Aisha and Horatio lit a massive fire – which Ridan decided to help with—and as the twilight came, we were all sitting around it, using the old Viking remains as stools and chairs. The driftwood made the fire burn strange blue and purple colors, lighting up relaxed and content faces.
The Hawk boys all sat together, poking sticks into the fire and laughing loudly at their own jokes. Ash, Tejus, Ruby and Hazel mostly just looked exhausted, but in a gross, lovey-dovey way. Both pairs snuggled up together, talking in soft whispers. Lucifer, Tejus’s haughty lynx, had miraculously appeared from the undergrowth nearby – he’d obviously followed us when we left the castle. I was kind of in awe of the animal…I knew cats were meant to have nine lives, but this one seemed to be completely indestructible. The jinn and Corrine kept passing perfectly cooked corn-type vegetables over to us—they’d managed to do some exploring in the nearby villages and fields before the sun went down to find something edible. It was easily the best food I’d had in months—possibly ever.
The only people who looked less than happy were Yelena and the Oracle.
“Don’t you like corn?” I asked Yelena, nudging her. She had been looking at her smoked husk for ages and not taken a single bite.
“I do.” She sighed. “But do you want mine? I’m not hungry.”
“Yeah,” I replied happily, taking it.
“Benedict,” Aisha called to me, “Yelena is upset.”
“Because she’s not hungry,” I explained.
“No,” the jinni snapped, “she’s not hungry because she’s upset. Goodness, child—you are something else.” She flung her hands up in the air, turning back to Horatio.
“Are you?” I asked, looking at Yelena.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s just that…I guess it’s all over now. I have to return home—and there’s going to be no more adventures, no more Nevertide, no more nothing. I’m going to miss the sentries.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. “You’re going to miss the sentries?”
“Well—yeah. Jenney, Ash, Tejus. Won’t you?”
I hadn’t really thought about it. I was just glad it was all over, and I certainly wouldn’t be missing Nevertide.
“I don’t want to go home,” she added fiercely.
“Yelena,” Fly interrupted gently. “It’s good that you’ve got a home to go to. Won’t your parents be missing you?”
“I guess,” she muttered. “Maybe.”
“I think they probably will,” Sky added. “You’re easily missable—trust me, they’ll be wanting you home.”
Yelena smiled a small smile.
“Thanks,” she replied, blushing.
“You can come and visit The Shade whenever you like,” I replied, a bit annoyed that the Hawks were saying all the stuff I was supposed to be saying. She was my friend, not theirs.
“Really?” she asked, her face brightening.
“Yeah. My mom loves you. She’ll like it if you came to stay.”
She smiled.
“Can I have my corn back?” she asked. “I’m starving.”
Rose
We returned to Nevertide. The moment we stepped out of the portal I scoured the land for Benedict and Hazel. I saw them, black forms all sleeping around a long-dead fire. I had almost forgotten it was the middle of the night.
“Should we wake them?” Claudia asked.
Behind me, coming out of the portal were the sentries we’d collected from the locations around Earth. My family followed, along with the Vaughns, the Lazaroffs, Sherus and his sister, and Mona—the rest of the GASP team had gone back to The Shade.
“I don’t know. I don’t suppose they’ve had a good night’s rest since they arrived here.”
“They’d want to know how it went,” my mom said. “I think in this instance we should wake them. Plenty of time to sleep when they’re back where they belong.”
My heart seemed to expand at her last words—the idea of having my children back home was unbelievably wonderful. To know that they were safe and sound in The Shade, far from the entity, ghouls, shadows and any other unpleasant creatures Nevertide had to offer.
“I also want to know if Benedict had any luck with the jinn. We’ll need to find them before we leave,” my father added, making his way toward the sleeping group before I could offer up another reason why we should leave them be. I wasn’t sure I wanted to anyway—now this was all over, I was looking forward to getting back to normal family life as soon as possible. Well. Almost normal. I imagined there would be some sentries returning with us…
Caleb took my hand, both of us hurrying over to the children. I knelt beside Benedict, shaking him gently.
“What!” He sat up instantly, his eyes wild with fright.
“It’s just us,” I soothed, pushing back his hair. His body was trembling.
“Sorry,” he murmured, “bad dream.”
I nodded, feeling a pain in my chest. I hated that he’d seen so much, had been so afraid for so long that even his dreams were haunted. I could only hope that his fear would become a distant memory after he left this place.
Slowly all of them started to wake.
Ben and River flung themselves at Field, embracing him in a huge bear hug. I did the same with Hazel, and watched happily as Claudia wrapped both Ash and Ruby into an embrace. I didn’t replicate my embrace with Tejus—I had the feeling he’d rather be left alone. However, it didn’t stop me from feeling a strong parental affection for him.
We told them about the battle, how we’d finished off the shadow armies and the few ghouls that were left on Earth and done our best to restore a sense of normality to the cities—but in some cases, particularly Paris, the clean-up would take months. I hoped they’d eventually find a way to straighten the Eiffel Tower.
“What about the jinn?” Derek asked after the kids had had their fill of our stories.
Benedict looked about in agitation, as if he’d lost something, but then calmed down again as a very tall, willowy figure started to walk toward us. She’d been at the far end of the cove, and from the state of her hair and dress I thought that perhaps she’d been sleeping in the bushes.
She looked very lost. As she got closer, I recognized the strange dark runes shifting about like shadows on her arms… I’d seen something like them before.
An… Oracle?
Benedict started to tell us the story of how they’d found her in the Dauoa forests—a half-Ancient, half-jinni Oracle who had resided in Nevertide all her life. My instant reaction was one of skepticism—and even fear. I knew from extreme experience that Ancients were not something we should be messing around with. Had I known that she was here with my kids, I would have come back with them straight away…
Claudia glared at the woman, moving to stand in front of Ruby.
“She means no harm,” Nuriya said wearily. “Admittedly her birthright is questionable, but I do believe she is a victim of circumstance—as far as I understand she has done nothing to harm any of us, and has no desire to do so.”
“Queen Nuriya, with all due respect, I don’t believe we can give an Ancient the benefit of the doubt,” my father added, his jaw clenched tensely.
“Wait till you hear what she has to say,” the jinni replied, “then judge her.”
Queen Nuriya prompted the Oracle by taking her hand gently. The woman looked as if she was preparing to run off into the forest at any moment.
With a quiet, almost musical voice, the woman started to explain how she had come to Nevertide—how her parents had used the land to protect her, how they had cast the dome that Ibrahim and the other witches had found surrounding Nevertide and its ocean.
I did wonder what they had been protecting her from, but if she was the offspring of a jinni and an Ancient, then most likely it was their own species they felt she needed to be cut off from. To call Ancients conservative would be an understatement.
“What about the planet of the stones, the one in the In-Between?” my father ask
ed after she had explained that she’d been responsible for locking the entity away.
The Oracle shook her head.
“That was my father’s tribe. They knew the magic of the stones, which was passed on to me as a young girl. My father was responsible for the planet—he believed that it was the only way to render the ghouls powerless.”
My father frowned. “It wasn’t ghouls that escaped from those stones—it was the shadow.”
“The shadow are ghouls,” Benedict announced with a strange level of delight, “they’re super ghouls—ghouls in their purest form! Tell them the history!” he demanded of the Oracle.
I suddenly felt queasy.
The Oracle frowned at my son.
“Benedict of The Shade, if you don’t learn more courtly manners, you will find it a lot harder to get what you want in this life.”
Benedict sighed. “Okay, please can you tell them about the history?”
“The creatures from the stones are the original ghouls, a lot stronger than the type you have come across before. When I arrived here, there were already supernatural creatures who had made Nevertide their home, and some of these were the regular, bone-like skeleton ghouls that you are so familiar with. I had been here a few years when the ‘original’ ghouls arrived. I do not know where they came from, perhaps somewhere far off in the In-Between. My father never found their home. The ‘entity,’ as you call him, the leader of the original ghouls, took over Nevertide. He built a fortress here in which to keep the memories of his victims. I had no bother from them, and they left me alone for the most part. That was until the human invaders came. They traveled by boat, and were fierce warriors. Even so, they were no match for the entity and his armies. Within a day the humans were made slaves. It was sad to see.” The Oracle stopped for a moment, looking past us all, off into the distance as if she was watching her own tale unfold in front of her. With a dreamy sigh, she continued. “The future unfolded, and I didn’t like what I saw. I helped the humans stage an uprising, I gave them weapons and asked them to consume the immortal water. They fought the entity, and I trapped him, knowing that many moons from that moment, there would perhaps be a time when he was set free.”
“The sentries, where did they come from?” Benedict persisted. I nudged him, wondering why my son was being so impertinent, and so desperate to get to this part of the story.
“The sentries,” the Oracle replied with a world-weary sigh, “are the result of humans who had become ‘infected’ by the original ghouls. The ghouls created their slaves to resemble their own powers and abilities, so they could create a species stronger than humans they could borrow mental power from. The sentries are hybrids, and share many skills of the original ghouls—things like long-sight, mind reading, and the ability to take ‘mind matter’ and turn it into something else—I believe you call these barriers?”
Tejus and Ash nodded silently.
“I didn’t realize the ghouls had all of those abilities,” my father cut in, his voice hoarse.
“The originals did. That is how they are able to take on the shape of the shadow—it is their own version of a barrier, a way to hide themselves. Of course, all these original ghouls took their power from their master in order to wake from the stones. Once he died, their powers left them, as I’m sure you saw.”
“Hang on a second.” Hazel held out her hand for us all to stop. “What you’re actually saying is that—”
Oh God. Poor Hazel! I saw her slowly start to register what the Oracle was actually saying.
“Sentries are part ghoul!” Benedict cried gleefully.
“Hazel!” I exclaimed, before I could stop myself.
Oh, God.
My daughter glared at the Oracle.
“I-I don’t believe you,” she stammered.
“I’m sorry that you do not like it,” the Oracle replied gently, “but it is the truth.”
“Eeek!” Benedict made a silly, high-pitched noise that I assumed was meant to resemble a ghoul’s cry and ran around the fire to escape the wrath of his sister.
“Benedict, I’m going to drown you in the ocean,” she snapped furiously.
“Enough, Benedict!” my father and Caleb demanded simultaneously. He stopped instantly, and came back to stand beside me.
“You are in trouble when we get home,” I snapped at him.
Tejus tried to comfort Hazel, but she seemed to be in a mild form of shock, just looking at the Oracle, then back at Tejus and Ash. She didn’t say another word out loud, but just kept mouthing ‘ghoul’ as if trying to get used to the term. Oh, dear. I felt like we’d be having a lot of discussions about nature over nurture in the coming weeks. My heart went out to her. I had to admit, it was a difficult thing to accept—that my daughter had become part ghoul was a shock to us all. Of course, I would always love her, even if she started to hanker for digestive organs, but I doubted that it would come to that. If Tejus, Ash and the lovely girl Jenney were anything to go by, being a sentry was an accolade, not a curse.
“I want to ask about the stones again,” my father interrupted. “How did you and your father create them? The jinn of The Shade have lost this ability.”
Queen Nuriya tilted her head in curiosity when the Oracle began to explain.
“The stones are created from the flowers the Hawk children delivered to you—they are a special breed that used to be popular with my kind for their energy. The flowers are used to crystallize them into a shell.”
“And you are still able to accomplish this?” he questioned.
“I am,” the Oracle agreed, “but please don’t ask me what you are going to ask. I can see that you are hesitant to ask anyway—you still do not trust me. But I do not wish to return with you to The Shade. I cannot see my future if I do, and that frightens me.”
“We need to learn from you,” Queen Nuriya replied softly.
The Oracle lowered her head, and closed her eyes.
“Please,” my father said. “There is a lot we could learn from one another. A lot of skills that the jinn have lost could be re-learned, and be of use to us in our line of work.”
“I will need to think about it, but perhaps…perhaps it will be possible for a short while. I’ve never been anywhere but here. To visit a new dimension, and to speak with people—well, perhaps that would do me some good.”
My father looked somewhat pleased, but mostly still wary. I knew that he and my mother, and the rest of the jinn, would be keeping a close eye on the Oracle if she did decide to return with us. We’d already had more than our fair share of Ancient trouble, enough to last ten lifetimes.
But perhaps, I reminded myself, looking at my daughter, who still appeared a little pale, we shouldn’t be so quick to judge the species, but rather to trust the individual.
Ruby
I looked around my room, enjoying the moment of peace I had to myself before the celebrations started. The leaves rustled gently against the window panes, and the house felt still—no armies attacking us, no barriers up protecting me from the dangers that lay outside. My nights and days had been tranquil, and that had taken some getting used to.
We’d been back in The Shade for two weeks. When Derek and the other members of GASP had arrived the night that we’d slept on the sea shore, we hadn’t even waited till dawn to leave. Ash and Tejus had both been willing to return with us, along with Zerus, Jenney and, after some reluctance, the Oracle. Ash had made sure the villagers were comfortable back at Memenion’s castle, but he’d been reassured by Queen Memenion that she would look after them, try to get them back on their feet before their emperor returned. Ash had trusted her, and so did I. After everything the sentries of Nevertide had been through, there was little ill-will left—it didn’t matter who came from what kingdom, or where their allegiances had been before the battle. They were all ultimately going to be responsible for rebuilding their homeland.
I had worried about Ash adjusting to life in The Shade, but I needn’t have. The initial fascination t
hat he’d held with Earth when I first met him had returned quickly—he spent hours trying to understand television sets, blu-ray players and gaming consoles. Even ordinary household stuff like vacuum cleaners, blenders, the refrigerator—all held him under their spell. As a ‘welcome to my world’ gift, I’d taken him to Hawaii for the day, just to hang out. We went to the movies and saw the latest predictable blockbuster, but I doubted he even remembered what the film was about, he was so amazed by the sheer scale of the screen, the ‘bizarre’ outfits of the actors, and then there had been the snacks. I laughed to myself as I remembered having to physically drag him away from the self-service soda machine—the other movie-goers had already been staring at us because of Ash’s size and his look of continued astonishment as he experienced what for everyone else was a typical Friday night.
After the movies, we’d gone to a restaurant—just a regular diner—but Ash had sworn he’d never eaten so well in his life. While we walked along one of the piers, I noticed that Ash was practically buzzing with energy. I thought it was the mass amounts of sugar we’d consumed, but Ash sheepishly put me right—he’d been syphoning off pretty much everyone. It was like a free-for-all buffet being in public. I didn’t really know how to react to that—it felt a bit unfair that innocent, unsuspecting humans were feeding him mentally, but then no one actually seemed to notice, or mind, so he couldn’t have been feeding off any of them in large doses. I saved that as something to bring up again at a later date…
Tejus had also settled happily into life in The Shade. Where Ash fetishized the mundane human technology, Tejus was in awe of the weaponry and communications that GASP had at its disposal—things like the satellite maps, the radios, on-screen calls—anything that helped GASP in its missions. He had already become a useful asset—his more traditional war strategy skills were intriguing to both Benjamin and Derek. He would be a great future member of the GASP team.
I sighed. Looking at my bookshelves, I saw my childhood collection of combat manuals, Sun Tzu’s Art of War and weapon guides. For so long I’d had my heart set on joining GASP. Now things were different. I had other obligations, a different life that was starting to take shape—one entirely unexpected, but that just made it all the more exciting.