Kingston was turning a satisfying shade of grape-purple.
“You guys don’t understand what you’re about to face,” Kiera said. “Unlike in the other cells where you can jump on a train to get to the next one, there is no next cell, and unless all of the cats are hunted and killed, more will come. Trust me. I’ve been here long enough to understand a thing or two about your grandfather’s prison.”
“How will killing me help?” I whispered, the point of her spear digging into my neck.
“You’ll heal, then be able to fight. Instead of being a burden, you’ll become an asset.” Under her breath, she added, “Hopefully. Unless you’re too pampered to do any heavy-lifting.”
The ache throbbing in my waist reminded me I had little choice. “Can you die an indefinite amount of times here?”
“Yeah. Unless you bite the—”
“Kiera,” Kingston wheezed. “Smoke . . . Gone.”
She flicked her gaze to the dregs of smoke puffing out of existence in the white sky. “Follow the river to the waterfall.”
“Don’t kill her,” Remo growled.
“Sorry, Carrot-top, but it’s survival of the fittest around here. I’m not dying again, because you don’t have the balls to trim the fat. Besides, you’ll see your girlfriend soon enough.”
“Girlfriend?” Kingston rasped.
Really? That was the part that gave him pause?
Branches snapped. I expected to hear a litany of growls, but instead I heard a new voice. A man with a thick beard but no hair raced from the forest. Like Kiera and Kingston, he wore a tattered and stained undershirt and shorts with a hem so frayed and uneven they must’ve been pants at some point.
“I got the weapons.” He brandished a handful of hand-whittled spears.
Remo pivoted toward the newcomer, lifting Kingston right off the ground. “How many of you are there?”
“Four.” To me, she said, “Oh, and, princess, when you get up there”—she tipped her head to the plateau—“don’t wake the vamp beetles.”
Vamp beetles? The tip of her spear scraped my thrumming carotid.
“Don’t!” Remo tossed away Kingston, who smacked down on the sand so hard, an oompf escaped from his lips.
“Now,” I breathed.
Kiera’s biceps tensed, and then the pain was gone, and so was I.
30
The Beetles
I awoke to a distant babble and cool stickiness. Before opening my eyes to face the white sky, I swallowed a steadying breath and took quick inventory of my body, relieved to note the absence of pain. This world was still despicable, but I was thankful for the strange loophole.
I flattened my palms and pressed my fingers into the squishy mud. Even though my body didn’t ache, I rose to my feet slowly, my clothes soaked in mud.
I stared at the hem of Remo’s tunic that skimmed the top of my thighs, sheltering my upper body like a poncho. I’d abandoned him shirtless down below. Our clothing wasn’t armor, but it beat bare skin. I hoisted the shirt up to dig my fingers into the tight knot of the belt he’d fastened around my waist to staunch the blood oozing from my wound. Once I got it loose, I slid it off my waist and hooked it around my neck. The tinny smell clinging to the soiled black fabric made my nostrils flare.
I was about to pull my arms through the sleeves of my jumpsuit when I remembered Remo had cut one off. Although not stifling, the air was warm in this cell, so I made scissors out of my dust, clipped off the remaining sleeve, then magicked my nifty tool out of existence and hoisted my suit back on. After threading the belt Remo had made me through the newly-felled sleeve, I retied a knot and looped it around my neck, then fit my arms through his tunic sleeves, rolled the cuffs twice to free my hands, and eased one arm through the stretchy necklace of sleeves to secure it across my chest.
Calling on my wita again, I fashioned a rapier. I wasn’t sure whether I would encounter the cats Kiera had mentioned up here, but I thought it prudent to be prepared. After a meaningful glare in the portal’s direction, I raced toward the watery expanse sparkling behind another tropical forest. There were no panem trees up here, just tall palms with ruddy bark coated in bulbs the color and size of gladeberries. As I slalomed around them, I finally computed what I’d seen down in the valley.
Kiera.
And Kingston.
Alive and untouched by age.
I couldn’t believe Joshua had been right.
I couldn’t believe Iba had been right.
I couldn’t believe Gregor had created a prison no one had any inkling about.
Except for Joshua’s source. Who the hell was Joshua’s source?
Soon the sound of flowing water superseded the swish of my needle-thin blade and the crunch of coarse sand beneath my stomping boots. Should I swim or run along the riverbank? As I contemplated both options, wishing I’d had the presence of mind to ask Kiera, my sword nicked the base of a tree. I didn’t think much of it until a low drone erupted, and the berry-like barnacles separated from the trunk.
“Aw, crap.” I joined my hands on the sword’s handle and raised it as a dozen overgrown ladybugs descended on me.
What I needed was a paddle, not a sword as thin as a toothpick. Grip slickening, I backed up, my boots sinking into softer sand, and reshaped my weapon. I dared a glance over my shoulder at the water. I was probably better off jumping in.
The buzzing grew so loud I whipped my head back toward the fleet of vamp beetles and swung, knocking out the first wave. Instead of plopping to the ground, they dipped like pollinating bees before rising anew and soaring straight at me. I batted the air, then whirled, my racket bowling a ribbon of them over.
A violent sting on my collarbone had my chin dipping into my neck. One of the bulbous things had latched on to me. The droning grew anew, and I flailed backward, one hand going to the bug and the other wrapped firmly around my paddle.
What was Gregor’s obsession with toothy flying things? Did he regret being born a faerie instead of a vampire?
Sweat pooled between my shoulder blades as I tore off the gelatinous bug and lobbed it at the tree it had come from, before whirling around to smash its incoming friends. My footing faltered, and I sailed backward, smacking into the stream. The momentum ripped the paddle from my hands.
The vamp beetles dove toward my floating body. Before any could dig their sharp teeth into my exposed flesh, I sank, and they hit the surface like toy balls. When one dipped below the rippling surf, alarm gripped me.
Please let them not be engineered to swim.
Like a buoy, the submerged bug rose back. Blood ribboned around the stream of bubbles escaping my nose. I parted my lips to take in air, forgetting I couldn’t breathe underwater. I snapped my lips shut around a mouthful of silt. Reflexively, I blew it out, along with my reserve of oxygen.
When I returned to Neverra, I would use a meat mallet and pound Gregor’s bones, and then I’d drag him to the very bottom of the Pink Sea and wait for his lungs to seize and his organs to fail. These heinous contemplations scared me, not in their atrocity, but in the lack of guilt and disgust I felt visualizing them.
My own lungs cramped, urging me to break the surface, but the red bugs droned inches from where my air bubbles popped, and where the hell was my racket? I extended my hand, summoning my dust. When no golden filaments shimmied toward me, my pulse ramped up. I kicked to go faster, scanning my blurry surroundings for an oblong shape, but the only thing I saw was the uniform layer of vamp beetles reddening the top of the river. Had they all congregated to keep me interred?
I finally understood why non-Daneelies described suffocation as feeling like your lungs had been set on fire. My insides teemed with searing heat that spread as though my veins had torn and were leaking kalini into the rest of my organs.
I’m done dying, Gregor Farrow.
Estimating I had a couple seconds of air left, I squinted harder. Fortunately, the stream dragging me toward the cliff was narrow, and the water sweet and clear�
�salt would probably have stung in this world.
Come on, come on, I urged my racket. Come back to me. I need you.
Unless it had gotten stuck in the sandy riverbed, it would go over the drop with me, but I couldn’t even spot the drop yet, which meant I would be out of oxygen long before I went over. The edges of my vision began to fray, which couldn’t possibly be a good sign.
Maybe I could break the surface for a quick breath. I stared up. The beetles were no longer hovering over the water. They were sitting atop it, bobbing like bloodied ducks.
Time for Plan B.
If only I had a Plan B.
Something bumped into my foot. I craned my neck, and although I felt like I was floating in a puddle of opaque glue, I made out the faintest, shimmering curve. Like a faulty pendulum, my arm arced toward my thigh, and then my cramping fingers curled around what had hit me. Hoping I wasn’t hallucinating, I dragged the thing toward my face and almost wept at the sight of it.
Instead of returning the wita inside of me, I fashioned a snorkel so long and thin it poked through the net of vamp beetles. And then I sucked on it. Water surged inside my mouth. I was so stunned I choked and almost dropped my device. In a dusky recess of my mind, it struck me I should blow into it to clear it, but I didn’t think I had a blow left in me. I tried, though. Not even a trickle of air drifted up the flooded tube.
Was night finally falling? The watery world around me had turned incredibly dark.
Although my grip was weakening, I gave my oversized snorkel a soft squeeze, making it solid, and then another to make it hollow. And then I pulled in a swallow, praying for air, praying I wouldn’t return to the field of mud, because I needed to reach the others and help whatever fight had begun down in the valley.
Air—delicious, pure, and crisp—luffed my cheeks and snuck into my stiff lungs. I breathed in and out, in and out. Slowly, my vision cleared, the gray dots replaced by dabs of bright color—iridescent blue and gladeberry-red. I didn’t even mind the sight of the beetles anymore. They couldn’t hurt me anymore.
I dragged one hand through the velvety sand, the grains puffing and dancing around me, tangling around my unraveling braid.
Boredom, or perhaps an innate sense that their mission had become futile, made the vamp beetles rise in droves and drift away, back to their bark ports. Breathing calmly, I took advantage of the respite to relax before what awaited me in the valley. After a couple more minutes of idle drifting, I reeled my dust back into my palm, kicked my legs, and broke the surface.
The water foamed, wavelets rocking into my cheeks and nose, spraying into my eyes. I was getting close to the drop-off. I poked my head out a little higher to gauge the distance. Half a mile. Perhaps less. I fluttered my legs, carving across the expanse toward the shore, fearing that flopping over the ledge would result in undesired spinal realignment. My muscles hardened and stretched, the tendons and sinews coiling deliciously. How I’d missed swimming. Too soon, I reached the embankment and clawed my way to dry land on hands and knees, droplets of blood plopping into the sand beneath my face. Damn bloodthirsty fiend.
Waterlogged, I rose to my feet. My clothing stuck to my body, but there was no point wringing them out, not when I was about to dive head first off a cliff and into more water.
I shuddered as the memory of my last fall lit up my brain. Not even the knowledge that I’d resuscitate tempered the horror of dying. My aim, when I pushed off the cliff, needed to be true. Unless I created another parachute . . . No. I didn’t want the other prisoners to see I had access to magic.
I hurried along the shore, kicking up clumps of sand, my feet squishing inside my boots. Ten heartbeats later, I stood on the edge of the cliff. Although the dense blue foliage obscured most of the valley, the crescent encasing the pool was perfectly visible—white dappled with so much red I imagined someone else had gotten injured or killed, because all that blood couldn’t possibly have come from my waist wound.
As though the cell had heard my contemplations, a striped beast with paws the size of dinner plates and lavender fur matted with blood inched toward the water. It tottered. Once. Twice. And then it collapsed, half into the water, half out. A hoarse mewl turned the fine hairs on the back of my neck erect.
Oh, Great Gejaiwe. I pressed my knuckles against my gaping mouth.
“You just gonna stand there, princess, or actually get your feet wet?” someone yelled.
I jumped as the voice of the older man who’d been on the beach earlier drifted toward me. He was paddling with the current, bald head slick and shiny as a pearl.
“We already killed half of them off,” he continued, his voice carrying over the rushing water.
“Half?”
“Three,” he shouted. “They’re always as many as we are.”
I gulped. Were they all as big as the one on the beach? I looked back down at it. The animal was motionless, deep crimson blooming around its thick body, golden stripes shimmering as though made of foil instead of fur.
“Where do we jump from?” I asked loudly.
“You need to get back in the river, swim to the middle, then let it carry you down! You dive from anywhere else and you’ll break your neck. Take it from someone who’s tested a variety of dive spots.”
My saliva thickened anew. “How many prisoners . . . have the tigri killed?” I asked, retreating back the way I’d come. Strong swimmer that I was, in this current, I’d never reach the heart of the river before toppling off if I didn’t add a few more yards.
“Just me. Damn tiger carved up my chest with its metal claws!”
Metal claws . . . Like on Kiera’s necklace. She must’ve plucked them off one of the beasts and strung them up on a cord. A battle trophy.
A growl followed by yelling down below made me wade into the frothy water. I pushed off the embankment and swam toward the center of the river, and then I turned toward the valley and let the current lasso me toward the fight below.
31
The Fourth One
I closed my eyes as I tipped over, curling my body into a compact ball to avoid skeletal damage. I thought of Sook, my thrill-seeking cousin. Of how he’d probably have hollered an impassioned “cowabunga” like he did when he flew over the Pink Sea and divebombed me, one of his very favorite pastimes.
Hitting the pool was almost like hitting solid rock. My organs remained intact inside my body, but damn . . . my poor skull. It pounded and wobbled like the rest of my bones.
I suddenly remembered my swimming buddy, and my arms and legs sprang out and carved through the water just as he collided into it. While he dropped like a stone, I scissor-kicked to the surface.
“Is the cat dead?” I asked once he’d emerged.
“If it doesn’t move, it’s dead.”
Treading water, I surveyed its ribcage. When it didn’t expand, I headed toward the shore. Over the sound of my arms slapping water came a series of distant grunts followed by a non-human roar. My pulse faltered, and so did my desire to join the fight, but Remo was out there.
I pushed away my apprehension and swam faster, studying the purple giant’s serrated claws, peaked ears, and twin golden fangs that jutted from its jaw, reddened by—I gulped—blood. As my boots gained purchase on the sandy bottom, a succession of shivers zipped up my spine.
“Move!” Baldie shoved past me, running his palms down his face to whisk off the water. “They need our help.”
I raced after him, Karsyn’s dust tingling in my palm, reminding me it was there for the taking, and I would take it if push came to shove. “What about weapons?” I yelled as he kicked up sand that stuck to my wet suit.
“They should have extra on site. If not, we hit the caves.”
I didn’t ask where the caves were, just followed him. Movement to our right made him change course. He veered so sharply around a thick, peeling trunk I missed the liana hung between it and the next tree, and it whipped my forehead, snapping my head back. Miraculously, I didn’t fall, but little st
ars spangled my vision. I shook my head to clear it just as a growl erupted so close I swore I could smell the creature’s rank breath in the air.
My blood and breaths came quicker. Soon, I burst from a thicket of yellow plants with curled tentacular leaves that scraped at my shins.
Holy Skies above.
A tigri was standing on its hind legs, and in front of it, holding a spear as puny as a matchstick, was Remo, bare chest streaked in blood and sand.
Not seeing Baldie anywhere, I fashioned a spear of my own that resembled Remo’s, only three times longer and sharper. And then I hollered at the beast to get its attention, which also got my fiancé’s attention. The huge feline landed, its paws making the very ground shake. My knees softened and bent as I squatted into a battle stance.
The tigri pivoted toward me and sniffed the air. And then it licked its chops and bounded.
Remo shouted, but my thrashing pulse drowned out his voice.
A dose of adrenaline so potent shot through me that I thought I might rocket off the ground if I so much as hopped. Even though I would never own up to it, I did jump and got a whole whopping foot of air between me and the ground before thumping right back down.
Since flying was a no-go, I reeled my arm back, preparing to throw my spear, but even if my aim was true and my velocity stellar, my pointy stick would probably glance off the compact wall of muscle coming at me. When I was younger, Iba had taught me that the best way to disarm your enemy, when outnumbered or outpowered, was by using the element of surprise. He’d demonstrated this when we’d jousted with reeds in place of swords. As I went for the final blow, Iba had dusted his face to look like Pappy, and although we weren’t supposed to use any magic, and I knew it was a trick, it halted me long enough for him to sweep my legs out from underneath me and pin me under his play sword.
As my strategy firmed up, the tigri launched itself at me, gilded fur rippling around its protruding haunches. I flexed my fingers around my spear and transformed it into a net of barbed wire, which I tossed at the animal. It snarled as it made contact, then howled as it became so tangled in the spiky mesh that it smacked into the ground. Remo, who’d raced behind it, jumped and plunged the spear into the beast’s neck. Right before my companion’s body could land on the prickly metal, I summoned my dust back.
Reckless Cruel Heirs Page 26
