I awoke to Brett staring at me. I smiled, before I realised that it was dark, except for a magical light. Brett’s hair was dishevelled and his eyes feverish. How long had I been asleep?
“What’s going on?” I groaned, sitting upright.
They didn’t need to answer me. The angle of the plane, the darkness interspersed with flashes of lightning, and the silence of the engines…
We were going down!
Chapter 11.
Dark Water
“Please remain calm!” the co-pilot, Seras, yelled from the cockpit. I could barely hear her over the thunder, rending of metal, the rush of air and the beating of my own heart.
“I knew we couldn’t trust it!” Treth cried, sword and shield drawn. For all the good that would do us.
“What are we going to do?” Trudie yelled over the cacophony, her eyes glowing a splendid and terrified gold. If she sprung a tail, I knew it’d be between her legs right now.
“What happened?” I shouted, barely audible.
“Surge!” Brett replied, his face pale.
I gritted my teeth. How? One in a million chance and we just happen to get hit. If probability was a god, it had a sick sense of humour.
“Captain!” Brett yelled towards the cockpit. “What do we do?”
No reply. The plane was losing altitude fast. I could barely see a thing if not for my coat, flaring up to illuminate the cabin.
“The plane won’t survive the impact,” Kyong said, casually. Calmly. I was glad that he’d come along. Cool head on his shoulders. Too bad it would be short lived.
“Remain…seated…” Seras insisted.
“No…” Pranish yelled. Everyone’s head spun to face him. He stood up, holding onto his chair to steady himself.
“Everybody get near the emergency rafts. Get life jackets on…”
Kyong shook his head. “No use. We’re going to be shattered on impact. Unless I could somehow spread myself across the hull of the plane, I can’t create a cushion.”
“You won’t need to!” Pranish insisted. “Get around me!”
Without any other option, we unbuckled our seatbelts, holding onto each other and the chairs as Pranish began to incant. The crew joined us; all huddling as close as we could to the wizard in the centre as he began to yell out arcane syllables.
It didn’t take a trained wizard to realise that Pranish was stumbling. He was usually calm. Poised. But no one could remain perfectly calm in this situation.
The plane shook with a lethal ferocity as it approached the surface. My hand tightened on Brett’s. He squeezed back. In the orange fiery glow, I could see only pale, sweaty faces, hoping against hope that whatever Pranish was doing would work.
Pranish kept up the incantation. Missed a beat. Restarted. The plane seemed to speed up, my heart rate keeping pace with it.
Come on, Pranish! You’ve never failed a spell before. Don’t start now!
Over the racket, I could no longer hear my friend’s magic. Brett pulled me closer, as the surge ended, and the lights returned. But, it was too late. We were on a nosedive into the darkness…
With a booming crescendo, a bubble of blue energy engulfed us all, just as the plane hit the water. Darkness engulfed us, as the renewed lights went out again. Everything not bolted down catapulted around the cabin. With the force of the landing, I jolted, colliding with a magical cushion as Pranish’s bubble saved us.
He was still bellowing out spell-words, even as water began to enter the plane.
“Prani!” Trudie insisted, as we tried to claw our way out of the bubble. My coat started kicking up steam as the water invaded the bubble and contacted the fire.
Pranish didn’t seem to hear her as he kept incanting, sweat pouring down his face and veins showing on his forehead.
“Pranish!” Trudie yelled, shaking him awake. The bubble disappeared, causing a splash as some of us fell into the drink.
“Get the raft!” James ordered. Still shaken, Linsey stumbled towards the front of the cabin. The captain turned to us.
“Once the raft is deployed, everyone get in. We started going down near our destination, so someone should pick us up by morning.”
At least there was that!
With the sound of rapidly inflating rubber, we made our way to the emergency exit. Despite the surge, some of the flashlights on our life jackets still worked, providing some more light.
Linsey was pale and I could see she was visibly shaken. Didn’t blame her. Rift surges were always a risk, but so was getting into a car accident. You didn’t expect it to happen to you. Until it did.
I stood on the edge of the entrance. Salty water flew up, stinging my face. I could barely see the large, circular life raft before me. Dark water roiled all around it.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to my coat, which whined and hissed at the coming water. “I’ll make sure to get you a lot of kindling when we’re dry.”
I leapt from the plane and landed on the unnervingly soft rubber surface of the raft. It was raining, and lightning illuminated the rapidly sinking plane. I felt my sides to confirm that I was still carrying my weapons. The armour was replaceable, but my artefacts from beyond the In Between were not. Still, I was going to miss my Fleetwood Mac t-shirt, down in the hold.
I felt a shudder as Brett landed in the raft. Then others. After an agonising century, people stopped coming.
“Is everyone here?” James asked. He was missing his captain’s hat.
Rapidly dimming lights scanned this way and that, as the waves threatened to topple us. That was, of course, if the rain didn’t drown us first.
“Where…where’s Linsey?” Seras stammered.
One of the flashlights went out, and I willed my coat to burn bright. But the rain was extinguishing its flames. I’d need to douse it in petrol later. It enjoyed that.
“Linsey!” James yelled, his voice cut off by the roar of the waves and storm.
I felt a presence to my side and reached out, feeling Brett’s sodden t-shirt.
“Linsey!” Trudie, Senegal and Seras shouted in unison.
Using Brett to steady myself, I stood up, almost stumbling as another wave hit.
I couldn’t stand this darkness! Linsey could be unconscious, clinging for dear life to the rapidly sinking plane and we’d miss her.
“Burn…” I whispered, egging my coat on. “I know it’s hard but give me an inferno now and I’ll give you all the coal, diesel and pure oxygen you’d ever want.”
A flicker. I saw a flash of Brett’s face, stoical in the face of danger. Then darkness.
A wave hit. And then I heard a heavy splash.
“What was that?” James yelled.
My coat flashed again.
“Seras?”
The co-pilot was gone.
“Treth, can you see anything?”
He manifested above us, peering out into the dark depths. He shook his head.
That left us only the coat.
“Burn…please…burn…”
Another wave…a flash of lightning. Thunder…
“Lin…” a voice was cut-off. Splash! Pranish!
I rushed to the edge of the raft, where I remembered seeing him, and put everything I could into willing my coat to burn.
The darkness melted away instantly as I turned into a pyre of flame that did not harm the raft or those around me. It illuminated soaked and terrified faces, and a dozen eyes staring at us from beneath the depths.
“Undead!” I yelled, and as if setting off a nuclear bomb, chaos broke loose.
Rotting, bloated arms thrashed towards me, just as I lifted my arms. Fire shot out, scorching the dead flesh. I heard gunshots as Brett unloaded shots into the water.
“Pranish!” Trudie cried out, her arms rippling with muscles and black fur as they tore through her sleeves. She slashed the arms off a drowned dead as it tried to clamber onto the boat.
I heard a gasp of air as Pranish broke the surface, rotting arms wrapped around his
neck and shoulders. His words were cut off by bubbles as they tried to pull him down again.
I tried to rush towards him, as half a dozen arms reached towards me. I drew my seax and slashed, cutting off fingers. Pranish broke the surface again. Just out of my reach…
Water splashed onto my face as Kyong dived into the darkness, sending his force-magic out and turning a bunch of drowned dead into grey and black goo. With a jet of water, he shot out of the ocean like a rocket, bringing Pranish with him.
Brett’s gunshots stopped, just as James cried out.
Multiple bloated and corral wreathed arms engulfed him, threatening to pull him off the raft. I rushed towards him and fell face first into the rubber as an arm caught my leg, attempting to pull me overboard. Treth manifested above me, bringing his shield down hard on the undead’s arm, severing it. I stood up to save James. Too late. He let out a final scream, cut off by the watery depths.
Arms surrounded us. Too many. And we couldn’t fire at them lest we puncture the raft. We backed into the centre of the vessel. Brett reloaded and only fired at the heads of drowned dead that broke the surface completely, revealing perforated bodies, covered in crabs and corral. How long had these zombies been crawling along the depths of this reef?
I drew Ithalen and slashed outwards, beheading two undead that got too close, but stopping short as I almost hit Trudie. Her snout was elongating, and a thin covering of black fur was forming all across her skin. Her eyes were brighter than the moon. Senegal, also going into his red wolf form, cried out. A cross between a howl and a human yell. Two undead crawling across the surface of the raft were pulling him towards the edge.
With a primal roar, Trudie picked up both the undead and threw them into the sea.
But it wasn’t enough. There were too many of them. My mind couldn’t help but picture the battle at Ithalen. But I couldn’t survive this.
Brett ran out of rounds again and reached for a new mag. Found none. I passed him my seax and he held it in the pose I’d taught him. The raft began to sink as too many bodies threatened to capsize it.
My eye throbbed. I excused it as a quirk of the stress. Because, by Athena, I was stressed. But, as I pierced the skull of a drowned dead and kicked it overboard, I felt it again. And again. As if the source of the throbbing was approaching. Could something even more menacing be coming?
I felt water up to my ankles and my sword arm was flagging. I pulled out Voidshot but, in the chaos, I couldn’t get a shot on anyone. None of the undead were biting us, I noted. It was as if they wanted to drown us. So, we’d become like them. And soon enough, we would be.
I fired wildly, as the bodies pressed closer and closer. Trudie growled, as she couldn’t pull her claws back enough to get any momentum without hitting us in the press of bodies.
The throbbing in my eye increased, as if it was about to burst. And then it stopped. Recognition flickered.
And the undead stopped.
The fighting ceased, except for Trudie tossing a few more overboard as she found the room. Slowly, the drowned dead turned around and jumped out of the raft.
The sound of a speedboat motor ceased almost as soon as we could hear it over the thrum of combat. At its helm, illuminated by the pyre of my coat and a search-light, was a blonde girl wearing a black hoodie. She was smiling, relieved, even as I felt the pain in her head that her domination of the undead had caused.
I smiled back, my relief, surprise and joy culminating into one as I saw Candace Evergreen. My sister.
Chapter 12.
Safe Harbour
I embraced Candace, holding on as if letting go would reveal her to just be a mirage. But her arms around me felt real. And this close together, our connection through our shared eyes was whole again.
One by one, we left the sodden raft and boarded Candace’s boat. A confused man sat at the controls. He wasn’t undead. Well, of course he wouldn’t be. Candace had been turning away from necromancy. Even she had used her powers now to save us.
“How did you find us?” I finally asked, over the torrent of rain and humming of the engine.
I looked into her blue and hazel eyes, the blue one being mine, and still saw strain. Her eyes were distant, her muscles tense. She was keeping the undead at bay. Even now.
“Everyone here?” I asked, accepting a flashlight from the boatman and shining it on the crew. Everyone was drenched, pale, and not in the best of shape. Senegal’s sodden fur was slowly receding back into his skin. Trudie, however, maintained her half-wolfish form, her eyes gold and bestial. Well, I couldn’t blame her for that.
I nodded to the boatman and, with a profound relief, he started up the boat, speeding back towards the lights on the coast.
Candace fell into my arms and I helped steady her onto a seat. I noted that Trudie didn’t blink as she watched her.
Candace shut her eyes, breathing in the silence and salty sea air, broken only by the buzz of the speedboat engine. Finally, she opened her eyes and smiled at me. She sat up.
“I’m…I’m glad you’re okay,” she said, softly.
“Thanks to you.”
“I felt trauma. Fear. And saw visions of the plane going down. Fortunately, I was by the marina. Francois owed me a favour.”
“This was nothing, Ms Feuilles,” he replied, with a thick French accent.
French? Mauritius had been a French colony.
“Are we really this close to Mauritius?” I asked, dubious.
Candace looked impressed.
“Yes. You crash landed just by the reef. Any closer to the coast and you would have crashed into a mountain. You were lucky.”
“Lucky?” Trudie snorted, almost growling. “We were attacked by zombies. The crew lost their lives.”
Trudie’s tone was accusatory.
“None of that was Candace’s fault. She saved us,” I argued.
“Those weren’t zombies,” Candace explained, ignoring Trudie’s tone and my defence. “They were drowned dead. They are weak-minded, formed without a necromancer. They do not seem to feed on flesh but are somehow angrier than zombies. There’s something dark and magical about the sea that naturally reanimates them and drives them to vindictively drown the living. As a form of vengeance. Perhaps, even spite.”
Candace’s explanation seemed to simultaneously interest Pranish and discomfort Trudie. She rubbed her forehead. Dark magic took a toll on the psyche, and she wasn’t as adept at it as she was before.
“Are you okay?” I whispered.
She smiled, weakly. “Yes. This pain will pass. It was necessary to use the darkness again. To save you.”
I couldn’t argue with that, but I felt a tinge of guilt that I had compelled Candace to slip back into her necromantic ways again. Even if it was to save my life.
Candace sat up straighter. On the outside, she looked perfectly healthy, but through our connection, I could sense that she was still suffering. As if a cigarette had been burnt right onto her skull.
“So,” she said, doing a good job masking her pain. “What are you all doing here?”
“We’re heading to New Zealand,” I answered. “My aunt is being held by the elves in New Sintar and I need to save her.”
“New Sintar?” she rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “That’s a long way off. We’ll need a ship. Far safer than a plane.”
“We?”
She looked up at me, as if surprised that I was still there.
“Oh, can I come? I’ve always wanted to see the Queen’s Palace, even if we’re attacking it.”
“Aren’t you hiding from some big baddies, necromancer?” Trudie interjected. I glared at her.
Candace winced. “I am. But travelling to the edge of the world is as good a place as any to hide. If anything, it should be safer. And…I want to help.”
“Of course, you can come!” I exclaimed, cutting Trudie off. What was her problem?
The hurt Trudie had caused Candace seemed to dissipate instantly as Candace beamed.
; “I’ll sort out a ship as soon as we get to shore!”
“Mademoiselle, consider Captain Ironfoot,” Francois said. “He is a good dwarf, with a better ship.”
Candace nodded. “I will, Francois. Thanks.”
I frowned. “A ship will be slow. The trip and return trip could take months. I don’t like leaving Hope City for that long.”
I felt Brett’s hand on my shoulder. “The city will survive, Kat. You left it in good hands.”
My frown deepened, but then melted away. It didn’t matter. I had to save my aunt.
Francois negotiated the boat into a quiet marina, lit up by golden electric light. He docked and then helped us leave his vessel.
I shook his hand, thanking him, as I noticed a now completely human Trudie storming off down the quay.
“Please stay close by!” Candace announced loudly, while somehow still sounding hesitant.
Trudie turned, glaring with golden eyes, before continuing to disappear into the dark, Senegal tailing close behind.
“Sorry about her,” Pranish insisted, looking embarrassed. “I’ve got international service and my phone still works. So, call me if you need us.”
He ran off to catch up with my irate best friend. I felt simultaneously angry and confused. Trudie had been fine with Candace around Christmas. What had changed?
“She’s stressed,” I tried to explain, not sure myself. “I forget sometimes that she’s new to this.”
“She’s killed over a hundred undead!” Brett interjected.
I glared at him and mouthed. “Not helping!”
“This way,” Candace said, softly, walking down the quay and into the darkness. Brett and I jogged to catch up.
“There’s a small hotel,” she added. “That will do for the night. I know the owner. They won’t ask any questions and won’t report you to Immigration.”
“You really have ingratiated yourself amongst the locals,” I said, with a hint of pride. Candace dealing well with living humans meant she didn’t need necromancy. Necromancers were loners by their very nature. People with friends didn’t reanimate corpses to do their bidding.
The Silver Star (Kat Drummond Book 11) Page 10
