Awaken

24

Then saw I people hot in fire of wrath,

With stones a young man slaying, clamorously

Still crying to each other, “Kill him! kill him!”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Purgatorio, Canto XV

THANK YOU FOR VISITING DOLPHIN KEY, A GATED LUXURY COMMUNITY IN ISLA HUESOS. PLEASE COME AGAIN!

That’s what the sign in the gatehouse read. Funny how I’d never really noticed it until I was sweeping past it as a psychopathic cop was trying to kill me.

I had a pretty strong feeling no one in Dolphin Key wanted me to come again, ever. Especially as I neared the gatehouse and saw the guard inside it waving madly at me … possibly because of what she saw directly behind me: a line of police cruisers, each with their lights and sirens blazing.

I was sure she was waving at me to stop. She certainly hadn’t raised the garishly colored swing-arm barricade that was supposed to keep the residents of Dolphin Key safe inside, and undesirable nonresidents out.

Then I saw that the guard was pointing at the end of the barricade, where there was just enough room for a single bicyclist to pass by, whether the arm was lifted or not.

I couldn’t understand it. Was she trying to help me? She worked for law enforcement. I was clearly a wayward degenerate.

Yet she was urgently waving me through, while keeping the barricade firmly locked down to thwart the authorities following me.

Of course I didn’t have time to ask her intentions as I swept by. I could only glance over my shoulder …

… then wish I hadn’t as I glimpsed Officer Poling’s face through the windshield of the car a few dozen yards behind me and felt my throat constrict with fear as I saw it contort with hatred and rage.

I don’t know why he hadn’t shot me instead of leaping into the nearest police cruiser and giving chase. Maybe the ravens — or whoever was controlling the Furies — told him not to.

I suppose it was better for me that he hadn’t. I wasn’t dead, and neither was he, as he surely would have been had he pulled the trigger … his fellow officers would have put him down like the mad dog he now resembled, and would probably have inadvertently taken the lives of a few innocent bystanders along with him.

But now he was hot on my trail, with Chief of Police Santos and his fellow officers hot on Officer Poling’s trail. I was leading a parade of cop cars down the narrow streets of Isla Huesos.

Worse, it turned out Officer Poling found lowered gatehouse barricade arms no impediment to his pursuit of me. He simply rammed his vehicle through them, sending splinters of wood flying everywhere and causing the gatehouse guard to fling her arms over her face protectively, then reach for her radio to report him.

I told myself I had the advantage, since I was speeding along the same path I’d taken dozens — maybe hundreds — of times since my mother and I had moved to Isla Huesos … including the night she’d thrown her Welcome to Isla Huesos, Pierce party, which I’d fled in a similar fashion … only then a demon-possessed cop hadn’t been pursuing me.

My feet were pedaling just as fast as they had that night, though, towards the cemetery … and to John. I was on a bike on well-known territory, able to traverse terrain automobiles couldn’t, such as sidewalks and lawns.

At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

I could only hope Alex was following along behind the trail of squad cars somewhere. I had yet to see him. I couldn’t risk glancing over my shoulder again, since the sight of Officer Poling’s twisted face behind the wheel frightened me so much, I almost lost my footing on the bike. I had to concentrate on the road in front of me. Every crack in the pavement was as recognizable to me as the veins on my own hands, but the storm had left a ton of detritus in the road in the form of fallen branches, overturned garbage cans, and the odd lawn chair. If I looked away for a second, I was afraid I’d lose my balance, then fall prey to a madman with revenge on his mind.

I told myself the feel of the wind in my hair as I sailed down the hill to the cemetery was exhilarating, not terrifying. The sirens’ screaming in my ears was exciting, not earsplitting. My heart was slamming hard against my ribs not with fear, but with anticipation of seeing John. He was going to be waiting for me at his crypt, exactly where he’d said he’d be. He’d take me in his arms and assure me he’d gotten the ships delivered safely to the Underworld.

Oh, God, I didn’t sound convincing even to myself. I could barely see where I was going thanks to the tears streaming down my face. Now Officer Poling was using the loudspeaker on his squad car: “Pierce Oliviera. Stop. You are under arrest for the murder of Mark Mueller. Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

People were coming out onto their front porches in order to see the person they thought was a real-life murderer whizzing past them on a bike. It was a good thing I lived underneath this town and not in it, because my reputation was ruined.

But what about Kayla? I regretted my decision to ever let her leave the safety of the Underworld. Certainly she was going to have to go back to her old life someday. She wasn’t bound by death (like Alex) or eternal love (like me) to stay forever in the Underworld.

Why had I allowed her tough talk to sway me into believing she’d be fine? Fine against Furies carrying guns?

I prayed Kayla would be waiting safely at the cemetery (where Alex had said she and Frank would meet us), and that John and I wouldn’t be too late to keep this whole thing from turning into the disaster Mr. Graves had warned me about.

Maybe it already had. Maybe the pestilence was leaking from the Underworld. It certainly seemed so. The storm was over, but so far the new life Mr. Smith had promised the sun would reveal in its wake wasn’t good at all. The sun seemed to be revealing horrible, creepy things, things like Officer Poling, things that would have been better off left in the dark ….

I slammed on the brakes. An enormous sapodilla tree lay in the middle of the road in front of me.

It was the one John had struck with lightning and sent crashing down on Mr. Mueller’s body after we’d hit him with Kayla’s car.

There was a single maintenance worker wearing a fluorescent-yellow vest standing in front of the tree, smoking a cigarette. He looked surprised to see a girl wearing a whip on a belt pull up on a bike … or maybe it was all the cop cars screaming behind me that surprised him.

“Well,” Yellow Vest said. “Hello there.”

The city hadn’t had time yet to put up orange CAUTION signs. There must have been too many other downed trees — and worse — across the island.

Mr. Mueller was gone. They had been able to remove his body by cutting away the section of the tree that had trapped it. The maintenance worker held a chain saw. The rest of the sapodilla still lay sprawled across the road. The maintenance worker appeared to have been getting ready to cut the trunk into pieces and throw the pieces into a large wood chipper sitting nearby before he’d stopped for his smoking break.

“Please,” I said, panting. “I need to get to the cemetery.”

“This road,” Yellow Vest said, “is closed.”

Too late, I remembered Uncle Chris had mentioned that it would be … to vehicular traffic, anyway.

“I know,” I said. I didn’t look behind me. There was no need to. I could hear the brakes of Officer Poling’s squad car squealing to a halt a few yards away. “But I really, really, really need to get to the cemetery.”

The maintenance worker took a long puff on his cigarette. Then he took one step to the left, revealing the space in the tree where Mr. Mueller’s body had lain. It was the same size as the space between the guardhouse and the swing-arm barricade at Dolphin Key, perfect for a single bicyclist.

“So go on already,” the maintenance worker said.

“Oh,” I said gratefully. “Thank you very much.”

“Stop,” I heard Officer Poling shout. “That girl is under arrest!”

I hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?” Yellow Vest asked me.

“I … ” I glanced back at Officer Poling, who was getting out of the car. “He’s not right in the head.”

Yellow Vest grinned. “Don’t you worry about me,” he said, and raised his chain saw. “I can take care of myself. You scoot now.”

He pulled the chain saw’s cord. The motor roared to life, the sharp, tiny blades beginning to spin madly.

I didn’t wait a second longer. I hurried through the space between the sapodilla’s enormous trunk. Only when I was through, and putting my feet back on my pedals, did I look back. The worker had returned to where he’d been standing, in front of the empty space, but he must have decided his break was over, since he’d stamped out the cigarette and was staring in Officer Poling’s direction.

“Well, hey there,” he said, as pleasantly as he’d spoken to me, albeit a bit more loudly in order to be heard above the noise of the chain saw.

I didn’t hear the rest of their conversation because I didn’t stick around. I saw that Chief of Police Santos’s cruiser had pulled up just behind Officer Poling’s. Yellow Vest was right. He could take care of himself.

I couldn’t understand it. Why hadn’t the maintenance worker tried to stop me, when the police were clearly in pursuit of me? I was obviously a criminal.

I didn’t have time to ponder it. I could only pedal, so close to the cemetery now that I could see the black wrought iron fence looming in front of me. Even if he got past the guy with the chain saw and Chief Santos — which seemed extremely unlikely — there’d be no way Shawn Poling could follow me into the cemetery, because the gate would be closed and locked. Mr. Smith had assured all of us that day in the school assembly that the gate would be locked all through Coffin Week.

And Officer Poling wouldn’t be agile enough to climb that high, spiked fence. He’d never catch up to me now. Or by the time he did, I’d be safely back in the Underworld, where John and I would try to return everything to normal … or as close to normal as things could get in the Underworld.

Except there was no possibility of “normal” anymore. Though the day was turning out to be one of the most beautiful I’d ever seen on Isla Huesos — the sky was a pure, cloudless blue, the temperature perfectly warm, the wind a little too strong for boating — what I saw in front of me as I grew closer to the cemetery filled me with horror.