Awaken a-3

by Meg Cabot

  “I did kill my teacher,” I said. “But it wasn’t back east.”

  “You stupid slut,” Seth said. He was angry now … really angry. Enough so that his blue eyes looked more like ice than pool water, and I glanced in Bryce’s direction to make sure that if those tanned hands, hardened from so much football practice and windsurfing, happened to wrap around my throat, I’d have backup. “You really think anyone would believe you? You punched your own grandmother in the face, then ran off with that long-haired freak. You’re mentally unstable, your boyfriend’s got a million-dollar bounty on his head, and if you come anywhere near me, I’ll make sure every news outlet in the country hears how you stalked me exactly the way you stalked that teacher of yours —”

  I was still staring at the front of his shirt. My mind seized on the detail that had been bothering me since I’d noticed it in the photo Farah had sent me earlier in the evening: Those polo shirts Seth habitually wore — like the one he was wearing tonight — all had little men stitched over the left breast.

  Little men riding a galloping horse.

  The boy in the photo Mr. Smith had showed me of Thanatos, the Greek personification of death, had also been riding a galloping horse.

  Only instead of swinging a sword high in the air with one arm, the man on the front of Seth’s shirt was swinging a polo mallet. He lacked wings, but then, so did the statue, now that time and natural disasters had worn them away.

  He destroyed whole armies with a single swipe of that sword, Mr. Smith had said. He killed without a thought to his victims. He was said to be without mercy, without repentance, and without a soul.

  So in other words, I’d joked, a typical teen boy.

  Just like Seth Rector, whose parents, in the middle of their family mausoleum, had erected a statue of Hades and Persephone.

  The goal of the Furies has always been to destroy the Underworld, Mr. Smith had said.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Seth hissed. “I don’t think you know who you’re messing with.”

  I raised my gaze to lock with his. “Oh,” I said. “I know exactly who I’m messing with. The guy who killed me — not to mention my best friend, my guidance counselor, my cousin, and now my boyfriend. Am I right?”

  Something in my tone caused his eyes to widen, not so much with alarm as with incredulity.

  “You’re crazy,” he said. “As crazy as everyone says.”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t literally kill me,” I said, plucking my necklace from the bodice of my gown, then beginning to twirl the diamond around my finger on the end of its chain. “You just pluck people’s souls from their bodies. You literally killed Alex though. And Jade, too, I think. You know what Jade told me once, before she died? That there’s no such thing as crazy. There’s no such thing as normal, either. Those aren’t therapeutically beneficial words. I don’t know if that’s really true. But I do know one thing: If you don’t let go of my boyfriend’s soul in the next five seconds, you’re going to find out just how crazy I can get.”

  “You can’t do anything to me, you crazy bitch,” he said, glancing back towards his friends. “Not in front of all these people.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I dropped my diamond and leaned forward, planting one hand on either side of his chest, trapping him inside my arms. He leaned back as far as he could, until his spine was stopped by the raised end of the chaise lounge. “Watch me.”

  He could easily have gotten away. He could have knocked me aside and stood up. But he didn’t. He simply lay there, breathing hard, wondering what I was going to do.

  What I did was lower myself slowly against him, then reach up to cup his cheeks between my hands. When he still didn’t protest, I pressed my mouth to his, my hair forming a dark, fragrant tent around our faces.

  He didn’t knock me aside then, either. It wasn’t because he was too much of a gentleman to hurt a lady. Look what he’d done to Jade. He didn’t knock me aside because he liked it … at least at first. He opened his lips beneath mine, let out a faint moaning sound, and lifted his hands to grip my waist, which just showed that all boys — even ones possessed by Greek personifications of death — could be shockingly stupid sometimes.

  Seth closed his eyes, but I didn’t. That’s how I saw the diamond dangling from my pendant fall against the curve of his bicep as he clutched me to him.

  It’s also how I saw the diamond begin to burn his flesh.

  He evidently didn’t notice the pain or the smoke. But plenty of other people did.

  “Woohoo,” I heard Cody hoot. “Rector, you dog. You two are smoking!”

  Seth was too busy trying to ram his tongue into my mouth to pay attention … an attempt I thwarted by moving my face away from his and kissing him on the cheek instead.

  Unfortunately, he kept moving his head so that my lips met his open mouth. This was very unwelcome, but didn’t last long, since the smell of his charring skin — and the sensation of it — soon caught his attention.

  He ripped his mouth from mine, then looked down at his arm. “What the —?”

  It was too late. The blue smoke from the wound in his arm was circling in a slow arc towards the ceiling.

  “Uh, Seth, Coach said no smoking until end of season, remember?” Bryce did not understand what was happening.

  Seth released me, shaking his arm until the diamond rolled harmlessly away, onto his shirtfront. Then, as the stone began to seer through the cotton jersey, he thrust me roughly away from him, towards the far end of the chaise.

  “Stop it,” he said in a voice that sounded nothing like Seth’s. It was deep and wild, and as angry as the ocean outside the glass doors. “Stop it now.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said. I glanced towards Seth’s friends, my eyes wide and innocent. “You guys, you saw it. Seth and I were kissing, and now he’s having some kind of fit or something. Maybe you should call his dad.”

  “Seth?” Bryce looked down at us, his expression troubled. “Hey, bro, what’s going on?”

  Seth gritted his teeth as he clutched at his arm. The wisps of smoke that escaped from between his fingers turned thicker … and blacker. Black as my diamond. Black as his pupils, which seemed to fill the entirety of his eyes.

  “I’ll kill you,” he snarled, saliva bubbling out of the sides of his mouth. “I’ll kill you for this.”

  “Dude,” Cody said, slapping a hand to Seth’s back. “Are you okay?”

  “Don’t touch me.” Seth whipped his head around to rage at him. Cody instantly pulled his hand away.

  “Um,” I said. “I don’t think he’s okay.”

  Outside, there was a flash of such brilliance, I thought at first it was a nuclear explosion. It lit up the sky, the sea, and the entire room … which was immediately after plunged into total darkness when the generator ground to a halt. Girls screamed — a particularly shrill sound, since the speakers had also failed — and I heard glass breaking. Then thunder crashed with such violence, the entire house shook.

  When the lights flickered back on a second later, causing us all to blink, I saw that there was a tall figure standing behind Seth who hadn’t been there before.

  “Hey,” Cody said, noticing the figure as well. “Who are —?”

  Who are you? That’s what he was probably going to ask. But before Cody could finish his sentence, the figure grabbed a handful of Seth’s shirt, then dragged him from the chaise lounge to his feet.

  “It’s one thing to kill me,” John said to him. “But kiss my girlfriend? I don’t think so.”

  Then he pulled back one of his powerful fists and planted it squarely into the center of Seth’s face.

  18

  “That forehead there which has the hair so black … ”

  DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XII

  John put a pretty solid end to the coffin party when he broke the host’s nose.

  At that exact moment, the sea broke through the glass wall around the spec home’s deck and came gushing through the backyard
, around the side of the house, and towards the driveway full of cars.

  The party guests who weren’t screaming about all the blood coursing down Seth’s face suddenly began screaming about their vehicles, and they streamed from the house in a futile effort to save them … everyone except those helping Seth, who was cradling his own head and moaning, and Bryce, who immediately came to his QB’s defense.

  Dropping his head, Bryce came at John like a bull, his face red with rage. John sidestepped him, then slammed a fist into the younger boy’s stomach. As a ball player, it couldn’t have been the first time Bryce had ever been struck in the gut, but it might have been the first time he’d ever been struck with such force, judging by the look of injured surprise that spread across his face. While Bryce was still doubled over in pain, trying to catch his breath, John plunged another fist into his kidneys. Bryce grunted, then sank to his knees, all the fight clearly knocked out of him.

  “John,” I said urgently, since he was still breathing hard and pacing back and forth in front of Bryce, looking not unlike the “wild thing” I used to accuse him of being. He seemed ready to hit Bryce again — or anyone else in the room — at the least provocation.

  None of the few remaining males looked as if they cared to engage, however. The DJ, Anton, was pointedly minding his own business as he swiftly packed up his equipment, and a few stoners were watching the fight with wide, astonished gazes from a nearby couch.

  “John,” I said again, reaching for him as he swung by me with no sign of recognition. Wherever Thanatos had been keeping him, the conditions had evidently not been pleasant. “It’s me, Pierce. It’s all right.”

  He threw me a skeptical look from beneath a lock of dark hair that had fallen over one eye. “Is it?” he asked as he paced, opening and closing the hand he’d used to punch Seth and then Bryce. “Funny, because it doesn’t feel all right. How could you have let him kiss you like that?”

  Oddly, it was that irritable snarl, more than any loving greeting, that made me realize John was fine. He had really and truly come back, just as he’d assured me he would on that dock back in the Underworld, and he was entirely himself.

  “John,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. Tears of joy.

  “How could you even have let him touch you?” he asked. “Didn’t you know who he was?”

  “Of course I knew who he was,” I said. Waves of love and relief were washing over me with as much force as the waves of seawater that were washing over — and destroying — Reef Key. “Thanatos, the Greek personification of death. He was holding you captive —”

  “Yes,” John said. “Exactly. And you kissed him!”

  “Well, all of Seth’s friends were standing around. How else was I supposed to get my necklace close enough to him long enough to burn him without making it look suspicious?”

  John’s scowl deepened. “You could have had Frank hold him down,” he said.

  I couldn’t help grinning up at him. I was so happy he was back and arguing with me. “Next time,” I said, “I will definitely have Frank hold him down.”

  “It isn’t funny,” John said. “You kissed him on purpose just to annoy me. So do you know what I get to do now?” He stopped pacing and pointed at himself. “I get to kiss someone — whoever I want — just to annoy you.”

  I reached out and took hold of the hand he’d used to point at himself, which also happened to be his punching hand. He’d skinned his knuckles on something sharp — possibly Seth’s teeth — and they looked tender. I raised the bruised, battered hand to my lips.

  I was standing close enough to him that I could see how quickly his pulse was leaping in his neck, and how, at my gentle touch, his pulse began to slow. His expression softened. Somehow he’d managed to acquire a shirt — a white one, loose around the collar, but close-fitting everywhere else, like his jeans — and a pair of boots not unlike the ones he’d left on the dock back in the Underworld. I wondered where he’d found them. Although his long dark hair was a tangled mess, and he needed a shave, he looked good. Death suited him.

  “All right,” I whispered, rubbing his hand across my cheek. “You get one free kiss … whoever you want.”

  Although I could see him struggling, he couldn’t maintain his scowl. A smile broke across his face. It was like the sun breaking out across a tempest-tossed sea.

  “What if who I want to kiss is you?” he asked.

  “I think that can be arranged,” I said.

  Wrapping his hand around the back of my neck, he drew me to the hard wall of his chest. His arms weren’t the only thing that enveloped me. The smell of him enveloped me, as well — that comforting smell of wood smoke and autumn and something distinctly John that I realized, as his lips came down over mine, now meant only one thing to me: home.

  “There’s something you promised you’d tell me when I got back,” he murmured after finally letting me up for air.

  At first I was too dazzled by his kiss to remember what he was referring to. Then I blushed.

  “Not now,” I said, looking down at Seth, who sat on the floor a few feet away being fussed over by Farah’s friends Nicole and Serena. Bryce was still recuperating nearby, too, though Seth didn’t seem all that sympathetic.

  “Did you not hear me?” Seth demanded of Bryce, swatting away the blood-soaked napkins the girls kept pressing to his face. “I said get up and take him out.” He shot a deadly look in John’s direction.

  “Bro, I’m not feeling so good.” Bryce clutched his stomach. “Maybe if Cody and those guys hadn’t left. But that guy is pretty big.” Looking up at John, Bryce whispered, as if Seth wouldn’t be able to hear him, “Dude, I think you’d better go. My friend here is really mad at you.”

  John glared at Seth. “Tell your friend the feeling is mutual. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. In fact —”

  John began to move with murderous purpose towards Seth, but I caught him by the wrist.

  “John, no,” I said. “Don’t waste your energy on him. We have more important things to do —”

  Right then, one of them came stumbling from the back bedroom into which Frank had carried her.

  “Seth,” Farah cried. “Where are you?”

  She wasn’t exactly fully recovered, as Seth had assured me she’d be. Kayla and Frank stood on either side of her, each with an arm around her waist. Their support appeared to be all that was keeping Farah on her feet. The only reason she’d stopped moving was because they’d both stumbled to a halt when they saw John. A pleased smile spread over Frank’s face.

  “Well,” he said. “Look who’s back from the dead.”

  Farah, however, only had eyes for Seth.

  “I turn my back on you for one minute,” Farah cried, weaving unsteadily on her high heels, despite her human crutches, but nevertheless able to focus a laser-like glare of wrath at Seth, “and I find out you’ve been hooking up with Pierce Oliviera?”

  Seth wasn’t paying any attention to Farah, however. He was staring at someone who stood behind her. Not Kayla or Frank, though. It was someone who’d popped his dark shaggy head up from the basement stairwell.

  “Hey, Seth,” Alex said, waving a file folder he had tucked in one hand. “Bad news. Your dad’s office is completely flooded. So’s your truck. But there’s some good news. I managed to print out all this stuff from your dad’s computer before it got ruined. Some kind of geographic reports on Reef Key and how it shouldn’t ever have been made into a housing development on account of — well, your dad probably told you why, didn’t he, Seth?” Alex winked at him. “I’m sure some nerds who know more about this stuff than I do are going to find it very interesting when I send it to them.”

  Seth went white as a ghost beneath the blood that was smeared all over his face.

  “No,” I heard him mutter. “It’s not possible. You’re dead.”

  “No, he’s not,” I said. “I told you.”

  “Listen,” Kayla said, ignoring everyone. The usual sparkle was gone from her
eyes, and not because she was missing the rhinestones she often pasted at the corner of each of her eyelids. She looked at John and me. “I’m glad you’re back,” she said to John. “But I don’t want to be responsible for adding another inhabitant to your world. Princess here has had way more than just too much to drink —”

  Farah’s head had been lolling, but it jerked up at the word princess. “Don’t call me that,” she slurred. “Can’t you call me chiquita like you do your friends?”

  “Yeah,” Kayla said unsmilingly. “Not gonna happen. I think we need to get her to the hospital. Nine-one-one says the ambulance can’t make it through with the tidal surge this high, but I know Patrick’s Jeep can —”

  “Take her and go,” John said. “Pierce and I will settle things here.”

  Outside, the wind was howling so loudly, the sliding glass doors had begun to shake. I questioned once again Seth’s wisdom in not boarding them up. My diamond had gone from ink black to a midnight blue, indicating that while no Furies were immediately present, we weren’t entirely clear of danger.

  Seth climbed to his feet as Kayla and Frank began to drag an unresisting Farah towards the front door. “Bryce,” he said, in a tightly controlled voice. “Don’t let those freaks go another step farther.”

  Bryce was distracted, however. “Hey,” he said, gazing at the sliding glass doors. “Maybe we should go with them. It’s getting kind of bad out there.”

  Seth whirled on Bryce to demand, “Are you kidding me? Have you seen who’s with them?”

  The DJ, who himself was on his way out, looked up in alarm at hearing Seth’s tone, and even a couple of the stoners raised their heads from the leather couches and blinked at him.

  “Cabrero,” Seth shouted, when Bryce only looked at him blankly. “The file, you idiot! Get that file from Cabrero!”

  Bryce shook his head, then turned his attention back towards the storm. “I’m sorry, dude,” he said. “It’s like what they were saying on the news. The bad side of the hurricane is starting to pass over, you know?”