Reluctant Gods (The Awakening Book 2)

by Keri Armstrong

  I was standing in front of them completely exposed. All my shortcomings out in the open for them to inspect, judge. See my freakiness in all its glory.

  My vision started to blur again, and this time it wasn’t from the pool water.

  “I am so, so sorry Phoebe,” Caleb begged, frantically trying to get as much water as possible out of it, making a complete mess in the process.

  “I am sorry,” he repeated “I wasn’t thinking. I’ll buy you a new one, I promise.”

  If I wasn’t so angry I would find his behavior hilarious.

  And then it hit me, I could see it clearly in his eyes. Sara’s too.

  They expected me to have a meltdown, and normally, they would be right. And maybe it was the beer talking but, that would negate my prior resolution to have fun for just one night.

  And besides, I was among my closest, not standing in the middle of Times Square while they filmed me and aired it on the screens above, so screw it.

  I simply smiled and shrugged. “I planned on washing it anyway.”

  They both exhaled, relaxing.

  Caleb nodded, grateful. “I didn’t want to say anything, but it was starting to get a little mangy.”

  I laughed despite myself. I pulled my hair out of his clumsy hands. “How dare you?” I faked outrage and threw it on the chair.

  “It’s true.” He shrugged and Sara nodded, laughing.

  “Oh, boy, you are so dead.” I shrieked like a banshee and started a true water fight.

  It was epic.

  Eight

  The next morning, despite Caleb’s pouting face, we stayed strong and prepared for our trip.

  “You should at least stay for breakfast. It’s still dark,” he complained.

  “That’s the idea,” I said.

  We wanted to cover as much ground as possible before daylight and getting to the caves. Besides, I didn’t have the faintest what we would encounter once there, so I figured if we had to break into someone’s private territory, best to do it early in the morning.

  “I’ll be here,” he said, waving at us when we settled in our rental jeep. “Bored out of my mind.”

  I chuckled, and Sara blew him a kiss as we drove away.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  I looked at my phone. The pic of the map we’d inherited showed a different spot than the pamphlets in the lobby. Apparently, those stories of giants in caves appeared all over. “We need to go south of Tucson. The caves are located near the Mexican border.”

  She grunted.

  I frowned at her non-reply. “But we can drive only so far, the rest we have to go on foot, so make sure your phone battery is at 100%,” I said, watching her watch the road.

  “Sure, sure.” She continued to look distracted then finally said, “If there are no roads, what do you think is there? Just desert?”

  I shrugged. “No clue, but probably. Maybe some national park.”

  She nodded.

  I just hoped it wasn’t some private property. That would be tricky for us. None of the info we had said anything. It was so vague it was ridiculous. We lived in the 21st century. The era of information, for crying out loud. I sighed and pushed at a strand of hair that kept poking my face.

  “Would you please stop doing that!” Sara snapped.

  My hand stopped mid movement. Something was up with her. She normally wasn’t the snapping kind.

  Aggravated, I gestured toward the wig. “I think it’s permanently ruined.”

  “It’s fine and what you’re doing is annoying.”

  Okaaay. She definitely woke on the wrong side of the bed. I huffed and turned my attention back to the map.

  After several minutes, she spoke in small voice. “Did you see his face?”

  And there it was. The reason she was acting so strange.

  “He’ll get over it,” I said, trying to fix my wig one more time. I’d spent two good hours trying to dry it in the style it was before but it didn’t work. Not that I was complaining, it had been worth it to share that time with them.

  But I wasn’t in the mood to coddle either Caleb or Sara right now. We had more important things to think about. And besides, he was the one who decided to crash our trip, a fact of which I reminded her.

  She sighed, and that was the end of it.

  We had gone several miles when the sun finally came up. My jaw dropped when I could finally see the landscape that stretched around us. I pretty much expected the same boring desert-like scenery with solitary bushes or cacti but this was amazing.

  What was otherwise relentless brown was sporadically broken with bits of green and a variety of colorful wildflowers. I wasn’t usually that type of girl, but I snapped a few pictures. The sun rising over the desert was a spectacular and it deserved to be preserved in some manner and admired. I even snuck in a few photos of Sara looking pensive as she drove.

  A dirt road appeared on our left and Sara turned. “This is it,” she said, starting to follow it, driving slower than before as the jeep kicked up dust, and gravel crunched beneath the tires.

  “Phoebe…”

  “Yeah?”

  “What if we get caught? What if we’re not supposed to be here?”

  I shrugged. “We just say we got lost. Cry if you have to.” I was confident enough we could fool any police officer, especially when he put his eyes on Sara, all doe-eyed damsel in distress. It would be easy.

  “And what about illegal immigrants?” She asked again.

  “What about them?”

  “Well, what if we stumbled upon one of their crossings. I’ve heard horror stories about the ‘coyotes’ who bring them across.”

  “They don’t bother us we don’t bother them,” I replied flippantly but was starting to feel uneasy. Sara was right. Stumbling across a bunch of people who tried to fight their way for a chance of better life could be dangerous. Though, like Sara, I was less concerned about the poor families than about the unscrupulous guides who ‘helped’ them cross. They certainly didn’t want witnesses to their operation.

  “This was a bad idea. We shouldn’t have come here alone.” Sara sounded like she was starting to hyperventilate.

  “Relax. Breath. Nothing bad is going to happen to us.” I said it to reassure her, but then I realized I really meant it.

  We were meant to do this. This was our destiny and nothing was going to stop us.

  I got excited all over again but Sara needed a little more convincing.

  “Look, I’m no expert, but don’t they have to do the actual crossing during the night, to not get caught?”

  “I don’t know, I guess.”

  “See,” I gestured toward the bright blue sky. “There’s no problem then.”

  She frowned. When she started to open her mouth to argue more, I turned on the radio and got lucky. It was playing one of our favorite songs from when we were kids.

  I started singing at the top of my lungs, doing the choreography we’d made up, which looked a whole lot more like Muppet flailing than actual dancing.

  Sara laughed and joined in, alternating her hands on the wheel. It was loud, and it was off-key, but the tension disappeared. I checked the map again and realized we were probably getting close to Bisbee. I had looked it up online before we’d left Illinois since I knew we’d be passing by there. I really wanted to take their ghost and vampire tour, but Sara didn’t share my enthusiasm. I bookmarked the page on my phone, and made a mental reminder to rope her into it on our way back.

  After a couple more hours of bad singing and Gatorade swigging, we found ourselves in the midst of desert scrub and the road, which had been slowly turning into more of a suggestion than an actual path, simply disappeared altogether. Several feet from a mountain range.

  Sara braked and turned off the engine. “Now what?”

  I looked around, surprised by the nearby mountain and sudden change of scenery. It seemed that one minute we’d been cruising through jamming to the oldies, and the next, a huge wall of rock ro
se before us.

  We grabbed our backpack and stepped outside, which was like opening the door to a hot oven and sticking your head inside. We’d turned on the air conditioning a few miles back and I’d forgotten how warm it was outside.

  I checked my phone to pull out the map and realized I didn’t have a reception.

  Nor did Sara.

  “So much for using GPS,” she said, but I was prepared for that scenario.

  I fumbled around my backpack until I found what I was looking for.

  “A compass,” Sara cheered. “You are a genius.”

  “Hardly,” I replied with a half-smile. “Just a realist.”

  I checked our coordinates. “We need to go this way.” I showed the general direction and into the hills we went.

  “Son of a...” I shouted for the tenth time, stumbling again. Cursing Hollywood to no end for ruining my perception of nature.

  In movies, everything was always so beautiful and the trees were tall but the sunshine was bright and the birds sang happily.

  Not in reality. There was no path to follow, the spaces between trees were packed with, well more baby trees and rocks that made you trip. My arms were already covered in scratches. It was hot and hard to breathe with the sun fully in the noon sky, and the only birds we could hear were tone deaf, screeching and freaking us out.

  The whole place was so sinister looking my skin crawled.

  “Do you think we are close?” Sara asked, her voice shaking a little.

  It was clear she could feel it too. The wrongness of the place. And I wasn’t imagining things. I could honestly feel an electric current running just under my skin.

  “I should really hope so.” I checked the compass again to make sure we stayed on the right course.

  I didn’t know how much of this freakiness I could endure. “Let’s rest for a bit, and I’ll check our progress on the map.”

  She nodded, even though it was clear she didn’t like the idea of stopping in the middle of this place. Running and screaming was more her style.

  I couldn’t say that wasn’t on my mind as well. There was something seriously wrong with this wood, and I wasn’t planning on staying in it any longer than absolutely necessary.

  A branch broke on our left and Sara screamed.

  I turned and almost screamed myself. Glowing yellow eyes regarded us from a starved looking canine face. And this time there was no fence between us.

  “It’s the same one, I’m sure of it. It’s the same one. Look at the scars!” Sara was hysterical, and I wasn’t far behind. It did look like the same animal. But surely scars on wild animals were common, right? I mean, these things were predators. They had to fight to live.

  That was so not helping.

  “Calm down,” I said to the both of us. “And remain completely still,” I warned.

  My mind went into overdrive trying to figure out how to get out of this alive.

  Yet the thing my thoughts kept returning to was, why did he do that? Not follow us in the first place, but announce himself. What I knew about wolves and coyotes—and this thing seemed like a hybrid somehow—was that they were pretty light on their feet. So, did he snap that twig on purpose? Did he want us to know he was there and following us?

  Okay, Phoebe, you have completely lost your mind. I was so freaked out I started to overanalyze and anthropomorphize.

  “Phoebe,” Sara whimpered.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to calm myself down “Maybe he is just curious.”

  “Why did you say that?”

  “Because it would have attacked us by now if that was its goal.” Still, he could change his mind and charge any second but I didn’t share that part. Nor did I question that to my mind, this animal was male, even though from a distance I had no way of knowing.

  “How do we make it go away?” That was an excellent question.

  I mentally went through our inventory and had to laugh. “I don’t know.”

  Sara looked at me like I was crazy and I grinned. Maybe she was right.

  “We worried about bugs and snakes that we brought bug spray, snakebite kits, and wore these,” I gestured down to our boots and jeans, “but completely forgot about the larger, more dangerous predators. Like freaking wolves and coyotes. He should eat us on principal, just for our sheer stupidity.”

  She didn’t seem to appreciate the humor. “So now what? Maybe we could try to scare it,” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “Let me try something first.” I moved a couple of steps to the left but he didn’t advance.

  “Now you walk slowly toward me,” I said to Sara.

  Nothing. The animal stayed put.

  We started moving slowly and he eventually did follow but kept his distance.

  So that was what we decided to do, resume our journey but keep an eye on the damn animal.

  “Maybe he’s just hungry. We have that jerky. Maybe we should feed it.” Sara offered.

  “Then he’ll definitely follow us forever,” I argued. “Let’s wait and see what happens.”

  “Like what? He gets tired of stalking us and leaps for one of our throats?”

  Logically, I knew she had a point. But for some reason—perhaps misguided instinct—I still felt like he wasn’t going to harm us.

  An hour passed and nothing changed. The coyote was still a part of our fellowship and all around us were rocks and more rocks. The sameness was starting to wear me down.

  “Phoebe, are we lost?” Sara sounded more annoyed than afraid, which I supposed was an improvement.

  “I don’t think so. We followed the instruction to the letter.”

  “Then where is it? There is nothing here but walls of rock.”

  “Shut up,” I snapped, my attention caught by a faint sound.

  She reared back. “Excuse me?”

  I shook my head impatiently. “Shut up and listen. Can you hear that?” The sound was faint but there was definitely something close by.

  She frowned at me but cocked her head to listen then nodded. “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think its water.”

  “It’s coming from out there,” she pointed to our left and I agreed.

  “Let’s go.”

  We doubled our efforts and not long after came across a small clearing.

  Sara gasped. “Oh, my God, it’s beautiful.”

  It was.

  We were standing on a bank of a waterfall. It wasn’t a massive one, we could clearly see the edges of it, but it was lovely and the sound it was making was peaceful.

  It was completely the opposite vibe than the rest of the forest.

  I was so mesmerized that I almost completely forgot about the beast tracking us.

  But then coyote—I’d decided that must be what it was—passed beside us and went to drink some water. When he had his fill he disappeared back into the woods.

  “I feel kind of silly now,” Sara said, watching him go.

  “That makes two of us.”

  He must have been thirsty all along and knew about this place. And we only thought he was trailing us because we were all going in the same direction.

  And now I felt guilty for denying him food. Poor thing. Who knew how long it had been since he’d had a meal. But my own fear—not to mention all those “don’t feed wild animals warnings” I’d read—got the best of me.

  “This has to be the place,” I said, returning us to the reason we were there in the first place. “Let’s try to find an entrance.”

  “Good idea.”

  We walked all around twice and still found no cave.

  “It’s not here,” Sara complained.

  “Maybe we just missed it.” Though I was beginning to have doubts.

  “We looked everywhere. This is pointless.” Sara looked defeated.

  And sadly, I had to agree. It was all a fool’s errand from the start.

  “Maybe we should head back for the jeep,” I said. “It’s getting pretty late. And maybe we can still stop
in Bisbee and do the haunted tour,” I added, trying to find a silver lining.

  “Pass.”

  “Okay, how ‘bout this. We make one more tour around here, then go spend the night in Bisbee. We can come back here early tomorrow and try again. You know, after we’ve rested from the vampire and ghost tour.” I added that last with a grin and she reluctantly smiled back.

  “Fine. One last walk around here, but then we’re leaving after ten minutes if we don’t find anything.”

  We took off again, and on a whim, decided to see if we could get behind the waterfall. As we neared the water’s edge, I thought my eye would fall out, and I mean the good one.

  Emerging onto the bank from behind a curtain of water, was none other than my classmate Nathan. He looked just as startled as I felt as he hurried down to meet us.

  “What are you doing here?” we asked at the same time.

  “We’re looking for a cave that’s supposed to be here.” I gestured toward the waterfall at the same time Nathan was saying, “I’ve been exploring the cave behind the waterfall.”

  Say what?

  Sara bounced up and down. “Really? There a cave behind it?”

  “Yeah, it’s tricky to see it from here but once you go thru, it’s amazing.” Nathan motioned toward the water. “Wanna see?”

  Energy and excitement renewed, we set out. The rocks were slippery, and the spray from the waterfall was going to be the final nail in the coffin of my poor, ailing wig, but I managed. I couldn’t believe that Nathan, of all people, knew about this place. I guessed we had a guide after all. I smiled at his back as he led the way.

  “How do you know about this place, anyway?” I asked. “And when did you get here?”

  He shrugged but didn’t turn around. “I’ve known about it since I was a kid. I have family nearby that I visit during breaks.”

  “That must be nice,” Sara said.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t sound too convinced. He suddenly turned. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  I frowned. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

  “When we bumped into each other, I was already on my way home because I realized how stupid I was being. This cave is too dangerous.”

  “We don’t mind,” I said.