A/N - Thank you for reading. I'm roadtesting a different writing style, so this story is quite different from my other one. I hope to update regularly, depending on where the story takes us (and how much real-life gets in the way!). As always, comments and feedback are welcome and very much appreciated.
Cheers,
~ BlackImprint
All Twilight characters belong to Stephenie Meyer.
Jacob POV
I can't believe I agreed to go along this. But I did, because it made her happy. It was the imprint. I couldn't deny her. I wouldn't deny her—I didn't want to. I would do anything for Nessie—my Nessie.
Rewind… Back to a few days ago. At least I think it was a few days ago. It could have been a week, or even a month, for all I knew. Everything's blurred into one massive clusterfuck. Just thinking about it made my head hurt.
I was at the Cullen house watching the game with Emmett and Jasper. Nessie had flitted downstairs with a massive leather-bound book in her arms, anticipation beaming from her cute little face. Her bronze curls cascaded down her back as she practically bounced with excitement. By all counts, she'd be about 19 now, but could still get wound up more than a four year old.
She shoved the book into my lap. "Jake, Jake, check out page 739!" The excitement was just about spilling over in her voice.
I eyed the musty old relic suspiciously. She must have dug the thing out of the bowels of Carlisle's library.
Nessie loved to read, but me—I'm more of a 'let's wait for the movie version' kind of wolf. I didn't want to touch it, but the eyesore was already in my lap. It was kinda dusty. And old. And wordy. Yeah, it was really wordy. And the game was already into the fourth quarter. And the score was tied. And I really wanted to see how it would end—the game, I mean—not Nessie's latest escapade.
Undead Hulk and Walking Prozac chewed the insides of their cheeks, looking like they were about to bust a gut laughing at any moment—they knew I couldn't hold out on Nessie and it was only a matter of time till I caved. I looked over at my angel, thinking how cute she looked cute with her big brown eyes looking expectantly at me. My heart swelled with love for her, and so yeah, I did what I was told.
Opening up the book to page 739, I saw it said 'Opening A Portal' in fancy shmancy old writing.
Great. I could see where this was leading.
I'm usually the last person to say no to some fun, but whenever Nessie got that look in her eye it usually led to one of two things: some wild goose chase culminating in Eddie boy being supremely pissed with me, or some wild goose chase culminating in Bella being even more pissed with me. Not that I particularly cared about incurring Sparkle Boy's wrath (it was sort of fun, really), but Bells was some kinda scary—I could just picture her now, golden eyes blazing as she lectured me 'How could you have gone along with this, Jacob? You're supposed to be the adult!' Sure, sure, whatever Bells. So anyway, for the sake of my own self-preservation I pretended not to understand where Nessie was going with this. I loved my girlfriend, but she drove me guano sometimes.
"Look," Nessie huffed at me as I smiled at indulgently at her. She even looked cute when she was annoyed. Too bad right now that annoyance was directed at me. "Focus, Jake," she lectured, putting one hand on her hip in that pose I'd come to know so well. I loved it when she got all bossy. It was hot. She was hot. My pants felt tighter. Shit. I was suddenly thankful for the massive book covering my lap.
"It says right here," my angel pointed out, snapping me back to reality as she started reading from the musty old pages, "that if you place two mirrors facing each other, the infinity of reflections will open a portal to another dimension. But it has to be done precisely at midnight, on a night of no moon." She looked up at me. I knew what was coming next. I braced myself for it. "Oh Jake, that sounds like so much fun!" she practically squealed. "Let's do it!" She looked at me expectantly.
"I dunno Ness," I countered. My spider-sense, wolf-sense, whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it-sense was tingling. "Sounds kinda creepy. And dangerous." But that just seemed to get her more animated and curious. So I tried a different approach. "Anyway, how do you even know it's gonna work?" That, unfortunately, was about as effective as throwing petrol on a fire.
Nessie was practically beside herself at the prospect of a new adventure "Oh, come ON! Stop being such a boring old man, Jake," she said, putting unnecessary emphasis on the old. Dammit, she knew exactly what buttons to push. "What's the worst that can happen? If it all ends up being nonsense we won't be any worse off than if we'd never tried it." And then she looked up at me with those big brown eyes again. I braced myself for the inevitable.
"Pleeeease, Jake," she pleaded, doing that thing with her eyes again that made me turn to jelly. Game Over. Nessie 1,076 - Jake nil. Gigantor and Prozac just sniggered. I made a mental note to kick their asses into next Tuesday the next time we played football.
So anyway—that's how, a few nights later, Nessie and I came to be standing on the edge of the treeline outside the Cullen house, waiting for the clock to tick over to midnight. We had set up two full-length mirrors and placed them face-to-face. Each mirror reflected off the other resulting in, as the book had described, an infinity of repeated reflections between them. I had to admit, it did look kinda cool. And thankfully, since Nessie had first come up with this crazy idea, I had managed to talk some sense into her. I had insisted that we study page 740 – "How To Close A Portal" - Probably a good idea to be able to turn something off as well as on. And she had agreed that if things started to get out of hand, I could put an end to this little adventure.
To be honest, I was sceptical. Yes, we were mystical creatures. And yes, we had seen and known a lot of things that would make most people question their sanity. But opening a portal to another dimension? Come on. That was just a little too far-fetched.
But as 23:59 clicked over to 0:00, there was a flash and then a dull glow appeared between the two mirrors. No. Fucking. Way. It worked. This was actually happening. I couldn't decide whether to be amazed or scared shitless. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, I should have put an end to this when I had the chance. But Nessie was practically bouncing out of her skin with excitement.
She moved to peer into the glow. I tried to hold her back, but she stuck her hand into it, seemingly mesmerised by how the lights danced between the two planes of glass. When she pulled her hand out, there was what looked like a drop of liquid mirror on her skin. It started to roll up her arm, leaving a trail of silver in its wake. What the fuck? What kind of liquid rolls uphill? I tried to brush it off her, but when it touched my skin it clung to me too and began tracing the same path. The infinity of reflections blurred around us and I felt the glow become stronger as everything else around us distorted and fell away. The mercury-like substance spread further on our bodies and began to swallow us. I felt the cold surfaces of the mirrors mold themselves around us as they closed in.
I tried to remember what the book said about closing a portal, but my mind went blank. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. All I could do was I hold onto Ness as tightly as possible, trying to keep her safe. I saw the panic in her eyes as she realised we had passed the point of no return. The cold liquid of the mirrors' surfaces enclosed themselves around us.
And then there was darkness.
Silence.
So fast forward to now. Here we are. Fuck knows where here is. Fuck knows how long it's been. And I still can't fucking believe I agreed to go along with what got us into this mess. Actually, to clarify—I have no trouble believing I went along with it, I just can't believe I was so fucking stupid.
Note to self: Do not do shit that's written in musty old books—like opening portals. Double-don't do it if your wolf instincts are sounding alarm bells. And most of all, don't ignore the alarm bells, no matter how much Nessie begs. It will only lead to tears. Mostly hers. And for you that just means it's going to be fuck-painful-as-all-get-out, since you can't stand to see her upset. But that's what got us into this mess in the first place anyway, right?
This actually would all have been kinda cool, if there was a 'reset' button or something to get us out of here once it stopped being fun. But there wasn't. And speaking of reset buttons, where was that goddamn book? I was sure I was holding onto it, but when we got here it was nowhere to be found. Fat lot of good page 740 does for us now – 'How To Close A Portal' – FAIL.
Ever since we'd arrived in this strange place, everything seemed hazy to me. Not confusing hazy—just physically hazy. I couldn't see as clearly as I was used to—somehow things didn't seem to be pulled into as sharp a focus as normal. And the sounds and smells seemed so dull here. At first, I had put it down to disorientation but it had been a while now and the haze still hadn't lifted. Nessie had described experiencing something similar, so I thought it must have actually just been really foggy here. But something still didn't seem quite right, and I couldn't put my finger on it. I actually felt different, but how I couldn't quite explain.
This was bad. Really bad. How was I going to get us out of this? My mind was going about a thousand miles a minute, its foremost thought being that I needed to get my Nessie back to the safety of home, pronto.
Now that I was able to stop and take a proper look around us, I saw that we were in a forest of some kind. Nessie had finally fallen asleep, unable to fight off the exhaustion any longer. I held her in my arms, her head against my chest as I leaned up against the trunk of a large tree. I stroked her hair and listened to her soft breathing. The upside of all this, I reasoned, was that at least I'm here with her. If she'd just gone off and done this on her own, she would have disappeared without a trace, and I would have been going out of my mind trying to find her. I was going out of my mind right now, but at least I had her here with me. I could protect her, and I would bring her home. I kissed the top of her head, and she snuggled in closer, as I breathed in the sweet scent of my Nessie and tightened my arms around her.
I stayed awake, keeping watch and watching over her. At the same time I also kept racking my brains for some way to get us out of this mess and back home again. But first, I had to figure out where we were. I didn't even know if we were actually in a different dimension (as the book had said), or just in some bizarre, unexplored part of the Earth.
As I sat there pondering this, I looked up into the sky and saw three moons. Okay, I thought, so that's one question answered at least—
I don't think we're Kansas anymore, Toto.
