Disclaimer: I own nothing. The beginning of this story is straight out of the book to let all my beautiful readers know where I'm at in the story.
Summary: What if Julian didn't die at the end of the third book? How would things have been different for the gang if he'd been banned from the Shadow World? How would Jenny react?
"We can unmake you!" The tall one shrieked and in that moment his voice wasn't beautiful. It was like an ice floe breaking, a cracking, smashing sound of destruction.
"What are they talking about?" Tom said.
His quiet, level voice helped Jenny. "They can cut out his name. If they cut out his name, he dies." Then she said, "Julian—."
"Go on!" He said.
The Shadow men were very, very angry.
"We have a right to kill!"
"Then take it!" Julian shouted. "But you won't get past me!"
The thin, scaly fingers of the Shadow Man's other hand were holding a knife. It looked like bone. It glittered like frost.
"Come on, Jenny." Tom said, not moving.
"Julian—."
"Go on!" Julian said.
The knife rose and fell.
Jenny heard herself scream. She saw the slash of the blade, the way the liquid diamond spilled like blood. There was a terrible gash in the stave now, a hideous blank space. A wound. They had carved out Julian's name.
Julian staggered.
Jenny wrenched herself away from something that was trying to hold her and fell on her knees beside him. Her thoughts were wheeling and spinning, with no order to them. There must be something to do, some way to help…
Really, she knew by his face that it was too late.
The other Shadow Men were coming in a rush of darkness and freezing wind. Jenny looked up into the maelstrom and tried to lift Julian to his feet.
Then hands pulled at her. Human hands, helping her get Julian up. And then Jenny was running, they were all running, half carrying Julian with them, and the door was right in front of them.
Ice lashed Jenny's back. A freezing tendril grabbed her ankle. But Michael was pushing the door open and Summer and Zach were falling through it—and then Audrey was through, and then she and Tom and Dee were, with Julian. She felt the resistance as she crossed the threshold, the g-force that threw her off balance and made her stumble and land on her knees.
The hallway was too small. There wasn't enough room for all of them, especially with Julian a dead weight. The telephone table went crashing sideways. People were falling on one another. Jenny was kneeling on somebody's leg.
"Get out of the way! We need to close the door!" Dee was shouting.
Everything was confusion. The leg under Jenny moved and she saw Audrey crawling away. She tried to crawl, too, dragging Julian. Tom picked up the telephone table and threw it over her head toward the living room.
Dee kicked the door shut just as the storm reached it.
"What about the circle?" Michael screamed. "Where's a knife, where's a knife?"
Jenny knew she had a knife, but she couldn't move fast enough. Michael grabbed up something from the floor. It was a felt pen, the pen Jenny had used to sketch the rune circle. With a slashing motion, he crossed the circle out. The cross looked like a slanting X, like the rune Nauthiz. The rune of restraint.
"You don't need to do that." Julian said, and his was voice was very distant. Powerless. "They won't come after you. They don't have claim anymore."
He was lying on his back, eyes looking at the ceiling.
(AN: Okay sorry about all this. This is about where my story will begin!)
Jenny took his cold hand in hers. "You'll be all right. You'll be all right." She repeated the words over and over, as though somehow if she said them enough they would come true.
"You—." He was interrupted by a feeble cough. "You should've left me there. Why didn't you?"
Tears formed in Jenny's forest green eyes. "I didn't want them to hurt you anymore."
He managed a small smile. "I think it's a bit late for that, don't you?"
She laughed despite herself. "You'll be all right."
His eyes hardened, boring into hers with all of his will. "Please don't be worried about me." When the tears fell from her eyes, he said, "God, Jenny. Oh God, please don't cry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I put you through all this."
Jenny didn't want him to die. Whether she could admit it aloud or not, she knew then that she cared about him. It didn't matter what he'd done in the past. She understood that he'd only done it because he cared about her. He didn't know what to do with feelings like that, and he handled it the only way he knew possible. If only I'd been able to show him the real way to love, she lamented sadly.
She looked back into his eyes, only to find that they were closed contentedly. She let out a strangled sob, trying not to cry when her boyfriend was only three feet away.
"He isn't dead." Audrey announced gravely.
Jenny's sobbing stopped as though someone had pressed the 'pause' button on a remote control wired to her system. She stared wildly at him, at his chest, watching the gentle rise and fall of his stomach.
"Why isn't he dead?" She asked the silent humans around her.
"That's the obvious question, isn't it?" Zach replied.
"They carved his name out." Jenny continued, not heeding her cousin. "He should be dead. By all means, he should be dead."
"Well," Michael said, his eyebrows in his hair, "I guess we'll just wait and ask him when he wakes up.
Dee helped Jenny carry Julian to one of the upstairs bedrooms so he could sleep in peace. Dee also helped her remove his duster jacket before pausing to ask if Jenny was going to be all right. Jenny didn't know if Julian was sleeping or if it was some sort of comatose state. Either way, she didn't want to leave his side. Instead, she promised Dee that she was fine and stayed upstairs, sitting beside Julian's bed.
Why didn't Julian die? He'd said if they cut his name out of the runestave that he would die, that that was the only way he could die. So why wasn't he dead?
She took his cool slender fingers in hers. When she felt something cold, like metal or stone, against his palm, she instinctively jerked her hand away. What was that? She wondered. Looking closer and cautiously turning his hand over, she saw a golden circlet. Looking inside the ring to see the inscription, she gasped to see that it had changed. Before, it had read: All I refuse and thee I chuse. Now, it read simply: I am my only master.
She bit her lip to bite back the oncoming stream of tears. No such luck. She felt the hot, salty wetness begin its slow descent down her cheeks and to her chin, where it dripped off harmlessly on the quilt beside the Shadow Man. She slipped the ring on her finger, feeling the cool metal band warm to her body temperature as if it were a part of her.
Staring at Julian, Jenny realized once again just how gorgeous he was. White hair—icy white hair. Blue eyes the color of the sky just before dawn, an impossible color, a color unlike any other, though now those beautiful eyes were hidden behind closed lids. Sculpted lips, the bottom full and the top slightly smaller than the bottom. She could quite easily picture that sensuous mouth twisting into a cruel grin, but right now it was relaxed.
Her eyes continued down his body, to the hard muscles, covered by slightly tanned flesh. She was so focused on the vulnerable boy in front of her that she didn't notice the one who'd just slipped through the cracked door and stood staring awkwardly at her.
"Jenny."
Tom.
Jenny stood up from the bed and whirled to face him. She relaxed when she saw his gentle green-flecked eyes. She smiled softly. "Tom." She said aloud, opening her arms for a hug. He didn't go any closer to her than he already was, however. He was staring at the ring with obvious insecurity.
"You love him." It was not a question, and it was not meant to be.
"What?" She asked, her arms falling back to her sides.
"The others, they mentioned the showdown you two had in the Tunnel of Love and Despair. They said you told him you cared about him."
She was at a loss for words. "Tom, I—."
"It's all right, Thorny." He said, raising his hands toward her as though she were becoming defensive. "I understand, and it's fine. I'm fine just being friends, as long as we can continue to stay on good terms with one another."
"Tom, I went through hell to get to you." She said, appalled at what he was saying. Was he breaking up with her?
"But you feel for him. I don't want to stand between the two of you. So, let's be friends, okay?"
Jenny could do nothing but nod and watch him bow his head, perhaps thinking of something, before giving her one last meaningful look—his eyes also glanced down to the comatose form on the bed—and striding out the door.
Visibly shaken and definitely unstable with everything that had just happened, Jenny sat down on the bed, still staring at the place where Tom had just stood.
Did he just break up with me?
Okay, there's the end of Chapter Uno! I'll try to have the next one out ASAP. It's been forever since I've gotten on here and written anything. Please review this and tell me what you think. All forms of reviews accepted! Even, sadly, flames.
