Uncontrollable

Chapter Twenty-Five

My eyes widened, jaw dropping the same way Vanessa's had.

"You know of him?" she screamed over the noise of the man still screaming.

"Yes, he-"

"Later," she ordered, cutting me off and grabbing my hand. The man had stopped yelling and began sprinting toward us in an attempt to take us down, but we'd already transported back to the Base by the time he got out from behind the stand he was behind. You'd think he'd just use magic.

As we slammed into the ground in the library, Vanessa began breathing heavily. I was on the other side of the room from her, but I could see her shakily pulled a chair away from the table and collapsed into it.

I sped over, worried that maybe the man fired a spell and it hit her just before we transported.

"I have never transported that far in my entire life. It took all the energy I had," she said in between breaths.

Sweat was beading on her forehead and then rolling down her face, taking any dust that had landed on her with it.

"Do you need anything?" I asked, not really sure what else to say.

"Water," she said. I imagined a glass of water appearing on the table and raised my right hand. The moment it had, I gave it to her, and she thanked me. She sipped it slowly, her eyes closed as if savoring it in her mouth forever.

After it seemed like Vanessa was calm and stable once more, I began trying to extract bits of what she'd found out.

"So how far did we actually go?" I questioned, starting out somewhat unrelated, just to ease into something that seemed to have shocked so much.

"Between realms," she answered, her breaths still fairly heavy.

"So we weren't in this world when we were at the Palace of Prophecies?" I asked, the possibility of more than one realm something I'd never tried to comprehend.

"No, I suppose we weren't physically in this earth, but it's not like we were floating around in space or anything; it's more like a different dimension," Vanessa explained. Halfway through her statement she stopped to take a shaky breath.

"So that's why it took so much energy out of you; because it wasn't just going from one place to another, it was crossing realms?" I asked, gripping what the reality was a bit more.

"Yes," she affirmed, looking into my eyes. "Thank you for coming with. You need two people — one to think about the realm you're going to and the other to create the portal. I wouldn't have been able to do that without you."

"No problem, although I barely did anything. But what was it that you heard?" I inquired. And the second I asked it, Vanessa's face went deadly white.

"I need to speak to Grey," she said immediately, standing up. The moment she got to her feet, she began swaying. I grabbed her waist.

"Take a few seconds to steady yourself before you go running outta here," I said. Her sudden necessity to speak to Grey startled me.

"I need to, Ryder. I'm not kidding," she uttered, her eyes focused on the door.

"I hate to break it to ya, but Grey is a lying, scamming, manipulative old man. Talking to him will do nothing for you," I said, anger bubbling in my voice. How could she not have figured that out by now, after everything he's done?

"I know he is! I'm aware of that much more than you," Vanessa exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air and wrenching her body away from me. "You may think you understand Grey from what you heard, but you don't. There is more to it than just that, and this prophecy has nothing to do with scamming you. You need to learn to stop assuming you know the whole story. There's always more than what appears to be right in front of you."