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Anna
“You can’t be serious? We’re just going to believe him?”
“Yes, Bowen,” she said, dropping the title as her anger at the other Initiate mounted. “I am. The Coven can decide if I made a mistake. Not you.”
Some of the others in her patrol shifted uncomfortably, but to Anna’s surprise none of them tried to fight against her decision. She hadn’t expected that from them, or from Damien and his group. Things were going smoothly.
Perhaps too smoothly.
“Stay here,” she said abruptly to her group. Without waiting for confirmation, she walked toward the tall man, eyeing him warily, sizing him up and down. He was tall, an impression that only continued to grow as she neared him. Correction, he’s very tall.
As she came closer, his eyes followed her, as bright as the sky on a clear day. What was he thinking, how was he feeling?
“Come with me,” she said, pointing at the portal.
Damien’s jaw visibly clenched, but he nodded. They walked over to the circle. She couldn’t see anything on the other side of it. Not the rocky mountain walls that formed the end of this little nook in the range, nor wherever it was he’d come from on the other side. She walked along its length, then stood to look at it from the side.
It was barely visible, razor-thin.
“Shut it down,” she said.
Damien hesitated.
“Now.” She tried to put some more steel into her voice.
“I can’t,” he said helplessly.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t make it.”
Anna pointed at his group. “Well who did? Get them over here.”
Damien shook his head. “They’re all on the other side,” he said, bowing his head. “They had to keep it powered so that we could escape.” He frowned, looking the rift up and down. “They said they would close the portal after we were through. The feedback was supposed to destroy them and the room they were in.”
Anna was still processing everything he’d said when the reality of it hit home to her. She gasped. “They were going to sacrifice themselves?”
The big man’s face hardened unhappily. “Listen, Miss. My entire world is gone. Hundreds of millions of us have fallen to these creatures. On the other side of this portal lies Fortress Glacis, a frozen wasteland of a settlement at the very northernmost part of our world. We were forced back there. Maybe two hundred of my people survived to come through. Asking twenty-four more to lay down their lives so that we may escape wasn’t so big a cost to us.” He looked away. “Not anymore, at least.”
Anna’s heart was breaking as he spoke, and every instinct in her screamed to reach out, to pull him into a hug, to tell him she was sorry, that she hadn’t truly understood the scope of what had happened to him and his people.
“You’re not lying about any of this, are you?” she asked softly.
His head came up violently, eyes blazing with blue fire. “You think I would make light of my race being on the verge of extinction? That I would use such a catastrophic event to worm my way into your trust?”
She held up her hands. “Easy, Damien. Remember, we know nothing of each other. For all I know, that could be your mission here.”
“No,” he said, walking back to face the rift, the portal as he’d called it, head-on. “My people are suffering and dying on the other side of this. If any of them are even left alive. Yet I am here, on your planet.”
He wanted to be back with the others. To fight with them.
“Why are you so eager to die?” she asked, hating the idea that he might be lying somewhere on a battlefield dead, with no one to mourn over him.
Why do you care so much? You just met him.
She couldn’t answer that question, and that alone sent more troubling thoughts through her. What did it mean?
“I’m not,” he said, working his jaw. “But the strongest, the bravest of us, they stayed behind to fight. While we...” He didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t have to.
Anna understood now. He felt like he was running away. Like he was a coward.
“Your people need you,” she said, not sure where the words were coming from. “They will be looking to you and the others, to do the hardest task of all.”
“What?” he asked gruffly, without malice.
“To rebuild. To carry on.”
Damien inhaled deeply, his spine straightening. She could see him latching onto that, to being needed. He was struggling for anything right now, and she’d just given him a lifeline.
“What’s your name?” he asked quietly. “May I know that?”
She considered it for a second. “Anna,” she said softly.
“Thank you, Anna. I needed that.” He stared at the portal. “What do we do now?”
“Now? Now you tell me who killed your race. What are they like? We need to be ready for them.”
“The portal will close,” he said stubbornly. “There is probably a delay from one side to the other, that’s all. I do not know how much time passed while I was travelling between worlds, but I doubt it was instantaneous.”
Anna hadn’t considered that before. “Perhaps,” she agreed. “But we must be ready. You are going to have to tell me all you know. Now.”
Damien shrugged. “It’s not much. About a year ago, a little less, a meteor struck our world. It was a powerful strike, tens of thousands died. But we survived. Teams were sent to search for survivors. To rescue them.”
“But the meteor was actually an enemy spaceship?” she supplied.
The Dracian frowned. “What? I don’t know this word, spaceship.”
“Um, a vessel to travel among the stars?” she asked, realizing that just because they both spoke English, didn’t mean that his people were as advanced as humanity.
“Ah. Maybe. We don’t know. Nobody ever came back,” he said. “Well, they did. But they weren’t themselves. They had been taken over.”
“Taken over?” she asked automatically. “By what?”
“Nobody knows. But if they get close to you, get you vulnerable, they will infect you as well. They spread like a virus. It moves into your brain and slowly takes it over, replacing it with more of itself. The only way to kill it is to burn the head entirely. Killing the thing inside.”
“Furies,” she gasped, clasping a hand to her mouth in horror. “You would never know...”
“We didn’t,” he said. “Not until it was spreading at a rapid rate. Too rapid to contain.”
“An entire planet. In less than a year.”
Damien bowed his head.
“So, the things coming through,” she said, taking several steps back, calling her magic to her in her staff. “They look like you. Walk like you. Talk like you. How do I know you aren’t one?” she challenged warily.
Damien shook his head tiredly. “Once it spreads to you, you die. Then, once it has replaced your brain, your mind, it reanimates the body. But they aren’t the same person. They don’t talk. They don’t even seem to communicate at all. Doesn’t stop them from working together though. Plus, they’re all angry. So very angry-looking.”
Anna chewed on her lip. She had to make a decision.
“Gather your people,” she said. “We’ll make for the Academy.”
“The Academy?” he asked. “What’s that?”
“It’s where we train. The Coven will decide what to do with you, Damien of Dracia. Come, bring them together and we will call up transportation for you.” Her face hardened. “I think you a man of your word, but be warned, if you try anything, we will use deadly force against you if we must, to protect ourselves and our world.”
Anna didn’t like being threatening, but what choice did she have? The Coven was already likely to have her head for what she’d done but bringing Damien and the others back to Winterspell was the right thing to do.
She could feel it.
