A Sanguinary Rose (Complete)

As the clock struck the chime atop Farpoint’s town hall, the chilly night wind picked up in strength. An uncanny stillness reigned over the center downtown, usually the most bustling district.

An unofficial curfew had been set up by the population, wherein people agreed to avoid outdoors after nightfall. I wasn’t prone to bump into anyone in the streets.

It dawned on me that I hadn’t thought out how I’d get to Salem from here. Farpoint’s Bureau now closed earlier after the vampire’s attack months ago.

The near full moon gleamed above like a beacon amidst a sea of clouds and mist. If all lights went out, I’d still be able to see everything as clear as midday. As I looked down toward the square’s center before the Bureau, I realized the Great Oak of Farpoint was going through an anomaly. Despite the lights of the lampposts and the silver of the moon, it stood bent, twisted, and wreathed in shadow.

Two figures watched me from under it. Their coats blended well in the dark and against the thick tree. Right away I could tell they were neither human nor vampire. The streetlights seemed unable to penetrate the darkness that permeated them as though it were solid and palpable.

“Rosenbaum,” one of them said as I approached. They hid half their face against the collars of their raincoats, their menacing eyes under the wide brims of their hats.

They were devils. I was getting better at identifying types.

“The Heir Prince thought you’d need a hand. We’ll take you to where the warlock will strike next.”

I looked over my shoulder at the dark, empty windows of the building staring out at us. This was it: The point of no return.

“All right then. Let’s go.”

Both stood at each side of me, shoulder to shoulder. Runic marks shimmered a faint crimson under our feet. The wind picked up in a gale around us, mussing my hair and flapping at their coats. A burst of light hit my eyes, leaving dark spots swimming in my retina. When my feet touched ground, there was no more Farpoint around me.

The devils were gone. They left me in the middle of a street before an archaic-looking building, the one I knew would become Mandala’s next target in a matter of hours. Beyond it sprawled a cemetery, scores of tombstones rising behind rusted gates and pikes. Above the branches of twisting trees loomed the white spire of a church.

Unlike Farpoint’s Bureau, this one was much larger, covering the entire block and standing four stories tall. Its pitched gable roofs connected to the eaves on each corner where gargoyles made their watch night and day from mystical and ethereal threats. Paned windows faced out the street in rows of seven on each floor. This building rose from the ground up with brick-and-mortar, and its window and door frames were bordered with timber. If not for the cars parked at the curb, I would’ve thought we had traveled back in time.

I had to keep moving though. I couldn’t stop. Otherwise, I feared I’d see common sense in the face and regret how close I’ve come. My emotions would catch up and make me weak. The more I tried to keep thoughts of my parents and friends out of my mind, the more they kept on dogging me—unsaid goodbyes, unspoken frustrations, the lies, the truths.

Would Mom still love me? If I went back, once everything finished sinking in, how would she treat me now? Understanding the tacit danger that lies under the superficial veneer of my controlled impulses, would she turn me away like Dad would want to?

No, only by stopping this madness would things go back to normal, to an extent. If I succeeded, and the veil wasn’t lifted, I’d tell Mom I was only joking, I was playing pretend. That is, if I returned.

I sat on a bench under a tree with overhanging branches and browsed through my phone. Countless unanswered calls and text messages amassed in my notification tab. Most from Mom and Anja, the former ordering me to get back to the house, and the latter pleading. There were a couple from Mr. Royce and one from Oliver asking where I went. I muted my phone, pulled up my hoodie, snuggled down on the bench, and dozed off after a while.

In the early hours before sunrise, I caught a squirrel. The thirst awoke the predator I’d kept under lock and key. Catching it wasn’t hard considering my swiftness and reflexes. Feeding on it was. Ending its life broke my heart, and the taste of raw, stringy meat brought on teary-eyed gagging while its blood gave me sustenance for the day.

An hour or two later the town was bustling with activity, and traffic flowed like its lifeblood. I hid and waited under the shade of trees, whiling the time away. I kept my eyes peeled for signs of disturbance in or around the old building. It was a long and exasperating wait. There were long stretches where the regret caught up to me and made my stomach turn and made me wish none of this were happening, made me wish I could head back in time and stop this whole madness from starting—stretches where my eyes watered up and my chest heaved as the painful memories of the fight with Dad came back to assail me.

At 4pm, feeling cramped and with sore muscles, I entered the Bureau’s lobby. I only got as far as the first glass doors before the security checkpoint. If I tried to go through, they’d spot the demonic dirk I hid around my waist and that’d be as far as I got. Here the cool air was soft and fresh to my skin, cooling off the beads of sweat beginning to trickle down my back and my forehead.

I looked through my phone to find that Anja and the others had long given up trying to get in touch. Mom, on the other hand, became more and more desperate with each text. A wave of hope and assurance washed over me—I only wanted to make sure of one thing, so I decided to respond.

Do you still love—the battery ran out and the screen flicked off Mom’s frantic messages to a black, unfeeling square of nothingness. I pressed the phone to my chest, gritting my teeth, just as the first explosion shook the building to its ancient foundations.

***

It didn’t take me long to realize the attackers came from the building’s lower floors.

Within seconds both the fire alarm and occult alarm had gone off. A throbbing red light pulsed in and out, followed by a purple one, alternating rapidly between the two while the siren shrieked like a storm of seagulls fighting for the same prey. Employees scurried down hallways with their hands over their heads, their undone ties flapping wildly. I saw them make a mad dash for the emergency exits, some of them tripping up and then shoving their way out the doors.

It wasn’t long before helicopters circled the building, the whir of their blades rumbling like an army of giant angry hornets. It was as though they’d been ready for the alarm to sound off.

A squad of armored soldiers streamed through the entrances and crashed in through the windows from their rappels, carrying assault rifles and full rioting gear. If they had stopped to look around, they might have spotted me hiding nestled between the cushioned chairs and potted plants.

Right away came the barrage of gunshots in the main hall and the upper floors, the shouting, the screaming, and the agony in their voices. I flinched and threw myself down on the floor, clamping my hands over my extremely enhanced ears as the booms and chained detonations like firecrackers continued to reverberate through my skull. The glass doors separating the entrance and the hall shattered in a hail of shards, raining on and around my head.

I shut my eyes hard, laying as low as I could under the bombardment of glass and bullets, pleading for everything to end. I squirmed and wriggled on the floor, trying to get a look behind me to measure my odds of slinking back out the entrance and hoping a bullet wouldn’t find me.

There was one last gunshot and everything inside the building fell in silence. The blaring sirens got deactivated. I dared to look up beyond the cracked glass doors and security checkpoint, hoping to all that was good they had succeeded. But there was nothing to see, nothing but pure solid darkness enveloping the hall and the counters and the receptionist’s desk where it once stood. While the helicopters high above continued to rumble, an unnatural, suffocating stillness had settled inside the halls.

The darkness is your one true ally, Mandala had told me once. But not this. This kind of abyssal blackness was but a supernatural partition between light and dark, nothing but pure evil. Glass cracked under my feet as I stepped closer. My throat was parched, and every fiber in my body screamed at me to get as far away as possible. This darkness was not my ally.

There would be only ashes to come back to if this was allowed to continue, so I pressed my hands against it.

It wasn’t solid. More akin to a veil. Its light fabric brushed against my hair and skin when I stepped through it. Even with my enhanced vision, I could barely see inside. The acrid stench from the smoking guns slithered into my nose, mixed with the scent of fresh spilled blood. Bodies littered the hall haphazardly, from cops and attackers alike. The corpses of the masked vampires that got taken out were already dissolving into ash.

I wove my way in and out over corpses, around destroyed furniture and upended slabs of granite, trying hard to avoid looking at the gruesome wounds some had, while also probing in the dark with an arm out, searching for a wall or a doorway.

My heart nearly came to a jarring halt when I got this close to bumping into one attacker. He stood taller than me, unmoving, facing north towards the bullet-riddled wall, breathing, but otherwise simply standing still. I held my breath and took a step back on the tip of my toes. Something cracked loudly under my feet. I flinched, but he made no reaction.

Another with a white rabbit mask stood facing south to the cracked glass doors, his chest rising and lowering steadily. He had to have seen me get closer, yet he never made a move.

There must have been at least five more, one or two armed with rifles, all staring at different spots and corners randomly as though waiting for their next command, like computer programs. Not even like zombies anymore.

The darkness only covered the hall. As soon as I stumbled my way to the staircase’s door and could see, I took off upstairs to the fourth story, taking the steps three at a time, my footsteps echoing loudly from the bottom up. If Mandala was going after the overseer, then that’s where I needed to go.

I emerged onto a carpeted floor and walls covered with lavish timber that gave off a strong varnishing scent. Down the aisle two masked vampires guarded the double doors to the overseer’s office, not unlike those below.

My approach didn’t faze them one bit, as though I was one of them. My muscles remained tense as I watched them, looking for signs of hostility or aggression, while I gathered the courage to open the doors.

I heard voices—an interrogation was going on inside.

“You’re not the first to sing me that song, nor will you be the last.” His voice sounded familiar. It was lilting and pleasant to the ear, and if I had to guess the accent, I would’ve said Mediterranean. “Making my job harder will never do you good, especially if you ask for mercy in return.”

I bit into my lip as buried anger resurfaced. It was Caspian.

“Give me the numbers, you old sack. We might allow you to keep your corporate-stinking job.”

The other voice spoke too fast and softly to make out his words. He sounded terrified.

“They can try blowing us up to kingdom come. But the only one who’ll die writhing in the fire is you.” There was a pause. “Let me get this straight. Are you that brave to trade your life for that of a blind girl?”

The other man whimpered.

A shiver ran down my spine at the mention of the blind girl. Who was he talking about? Someone close to the overseer?

I swallowed, glancing between the two masked vampires at each side. Forever they stared ahead, even as I stood inches away from them. I was steeling myself to enter the overseer’s office, but I couldn’t have these two come in after me. Slowly, keeping my breath as calm as possible, I bent down and slipped the blade from my waist, keeping it hidden behind my wrist as I rose.

Do not miss. Do not miss. Do not miss. I clutched the handle, pointing between his ribs, inches away, not breathing, and plunged the twisted knife in the vampire’s heart. He tumbled against the wall, dropping limp.

I caught a blur of movement off my periphery and the second vampire’s knife sliced against my arm as I tried to duck it. Blood spilled, pain surged, and I clamped down to keep from screaming.

I saw the second swing coming a mile away and dodged it. It felt surreal how fast I could move. I responded with my knuckles to his face, crushing his mask to pieces and breaking one of his bones. The blow sent him off his feet, without cries or protest, sprawling on the carpet. I dropped my weight on top of his torso and sank the dirk between his ribs.

But I was out of time to catch my breath.

“You, go check outside,” I heard Caspian say.

As the double doors swung open, I shoulder rammed the masked vampire in the entrance to the ground, grabbed him by the ankle, spun on my feet, gathering momentum, and hurled him against the bookshelves lining the wall. Books fell in a torrent over his head.

There were four people inside. One masked vampire, the one that shuffled back to his feet, Caspian, and the overseer. The old man in the business suit was portly and balding, with wisps of white hair on the sides of his head. He lay on the ground, attempting to rise, but either too weak or scared to do it. He was shaking violently, and tears rolled down his face.

“Vampire girl, how did you get in here?” Caspian was smiling, his eyes sparkling with curiosity. “You come to the hunter. How moronic of you.”

“Where’s Mandala? And why are you working for him?”

“With him. Why do you think? I get to hunt. It’s bound to be a booming business, and I’ll be spearheading it. I hate working with vampires, but these thralls are cheap labor. Mandala said I could dust them myself after we were finished.” Caspian drew a tiny crossbow from his trench coat and nocked a bolt to it.

I was ready for it. But he fired it at the old man propping himself up on the carpet. The overseer cried and clutched the shaft sprouting from his thigh.

“I’ll give you the antidote—for the numbers,” Caspian said, tugging a sly smile.

The overseer’s big white eyes were blinking rapidly, and he began hyperventilating. “0451HEIT,” he said, and let out a sob. “The antidote…”

“Vampire girl, check this out. You might be interested,” Caspian said, skipping around the fancy mahogany desk. He inputted the password on the desktop’s keyboard. “This is how we lift the veil. See what they don’t teach you at school about old benevolent ORPHEUS.”

The overseer was grasping at his throat, every breath raking his lungs. A sheen of sweat covered his forehead. “The… antidote.”

“What antidote? Oh… I was joking, there isn’t one.”

The old man ragged out one last yelp, gave a twist, contracted on the floor, bones snapped, and his face smacked the floor, a puddle of drool pooling around him.

At the same time the bookshelves moved, parting in the middle and sliding away from each other. A motorized, whirring sound came from behind the wooden frames as gears and cogs operated the machine. Left bare, the wall behind was painted red with alien or demonic markings, not unlike those that appeared when Mandala opened his wormholes.

Caspian pressed a button on the desk, and a droning noise like static filled the room as it powered the device. The markings glowed a bright scarlet and a trans-dimensional gash on reality tore open, yawning wider and wider until it revealed a human figure.

My eyes became transfixed on the sight.

A blindfolded woman wearing only a hospital gown sat alone in the gloom. Her mouth hung agape, strings of drool running down her chin. Nourishing tubes were inserted in her wrists. Her fingers seemed to move on their own, flicking, twirling, twisting, and I would’ve missed the nearly transparent threads sprouting from her fingertips if not for my enhanced vision. The cosmic-like background reminded me of the Starlit Almanac. She was literally trapped in the middle of nowhere among the stars and this portal was her only way out, if she somehow freed herself of those callous bindings.

“These are the weavers of reality,” Caspian said. “From a young age till their bodies fail them, this is their fate. Her mind is long gone, taken by the abyss. This is the sacrifice we have to make to keep our secrecy.”

I was only then recovering my stolen words. “I’m sure… I’m sure this kind of injustice torments you.”

Caspian shrugged. “I couldn’t care less.”

He raised his crossbow arm towards the weaver and pulled the trigger. I was already on the move, sprinting across the office, past the two masked vampires, to ram the dhampir. As the bowstring thrummed, Caspian went vaulting over the desk like a rag doll, shoving the swiveling chair to crash against the wood.

A rapidly beeping alarm came from the overseer’s computer. Inside the portal, the weaver was dead, struck in the back of the head. I turned away from the sight, feeling close to retching. Tears stung my eyes after a few seconds.

The vampire hunter wobbled back to his feet, finding support on the desk, wincing as he cracked a bone in his neck. “Seize her.”

“How could you? How could you?”

Caspian laughed. “Ah, so you advocate slavery and human trafficking?”

When the first vampire took hold of my shoulder I spun, slipping the dirk in his chest like it was made of tinfoil and slamming him away from me. The second one lunged for a grab. I ducked under his flailing arms, put all my strength into my shoulders, and launched him over my body. He thumped on the floor face up, but had no time to react before my knife reached his heart.

“Don’t. Make. My. Job. Harder.” Caspian pressed a finger to his ear. “Bring me backup, or I swear I will kill this bitch.”

The vampires’ bodies had begun to crumble to dust, the clothes to flatten and wrinkle over them.

There was a blinding flash of red light. I barred my eyes from the bursting glows as two figures emerged from two wormholes by Caspian’s side.

Clad in black uniforms with a saber-wielding thrush engraved on their arms, the two Knights of Caim drew their swords in quiet whispers of black steel against leather. The two sidled up in circles, never looking away from me with their gold serpent eyes, surrounding me. Tendrils of shadow trailed after them, they clung to their every movement. Their movements were soundless—they might have been ghosts.

“The warlock wants to see you,” Caspian said. “My friends won’t hesitate to cut you to pieces if you do not comply.”

“Why?”

“You’re the mastermind of this all. Of course, he wants to see you. And if it pleases him, the better for me. Saying he’s unsatisfied with your replacement would be an understatement.”

“My replacement?” Melanie was working with him from the start. It had to be her. My blood boiled. If not for her meddling, the warlock might never have known about my plans with the Starlit Almanac. “Take me to him, then.”

A pair of sturdy hands seized my hurt arm and twisted it behind my back while another clutched my neck. I groaned as the Knight dug his nails into my closing knife wound, sending spears of pain through my limb. I clenched my fists to restrain my demon from lashing back at them.

“Dandy. Let’s go now. Show me the coordi—” Caspian began, but there was a crashing noise and the room lit up in a solar white, making me shut my eyes. He threw his arms up to cover his face. “Cazzo.”

Having my back turned to the source, the walls and furniture glowed with its powerful radiance. The Knight holding me captive flung me away to shield himself while drawing his saber. I lay where he left me, hands and knees pressed on the ash and bloodstained carpet, desperate for answers, but unable to look behind me. Soon there was a clash, and clanging noises in quick succession echoed off the walls and into my enhanced ears.

“There she is!”

Mr. Royce! My heart gave a turn. I couldn’t tell if it was from happiness or fear for them. No, it’s too dangerous. I wanted to yell at them, but it was too late for that.

“Scarlett, come on. Get up.” Oliver knelt by my side, offering his hand as support. I looked behind us.

Alan, Morganne, and Mr. Royce were dueling the two Knights—if you could call it that. They barely held them back with Alan’s deft handling of his luminous spear, blocking and parrying the deadly, elegant dance of the two devils, while the warlock’s and witch’s combined efforts of harrying them with time spells and hexes in a strategic sequence helped to slow them down or distract them.

“On the left,” Mr. Royce yelled while casting a slowing spell on the other devil. “Get him.”

Morganne’s spirit seemed right in the heart of battle. She cast, cursed, hexed, jinxed, bewitched, one right after the other, synchronizing well with Mr. Royce’s spells.

“Now the right. Attagirl.”

“Look out!” I shoved Oliver out of the way as Caspian’s white, gleaming blade cleaved the carpet where he had stood.

“I’ll banish you back to Hell, devil boy.” Caspian prepared for another swing, pressing on a startled Oliver. He was reluctant to fight back with fire, afraid it’d get out of control and catch everyone of us in it.

There was a yellowish blur and a powerful, rumbling growl. It pounced and smashed into Caspian’s side, sending him splintering the bookshelves in a deafening crash. Halfway through her transformation, tawny fur covered her arms and legs. Black-tipped lynx ears sprang from her temples and whiskers from her cheeks. Her short fuzzy tail flailed angrily.

“Leave them alone,” Anja said, snarling between her razor-sharp fangs.

“Devils and vampires are nobody’s friends,” Caspian said, rising out from under the debris of wood at his feet. He spat and patted down his trench coat. Anja had torn into it with her claws. “Mark my words, catspawn.”

“You can’t take us three to one,” she said, her lips pulling back in a furious hiss, her razor-sharp claws splayed.

The vampire hunter twirled his sword about his wrist and sheathed it in his belt. A smile crossed his lips. “I don’t have to. Now it ends.” He was watching behind us.

The other fight had wrecked the rest of the office to unrecognizable rubble and had made its way out to the hallway. It seemed either Morganne or Mr. Royce had blasted one of the Knights through the walls and everyone had followed out.

It was Alan taking the brunt of their force though. He seemed slower now and losing confidence. He didn’t fight to win anymore. It was pure self-defense and caving in soon. Through his wincing expressions, I saw fear for the first time in his eyes, I saw what he always fought to conceal: Weakness.

Even as he flew up to the ceiling for a much-needed breather, the Knights boosted each other into the air for a swing. They were relentless and nimble in their pursuit like nothing I’d seen before.

Mr. Royce cast his phrases while pointing his gold watch at them. But fatigue had gotten to him. If the spell had any effect, it wasn’t noticeable, and he propped his hands on his waist, panting.

Morganne shouted hexes from the depths of her lungs, growing frustrated as she missed her targets or didn’t work as she expected. A blast of air surged from the fluttering pages of her grimoire, hit a Knight, shoving him a few feet backward, only to continue pursuing the angel as though it had no effect.

Then it happened.

Alan lost height in one bout after blocking a saber. The second knight thrust himself off the wall higher into the air and the blade struck him.

It sliced clean through a wing. The spear of light slid free from Alan’s hands and vanished into specks of light dust. The angel tumbled, spiraling down, and crashed landed on the carpet on his back.

“NO,” Mr. Royce shouted. Anja stifled a shriek while clinging to my shoulder. I looked on as I felt something break inside me.

The Knight pressed a combat boot on Alan’s chest when he tried to rise and hovered the saber’s gleaming tip over his stunned face. The devil’s slit eyes smiled with triumph, and their cold, merciless gaze transfixed us. We all grew still, holding our breaths. The silence might have been deafening, except for the whirring of helicopter blades high in the sky.

“Lay down your weapons, lose the second skins, sit down, and the mangled bird gets to live,” Caspian said, perched on the overseer’s desk.

Alan lay breathless, wide eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, or at the tip of the black sword that hung above his head like a pendulum of death. The second Knight crouched at his side, gripped him by the arm, and yanked him shuffling to his feet. He pressed the saber edge against the skin on his neck. There were threads of silver ichor dripping from his lacerated shoulder blade where damaged feathers were still plastered to him.

“Let him go. We surrender,” Mr. Royce said, placing the clinking gold watch at his feet. Then raised his arms up over his head.

“Let him go, motherfuckers,” Morganne shouted. She was seething underneath her pale skin.

“I didn’t say he gets to walk free,” Caspian said, hopping from the desk to the floor. “One of you is paying for all of this mess.”

The Knights manhandled Alan across the office to join the vampire hunter by the overseer’s desk. He didn’t fight back. He looked too dispirited to make a move.

“Let’s go. Give me the coordinates,” Caspian said, extending an arm to one Knight.

The soldier tossed him a device with numbers on its screen. Caspian took a brief glance at it, reached into his inside pocket to retrieve yet another device, input the numbers on it, and a wormhole roared open at their side.

“No. You can’t.” I slipped from Anja’s embrace. It was supposed to be me the one they took. “Take me instead.”

“Scarlett, no,” she yelled after me.

The two devils shoved Alan inside and Caspian followed.

The portal closed right before my fingertips, and I fell to my knees, shaking.

***

“They’re in Limbo,” Morganne said after moments of stunned silence.

“Limbo…” I let the word hang in the air. My voice cracked a bit. “H-how do you know?”

“It’s the safest place to hide from anything. A gray world, full of fog and mist. It’s where you’d run to after wronging an Archdemon or a God. The only way to track them down and find them was through those coordinates.”

The sight of the maimed wing sent waves up my esophagus. “Why? Why? Why did you have to come find me? They were going to take me to Mandala.”

Mr. Royce bent down to pick up his watch. He couldn’t bring himself to look anyone in the eye. “Alan knew what you were up to, felt it. He had your back. There was no changing his mind.”

“Or ours,” Oliver said.

Anja knelt beside me and put an arm over my neck, a tear running down her cheek.

“This also helped,” Morganne said, drawing a piece of paper from her sweatshirt pocket. It was Dexter’s letter. “It was pretty lame after all, but at least we knew how to find you.”

We fell in silence. Oliver peered between all of us with a what now kind of look.

The corpses around us would soon be nothing but dust. The whole office was nothing but charred and cluttered debris.

I heard sobbing and looked around me.

“I suck.” Morganne’s eyes had welled up. “I suck. I suck so much. Why do I suck so fucking much?” She struck the floor with a fist. “If I had tried harder, they wouldn’t have taken him.”

Mr. Royce stared at the carpet, sapped of all energy. “You can’t beat yourself up over that. You did your best. We all did.”

“I could’ve tried harder. Everything I worked so hard to achieve was for nothing. I did nothing but tickle them.” She dashed the grimoire against the wall. Battered it landed face down on its pages. “I’m only gonna get in the way.” Her hands were clenched at her sides.

The teacher picked up the grimoire and dusted it off. “You’re the brightest witch I’ve ever had the pleasure of teaching, the most passionate and hard-working. I am profoundly proud of all your progress. But nobody can be good at everything. That’s why we find what we love to do and focus on mastering that. Once you do, discipline is your only limit.”

“What if I never find it?”

“You will. You work harder for it than most do. I didn’t find my forte until I was in college. Some do so decades into their lives.” He handed back her tome.

She swabbed her eyes with her sleeve. “You… you guys are the best thing that’s happened to me in all my hellish years of high school. And I’ll be damned if some lunatic mofos are going to take that away from me.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Oliver said.

“Same,” Anja echoed beside me, staring blankly at the debris.

I felt the same way, but the sight of Alan spiraling from the air still haunted the back of my mind. It would be my greatest agony to see them suffer a similar fate. “We’re stuck here anyway. Without the coordinates…”

Mr. Royce walked past us to the overseer’s desk and wound his pocket watch’s crown, reciting phrases under his breath. After a few clicks, Caspian, the two Knights, and Alan materialized into existence from a portal. We all bolted to our feet, ready to fight again. But the teacher was calm, standing by their side while tinkering with the watch.

They moved in reverse, striding backward and away from the portal. There was a flash of red and it vanished. Caspian looked briefly at the device on his hands before the wormhole would open. Mr. Royce froze time and peered over the dhampir’s shoulder. “This is how we were able to find you on the night of the Halloween’s dance.”

Alan’s blank stare hurt me. All his confidence, all his flamboyance, shattered in an instant. I couldn’t look away from him.

“Look at their eyes,” Oliver said, inches away from the Knight. The uniformed humanoid was at least a whole foot higher. “They’re… cold, hollow…”

Morganne walked up to the other and launched a vicious kick at his groin. But her leg passed through the illusion harmlessly. “It was worth a try,” she mumbled to herself.

Mr. Royce sighed. “I’ve never opened a wormhole. We’re going to need to go downstairs to the Gates before this place gets swarmed again.”

The witch stood by his side to peek at Caspian’s device. “I’ll open it.”

“It’s greatly beyond my level, and I’ve tried many times to summon one throughout my career.”

“I can do it. I know it. I don’t know how, but I have this strong feeling.”

Mr. Royce looked hesitant. “If you believe you can do it, then I trust you can. Do hurry, though. I’d like to be gone before they storm the building and find us here.”

Morganne nodded, blinking, and gazed down, concentrating. She held her grimoire open in one hand. Her calm breathing soon became fast and erratic.

“Take it easy, don’t strain yourself too much,” Mr. Royce said.

But the witch was unresponsive. Her eyes became pitch-black orbs.

Anja winced. “What’s happening to her?”

“She’s drawing too much power.” Mr. Royce backed off from the witch. “She’ll either make it or pass out from exhaustion. There’s nothing we can do to stop her now.”

The room fizzled with energy, a hum of static going around and covering my skin with goose bumps. Books slid out of the shelves in a cascade of fluttering pages. Wind swirled around her feet, picking up strength until it was ruffling our hair. Her black tome’s pages flapped wildly.

The glowing markings flashed into existence on the carpet. Not a second later, the wormhole tore open in a sudden vacuuming of air.

Mr. Royce stared agape. “How’s it possible?”

Morganne broke the trance and lurched a little before Oliver caught her. “Guys, methinks a migraine is coming my way.”

The teacher was still stuttering, a grin spreading across his face. “But h-how?”

I peeped over the edge. “Are you sure this leads to Limbo? Are you absolutely sure?”

The witch looked heavy-eyed. She nodded as Oliver helped her stand steady. “Hurry before it closes.”

“Wait.” Anja tugged me back when my feet tipped before the abyss. She drew me in to her lips, pulled together like magnets made for each other. “I don’t wanna regret anything in the end. Who knows, maybe it’s the last time we say goodbye.”

“Our lives will never be the same after this,” Oliver said, echoing her thoughts.

I turned to the roaring darkness. “It only has to be me. I’ll find Alan and put an end to this. And if not, getting him back will be enough. Go. While you still can.”

“I cannot go back to daily life… not knowing what’s become of you,” Anja said, clasping my hand.

“I came here against Father’s wishes,” Oliver said. “I either go back with my hands full, or not at all. It’ll be dangerous, but together we can lower the risks.”

Morganne’s chest was still heaving. “Dammit… Scarlett… you’re not changing anyone’s minds. The next hole I open will be under your feet.”

“Fine. But you’ll leave Mandala to me. You don’t let him see you, and you don’t let him hear you, whatever happens, got it?”

I didn’t wait for their response. The world turned black and its howling filled my ears once I plunged in the wormhole. Strong currents of wind whipped my face and made my eyes water.

Soon I touched down among fog and mist.