Preternatural (Worlds & Secrets) (43 page)

“
Where’s Mychaela?” Aemilia asked. We exchanged glances, confused. Aemilia had just
brought to our attention a very important point – where was the princess of Vernaesce?

“
My goodness, you’re absolutely right. How did you
guys get a hold of her last time?” Jade asked, her hand to her mouth in worry. Jordan jumped down from a ledge she was upon near the ceiling.

“
Aemilia and I were already at the ball when she pulled us aside,” she spoke.

“
Tarmo, Tammy, what about you
guys? You claimed to have been in contact with each other for ages. That you were all practically
monitoring
the movements of the Barons.” Tarmo and Tammy looked at each other.

“
That’s true,” they said to each other. Tammy shut her eyes and concentrated. Concordantly, Aemilia walked on over to the two swinging doors and lightly slid her finger between the thin gap between them. Frost scaled the door and they were bound shut. We hoped that whatever Tammy was attempting would be able to get a hold of the princess. Suddenly, Tammy’s eyes immediately shot open and quickly flashed a bright luminescent pink.

“
She’s meeting us back at home in Vernaesce, we better hurry. She said she’ll be there soon with a sentry via Root System,” Tammy briefly told us.

“
How do you
do
that? She’s not even telepathic,” Jaden asked, grinning.

“
There is only
so
much telepathy a being can have – they just don’t know how to use it well. It’s locked up at the back of their heads.”

“
Oh
goodness
, no,” Robbie immediately gasped, his eyes wide open and almost hazel as usual.

“
What is it?” Jaden asked.

“
We have a double period of maths…
with Tantrus
. Wouldn’t he notice a few runaways? Especially seeing as it’s
us
?” Our heads all subconsciously turned to Jojo.

“
Don’t look at me, okay? If he wants to be mad at us, he’ll be mad at us. Okay, enough chitchat – Mychaela should be there soon, hands in the middle.”  Aemilia quickly joined us. We shot our hands out in the middle, each of us touching, before immediately disappearing with embers trailing us and the ice of Aemilia’s creation melting away.

Tammy and Jade had put up a telekinetic barrier around the foliage of the canopy, enabling only us who had left our fingerprints on it to enter and exit the dome barrier.
We waited high up in the trees, cooped up skilfully between branches, away from eyesight and hidden in the thick green net of interwoven leaves. Anne and mum were home. If they knew what we were up to, we would never be given freedom again. World war Anne-gelina; I’ve told you this.

It was a few minutes after we had left
Aemilia’s school and setting up the barrier took some time as well. Waiting in a tree wasn’t as uncomfortable as I imagined though.

I held on
to two branches and squatted, partly leaning out to look down. Jaden monkey swung himself from all
the way back of the barrier-protected foliage. He swung acrobatically from a branch to the other, somersaulting in the air like a trapeze artist and swinging around next to me.

“
A.J.,” he began, “what if this is all a lie? What if your suspicion or
informer
is wrong?” Jaden asked. I sighed hopelessly. There was no doubt I hadn’t thought of those odds and possibilities.

“
Think of it this way,” I gulped and tried to make an adjusted statement to what I know had
been a bothering question. “At least we would have sealed the doors and stopped them from crossing anyway.” Jaden sighed and wet his lips as he looked out to the horizon.

“But we stick together, okay?” I told him.
A smile curled from the corner of his lips and he nudged me. The jokes and the insults were our way of expressing our love to each other. Mum and Jade knew that. Because nothing could truly get between Jaden and me. We were friends first before we knew anybody else – we finish off each other’s sentences for goodness’ sake.

“
It’s a bit creepy though, the possibility of meeting dad’s killers,” he said softly.

“
Yep, it sure is,” I responded with a sigh, attempting everything ‘alienly’ possible inside me to not let my fear of dying get a hold of my core and destroy me from within, especially before I had even closed the Cavern doors. Suddenly, I felt a tremor in my core. Mychaela was coming through – I could feel her in the roots of the Earth.

“
Everyone look lively, she’s here,” I warned. Jordan quickly jumped down from our staggering height (landing firmly on her feet) and stood at the very edge of the force-field, ready to pull Mychaela in before she alerted the adults. Suddenly, the ground burst open with an explosion of soil, spitting out Mychaela and a palace guard, yet leaving them standing upright as if they hadn’t been bent and morphed like a rubber band (I knew the feeling).

“
Thank you,” we heard her say courteously.

“
It is always a pleasure to serve Her Highness,” the guard respectfully responded, bowing from the head.

“
Naymeth, I told you to call me Mychaela,” she spoke with a soft smile before the palace guard was sucked back into the Earth with another eruption of soil and dirt, but leaving the surface intact, without uneven soil or grass.

M
ychaela was as radiant as ever: her long, black, waist-length hair was in a French braid over her shoulder with her thick fringe covering her forehead; her Revelion, like Robbie’s, was attached to her right forearm; strong mascara outlined her eyes and her nails were painted black, matching with the black choker around her neck with an oval onyx dangling off it. She had on tight fitted black jeans with dark purple Dr Martens and a plaid black and white shirt that seemed a little too big for her.

Mychaela looked around the compound languidly, strolling around as she approached the circular canopy of trees whilst walking backwards.

“Go,
go
!” I hissed. Jordan passed through the barrier, wrapped her hand around Mychaela’s mouth and dragged her back in as she shrieked.

“
Tammy!” Robbie hissed. Tammy made a small soft spot in the force-field before it once again solidified, allowing Mychaela to leave her print on the shield so that she could enter the barrier at will. As Jordan dragged her in, Mychaela’s prints were simultaneously synched into it. Jordan let go as soon as they had entered and the invisible barrier was sealed. Mychaela looked around and only saw Jordan.

“
Oh, it’s only you. Where are the others?” she asked. At that instance, we jumped out of the trees like wild animals and landed harmlessly. She smiled and gave each one of us a hug, giving Liam a more careful one. Unexpectedly, the front door opened and mum came trotting out, looking around suspiciously.

“
What’s she doing here; I thought they were out?” Mychaela spoke loudly.

Jordan
’s hand immediately found itself wrapped around Mychaela’s mouth again.

“
Aden, your mum’s much stronger than I am so there’s a chance she could see through the barrier,” Tammy whispered as we stood still. Mum walked around, getting closer to the dome.

“
What do we do?” I hesitated. “Climb! We climb!” she replied.

“
Get up in the trees, quickly.” We scaled up into the thick, dense depths of the foliage and remained tucked there, all next to one another. Mum had walked out of the path of oak trees in front of the house. But then the worst occurred. She softly strode across the brim of the force-field, about to glide into the canopy but immediately being blocked. She knew something was there and her eyes dilated in shock.

“
A force-field?” She suddenly figured out we weren’t at school. She couldn’t see or hear us, but she knew we were there. She hit against the dome barrier, creating a series of large cracks over it as we quickly scrambled about. Tarmo’s particular presence made the dome stronger and therefore harder for mum to breach as he attempted to block some of her chakras.

“
Everybody, hands –
quickly
!” Jojo quickly yelled through the last final cracks of the dome. We stretched our hands towards each other and we instantaneously teleported away. The barrier disappeared with the wind and mum came hurrying underneath the canopy. She looked up, staring mindlessly, as saw the faint ashes and green embers that Jojo had left behind, before quickly going back into the house.

We
gasped, relieved, as we landed in the little office in the Hydrotte region where we first met granddad. The office was locked from the outside. No one was here, only us – a bunch of teenagers. We turned on the lights without delay. None of us bothered to sit down; we stood in one corner. Mychaela slowly ceased her giggle.

“
So, Tammy told me about the situation,” she spoke.

“
When do we go?” Tarmo asked, picking up and examining the glass orbs.

“
As soon as possible. We need
to make sure they don’t get out. I’m not sure whether it was something to do with Samhain, but they need to be prevented from emerging at all costs. I don’t want to die,” I spoke timidly. Jaden put his arm around me for comfort. The only reason I would be hunted down by the Barons if they were ever loose was because of my power. That’s the only impression I got from my doppelganger. He never made much sense. I still had not even a stem cell about what made me so special that they’d want to kill me. Suddenly I didn’t feel like having these powers anymore – or maybe these were just uncertain doubts. Unexpectedly, the television in the room switched itself on. None of us had even touched it.

“
Liam, was that you?” Robbie asked.

“
No,” he replied timidly and frightened. The television channel was switched to the news. We were all left baffled as reports on viciously erupting geysers were discovered in the Caribbean, along with terrible thunderstorms and maelstroms. All of these were in the same location. Scientists seemed unsure of the cause of such unseasonable catastrophe.

“
It appears that the vicious seas and tsunamis around the Caribbean are the effect of some unusual lunar activity. This likely explains the vicious weather, horrific winds and constant raining during the past couple of days –
”
a news reporter spoke. We were all worried.

I looked to my left and saw
my doppelganger suddenly appear from the shadows and darkness of this cube of an office.

“
You haven’t much time,” he said softly. I looked at him and gently walked on over towards him. Everybody stared at me, as if I were crazy, talking to myself.

“
How far is the prison from fully tearing?” I asked.

“
Aden, who are you talking to?” Jade spoke, but I didn’t hear her as my doppelganger spoke.

“
If you want to maximise your chances of winning, of keeping them away for another
good
number of years –” oh no, he was about to say the phrase I was dreading. The one I didn’t want to hear.

“
– Aden –” The others kept calling me but I wasn’t paying attention to them. It was so obviously clear what he was about to say but I didn’t want to hear it.

“
Then, go
now
.”

CHAPTER 14.

Ruins of the Realm In-Between

The words my doppelganger spoke ma
de too much sense to be lies. But I was afraid. I just wanted them to
not
be true.

“
Aden, what’s wrong?” Tarmo asked. They all thought there was a chance I had gone crazy or mad. I turned to them.

“
You guys,” I began. “I have the strongest suspicion – the strongest gut feeling that we will be too late if we don’t act on this soon.”

“
Look, Aden, it’s not that I don’t trust you, but we can’t
rely on your suspicions and gut all the time,” Jordan spoke.

“
I agree,” Jade and Mychaela seconded. I sighed and ran my fingers through my haywire and now blue hair. I couldn’t get them to believe me unless I divulged something to them which I would rather keep hidden – it was my
little secret. For the time being at least
.
They didn’t need to know about my doppelganger. I tried telling them once at school and it didn’t work.

“
Aden, we honestly
do
trust you. But what if you’re being hoodwinked? I mean, none
of us can see or hear the things you’re going on about at the moment,” Jade spoke. I bit my lower lip in frustration; my canines were a simple sheet of skin away from piercing my skin. Jaden stepped next to me.

“
I believe him,” he said.

“
Even if we don’t know what he’s talking about, doing this quickly won’t have any negative effects. In fact, it’ll benefit us all and stop us from being killed. I don’t see why this should be a bad thing,” he continued. Upon the end of his statement, the lights of the room were dimmed completely without warning.

We
looked behind us. At the far end of the room, a wormhole unlike any of those we normally witnessed was slowly coiling into existence, larger and larger until it was wide enough to fit one of us through. Through it, we could see nothing but half-light, bleakness, and gloom. It looked like a spiralling galaxy slowly coming forth. We gulped. I looked to its side and saw my doppelganger leaning against the wall with his arms folded.

“Please,” he softly pleaded. I didn’t understand why he needed me to close the Cavern doors so desperately. But the wormhole was enough proof for the others that this was real.

“Believe me now?” I asked. We knew none of us could open something like that. And even if Robbie
were
to, he wasn’t anywhere near
the wall to have opened it. They couldn’t see my doppelganger and to be frank, they didn’t need to. All they needed to know was that I was telling the truth.

“
I’ll guide you,” my doppelganger softly said, walking towards us.

“
What time is it?” I asked, looking halfway back at Jojo from the tip of my shoulders.

“
Around eleven O’clock. Why? How long do you think we’ll be there for?” she asked worriedly – then again, who wouldn’t
be agitated at this time?

“
I figure as long as it takes,” I replied, looking straight ahead at the wormhole. My doppelganger simply walked through the portal in a warm flash of light, brightening then quickly dimming again.

“
Who’ll go first?” I asked cowardly. After a moment of silence, Tarmo stepped forward.

“
I will.” He ran his fingers through his hair and disarrayed it. With a quick flash he was absorbed through. He popped his head back out a few seconds after he had gone in.

“
It’s okay, you can come,” he said. I looked back nervously. I loosened my tie even more and looked back ahead. I gulped heavily before finally walking through. I was gone in a flash of light and had appeared on the other side. I looked around, but I was utterly baffled as everybody else walked through behind me. What faced us wasn’t at all what I thought it would be. We were back where we always started when traversing – the apocalyptic version of Vernaesce. Everything was dark, murky and gloomy. The walls were all stained and half-demolished, objects were shattered and broken into pieces, mere memories that once were but existed no more exuded an unbearable smell that hung in the air, escaping from an undiscoverable source. We were in the same room, however. The same office concealed underneath the tunnel where we were first informed about Vernaesce. Except it was submerged in a pit of obscurity.

Series of smoke spiralled into the air from the
rubble remains of the bookshelves.

“
My
goodness
,” Mychaela muttered, as her brilliant, fragmented eyes surveyed our surroundings. But there was something wrong. In the book which Tammy and Jaden found information from, it spoke about the Cavern doors being in the Shadow Realm. My doppelganger opened the portal to take us wherever we needed to go –
not me
. So was
this
the Shadow Realm? Was the hidden Realm between Earth and Vernaesce always so unthinkably close by? I turned around to Tammy as the portal slowly closed. I don’t think Robbie would have been able to open a portal just like this one though.

Jaden accidently stepped on a large pile of
debris. A few embers of glowing purple roared, making her jump startlingly before it settled. My hands couldn’t stop shaking, especially as the cold tried to seep into my bones.

“
This…this isn’t right,” Tammy said.

“
Why? Isn’t this the Shadow Realm?” Jade asked. We had already begun heading out of the devastated and decayed version of the office and were heading towards the stairs, which would take us out onto the streets of the Hydrotte region. We walked out of the rusted door and looked at the tunnel that led to the surface, partly in ruins.

“
You don’t recognise, it do you?” I asked my sister.

“
This is the traversing point from Earth to Vernaesce,” Robbie told her as we walked out of the main door. We marched into the streets cautiously and stood at the same spot we found ourselves on when we first
came to Vernaesce.

“This isn’t the Shadow Realm,” Liam added.
The sky was the same lifeless grey. The only forms of life we could actually see were murders
of crows, but they all resided in the skies.

“
That’s funny, because I live on Vernaesce and go to school on Earth. But I have
never
encountered this place before,” Aemilia spoke up.

“
Yeah, me too,” Tarmo and Jordan agreed.

As we spoke, none of us looked at each other, just at t
he foggy world surrounding us, mesmerised by what felt like an ancient bleakness that we were trapped in. It was as if a terrible world war had destroyed the entire place and left it forsaken and damned.

“
In the book, it spoke about the Shadow realm, but this isn’t it?” Jaden asked. Liam stepped forward.

“
This place is a traversing point to many different aspects of Vernaesce, spiritual, physical; that much is clearly known by the scholars of the Supremacy – the problem….is getting there,” Liam said.

“
So it’s practically impossible to get through if you don’t have a guide or know where to go?” Tarmo asked. His cloudy eyes looked like these two scary beads staring through the fog. Then again, all our eyes were lit, just like on Samhain.

“
I’m guessing so,” Tammy said. We looked around at the torn world and destroyed buildings. We had no clue which way to go. Since everything had been destroyed, all directions were indirectly new routes. We looked at the cratered, ruined, once beautifully paved road that curved out of sight into the fog. I realised this. When we first came to Vernaesce, I saw a figure in the Shadows. I didn’t understand it, but it all made sense. I understood who it was, who I had seen, because I was seeing him again – my doppelganger at the end of the road, quietly and calmly ushering us towards the fog. All of a sudden, Aemilia pointed something out that made me sigh in relief as my struggle would then be over.

“
Who is that
?
” she said, pointing towards the fog. I looked again and there was only one
person there.

“
Yeah, she’s right – who
is
that? There can’t be people living here,” Jade pointed out.

They could see him. O
nly in the fog, they could see him.

“
You
finally
see him,” I muttered delightedly. Warmth rushed through my heart as they would finally understand what I had been saying all along, but this time, straight from the horse’s mouth.

“
What are you on about?” Jojo replied. I sighed.

“
That’s who’s been helping me. Right from when I was attacked at school to my suspicions. He’s my doppelganger. He looks just like me –”

“
We
know
what doppelganger means, A.J.,” Jade retorted. She seemed to become more and more unhinged by the minute.

The fog was looming as w
e approached it guardedly. Eventually, we were face-to-face with him and they could all see the bizarre form that stood in front of them. He stood at the brink of the mist’s entrance whilst we remained outside it, staring back at him. Jade almost fainted at the mere sight of his face.

“
How come only A.J. has a doppelganger?” Jade wondered. He looked halfway back over his shoulder. We saw the fog suddenly darken and grow blacker. Then, we noticed the ghosts of Samhain, growing into the mist ahead like emerging shadows.

“
You see, we don’t
leave,” the doppelganger spoke, his voice broken and raspier than usual.

“
So, you
are
a ghost?” I asked him. He shook his head with a tiny grin on his face.

“
I am
much
different. But that isn’t important at the moment. You need to get to the Caribbean whereabouts of this Realm,” he spoke.

“
But in the book it talks about it being in the Shadow
Realm,” Robbie replied. For a moment, silence swept over us all as the ghosts and my doppelganger stared at Mychaela through the fog. She gently backed away and moved closer to us. Their eyes lingered away from her and back to Robbie who had asked the question.

“
The statement in the book was misleading. It was a hidden answer: the inside of the Cavern is much wider. It’s the
interior
of the Cavern that is linked to the Shadow Realm. Outside is just the same traversing point we are in now. Think of it this way: a jigsaw puzzle finding itself lost in another jigsaw pile. It’s
there
, but it doesn’t really belong there. It doesn’t fit.”

“
But even so, I might not be able to teleport us there; I don’t know what the place is like,” Jojo responded hesitantly. My doppelganger looked to his side and a wormhole much like the one which took us here slowly enlarged, shedding its mysterious half-light against our different-coloured eyes. We gulped.

“
And…how do we get
out
?” Mychaela asked. The doppelganger scoffed.

“
In that case – a coin is all you need,” he said. It made sense; that
was
how we always got out of here. We trotted towards the wormhole and traversed. I clutched my arms and gently glided through, now prepared for any evil I may face for the third time in two months.

Tarmo’s breath was heavy in the dead silence.
“Where are we now?”

That was the perfect question to ask actually. None of us knew. We stood on a round patch of land covered with
white sand, enough for us and more people to stand on. We were surrounded by a ring of vast amount of water and to top it off, a large cliff that stretched around this place walled us in. But we were, more or less, in a bowl surrounded by a vast amount of water in circumference.

“
Guys, look!” Tarmo pointed out, straight ahead of us. A thick crack, which seemed to run all the way down into the water, was dented into the face of the cliff facing us and was all that seemed visibly clear.

“
Is that it?” Mychaela asked.

“
I think
so
. We’ve found our doors,” Jade responded, shaken to her core.

“
But it’s so far down underneath all this water. I didn’t think people such as the
Barons of Corlévati
would be naïve enough to leave their reincarnation chamber vulnerable,” Jaden spoke.

“It’s not,” Liam
and Jordan spoke grimly. They looked at each other, unaware that the other was thinking the same thing.

“Can you feel it too?” Liam asked. Jordan nodded worryingly. We looked at
them, questioning their thoughts, as Liam bent down to pick up a pebble. He took a pace back and threw it with all his vim towards the Cavern’s crack. Before it could even reach a metre of the cliff’s radius, the outline of a large, transparent, circular force-field shone as the pebble disintegrated to dust with a loud crack. The force-field lost its visibility once more.