So it was pointed out to me that I always update on the thirteenth… NO that was not on purpose, and definitely kind of freaky- way to notice the weird stuff!! Ha ha.

And I am very very Team Jake. Obviously- Edward is a walking cliché and I've personally always thought Jake seemed like he had more feeling to him than Edward.

Just you know, in case anyone thought i hated him because of the way i treat him in this story. i don't, i love him!!

Anyways, here ya go!!

~wwsadd

Old Magic

The boys insisted that they need a couple of hours as well, to figure out exactly how they were going to summon a Guardian. That left me and Sarah and Kate with nothing to do.

"So… How was seeing Jake again after all this time?" Kate asked, perched on my desk, with her feet swinging lazily. We had returned to Spencer to "relax" for a while, as the boys had basically demanded.

I sighed. "It's hard to explain. He's exactly the same as I remember. He's still my best friend… but I don't know. It's like I changed so much that the entire foundation of our friendship is gone.

"Don't get me wrong; it was amazing to see him again. It was just… I don't know, depressing? At the same time." I replied, curling up on my bed. I had pulled on my favorite pair of sweats and a hoodie that I'd stolen from Tyler. Now that Reid wasn't here, I was starting to get cold again.

Sarah raised an eyebrow from her place sprawled on her own bed. The room looked like it hadn't been lived in at all for the last couple weeks.

"Depressing? At least he's alive, right?" She pointed out.

I shrugged. "For now. He's just so intent on following all of the rules all of a sudden. He doesn't see that his 'Ancestors' or whatever are just playing with him. They knew he would fail." I said, my voice getting harsher in my anger.

"So much for 'good werewolves'. What did you do when you left? I mean, shouldn't Seth be here freaking out again or something?" Kate muttered.

I shook my head. "They probably think I'm being held for ransom or something. When the shadow came… I don't know, all they would have seen is it taking me. I could call them… but what are they going to do besides get themselves killed?

"Believe it or not, I think they are safer there, running around pointlessly in circles- trying to find answers that are right in front of their faces but that they are too stubborn to see." I said, continuing in what Alice would call a mini-tirade.

"Maybe. How much better off are we here though?" Sarah asked, and I could tell that she had not meant it as an insult, but out of curiosity.

I closed my eyes, trying to find the peace that was so elusive lately. "I'm just hoping we all survive at this point. I'll worry about specifics later." I murmured.

"And your parents?" Kate added, as an afterthought.

"I don't know. Frankly I don't know anything at this point. We are quite literally at square one right now. But I'd rather not pull them into this. If they knew anything else, they would have come up with a solution by now." I said, trying to be convincing.

"What… exactly happened?" Sarah asked after a few minutes of suffocating silence.

I took a deep breath. "I caught up to Jake… In the rainforests of Columbia. I think I was just so relieved that he was alive, that I didn't even worry about what he was doing there.

"We traveled for days. I got fed up- He still treats me like a child, like someone he's obligated to take care of, and I finally snapped. I said some things to him that were mostly uncalled for… and then the shadow showed up." I explained, trying not to get choked up at the weight of my actions that was currently crashing down on me.

"The shadow… it spoke of the Ancestors, like Jake had. Said that I should offer them something they couldn't refuse. At the time all I could think about was saving Jake and Seth. So it dropped me, I don't know, in the spirit realm or something. The Ancestors told me that if I could defeat the shadow, a long shot even by their reckoning, I would achieve the peace that my mother has been trying to attain for the last two decades.

"It was like ice, the spirit realm. So very very cold. I asked Sam, the Ancestor I talked to, lucky me, to take me to Nahuel. I explained the situation, and he offered his help. And… now we're right back here- wondering what the hell we're going to do. I'm beginning to see a pattern." I joked, feeling only the most desperate form of humor.

Kate grinned, Sarah giggled. "Well life is definitely more interesting with you around."

"Gee thanks." I muttered, chucking my pillow at Sarah, who was still laughing.

"Are you sure you don't like, have a great aunt that's a fairy or something? Three wishes would be way helpful right now." Kate quipped.

I rolled my eyes. "That would be a genie. And besides, fairies are mean. You're thinking of the fairy godmother from Cinderella- hate to break it to you, but that was a gross imitation by a bad artist." I replied.

Kate looked offended. "You don't believe in fairies?" She asked, nearly outraged. "Can you say hypocrisy?"

I giggled. "In four different languages. And I didn't say I didn't believe in them, just that they would be very non-helpful in this situation." I said, laughing for real this time. I laughed even harder at the looks on their faces.

Neither one could tell if I was kidding or not.

An hour later we were in my Porsche. I didn't feel well, and was letting Kate drive, breaking one of my personal rules.

"Isn't this the part where you come up with some brilliant top-secret plan?" Sarah asked from the backseat.

I not-so-discreetly gave her the finger. "I'm actually fresh out of brilliant ideas. I think it's your turn."

Kate chimed in. "Yeah Sarah, we better not let her come up with the next plan, who knows how much more trouble she's gonna get us into?"

I wasn't sure if I was shocked or not. "What's that supposed to mean? You guys asked to help, remember?"

Kate shrugged. "I was referring your complete lack of self-preservation. I can't believe you've been Using."

"Yeah, Reid's gonna freak the hell out later. Just FYI." Sarah added.

"What else is new?" I grumbled, glad for once when Kate shifted to Park and the dark exterior of the Colony House hovered threateningly ahead.

We slipped single file down the creaking old stairs. I followed Sarah, who was following Kate. When we made it down to the dark carnivorous room, I shuddered. Shadows were more threatening now than they ever had been before.

Not to mention, the last time I had been here, I had been fighting Chase.

The flickering light of the candles threw strange shapes on the walls. I berated myself for being such a pansy. I took a shaky breath. It didn't help.

So I gave up trying to be brave and flung myself into Reid's arms instead. They wrapped around me tightly, as he dropped a kiss lightly on the top of my head. "Miss me?" He asked.

I just hugged him harder. He pushed me away enough to look at my face. "Hey, you okay?"

Shrugging, I internally fought against the severe fight or flight mechanism that was screaming at me to get the hell out of this place. Something here was very very evil.

Reid pulled me toward the stairs, while throwing a cursory glance back over his shoulder at his friends. "We'll be right back." He said, tugging me up the steps before anyone had a chance to respond.

When we got to the front yard, he led me to Ty's Hummer- that I assumed they all arrived together in. Pulling the keys out of his pocket, he unlocked it and opened up the back end.

He sat down, patting the spot next to him. I pulled myself up next to him, curling into his side. "Rainy…tell me what's wrong. Please?"

I didn't know how to begin. Everything was wrong. And the dark underside of the Colony House seemed to bleed with the dangerous darkness I had been running from for what seemed like ages.

"Reid, do you ever wish that you'd never met me?" I asked, staring resolutely at the trees of the nearby forest. That hadn't been what I had meant to say, but it was too late to take it back.

"What?" His voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip. There was a millisecond of silence before he reached over and cupped my face between his hands, forcing me to look at him.

"Look at the mess I've made. Don't pretend that I haven't been making your lives hell from the moment I walked into them." I said shortly. This was not what we should be talking about right now.

His eyes flashed, something I wasn't used to seeing. It wasn't so threatening as it was startling. "The only time you made my life hell was when you walked out of it." He said, his voice nearly a snarl.

My breath caught in my throat. "But-"

"Don't." He snapped. "We'd be dead if it weren't for you. None of us were strong enough to stand a chance against Chase. And you brought us together… Caleb and I couldn't be in the same room before you and Sarah became friends. Nothing bad that has happened is your fault."

Stupid tears. I sniffled. I couldn't entirely agree with his words. The shadow would not darken their doorway if I had never led it there- no pun intended.

"Maybe it isn't directly my fault." I conceded. "But it's still a huge problem. A problem that wouldn't be here if not for me."

He used his thumbs to gently brush my tears away. "I'd rather you be here with me and have the apocalypse on your tail than to even think that you are out there alone, trying to figure out a Power you never should have been cursed with." He said, his voice and eyes going hard.

I tried to laugh, but it came out sounding sort of strangled. "The Power I can handle… I just don't know what I'm supposed to do now- every option we have seems to be going from bad to worse."

His hands did not relax their grip on my face. I took comfort in the safety that I always found with him. "We can get through this Rainy, I promise." He said, and sealed that promise with a kiss.

"Just stay with me okay?" He asked, jumping up from the back of the Hummer and pulling me with him toward the house, his arm still pinning me tightly to his body.

When we made it back down to the dark eerie room, our friends went silent. "What did you guys do?" I asked, trying not to sound harsh, but the suffocating feel of evil hit me like a brick.

"We evoked the ancient magic of the Covenant… we're about to summon a Guardian." Ty said, raising an eyebrow like he had been expecting a thank you.

"If I hear the word 'ancient' one more time, someone is gonna die." I muttered. "Whatever you did, this room reeks of evil."

Sarah and Kate both visibly stiffened. The boys did not, which made me believe that they felt it too. "Do you want to do this or not?" Ty snapped.

I glared at him. "No." I decided. "Something is telling me this is a really bad idea."

Caleb closed his eyes leaning his head back defeatedly. Pogue groaned. I could feel that Reid had stopped breathing next to me. Tyler started laughing. But it wasn't right. It was harsh, ominous.

Kate caught on quicker than I did. "Damn it you guys didn't wait for us?" She asked, exasperation and irritation both evident on her face.

I felt my own eyes widen. I pulled out of Reid's grip, stumbling into the middle of the room. He made to grab at me, but I glowered at him. I dared him to take a step toward me. I thought my friends were supposed to be advocates of good magic- but suddenly it felt like they had summoned the devil, and worse, had no qualms about it at all. I had no right to feel betrayed, but I was scared out of my mind, and angry that they would be this stupid.

The suffocating feeling doubled. The flames of the numerous candles grew, streaking up into the darkness.

Instead of a shadow, it was like a malicious wind had picked up. The books flew off the shelves, the dust of a hundred years swirled like a twister on the Prairie. The force of it picked up until it literally had my friends pinned to the walls.

"What the hell is this about?" I screamed, still in the center of what I could only assume was the summoned Guardian's unnecessary display of power. Without a second thought I summoned Chase's Power.

I felt my eyes bleed to midnight, and then flame over, as I tried to still the incessant wind. Nothing happened for a few seconds, but those seconds felt like decades as my energy was slowly sucked away. It occurred to me that I might die, right here, if I ran out of strength.

The furious wind stopped suddenly, and I couldn't help but fall to my knees. I expected my friends to rush over; to panic like would be normal- or normal for us anyway. But I heard nothing.

I could barely lift my head from my hunched over position. I struggled to move, and finally forced myself to look around, wincing at the pain that shot through my over-exhausted muscles.

It would have been comical if it hadn't been terrifying. It seemed as if they were attached to the walls, with invisible ropes or something. No one seemed to be able to speak, although there was horror in everyone's eyes. The boys were struggling against the invisible bonds, but they were no match for the magic they had summoned.

A chilling voice spoke from the darkness. I'd had about enough of body-less voices. "Ah. A young tutore." It said, in an accent that was not even vaguely familiar.

As much as I wanted to climb to my feet, as hard as I was fighting, I could barely keep from falling all the way to the floor. "What is your damage?" I managed to spit out.

It laughed, sending shivers down my spine. The darkness finally began to congeal into the form of something that looked human. But only if I cocked my head and squinted really hard.

Her ashen face was sunken, her grey eyes swam with malice in the flickering candle-light. I would have to guess she was no older than me- but the feeling of
overwhelming evil was millennia old.

"My… damage? I made the mistake you are about to repeat." It hissed. "You may think yourself strong- and you are. You may think yourself brilliant. You are that too. You are quick and brave- everything we as a race once were. But we are not indestructible.

"We bleed. We can be overcome, by greed, by hunger, by lust. By fear. Fear of losing everything- fear of losing ourselves. Fall to that fear, and it is not only your own death sentence you sign.

"Our purpose is to protect. But sometimes we must say no. We must protect others from ourselves. I did not heed that rule, the most sacred of our laws. And for that, I almost destroyed the world. It is exactly what will happen to you when you attempt to take in a power you can not hold.

"Heed my warning young one. The fate of the entire world depends on it." And with a last hiss, it disappeared in a whisp of smoke.

I used the nearest stone chair to pull myself weakly to my feet. My vision blurred from the effort it took. My ears barely registered the dull thud, as my friends were released from their magical bonds.

The door at the top of the stone steps flew open, and suddenly Nahuel was in front of me. "What just happened?" He demanded. "The evil was tangible from miles away."

I tried to nod, but ended up falling forward, clutching at him, to keep from falling to the hard floor. His strong hands grasped at my shoulders, holding me upright. "Nahuel, we can't do this." I whispered.

so... now what? oh yeah, i should probably know the answer to that huh?
review if you want to know too :)