Immortal Souls (The Immortal Souls: Magic & Chaos)

Book 2 - Chapter 16

Jamie burst through the door, pushing it so hard that it slammed into the wall behind and left a dent in the plaster. Sam was sitting up in her bed, her eyes tightly shut, her mouth open wide as she screamed a piercing scream.

Jack was kneeling on her bed, half bent over her, gripping her arms tightly as she struggled for freedom. "Sam!" he yelled, trying to get through to her.

Jamie walked over to her slowly, not sure what he should, or even could do to help.

Danny and Jade barged into the room behind him, but they both stood in the doorway. Watching Sam with worried eyes.

"Sam!" Jack yelled again. Shaking her hard as she kicked at him with her legs. Half wrapping them around him, getting him in the back, though he hardly seemed to notice or to care.

"How can I help?" Jamie asked, his voice coming out quiet compared to the volume of Sam's screams.

"She's going to wake up the neighbours!" Danny yelled. "They'll probably call the police!"

"I'm trying to wake her up!" Jack shouted, his voice projecting angrily above the noise. He spoke to Danny without turning to face him, his attention focused one hundred percent on Sam.

"Sam!" he yelled once more.

Jamie stood there uselessly, watching Jack's futile attempts at calming Sam. He watched for countless moments, his mind going numb from the sounds of the screaming and the shouting, until finally, he managed to snap himself into action.

He closed his eyes, blocking out the surrounding noises and the other people in the room. He scarcely noticed Danny shove him aside as he moved to help Jack. Jamie focused on Sam. Casting out a psychic net, attempting to reach her in a way the others couldn't.

<Sam?> Jamie called to her inside her head. Gaining entrance to her mind was simpler than usual, but he found comfort in the fact that it wasn't as easy as it had been this morning. And inside her mind there were colours, glittering images that appeared as though they were just beginning to form.

<What are you doing in here?> He heard her voice inside his head and felt a surge of relief wash over him at her responsiveness.

<Sam, you need to wake up>

<What do you mean?> she asked, her voice sounding as though it were coming from directly behind him. <I am awake>

<No Sam, you've been unconscious for over twenty four hours>

<Why are you being so weird?> she asked with a laugh. "And why are you talking in my head instead of out loud?"

Jamie's eyes shot open. He sucked in a breath as he looked around slowly, taking in his surroundings, instantly recognising the cliffs where he stood despite the fact that it looked different.

Trees that stretched on for what seemed like an eternity lined the space at his back. The grass at his feet was cut short, and was a healthy green, appearing as though it was regularly maintained, which Jamie knew for a fact it wasn't.

The sky was a colour unlike any Jamie had seen before, well . . . unlike any shade he'd ever seen the sky before. It was a bright, luminous blue, with billows of glittering purple and green dust swirling around like clouds.

Sam was sitting on the ground, her feet dangling over the edge of the cliff. But in front of her, instead of an endless ocean, was a city.

It looked like it was at least a thousand years old. Small buildings nestled around a large castle, the whole thing surrounded by what appeared to be a wall that was made of Magic.

A few metres to his right was a rope bridge that connected the cliff to the island kingdom.

"Sam," Jamie said, kneeling down so they were at eye level. "You have to wake up . . . this isn't real."

Sam looked at him and smiled. "Really?" she asked, thumping her hand down on the grass beside her. "It feels real." She plucked a fistful of grass from the earth beside her and held it out to Jamie. "Dare you to," she said with a devious smile. "Tell me if it tastes real."

"Sam seriously, you need to wake up. I don't know what's going on. I need you to wake up."

Sam sighed and frowned as she turned her face away from him. "This is what it used to look like, you know?"

"What?"

"This place," she said, directing around them. "Over a thousand years ago . . . would have been around the year seven hundred . . . that's when the world forgot."

"What did they forget?"

Sam looked at him. Her eyes seemed sad, and somehow wiser than her years should allow. He'd never noticed that about her before. "They forgot that Magic is real."

"That's because it's a secret," Jamie explained. "Humans aren't supposed to know."

Sam shook her head, her hair floating in the cool breeze. "A long time ago everyone knew. Nothing was a secret." She turned to Jamie and smiled fondly, as if she were recollecting the world as she'd known it, which she couldn't be, because Sam hadn't been alive in the year seven hundred. "Humans, Witches, Warlocks, Vampires, Lycanthropes, Faeries, Valkyries . . . even Gods. Everyone knew about everything. People travelled between dimensions. This universe was connected. But then . . . then the war started. And everybody left, so now this world belongs to humans, because they don't remember that it's supposed to be shared."

"Sam—"

"This is before," she continued, indicating to their surroundings. "The war hasn't started yet."

"Then let's go before it does," Jamie pleaded with her, gazing at her with imploring eyes.

Sam looked at him as a slow smile spread across her face. "Asking me to run away with you? As if you haven't done that before."

Jamie opened his mouth to answer her, but before he could speak a word, the world around them crumbled and everything went dark.