The Ancients Series

by Christine M. Butler

  “You’re already dead if you’re on their side, what do I care if they torture your soul?”

  “You care, because if I take one step off this dais, the portal closes forever. It becomes sealed with my final death. Right now, I am hovering in-between worlds. It hurts like a bitch too! Seriously, like pins and needles in your limbs that just won’t go away times about one hundred.”

  “You step off that dais before my people are returned to me, and I swear to you right now, that I will hunt each of your people down. I will kill them slowly. I will gnaw on their bones.”

  “Yeah, yeah… you’ll wear their skulls as a Halloween mask, and play with their entrails. I get it. Seriously, is there some sort of ‘how to be an effective monster’ school that all of you guys attend? It’s really a bit ridiculous.”

  “JESSICA!” Another wicked echo crashed through the cavern, bringing dust and debris down with it.

  “Okay, geez. I’m just trying to give you fair warning, which by the way, is a lot more than you’d ever give someone like me. There are some angry souls here, and they are going to be out for blood when they cross over, but hey, who am I to stop them since you’re the one who put me in this predicament to begin with.”

  “If they are enemies of mine, I put them there once, and I will be able to do it again.”

  Laughter from the wolves behind me made me turn and look. “What?” I asked them.

  “If these beings were to cross through the portal they wouldn’t be living things. They would be wraiths, and he has never seen the fury of a wraith hell bent on vengeance.” One of the wolves told me. “That is why the portals were closed to begin with. The only ones who could put the wraiths back were the witches, and even then, only one had the guts to do it. It leached some of the life from her with each one she put back here.”

  “Layla?” I questioned.

  “Yes, Layla. She did not inherit her moonbeam appearance. She earned it from her many battles with the dead. That thing out there would be eaten alive. Unfortunately, so would anyone else who crossed their path. Wraith-spirits, unless harnessed as a guardian spirit, will target anyone and everyone to get their vengeance. The problem is, their pain is insatiable. Those with gifts such as Layla’s are rare. As luck would have it, they are also the only ones who have been known to stop the wraiths.”

  “Well, if nothing else, I am getting an education over here.” The tingling sensation was growing worse in my limbs. Jack was beginning to wail again, and I knew that meant he was feeling it too. I couldn’t stay on this dais much longer. It was beginning to hurt too much. “Have you gotten through to her?” I asked Aislynn.

  “Yes. They know, and they have a plan.”

  “Okay.” I turned back to Louis then. “I can’t hold this portal much longer. It hurts.”

  “I don’t care if hurts for eternity, you know what I will do if I don’t get my way.”

  “Your way will see all of you dead anyway, but I can tell you this. I will not unleash a bunch of hell-bent, crazy souls on the world because you think you can control them in some private army venture, or whatever the hell it is you have planned. There was one more thing about the sacrifice that you probably should have known.”

  “And what is that, little wolf girl?”

  “It is all about will.”

  “Who is Will?”

  “Not who. It all comes down to my will. If I will the portal open, it is. If I will it shut, it shuts. If I will it sealed forever, that’s what happens.”

  If a person could blow steam out of their ears, cartoon style, Louis would have been blowing his top at that point. “YOU WILL DO NO SUCH THING!” More dust and debris fell around the cavern as I watched. I wondered for a moment if he would actually cause a collapse.

  I didn’t answer. I heard a voice behind me whisper, “If you step off, there will be no going back, Jessica.”

  “If I don’t step off, I will just end up here anyway.”

  “JESSICA!” Louis yelled out.

  My ears popped as the pressure changed, and the icy tingles coalesced over my entire body with one violent shiver as I stepped off the dais and down to the floor on the side of the dead. I could now sense the anger in some of the souls. They had been waiting for a release that wasn’t going to come now.

  “You sealed the portal.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement.

  “I did. How could I knowingly unleash any more horrors into that world?” I looked down at the baby who was squirming around in the sling attaching him to my body. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t get you home to your mommy first,” I whispered to him. I turned to look out past the dais into the rest of the cavern. I could no longer see the other side. I didn’t know if Louis was still there, throwing a hissy fit, or if he went to go make good on his promise to destroy my family.

  “Do you think they’ll be all right?” I asked the other wolves who were hovering around me, trying to give comfort.

  “They were warned, and it sounded as though they had a solid plan. All we can do is hope, pray, and wait.”

  “Okay.” So, I sat there, running my fingers over the eternally smooth skin of the baby in my arms. I wished I could give him back to Sierra. I wished that I could hold my Willow one more time. Looking back over the past few days, I hadn’t been able to devote enough time to just sitting in peace with her. My baby would grow up not knowing her mommy and that broke my heart into a million tiny little pieces. I wanted to at least see her one more time.

  “Wait, when Jack died, he came to see us at his sending off. He was there, what if, could I?”

  “That was different. His soul had to travel from the other world to this one. It gave him time. You are already here, and once here, there is no return.” One of the wolves answered. I didn’t even look up to see which one this time.

  I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye. That wasn’t entirely true. I knew my chances of coming back weren’t good. I wrote letters to Mikael, Willow, and my parents. I entrusted them with Serena before I left. There was one for her as well, and for Ashley. The most heartbreaking of them was the one to Sierra, because in it, I had to apologize for not bringing her baby back to her. She would be a mother who lost her child on that side, while I was the mother lost to her child on my side. If I ever thought life wasn’t fair, I was now beginning to understand that death was no different.

  “Mikael is going to hate me.” The words burst from me without a moment’s hesitation between the thought and the verbalization. “He didn’t want me to do this. He wanted me to wait. Now, I don’t get to see him again.”

  “You will see him again, when his time comes.” A wolf called out to me.

  “It’s not the same. He could live a few hundred years beyond now, what the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime, while I wait?”

  “You make your peace with your decision to save others instead of yourself. Not that you would have been able to go back once you were here. We’re really sorry we couldn’t spare you our fate, Jessica. We had hopes that you would be the one to live a long and happy life. Almost all of us were cut down early in our lives. You were right, earlier, when you said people fear what they don’t know.

  “Yeah, I guess.” I looked up then, at all the souls who still dawdled around, and in the mix I thought I saw a familiar face or two. “Anna?” I called out.

  There she stood, my Aunt Anna Marie, the woman I had been named for. “Jessica,” her shy demeanor reminded me of the stories my mom would tell about her when she spoke of their childhood. “I hoped not to see you here for a very long time.”

  “That makes two of us.” I laughed.

  “That, you must get from your father. Your mom was always far too serious for humor in death.” Anna winked at me. A handsome man stood not too far behind my aunt. He never took his eyes off of her as she spoke to me about how my much she missed my mom.

  “You must be Lucas?” I asked as he came in closer.

  “I am.”

  �
�Oh, I suppose I lost all my manners when I died, or maybe when I was shunned by my pack.” Aunt Anna shrugged her shoulders. “This is my mate, Lucas. Lucas, this is my Niece, Jessica.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you already,” Lucas said as he took my hand and gently kissed the top of it. He tipped his head to indicate the white wolves; “they’ve kept us in the loop, mostly.”

  “Oh, no!” Anna cried out, after seeing baby Jack’s hand poke back out of the sling I still carried him in. “Not little Willow too?” A tear dropped down her colorless cheek, and I watched as the thick, fluid seemed to defy gravity and just hover there, high on her cheekbone as she reached out for that tiny little hand.

  “This is not Willow. My friend had a baby. He was taken by mistake. They thought they had my daughter. I came to get him back, for his mother, but… I couldn’t.”

  “You tried, and you are here with him. I am sure she will find some small comfort in knowing that he is with you, and will be taken care of until she meets him here one day.”

  “So, is this it? Is this all there is to the afterlife? A bunch of spirits hanging around in a giant cavern style waiting room?”

  Lucas laughed and teased Anna. “It’s good that she was named for you. She definitely sounds a lot like you.”

  “I suppose you’re half right. This is a waiting room, in a way. Those who are here are either stuck, because they can’t move beyond what has happened to them, or they are waiting on loved ones to make it here first. You could say we’re the ones with unfinished business.”

  “Really? So what are you waiting for then?”

  “To see your mom. I need her to know that I don’t blame her, and that I appreciate everything she did for me, before and after…” Her voice trailed off on a saddened note.

  “I understand, and she will too.” I looked at Lucas then, “so who are you waiting on then?”

  He smiled brightly at me, as if I should already know the answer to that question. “I am simply waiting on my love here to finish her business, so we can both move on together.”

  “So, I’ll be able to wait here for Mikael, and Willow?”

  “If you need to wait for them, then yes, you can.”

  “I do. I need their forgiveness.”

  “Oh, Jessica,” my aunt grabbed me up in a giant hug, careful of the baby that was still lodged against me, our bellies still touching through the sling.

  We were just letting go of one another when voices started to rise beyond us. There was another woman standing there chastising the white wolves, my ancestors. “What in the world is going on now?”

  Anna put her hand out on my shoulder. “Jessica, you might want to wait a moment. She’s not the friendliest of souls.”

  “Well, we’re all dead here, right? What harm can be done?”

  “Oh, you don’t want to know. Even souls can be punished. There are stories of heaven and hell, and well, purgatory right?” She waited for my nod of acknowledgment. “Well, sweetheart, we’re in what you might think of as purgatory. Souls have been known to disappear from here in one of two ways. They either move on, presumably to a better place. Or…” My Aunt Anna swallowed hard, not wanting to continue.

  “Or what?”

  “People, like that woman there, drag them kicking and screaming to another place.” I turned as the words left my aunt’s lips, and I saw that the other white wolves and the woman who had been arguing were now looking at me. None of them appeared happy about it, except the strange woman.

  “Well, that can’t be good.” I managed before the white wolves beckoned me over to them.

  “Jessica Marie St. Marks De’Lune.” The woman intoned, as she looked me over. “What would you give to get a second chance at life with your mate, with your real child?” She looked down at the baby in my arms with disdain, but didn’t wait for me to answer. “Would you give up your soul in the end, if you knew you’d get a few hundred years with them?”

  This woman was dangling a big carrot on a stick in front of me. I would give up a lot to be with my family again. I would give up everything, although, I’d at least take a minute to process the loss of my own soul first. “Are you telling me you can grant such a request?”

  “Me? Heavens no. Why would I do that, even if I could?” She eyed me again, as if I were a much lower being. “I don’t have a lot of time, so let’s not play games here. You are a conundrum to me. On the one hand, you are responsible for my oldest daughter’s death. On the other, you seem to single-handedly be bringing my other girls together. I had hopes that they would be the first of the witch families to understand that a coven of familial witches was the strongest power source there is on Earth.” A particularly bright twinkle lit her eyes up from the inside out as she spoke. “If someone were to, perhaps, tip them off to that… then maybe you wouldn’t have to carry the burden of being the only white wolf left. Maybe they could help make new species that would take the heat off of you, so to speak.” Her ambition washed off of her in waves. “You will do that, won’t you? I might be swayed then, to forgive you for Sophia.”

  “What is she talking about?” I asked of my white wolf ancestors.

  “She’s talking about a chance for you to go back.”

  “To go back?”

  “To live again, Jess.”

  “What? I thought you said there wasn’t a way for me to go back to the other side?” My ancestors looked pained as the woman beside them smiled, and anxiously awaited their explanation.

  “The devil is in the details, is it not, Kezia?” Aislynn tossed the accusation back at the woman in question. In order to gain access to the other side again, to return to the life you once knew, it requires great sacrifice. A dual sacrifice actually.

  “Why must everything require sacrifice? Isn’t that what got me into this mess to begin with? Seriously, I already sacrificed myself, and baby Jack, what more could the beings in charge possibly want from me?”

  “They want nothing from you.” Aislynn scoffed in my direction. It was the first time I heard her be less than kind to me.

  “Watch it Aislynn, dear, your true colors are showing.” Kezia laughed as she spoke. And while there was a cruel edge to her tone that was never present when Serena spoke, Kezia’s voice was almost indistinguishable from her daughter’s.

  “What do you mean they want nothing from me? How in the hell can I sacrifice what I don’t have to give? If they want nothing, then there’s no way to get back to my life.”

  “Oh, but there is, sweet child,” Kezia cooed. “It just won’t be you who does the sacrificing this time.”

  “I still don’t understand.” I looked back and forth between the two women, trying to figure out just how much crazy actually ran in my bloodline. Actually, I decided it was probably best not to know the answer to that particular question. I waited, instead, to hear what these two sacrifices would entail, but no one seemed willing to answer my question. Aislynn stood there, looking from one white wolf to the next, as if they were communicating silently among themselves. You would think, if that were the case, that I would be able to hear them too. After all, I was a white wolf in life, so now I should belong to the club or something since I was technically dead.

  “The first sacrifice is ours to make, Jessica.” Aislynn referenced herself and the rest of my white wolf ancestors. “Nearly all of our line were born on the heels of another sacrificing herself for the next in line. We were only supposed to be born every 200 or so years, just like the witches. I think you can do the math as well as I can. There are almost twenty of us here, in our little ancestral pack. When a white wolf dies, it re-sets the clock, so to speak. Instead of just carrying on the gene until the 200 years have passed, a new white wolf is made on the heels of the last wolf’s breath. In other words, when you died, your daughter’s white wolf gene was activated. She will grow to be a white wolf, just as you are.”

  “I suppose she should have said, just as you were.” Kezia teased.

  “Willow…” my
heart ached at the mention of my daughter, but I had to get to the bottom of this. “If I go back, will it be undone?”

  “We don’t know. None of us has ever gone back to find out. There is a reason we have never gone back, Jessica.” Her head dipped, as she hesitated telling me. “Our leaving this place, and living again, it is possible, but it comes with a price. As far as we know this can only be done once, and only under certain circumstances. Apparently, this one had something to do with that little after-death fail safe.” Aislynn pointed at Kezia then, who actually giggled and made a little clapping gesture with her hands.

  If I didn’t know before that she was such a horrible person in life, I might have been amused by her antics. Baby Jack squirmed in my arms again, and I was honestly afraid that he would pull away enough to break out skin-to-skin contact we had going on. I stopped what I was doing, and held my question until after I situated Jack to ensure our skin stayed in contact. “I’m assuming my case meets all the specified criteria?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “And what about little Jack here? Will he be able to go with me?” Aislynn’s grim look was all I needed to know that it wouldn’t be possible. “What if I sent him in my place?”

  “You would send him back to die of starvation in a cavern long forgotten by all, but one ally, and who knows how many monsters?”

  “Layla is out there though. I haven’t been gone that long yet; she’ll still be there. Gabriel promised to keep her there for an hour. Surely, it’s been less than that.”

  “Time works differently in here, sweet wolf. Things have already come to pass out there while some of us stood around getting familiar with old family members.” Kezia tossed an accusatory glance over her shoulder at Anna and Lucas.

  “How much time has passed? There has to be a way to get him back to his mom. Can’t we contact Serena again, or Layla, and let them know?”

  “If we do what Kezia is proposing, we will not be able to communicate with the living world any longer. We will be released from that which binds us to this in-between place. Most of us will move on.” I’m not even sure which wolf spoke, because I was so stunned by the admission.