Feeding Frenzy (The Summoner Sisters Book 1)

by Allison Hurd

  “I guess it’s a little late to back out, now,” he mutters. “All right. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Good man.”

  We start marching back up the stairs. The hallucinations return in force. The ground wobbles. I can see things in the corners of my vision that disappear when my eye turns to track them. I keep my hand on the rough stone, my palm higher than my fingers. “It’s not real,” I tell myself as my parents rematerialize to tell me something very similar, but with different connotations. I step up and am racked with heaving sobs. “It’s not real.” The next step I’m laughing raucously. “This isn’t me,” I tell myself, focusing on the stone.

  My cuffed hand pulls back. “We can’t go that way,” Lia’s pulsing mouth tells me. “It’s blocked.”

  I yank the cuff. “Remember the anchor,” I yell, sending all my thought back to my hand on the wall. We start moving forward again, inching along. From Lia’s pocket, I can see the diamond glowing. Looking at it is like trying to focus on one stone at the bottom of the ocean, but it seems to me that it’s fading quickly.

  “Focus,” I mutter to myself. I grit my teeth and muscle my two accomplices up another step.

  I repeat my mantra as I climb doggedly. I’m getting seasick watching the world twist around me, so I close my eyes, limiting my scope to the only thing in which I’ve put my faith. I’ve got the cut of the cuff on my left arm that reminds me why I’m fighting, and the rasp of stone on the right, centering me in the present. I hold onto this tenuous lifeline with all of my willpower.

  Suddenly, the hallucinations stop. My emotions snap back into my control mid-laugh, but there is nothing in front of me. The dim light that’s followed us along so far is gone, and we are plunged in total darkness; the complete lack of light one finds if one goes alone into caves and turns off their headlight. It is heavier than the darkness in a room, more stifling than nighttime in a lightless desert. I can’t sense a step, can’t feel more wall to guide me. I begin to panic. Without my anchor, madness will take over, sure as night follows day. But then my sense of orientation returns, and I breathe a little trust back into my mind. I haven’t let go of my anchor. It’s still there. If I can’t go forward, it must mean that there’s nowhere forward to go.

  “Lia, I need you up here,” I say. My sister is alternately whimpering and laughing at something, her unfocused eyes telling me that she’s still in the middle of Mania’s spell. I pull her until she’s on the same step as me. There’s very little room to do it, and our handcuffs make it even more difficult.

  “Lia? You back?”

  “Saint Luke’s left testicle, that was an unpleasant experience,” she curses colorfully.

  “I guess that’s yes, then?”

  “I guess. Where are we?”

  “I think ‘out’ is somewhere around here, but I can’t be sure.” I raise our hands to my head, searching for my lamp, but it’s missing. I must have lost it when I ran away from Phobos.

  “My lamp’s gone,” I tell Lia as she takes deep, calming breaths of her own.

  “Mine’s cleverly in my pocket,” Lia replies with a frustrated huff. “The diamond was plenty before our manic episode.”

  “Gotta get Kline up here, then. He should have a flashlight and the key to our cuffs.”

  “Okay. We’ll have to disentangle a little,” Lia strategizes with a last shake of her head to clear the spell. “I’m going to send you back down a couple steps so we can make room for Kline, who can unlock me. I’ll get some light and then pull you back up. Good?”

  I swallow nervously. This will really mess up my anchor. I’ll have to turn around, which means I’ll lose contact with the wall. I’ll have to trust Lia with my fragile sanity. Well, she trusted me with hers.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. See you in a few.”

  I take a step down, and she pushes me another, back into the voices and roiling floor.

  I stay there, for how long I can’t be sure. I listen to specters that followed paths I didn’t take, and words uttered a lifetime ago that still haunt me to this day. I relive decisions that could have gone so differently, sewn together with disproportionate emotions. I keep telling myself that this isn’t right, but I have nothing around me now to help convince myself otherwise. And then my wrist tugs. I fight it for a moment, expecting a trick, but it is insistent. Two different hands catch me as the three of us teeter precariously at the top of the stairs. My hand and Lia’s are still cuffed, though she and the detective are free of each other. Her head lamp is on, and his flashlight is out, but all it shows is earth and stone.

  “No! No! This can’t be real!” I moan. “I refuse to believe it ends like this!”

  Lia fishes her diamond out of her pocket. “Shit!” she curses. Its light is almost faded, a slight blue sheen replacing what had been bright as the sun.

  I look around us frantically. Beyond us, in the black wall, I see a faint light. “Hey, turn off your lights, quick.” They do so wordlessly, heeding the urgency in my voice. Without the unnatural shadows their lamps create, I can see a small sliver of early evening sun outlining what appears to be a door, mirroring the subdued light of the magical stone. I laugh and point.

  “Push!” I cry.

  Lia and Detective Kline throw their full weight into the doorway, while I stabilize them. It budges. We all shout with relief and push again and again, until a narrow sliver of the door is cracked. I can see sky and better, smell fresh air.

  We shove the door one more time and fall through. I see a beautiful valley for just a second, and then it is gone, vanishing into a warm, white light that blinds me and sucks us in.

  “Lia!” I call out before the celestial portal consumes all of my senses, and I pass into oblivion.

  CHAPTER 19

  The next time I come to, I’m lying in a cornfield. I groan as I shift on the ground and try to sit up. A pair of handcuffs chain me to my little sister and stop me short. I rearrange myself so that I can sit comfortably in our current configuration. The past forty-eight hours come rushing back to me and I look around for Detective Kline. He’s nowhere to be seen. If I had to guess, I would imagine that the spell that sent us back only sent Lia and me to the same place because we were bound to each other.

  “Lia,” I murmur, kicking her foot with mine.

  “Mmph,” she grunts.

  This small act of normalcy makes me chuckle.

  “Come on sleepy, you’re lying in dirt.”

  She rolls away from me. I should have expected this. My injured arm is tugged again, and I land heavily on top of her, cursing the sudden impact on my broken ribs.

  “Ow! Why!” Lia complains. She begins waking up, noticing the foreign stalks of corn. She looks over her shoulder at me as I sit back up, wincing at my tender injuries.

  “What are you doing?” she asks me grouchily. I shake the handcuff at her silently, waiting for the bright burst of pain to fade.

  “Oh. Right! God, I’m sorry, I totally forgot.” She sits up, rubbing her eyes with her free hand. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know. Not the parking lot with our car, that’s for sure,” I reply when my voice returns, jutting my chin at the gently swaying stalks.

  “And not in hell,” she says. “That’s a cheerful sentence. We did it!” She smiles triumphantly at me. “Maybe we’re in Kansas—that would be funny.”

  “Ha! Well, we sure did something. Do either of us have something to pick handcuff locks with?” I ask her. We rifle through our pockets looking for anything that will work. We surprise ourselves with our preparedness—we actually have a handcuff key stored away. We’re so smart. In moments, we’re free of each other. Lia and I take stock of our overall physical well-being—I’m not sure I’m ready to examine anything mentally yet. When we’re both sure that we’re each in one piece and able to walk, we go to stand up.

  “Holy hell,” Lia cries, our legs turning to jelly. We both get to our feet like baby giraffes taking their first steps. “So
those were actual stairs we climbed.”

  “I guess Hades isn’t big on spiritual journeys,” I laugh. “He’d much prefer physical ones.”

  With some more cursing and protestations of our weakness, we begin walking in one direction through the corn. Eventually, we come to a large central corridor among the rows of produce. From here we can see a farmhouse down the lane, and a street at the other end, towards which we march. This lane seems to be all residences and farms, which still doesn’t do much to help us orient ourselves in the world. A lot of this country of ours is full of farms and residences. I see a street sign and hobble over to it. I burst out laughing.

  “What? What’s so funny?” Lia asks me.

  “That fucker has a sick sense of humor,” I tell her. “We’re on Hades Church Road.”

  “Oh, come on,” she moans. I have no idea what state we’re in, or what direction town might be in, so we just start walking. It’s been about two days since we’ve had anything to eat or drink, so that becomes priority number one. We find someone who still has a sprinkler out even this late in the season. Lia and I look around cautiously, but see no indication that anyone’s paying attention, so we disconnect the contraption and drink greedily from the hose.

  “Sweet nectar of life,” I say as Lia passes me the water.

  “Excuse me! What do you think you’re doin’?” an angry male voice asks. I turn around with the hose spouting water from my hand.

  “I’m really sorry, sir! We were just thirsty. We’ll put it back now and leave you alone.” Lia quickly screws the sprinkler back on, squealing as she accidentally gets sprayed.

  “You get out of here, now!”

  “Sorry!” I yell again.

  We scamper back to the road and jog off. Not long after, I hear a car coming down the road, and turn to look at it.

  “Aw…man…” I groan.

  “What?” Lia asks, turning around. “Aw…” She echoes me. A black and white Crown Vic pulls up to us.

  “Well, howdy there!” the sheriff says. The seal on his squad car says Greencastle, Pennsylvania—so now we know where we are, at least by name.

  “Howdy yourself,” I say back pleasantly.

  “Got a report of some delinquents ruining lawns,” he says casually. “But I just seen the lawn myself; it seems to have gotten over it. Mind if I ask where you two are going?”

  “Actually, we were hoping you could tell us,” I reply. “Our friends thought it’d be funny to leave us in a cornfield, I guess. We’re trying to get to Roanoke.”

  “Roanoke? Virginia?” The cop laughs. “Heck of a way to drive for a prank. That’s gotta be almost four hours from here by car.”

  I look down at my feet and back at Lia. Four hours by car is probably about five days on foot, if we run back-to-back marathons each day which is just not going to happen in our current condition. We don’t have phones or cash or identification…I won’t say that it’s the worst thing we’ve ever had to do—that bar just keeps getting higher—but it’s a long shot away from a good time.

  “Well, good,” I respond to the officer with a small laugh. This news seems to have rendered Lia entirely speechless—she just keeps staring off at the tree line. “Could you at least point us in the right direction? Guess we’ll have to hitch back.”

  “Well, I don’t feel good about that. Want a ride to the station? I can let you use a phone, call someone?” I hesitate. It’d be nice to get off my feet for a bit, but I think I’ve made my feelings about precincts exceptionally clear.

  “When was the last time you had a bite? We got some donuts,” the sheriff bribes us.

  That settles it. I can almost see my stomach leap at him as he says that blessed word.

  “That’s really kind of you,” I thank him as I head for the back of the squad car. Lia and I scooch in, reveling in just sitting. You don’t really appreciate sitting until you haven’t been able to do so in a couple of days.

  We both fall asleep on the short ride back to the station. I wake up, momentarily disoriented again as I find myself unchaperoned in the back of a police car. Lia is still conked out next to me. I try the door and am surprised when it opens. I decide to let her sleep, and head into the precinct.

  It’s a small-town affair, and I see the sheriff’s office immediately. He waves at me and comes out when he’s hung up the phone.

  “Well, well. Sleeping Beauty awakens.” He jokes. “Sorry, I just didn’t want to disturb you; you both looked so tired.”

  “No—thanks, appreciated.” He turns away for a second and comes back with a box of donuts.

  “Donut for your thoughts?” he asks gently, motioning to an empty office. He’s talking to me like I’m a skittish, stray animal, and I bet I look like one right now. I catch myself in some glass. My hair is lank, my Motocross armor busted at the shoulder and knees, obvious cuts on my arms and face. Picasso could have used me as proof that his paintings were totally realistic. Just then, Lia bursts in, looking around the building frantically. When she sees me she lets out a sigh.

  “Don’t run off like that!” she chides me.

  “My, how the tables have turned,” I tease. “Sorry. Donut?”

  She grabs a pastry and waves it menacingly under my nose. I bite it and follow the sheriff into the room. I know I should be traumatized, but I feel good. I’m so glad to be in the world again, and to have Lia safe, that the darkness of the past couple of days seems inconsequential compared to the brightness of our prospects.

  We sit down with the kind sheriff. “Now, you’re not in trouble for the lawn or anything. I told Larry that if his lawn was so bad off that two girls getting a drink were gonna hurt it, he should pray more,” he says with a wink. “But I would sure be glad to hear about how y’all ended up on the wrong side of a prank in Motocross gear like this, all banged up.”

  “Not much of a story,” Lia shrugs. “We were out on a rough trail; finished up; had a few brews; fell asleep; ended up in a cornfield in Greencastle.”

  “That right?”

  “Yup,” I confirm.

  “It’s just, you look mighty similar to this advisory that came through yesterday. It said something about a couple of young women from Roanoke who made off with a cop and a detective. Suspected armed and dangerous.”

  Lia and I carefully don’t look at each other. I try to decide whether surprise or confusion is the most appropriate expression, and probably only manage to look incredibly guilty. Just then, a fax machine in the corner of the room springs to life. The sheriff slowly reaches over to grab the print out and glances at it. He does a double-take and reads it through carefully.

  “Must’ve been a false alarm,” he says after the second read through. “This here is a lift on the advisory.” He looks at us carefully, some of the kindness traded for suspicion. “Well, ain’t that somethin.’ You gotta admit, these two ladies sure look a lot like you do, don’t they?”

  He shows us the print out, which must be a reprint of yesterday’s bulletin. On it is a picture of the two of us sitting in the Roanoke precinct. Was it really only three days ago?

  “Wow, that’s pretty wild,” Lia says. “If I didn’t know for sure we hadn’t kidnapped any detectives, I’d think it was us, too.”

  “Well, I think I’ve about taken up all of your time that I can,” the sheriff replies, his eyes crinkling at us again. “You probably wanna make that phone call?”

  “Uh, about that,” I cut in. “Is there a computer we can use? We don’t have our cell phones, and I don’t know anyone’s numbers without it.” I smile at him, but it’s a real problem we face. I can remember Lia’s number, and our parents’, but everything else…

  “Oh, uh…let me see what we can do.”

  “I told you we should make a document on the cloud with phone numbers,” Lia says to me when the sheriff leaves.

  “Yeah, but then next time we get picked up, someone might find it, and then all our friends would be jeopardized.”

  “They are now! W
hen they take our cell phones!”

  “Those are burners, the numbers in them are all half dead anyways,” I remind her.

  “Your paranoia makes no sense!”

  It’s a recurring argument of ours.

  “You still need that computer?” the sheriff asks in the doorway.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I say with a quelling look at Ophelia.

  It’s a gamble, but we agree to look up the Roanoke police department. I figure, if the advisory’s been lifted on us, it’s because Kline has contacted the department and told them to call it off. I call the number listed.

  “Hi, is Detective Kline in?” I ask quietly, hoping no one in the sheriff’s department can hear me.

  “I’m sorry, Detective Kline is occupied. May I take a message?”

  “This is very important, though,” I explain to the receptionist. “I really need to speak with him.”

  “Well, I’d be happy to take a message, and have him call you back.”

  “No, it’s…it’s about Summer and Ophelia Watson,” I whisper. The other end of the line is silent. “Hello?”

  “One minute please, let me see if he’s available.”

  “Everything all right?” the sheriff asks while I wait.

  “Yep. Just on hold. Our ride’s in a meeting. Sorry about the delay.”

  He gives me the “okay” sign and walks away. I motion to Lia.

  “They’re getting the detective,” I whisper to her.

  “Detective Kline speaking,” comes a familiar voice.

  “Hey, glad to hear you made it back topside,” I say.

  There’s a pregnant pause. “Summer?”

  “The one and only. Listen. The H-Man sort of dropped us off in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. Think you could…help us get to Roanoke? Or send someone up with our car and stuff?”

  “Jesus Christ, Summer! I had an advisory lifted on you because I thought you’d both died!”