“Flying?” I asked her, my voice riddled with doubt.
“Not far. Just us. Our power. It’s something Ferin can make when they—join. But the joining has to be flawless.”
“I thought it was good,” I said, fighting the urge to preen. I’d done many things since being bitten by the ginger vamp, but an air cushion of orgasmic energy was, to be fair, something new. “Incredible. I didn’t know.”
She smiled over at me. “It was, wasn’t it? It’s outside our world, to know we’re capable of something like that, isn’t it?” She kissed me again, flexing her arms with a slow delicacy. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
She dressed without hurry and headed back up to the house, leaving me alone with my afterglow and the distant wall of water, lit from the top by a moon that was going ever higher. Our connection had a purpose, and I understood it now. She wanted a bond, and our bodies were the shortest route to creating something powerful between us.
Maybe that was enough for now. I started toward the house, smiling. Despite our danger, it was enough for me.
29
Zarya came back down to the beach the next morning, wearing loose white cotton pants and a white cotton shirt. She carried coffee and a hideous bowl of dried gruel for breakfast, as well as dog food for Daisy. “So,” she said, a bright smile on her face. “Are you ready to get to work?”
I was ready. I was more than ready. I accepted the breakfast and sat up on the beach. “Aside from this gruel, I’ve never felt better.” I held up the bowl for her inspection, but she waved it off.
She laughed gently. “Water isn’t so much a gung-ho, aggressive element. It can be used aggressively. I know that, and you know that. But water is patient. Given enough time, it will turn a mountain into dust.” She put the bowl down for Daisy, who leaned against her in a kind of canine hug before diving into her meal.
“I know you’ve got a lot of raw talent, Jason. Anyone can see that, and I could feel it in you last night. I saw you use some of your abilities against the vampires, and in the boat, and again with the wall. I wasn’t in great shape to really assess them in any kind of detail. What I’d like to do is to challenge you as much as I can. I’m going to want to challenge your limits. We can’t move beyond those limits until we find out what they are.” She looked out at our defensive wall and gave a little laugh. “Of course, I’m pretty sure those limits are a little far afield to begin with.”
I grimaced. “That remains to be seen, I guess. But we’ll find out.” I sipped from my mug of coffee. “What should we do first?”
“Eat,” she said and glanced at my meal with significance. “Eat, and maybe start with something that isn’t combat related.”
I did a double take. “Are you sure? Because there’s kind of a war on.”
She smiled and put a hand over mine. “I’m sure. Raw power doesn’t win wars. It helps, but what wins war is strategy. In order to develop a strategy, you need to have intelligence. You told me yesterday you could see all the way around the island, just using the water. That’s fairly advanced work, and I’m impressed. Most new students take decades to figure out how to use their power for clairvoyance. I’d like for you to try to figure out how far you can reach.”
I gave it some thought. “You’re here to pull me back, right? If I spread myself too thin?”
“Of course.” She gave me an encouraging smile, and I sat back to begin.
It was easy to spread myself around the island just by connecting with the wall. I’d done it once, so repeating the psychic feat was simple. The hard part was pushing past what I already knew. There wasn’t a barrier—only my own fear, and the unknown that rested just on the other side of my own ability.
I refused to allow it. I wasn’t going to be that guy, kept from doing what needed to be done by a fearful soul. I made myself push beyond and out, toward the city and all its teeming residents, both dead and undead.
And then I was through, though the mental punch left me shaking for a moment. I could see boats pushing through the water, belching out smoke and leaving rainbow tears of oil on the churning waters. I gave that ship an extra push—on behalf of the ocean, I wanted the ship gone and the oil slick with it. Fish swam in the depths of my sphere of control, alone and together. I sensed elegant jacks and barracuda and a school of massive tuna, their powerful tails slicing the water as they hunted in silent accord. A curious shark bumped a surfer then left him sputtering in momentary fear before peeling away, and on the bottom, a clever octopus pried a desperate crab from a discarded can. Life and death were a constant, and they occurred whether I was watching or not.
I wanted to stay like this, immersed in the waters around me, my body and mind separate but connected. The sensation gave me a hint of peace, the first I’d known since the vampire had bitten me, and I felt a pang of regret as I began to pull back from casting myself into the broad, warm waters, turning my focus to the foul outline of the city. I recoiled away from it and the cone of waste that soiled the waters, leaching from the streets and humans and their lives. For a moment, I considered staying away, lost in the deep, but I approached anyway. I had a job to do, and I would find no peace with it left undone.
I approached the city. Here, I pushed myself up through the drains and into the water system, my senses crushed by the makings of humanity. The iron pipes were confining. The sewer system had been repulsive, and I didn’t like to think about the violation of chemicals and waste surging outward and past me into the wider sea. I left the drains and found my way into the municipal water system. The water was clear by comparison.
From there, I lost focus. The entire purpose of my casting was to find information, hone my skill, and push my own limits. My mind settled on a single name that would achieve all of that. I called Christie, our vampire-hunting event planner, to my mind.
I concentrated on the most minute things about her—her curly hair, her pretty smile, and the silver cuff around her wrist. After several minutes of trying, I found her. She was close to water. A party, near a pool, and there was an argument nearby. Someone cried—a woman—and I caught the deep basso of a man’s voice, yelling in rage. His hand drew back to strike the woman.
I didn’t think. I acted. I reached out from the pool, grabbed his ankles, and pulled him into the water. I didn’t hold him long enough to threaten his life, but I did keep him there long enough to scare him. I was the spirit of water, and I would not be denied.
Christie ran over to the crying woman and helped her away from the pool. She looked back at the water a few times, but she couldn’t see me. No one could, not even the moon, which had seen everything on the beach only hours before. I was everywhere and nowhere, and the power was intoxicating.
A warm, dry hand touched mine, and I found myself pulled back in an instant. I was back in my body, dripping wet, with Zarya standing over me. “You are strong,” she commented. Her eyes were wide, but her smirk spoke volumes about her humor. “I’m pretty sure I said you were supposed to be just looking, not drowning wife beaters.”
I flushed, but I kept my chin up. “I couldn’t just watch and let it happen. What would that say about me?”
She softened. “I suppose. There will come a time, you know, when you’re going to have to let it go. It’s going to hurt, and it’s going to be awful, but you’ll have to do it. You won’t have a choice. But for now, let’s talk about the depths of your power. Did you feel it in your journey?”
“Depths?” I blinked. “I mean, it felt incredible, sure. But I’m sure almost any Ferin can do it. The New York crew talked about scrying through water.”
She shook her head. “Scrying is one thing. This is to scrying like what a bomber is to a paper airplane, okay? This was the most sensational thing I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t have gone as far as you did, unless I’d been following along with you. And I definitely couldn’t have pulled that guy into the pool from this far away. Own it. You did something astonishing.”
I laughed and scratched m
y head. It had been fun, and it had certainly been more than I’d thought I could do only yesterday. “How far do you think I can go?”
“I have no idea.” She got behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. They squelched wetly against my shirt. “How about if you give it a try? See how far. Don’t drown anyone.”
I concentrated again. This time, I sent my thoughts northeast. I pushed past Havana, past Florida. The Atlantic seaboard had little interest for me, and I gave Boston Harbor as wide a berth as I could. I was sensitive to the presence of man, and it seemed to grow as I ranged farther away. I filed that fact and went on, my presence little more than a ripple in an ocean made from them. I would go home, I decided, and the thought of it sent a shock through my body that took me a moment to recognize. It was peace. Home would bring me quiet, and maybe, if I could still see, a small dose of calm.
Once I got to Portland, I turned inward, following streams and inlets toward my old home in the Maine inlands. It was there that I found Linda, pouting and working at the Poland Spring bottling plant in Poland, Maine. She’d had to get a job finally and support herself. She stared at her hands, and I knew the expression. She was wondering how everything went wrong. It was an expression I’d worn many nights after our divorce, pain writ large on my face. Now she wore it, and it sat awkwardly on her features, like a shoe on the wrong foot.
I pulled myself back this time, laughing. I didn’t know if I was laughing from exhilaration or laughing from the thought of Linda drawing an actual paycheck, but I was laughing. “Would you believe I made it up to Maine?”
Zarya shivered. “I was there, remember? It was cold up there. Let’s not go back.”
I put my arm around her thin shoulders and warmed us both up. She shouldn’t have to be cold. “Sorry. I wanted to see if I could go that far.”
“Honestly, I did too. You’re down here near the Equator, and you were able to reach all the way up to Maine. And you’re not even breathing heavy. How does that feel to you?” She leaned into me, drawing something from my touch. I couldn’t tell if it was strength, comfort, or what.
“Bizarre. Insane. I don’t know. I’m sure there’s another word for it. Just like I’m sure I’ll wake up tomorrow and find I can’t actually do any of it.” I ran my hands through my hair. “For now, it’s sure as hell fun to play with.”
I didn’t point out that fun wasn’t why I was there. She already knew, and I already knew what she thought. The less obviously offensive uses of our powers would still be useful, and we could only truly come to accept and master our powers if we enjoyed them.
“All right. Good. Now let’s see how much force you can hit with, when it comes to water.” She winked at me and built a form out in the water.
The form was about human height. It could stand in for a vampire, so I decided to imagine it was Chilperic. My creator was dead, and dead by my hand, but I would never stop hating him. I sucked up as much water as I could, so much that it looked like the tide had suddenly gone out. Then I aimed it directly at the Chilperic-form and let loose in something between a jet and a knife made of water.
It didn’t go down.
When I cursed, Zarya chuckled. “Remember, I’m holding it up. And don’t forget, vampires are hard to kill.”
I let loose again, but I tried a different tactic. Instead of just loosing brute force against the dummy, I aimed a long, thin cone of water directly at its throat. It worked like a spear. I’d gotten the idea from watching Zarya take on the vampires in Belize City, and I figured it had to work again.
This time, the monster’s head was severed. It returned to the newly exposed floor with a plop, and the rest of the water we’d sucked up splashed back to join it.
“Want to try something fun with me?” She waggled her eyebrows and held out her hand.
“Sure.” I took her hand.
She tilted her head to the side. “You trust me, just like that?”
“You haven’t given me a reason not to.”
She smiled warmly. “And I don’t intend to change that.” She led me out onto the water. “Just look up and don’t forget. You and the water are one, so you don’t have to worry about anything.”
We stepped out onto the waves. I didn’t think much about where she was going with this, but when we got a few yards out onto the water, I realized what she was doing. We were on the water, not in it. I, the kid who’d been kicked out of Sunday school for falling asleep in the back of class, was walking on water.
I laughed with delight. Then I took Zarya for a run around the island on top of the waves, just because we could. Daisy ran along the beach, and for now, everything was perfect.
30
We moved over to another island. It was a smaller island, but just as lush and beautiful as Zarya’s. This one had a similar ruin on it, but the way it was designed let in more light. It stood a little closer to the beach, simply by virtue of being on a smaller island. Anything we could want was on this island. Banana and mango and sapodilla grew wild here. So did other fruits I’d never seen before. I could reach out and catch fish with my bare hands if I wanted to. The sense of life around was almost oppressive, with every part of my vision taken up with something vibrant and growing.
We didn’t have the infrastructure here that Zarya had built up over the past few centuries, and that was an issue. Zarya wanted to go back for it, since we hadn’t brought a big enough boat to move all of her things with. I had a different idea.
“Look. It’s your stuff, and I get that you want to protect your stuff. I respect that. Here’s the thing. We know the bad guys aren’t going to be held off by the wall of water forever.”
All three of them looked at me, like what I’d just said wasn’t a complete sentence. “Your point?” Kamila asked.
“My point is: I want to leave the wall up for a while. Let them bash their heads against it for now. Eventually, they’ll figure out they can just drop in from above. When they do, they’ll find most of Zarya’s things still there. They don’t know you well enough, Zarya, to know what’s truly important to you. We’ll have that all with us.”
Zarya crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m with you so far. Except for the part where we’ve left all my stuff for them to paw through.”
I chuckled. “Stuff is replaceable. You can always get more things. When they show up, they’ll find you gone and the house looking like you’ve just gone to have a wash in the ocean. They’ll wait around for a while before figuring out you’ve hightailed it away, maybe to someplace like the States. It’s as good a place as any. And then—”
“Then we sneak up and torch them all.” Tess flipped one of her silver-tipped spikes up into the air and caught it again.
“Er, no. Tempting, but I don’t think we can take on so many of them at once.” I winced. “Meanwhile, we’re on the other island, hanging out and drinking rum.”
“Okay.” Zarya leaned forward. “I kind of like where you’re going with this, but I see one problem with your big plan. Why exactly are they going to walk away from the nice, cute little island not too far away?”
I waggled my eyebrows at her in what I hoped was a fetching way. “Well, now, you see, here’s the thing. While we’ve got the wall up, we’re going to start altering the current around this island. We’re going to start just subtly directing people away from it.”
Zarya and Kamila stared at me for a long moment. Tess got it right away. “That’s brilliant.” She clapped her hands together. “That’s actually brilliant.”
“It’s brilliant, but can they do it?” Kamila scratched her head at me. “I’m sure it’s wonderful, but can they pull it off?”
Zarya opened her mouth. She closed it again after a second. “I don’t know.” She sighed and leaned back. “I’ve done it on a more limited scale and in a smaller way. I’d have some concerns about doing it in the long term if we were planning to stay here for the next three hundred years, but that’s not in our battle plan, is it?”
My
heart skipped a beat when I recognized the implications of Zarya’s statement. She was planning to come with us to Patagonia.
“No, it isn’t.” Tess grinned wickedly. “And in the meantime, it’s so much less ostentatious than the wall. The vampires will be caught up in the stupid wall, obsessing about it. You know how they get. And then it’s going to come down.” She rubbed her hands together.
“It should never occur to them to wonder why they can’t get near this island. They’ve never been here before. By the time they realize something’s going on, we’ll be long gone.” I cracked my knuckles. “We’re not likely to be able to run with most of your household goods anyway, Zarya. I’m sorry.”
She sighed and looked at the ground. “I know. I hate to lose so much, but I’ll lose more if I try to hang on to it.” She chuckled bitterly. “After so much time, you’d think I’d have learned, right? People are more important, so—I’ll let go.”
Daisy walked over and plopped herself into Zarya’s lap.
“And Daisy, of course,” she said and wrapped her arms around the dog. It was hard to stay sad when you had your arms around the dog.
As a result of our conversation, we set up housekeeping in a new ruin and did our best to try to make ourselves comfortable. Zarya knew of a place near Belize City, but not too close, where she could get mattresses for all of us. At least we wouldn’t be sleeping on the stone floor. Kamila took Zarya to the village to take care of that, while Tess and I kept watch over things on the new island.
We just called it the New Island. We didn’t come up with any special names for it. We didn’t want to get attached because we weren’t going to be staying long.
We walked along the beach, taking note of the perimeter and checking anything that seemed at all suspicious. As near as we could tell, no one had been near this island in decades, not since the last person to use a collapsed fishing shack had turned off the lights, so to speak. That didn’t mean there weren’t vampires here, but I didn’t see signs of anything larger than a coatimundi passing through the brush. Tess concurred.
Forever Young - Book 2 Page 19
