CHAPTER FORTY

You Can't Save Them All

_____________

     A LOW GROAN tore through Ryan's lips as his consciousness returned to his mind. Pain radiated across his skull, forcing him to squeeze his already closed eyes tighter together. He knew that he rested on a something hard and cold, but he failed to recognize what. His accelerated healing kicked in and caused the headache to fade, allowing him to pry his eyelids apart.

     Ryan blinked up at a dingy, block ceiling tinged red by the lighting around the room. Was he on the floor? The question just brushed his thoughts when memories flashed behind his eyes.

     The tiny bar in Mystic Falls, a taunting call from Kai, Josie kissing him before she spelled him unconscious and broke the Sandclock.

     Ryan scrambled off the floor, snapping to where he remembered Josie fell moments before he was dragged into darkness. He expected to find the girl still there, fighting against the Black Magic that rushed back into her body, but all he saw were displaced tables and the remnants of the broken mora miserium.

     "Josie?" Ryan called out, swiping his gaze across the empty bar. "Jo?"

     "Yes."

     Ryan whirled to the right when the familiar voice reached his ears. He almost sighed in relief until he laid eyes on what used to be Josie Saltzman. The person in front of him still looked like the girl. She had the same facial features, the same clothes, the same doe brown eyes. But what changed the most had been her once straight, brown hair that darkened to a pitch black and curled away from her face.

     The Black Magic Josie from the vision.

     Ryan swallowed when the darker version of Josie stood less than a foot from him. A cold, heavy feeling pooled in the pit of his stomach. The feeling he noticed moments before he, Alaric, and the twins were sucked into the 2018 Prison World. He now realized what it had tried to tell him.

     Josie tilted her head as she met his gaze. Her own blank and emotionless. "You're awake. Good. We must go," she stated in calm, monotone voice, before she pivoted on her heel and started for the exit.

     Ryan's eyes widened and hurried after her. "Go? Go where? Shouldn't we talk about what just happened? You broke the Sandclock. Are – are you okay?"

     "I'm fine." Josie did not glance toward him as she shoved open the bar's exit.

     Ryan winced when he stepped out of the building. The morning sun rose, illuminating the overcast in a bright blanket across the sky. How long had he been out? It was night when he followed Josie and Jade into the bar.

     When they were in the middle of the street, Josie stopped short and turned to face the Mikaelson boy. Ryan stumbled to prevent himself from crashing into her. "You need to teleport us to the Salvatores'," she told him.

     Ryan blinked as his brows furrowed. "Uh, why?"

     Josie's placid expression never faltered. "We need my father's assistance. The shortened travel time should help us reach him before Jade, Diego, and Wendy tear him apart."

     Ryan's heart leapt into his throat. He knew that he forgot something. While Josie knocked him out and broke the Sandclock, Alaric had been left to deal with a group of vengeful, supernatural teenagers. The man could certainly hold his own, but he would eventually grow tired and leave him vulnerable.

     With a nod of his head, Ryan held his hands out toward the Saltzman girl. "Okay."

     Josie placed her palms on his and kept a firm grip as his eyes fluttered closed. Ryan inhaled, focusing all of his energy on transporting himself and Josie through space and time. A massive pressure settled in his chest when his magic built. When it released, Ryan pried his eyes open and found that they were inside the foyer of the Salvatore Boarding House.

     Voices were heard through the entryway. Loud and clear in the silence of the Prison World.

     Josie dropped her hands first and started toward the large living area.

     "Oh, come on. Let's not fight. We don't wanna waste any of that blood."

     Ryan went after her, pausing at the threshold of the room when he spotted Alaric and Jade. The headmaster had a long sword in hand, seeming to have swung it toward the young vampire, who caught it between her palms above her head.

     Josie walked over to the blonde without a care and raised a hand to touch the center of her back. Jade froze, her entire body going rigid from whatever Black Magic Josie infused into her.

     After a moment, Jade shakily lowered her arms with harsh breaths escaping her lips. Her stare dropped to her hands, before she looked to the man in front of her. "I'm so sorry," she panted out. With another touch from Josie, Jade's body slacked and she fell to the floor in a heap.

     Alaric's brows creased at the sight until he noticed his daughter stood a few feet from him. "Josie?" His gaze drifted over her new appearance and questioned, "what did you do?"

     Ryan stepped into the room to where the two of them remained. He stopped next to them, falling still when he watched the Saltzman girl's eyes flash black.

     Josie did not appear bothered and stated, "I fixed her."

     __________

     Without another word, Josie exited the Salvatore Boarding House and continued down the two-lane road into the surrounding, wooded landscape. Ryan and Alaric followed her, clueless as to where she intended to go and what her motives were. Every time they asked, she muttered something about Lizzie and nothing more.

     "I can't believe she did this," Alaric exclaimed, trailing behind the darker version of his daughter. He stared at her for a long time, observing her changed demeanor. "Why did you let her break the Sandclock?" he questioned the Mikaelson boy at his side.

     Ryan looked to him and scoffed. "I didn't let her do anything. I tried to talk her out of it, but she knocked me out and did it anyway."

     Alaric pressed his lips together, returning his attention to the girl ahead of them. "What exactly did you do to Jade?" he called out to her as he picked up his pace. Josie did not answer. "Josie, talk to me!"

     "Lizzie's this way," Josie said, not addressing the inquiry. "I can feel her."

     "Why did you break the Sandclock?"

     Josie stopped and glanced toward her father. "I can't remember."

     Alaric's eyes narrowed, shifting his gaze to Ryan. "Do you remember why?"

     Ryan sighed. How could he explain everything that revolved around the Saltzmans and Kai Parker without falling into a long winded story? They did not have time for that. "I'll tell you later."

     Alaric looked back to his daughter and hurried to keep up with her fast pace. "Well, are you okay? I mean, are you in pain?"

     "No," Josie stated as her booted heels clicked across the paved road at their feet. "For the first time in my life, everything feels – clear." Her eyes drifted to a spot in the distance and she raised her hand to point its way. "There."

     Ryan followed her arm to where a police cruiser rested at an odd angle in a ditch. His eyes widened. Lizzie. He took off toward the car, pushing himself to move faster with his enhanced speed. When he reached the driver's side door, he found Lizzie leaned forward against the steering wheel. Ryan snatched ahold of the handle and reached inside to ease the girl back into the cushioned seat.

     "Ryan," Lizzie breathed when she recognized him. Blood oozed from a cut above her left eye and dripped from her nose. She wore a light blue dress and a white shawl around her shoulders. A large, red stain covered her stomach with something jagged impaled into her skin.

     Before Ryan could ask what happened, Alaric appeared next to them. "It's okay, honey," he exclaimed.

     "Dad." Lizzie groaned as her chest rose and fell in harsh movements. "Something's wrong. It feels like my mind is breaking," she muttered, prying her eyes open.

     Ryan stiffened when they flashed black. Just like Josie's did earlier. He forgot that they were magically linked.

     Alaric swallowed and helped his daughter out of the car. "It's okay. Easy does it. We need to get you to the hospital. Everything's gonna be just fine."

     Lizzie hissed from the pain the action caused. She leaned against the side of the police cruiser and coughed. "Dad, I drank vampire blood. Please don't let me die."

     Ryan did not expect that.

     Alaric held the same shock, but he failed to comment on it. "You're not gonna die," he told Lizzie and lifted her into his arms. He turned to where Ryan stood next to him. "Can you teleport us to the hospital?"

     Ryan paused. "Uh, I've never teleported more than one person before, and I really don't wanna test it out with her like this," he said, gesturing to a severely injured Lizzie.

     "We don't have much of a choice, Ryan," Alaric countered and tightened his hold around his daughter.

     Ryan pressed his lips together, before his gaze drifted to Josie. She stood at the edge of the road, watching the scene unfold with glazed eyes. "If I'm gonna do this, I need you to give me a magic boost."

     "Ryan," Alaric warned him, but the Mikaelson boy paid him no mind.

     Josie's stare settled on Ryan and she nodded.

     The situation caused Ryan's nerves to skyrocket as he ushered Alaric and Lizzie out of the ditch to stand on the side of the road. He took a deep breath and set one hand on Alaric's shoulder. With the other, he held out to Josie and grasped her outstretched palm. Ryan forced the familiar sense of teleportation to flood his body and spread from his hands to those in contact with him. The burst of magic stung beneath his skin until a cold wave from Josie eased the pain.

     In a blink, Ryan stumbled back and tore his hands away from them. His eyes snapped open and he found himself inside the sterile halls of the local hospital. The same one he visited with Josie and Kai the day before. To his surprise, Josie, Alaric, and Lizzie were with him.

     When he realized where they were, Alaric kicked off the linoleum and raced down the hallways. Ryan remained hot on his heels. The man hurried around a corner, shoving his way into one of the vacant operating rooms. Alaric moved over to the cushioned table and laid Lizzie atop it. The girl grunted and winced as her pain increased.

     Alaric swiped a few bundles of gauze from a nearby table, before he stepped up to her side and pressed them down onto her bloody stomach wound. "You're gonna be okay, Lizzie. It's alright, it's alright."

     Ryan stood on the opposite side of the table, helpless to what he could do for his friend. If he were a normal vampire, he could simply use his blood to heal her. But he was not a normal vampire. He was a tribrid. A tribrid who knew nothing about the medical field. He could try to use magic to heal her, but even healing spells came with risks. And most of the time, they were used on minor cuts and scrapes. Not impalements.

     "The Black Magic is making her worse," Josie voiced from where she observed her sister writhe on the operating table. "She won't make it with it inside her."

     "Well, Josie, can you do something?" Alaric questioned as he pressed harder on Lizzie's bleeding wound. The blonde girl cried out and struggled to breathe. "Josie, please!"

     Josie looked to her father with a flat stare. "I'll be unconscious for a little while. Don't be scared." Her eyes flashed black, before they closed. She reached out toward Lizzie and set her hand on her sister's arm. The red tinge of her siphoning flared as she drew the Black Magic into herself.

     Ryan's heart thudded in his chest when black veins crept up Josie's cheeks and down her forehead. Before he could voice his concerns, Josie fell back from Lizzie and lost consciousness. Ryan reacted, grabbing hold of the girl to ease her down to the floor. He glanced up to where Lizzie remained on the operating table, finding that she also slipped into a forced sleep.

     "I can help."

     Ryan turned to the door and spotted Jade on the threshold. She no longer wore her leather jacket, having swapped it for a green sweater. She started to enter to the room, but she skidded to a halt when her stare dropped to a blood covered Lizzie. Jade gasped as her eyes shifted red and veins pulsed over her cheeks. With a sharp breath, she rushed out of the room and leaned against the wall beside the open doorway. Ryan's brows furrowed at her reaction. It did not line up with her murderous demeanor she displayed since they first met.

     Jade's breaths came out in pants as she stayed outside. "Dr. Saltzman, it's me. I don't know how, but Josie turned my humanity back on. Look, you can still kill me if you want to, alright? I – I know that I deserve it. But I was training as an EMT when I was sixteen, and I've spent the last ten years learning how to patch people up after a fight, alright? I can help her." She sucked in a deep breath. "But I can't be near the blood. So you're just gonna have to do exactly what I tell you."

     Alaric stared at the other side of the room, before he looked to Ryan knelt on the floor with Josie in his arms.

     Ryan noticed the silent question in his eyes. The man did not know if he could trust Jade. But Ryan failed to think of another option. They were low on options. "Let her do it."

     Alaric held the Mikaelson boy's gaze for a while and then sighed. "Jade, tell me what to do."

     "Okay, um, Ryan, can you go over to the heart monitor and stick the leads to Lizzie's chest?" Jade asked.

     Ryan gently laid Josie on the floor and stood. "Uh, sure." He moved to the large screen next to the operating table. He glanced over it, reaching out to press the power button. When the screen blinked on, he grabbed the two wires that were attached to the machine. "It's on. Where exactly do I put the wires?"

     "You're going to put one on each side of her chest about three inches below her collarbone. They should be equidistant from each other," Jade explained to him.

     Ryan nodded, releasing a long breath as he placed the strange stickers attached to the wires on Lizzie's chest. After a moment, a series of beeps escaped the monitor. A green, jagged line appeared on the screen, going up and down with the sound.

     "Dr. Saltzman, you're going to take out whatever's in Lizzie's wound," Jade continued. "Try to keep the extraction slow and precise."

     Alaric nodded and removed the gauze from Lizzie's stomach. He stared at the rough metal that stuck out of her torn dress and skin. He reached out to grip the object and began to pull it from the wound. His movements were slow as he pulled the metal out of his daughter's stomach.

     Ryan's foot tapped against the floor as the heart monitor's beats grew closer together. He knew enough about medical stuff to know that an elevated heartrate was not good.

     "Okay, now you're gonna need to stop the bleeding," Jade voiced. "There's a Laughlin clamp on the tray. It kind of looks like..."

     "Yeah, I know what it looks like," Alaric replied, snatching up a silver utensil from a tray beside the operating table. "Her mom invented it."

     Ryan's brows creased at his comment until the realization dawned on him. Alaric did not mean Caroline, he meant Josie and Lizzie's biological mother, Josette.

     Alaric angled the Laughlin clamp toward Lizzie's stomach, pushing it into the wound to stop the unwanted blood flow. The monitor's beeps slowed into a steady rhythm. Lizzie's heartrate had stabilized.

     Jade sighed in relief. "Okay. The vessel's sealed. Her pulse is steady."

     Alaric did the same and looked up to where the vampire girl peeked around the doorframe. "Thank you."

     Jade's twitched in what could have been a smile, but it fell before the expression went any further.

     Ryan's attention drifted from Lizzie's pale, unconscious form to where Josie began to move from where she laid on the floor. Her eyes opened and stared up at the ceiling, before they snapped to the Mikaelson boy across the room. He watched her set her hands onto the linoleum and quickly leapt to her feet.

     At the sight of her, Jade jumped, gaping at the Saltzman girl with wide eyes.

     Josie tilted her head, shifting her stare from Ryan to the blonde vampire. "Hello, again," she drawled, stepping toward the girl.

     Jade swallowed as she moved away from the doorframe. "What happened to you?"

     Ryan sighed, drawing the vampire's eyes to him. "She did something stupid, and now she's full of Black Magic."

     "And she also can't recall why," Alaric added, after he stitched up Lizzie's wound.

     "I must've had a reason, but it's blank," Josie shot back to her father. "There's something missing from my memory. Or someone."

     Jade blinked. "Uh, same." She reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "I don't know what this is, but I found it in my pocket," she stated and handed it to the Saltzman girl.

     Josie took it, flipping it open to read whatever sat on the off-white page. Her booted heels clicked across the floor as she moved toward the operating table. She held the paper open and out for Ryan and Alaric to read.

     Ryan's eyes strained to see the handwritten note. Thanks for all the sex – Kai. His nose scrunched. Jade needed to reevaluate her taste in significant others.

     Josie noticed his reaction to the name. "You know who this Kai is?"

     Ryan nodded, meeting the girl's darkened eyes. The emptiness within them caused an uneasy feeling to pool inside his stomach. "Yeah. He's who you've all forgotten. His name is Kai Parker. He's yours and Lizzie's psychotic uncle. He jumped into Malivore after he told you that the only way out of here was to break the Sandclock."

     Josie breathed deeply and her eyes fluttered closed. "That's the spell affecting my mind. I've felt it before." Her eyes snapped back open, but they were consumed by blackness. "Malivore."

     Alaric pressed his lips together and turned to where a stool sat near the operating table. "You might want to grab a seat, Jade," he called out to the vampire.

     Jade's brows furrowed as she stepped into the room, gliding her hand across the green tiled wall to brace against it. "Why?"

     "Trust me," Alaric replied, claiming the cushioned seat.

     Ryan's lips parted to offer his magical services, but Josie beat him to the punch.

     "Harae-tamai, kioku yomigaerashi-tamae."

     Ryan watched a mist of black energy escape Josie's fingers as she lifted her arm and motioned in a large circle. The spell took affect and forced Josie, Jade, and Alaric's eyes to roll into the back of their heads. Jade slumped against the wall, sliding down to the floor when her legs collapsed, while Alaric fell into the shelf of medical supplies at his back. Josie lost her footing and plummeted to the ground, but Ryan and caught her in his arms.

     With a long breath, Ryan settled onto the spotless linoleum and let Josie rest on his lap as the Black Magic spell restored the girl's stolen memories of Kai Parker.

<June 13, 2020>

This chapter was going to be longer, but I didn't feel like adding more.

Anyway, here's your first look at Ryan interacting with Dark Josie. Not incredibly exciting, but Lizzie just had to go and crash a cop car into a ditch.

Don't forget to vote and comment.

-Jordan

P.S. Unedited chapter.