Awaken

4

When I perceived, like something that is falling,

The mountain tremble, whence a chill seized on me,

As seizes him who to his death is going.

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Purgatorio, Canto XX

Chloe wasn’t talking about you,” I said to John, leaning my elbows against the rough wood of the dock railing. “She meant the other lord.”

John raised a dark eyebrow. “Oh, that one,” he said. “My mistake.”

He should have looked intimidating — the death deity on the back of his rearing ebony stallion — and I suppose he did seem that way to everyone else, at least judging by their reactions to the sight of him. Behind me, I heard Reed let out a soft expletive of surprise, and Chloe gasped.

But he was the most gorgeous boy I’d ever seen, even with his mouth twisted into a slightly cynical smile at the idea of anyone referring to him as the Lord. He was, as no one knew better than me, far from without sin.

I’d given up trying to control my pulse, which leaped rebelliously every time I laid eyes on him. I had no more control over my heart when John was around than John evidently did over his obnoxious horse, Alastor, who was prancing around in the frothy waves as if he’d stepped on some of the water glasses Alex had dropped … not that it would make a difference, since they’d have been pounded to dust beneath the horse’s massive hooves.

You can get away with making theatrical entrances on the back of a jet-black stallion when you’re the lord of the Underworld, especially while wearing black jeans, studded wrist cuffs, and tactical boots. Granted, John had abandoned the long leather coat he usually wore, but the way the strong, hot wind off the lake caused the waves to crash around Alastor’s forelocks and sent John’s long dark hair — “death metal goth,” I’d once overheard my mom inaccurately describe John’s hair to my dad — streaming around his face and neck gave his entrance an extremely dramatic effect.

John’s appearance did not, however, have the same mesmerizing effect on Alex as it did me and everyone else on the dock.

“Not that guy.” Alex joined me at the dock railing, a disgusted look on his face. “I can’t stand that guy. This is all his fault.”

Uh-oh. This was not the most opportune time for Alex’s memory to be coming back … and not the most ideal tone for him to be taking around John.

“Alex,” John said mildly, his gaze flicking towards my cousin. “I could tell it was you from all the way across the beach. Pierce only gets that particular tone in her voice when you’re around. What are you doing here?”

He had to keep a firm hand on Alastor’s reins, so the muscles in his biceps swelled a little, causing the sleeves of his T-shirt to strain.

This was extremely distracting — at least to me — but I had other things to worry about. I was pretty sure a fight was about to break out between my cousin and my boyfriend, which was bad since John and I were still searching for solid ground between ourselves, kind of like the way Alastor was searching for solid ground in the sand beneath his hooves.

“Alex thought I needed rescuing,” I explained. “But we talked and got it all straightened out, so he’s good now.”

Unfortunately, John didn’t fall for this blatant lie.

“How did he get out of the castle? Typhon never would have let him past —” John broke off, his gaze going to my hip. “Where did that come from?”

I looked down. “Oh,” I said, remembering the whip. “Alex found it, but I —”

“You’re the dude from Coffin Fest,” Alex interrupted, stabbing his finger at John again. “I remember. And you were there when I woke up in the cemetery. You brought me here.” He said the word here like it was the worst place in the entire universe, which isn’t true, since obviously high school is. “Well, I want to go back. Now.”

John raised a single eyebrow … never a good sign.

“Don’t you think every single other person here wants the exact same thing?” he asked as thunder rumbled again in the distance, louder than before. John, when emotionally perturbed, could cause inclement weather conditions with his mind, but I was fairly certain the thunder we’d been hearing all day had been meteorological, not paranormal, in origin. “What makes you think you’re more important than they are?”

“I have unfinished business back in Isla Huesos,” Alex said. “Important business that’s a matter of life or death. You know what I’m talking about.”

“I do,” John said, reaching into the pocket of his jeans and bringing out one of the small tablets with which he and his crew stayed in touch while they worked. “Go back to the castle, Alex. When we’ve gotten these people boarded, you and I can discuss your unfinished business. But now is not a good time.”

If I were Alex, I’d have done as John advised. His voice had hardened from the warm caress it had been when he’d spoken to me into something that felt more like the sand being flung by the wind around us.

Alex, however, had never been one to take a hint, much less an order, and he definitely wasn’t about to now.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Alex said, in a mock apologetic tone. “Am I interfering with your busy cruise director activities? Far be it from me to keep the other passengers from their shuffleboard. I’m only talking about keeping my father out of jail.”

Fortunately, the marine horn gave another long, lonely blast to draw attention to the fact that the prow of an enormous ferry was bursting through the thick curtain of fog.

“Here it comes!” Chloe cried excitedly, pointing. “The boat! I see it!”

I saw it, too. So did John, though he lifted his gaze from his tablet’s screen only momentarily. The tablet was also where he received the information telling him onto which dock to sort the dead. Lived a life of selfish debauchery and sin? Step to the right. Lived a life of moral decency? Step to the left.

Or maybe it was the other way around. It was hard to remember when the people closest to you were fighting.

Who sent him this information — the Fates? The Lord from Chloe’s T-shirt? Aliens? That was as big a mystery as where the tablet had come from.

“Dude,” Alex yelled at John. “Did you hear me?”

This time John didn’t bother looking up from the screen. “As I believe I’ve told you before, Alex, my name is John, not Dude. Pierce, what do you know about tying off mooring lines?”

“Everything,” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about. “I tied one off for lunch yesterday.”

I saw the skin around John’s eyes crinkle as he studied the screen of his tablet, almost as if he might be trying to suppress a smile, despite the seriousness of the situation. John and I may not yet be back on solid ground with each other, but at least he was learning to lighten up a little … a promising sign, considering his profession — not to mention his past.

Sure enough, he was smiling as he looked up, tucking the tablet away. “Frank and Mr. Liu have their hands full at the moment over at the other dock. I’m going to need your help when that ship comes in.”

I was surprised. John had never asked for my help before, though Mr. Smith had assured me that all signs pointed to my being John’s chosen “consort,” which meant spouse or paramour of someone who ruled something.

John, having been born in the eighteen hundreds, would have preferred me to be his wife, even though I’d explained to him that these days, people who married at our age tended to end up on reality shows on MTV.

Then John had asked what MTV was.

“Where would she have learned to tie off a mooring line?” Alex asked before I could say anything. “She went to the most expensive private girls’ school in Connecticut. All they taught her there was how to fold doilies.”

Pointedly ignoring Alex, I said to John, “I’m sure if you show me, I’ll catch on.”

“Excellent.” John’s gaze on me was warm. “Then later perhaps you could show me how to fold doilies.”

John had made a little joke!

This wouldn’t have been a big deal for a normal guy, but it hadn’t been very long ago that the only way John could express himself was by hurling his fists. It was astonishing how well my efforts to civilize him were paying off.

Alex didn’t seem to appreciate my efforts, however.

“Are you kidding me with this?” he demanded, banging the dock railing again with his fist as he glared at John. “She’s not strong enough to handle the lines from a ship that size. And quit ignoring me. You’re letting me on that boat so I can go home and help my dad.”

“Alex,” I said, turning towards him. “I want to help your dad, too. But I already told you, that boat isn’t taking anyone back to Isla Huesos, and even if they were, you couldn’t —”

“Was I talking to you, Pierce?” Alex whirled on me to demand. “I don’t think so. Back off.”

Behind me, Chloe let out a little scream of alarm, then grabbed both my arms and huddled behind me, using my body as a sort of shield. From what, I wasn’t sure, until I looked up.

John had wheeled his horse around, urging him through the waves until he reached the end of the wooden pier. The next thing I knew, Alastor was clattering up the steps onto it. All the newly departed souls flattened themselves against the wooden railings on either side of the dock to make way for the foam-flecked animal and his rider, whose gray eyes were flashing bright as lightning.

“Oh, no,” Chloe said with a groan into my hair.

“It’s all right,” I said to her soothingly. “He promised never to hurt anyone.” Though judging from the livid expression on John’s face, it seemed as if he might have forgotten that promise he’d made so long ago that night by my mother’s pool. Perhaps my efforts at civilizing him were not going as well as I imagined.

John had pulled Alastor up short before Alex and dismounted. The horse blew his hot breath into Alex’s face.

“Was that supposed to impress me?” Alex asked John, his voice shaking a little.

“No,” John said. His own voice was surprisingly even-toned, considering how brightly his silver eyes were flashing. “My horse doesn’t like you. Sometimes I have difficulty controlling him around people he doesn’t like.”

Alastor bared his teeth, each one the size of my big toe. Alex swallowed audibly.

“John,” I said, peeling Chloe’s clinging fingers from my dress and slipping between the two boys. “Alex just woke up. He didn’t have time to speak with Mr. Graves. He doesn’t know where he is or exactly what’s happened —”

“He knows you, though, doesn’t he, Pierce?” John laid his hands on my shoulders to move me — gently but firmly — aside. Though I dug my heels into the wooden planks of the dock, it was like trying to fight against the current of the waves below us. I found myself pressed up against Alastor’s side, a position neither of us much liked.

“He knows you’ve never been anything but kind to him. And yet, after everything your cousin has done for you,” John continued, addressing Alex with the same kind of disdain with which Alastor regarded me, “you show your gratitude by speaking to her rudely, and stealing a weapon from my home?” He pointed at the whip I’d looped through my sash. “Particularly that weapon?”

I glanced down at the whip at my waist, wondering what John was talking about. True, it hadn’t been very sportsmanlike of Alex to grab it — or any weapon — to use against John or any of the other residents of the Underworld, especially considering my cousin was here as a guest, even if he hadn’t known it at the time.

But whips weren’t particularly known for their lethality. It wasn’t as if Alex had stolen a knife from the kitchen, with which he could truly have harmed or even killed someone. To have inflicted a mortal wound with a whip, he’d have had to tie his victim down, then administer multiple lashes, during which time he most likely would have been caught and stopped by one of us. It was an odd weapon for the Fates to have given him, and an even odder one for John to have been so angry about.

“What were you going to do with it?” John asked, still pointing at the whip.

“I —” Alex ducked his head to look down at his sneakers, as if realizing he’d done something not only stupid but also embarrassing. “I … I don’t know. I just wanted to protect myself, and Pierce, too, after I found her.”

I saw from the way John’s expression softened a little that this had been the right thing to say — though Alex couldn’t tell, since his head was still ducked.

Poor Alex. It wasn’t completely his fault that he acted the way he did sometimes. He’d been raised by our grandmother since his father, my uncle Chris, had spent most of Alex’s life in prison for transporting drugs, and he barely knew his mom. She was in the “entertainment business,” the kind you had to be over eighteen to see on the Internet.

“Apologize for the way you spoke to her,” John said to Alex, “and perhaps I’ll be able to forgive you for stealing the weapon.”

I rolled my eyes at this lordly speech. I know John noticed because the corners of his mouth twitched, even though his gaze never left Alex, whose own gaze was still fixed on his shoes.

To my surprise, Alex lifted his head and looked me straight in the eye.

“I’m sorry, Pierce,” he said, sounding as if he truly might have been. “None of this is your fault, and I shouldn’t have blamed you. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Ever since I woke up, I’ve felt … strange.”

I wasn’t sure it was true that none of this was my fault, actually. Maybe the stuff about Seth Rector wasn’t my fault. But certainly some of the horrible stuff that had started happening since I’d come to Isla Huesos was my fault, like our guidance counselor Jade getting murdered. That had happened because she’d been mistaken for me.

I didn’t feel pointing this out would be particularly helpful that moment, however.

“It’s all right,” I said soothingly. “You’re supposed to feel a little strange at first. It’s normal for an NDE.”

When I saw his look of confusion, I remembered I’d never explained to him about the exclusive club to which we both belonged.

“NDE,” I repeated. “Near death experience. That’s what they call it when you die, then come back to life.”

“Oh.” Alex looked a little less confused. He knew all about the “accident” in which I’d lost my life and become an NDE, though unlike him, I’d been revived by natural, not supernatural, means. “What about Kayla? You said she’s here. Is she an NDE, too?”

“No, Alex. She was there when the police caught us in the Rectors’ mausoleum, rescuing you. We brought her here to keep them from arresting her.”

Alex said, “Oh,” again and looked somber.

I thought it might be appropriate to give Alex a hug, but the last time I’d tried, he’d stiffened like the corpse he’d turned into a few hours later. The Cabrero family wasn’t particularly demonstrative, unless you counted murder.

“I … I’m sorry about the whip,” Alex said, more to John than to me. “But … ” He added this last part in a defensive rush. “ … I’m still going to try to get out of here first chance I get.”

“I’d expect nothing less from someone related to Pierce,” John said. His tone had grown warm again. “But until you do find a way to escape, you might as well make yourself useful. Have you ever tied off a boat before?”

Alex made a contemptuous face. “I live on a two-mile-by-four-mile island. Of course I’ve tied off —”

They were interrupted by another long blast from a marine horn. But this time it didn’t emanate from the boat that was churning towards the pier on which we stood. It came from farther out across the lake, somewhere deep inside the center of the murky gray fog that was bearing down on us as rapidly as the ferry.

“Is something wrong?” Chloe asked anxiously. She’d noticed the same thing I had … a look of anxiety that suddenly appeared on John’s face. Something was definitely wrong, at least judging by the way his eyes had narrowed — and his jaw tensed — as he stared out across the lake. But what was he seeing that the rest of us couldn’t?

“Captain Hayden!” Another set of footsteps sounded on the wooden dock, these much lighter than Alex’s had been — but louder, because their owner was wearing a pair of thick-heeled, silver-buckled shoes.

I turned to see Henry Day racing towards us, a metal object clutched in one hand. Following not far behind him — but at a much less rapid pace — was my friend Kayla, wearing a gown of flowing lavender silk, her long dark hair curling wildly about her face and bare shoulders. While Henry’s face was tight with worry, Kayla’s expression was one of annoyance, especially when she spotted Alex.

“Thanks a lot for ditching me, Cabrero,” she snarled at him.

“I didn’t ditch you,” Alex protested. “I didn’t even know you were here.”

Kayla dismissed him with a queenly sniff, then said to Henry, “I thought I told you to quit running. You’ll fall down in those stupid shoes someday and hurt yourself.” She looked at me and shook her head. “Seriously, chickie.” (Chickie was her nickname for me.) “How do you put up with these people?”

I smiled, pleased — but not really surprised — to see her back to her old self so quickly, even after everything she’d been through. If I had to use one word to describe Kayla, it would be adaptable, which also, she’d once told me, happened to be what she’d seen written across the top of her disciplinary file. Antagonistic towards authority figures but highly adaptable.

“Thanks, I’ve had a lot of practice,” I said.

“Captain,” Henry said. He cast Kayla and me a disapproving look. He was only ten years old physically, but he’d lived for more than a hundred and fifty without any sort of female influence, so he did not have a lot of patience for girls. “Look.”

Henry thrust the object he’d been carrying at John.

It was a brass spyglass, one that I recognized from John’s bedroom, where he kept a number of nautical tools that had been scavenged from the sunken Liberty, the ship he and Henry, Mr. Graves, Mr. Liu, and Frank had sailed from England. A storm sank it in the port of Isla Huesos.

John raised the spyglass to one eye, then stood peering out at the approaching ship. I turned to offer Kayla one of the glasses that hadn’t tumbled into the lake.

“Thirsty?”

“Oh, God, yes,” she said, taking the water gratefully. “Do you know what the awful-smelling stuff is in the pots that old man is brewing back there in the castle?”

I nodded. “Beer. Yes, I know, Mr. Graves has been trying to get his recipe right for quite a while.”

“He made me taste some,” Kayla said between sips of water. “I hate beer. But I’ve had worse, actually.” Her gaze moved past me to take in the beach, the dock, and finally the gigantic horse standing next to me. She slowly lowered the now empty water glass. “What the hell?”

“Oh, we’re not in hell,” Chloe informed her, sprightly. “We’re here waiting for the boat that’s going to take us to our final destination.”

Kayla’s gaze slid towards her. “Really,” she said, her pierced eyebrow lifting. “How nice for you.” Then she noticed Reed. “Well,” she said, her expression changing. “Hello.”

He grinned. “Hi. How are you today?”

Kayla’s smile was bright enough to light up the entire Underworld. “Doing much better now that I met you. I’m Kayla Rivera, who —”

“Sorry, she has to go now,” I said to Reed. I took Kayla by the arm and dragged her a few feet away. “Could you please not flirt with the dead people?” I hissed at her.

She glanced back at Reed over a bare shoulder, startled. “No way. He’s dead? That guy does not look dead. How’d he die?”

“What does it matter?” I asked. “I thought you liked Frank.”

“I like Frank, but I’m not dead. Is that what’s with Cindy Lou Who’s hair over there?” Kayla nodded at Chloe. “Is that blood? She’s dead? I thought she just had a bad experience with some hair dye.”

“They’re all dead,” I said. “I thought Mr. Graves explained it to you.”

“He did, in between beer tastings. But how am I supposed to tell who’s dead and who’s not if they don’t have telltale bloodstains? You know, it’s good this place gives out free gifts, because who’d want to stay if they didn’t?” She patted the sparkling amethyst-tipped pins in her own voluminous hair, which matched the purple streaks she’d dyed there. “I’d be so out of here otherwise. Dead people and giant horses and dogs and homemade beer? Yuck. FYI, if my mom doesn’t hear from me by the time her shift at the hospital ends, she’ll probably call out the National Guard.”

“Good luck with that,” I said. “Remember that reward my dad was offering for my safe return from my kidnappers?”

“Oh, was this where you were?” Kayla looked surprised. “No wonder you were in no hurry to come back. I wouldn’t, either, if I was kidnapped by someone who looked like that.” She grinned a little wolfishly at John, who still stood with his back towards us, peering through the spyglass Henry had rushed down from the castle. Then she added, “Which Frank does, of course. Where is Frank, anyway?”

I pointed at the dock across the beach. “Over there.”

Next thing I knew, she’d shot over to the railing to wave and blow kisses in Frank’s direction, which didn’t work out quite as well as I suspect she’d hoped, since when Frank looked up and smiled — almost as if he’d felt Kayla’s kiss travel on the hot wind, then settle upon the jagged scar that ran down one side of his face — one of the men in the line behind him used Frank’s momentary distraction to wrap a burly arm around his throat.

Fortunately Frank reacted quickly and decisively by thrusting the heel of his hand into the other man’s nose. Kayla looked upset by the turn of events, her hands flying to her face in alarm. Concern for Frank hadn’t been why she’d gasped, however.

“Guillotine,” she shouted across the beach. “Use a guillotine chokehold on him, Frank, you idiot!”

I shook my head in wonder. It wasn’t that I was surprised by what Kayla was screaming, or that I minded that she’d been checking out my boyfriend’s backside — which I had to confess did look particularly well proportioned in the snug-fitting jeans he was wearing.

It was that the way she was acting reminded me of something my dad had once told me. The military had performed a study to find out what kind of equipment my dad’s company could provide to help keep fighter pilots calm and levelheaded when they were flying in their F18s and being shot at by the enemy, thousands of feet above the earth at speeds exceeding a thousand miles per hour.

Pulse monitors were applied to the fighter pilots’ chests and were read around the clock by scientists on the ground.

The problem, Dad said, was that the heart rates of the fighter pilots remained perfectly steady when they were in the air, and even when they were under simulated attack.

It was only when those same pilots were back home, jockeying for a position with their shopping cart in line to buy dinner at their crowded local grocery store, for instance, that the scientists saw the readings on their heart monitors skyrocket.

It just goes to show, you can’t tell how anyone is going to react in any given situation, Dad had said.

It was no surprise to me that Kayla was taking completely in stride the discovery that there was an underworld beneath the island on which she lived. The only thing I’d ever seen really upset her was when she’d witnessed John and me revive Alex. She’d been sure we were vampires …. Oh, and my suggestion that she join me for ice cream once after school with Seth Rector’s girlfriend, Farah Endicott. I’m pretty sure Kayla thinks Farah’s a vampire, too.

“Uh-oh,” Kayla said, elbowing me. She pointed at John, who was slowly lowering the spyglass Henry had passed him, his expression troubled. “Looks like the boyfriend’s not happy.”

But when I glanced in the direction John had been peering with the small folding telescope, I saw what could only be good news: the prow of a second ship breaking through the thick wall of fog.

The passengers over on the pier manned by Frank and Mr. Liu saw it, too. They began to cheer. They thought they were being rescued from their present misery.

They didn’t know they were about to board a ship to some place much, much worse.

“What’s wrong?” I crossed over to John to ask. “Haven’t you had two ships come in at the same time before? You don’t have to worry, you know. We’ll all help.”

John handed the spyglass back to Henry. I wasn’t sure if he’d even noticed me, let alone Kayla; he’d been so transfixed by whatever it was he’d viewed through the lens.

“Let Frank and Mr. Liu know what’s happening in case they haven’t noticed yet.” John was speaking in a swift, low voice so quietly, I was certain only Henry and I could hear him. “Tell them I’ll take care of it, but they’ll need to be ready just in case.”

Henry nodded crisply. “Right away, Captain,” he said.

Henry pulled his own tablet — or magic mirror, as Henry adorably referred to it — from a coat pocket, and began to type.

“Just in case?” I stepped away from Kayla, lowering my voice to match John’s so she and the others wouldn’t overhear. “In case what, John? What’s going on? I said that Alex and Kayla and I can —”

“The problem’s not that the boats are coming in at the same time.” John’s tone was barely audible. He didn’t want to broadcast his concerns to the public. But his expression was graver than I’d ever seen it. “It’s that they’re coming in too fast.”

When he looked down at me, I saw something in his light gray eyes that I’d seen there only a handful of times before: It was fear.

“Pierce, those boats aren’t going to stop until they hit something. And the only thing in their way is us.”