A Power of Old(51)

“Allow yourself this gift, Jenus,” she whispered, turning her back to me and slowly walking back to the pool. She stepped up onto the edge of the marble rim, and then slowly lowered herself back down.

She laughed again, beckoning to me.

“Jenus, come,” she purred, “there really is no need to be afraid.”





Rose





We traveled as slowly as we could along the portal that led to the supernatural dimension, waiting for Nuriya to indicate where we should ‘turn off’ for the In-Between. I felt weightless within the misty blue walls of the tunnel, my hand clutching Caleb’s as we tried to keep as close to the walls as possible.

Up ahead, Corrine, Mona, Aisha and Horatio followed Nuriya, the witch using her magic to prevent Caleb and me from being sucked downward by the vacuum. Behind us, Yuri, Claudia, Ashley and Landis followed. The jinn started to slow down, and Nuriya pointed off into the swirling mists. Corrine and Mona again assisted us with their powers, allowing us to follow the jinn’s lead, and we started to pass through the walls. Blanketed by vapors, I felt like I’d stepped into a dream-like snowstorm. The nothingness of the portal wall, the complete and utter silence of the blanketing mists started to get to me. I wanted to yell out—to make some sort of sound—to end the deafening silence. But as we passed through to the other side, it had only just begun.

A noiseless, star-studded eternity surrounded us. I saw what looked like planets far off in the distance, glowing. We moved slowly, drifting downward. I glanced over at Caleb, smiling—we had often wondered what the In-Between would be like after hearing my brother’s experiences with it. He was as amazed as I was, his brown eyes widening as he peered into the great abyss of stars.

The jinn suddenly vanished us all, and the next thing I knew, we had traveled far away from the portal and were hovering above a star. Not one of the brightly glowing ones, but a dull sphere that looked dark and gloomy and unwelcoming.

Nuriya cleared her throat, beckoning us to follow her. Without me doing anything, I felt my body changing trajectory, moving toward the jinni. Soon, all of us were gathered around her, floating gently in the air.

“Before we arrive, I need to tell you about the Shadowed. They are the creatures that guard the stones. They won’t harm us, but stay out of their way as best you can,” Nuriya informed us.

“Wh-What kind of creatures?” Claudia asked, taking the words right out of my mouth. Nuriya hadn’t mentioned anything about ‘guardians of the stones’.

“You will see,” she replied.

I gulped. I didn’t much like the sound of that.

“How do you know all this anyway?” Aisha grumbled, looking toward the planet with trepidation.

“My grandfather,” Nuriya replied with a regal swipe of her hair, ignoring Aisha’s tone. “He brought me here when I was little. The In-Between was an old, forgotten land that our people used as a dumping ground…it was a point of interest in the history of our kind.”

Without warning, the jinni jolted us down to the surface of the planet—one moment we were suspended in mid-air, the next, my feet were on solid ground. Looking around, I saw that Nuriya had placed us on a large, volcanic rock that jutted out from the earth. Beneath us, and for as far as I could see in the distance, the rest of the planet was covered in dull stones, small and perfectly round replicas of the one that had shot out from the portal.

“This place is weird,” Aisha whispered, shivering at the sudden drop of temperature. I agreed, but I didn’t think that ‘weird’ covered it—this place was isolated and bleak. I wasn’t in any hurry to spend any more time here than we absolutely had to.

“Let’s collect the stones—”

I broke off as I saw Caleb pointing, his gaze fixed on an approaching figure in the distance.

“Shadowed?” he questioned Nuriya.

“Shadowed,” she confirmed, nodding grimly.

The figure loped toward us. Its movements were heavy and slow, at odds with its almost ghost-like appearance. As it got closer, I saw that the creature had been drained of all its color, making it look more like a negative photo of something that had once been and now no longer was. The most shocking thing, the part I hadn’t expected, was that the figure looked like it had once been human, or close to it. Yet it couldn’t be an actual ghost, for we could see it.

The jaw of the Shadowed hung open, its gaping mouth nothing but a black hole from which a low, guttural moan emerged. Catching sight of us, but unable to reach the top of the rock from where it stood, the Shadowed started to roar, its expression growing confused and angry.