Spirit Tales (The Millennium Wolves AU)
Chapter Forty-Six

Bastien and Maria already understood they couldn’t stop me now that my former human friends were going missing. They got that, and respected my decision this time.

“Fred’s going to kill us,” Maria murmured, putting her head in her hands. She sat next to me in the backseat of the car we took from the parking lot. Bastien drove, Jason sitting next to him, and Rachel, Maria and I were together in the backseat. Jason and Rachel told us they were coming along, because it was their duty to keep an eye on the humans - Fred himself gave them this mission, I only now knew.

Meanwhile, Jason explained the humans escaped their guard, and Rachel couldn’t stop being angry with herself. I found myself comforting them and telling them they would be alright - that everyone would be alright - while I was the one who needed comforting. The tension inside me threatened to tear me apart.

Bastien parked the car in the entrance of the forest and we left it. Bastien led our group, with me right behind him. Jason took up the rear, sandwiching Rachel and Maria. Bastien started walking in the thin paved path into the forest, and I stuck close to his back, scared from what was about to come.

The sun was almost completely down, and the darkness didn’t help me feel better in this murky forest. I was wondering why it was so quiet here, why we didn’t hear noises of the battles from somewhere, but I didn’t dare speaking. We didn’t want to alert Evander or one of his followers to our presence.

Bastien stopped suddenly and we all stopped with him. “What’s wrong?” Maria whispered, worry in her voice.

Bastien turned to us, his face grim. “We have to replace another path,” he whispered back, “this one is blocked.”

I looked over his shoulder and murmured, “I don’t see anything blocking the way.”

“There are two nests of Baldfaced wasps,” Jason murmured, “I notice the signs.”

Bastien nodded and Rachel let out a quiet curse. “Then where should we go?” she asked softly.

“We’ll have to choose the longer path,” Bastien said and turned left at once. We were back on track, everyone going right after him. The only perk in going inside this scary, dark forest, except of us being a group of five, was that two of us were healers, meaning their gentle aura calmed us, even though we were all stressed anyway. Not to mention the worry about what the future held for us in store.

When Bastien stopped again after about ten minutes of walking, I felt my patience waning. “What now?!” I hissed.

He didn’t respond but took a sharp turn to the right, and everyone turned with him without saying a word. I felt a mental hand caressing me, and when I glanced behind me, I saw Maria sending me an understanding gaze. She was using her powers to try and calm me down, and while some part of me was grateful, I would’ve been happier if she’d warned me first.

There was no sign of life in the forest. No people, no Fred, no Evander. It was like the forest was deserted. I felt like we were going to be lost soon, even though Bastien seemed sure he knew the way.

After an hour of walking in the complete darkness, Bastien stopped, picked up a tree branch from the ground, and turned to look at us. “I need to replace fire-starting stones,” he whispered, “we can’t keep navigating in this darkness.”

“Wait,” Rachel crouched down on the earth and started scouting the darkness with her hands. After a minute, she straightened back up with two stones in her hands. She gritted them against each other, and after a few trials, sparks flew from them and lit up the branch in Bastien’s hands. All of us looked at Rachel with out chins hanging, and she stared back at us. “What?”

I didn’t imagine someone as neat and arrogant as Rache McDaniels was good in survival. She must’ve sensed my shock, because she rolled her eyes, shrugged, and took her spot next to Maria again. Bastien shook off the surprise, thanked Rachel, and continued walking into the forest, this time with fiery light showing us the way.

“I hope we’ll get there in time,” Maria whispered after fifteen minutes. Now the healers themselves couldn’t use their relaxing powers, since they were nervous themselves.

“We’ll get there,” Jason murmured with a burst of optimism, “you’ll see.”

“I agree with Maria,” I hissed, “I don’t think we have a chance to reach there in time.”

“If you think negatively, the situation will be negative,” Rachel muttered.

“I suggest you all be quiet,” Bastien snapped in a hiss, on edge as well.

We shut up and continued walking quietly. The longer we made progress into the forest, the greater the feeling that something bad happened - or would happen - grew in me. I found myself staring at one of the trees ahead of us just to concentrate on something other than my thoughts, when I suddenly felt a desperate need to go to that specific tree.

And when we reached the tree, I stopped in my place, letting others go ahead, each of them stuck in their own head so they didn’t notice my sudden pause. Some part of me knew I should announce it, but I couldn’t because the tree completely distracted me.

The tree wasn’t special. It looked like any other ancient trees in this forest. But I found myself attracted to it, as though it was magnetic. I raised my hand and put it on the tree trunk. A warm, unnerving feeling spread over me, and my eyes widened in both fear and shock. I tried to disconnect my hand from the tree at once, no longer enchanted by it, but I couldn’t move my hand. I looked around me, scared, looking for the group, but I saw no one. Bastien and the rest had left me behind.

Good going, Angela! I thought, angry with myself.

The tree suddenly glowed, and I let out a small, breathy ell. Before I could do anything, the other trees in the forest, one after another, started glowing. The darkness was lit by the dim lights of the trees, and I gasped, stunned. I managed to take my hand of the tree and felt my heart beating loudly in my chest. I had no choice now. I needed to move along.

I started paving my way inside the forest, going quickly, trying not to touch the glowing trees. A gut feeling told me that the trees glowing wasn’t a good sign. Moreover, Tempest starting murmuring something in my head, and when I grasped one of the words she said, I didn’t know what she meant by that.

Liv…

What’s Liv? I asked her, my heart thudding.

Tempest didn’t respond and I didn’t dwell on it, simply continue walking into the forest, trying to replace Bastien and the rest. But I didn’t replace anyone, and I felt like I was lost in this endless forest, the darkness and dim lights not helping me at all. I started feeling cold and pulled my jacked tighter around me, trying to replace some sense of warmth.

I didn’t know how long I was walking in the forest alone, but it felt like an eternity. Meanwhile, starts shone in the sky, and I could barely see them through the treetops. The moon was up as well, and if I had to guess, I believed it was close to ten PM now. Soon it would be midnight.

I rubbed my hands together and started walking faster and faster, trying to reach somewhere. I tried not to breathe too loudly, but it was hard, what with everything around me being so silent. The biting sound of the leaves under my feet also broke the silence. Something inside me - instinct, maybe - told me I was close, but I couldn’t hear anything, and saw no battle occuring.

I stepped in the woods, searching for anything, but found nothing, only glowing trees.

Suddenly I didn’t pay attention to where I was going and my leg got tangled in a bunch of branches on the forest floor and I lost my balance and fell. Coldness crawled then, and when I tried to stand up, I saw it was pointless. When I tried moving my tangled leg, it hurt. More than hurt; he pain was burning. I bit my lip just not to scream from the pain, and I knew I either twisted it or worse.

I had no choice but to hold on to one of the trees so I could rise onto my feet, and I wrapped my arms around the glowing nearby trunk - which turned out to be a mistake, because the moment I touched it, everything around me turned blurry. A strong wind blew, like a sudden storm, making me hold on tighter to the trunk as though it was my saving grace, while my hair flew wildly and my body threatened to fly just as well if I let go. Light came out of nowhere, blinding me completely, and I closed my eyes tightly.

I then felt how my consciousness leaving me slowly, and how pictures started moving in my head…

I felt like I was starting to dream, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that I was dreaming. It seemed like I was sitting in front of a TV screen, watching aside, while before my eyes I saw an abandoned road and a scared, redhead woman sitting there with her back to the wall, staring with horror at her hands, as though they were alien to her.

Before her stood a man who seemed kind of boyish, but had to be in his early twenties. He had a neat brown hair, and a pair of grayish-green eyes, like clear ocean water, and his body was a mix between lean and muscular. He wasn’t pretty, he was human, but there was something about him that made you think he looked better than you believe.

The girl, on the other hand, was very pretty for a human. Her eyes were wide and blue, like a pair of neon lights, and her hair was like a deep red flam. It was obvious she was tall, what with her long legs, and her body was very curvy in all the right places.

But the fear ruined her prettiness, and when the man stretched his hand toward her, she choked. “Why me?” she blurted out, her voice shaking and scared.

The man let his hand fall to his side. “You’re like me, Ruby,” he said softly, “I’m sorry.”

“N-No…” the girl, Ruby, started crying. “I’m n-not like you! Y-You never change, C-Charlie! You alway look the same ever since I was little and you were twenty-three! I’m n-not like you!”

“You’re immortal just like me, Ruby,” Charlie insisted, raised his hand, and a stream of water was shot from the center of his palm to the wall next to Ruby’s head. She screamed in shock and horror. “Your powers aren’t like mine, and I know your Spirit talks to you in your head, right?”

Ruby’s eyes, which were bloodshot from crying, broadened in terror. “Get out of my head!” she yelled. “Get out of my head!”

“You’re one and the same, Ruby,” Charlie said, his face harsh. “Like me and my Spirit, Wade, are one. One cannot live without the other. Listen to your Spirit, or at least try…”

The scene changed all of a sudden, and Ruby and Charlie stood next to each other in a dusty, old office. A tall, muscular man stood with his back to them, looking out of the office window. “Evander,” Charlie said quietly, “we want to join you.”

Evander didn’t look at them when he said, his voice deep and lower than any other voice I’d ever heard, “And why should I believe you want to innocently join me, Charlie Crawford, the Spirit of Water who was born in the year 992?”

Carlie seemed aghast and frightened that Evander knew so much about him. “We need you,” he said, his hands curling into fists, “to beat the fucking Alpha for once and for all.”

“He ruined our life, just like he ruined yours!” Ruby said with surprising conviction. “We heard everything about your past - about Casimir, and Frederick! Please let us help!”

“Ruby Pond,” Evander said coldly. “The Spirit of Nature and Life, born in the year 1854,” he didn’t seem happy about it. “Your power won’t be of any use for me. Crawford, on the other hand, with your water powers…”

“Please let me help, too!” Ruby begged, falling to her knees crying. “Please let me try and b-beat the Alpha my own way!”

“You’re not the only one who was hurt by the three Alphas of the Millennium, Evander,” Charlie said quietly, “it won’t be fair of you to not let us help.”

After a long silence, Evander sighed and said, “Very well.”

And before he turned around, the pictures around me disappeared, and I fell among inscrutable fog, and when I opened my real eyes this time, I found out I was lying on the earth, my hands still wrapped around the runk, which didn’t glow anymore - much like all the other trees - and that beyond it there was a large meadow and in within it… people.

Everyone I knew was there. Fred and his group, Bastien, Rachel, Jason and Maria who joined them as well, all of them facing another large group of people I didn’t know but had in their midst Charlotte, Hazel, Ethan and Jane, who were sitting on the ground bound to each other with ropes.

At the head of the unfamiliar group stood three people. Two of them I recognized in surprise as Ruby Pond and Charlie Crawford, the Spirit of Nature and Light and the Spirit of Water, whose faces were blank, their hands curled into fists, ready to giht. Between them stood, most likely, Evander.

He was a tall man with broad shoulders and muscles. He was human, but… he was as handsome as Apollo or Ryan. His hair was black and wild, his eyes bright, he wore a black trench coat with black pants, and his face was completely serious. When I tried to see what color were his eyes, I almost couldn’t because of the darkness, until the moon suddenly appeared beyond the clouds, raying light down, and I saw his eyes in a spark, even though he was far away from me.

The spark was green.

And the green was painfully familiar.