My uncle nodded in understanding but his frown remained as we passed through one of the smallest lecture halls on campus and one of the oldest. Rows of pristine wooden chairs lined against thick, polished mahogany desks sat facing a single lectern at which my uncle stood most mornings, waving his hands about like a lunatic as he posited on the speed of light and dared his students not to trust their own eyes. Behind that lectern sat a door and beyond that door was my uncle’s office.
Professor Xavier Belling’s office was always a horrible mess. Books and letters were open and strewn about. Jars of some unidentifiable scrounged up body parts suspended in strange liquids on every shelf. Fossilized bones and a row of neatly polished fangs of various shapes and sizes. One might never know that he was an Astrophysicist at all if it weren’t for the telescope in the corner, pointed out the window, and the spectrometer growing dusty on a top shelf. But I knew that Professor Xavier Belling’s interests were as vast as they were limitless. At first, I’d gotten the chills every time I entered this place. Now, I simply ignored it all and focused on him.
“Something strange happened,” I told him then, lowering my voice out of habit as I broached this particular subject of conversation. “Before I killed it, when it had finally reached me, it stopped.”
My uncle’s eyes met mine. I had captured his interest.
“Stopped?” he inquired, curiously. “What do you mean it stopped?”
“It sniffed me, smelled my scent, and froze. It looked just as confused as I was, like it wasn’t certain anymore if it should make a meal out of me or not.”
“Interesting,” my uncle agreed, tapping his chin.
“Do you think it knew?” I asked, unable to breathe as I did. “That it… sensed me?”
My uncle’s gaze flicked to me again, brushing over the angular features of my face, the high cheekbones, violet eyes, and honey blonde hair.
“I think it’s entirely possible,” he answered after a moment and I loosed a breath, closing my eyes. “I don’t know how much time the Fae spend with their monstrous prisoners but I imagine it may be enough for the creatures to recognize their scent.”
I flushed scarlet. I hated talking about this subject, hating being reminded of that half of me, the part of me that no one could ever know about, that my uncle and the few others we had trusted with my secret had taken great pains to keep hidden.
“Especially if they are arming them with battle axes and shoving them into the mortal plane,” I snapped, nostrils flaring.
I didn’t want to believe it, that the people I shared half of my heritage with could be so evil as to send an ancient beast plunging into the world of the mortal once again. But I couldn’t deny that it was a possibility.
After all, what did I know of my immortal kin other than what the stranger who had delivered me to my uncle when I was just a baby had told him? That there was a plane of existence somewhere above our own and that Fae and other mythical humanoids had brought there all creatures of lore and legend when it had become clear that humanity simply could not handle the existence of magic in our world. So they had separated it from us. As simple as that, my name, and a sympathetic admission that my father, my uncle’s brother, had died and that was why I’d been brought to him.
“Now, now, let’s not be hasty,” my uncle warned, holding his hands up in surrender. “I know you’re inclined to blame the Fae for these unfortunate circumstances but we do not know how that monster escaped, nor how he gained a weapon in the process.”
I opened my mouth to argue but he held up a hand.
“Still,” he continued with a tone designed to placate me, “I will ensure that the Dean is made aware of these… fresh discoveries. If the DAA wishes to look into it—”
I cut him off with a scoff. They had commissioned the Department of Astrological Anomalies just after the first rift had opened over five years ago. They had summoned my uncle then, among the other highly respected scholars the government called upon when it lacked the expertise to investigate a natural phenomena itself, and they had dispatched it with the use of their now patented polarity reversing machine. Since then, the equipment had been used to close two more rifts.
Because they had to be closed.
“How are we going to close it?” I asked then, changing the course of the conversation from the minotaur and reverting to the reason they sent me north in the first place.
My uncle frowned.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he confessed. “If it’s as big as they’re saying it is and now monsters are dropping through it unprovoked, Seren, you know we’ve encountered nothing like that before.”
I flinched at the use of my birth name. He noticed and offered a slight apologetic smile.
I understood what he wasn’t saying, what we never said. These weren’t black holes because they weren’t a natural phenomenon, an inexplicable occurrence of nature itself. They were something else. A portal of some sort, being opened into the only place where monsters such as the minotaur could exist, the place that only my uncle and I knew was real.
“Are you saying there’s no way to close it?” I asked, terror snaking like ice through my veins.
“I will never say there isn’t a way. But there isn’t one I’m currently aware of.”
My shoulders fell. I sighed.
“The Dean and I have been working on some potential solutions,” he told me. “I’ve written to Mr. Kendrick and—”
“Mr. Kendrick,” I scoffed, crossing my arms. “The man who ran from the field like a coward? The man who fled from a discovery that any researcher worth their salt would practically kill to examine?”
“Ren,” my uncle started, correcting himself, calling me by my preferred name, “I know you don’t care for the man. Frankly, I’m not fond of him myself. But the DAA has access to broader knowledge and governmental resources that we might need to face what’s coming.”
