Hi!

Ok, I came home just now and it's late late late. BUT I knew I was going to post this one anyway.
Guys, this one's going to be fast-paced. Did anyone expect THIS? Let me know!

Lara

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Chapter 25

I think I lost a few seconds. The next thing I knew, I was slumped over, riding out another wave of tremors. The ricochet of using too much magic – magic that hit hard like the violent backlash of a gun. The room was spinning like a drunken, vertical cartwheel. I blinked and closed my eyes again, then reconsidered. Closing them was worse. Dammit, I was going to throw up. Any second.

Sounds pierced into my perception and slowly began to make sense. There were noises of things settling and cracking, bits and pieces of stones crunching underneath heavy-booted feet. Coughing and gasps. Moaning. Angry voices. And above all laughter and a voice I'd come to resent like nothing else.

I looked up, trying to breathe like a normal person would do – like someone that wasn't at the brink of passing out. The room looked like a war zone in a bad B-movie. Dust billowed out from the centre, dissipating. My vision clearing up with it. The floor looked like a minefield of deadly bombs went off – cracks and bits of marble stone, no matter where I looked.

I followed the line of destruction and found him. Looked like Raphael Medici dodged whatever magical shit I sent his way. He was standing one foot beside the crater in the floor, and he was laughing. He was laughing!

"A good try, but not what I wanted from you, Anna Johnson. I was looking for another kind of magic." He stared at me for a long moment. "You need more incentive? Something else apart from the pain to make you cooperate?"

I twitched. White, hot pain flashed in my shoulder. I closed my eyes, tried to breathe through the pain. I'd wiped myself out with that blast of earth magic and Medici was still standing. Dammit. I blinked, peered through the curtain of brown hair.

Medici was coming closer. I righted myself, watched him warily as he took another step.

I was so exhausted, I barely noticed it. There was a tear high up his left trouser leg. Was that blood? Did I actually hit him?

"I could, for instance, give you the kind of information you've been, I hear, looking for these past few weeks," he said.

I stared at him mutely, trying to keep a blank face amidst the pain.

"You went to meet the half witches," he said. "You must know."

I tensed. Dammit, was everybody keeping tabs on me?

"How much do you know about the new cooperation between Alexander and the head of the Circle, Anna Johnson?"

Why was he bringing that one up? Why in connection with the Bloody Warden members? I tried to shove myself into that place of perfect nonchalance, using the kind of expression that said 'So what? Like I give a damn.' And it probably would have worked, hadn't the muscles between my shoulder blades tensed into a complete lockup.

By the look on the Raven's face he noticed.

"Did you mind that Gustav Brown sold you out to the head vamp to save his own backside?" he said. "Did you mind being shoved around? Used and played by both, the head vampire and your boss?"

I jerked, eyes widening.

Medici laughed. It was a throaty laugh, and it made goose bumps crawl over my skin.

I stared at him, hating myself for showing a reaction at all. Alexander got to me with his constant scheming and through our bond. The Raven played the same kind of mind games, yet on a completely different level. He was getting into my head with words alone.

"So you did mind," he finally said. "You know, over the last few months I found out a lot about the Circle. Having someone on the inside has its perks. You want to know why your boss is best friends with Alexander? Why everyone, including the shape shifters and Chris Hayes, were after the information I offered?"

I stared at him, fighting against the pull, the seeds of doubt and distrust blossoming.

Did you mind being shoved around? Used and played by both, the head vampire and your boss?

The words were spinning in my mind, endlessly. Just how much did Brown know about what Alexander did? Just how much did Brown know about Alexander's plans of getting himself a witch for his own purposes? For making me his human servant?

Please, no.

My eyes were hot and wet. I'd seen my world crumble and shatter, and picked myself up only to see it go down again. It couldn't be true. I blinked, taking a deep breath. Like I could even make sense of all the mess in my brain.

But, wait. Somewhere inside that chaos, there was a thought that gave me pause. The most important question, one that I should have seen the moment he started his speech. Why was Medici telling me this to begin with?

Answer A, and the simple one: he was lying. Answer B, and far more complicated and messy than A: He wasn't lying. If Medici was telling me the unadulterated truth, it begged the question why he did. The Raven wasn't just going to throw around bombshells of secrets like that. No. If he was telling me all of this because it really happened, there was only one conclusion. He either was sure that I was going to join him and his dark-magic-squad once I got a taste of the fifth element, or he was going to make sure I wouldn't be around long enough to spill.

He was going to kill me. Just like that.

Panic slammed into me, wreaking havoc in my brain. I heard the quickening of my own breathing, couldn't find a way out of the maze of crazed thoughts.

It was a lie. Had to be.

I shook my head, ground out the words with violence. "You're lying. I don't believe you."

"As stubborn as they come." The mirth was gone from his voice. "We'll see which side you'll be on."

I heard the Raven's voice and looked up in time to see him raise his hand. He was going to torture me, again.

No.

Sometimes it's not the pain itself that's worst. It's the sick anticipation for it. Those seconds before it hits, the fear itself is our greatest enemy. It makes us weak and stupid in that one critical moment where we can't afford it.

All I could think of was getting away. It was then that it happened. The pendant flared hot against my skin, biting into the soft spot between my breasts like a life wire. And all of a sudden I was sure of what exactly it was and why my godmother gave it to me.

I thought I knew why it felt so familiar. It felt just like a device to open a portal. It all made sense. Giuliana said it was the key to finding the Lumenis and the only means to bypass their wards And I was going to bet my life on it.

The pain hit, reshaped veins and flesh deep inside of me. Ragged breath, damp hair clinging to my forehead like it belonged there. Grains of pain twisting in the furthest corners of my system. I looked at Medici through wet eyes. Now was a good time to lose consciousness, or, even better, figure out if the pendant was a portal key or not.

The real brain-twister? How do you activate a portal if you don't know where you're going? I didn't even know where to go, didn't even know for sure if Giuliana had spelled the damn thing to carry whoever used it to Italy.

Italy. Was that where I was supposed to go? Did I have any other options? I didn't even know where Giuliana or that damned secret witch community of hers was. All I had was Giuliana herself.

But it felt right. This had to be it.

I muttered an incantation I'd learned what felt like a life-time ago. I focused on my godmother's face, her voice.

There was no way for me to prepare myself for it. One moment I was there, the next, the black void opened and sucked me in.

* * *

Travelling via portal is a test to the soul. It's violent. It's terrifying. If you're not careful you'll not only lose bits and pieces of yourself in there. One moment is enough. If your control shatters, if your will to survive and make it through falters for the fracture of a second, you'll never see the light of day again. Your mind is the one thing between death and survival.

The rules of physics were little more than a faint memory in this place. They may have existed somewhere else, far away in the world I knew, where gravity was gravity and E was mc², where atoms and quantum mechanics were more than words and prefabricated terms.

But here? They were gone. Nothing was relative. Everything absolute. This space was the complete opposite of what we called physics. My whole being was pulled through a reversed, perverse gravitational force, grains of a sandstorm scraping my mental skin. Sodomizing, shredding belief in the quantifiable. In what I always thought was real.

It was worse than any other time I'd used a portal. If it didn't stop soon, I was going to get torn apart in this black hole. Pockets of non-existence bruised my mind, threatened to destroy its torpid shell and suck me under. Agony. A lifetime of darkness and nonentity.

A little more, a little longer and I was going to watch pieces of my mind fall apart and scatter, like pebbles rolling across a black marble floor.

It ended as fast and unexpected as it started. Just when I thought I was going to break, the void spit me out. I fell forward, landed hard.

For a long moment I just lay there. Motionless. Unaware of anything but my own, rapid breathing.

Minutes passed. Nothing but the absence of dark void. Another intake of breath, fistfuls of pain. My senses revived, one after the other, like a reversed line of dominos picking themselves up.

"Yeah, opening up a portal when you're in the middle of passing out – great idea, Anna. Just great." I coughed. "And where the hell am I anyway?"

I opened my eyes, blinded by daylight and overwhelmed by the smell of moss and things that lived and thrived in nature. I was staring up at a patchwork of sunlight and shadows, leaves and branches in the sky. I breathed, tasted forest on my tongue. This was real. I survived.

I laughed. Of all the things ... I just lay there and laughed. Then coughed some more. I turned to my side, felt my fingers dig into the dirt on the ground. It felt so real, I could have wept with joy.

I righted myself, slowly. I had no idea what I just survived and why exactly. The pendant saved me from... yeah from what? Dying? Turning into something only legends spoke about? Legends that according to the Raven were nothing but lies?

I shook my head, violently. No matter what, the Raven was wrong on this one. I sure as hell wasn't a Pentagram.

The three great witches help me, I hope he's wrong. Either that, or I'm going crazy.

I shoved fingers into my hair, a mess of tangles and snarls, and let out a deep breath. What next? I took a look at what lay in front of me.

A ring of shrubs and bushes hiding underneath lines and lines of pine trees. I was in a forest. In a freaking forest! I survived being sucked through what had to be the worst wormhole-portal the magical world had ever seen. For what? This? When I tore into the portal, I was pretty sure it was going to carry me right into the middle of what Giuliana called a secret settlement of the Lumenis. So sure was I that the pendant was spelled for that one purpose, I didn't think past what would happen if it wasn't. Now I was in the middle of nowhere.

I squinted, turning as I took in my surroundings again, took another deep breath. Soft, fresh air only a forest could grant, mixed with a floral scent that reminded me of pineapples, dry but rich soil, and life. A faint component, the odour of salt stirring in my nose.

Trees, trees, nothing but trees. The forest looked like any other forest. But it was empty. Nothing but the sound of air brushing through branches and fir needles.

I walked the perimeter. Not a sign of another human soul, no matter where I looked. By all appearances no one had been here before. As in ever.

The unfairness of the situation would have struck me as hilariously comical, if I hadn't been the one at the receiving end. I yanked the chain of the pendant over my head, holding it in my hands. It was my life saviour, my last resort and ace in the hole. At least that's what I thought.

I started pacing, staring at the pendant as if my life depended on it. Maybe I didn't walk far enough, maybe I messed up at some poi-

A thump, dull pain, and I was on my hands and knees, facing dry forest soil up close. I snorted. Yeah, tripping over my own feet was going to do the trick.

I held up the pendant in front of me, staring, and stopped. A reflection of light caught in the blue crystal. I looked up, down again, then back up. There was only a den of shadows and forest in front of me. Where did that reflection come from? It was a physical impossibility – unless...

My fingers tightened, buried themselves in the forest soil. Slowly, oh so slowly, I got to my feet. There was a good reason why no one knew where the Lumenis lived. And maybe, just maybe I was staring at it.