Harem of Souls

by Emma Dawn

  He grabbed my hand and bolted, using the big branches of the tree we were in as pathways as if we were Tarzan and Jane, not Rose and Jessop. I followed as best I could, doing everything in my power to keep up. I kept imaging the perfect pathway, smooth and easy to find and hoped that it would help.

  Soon enough we were on the far side of the second tree and he leapt for a third. Behind us the giant crashed through the second tree and I looked back only enough to see that a domino effect was happening. That second tree was already rolling toward us.

  With my hand wrapped tightly around his, we raced through the trees. Again, I kept it in my mind that the tree trunks would smooth, that the branches we needed would be there. My heart pounded wildly and my body ached from everything we’d been through. But we weren’t done yet.

  It wasn’t until we were in our fourth tree that Jessop slowed and slid to a stop. Behind us the crashing of trees continued, but it moved away from us. I slumped in his arms and he wrapped me in a tight hug. “Almost there. We get to the boat and the crabs won’t follow.”

  “But they’re crabs, they like water, don’t they?” I said.

  And then I remembered the tentacle thing that had bitten into me. Jessop grimaced. “We have a better chance in the boat. Okay? We get to it, maybe you can imagine the water pushing us fast toward the firelight?”

  I nodded. “I can do that.”

  He smiled and kissed me, his lips a soft press that was there and gone in a flash. “We need to get down the tree, and then to the boat there. Do you see it?”

  I peered through the branches, seeing the rowboat about a hundred yards down the beach. Not too far.

  If not for the clicking of the crabs racing toward us. “How do they know we’re even here?”

  He shook his head. “No idea. They weren’t that smart when I was here before.”

  I twisted around. “Gavin, my father . . .Vincent said would be chasing me . . .maybe he’s here? He wants to get to the Chalice too, right? He could be making it harder on us.”

  Jessop turned and we both tried to see if there was anyone else nearby, but it was impossible with the branches and their placement. I bit my lower lip and shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s probably doing it. If we run into him, we deal with him then.”

  Jessop’s hands tightened around me. “You understand that he has to be killed?”

  I drew a slow breath. “Yes. I understand.” I didn’t have any connection to the man who was my biological father, and the fact that he was hurting me and my men was enough to destroy any feelings I might have had.

  Jessop kissed me again. “Now, let’s get to the boat. We can outrun the crabs.”

  “You sure?”

  “No, but it sounds better than we’re both going to die being eaten alive.” He grinned and I shook my head.

  “You’re a maniac.”

  “Only where you’re concerned.” He moved with me to the edge of the tree branches, shimmying down until we were only twelve feet in the air. Twelve feet, give or take a few inches. God, I did not want to do this, but what other choice did we have? I looked up and saw the fire that was impossibly out in the middle of the ocean, past the breakers again. That was where we needed to go. We could do this.

  I did a quick scan of the ground and didn’t see any crabs. Now or never. I took a big breath and jumped, Jessop following my lead. I hit the ground and rolled with my momentum.

  There was the sound of something I knew all too well behind us. I didn’t need to look to know that the stupid fucking crabs were on us, like they’d been lying in wait, the sneaky bastards.

  Scrambling, I got to my feet and almost fell again as I stumbled toward the edge of the water. Jessop helped me, his hand finding mine and we bolted toward the boat that bobbed about six feet out.

  “Hurry, go!” He pushed me as if he were going to push me away. I clamped my hand over his.

  “No, either together or not at all.”

  He let out a growl but didn’t slow. We splashed into the water and I imagined the rope untying as we drew close. The rope frayed in front of my eyes and I grabbed the end of it, running as hard as I could with the water already over my thighs. Jessop grabbed me around the hips and lifted me into the boat. I turned and pulled him in, taking in a good amount of water with him but we were still afloat.

  And better than that, the crabs had stopped, they were not following us into deeper water. I knew why, but I chose not to think of it.

  “We have to hurry.” Jessop hunched as he spoke and I looked back the way we’d come. The edge of the sky was turning, ever so slightly from the deep of night to the barest start of the morning.

  I fumbled around in the bottom of the boat, looking for paddles. Jessop lay down where he was and I stopped what I was doing and went to him. “Jessop, what’s wrong?”

  “The sun, it makes me tired.”

  Which meant I had to hurry. I found a single paddle in the bottom of the boat and put it into the water. It had been a long time since I’d been in a canoe or a rowboat, but I knew the gist of the movement. I set my body into it. We were a long way out from the breakers and even I could see the change on the top of the water.

  “Hang on. I’ll get us there,” I said and dug the paddle through the water again and again, driving us farther from shore.

  “I know you will,” Jessop said. “Rose, listen to me. I know I’m going to die. We both know it. But you need to keep going. You need to keep fighting your way to the Chalice. You are going to be the one who changes things for us all.”

  “Kessler said something similar.” I spoke as my eyes traced the water around us. Something big was moving closer. I could see the shadows here and there, flitting along. I put my paddle back in and hit something hard. A tentacle of deepest purple reached up and yanked it from my hand. I sat back, thinking.

  Jessop was unaware, half drugged by the rising of the sun. “We all know what must happen, but we are bound from saying anything. Forbidden is not a strong enough word. We literally can say nothing. But I believe there is a way for you to fix it all. Follow your heart.”

  “Yeah, yeah, follow my heart. Got it.” I searched the boat for a second paddle and then an idea formed. I could move the world. I could make things. Why couldn’t I create a wave that pushed us toward the fire? Jessop had already suggested it, and in my panic, I’d forgotten. I didn’t care what Jessop thought. I wasn’t going to assume that blood needed to be spilled for me to move to the next challenge. I leaned over the side of the boat and put my bare hand into the water.

  The boat gave a little leap as a wave lifted it up and forward. “Hang on, Jessop, I’m going to get us there.”

  He gave a little grunt but said nothing else. I kept my eyes forward, directing the wave and thus directing the boat. There was no way this could go wrong. No way at all. We were moving too fast for anything to catch us.

  The boat bumped up in a motion that had nothing to do with the wave I was controlling. I swallowed hard and stared at the fire only a hundred feet away.

  Ivan, Liam, and Torq were there, pacing.

  I bit my lower lip. “Come on, you stupid little boat, go faster!”

  If anything, the boat slowed to a crawl. A slimy, cold chunk of tentacle brushed past my hand in the water, drawing blood with the razor blades it seemed to have embedded in each sucker.

  I yanked it out and turned. Jessop was asleep or passed out I wasn’t sure which. On the edge of the boat behind me though was a fucking goddamn monster. The tentacle creature had pulled itself up on the edges of the boat and clamped on tightly, stopping our progress completely.

  Jessop rolled over, his eyes going to me. Those soft brown eyes filled with understanding.

  “Don’t move,” I whispered. I could fix this. Maybe I could make the creature disintegrate, or shrink. I thought about the octopus thing shrinking to the size of a shrimp. Nothing happened. My breathing hitched. “No, this is not the time to stop my ability!
”

  Behind the creature, toward the shore a second boat bobbed toward us, a man in it.

  A man . . .that could be my father manipulating things? Gavin?

  I didn’t know what to do. “Jessop.”

  “Get in the water. Swim.” He twisted and kicked at the creature and it tangled its wicked hooked tentacles in him.

  “Jessop!”

  “GO!” He roared the command at me and I knew he was right. I let a heartbeat pass where I took him in, his face, the strength in his body and his need to protect me. And then I turned and dove into the water. I wasn’t giving up, not for a second.

  I swam on my back so I could see the bobbing boat. I looked up at the sky above us and the clouds. Lightning, could I draw it to the monster?

  Only one way to know. I thought it, seeing the bolt in my mind’s eye, and then the lightning coursed down so fast I almost missed it by blinking.

  It hit the creature dead on and then it fell away leaving Jessop standing there. He turned, a grin on his face. “Rose, you are amazing!”

  I waved at him. We’d done it. We’d outsmarted the challenge!

  His body jerked suddenly and his hands went to his chest. He turned sideways and I saw the bolt sticking out of him, a giant wooden spear that pierced him through. He fell into the water without another word. Tentacles reared up around where he fell and grabbed at him and the boat, splintering it.

  I tread water, shock making me stupid. I should move. I needed to be moving toward the firelight and the safety of the other men. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move.

  Because that bolt had come from the other boat, and if not for the man in it, Jessop and I would have been free and clear together.

  Anger snapped through me like I’d never felt before. “You think you’re going to scare me? Well, let me tell you, you’re about to get the scare of your life, you fucker.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Wrath of a Woman

  I swam not toward the firelight, but toward the other boat, toward the man who had shot Jessop through the heart and killed him. I didn’t care—but should have—that I was swimming over the spot where the octopus creature had gone. Some weird instinct told me that now it had Jessop and its count of blood for the challenge, it wouldn’t come for me. The water was safe.

  For the moment. The boat bobbed and the man in it was backlit by the slowly rising sun so I couldn’t see his face. Thick body, a dark cloak that when it caught light, I would say it was the same dark green as my own clothing.

  That was the man who was my father by blood? Even if he was, he was no better than my adopted father, a useless drunk who’d beaten me whenever he thought my mother wasn’t looking. Joke was on him, she beat me whenever she thought he wasn’t looking. So, a father who had no care for my well being was nothing new.

  I thought about the water swelling up under his boat fast and hard. The wave I produced shot him into the sky and I yanked the boat from him and brought it to me. The boat landed with a splash to my right side and I crawled into it and pushed the water hard underneath it, driving me toward the flames of Ivan and the others. Tears streaked my face, as salty as the ocean below. I kept my back to the man I’d dumped out. I could only hope he was eaten by the crabs or the octopus, but I doubted either would happen. The blood debt for this challenge was paid by Jessop. Which meant there should be no more—

  The water exploded in front of me throwing me to the back of the boat and a tentacle thicker than all the others drove straight into the air, the tip turning toward me.

  I reached over the edge of the boat and touched the water to help veer the boat around it and pushed harder with my thoughts with all the energy I had left. I was fifty feet from the fire, forty, thirty . . .at twenty feet the boat jerked to a stop and I didn’t even think about it. I leapt up and ran to the bow, pushing off at the last second and diving into the water.

  Something swept across my legs, but didn’t grab me. I kicked and paddled with the last of my energy, using my connection to the water to help propel me. I came up for air only a few feet from the flames. I swam forward as a tentacle roped around my leg and tugged me back.

  I was at the edge, and I drove my hands forward, feeling rock and ice under them instead of water, I clung to it and screamed.

  Liam saw me first and dove for me, grabbing my hands. What happened next was nothing short of an epic tug of war with me in the middle as the rope. I kicked and pushed at the tentacles while Liam pulled on me.

  “I got ya, Rosie. I got ya!” he yelled and then suddenly the tentacles released me and I was out of the water and laying on top of Liam in the mountains with no sign of the ocean or the tentacle monster anywhere. I was dripping wet and the cold cut through the moisture, freezing the droplets in a matter of seconds. My teeth chattered so hard, I thought they might crack but I managed to get up to my knees. I smoothed my clothes away, getting the worst of the water off. Exhaustion curled around me and the cold suddenly didn’t seem so cold.

  “Get her some blankets,” Ivan barked.

  I smoothed my hands through the material at my feet, imagining it dry and fur lined. I brought my hand up over my legs and my middle, to my arms and neck. The wind was cut off from touching me and the inner lining of my new clothes felt like heaven. Someone took my hair and squeezed the worst of the water out.

  “Come on, Rosie. Let’s get this . . .I was going to say dry, but it is.” I think it was Torq. He moved past me to look out into the darkness, as if searching for something.

  I nodded, only partially realizing that I was effecting things without barely even thinking about them now. Second nature, that had to be good, right? I let Liam lead me away from the edge where I’d come through. I turned once and thought maybe I could see the waves of the ocean, but no, it was just the snow blowing in the wind into humps.

  I shivered and Liam sat me on a blanket under a small tent. He crawled in with me and lay down at my side. “Rough, eh?”

  I nodded and then the tears came. Tears for Jessop, and Mars, and Kessler. Three men, lost. But they could be found if I was brave enough. “I need to sleep,” I whispered. I didn’t need to sleep, I just needed to block the world out for a bit.

  “You don’t, but it’s habit when you have enough shock to the system,” Ivan said. I turned to see him sitting in the opening of the tent. “I need to speak to you.”

  “Let her rest,” Liam said. “Let her mind rest.”

  Ivan ignored Liam. “She needs to talk through this. It will help. Something tried to pull you back. That shouldn’t have happened.”

  “My father was there.” I spoke through the fatigue, feeling it pull me under. “He was in another boat. Jessop and I were free of the monsters, on our way back to you together.”

  Ivan jerked as if I’d slapped him. “What?”

  I blinked once, slowly. “The man who is my father by blood shot him through the heart with a spear. He tumbled into the water and the octopus creature took him down along with our boat.”

  “How did you get away?” Liam’s arm was under my head and I felt his muscles flex and pull.

  “I took the other boat from that shit head. But I think he can manipulate the world here like I can. It’s the only thing that makes sense. As shitty as it is. It explains why I couldn’t close the crack in the mountains and save Mars. Why I lost Jessop.” Damn, Ivan was right. The more I spoke, the more the fatigue fell away. The shock seemed to be easing, my shivering slowed and my heart rate settled.

  Ivan pointed a single finger at me. “Do not run off. We have to figure out what this means. This changes things. Do you understand?”

  I swallowed hard, taking a chance. “Jessop thought you might try to stop me.” Maybe that was a bit of a stretch, but I put it out there. Between that and Torq’s assertion that Ivan wanted me dead . . . I had to know the truth.

  Ivan paled. “I would never endanger a charge’s life.”

  “Not even to keep more of your men alive?” I had to
ask the question and with a witness. Because I knew if Ivan was that kind of man who would give a narcissist a run for his money, then I needed a witness to what I was saying and Ivan’s response. I was no school girl dealing with a big tough man for the first time in my life. Liam’s arm tightened around me. The problem was, if Torq was right, then Liam was no better. But Liam’s arm felt like . . .safety. I let out a slow breath, trusting my instincts.

  “Ivan, answer her.” Liam growled the words which did all sorts of things to my heart. Two of his friends had died protecting me, and he was still willing to stand with me against his leader. Torq’s warnings evaporated from my head.

  Ivan—crouched in the entrance of the tent—glared at me. “I don’t want them to die. Jessop was right about that. But I won’t stop you from taking us into the challenges. It would be a waste of their lives to let them die and then have you fail.”

  He stood abruptly and spun on his heel, striding through the snow. “He really doesn’t like me,” I said more to myself but Liam grunted in acknowledgment.

  “He doesn’t like any o’ the charge’s who’ve come through, Rosie. They have cost us men in their lives and injuries. Very few of our charges—only one really—has ever made it to the final challenge. We assume she made it back to her life, but we don’t know for sure. They force us to face our worst fear—”

  “You mean your death.” I was also thinking about the woman who made it to the end. Vincent had said she failed her last test. Obviously, the men didn’t know, and I was not going to burst their bubbles.

  “Aye, I mean our death. But when they can’t stand up to those same fears, then we lose them. It is a toll on us all.” He sighed and lay back and I let my head curl into the crook of his arm.

  “I’m going to try to get them back,” I said.

  Liam twisted onto his side to look at me. “What?”

  I turned so we were almost nose to nose. “I care for them, Liam. For Kessler, Mars, and Jessop. I don’t want to say love because that’s stupid. But I will say they are important to me. All three of them. All six of you.” I shook my head. “It is stupid. I know it is. But I’m not going to just walk up to the Chalice and leave you behind. Not if I have anything to say about it.”