The railings around the ship were studded with these strange little craft—fiberglass, highly buoyant, with diesel engines and very little chance of being swamped even in high seas. I assumed they’d have life vests and provisions inside.
It was a race to see if he could get the Wardens into the boats before my sharks arrived for their feast. Lewis correctly deployed his forces, keeping the Earth Wardens focused on repelling attacking predators as the Fire and Weather Wardens, staff, and crew boarded their ships. Then he evacuated the last of them.
I bobbed in the pounding waves, cold and shivering, watching.
The
Grand Paradise,
that floating castle, rolled like a dying whale, heeling in the direction of its fatal wound, and then the stern rose at a ninety-degree angle out of the water, exposing the massive propulsion pods and steering mechanisms. I could see, very briefly, the entertainment area of the ship that I’d never had time to visit—the rock-climbing wall, the pools, the spas.
And then it all slipped beneath the waves with a deep, gurgling death groan, churning foam and debris, and was gone in less than a minute.
I put my face beneath the water and watched its free-fall descent into the dark, and laughed, because even if the Wardens survived all this, that was going to be one
hell
of a security deposit problem.
I was still laughing when something suddenly lunged up from the depths at me. I had one flash of a second to recognize the gaping maw, the dead eyes.
Shark.
Sometimes, no matter who you are, or how powerful, Mother Nature still wins.
I floated on my back, bouncing on the churning waves, watching clouds fly in black, menacing swoops overhead. My storm circled in thwarted, anxious fury.
I was bleeding badly, and I couldn’t seem to stop it. I’d blown the shark into bloody meat, but too late; it had gouged a giant chunk from my thigh, and although I’d shut down the pain receptors, I knew how bad it was. The power I had at my command wasn’t meant to heal. It was meant to destroy.
Maybe it was a hallucination, but I could have sworn Bad Bob was standing on the wave-tops, looking down at me. He was wearing that same crappy, loud Hawaiian shirt, and his thin white hair blew in the same wind that blew spume from the water into my mouth as I struggled for air.
“What is it the kids today say, Jo? Epic fail?” He crouched down next to me. I could see the water rippling over his toes, but he could have been standing on concrete, while my struggles to stay afloat were getting weaker and weaker. “I think you let this happen. I think you were so damn guilty, you thought a shark bite was what you deserved.”
“Fuck you,” I whispered, and coughed. God, I hated him. The darkness inside me had filled me to bursting, and I needed to gag it out before it choked me. “I killed the ship for you.”
“Yes, you did. Not a bad job. But you let the lifeboats survive. That’s a whole lot less impressive.”
I blinked away burning salt in my eyes. “Help me.”
“Wait, what was the pithy phrase you just used?
Fuck you,
Jo. You kill Lewis Orwell for me. Then we’ll talk about how I can help you.” He smirked down at me, his pale eyes as vicious and shallow as those of the shark that had come after me. “Consider it the fairness doctrine in action.”
And with that, his image turned into a black mist and blew away.
But I didn’t think he’d ever really been there anyway.
There were more sharks coming. I’d drawn them here, and now there really was blood in the water—mine. My wounds were pumping out more all the time, and the shark I’d destroyed was functioning as bait too. The next one to arrive wouldn’t be so tentative. He’d just rip me in half.
I wondered if it was shock that was making me so fatalistic about that.
The lifeboats were all heading off to the horizon now.
All except one, which peeled off and turned back.
I was unconscious before it arrived.
I woke up lying on the floor of the lifeboat, with two Earth Wardens healing up my bites as best they could.
It hurt.
It hurt a
lot.
Cherise, Kevin, Cho Chu Wing, and the remaining crew were on this lifeboat, as well as the
Grand Paradise
’s Captain Miller, a sturdy gentleman who retained his military dignity despite his waterlogged uniform. He didn’t say much. I didn’t suppose he was regretting not going down with his ship, but maybe he was thinking about all the inevitable paperwork.
Or, if he knew I was responsible, he was thinking about finishing up what the sharks had left undone.
“We need to split up the boats,” Lewis was telling the captain as I drifted in, out, and around consciousness. “We’re like ducks in a shooting gallery out here on the open water.”
The captain nodded, but not as if he really understood or cared. I didn’t think he cared about much anymore. “I’ve already sent out distress calls,” he said. “Six freighters are heading our way, including a Saudi tanker. They’ll start rendezvousing with the other lifeboats within the hour.”
Lewis nodded and walked over to take a seat near me. The benches were fiberglass, with cushions that doubled as flotation devices. Among the supplies already broken out were insulating blankets, one of which was already wrapped around my damp, shivering body, and boxed drinks. They were trying to coax me to drink apple juice, but I couldn’t choke anything down. Not yet.
I’d learned a startling new lesson: no matter how badass you think you are, having a shark latch on to your body and break a piece of you away will put a dent in your self-confidence.
Cherise was playing Red Cross nurse; she draped a blanket over Lewis’s damp shoulders and handed him a juice box, which he mechanically sipped as he stared down at me.
“What?” I asked, and tried to smile. “You never saw somebody trying to kill you get their ass kicked before? Because I know you have.”
No answer.
“You want some advice? Pull the Wardens together. If you split them up between the rescue boats, you’re screwed.”
“Thanks for the tip,” he said. “Wardens stay on the boats. I want them protected in case you and Bad Bob decide to play Battleship.”
I almost managed a shrug. “Hazards of the sea. They all know what could happen.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I’m sure that’ll be a great comfort to their kids back home. I want Wardens behind us, guarding our retreat, as well as with us, guarding our asses up close. You got a problem with that, take it up with—oh, nobody, because at this point, you’ve got nobody.” He raised his head and fixed me with red-rimmed, fiercely focused eyes. “What am I supposed to do with you?”
A week ago, if he’d asked that question, it would have been with an undertone of longing and some heavily suppressed fantasies involving schoolgirl uniforms. Not now. He was looking at me like I’d looked at the shark that had bitten me.
“I can still get you to Bad Bob,” I said. “If you want.”
“I can’t trust you.”
I winced and closed my eyes as one of the Earth Wardens laying hands on me did something particularly painful. “I’m serious. I will take you to Bad Bob. I need to get there myself.”
“Why?”
I opened my eyes and locked stares with him. “Because he left me to die in the ocean and get eaten by sharks. Because you came back.”
“Bullshit.”
I blinked.
“Don’t tell me you’ve had a change of heart. I can see you didn’t. You’re just pissed that he didn’t keep his promises to you. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.”
I closed my eyes. I was too tired, too hurt, and too sick to care about his philosophy right now, and the darkness inside me
ached
, impatient with my body’s weaknesses. Soon I wouldn’t be vulnerable. Soon I’d be like the storm itself—unstoppable, unfeeling, a force of nature.
Lewis had chosen his healers well. They did their job, whether they wanted to or not. It took time, and I slept in between the exhausting bouts. I could feel the lifeboat moving, but I no longer cared where it was going. It didn’t matter. The storm would follow me, pouring power into me, filling me with darkness.
When I woke up,
really
woke up, the Wardens had finished their work.
I was healed.
I looked at my jeans, which had a ragged hole ripped most of the way through them, and beneath the bloody cloth, my leg was mostly there. Scarred, yes, but it would heal. The new muscle and flesh felt weirdly tender.
I looked up and saw them all watching me.
“Thanks,” I said, and tried to stand. It wasn’t as hard as I’d expected. I actually felt fairly good. Better, as the storm above us purred and rained down its darkness into me, reminding me who I was. What I wanted.
Lewis was right not to trust me, but I knew I didn’t need to tell him that.
“Jo,” he said, “sit down.”
I didn’t. I looked at him. There was a tingle of fire in my fingers, and as I rubbed them together, I saw sparks jumping. “Time to change course,” I said. “I’m taking the boat. The rest of you—you can either come along and shut up or I can leave you behind. In pieces.”
He took in a deep, resigned breath. “I didn’t save you just to fight you.”
“No, you saved me because your delicate conscience couldn’t stand thinking about me getting ripped apart by sharks,” I said. “Your mistake, man. Not mine.”
“You don’t want to do this.”
I smiled. And he saw that I really, really did.
Kevin wasn’t surprised. He was grimly staring at me with a bleak expression, as if he’d known it all along.
Back at ya, punk.
“You’re not going to hurt anybody else,” Lewis said. “I’m not going to let you.”
That made me want to prove him wrong. “We knew this was coming,” I said. “So go on. Try and stop me. It’s time for the lightning round, Lewis. Go for the actual lightning. It’s a small, enclosed space, but some of them may not die right off. The sepsis from the burns, that’ll probably kill them in the end.”
He didn’t move. “Don’t make me. Please, I’m asking you, don’t.”
I called fire in my hand.
Lewis grabbed my arm, but instead of fighting me power for power, as I’d expected, he yanked me close, pinning me against his body. Putting my palm directly against his chest.
“Please,” he said. There were tears in his eyes. “Jo, I know you’re in there somewhere.
Please stop.
”
“No,” I said, and let the fire go. It flamed through his shirt, charred his flesh.
And I felt
nothing.
Lewis let out a soft, agonized moan, but he didn’t let me go.
“I’ll kill you,” I growled, and I meant it. “Every one of you if I have to. But I’m taking this ship.”
“No.” Lewis grabbed my face in his hands and—kissed me. There was desperation in it, and fury, and pain, and anguish . . .
. . . and death.
I felt something go very, very wrong in my brain.
Click.
Lights going out. A burst of pain, of surprise, of
knowledge
. . .
Fail-safe. He’d put a fail-safe in my brain and he’d made me forget about it and now I’d forced him to trigger it, at long last.
“You’re not taking the ship,” Lewis whispered. I could hear him, and I could feel the fading sensation of his lips against mine. A benediction into the dark. “Good-bye, Jo. God, I loved you.”
Pain exploded through my nerves like flares. I couldn’t move, couldn’t blink, couldn’t take a breath.
Not fair, this shouldn’t hurt, death should be quick . . .
The fire sank deeper, bone-deep, as if my internal organs were charring and baking.
All the pain was on the inside, shimmering like lava. On the outside, I remained limp. Apparently, already gone.
What was keeping me here?
Lewis lowered me to the deck. I could sense what he was feeling. He was full of horror and guilt for what he’d done to me, even though he’d known that it was necessary. It was toxic in its intensity, truly shocking. I didn’t know how he could live with it.
Or if he could.
In the breathless silence, Cherise’s voice sounded very small. “What did you do to her?”
“I killed her,” Lewis said, and closed my eyes. I felt tears slide down my temples as he did—could the dead cry?—and felt his fingertips brush across my forehead in the old familiar gesture. “I
had
to kill her.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that.
Nobody spoke. Cherise pulled in a deep, trembling breath, then let it out in a rush. “You’re lying. She’s not
dead.
No way. Not Jo.”
One of the Earth Wardens who’d just wasted all that time and effort on healing me knelt down and pressed cool fingers to my neck, then bent over to listen to my chest. He checked my eyes, which were fixed and out of focus.
“She’s gone,” he said. “Christ, Lewis.”
“She’s not
gone,
” Cherise insisted. There was a rising tide of alarm in her voice. The river Denial, flooding its banks. “She can’t be
gone.
Check her again.”
“Cherise—” Kevin tried to head her off.
“No! Check her again!”
They did. One of the other Wardens even tried reviving me—pumping my chest, breathing for me.
My body was an inert lump of clay, and inside it my mind was shrieking, trapped and unable to get free.
“She’s gone,” Lewis repeated again dully, with a hitch of agony in his voice. He thought I was dead, I could feel that. Whatever was anchoring me here, in this dying shell, was something he couldn’t touch. “We have to let David say good-bye.”
“You can’t do that, man. He’ll kill you,” Kevin said. He sounded absolutely sure of it. “No. I’m not letting David anywhere near this. There’s no way he won’t rip us all into meat for doing this to her.”
“Give me the bottle.”