Awaken

6

“Mars draws a vapour up from Val di Magra,

Which is with turbid clouds enveloped round,

And with impetuous and bitter tempest … ”

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XXIV

Kayla appeared a moment after John vanished, keeping a wary distance from Alastor’s enormous jaws.

“Did I see what I think I just saw?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I’d ducked my head in the hope that what she thought she saw weren’t my eyes filled with tears. “What do you think you just saw?”

“Your boyfriend dive into, like, three feet of water. He didn’t come up, either. He’s probably drowned or turned into a merman. Honestly, I don’t know which would be worse —”

“Did you see a splash?” I interrupted.

Kayla looked surprised. “Now that you mention it … no, no splash.”

“Yeah. He’s not in the water.” All the warmth that John had injected into my body with his kiss had disappeared. I felt cold again, and not only because fingers of fog had begun to creep ashore and were tingeing the formerly hot wind with ice.

“Well, where is he, then?” Kayla asked.

I exhaled. “I can only assume he’s off fighting invisible forces of evil. They’re called Furies. Did Frank mention those to you? John’s job is to fight the Furies and to make sure this place runs smoothly and that the souls of the dead get to their afterlives. And Frank’s job is to help him.”

Kayla shook her head with enough energy to send her springy dark curls bouncing on her bare shoulders. “The way Frank described it, it’s his job to run this place. Your boy, John, is more like his sidekick. Frank said they get paid in pure solid gold. He said he’s going to give me some.”

“Right,” I said, reaching for Alastor’s bridle and then gritting my teeth in annoyance as he swung his head away from me. “You should totally believe everything boys tell you, especially Frank. Help me grab this horse, will you?”

“Uh, no thanks,” Kayla said. “Frank better not have been lying about the gold. I was planning to use it to pay for my surgery.” She pointed to her chest. One of the first things she’d told me the day we’d met was that she was having breast reduction surgery as soon as she turned eighteen.

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, if we don’t get out of here, you’ll be able to use those as flotation devices.”

Kayla laughed. “You really are crazy, chickie,” she said. “You know that? I couldn’t understand what you were doing in all my classes at first. I was like, ‘Poor little white girl.’ But now I know. No wonder they put you in D-Wing.”

“They put you in D-Wing, too,” I said defensively. “So what does that say about you?”

“Everyone knows I’m crazy,” she said. “But you go around looking like the pretty little rich girl on the outside, not a care in the world.”

Her words chilled me to the bone, more than any wind ever could. Did people really think of me that way? I wondered. Pretty little rich girl? Was that what I got for keeping my scars so well hidden, buried so deep?

“Well, everyone’s wrong,” I said. “I’m not just a pretty little rich girl without a care in the world. I’m the queen of the Underworld. So people better stay out of my way.”

Kayla laughed. “You better take your hand off that whip handle when you say that. You look more like the queen of something else.”

“Sorry,” I said, dropping my hand from my waist. “I need to get rid of this thing.”

Behind Kayla, everyone had started crowding around the area where John had disappeared.

“I’m telling you, he went in,” Reed was saying, peering down into the dark, agitated water.

“I didn’t see a splash,” Chloe said. “He disappeared right before he went in.”

“Right,” Reed scoffed. “A guy disappeared into thin air. That’s impossible.”

“It’s impossible for there to be flocks of Corvus corax inside a cave,” the old man in the hospital gown said. “But you’re not going to deny they’re flying above our heads, are you?”

Reed eyed him. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“There he is!” Henry had his spyglass to one eye. “I see him!”

Everyone looked in the direction Henry was pointing, including me. There, in the wheelhouse of the ship — the one careening towards the dock on which Frank and Mr. Liu were toiling — was a lone figure, barely discernible across such a far distance and with the fog closing in.

“That can’t be him,” Alex said. “No one can swim that fast.”

“It is him,” Henry said. “Look.” He passed my cousin the spyglass. “And he didn’t swim. He can blink himself wherever he wants to be, and a second later, there he is.”

Alex snorted, peering through the telescope. “Right, Shorty.”

“How do you think you got here?” Henry asked, sounding offended. “He brought you by blinking, that’s how. And my name isn’t Shorty. It’s Henry.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Shorty,” Alex said. “No one can blink anyone anywhere.” Then his voice changed as he saw something through the telescope. “That is him.”

Though it was impossible to make out John’s face from such a distance without the help of a magnifying lens, it wasn’t hard to see that the ship on which he was standing was changing course. It had begun to turn, slowly but inexorably, towards the one headed our way.

“What’s he … That is so weird,” Alex said. “There’s no one else in the wheelhouse. There’s no one steering those ships. No one but —”

Alex abruptly lowered the spyglass, staring across the water at the two boats as if he’d just realized something. The realization was evidently not a good one, since the next word out of his mouth was of the four-letter variety.

“Alexander!” Chloe cried, shocked. Her gaze went to Henry. “There are children present.”

Henry hurried to reassure her. “Oh, I’m used to it, miss.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” Chloe said, with a pretty scowl.

Alex was ignoring them both. “That’s why he went out there. There’s no one steering them, and they’re coming in too fast,” he said. He swung an accusing look at me. “Was that what the two of you were whispering about?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s going to try to stop them.”

Everyone had turned to stare at me, I suppose because I was sitting on top of Alastor’s back, where I’d climbed before any of them, including Kayla, had noticed. I’d felt the horse stiffen with indignation beneath my legs, but I already had a firm grasp of the reins in my left hand and John’s father’s whip coiled in my right, just in case Alastor tried anything foolish. Of course I’d never hit him with the lash (which was too long to be of any use as a riding crop), but I might flick him with the coil if he tried to throw me.

But he must have noticed the whip, because though he tossed his head a few times, he didn’t rear or kick. He merely snorted, as if to express his extreme displeasure with the situation.

From the volunteer work I’d done in animal shelters in my past life — before I’d died the first time — I knew that half the battle when it came to untamed creatures like Alastor (and his master) was psychological. You had to make them think that you weren’t afraid of them, and that you were the boss. You weren’t going to put up with any of their nonsense.

Of course, it was a bit different when you were dealing with a nine-pound feral cat as opposed to a death lord’s three-thousand-pound stallion.

Alex shook his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t know which one of you is crazier,” he said, looking back towards John. “You or him.”

“Yes.” Chloe sounded politely timid. “Shouldn’t you be wearing a helmet or something, Pierce? That horse is awfully big. What if you fall?”

“Under normal circumstances,” I said, “yes, I should be wearing a helmet. But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they? Look, I need all of you to listen to me … ”

My voice trailed off as I realized no one was paying the slightest bit of attention to me. All of them were staring at the water and the spectacle of the enormous ship John was steering … directly into the path of the other.

Alex was right. Even with the fog swirling so densely around the two boats, I could see clearly what John was planning on doing. The gaping hole in my chest where my heart had once been — before John had ripped it out and taken it with him — seemed to widen another inch, allowing more of the suddenly chilly air to come seeping in.

“I don’t understand,” Chloe said. She, too, was nervously watching the drama playing out across the lake. “Why is he steering that boat away from the other dock?”

Alex lowered the spyglass. “Because he’s going to try to ram it into the one that was supposed to be picking you guys up.” There was grudging admiration in his voice.

“Why?” Chloe spun around to face Alex.

It was, I suppose, a bit like watching a professional car race in which one of the drivers had gone completely mad and decided to smash his car into all the others. You didn’t want to watch, but you also couldn’t look away.

The problem was, I was in love with the mad driver, and watching him on this insane suicide mission was destroying me.

“But if he smashes his boat into that other one,” Chloe protested, “he’ll be killed!”

“Maybe not,” Reed said in a hopeful voice. “He could rig the steering wheel and jump off at the last minute. I saw that in a movie once.”

“He’ll get sucked under by the boats’ propellers as they go down,” the old man in the hospital gown disagreed gloomily.

“No, he won’t,” Kayla snapped at him. I saw her glance my way. “He’ll be fine. He’ll be just fine.”

“Right. You don’t know the captain,” Henry said to Alex in an offended tone. He snatched the spyglass away from him. “The Haydens love to smash things up.”

Henry wasn’t exaggerating. John had smashed up nearly every obstacle put in the path of his pursuit of me, including but not limited to shopkeepers, teachers, and even sets of iron cemetery gates. A wooden boat would be nothing to him.

“Seems like a waste to me,” Hospital Gown said, his tone now disapproving. “Two perfectly good boats —”

“He doesn’t have any choice,” I said hotly. “He’s doing this to save the docks.”

I’d navigated Alastor until he’d moved his heavy bulk into the middle of the pier, surprised at how willingly he obeyed my commands, seeing as how all I wore on my feet were ladylike slippers, so when I dug my heels into his sides he could hardly have felt it. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, riding bare-legged in a dress, but like Kayla, I could adapt, too, in an emergency.

“So maybe,” I went on, when Hospital Gown and everyone else around him had looked up at me in surprise, “you could do him the courtesy of not letting his efforts go to waste. We need to start evacuating this dock, so if you all will follow me to the castle, where you’ll be safe —”

Kayla wasn’t the only one to echo, “Evacuate?” but she was the person standing closest to me, so she was the only one to whom I responded softly, so the others couldn’t hear.

“We need to get back to the castle,” I said. “John says it’s the only place we’ll be safe.”

Kayla blinked her exotically made-up eyes. “Safe from what?”

“Those invisible forces of evil I mentioned earlier —”

I didn’t mention that I’d been John’s primary concern, or that he hadn’t said anything about Chloe or Reed or the others. But how could I take Alex and Kayla and leave the rest of them all standing there? Who was to say the Furies wouldn’t come after them?

Before Kayla could say anything, Hospital Gown burst out with, “Evacuate? We’ve been waiting here for hours; we’re at the front of the line, and now you’re telling us we’ve got to move some place else?”

All around him, old people lifted their voices to unite with Hospital Gown’s in a chorus of protests. “He’s right!” and “We’re not going anywhere!” and “We want to speak to someone in charge!”

You try to do one nice thing for people, and look what it gets you.

“I’m in charge,” I shouted back at them.

I’d have been better off staring them down in cold silence, but to do that I’d have to have been more sure of what I was doing. And I hadn’t the slightest idea of that.

Still, I plunged on, hoping, like a substitute teacher on the first day of school, that the volume of my voice would hide my anxiety and make up for my lack of experience.

“All I want to do is make sure none of you gets hurt,” I yelled. “So get in line behind me and we’ll all —”

It was too late. Alastor’s ears pricked forward and he snorted. Then Hope let out a squawk of alarm and suddenly took off from between Alastor’s ears, as if frightened by something. But what? I wondered. I hadn’t been shouting that loud. Could she have sensed my own fear?

As I looked around to see what had startled her, a bolt of lightning split the air, thrusting the entire cavern into stark white daylight, instead of the perpetual pinkish dawn it seemed nearly always to be in.

Chloe wasn’t the only one who screamed. I’m pretty sure Kayla and Alex — as well as Hospital Gown and most of his friends — did, too. I know my ears were ringing afterwards … possibly from a scream of my own.

When I lowered the arm I’d lifted to protect my dazzled gaze, I saw that the two ships were so close to the docks, I could have looked into John’s eyes — if his long hair wasn’t partially obscuring his face — as he struggled to twist the wheel, which some unseen force was attempting to pull in the opposite direction.

Furies. Without any weak-willed human bodies to possess the way they did on earth, they couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. But I should have known that they were all around us, not only by the color of my diamond and what had happened to the boats, but also by the chill in the air, the lightning, and now the almost undetectable but ever increasing shaking of the boards of the dock beneath us. The remaining water glasses on the tray Alex had left on the railing began to drop into the water one by one, until finally the empty tray itself slipped, with a plop, into the lake.

People seemed eager to take my advice to evacuate now. The problem was, they couldn’t.

“W-what’s happening?” Chloe cried, reaching for the closest solid thing she could grab on to, which happened to be Alex.

True to his name of protector of man — and now girl — Alex slid an arm around her just as the waves began to slap over the side of the pier, dampening everyone’s legs to the knee.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I think Pierce is right. We’d better —”

His voice was drowned out by the loudest clap of thunder I’d ever heard.

Except that it wasn’t thunder. I twisted in the saddle to see if John was all right, knowing as I did that there was no possible way he was going to be able to employ that trick Reed had suggested and rig something to hold the wheel in place as he leaped to safety.

I was right. The sound we’d heard was the prow of the boat John had been steering, ripping out the hull of the ship in front of it as it rammed against it, with John still aboard.