Sarah
I pull the crank that opens the ceiling in the tower, watching as the night sky comes into startling clarity. The stars are faint overhead, shielded by a layer of thin mist that moves across the sky like wisps of smoke. The moon, however, is full and painted a pale blue. It’s stunning, and even through the haze of poison still in my system, I can feel its pull.
The voices that usually come from the orrery are silent as I move toward it, taking note of its gears and spiraling tangles of sleek steel and brass. The planets in our solar system circle around the moon in this version of the heavens instead of the sun like a direct line to the Goddess, and as I approach, my heart in my throat, the moonlight reaches the flat surface at the base of the orrery and sets the entire alight in dancing shadows.
My heart rate quickens as the voices start up, whispering through the room like the mist hanging below the stars.
“I don’t understand you,” I whisper back, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “Please, I just need to know where my mate is. That’s all I want to know.” I reach for the lever at the base of the atrium, twisting it in a rough, clunky circle. The gears shift, and the orrery begins to move. I let go when the voices reach a fever pitch and ring through my ears. I stumble back, watching the swirling metal.
The moonlight drifts over each planet and reflects off the moon at the center of the orrery. The room erupts in light so bright I have to shield my eyes.
“Our lost sister returns at last. Welcome, Guardian of the Gates of the Other Realm.” The voices scream through my ears in conflicting tones and accents, converging into pure noise. I cover my ears as the voices continue, “Call on us, Guardian. Tell us what you wish to see.”
“My mate!” I bellow, tears stinging my eyes.
The light explodes into nothing but pure white, then slowly fades. I open my eyes to silts and peer into the sudden darkness all around me. I can see… scorched earth. A once great city reduced to rubble, overtaken by nature. Twisting roots from new growth trees claw into the scorched soil down into what appears to be an empty abyss.
But it’s not empty.
At its base, another orrery lies.
“This is in Eastonia,” I whisper to myself, my mouth growing dry.
“Yes, sister. Tell us what you wish to know.”
“Can I see him? Is he still alive?”
But the image explodes in color, and suddenly, I’m standing in a brightly lit room, sunlight pouring through ceiling height windows I find incredibly familiar.
I watch myself–slightly older, with my hair falling down to my lower back, wearing a gown of pale gold–cross the room to lift a baby from a crib drenched in warm sunlight. I cradle the baby in my arms as I turn to the other figure in the room, my lips moving but my words totally muffled.
A boy, no more than ten, runs up to me, dragging another little boy with him, while a little girl follows behind clutching a teddy bear in her arms.
Sydney kisses me on the forehead, his voice echoing through my ears, “Are you ready?”
The vision of my future breaks and is replaced by darkness again, by growls and echoes of pain. Sydney watches a knife fall from his belly and clatter on the ground as he slowly looks right at me… but I’m not me.
“Now neither of us can have her,” I say to him, my voice replaced by Gabriel’s.
I stumble backward, clapping my hands over my mouth and closing my eyes. No, no, no!
Someone grabs me from behind and yanks me out of the moonlight.
“Sarah?” King Isaac takes my face in his hands. “Sarah!”
“Gabriel stabbed him. I can’t–I think I know where he is!”
Isaac looks over the top of my head, his eyes reflecting the moonlight drenched orrery. “You hear it too, don’t you?”
“It showed me a vision of the future.”
“Don’t trust it,” he tells me, dropping his hands and taking my arm. “Every step we take affects the future in some way.” He turns me to face him. “Listen to me closely, Sarah. I’m going to go get him, but you have to help me get there.”
“How?”
He takes my hand and squeezes. “Think of where he is. That’s all you have to do.”
I imagine the vision of Eastonia at the same moment Isaac sends us whirling through space and time. I feel like I’m being pulled apart and put together again in the space of a breath, and before my heart can beat again, my feet meet solid ground.
It smells like blood and rot. My eyes open, and I’m met with bone and sinew of some creature from my worst nightmares.
But a golden wolf stands beside me, his blue eyes locked on the rolling, seemingly endless darkness.
A wolfish whimper bleeds out of the darkness, followed by an answering snarl. My heart leaps out of my chest, and I shift without meaning too, my clothes ripping away as I hurtle into the darkness.
I have to find my mate.
‘Two Rogues, Sarah!’ Isaac says into my mind as he runs ahead of me. The orrery comes into view, leaking power I can’t even describe. Every fiber of my being tells me to run, that this place is evil, that it’s calling to me, and I have to escape.
I’m momentarily blinded by the orrery, by the dozens of planets and stars I’m not familiar with, but something crashes into my side and sends me flying through the air like I’m as light as a feather.
I hit the ground and roll to a stop on my back just as two glowing red eyes creep out of the darkness. The biggest, ugliest teeth I’ve ever seen in my life clack and drip with saliva as the rogue, those mythical–I fucking thought–beasts formed by wolves who give up their souls to remain in their wolf forms forever, closes in on me.
Blood stains his jowls. My mate’s blood.
Anger propels me to my feet just as the rogue lunges, but I’m smaller and faster, and I dart between its legs, my back brushing its hairless belly. I clamp my jaws around its boney ankle and thrash. The beast roars in pain, trying to twist toward me, but I yank hard on its ankle and send it skidding on its side.
Its back crashes against the wall of what I believe must be an old temple, or a castle of some kind, lost and buried deep underground. A crack echoes through the space over the roars and clacking teeth of the rogue Isaac is battling.
I watch the light behind the rogue’s red eyes dim then flicker out.
But Isaac is still fighting with what I believe is the last rogue left. I charge toward him, rounding the orrery as moonlight begins to drift over its surface, illuminating the strange network of gears and rusted metal. Thrumming voices chant to the beat of ancient drums, calling out my name. Sasha, Sasha, Sasha.
I’m not Sasha anymore.
Sasha is dead. Buried. Forgotten.
The chanting follows me as I turn from the orrery and use every ounce of my powerful legs to propel myself into the air, coasting over the bodies of two more rogues, and catch the rogue fighting with Isaac by the rough of its naked neck. I sink my teeth into its flesh as I fly through the air, begging my body to become dead weight, and bring the rogue with me as I crash into the ground once more.
It shrieks in pain before I’m crushed beneath it.
‘Sarah!’Isaac’s voice calls through my mind.
I’m totally squashed beneath the rogue, but I kick my legs, trying to claw my way out. Its skin is oily and thin, and my claws leave trails of its blackish-green blood as I pull myself free of its weight and breath in the comparably fresh air.
Isaac runs toward me, favoring his right front leg, his golden fur blotched with both red and green-tinged blood.
But the rogue lifts its head, its powerful jaws widening, just as Isaac attempts to leap over it to get to my side. It catches Isaac around the belly and tosses him against the orrery.
‘NO!’ My howl rips through the air as Isaac falls limp to the ground, his head bouncing on the cracked, slimy stone tiles.
I’m stuck in place, frozen in horror, as the moonlight illuminates the two wolves lying only a few feet from each other. Isaac, with his golden pelt, and… and Sydney, who is so still I can’t tell if he’s still breathing.
This can’t be happening.
The rogue sways to its feet, taking a few uneven steps in my direction. My eyes are still on Sydney and Isaac. I can’t lose them. I can’t. I can’t go back to a world without my mate. My mind floods with Maddy’s image. I imagine breaking the news to her that her mate is gone, and my heart shatters in my chest.
A prickling sensation ghosts through my fur, making the silver-white tufts stand on end.
Sasha, Sasha, Sasha.
I watch as the moonlight hits the center of the orrery. Gears begin to turn on their own accord, casting a crackling, whirring sound throughout the space. The rogue is closing in on me with slow, calculated steps.
The powers I refused to acknowledge, powers I refused to train, ignite. I don’t hold them back like before. I let them flow, twisting into something new, deadly, and beautiful.
I take several slow steps forward to meet the rogue before speeding up and bouncing off the tips of my claws, sailing over its head, shifting in mid-flight and stretching my human fingers toward the moon at the center of the orrery. The rogue snarls, its jaws nearly snapping closed around my ankle, but it misses. I scream in determination, stretching my fingers, hurtling through the air so swiftly that the ground beneath me blurs. The second my fingers brush the decaying, chipping surface of the moon, light erupts in sprays of silver and violet, and I’m swept away.
Time spins. All around me, the rogues stand once again. I’m watching this scene play out like I’m rewinding a movie on the ancient VCR at my home on Mononoke Island. I watch as Isaac and I in our wolf forms battle in reverse, then I watch us shift, then arrive in a burst of light. It goes dark again, and I watch in horror as Sydney lowers his head to the ground in defeat only seconds before Isaac and I could get here. Then he’s fighting the rogues, killing two of them.
Then, he’s crouching in front of Gabriel.
I raise my hands and time stops, my powers falling away in wisps of violet mist.
“You and I could have been so powerful together, you know. Your powers are pretty useless to me, but your manners are… sadistic, deep down. Feral, savage. You hide those parts of you well behind your tailored clothing.”
I grab Sydney’s arm at the moment he lunges toward Gabriel, and Gabriel raises his blade. Sydney jerks back, turning to me in shock.
I wonder what I look like right now. I can feel my hair flowing out around me. I’m casting a pale silver glow over both men. I move slowly, and my voice is… distant, and ethereal, as I look into my mate’s eyes and say, “Kill him.”
Sydney stumbles away but blinks, shaking his head in shock.
“Kill him,” I repeat.
Sydney yanks the blade out of Gabriel’s hand and stabs him in the heart. I watch the light in Gabriel’s eyes dim as the first sounds of the rogues appear, their claws scraping over the ancient tiles.
“Sarah?” Sydney breathes. “Are you really here?”
“I’ll be here soon,” I tell him, breathless, as I snap my fingers, and I’m sucked through time again.