Eternity (24 page)

“Oh, Jack,” I
said through my tears when I was finally by his side. I grabbed his
hand, which was pale and cold, but I had to stand away a bit so
that Dr. Hughes, who was also still in her pyjamas, and a couple of
nurses could work on him. I could feel blood on my hand where I was
touching him, and it was all over the place.

“We need to get
him some blood!” Dr. Hughes shouted. “His blood pressure is barely
registering! Somebody go to the west wing and find me a werewolf
with the same blood type, or we’ll never be able to save him.” She
worked quickly, trying to put pressure on his wounds to stop the
bleeding, while the nurses worked to do the same. One of them had
to leave to find a blood donor.

He really
didn’t look good. He was unconscious, so his hand was limp in mine.
There seemed to be cuts all over him. There was a bad one across
his forehead, and one that was even worse on his abdomen, with the
skin torn up. They were definitely claw marks, and I could also see
teeth marks on his neck and arms. Blood seemed to be pouring from
every opening, no matter how quickly the doctor worked. I was
losing him.

“What about
Adrian?” I asked the doctor, since I didn’t see him anywhere. “Is
he okay?”

“He’s fine,”
she told me as she worked. “He had a few scratches, but nothing
life-threatening. I think he was the bigger one of the two.”

I nodded and
turned back to Jack. He stirred slightly and moaned, but he didn’t
open his eyes. I could feel my heart breaking, like someone was
stabbing it over and over again.

A hand gently
rested on my shoulder. I looked up, thinking it was a teacher, but
I was surprised to see that it wasn’t. It was Anna. I had no idea
what she was doing there at the time, but I found out later that
she’d heard something going on and came to investigate. She looked
at me sadly.

I suddenly
remembered that she was a vampire. At first I was worried that all
of the blood in the room would cause her to try to hurt Jack even
more, but she didn’t seem to be paying attention to him. My second
line of thought was not about if she would hurt him, but about if
she could save him. I’d heard of vampires saving people by turning
them. I hoped it wasn’t too late.

“Can you save
him?” I asked. I could hear the pleading in my own voice.

“I can’t,” she
said softly, but it didn’t help dampen the pain her words caused as
they destroyed my last hope. “He’s already a werewolf, so I can’t
turn him. It’d only kill him.”

“I can’t lose
him Anna,” I sobbed. “He’s the only family I have left in the
world. He means everything to me, and it’s probably my fault that
this happened.”

“I might not be
able to save him, and the doctor may not be able to save him, but
you can if you hurry.”

“How?” I asked
desperately.

“You know what
you have to do,” was her reply. “You just need a little faith.” She
squeezed my shoulder and gave me another sympathetic look, and she
walked away through the crowd of teachers.

I was confused,
and I had no idea what she meant. Her mention of faith made me
think of the gods, and I remembered Sydney’s story about them
healing her sister, and I thought that was what she meant. I
immediately started sending out my thoughts to them, hoping they
were listening.

Then I realized
something. She thought I was a goddess. She wasn’t asking me to
have faith in the gods. She was asking me to have faith in
myself.

I loved Jack.
While I was looking at his limp and bleeding form, my mind was
going through all of the time we had spent together. I remembered
the day we met, when I was sitting out in the backyard crying
because some girls were teasing me, and he came up and tried to
cheer me up with corny jokes. I remembered when he punched Dan in
the face for making a pass at me, which got him in trouble. I
remembered the first time he had lost his temper, and how scared he
was afterward, and I remembered the look in his eyes a few hours
before when I had pushed him away. He meant the world to me. When I
had said he was the only family I had left, I meant it. He’d been
in my life longer than anyone else, and he was always there for me
when I needed him. In that moment, I realized that I would do
anything to save him, no matter what it did to me.

I leaned
forward and kissed Jack’s cheek in the one spot I could find that
wasn’t covered with blood. “Hold on just a little longer,” I
whispered in his ear. I let go of his hand. It was incredibly hard,
but I turned away from him and walked away.

I didn’t have
time to plan what I was going to do, so I decided to stick with the
first plan that came to me. It probably wasn’t the best idea, but I
couldn’t think of a better one at the time. I pushed back through
the crowd in the infirmary and started running again, this time for
the exit.

I heard Heather
shout for me to wait, but I didn’t have time to explain, so I kept
going. I heard her running behind me again, and Melissa was with
her. It reminded me of the first drawing that I had done that
night, and I finally understood it. I was about to make it happen.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Victor followed not far behind,
under the orders of the headmaster, who had been in the infirmary
with everyone else.

“Juliet, where
are you going?!” I heard Heather shout from somewhere behind me as
I went out the doors of the school, after a quick glance at the
portrait of Amun on the foyer wall. The night air was cold on my
exposed arms and legs, and the ground was rough beneath my bare
feet, but I ignored it because it wasn’t important. I headed north
and went straight into the woods.

It was darker
under the cover of the trees, so I could hardly see where I was
going. I almost tripped a few times, but I kept up my pace, knowing
that I had little time left. I heard branches rustling behind me so
I knew Heather and Melissa weren’t too far from me. I hoped it
wouldn’t be long before I reached my destination, but I didn’t know
because I’d never been there before.

As I was
running half blindly through the woods, I reached up and lifted the
keys from around my neck. I held them in my hand and felt their
unique textures, which was somehow comforting and gave me more
strength and courage. I hoped that everyone had been right about
me, and that I had been wrong. I was about to take a huge leap of
faith, literally, one way or the other.

I was glad I
saw the cliff before I reached it because I didn’t want to fall off
of it accidently. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t
seen the difference in the trees. I slowed down and stopped before
I reached the edge. I could feel stinging cuts on the bottoms of my
feet from running over sharp rocks and twigs, and my hair was
probably full of leaves. When I stood on the edge of the cliff the
wind felt stronger than it had under the cover of trees. It blew my
hair and my nightgown around me. I held up my hand to look at my
keys one last time in the light from the moon, which was visible
there. I turned my head to look back, and I could see Heather and
Melissa hardly ten feet from me. They had come to a sudden stop
when they noticed the cliff.

“What are you
doing?!” Melissa shouted. I could finally see Victor, who was
another ten feet behind the girls, but he was closing in. I smiled
sadly at them all, and turned back around. When I peered over the
edge, the bottom looked like it was at least a hundred feet away. I
hoped it was more. I wanted to die instantly when I hit the bottom.
It was the main reason I had chosen this plan. I dropped the keys
onto the ground beside me so that they wouldn’t be damaged by the
impact, and they seemed to fall in slow motion.

I heard Heather
scream when I jumped, and it seemed to last a long time. I didn’t
scream myself, mostly because I was beyond caring what happened to
me. I thought briefly about how falling felt so much different than
I had expected. I thought it would be almost peaceful, but the air
rushing by me was violent and strong, and made it impossible to
breathe, not that it mattered much. I was about to die anyway.

The way down
seemed so long. I kept waiting and waiting to hit the bottom, but
the open air seemed to go on forever. I hoped that it meant the
bottom was farther away than it had looked. That was the last
thought I had before I finally hit the rocks below. There was a
brief moment when I felt my skin splitting and my bones shattering,
and then there was darkness.

Chapter
31

The darkness
lasted for a very short period of time, which I was thankful for
because time was not something I had a lot of. There was a strange
feeling, and then a rush of awareness. I could still feel my broken
body, but I didn’t feel any pain, like my body wasn’t really
important. The awareness that I felt then turned into something
much stronger. It was like a wall inside of my very soul was
breaking, and a wave was spilling over and consuming me. That wave
was my very essence, which I had kept from myself with the wall
that I had built. All of my memories came flooding back, and with
those memories came pain and sadness from all that I had lost,
which I felt with great intensity. It was the reason I liked living
without the memories, and I felt a moment of regret for bringing
them back, but I knew that it would be worth it. I felt the power I
had been looking for return to me, which I used it to heal my own
body and clean myself up, but there was another body that needed me
more.

When I opened
my eyes I saw Victor there standing over me. The expression on his
face was one of awe and shock. I wondered how he’d gotten down the
cliff so quickly, but then I remembered that he could jump through
space, which was generally referred to as psychoportation.

“Isadora?” he
whispered.

“Yes,” I said.
“Tell Heather and Melissa that I’m alright, and try to keep this a
secret.”

I psychoported
myself back to the hall outside of the infirmary because it was the
fastest way to get there. No one noticed my strange arrival because
they were all busy inside the infirmary. I hurried inside and
pushed my way through the crowd.

Jack looked
even worse than before, which I hadn’t thought possible, but he was
still alive. Most of his wounds were covered, so he looked somewhat
like a mummy. His skin was incredibly pale, so he looked lifeless,
but I could hear the faint beating of his heart and feel his spirit
within him. The nurse had not yet returned with a blood donor, and
there was no guarantee that she could even find one anyway.
Luckily, they wouldn’t be needing one anymore.

Dr. Hughes
moved out of my way when I went to be by Jack’s side. She thought I
was there to say goodbye, but that was certainly not what I
intended to do. I laid my hand on his bandaged forehead, and I let
the power within me flow to him, healing as it moved. When all of
the wounds were healed I replenished his blood supply as well,
which immediately brought color back to his skin, and I could feel
his heart beating stronger. When it was finished, I brought my hand
away from his head. I started taking off the bandages, and when Dr.
Hughes saw that the wounds were gone, she began to help without
question, and so did the nurses. It didn’t take long to get them
all off. By the time Jack opened his eyes, he looked as if nothing
had even happened, despite the fact that he was lying on a bed
soaked in his own blood. He sat up, looking confused, not that I
could blame him. He turned and looked at me, blinking.

“Juliet, what’s
going on?” he asked.

“You don’t
remember?”

“Not really. I
-” he stopped, and his expression darkened. “I was upset,” he said.
“I remember our fight, and how I felt. I almost couldn’t control
myself. When I left I went outside, and I turned into a wolf when I
got to the woods to try to let off some steam, but it only made me
feel angrier, and I blamed everything on Adrian.

“When I got
back inside it was late, but Adrian was in the common room alone. I
hated him, and I was angry, and I started shouting at him. It took
him by surprise, and he hardly reacted. For some reason that made
me even angrier, probably because I felt like he didn’t care, and I
snapped. I turned right there and tried to attack him, but he
dodged me and turned himself. I was so bent on hurting him I didn’t
even notice that he was bigger than I was, though I probably
wouldn’t have cared at that point anyway. I remember going at him,
but he was too quick and strong, and he hurt me. That’s really the
last thing I remember.” He looked down at himself to make sure he
was in one piece, and he saw the blood. “Is that mine?”

“It is,”
someone said behind me, and I turned to see Mrs. Bainbridge. Victor
was standing next to her, and I could see Heather and Melissa in
the background, meaning he had psychoported them back. “You were
gravely injured by Mr. Alvarez, but luckily your friend here
discovered an ability to heal. You probably would have died
otherwise.” She motioned to me. I could read her thoughts
effortlessly, so I knew she knew what had happened. Victor had
already filled her in. She also had no intention of telling Jack
the truth, which I was thankful for. The rest of the teachers who
had known beforehand who I was were already guessing the truth.

“You can heal?”
Jack said, clearly surprised.

“Yeah. Jack,
I’m so sorry about what happened. It was more my fault than anyone
else’s. I never would have forgiven myself if you’d died, and I
don’t know what I’d do without you.” I was crying again, but I
couldn’t help it. I was so relieved that he was alright.

Jack got up and
hugged me. I didn’t care that he was getting blood on me, and I
hugged him back. “Don’t blame yourself,” he whispered in my ear. “I
should never have asked you to be anything but my friend when you
had already told me that’s all you wanted, and I shouldn’t have
attacked Adrian. I guess in some ways I’m probably as bad as he
is.”