on a second,” Sebastian stopped them all. “What happens to her after she does this?”
Nona was desperate to find out as well.
“Nothing,” Meghan answered, surprisingly, on her own behalf. “The fire will burn it all up. Right?” she aimed at the others.
“That is our belief,” Jasper confirmed. “There’s no reason to think otherwise. It is still dangerous, and potentially life threatening in many other ways.”
“Because we’ll be fighting Fazendiin to even get our hands on the Stone.” This time, it was Ivan joining in. He’d been told all of what was going on, but still struggled to believe it all.
“We are working on theory,” Jasper offered. “But ones I’d wager my own life on.”
“Wait a minute, so, if we are able to get to the Stone, and I can do my little circus act, and burn down the house, so to speak, it will leave the Stone, useless, and me… no longer immortal? Just a Firemancer?”
“That’s the theory,” Jasper explained.
“Wow. Um. Okay. I can work with that.” Her eyes narrowed. “That means, Colin and Colby would no longer be either, right?”
“We believe so.”
“What about my father?” she asked.
“That’s the one thing we are not totally sure of. He’d lose his immortality, no doubt, but something tells me he might be prepared for that outcome. Which is why we also have a Plan B.”
Jasper’s eyes twinkled.
Just what did he have up his sleeve now?
Meghan’s mind was racing a thousand miles a minute.
“Not all of Babiin Balick’s followers perished during the Stone War. We have an army, ready, and trained to fight. But our greatest weapon stands before me now.”
All eyes landed on Meghan.
And for the first time in her life, she agreed. She was the greatest weapon in this battle. And she was ready to fight. And win. She was not going to allow her father to return magic to the world and create this even more powerful Stone. She was going to destroy the original Immortality Stone. And she was going to save Colin, and if possible, Colby.
For the first time in her life, she knew exactly what she was going to do. And it was her choice to do it.
CHAPTER 17
Everything had turned instantly into a bittersweet chaos.
The very people they’d been dying to save had shown up on their doorstep.
Bat
tered. Beaten. Broken. Some, barely shells of people still living.
While the banished and the Tunkapog did their best to wade through and assist those in need of the most care, a girl was running through the crowd shouting something. She had a young man with her.
Arnon Jacoby heard his name being shouted and watched the girl spinning and hollering and searching.
“Young lady,” he called out. He motioned her over.
“I’m looking for someone named, Arnon Jacoby. Or Kanda Macawi. Or Billie Sadorus. Please, it’s urgent.” The young man with her nodded in his agreement.
“I’m Arnon Jacoby.” He hollered to someone nearby. The woman came over. “Kanda Macawi,” he introduced. She smiled kindly at the young woman.
“My name is Mireya Mochrie. This is Joseph. I have a message for you from my brother, Jae.”
“He’s not with you, then?” Arnon confirmed. That was a shame.
“No. He sent me with a warning. You’re not safe here. None of us are safe here. We need to move. Fast.”
And didn’t that take the wind out of their sails. They’d already had this conversation after Colby had shown up and found them. They’d added extra protections, but it wasn’t enough.
“I’ll go find everyone,” Kanda informed Arnon. “Stay, help. I’ll return soon.”
Arnon nodded and peered down at the young woman. He gave her a kind smile. She had old eyes. Had seen a lot, he imagined. How sad that the young would suffer the most.
“Where is your brother, Mireya?”
She didn’t have the heart to answer. Joseph did on her behalf.
“Still on the island we think. Mireya said someone named Colby did all of this.” He motioned around him.
“Colby? Really?” He could not help but let his shock show. Perhaps the kid was not lost after all. “I’m sorry about your brother, Mireya. We will do everything we can to save him.”
The poor girl didn’t hold onto much hope. She excused herself to go find her parents, and she and the young man took off to search. He turned around only to freeze as even more bodies appeared out of nowhere.
“Meghan.” He breathed out a massive sigh at the sight of her, amongst quite a crowd of her own. She smiled in return, then frowned, seeing all the chaos. Arnon went over to her and they hugged in greeting.
Sacrifice (The Wayward King, The Projector's Mother, and A Prophecy Reborn) (A Fated Fantasy Quest Adventure Book 9) Page 14