by N. D. Wilson
Smiling, he held out his unburnt hand.
Cyrus shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it’s not going to work.”
The man reached Cyrus. “The arrangement can still be friendly. I am no longer Mr. Ashes. I am prepared to show mercy. I will spare your mother. Perhaps even your brother. They are sleeping so peacefully in my plane right now. My sons could bring them in.”
Rupert Greeves, eyes rolling and foam dripping down his short beard, staggered into the kitchen on wobbling legs. He was carrying Cyrus’s small club.
“Phoenix!” he bellowed. “Your cowards fled.” He tried to cross the kitchen, but the twins jumped back, shoulder to shoulder, weapons raised, barrels ready to spit their balls of fire. Nolan stepped beside Greeves.
Dr. Phoenix didn’t turn. He smiled at Cyrus.
Give him the tooth, Cyrus thought. No. Hit him in the stomach.
Phoenix shook his head.
Give him the tooth. Cyrus shook his head at his own thoughts. They weren’t his thoughts. He looked at Phoenix’s temple, gauging the distance.
“No,” said Phoenix. “On the tip of an arrow, maybe. Carved into a bullet, perhaps. If only you had thought ahead. Would you like your family to live? Or would you like to be responsible for their deaths?”
Greeves staggered forward, bellowing and swinging his club at the green men. He slipped and hit the ground.
Lunging forward, Cyrus swung for the temple. Phoenix’s left hand swallowed his fist easily, but the tooth plunged deep into Phoenix’s palm.
Smiling through the pain, Phoenix began to twist Cyrus’s grip, levering his hand back, driving him to the floor. Cyrus’s breathing stopped. His mind wouldn’t let his lungs inflate. His heart was slowing. The key ring bent and began to give. The silver sheath popped loose in his palm.
No. Cyrus tore his fist free and staggered back, still clutching the tooth between his bloody knuckles, his lungs suddenly bursting with air. Phoenix stepped forward calmly.
Cyrus looked at his unconscious sister, at Jax and Dennis rising to their hands and knees, at Rupert and Nolan facing the bleeding green twins and their guns, at Gunner and the waking mob through the doorway in the dining hall. Turning, Cyrus lurched toward the kitchen’s back door. He had to lead the hunters away.
Banging out into the wind, Cyrus slipped down the stairs onto the wet grass. Scrambling to his bare feet, he ran along the building.
Phoenix was yelling. Behind Cyrus, the twins slid out of the doorway and into the storm. Cyrus accelerated through the shadows, brushing his shoulder against the wall. And then his shin collided with a hidden bicycle. Shoving the partially separated tooth and keys into his pocket, he grabbed the handlebars, jerked the bike away from the wall, and jumped into the seat. A large umbrella propeller spun in the wind above him.
He didn’t have time to worry. He pushed off down the hill, pumping the pedals.
Cyrus gasped as the wind jerked the bike off the ground. He surged up past the first-story windows and back toward the building. The propeller tip sparked on stone and the bike swung, cracking Cyrus’s knee hard against the wall. He wasn’t flying, he was blowing away like an unleashed kite. The gusting wind pulled him from the wall, spun the bike in a circle, and forced him toward the trees. Below him, the ground was dark. Treetops were jagged silhouettes waiting to swallow him. Pedaling furiously, Cyrus tried to lean and tried to steer, but he was at the wind’s mercy.
A fireball swirled past him, and he felt the heat on his wet skin. He watched it dissipate in the wind as it climbed. The wind spun him around. He was facing the harbor but blowing backward. Two more fireballs climbed into the sky in front of him, shredded by the wind high above. Cyrus stood, pumping hard on the swaying pedals, and scanned the ground forty feet below. He could just make out the twins, guns raised.
Jerking hard on the handlebars, Cyrus managed to twist the bike around, getting the harbor and the wind at his back. He was racing toward the main building.
Teeth grinding, Cyrus pumped for elevation as the wind threw him forward.
He was climbing, but not fast enough. Statues loomed above him along the roofline. A fireball burst on the stone in front of him, blinding him with light. Another rose up in front of him, singeing his face.
It exploded in the umbrella propeller, raining fire, burning skin.
Cyrus didn’t stop pedaling as he fell. The bike crashed into the wall and tumbled down the stone face. The wind tore the blackened propeller free and Cyrus slammed into wet earth with the bike on top of him.
Gasping, blinking, he managed to push the bike off. A green-faced man with strange eyes leaned over him. His eyes were golden. Gills fluttered on his neck. His identical brother loomed behind him.
“Take it!” Phoenix yelled in the wind. “Bring it to me!”
Cyrus’s breath was gone, and his mouth was filling with blood. He spat and gasped and felt for his pocket, trying to roll onto his side. Wrong pocket. His fingers grazed glass and tingled with electricity. The green man pushed him flat and pressed him down. Long hands groped for his pockets.
“Can’t,” Cyrus gasped. Gritting his teeth, he gripped the lightning bug cube, tugged it free of his pocket, and slammed it against the twisted metal of the bike frame. Glass shattered. Shards dug into his palm, but the pain was nothing to the roar of electricity that shot up his arm.
Thunder grumbled on the wind.
With his empty hand, Cyrus grabbed at the groping twin’s shirt, tugging him down while he raised his electric fist. Green arcs sparked between his knuckles.
A blow slammed into his face, but he didn’t let go. A knee crashed into his ribs. Cyrus sputtered, shoving his quivering beetle hand down the man’s shirt, just managing to open his throbbing, electricity-petrified fingers, releasing the lightning bug against green skin.
The twin shivered with the current. The storm sky flickered. Too late to get away. Cyrus clamped his eyes shut.
Through his eyelids, the flash was bloody red. Pure heat ripped through his body.
He heard nothing. He knew nothing. All was forgotten.
Someone was slapping his face, even harder than the needling rain. He opened his eyes. Greeves, looking ill. Antigone, worried hands cupped over her mouth. Nolan, with his hand raised for another slap. Instead, he pulled Cyrus to his feet. His bare feet hurt. A lot.
“Where’s the tooth?” Nolan asked.
Cyrus shoved cracked and blistered hands into his pockets, but he didn’t need to. He felt empty. The tooth’s power was gone. The keys were still there, but they and the remaining charms were loose in his pocket. And the key ring, bent and molten, was stuck to the empty silver sheath.
A green man lay in the grass with open, steaming wounds. Cyrus blinked quickly in the wind, remembering the struggle. His eyes wanted to roll back in his head. “They took it. After the lightning. Sorry.”
Without a word, Rupert and Nolan began running down the slope.
Antigone threw her arms around her brother’s neck. “We’re alive,” she said. “But Mom. Dan. He still has them. Was he telling the truth? Are they in the plane?” She squeezed her brother hard.
Letting go, she wiped her eyes. “Where is Diana?”
Cyrus looked around. His body felt like Play-Doh. His brain was blistered.
“The plane,” he said. “Diana, we …” He swallowed. “She’s trying to blow up the plane.”
Lightning shattered the sky. Thunder washed around them. Down near the airstrip, fireballs corkscrewed back up the slope and over their heads.
Diana Boone reached the airstrip and looked back up at Ashtown. She could see motion in the lit kitchen windows, but Cyrus was gone. She didn’t have time to go back. He knew where she was. He could catch up.
The rest of the way to the jetty, she was more cautious. The dragonflies found her—she felt bad for them, slower and battered by the storm—but Phoenix hadn’t seemed to feel that his plane needed a guard. Overconfident, she though
t. She hoped.
The plane was all the way at the end of the jetty, tied off and facing the shore, grinding its pontoon up and down the rocks as the waves washed in. She’d thought about cutting it loose, but with the wind it would only drift into the harbor. Now she was wishing that she’d paid more attention to her cousin’s monotone recitations as he worked on her Spitfire. He would have found the fuel line in no time. And, once he’d found it, he would have known what to do with it.
Diana glanced back up. The kitchen door opened. Two tall shapes stepped through. They were looking for something. They didn’t have to look long. Spiraling fireballs climbed into the sky.
Diana’s mouth fell open. Cyrus was trying to fly away. In this storm. Pulling her gun, she began to run back down the jetty. She paused. She had her own job to do. She’d have to do it quick.
She turned back to the plane. The water was rough, too rough for any sane pilot to attempt a takeoff. But it had been too rough for any sane pilot to attempt a landing. And the wind would give the plane extra lift.
She had no time. None. And no plan. Bright, erupting fireworks continued up by the main building. She couldn’t let herself watch.
Diana looked at the gun in her hand. She had five rounds. She looked at the plane’s grinding pontoon. Three steel braces attached it to the main fuselage. They were pipes, and they weren’t very thick.
Scrambling down the rocks and through the spray, Diana hopped onto the pontoon. Pulling the hammer back on her revolver, she aimed down at where the forward brace attached to the pontoon. She fired.
A hole appeared in the metal.
Up the hill, lightning forked to the ground. The thunder washed around her, fading quickly in the wind.
Diana fired into the brace two more times, and then twice up into the plane’s engine for good luck.
She heard guns. Two tall shapes were coming down the hill. Phoenix was retreating, but where was Cyrus? Shapes were rushing out the kitchen door, and she saw muzzle flashes. A fireball swirled back up the hill but fell short, erupting into a hurricane of sparks in the wet grass. Another painted white flame across the face of Ashtown.
Diana moved down the jetty. Her gun was empty. The shapes at the top of the hill were huddling over something.
Two shapes were retreating across the airstrip. They’d be at the jetty soon. Pursuit had begun. Gunfire. White flame swirled back up the hill in reply.
Lightning struck again, but behind her, over the water. Diana covered her ears against the thunder and backed toward the plane. She didn’t want to be in the water with lightning falling, but she didn’t have much choice.
The two tall men reached the jetty—Phoenix with one green man.
Diana hopped onto the pontoon and slipped off quietly, treading water beneath the plane. She could hear yelling, but her ears were ringing from thunder and her own gunshots. The wind and waves swallowed the rest.
Fuel dripped into the water around her.
The twin dropped to his knees on the jetty, and white fire swirled back at invisible enemies. Phoenix jumped into the plane.
Spitting water, Diana wished she hadn’t emptied her gun.
A moment later, the engine sputtered to life. Diana closed her eyes against the propeller’s battering breath and wished she could cover her ears.
Cyrus stood panting in the rain beside his sister. His face was singed and blistered. Rupert Greeves and Nolan stood beside them, their clothes smoking. The guns were all empty, and every time they took a step forward, another fireball bowled up the hill, exploding in the grass while the wind whipped the flames around them.
“Cyrus,” Antigone said. “We have to get them. We can’t let him do this.”
Cyrus said nothing. Blinking away the rain, his eyes bounced between the plane and the man guarding the jetty.
The plane’s engine started. The propeller was growling, ready to pull, ready to climb. Lights were on in the cockpit. It hadn’t blown up. Where was Diana?
Tensing, he inched forward. Greeves dropped a heavy hand onto his shoulder, holding him back.
Cyrus bit his lip, tasting blood. If his brother and mother were really on that plane, he couldn’t watch them leave, not with that man, not into a storm. He didn’t have a choice. Dying would be better than watching.
A dragonfly whipped by overhead.
Rupert watched it go, then he raised two fingers to his mouth and whistled long and sharp.
Cyrus dashed down the hill.
The first fireball seemed to come in slow motion. He dropped onto the wet grass and slid through its sparks. Hopping up, he had three strides before the next one exploded at his feet.
He jumped as high as he could, flailing his arms, kicking through the heat, overbalancing as he came down. The crash became a roll, and he was up again and running.
A wave of dragonflies streaked above him. Nolan came up beside him.
The screaming pitch of the seaplane’s engine climbed, and it rocked away from the jetty, beginning to turn around in the harbor, preparing to fight the wind. The man on the jetty was finally retreating to the plane, running fluidly, spraying fire over his shoulder. A fireball exploded around a ship’s mast. Three others drifted away into the trees. The dragonflies were on him now, and he swung at them as he ran. At the end of the jetty, he launched himself easily through the air, landed on the plane’s moving pontoon, grabbed the wing, and swung himself up through the open door.
The dragonflies veered away.
Cyrus reached the wet stone. His mouth opened and his tongue crawled out as he pumped forward, every tired muscle firing, his limbs screaming as he sprinted the long stone curve. Nolan was falling behind. Rain stung. Legs burned. None of it mattered.
The plane had completely turned. It was just off the end of the jetty. The engine shrieked at the wind, and it began to pull away.
One second. Two seconds. Three.
Cyrus planted his left foot on the end of the jetty and threw himself out into the air.
He smacked into the tail and tried to hang on, his hands slipping down the wet metal, peeling open his lightning-blistered palms. And then the plane hit its first wave and shook Cyrus off. Dropping to the water, he grabbed for the pontoon, just managing to hook his left arm around the rear brace.
The plane was picking up speed, bouncing, slamming into each wave, dragging him on his back, nosing him under into the force of a waterfall, skipping him across the top like a stone.
The pontoon smashed into a wave and rose above the water.
Cyrus’s torso rose with it. His waist was free. His legs slapped into the next wave. The force jerked him loose and sent him rolling across the rough surface. Above him, free of the water and accelerating into a climb, the plane burst into flames.
Sputtering but still conscious, Cyrus watched the plane as it dropped, trying to touch back down against the windblown waves.
With a snap, the first whitecap ripped off a pontoon and sent it cartwheeling across the surface. The plane’s nose smashed into the water. Its tail rose and fell forward in a somersault.
Metal creaked and sighed. Flames trickled out onto the water.
Cyrus tried to swim toward the wreckage, but the wind was too strong for his weakened arms, and the chop of the water was too big, driving him back toward the distant shore.
Filling his tired lungs to bursting, he dove, pulling himself below the moving surface.
Ten feet down, he started kicking forward. He could hear the groaning metal of the plane all around him. He had no sense of direction, no energy in his limbs, and no possible chance of reaching the wreckage.
But he couldn’t stop. Not now.
A large shape rose up beneath him. Sandpaper skin against his hands. A vertical fin. He grabbed on, and Lilly the bull—he hoped—surged forward through the darkness.
The popping and creaking grew louder. Before long, the orange dance of fire lit the surface above him.
He patted the shark and let go, kicking up toward
the inverted cockpit.
Both doors were open.
The submerged cockpit was empty.
Cyrus slid through a door and pulled himself back toward the rear of the plane and up into an air pocket.
Dan was sitting on the plane’s ceiling, bleeding from his forehead, cradling his mother in his lap. His blond hair had been cropped close to his scalp. His eyes were frantic and confused. He was much bigger.
“Cy!” he yelled. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
Antigone watched Cyrus and Nolan run, and her teeth drew blood from her fingers when Cyrus jumped.
She saw the plane drag her brother into darkness. She saw the fire and the tumbling crash. She raced after Greeves as he ran down to the docks, and she jumped into his metal shell of a boat while he jerked the cord on the motor.
Nolan was standing on the end of the jetty, watching the lake’s churning surface burn. Diana climbed up the rocks beside him and sat, covering her mouth in shock.
Antigone grabbed on to the heaving prow, and the boat surged and chopped its way out into the lake. Her mind was numb. Water stung her unblinking face. Wind and rain tore at her hair. Distant lightning and approaching flames seared their brightness on her staring eyes. The burning plane was sinking—the last three people she loved were sinking with it.
Rupert circled the wreckage and circled again, tightening his loops, passing through islands of flame. Finally, cutting the engine, he jerked his shirt over his head and prepared to dive.
Antigone grabbed his arm.
Antigone was the one who heard her brother—her brothers—calling out her name from the oily water. She was the one who spotted the three shapes in the darkness. And when Rupert had lifted her mother’s limp, dripping body from the waves, and a muscled, confused Dan had swallowed her in a hug, and Cyrus had emptied his gut of lake water and lay gasping at her feet, when the boat had finally turned its nose back to Ashtown, she was the one who held her mother’s head in her lap, rocking with the heaving waves, stroking dripping white hair, looking at her battered and bleeding brothers, mixing hot tears with the rain.
