Kandy scrambled to her feet, gave me her shoulder, and started half-dragging me down the stairs toward the entrance. She was limping herself, and her other arm — her bad one — didn’t seem to be fully functioning.
“The kid!” I cried.
“Screw the kid,” Kandy snarled.
My right leg was definitely not happy about the quick pace. As we moved, I twisted the three braids together, then knotted them around my left wrist. Their sorcerer-alchemist magic prickled against my skin, but didn’t seem to affect me adversely in any other way.
We stepped off the stairs and the earthquake hit.
The ground suddenly cracked open before Kandy and me. We dove in opposite directions to avoid falling into the fissure that appeared in front of us.
Warner, slightly behind us, tumbled out of my sight. Despite the rolling ground, I could see Kandy gaining her feet to my left. She was close to the exit.
I tried to stand. The ground underneath me continued to roll and crack. The leeches had all disappeared.
“Remember Indiana Jones?” Kandy shouted from the relatively safe entrance archway, which had held against the earthquake so far. She was still having way too much fun.
I laughed. Even with my leg hurting and Warner currently missing in action, I couldn’t help it. “I’ll race you out,” I called.
Kandy lost the smile. “Jade!” she screamed as she pointed up over my head.
I looked up, even as I saw Kandy dive through the stone-framed entranceway.
I had a split second to hope she made it out of the fortress safely. Then the high-vaulted ceiling crashed down over my head.
I ducked, hunkering down next to a portion of the ground that had swelled upward from the earthquake. I wasn’t sure that would offer any protection, but I also wasn’t sure what else I could do at the moment.
I was, however, sure that half-dragon/half-witches didn’t survive being crushed by thousands of pounds of stone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Someone was calling my name. Screaming it, actually. But I couldn’t open my eyes … or my mouth, for that matter. All the bones in my face felt like I’d run into a concrete wall nose first. Yeah, unfortunately, I knew what that felt like.
“Jade!”
Kandy … Kandy was screaming for me. She sounded terrified, and that just wasn’t right. My vibrant, brash, best friend should never sound that way, especially not when calling my name.
I opened my eyes. I still couldn’t see anything. It felt like some sort of liquid was screening my sight.
Blood. My eyes were flooded with blood.
I lifted my arm to wipe my face. I could feel the bones knitting together as I moved. It hurt. Enough to wake me up a bit more.
My hand came away bloody, but at least I could see again.
“ … not much longer,” Kandy screamed.
I lifted my head. I was lying on my side, so I rolled over onto my back. Kandy was standing over me. She appeared to be carrying a boulder large enough to obliterate the sky above her.
Sky … that didn’t make sense. Rock … the fortress ceiling had collapsed on me. Though the earthquake had apparently abated.
“Move your ass, dowser!” Kandy shrieked. She was shaking with the effort of holding the boulder off me.
My survival instincts kicked in. I rolled. The rock slammed down exactly where I’d been lying.
I sat up to see Kandy collapse. She fell, first to her knees, then all the way over onto her side and a craggy pile of massive chunks of granite.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I couldn’t hold it.”
Then she stopped talking.
I crawled to her. My hands and arms were the only part of me that seemed to be working, so it was slow going. I left bloody handprints in my wake. I got halfway to her before the bones in my left leg had knit together enough that I thought they might be able to help. My right leg was still useless, though. The one the dragon kid kicked.
“Kandy?” I whispered. I could taste the werewolf’s magic, but it was as dim as it had ever been. Beyond that, I could taste only the magic of the braids that were still tied around my left wrist, and the magic of the cuffs that Kandy wore. No kid and no Warner, though I had the distinct impression that my magic was concentrating on healing bones and mending lacerations, not on dowsing. So they could both have been nearby.
I reached Kandy. I could see the slow, steady rise of her chest, so she wasn’t dead. Her arms were sprawled out to the side. I don’t think she’d even tried to stop her fall. Her palms looked like hunks of bloody, shredded meat.
I lifted her into my arms, somehow finding my feet despite the fact that my legs didn’t feel whole yet. She was too light. I’d carried her like this in London and she’d been epically heavy for someone so tiny. But then, a lot had happened since London, and my magic was different now. I’d been so badly hurt in Sienna’s final circle — had used so much of myself to contain her magic in my sword — that when my magic came back, it was as if it filled up all the empty spaces and burrowed even deeper into my flesh and bones.
“Why are you carrying me like a baby?” Kandy murmured.
“I didn’t like you lying on the ground,” I answered.
“That’s no excuse.”
“You dug me out.”
“What did you think the cuffs were for?” Kandy sneered, which was an impressive feat when she hadn’t actually opened her eyes yet. “Yoga?”
I coughed out a laugh, along with a mouthful of blood.
“Eww,” Kandy said, opening her blazing green eyes. “Did you just spit blood up on me? Put me down.”
I tried to prop Kandy up on her legs, but she was having some trouble taking any weight on them. “Umm,” she said. “Just put me over there for second. I don’t think I can stand up yet.” I set her down, half propped up on one of the large jutting slabs of the floor … or maybe it was a piece of ceiling. I couldn’t tell. The place was a dangerous freaking mess.
“Just because you can lift heavy things with the cuffs doesn’t mean your legs can take the weight,” I snarled, suddenly irrationally angry that Kandy was even in this situation.
“What are you, my mother?”
“You’re hurt, and —”
“And you feel bad, like usual. I thought I was a member of this team?”
“You are, but —”
“Get your shit together, dowser. Find the sentinel and get us out of here.”
I clenched my jaw and then my fists. Happily, they both seemed to be working just fine now. Counting to ten in my head, I looked around at the caved-in disaster area that was the fortress.
Yeah, look at me being all grown up again.
The dais and the altar were gone. I couldn’t even see where they’d once been.
“Did you see where he fell?” I asked Kandy.
She shook her head but seemed more interested in breathing than in talking. Her berry-infused dark-chocolate magic intensified. I took that as a sign that she was going to be okay.
I hoisted myself up on the next section of jutted floor, careful to avoid falling into the chasm that looked as though it dropped into nowhere on the other side. Apparently the entire ceiling hadn’t collapsed — just the center section. I could see darkness above, but it didn’t feel like sky — no stars and no fresh air. I couldn’t see the entrance, if it even still existed.
No kid. No shadows.
And my freaking right leg still wasn’t functioning properly.
“Sentinel!” I yelled. Then I waited, but there was no answer. Not even an echo of my call. “Something’s coming,” I muttered. I didn’t like the stillness of the air, or the lack of magic. Though that wasn’t new, since it had felt stripped away since we stepped through the lighthouse doorway.
“You’ve ruined that pretty skirt.” Kandy shifted into a seated position behind me and then slowly rose to her feet.
I glanced down at my skirt. It was cover
ed in blood — Kandy’s and mine, I guessed — and shredded in numerous places. I was also missing my flip-flops. Thankfully, I still seemed to have my satchel.
“At least the blood matches,” I said.
Kandy snorted. Then, painfully slowly, she climbed up onto the boulder opposite me to look toward where the entrance had been.
“Warner!” I shouted again.
A pile of rocks on the other side of where the altar had stood shifted. I clambered down the side of my perch, then leaped over a fissure between me and the shifting rocks. As soon as my feet touched down on the granite on the other side, I could taste Warner’s black-forest-cake magic. Further evidence that the entire fortress somehow absorbed magic, or dulled it, or something.
I could feel Kandy following, but she was still unsteady on her feet and moving slowly. I crushed the spike of fear I felt when glancing back at her. We’d get out of here and she’d heal. I’d take her to Qiuniu if necessary, though owing too many favors to the Brazilian guardian probably wasn’t a fantastic idea. I was fairly certain it wasn’t cupcakes he wanted in trade.
I reached Warner where he’d half-dug himself out of the rubble of the floor and ceiling. Though he was covered in rock dust, he didn’t appear to have a scratch on him. Of course.
I grabbed his arm and hauled him the rest of the way out. He groaned in pain but did most of the work on his own. I wasn’t sure I could have moved him any other way. He tried to stand, swayed, and then fell against the nearest pile of rubble.
“Legs broken,” he said. “Long fall … the climb up wasn’t short either.” Then he lifted his head as if hearing something.
I glanced around but I couldn’t hear anything. However, Kandy was perched on the far side of the fissure from us and was looking around as well. Beyond her, I could see where the entrance had once stood. It was blocked by a cave-in now.
“What’s that?” she called.
“Water,” Warner muttered. He straightened and, oddly, twined his fingers through those of my right hand.
“I might need that hand,” I joked.
“Is that … water?” Kandy called. She was looking back toward the blocked entrance.
I still couldn’t hear anything.
“We need an exit, wolf. Now,” Warner said. “Fresh air would be the best indication of one.”
Kandy lifted her head as green rolled over her eyes. Then she pointed toward a half-collapsed wall behind us, where I could see only rock piled on more rock. Kandy began climbing down the boulder she’d been perched on. The large fissure was still between her and us.
Then I heard the water. A rushing sound like a thundering tide.
“Not a tide …” I said, voicing my fear out loud. “A river.”
Rock and debris blew open the former entrance behind Kandy. Water flooded into the chamber.
“Kandy!” I screamed as I lunged forward. She was poised to leap the chasm before her, but I could tell she wasn’t going to make the jump. Warner held me back, so firmly that my right shoulder actually dislocated with a pop and a flash of pain.
The torrential flood — boiling with all the rock and debris it had gathered in its path — crashed into Kandy in midair.
Still fighting Warner, I lost sight of my friend. The water hit us at waist height, with more continuing to flood into the chamber.
I was still screaming and fighting when the sentinel picked me up, then threw me toward the back wall like I was a freaking football. I flew toward the opening that Kandy had scented, just as the water burst through three more sections of the ruined fortress and crashed into Warner.
I hit rock, cracked my head, and was swallowed by the flood.
∞
I was dreaming. A floating, peaceful dream. I felt free, weightless, and warm. I was enveloped and held lovingly by a warm blanket of … water.
Water.
I was surrounded by water.
I opened my eyes.
I was surrounded by endless blue. Blue … blue … salty water.
Peacefully slipping away in the deep, deep water.
And I couldn’t breathe.
I shouldn’t breathe.
I was drowning.
I was dying, actually.
I screamed, involuntarily thrashed my arms and legs, and instantly knew that was the wrong thing to do. I snapped my mouth closed in an attempt to preserve whatever oxygen still filled my lungs. Pain lanced through my chest as my body demanded more air.
I kicked out with my legs. I didn’t know where to go, what to do, but this couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the end.
Then I remembered.
Just before the synapses of my brain fizzed out from oxygen deprivation, I remembered Chi Wen brushing by me in the nexus. I remembered the glimpse of the vision he’d shared with me. I remembered the instance of drowning.
I remembered breaking through into the sunshine.
I kicked again. I lifted my arms up and over my head and pulled myself through the water, having no idea if I was going in the correct direction.
I had to believe.
I had to trust.
If I was going to carry the yoke of destiny like a freaking albatross — if I was going to run scared from fate, even as I blindly stepped forward onto its path — then I was going to believe, going to trust the far seer. I was going to trust in magic. Trust in the spirit that flowed through us all, as Gran would say after too many chocolate chip cookies.
My fingers broke through into unresisting air, slapping down against the surface of the water as my head followed through into sunlight.
I breathed, gasping for air. Coughing and choking on the water I inhaled in my haste.
A hand grasped my left wrist. A shock of smoky dragon magic flashed through my senses.
Not dragon. Guardian.
“Pulou,” I gasped, looking up through the mop of wet curls that obscured my vision. The treasure keeper was hunched down, holding me from a portal that hovered about three feet above the water.
He was peering down at my wrist, but didn’t seem to be all that surprised to be holding me half out of the water in the middle of the Bahamas. “Are you wearing one of the three ways to kill a guardian — an ancient relic of grave importance — as a bracelet? A now soaking-wet bracelet?”
His proper English accent made his casually posed question seem like a scathing condemnation.
“Umm,” I said. “You didn’t actually mention the guardian killing part.”
Warner broke through the surface of the water beside me. Kandy was in his arms.
I wasn’t sure she was breathing.
Without even thinking about it, I wrenched my arm from Pulou’s grasp and threw my head back to scream into the golden magic of the portal.
“Qiuniu!”
Warner lifted Kandy up out of the water and Pulou knelt down to take her from him.
“Qiuniu!” I screamed again.
The treasure keeper stepped back into the golden magic of the portal as Warner somehow grabbed the edge of the portal like it was a physical object and hoisted himself out of the water. Kneeling, he spun to reach back for me. I grasped his hand and heaved myself up. My heart thumped wildly in my chest. I hadn’t quite caught my breath from drowning, and now I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to breathe naturally again.
∞
Warner and I tumbled back into the dragon nexus in a tangle of limbs and slid across the floor.
“Kandy … Kandy … Kandy …” I realized I was repeating my friend’s name over and over in time with my heartbeat, so I clamped my mouth shut.
Qiuniu was already standing over Kandy, who was supine on the floor at the exact center of the nine nexus doors. Pulou stood to one side with his hands on his head as though he didn’t know what else to do.
I scrambled forward, not bothering to stand. Qiuniu lifted his beautiful brown eyes to me.
“She’s too far gone,” he said.
>
The words warped around in my head as I refused to actually hear them.
As if to confirm Qiuniu’s terminal diagnosis, the cuffs fell off Kandy’s wrists with two terribly audible clicks.
“No!” I shouted. “No!”
I shoved passed the healer, gaining my feet as I did so. He fell to the side with a surprised grunt. I gathered the green-haired werewolf in my arms. “No! No! No!” I repeated the word over and over, forcing my denial of the possibility of Kandy’s demise into the ears of all the magical witnesses in the vicinity.
Kandy was a child of the magic that ran through us all. And that magic wasn’t ready to let this vessel go.
“Warrior’s daughter —” I could hear the attempt at reason in the healer’s voice.
“I can still taste her magic!” I snapped at him, not even remotely caring that one didn’t shove past guardians and then shriek demands in their faces.
Qiuniu shook his head sadly.
But not sadly enough for me.
“Portland,” I said. I stood, still unsteady on my feet but buoyed by my anger. Epically angry and determined.
“Where?” Pulou asked, his question gentle.
“Desmond … the Alpha’s home.”
“I don’t know where that is …” Pulou said.
Ignoring him, I turned toward the native-carved door.
“Jade,” Qiuniu said behind me.
“She needs the magic of the pack! Portland!”
Pulou stepped up behind me and wrapped his hand around my upper left arm. The door to North America blew open before me. “Show me,” the treasure keeper said as we stepped together into the golden magic of the portal.
I could feel Qiuniu and Warner following us. And I momentarily panicked. I was dragging all of us into magic I couldn’t actually control. What happened if we got lost in here?
Pulou squeezed my arm. It hurt. “Focus, Jade Godfrey.” I heard him in my head rather than with my ears. “Take us to the pack.”
I visualized Desmond’s living room. The massive stone fireplace, the large trestle dining room table, the perfect chef’s kitchen … I wondered if he’d fixed the granite island that he’d broken when I’d come to read Rochelle’s oracle magic last January …
Shadows, Maps, and Other Ancient Magic (Dowser Series Book 4) Page 20
