Secret Keeper (My Myth Trilogy - Book 2): Young Adult Fantasy Novel

by Jane Alvey Harris

  “Stop! Open the gate!” His shout pierces through the van’s frame straight into my ears, his unflinching eyes never leave mine. “It’s her, in the last metal carriage! She’s here!”

  The motion of the gate pauses, shudders, begins to reverse its trajectory. And though I should be alarmed, I’m still held captive by this man and his hooded eyes.

  I wriggle out of my seatbelt, crawling inexplicably over the back of the seat. My limbs act independent of my brain in a much bigger betrayal than inappropriate laughter, but once again I have literally no control over my body.

  I’ve never met this man before, but I know him. Don’t I? He’s important. He could even be the one I’m looking for.

  Marcus curses, braking hard. I topple back over the seat onto the floor of the van, my Connection with the stranger severed. The loss hurts physically like a stab in my gut. Shouts ring out from every direction as I pick myself up off the floor in time to see soldiers from the black wall rush the gate in full metal armor, forcing it shut.

  The man pushes his sinewed body between the wall and the gate. His magnetic gaze locks on me, stunning me like the brilliance of a million sparklers searing the night sky on the Fourth of July. Unable to blink, I’m blinded by a coruscating rush of wildly distorted images and patterns beaming straight into my brain. Amidst the whirling torrent, the impression of a fisherman casting his lure imprints on the bone-white landscape at the back of my eye: a thin dart of silver arcing through the distance between the stranger and me. The barb of a phantom hook sinks into the shadowed space behind my Mind’s Eye.

  He drags on the line. Pain howls through me.

  A scream rips up my throat as my skull attempts to exit my face. I try to shut my Mind’s Eye but it’s clamped open, exposed. I scream again and again, covering my actual eyes with my hands but I can’t block him, I can’t stop him. He’s extracting my skeleton through my eye sockets.

  My pressure points are about to explode. I feel the fingers of his determination climb inside the hole he’s opened in my forehead. Infiltrating my brain cavity they grope along my central nervous system. I’m levitated up inch-by-inch until I’m out of my seatbelt, crushed flat against the double metal doors of the van.

  I hear my own screams. Aidan and Claire are screaming, too. Their hands claw off Kaillen’s jacket, tear at my wings, clutch at my sweat-stained gown as they wrestle me back into my seat. The elves from the back middle row have grabbed both my feet.

  Why is he doing this to me? And how? I’m being ripped in two.

  A deafening screech of wrenching metal assaults my eardrums. The van leans crazily to the right, left wheels lifting off the ground before settling back with a deafening whump.

  The tug-of-war abruptly stops and I fall back, blinded now not by brilliant light, but by complete darkness.

  I slump down onto the bench seat and curl up in a ball, sucking air, afraid to open my eyes because what if even my regular sight is gone? Rain pelts my mud-crusted feet, squelching between my icy toes.

  “Bind the prisoner and bring him to the holding area. I will examine him personally.”

  Regal authority rings from the unfamiliar voice. My eyelids startle open. I see…

  …descending sheets of rain…

  …slow, slow. Divide into…

  …individual droplets…

  …tremble suspended in the air…

  …suddenly reverse…

  …jerked skyward on invisible strings…

  …hover, quivering…

  …inhale sharply…

  …free-fall to the ground in a continuous spate against the cobblestones.

  I’m blinking hard at the woman in close-fitting metallic armor standing where the sliding door of the van used to be. She’s appraising me head-to-toe with ice-blue eyes. The helmet she’s tucked beneath one arm gleams dimly in the rain.

  Her hair is solid gray, short and thick—really thick—crowded together in stiff spikes at odd angles, resilient against the storm’s onslaught. The van’s sliding door lies in a crumpled heap behind her, like a beer can smashed flat and discarded by a careless frat boy.

  “Treoir. Escort my great-granddaughter and her companions to the War Room,” the woman commands. “I will join you shortly and scan them myself.”

  “At once, your Majesty.” The reply comes from one of the enormous guards at her shoulder. The voice is toneless, genderless, almost automated.

  “Welcome to Dún Daingean, Emily,” the woman says. “I am the High Queen. We have much to discuss.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  There’s no time to even register anything but shock as the Queen pivots on her booted heel, reaffixes her helmet, and strides off into a wall of sheeting rain.

  Two massive guards yank me from the wreckage of the van. Dizzy and drained I topple to my knees between them on the cobblestone sluice, my heart hammering against my ribs, chest heaving.

  “Emily!”

  Aidan.

  “Let GO of me you stupid JERK!”

  Claire.

  Straining, I lift my chin enough to see Claire struggling like a wild cat to break free, kicking and slapping at the armor of the giant guard restraining her. “LEAVE MY SISTER ALONE,” she shouts.

  “Claire, no! It’s okay, I’m okay!” But my voice is barely a croak and my head flops ground-ward again, heavy as an anvil. “Please,” I beg with all the life I have left in my body to the guards, praying they’ll hear me, praying they’ll care. “Please don’t let them hurt her.”

  Gently, my guards pull me to my feet. Healing warmth seeps from their gauntleted hands into my armpits and elbows where they grasp me, spreading through me like a lit fuse. My mouth drops open as the agony in my head dissipates slightly, and the afterimages rimming my vision fade. I look from one armor-clad guard to the other, stupefied.

  “You’re maidens,” I breathe, as their Blaze seeps into me.

  “Again, Lady,” one of the maiden’s voices thrums in my ear as I gain my feet. “Tell the little one to stand down.”

  “Claire, stop!” Strength returns to my voice, carrying it through the rain. “They aren’t hurting me. Do what they say!”

  Claire quiets, but slaps away the guard’s hand from her shoulder.

  Are her guards maidens, too? It’s impossible to tell. They’re taller and bigger than me. Their armor is boxy, unwieldy. They all look like robots, without even slits for seeing or breathing through.

  Raindrops cling to my lashes, runneling down my nose, but the downpour is distant. Glancing up, I discover my maiden guards are shielding the rain from my head with their huge gauntleted hands. The only water on my face is what drips from my drenched hair.

  Another commotion breaks out near the second van. I swing my face in that direction, but my eyes are torturously leaden, tracking in aching slow motion. I need fifty Advil and a blissful 10mg of Ambien. No. I need a whole new head.

  “Get your hands off me!” Kaillen’s roar bursts from a melee of soldiers. Several of them go flying, landing with thuds on the road. “Emily!” He tears through their ranks, an enraged grizzly. “Are you hurt? Did that man at the gate hurt you?” But already they’re on top of him. He swats at the guards distractedly, and with a pang of excitement I realize all his attention is focused on me. Oh God. He’s so strong. He’s coming to rescue me.

  His eyes widen as if he sees something I can’t. Then his hand clamps around his own neck, fingers splayed around a dart that’s bloomed there out of nowhere. I gasp, horrified.

  Plucking the tiny, feathered thing loose, he stares at it between his fingers, bemused, until a chainmail arm encircles his neck in a stranglehold. Dazed, he strikes back with his elbow, easily disengaging his attacker, still transfixed by the dart in his other hand. He looks up at me, a stunned apology on his face. I want to scream a warning but my voice sucks back down the drain in my throat with all the rest of my newfound energy. A useless grunt escapes me as a plated fist strikes the bridge of Kaillen’s nose.
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  He collapses heavily to the earth, sprawled in the mud. One of the downed guards rises from the ground, delivering a bone crunching kick to his ribs.

  I sag to my knees, feeling his pain as my own just as another guard with steel-pointed boots kicks him again. A hideous cracking sound swallows the air. Kaillen’s eyes bulge, his mouth contorts in a curse. Lightning-quick his hand snakes out, wrapping around the leg of his nearest attacker, yanking hard. As that guard falls, another raises a cudgel, bringing it down not once but twice on the crown of Kaillen’s head.

  Tears pour down my face as he goes slack.

  He was trying to help me. Just like Xander.

  Rain pools on top his eyelids. There is no one to shelter him from this storm.

  Subdued and frightened, the banished Fae draw together in the narrow alley between the adobe wall and the slick blackness of the enormous black city gate. Lost sheep in a tempest, we huddle closer together for warmth and comfort, not knowing what might happen next.

  Twist and Ava are suddenly next to me in their thin gossamers, wiping my tears, and all I can think about is how wrong it is that they are comforting me. They’ve both lost so much. They’re exponentially more courageous than I am. To the nth degree.

  Guards flank us, but none interfere with our tear-filled reunion. Within seconds Aidan and Claire are pushing their way into our group hug and so is Quince. Relief rises off my drenched clothes like steam as I manage to wrap my arms around my brother, sister, and my friends.

  The guards prod us forward so we’re moving again, but instead of moving to the black, forbidding gate, we parallel the ominous wall. Four soldiers with two stretchers slung between them lead the way. On the first stretcher lies Ian, shrunken and pale. Someone has folded his arms across his chest funereally. Kaillen is behind him on another stretcher. One of his arms dangles over the side, his fingertips nearly brushing the road. His thick dark hair clings to the warm brown of his cheek. He’s gravely injured, but he still looks healthy and gorgeous. I can almost hear the blood pumping through the veins beneath his skin, working to repair the damage inflicted on him.

  I follow the procession of stretchers, able to stay upright only with the help of the maidens at either of my elbows. The slightest breeze could topple me. My bare, blistered feet seem worlds away at the ends of my legs. If I don’t keep close track of them, they slip and slide in the mud. I concentrate, trying to pull my own weight, but I’m not gonna lie…I would happily collapse on one of those stretchers right about now…

  The sudden absence of rain jerks my head up. We’ve passed into an echoing tunnel. The dank smell evokes the image of worms wriggling underground again, only this time I have the distinct impression of being a worm as the downward slope rakes steeply under my feet and I realize: we’re descending deep underground.

  The damp, cold subterranean passageway is barely wide enough for my two escorts and me to walk abreast—if you can call what I’m doing walking, which technically you can’t. It’s definitely closer to a sloppy stumble. Sconces along the earthen walls throw guttering torchlight, sending our shadows lurching across the low ceiling like stooped goblins. I limp along as if my muscles have been disconnected from my somatic nervous system. It’s driving me nuts to have so little control over my own body.

  But dwelling on my weakness will get me nowhere. Instead, I study my escorts’ armor, trying to puzzle out how they put it on and take it off, scanning for any visible seams or fastenings. There are none that I can see. Is the armor even made of metal? It reflects the torchlight, but it almost looks too…I don’t know…spongy?

  No. Spongy isn’t the right word. When I first saw them outside, I’d thought the guards looked like mini Transformers—those robots that turn into cars—and how inconvenient it would be to maneuver in such clunky suits. But on closer inspection they appear sleek and deadly, almost feline. Have the suits morphed somehow? I search the headpieces of both maidens for any glimpse of humanity, of the women within, but they are featureless and wordless in the bas-relief of sputtering flame.

  The occasional sniffle from Claire tells me she’s right behind us, but other than that, I know nothing of our group. The stretchers have either taken a different turn, or have outpaced us. The mystery of what is happening to Ian and Kaillen worries me, but distantly, mutedly. I’m too exhausted, too drained to think much beyond the steady breath of Claire behind me, and my own ungainly gait. Besides, I can’t look back: my head is too heavy to turn and my neck is mush.

  It’s eerily quiet. My guards navigate with surprising stealth considering how unwieldy I am. The shambling of my own raw feet and the occasional plunk of water dripping from the ceiling echoes through the tunnel.

  We round corner after corner, doubling back on ourselves until my head spins…not that I’ve ever been good at navigating. I’m what Jacob likes to call ‘directionally challenged’. I get disoriented just riding an elevator, emerging out onto whichever floor completely bewildered, as if I’ve just deplaned in a different country.

  But the maidens, with their firm grip and steadfast eyes seem to know exactly where we’re going, choosing paths and taking turns in tandem with the precision of synchronized swimmers.

  We’re still descending, and we’ve been underground way too long. My old enemy, Claustrophobia, grows larger and larger, stomping the space in my lungs smaller and smaller. I can barely manage quick shallow breaths.

  Maybe this is all a twisted game. Maybe there is no war room. Maybe their plan is to hopelessly confuse us and then abandon us in the middle of this black subterranean labyrinth to starve to death beneath agonized horizons of compressed regolith.

  Well then, they’ll have to drag me. I’m not cooperating with their sinister plot to leave us for corpses in the bowels of the earth.

  I do that trick toddlers do when they don’t want to be picked up: I let all my muscles go slack. Goodbye, standing up. Hello, falling down.

  I must be pretty heavy dead weight, because both maidens go down with me…on top of me, actually. I’d laugh in triumph except I’m working to breathe around a mouthful of thick, disgusting clay. It pushes up my nostrils, squishing nearly solid inside my left ear canal. I choke and retch as the maidens regain their feet and haul me up without a word.

  “Emily!” Claire’s worried voice ricochets off the passageway walls.

  “Oh, please.” Aidan sounds amused behind her. “She so did that on purpose.”

  I’d snarl at him to shut up if my mouth weren’t full of muck. I settle for a stern glare over my shoulder instead. It doesn’t seem to affect him much, but at least it’s enough to communicate to Claire that he’s right and she shouldn’t worry.

  “Aidan,” Quince scolds from further down the line. “Your sister has been through an ordeal today. She’s exhausted and…”

  “I know she’s exhausted,” Aidan cuts her off, a smug grin in his voice. “I also know that ‘sometimes when the going gets tough, the tough just need to give up.’”

  Claire snickers. “That’s my favorite Emily quote.”

  “It’s a form of silent protest, right, big sis?” quips Aidan.

  Nice. The single life lesson they’ve learned from me involves the one time I used Mom’s credit card to buy Aidan’s science project off of Craigslist because honestly I just can’t with science projects. In my defense, it was a good lesson in economics. Only $15! But sadly it fell apart on the way to school and he got an F. Everyone knows: if you cheat and you still get an F, the Universe is punishing you both for being a cheater and for sucking at it.

  “At least you won’t look like an idiot with Hot Tamales up your nose when you meet the High King,” he mocks like the dorky loser of a brother he is. “Mud is way better than candy. Nice save.”

  Of course, he and Claire have ditched their nostril-candy.

  “Hahaha, that face though, Emma,” Claire cracks up.

  Honestly, their chirpy laughter and glib critiques of my failed fainting-spell manage to light
en the oppressive mood. I know it’s fleeting. The fear will return. But for a moment it’s just me and my brother and sister being goofballs.

  My maiden guards have propped me up against the side of the tunnel while they fiddle with something in the stones across from me. They’re probably grubbing for beetles to feed us for our last meal. I stink-eye my siblings as I straight-leg-slow-slide down the wall to my butt in the mud in the most exaggerated, pathetic, nearly-silent protest I’ve accomplished thus far in my life.

  I pretend Aidan and Claire’s mock applause is sincere.

  Sticking out my tongue, I fling a handful of mud at Claire because she’s closest and also because she’s just way too clean. She shrieks and jumps back like I’ve thrown monkey brains. I giggle. What a prissy little princess. I love her so much.

  From further behind, the Fae bump and jostle until they’re crowded up around Aidan and Claire. The guards stop anyone from advancing past them, but can’t keep them from peeking over their shoulders. How lovely. My people have come to pay homage to me, their Mud Queen.

  A menacing click-click-hiss sets sirens ringing in my head. I scramble to my feet, skin crawling with images of giant insect mandibles snapping open and closed. The comic relief has been shattered and again I’m petrified by the crushing facts: We’re stuck under who knows how many miles of earth; Kaillen is injured; Ian is dying; Jacob is gone, and we’re going to die. Worms will snack on our eyeballs, maggots will breed in our decaying flesh.

  “Look, Emma!” Wonder overflows from Claire’s voice. “It’s a door!”

  A seam has appeared on the opposite wall, revealing the outline of a wide squat door. Intricate gears snick and whir, wheels and cogs gleam independent of the wavering torchlight. The door isn’t high tech, but it isn’t basic, either. Like the chain of my medallion, the mechanisms seem to be a sinuous piece, appearing more liquid than metal—like quicksilver—except almost breathing. A series of bolts and levers begin schlotting and clinking in such rapid succession, my eyes can’t keep up.