Coiled Snake (The Windstorm Series Book 2) (30 page)

But the Yakone must not realize their ambassador is below them, because they don’t stop firing into the water and Rye is forced to dive out of sight. The Yakone continue to send shots into the sinkhole, aiming them in every direction.

I take a deep breath and dive back under the water, kicking toward my siblings’ hideout. I surface in time to see Mokai lean out of the cave and hurl his spear at the nearest Yakone. Incredibly, the spear lands in her chest.

But now the Yakone know where they are.

A blast of bullets rains down on them, and I see Kai stumble back into the cave.

“No!” I scream. I grab the
patu
from my belt and hurl it upward. I miss the Yakone, but I’ve caught their attention. They turn their fire on me, and I dive again.

I emerge near the edge of the sinkhole. Bullets are striking the water everywhere.

I see Rye surface a few feet away from me. I move toward him and clutch his arm. “Get in the cave!” I yell. “Help Hana!”

He starts to protest, but I shove my handgun in his face. “Get up there, Rye, or I swear I’ll shoot you.”

He clenches his jaw and his green eyes drill into mine. But I don’t move my gun, and he strikes out for the cave. Once he starts climbing the rocks, I turn around and look for the Yakone.

When I spot them, I replace my handgun in its holster and pull Paika’s knife out of its sheath. I shove the knife between my teeth. Then I begin to climb up the sinkhole wall.

The muscles in my arms and back strain as I pull myself slowly out of the sinkhole, but I don’t stop. So far, the Yakone haven’t seen me.

As I come up below them, I grip a handful of the tuberous vines and take a deep breath. Then, moving quickly, I pull the knife from my mouth and jam it into the nearest Yakone’s leg. He screams in pain. Before I lose my advantage, I twist my body around, pull the handgun out of my holster, and shoot across my chest at the second Yakone.

The third warrior sprays the air with bullets, but the darkness shields my position. I duck back into the thick roots before he gets lucky. He shoots again. Misses. I swing out of my hiding spot. Aim my pistol and fire. He goes down.

Suddenly, a large shape looms above me. The first Yakone. He grabs me by the hair. I fire my gun, but he rips it from my grasp. With seconds left before he kills me, I reach for my knife protruding from his leg and twist it.

The man screams and slips in the mud, tumbling over the lip of the sinkhole, pulling me down with him. The weight of his body smacks me against the water and forces us deep.

The man gets his hands around my throat. Fingers dig into my skin. Squeezing. Squeezing. I can’t breathe.

Suddenly, a shot cracks our ears, and the man’s shoulders slacken. His hands go limp. I pull free.

As I move out from under him, I see the glint of Paika’s jade knife. I yank it out of the man’s shin and paddle to the surface. Then I swim frantically toward Mokai and the others.

As I pull myself up toward their cave, the barrel of a rifle is suddenly thrust into my face.

“It’s me!” I shout.

Hana pulls back the gun, and I crawl into their hideout.

“The Yakone?” she asks.

“Dead.”

Hana nods and gestures for me to follow her. As we crawl forward in the darkness, the howling of the wind begins to soften behind us.

“The cave goes back a fair way,” Hana explains, flicking on a flashlight. “Might as well weather out the storm here. Besides, Kai’s been shot in the ankle.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s okay. For now.” A line forms between her eyebrows.

We reach the others. Maisy and Mokai are stretched out on the floor of the cave, both of their legs wrapped. Jack crouches next to Maisy. Past them, I see Rye, kneeling beside Yingo. He looks up as we approach. There’s a fury in his face I’ve never seen before.

“Yingo’s dead,” he announces.

“Bloody hell,” Hana says, slamming her rifle on the rock floor. “So much for our bleeding mission.”

Kai looks devastated. “What? How?”

“You were so busy taking care of his foot,” Rye spits, “that you didn’t bother to check anyone else.”

“Nice try blaming this on me!” Hana yells. “It was your rotting friends that did him in!”

“If you had let me talk to them, I could have prevented it!” Rye counters.

“Like hell!”

“How did they find us in the first place?” Kai asks. “In this storm? It’s not even their territory.”

A terrible thought forms in my mind. “Holy crap,” I breathe. “I’ve been so stupid.” I grab Rye’s arm and look down at his wrist, but nothing’s there. “Where is it?” I demand.

“Where’s what?”

“Your Quil.”

“I don’t have it.”

I pull Paika’s wet knife from my belt and hold it to his neck. “Don’t lie to me. You led them straight to us!”

“Go ahead,” Rye says. “Cut my throat. I only did it to save Yingo, and now he’s dead. So are half of the people I brought with me.”

“Give it to me, Rye,” I shout.

“I’m sick of playing nice,” Hana interrupts, joining us. She steps forward, shoves Rye against the wall of the cave, and searches him.

“What’s this?” she asks, removing several small leather pouches from a pocket in his pant leg.

“That’s personal,” Rye says.

“We’ll see about that. Ah, here we go.” She triumphantly removes the Quil from another pocket.

“Destroy it,” I say.

Hana throws the Quil on a rock and smashes it with the butt of her rifle again and again until the device is crushed. “Now can we kill him?” she asks.

I hesitate. “We’ll vote on it,” I say, avoiding Rye’s gaze. “What do you think, Kai?”

But before he can answer, a quiet voice says, “I vote no.” I twist my neck around to look at Maisy. She’s propped herself up with her elbows, and even in the gloom of the cave I can tell her face is deathly pale.

“I vote no, too,” Jack says quickly.

“Who are these kids, anyway?” Hana asks. “They don’t get a vote.”

“They get a vote,” Kai says. “They’re … Kit’s siblings.”

“Bloody
pueha
!” Hana swears looking at both of us. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Wasn’t time,” I mutter. I glance at Rye. He’s staring at me too, his expression impossible to decipher.

“Fine,” Hana growls. “Two, against. I vote for. Kai?”

Kai hesitates. “We could use the help carrying Maisy, but we’re low on food. So I vote we kill him too. Not that it matters,” he adds. “We’re all dead anyway. We’ll have to hide in here until the storm’s over, and by then it will be too late.”

“Figures,” Hana says. “The one day we need good weather, we get buggered by a bleeding hurricane.”

Her words remind me of something Julian said last night.
It’s not even the wet season.
And then I remember something Miri told me a long time ago, in what seems like another person’s life.

“Isn’t it kind of strange,” I say slowly, “that the storm didn’t start until we broke into the prison?”

“What are you saying?” Kai asks.

“What if … what if it wasn’t a coincidence?”

“You think it was a talker?” Hana says in a hushed voice.

Rye coughs. “Talker?” he scoffs. “
Wind
talker? You know those don’t exist, right?”

“Shut up, you! Just because your tribe has abandoned the old ways, doesn’t mean we all have,” Hana snaps.

“You’re telling me you think one person has conjured this entire hurricane?”

I have to admit it sounds crazy. The kind of control that would require is mind-boggling. And yet, there’s something not quite natural about what’s going on here.

“Okay,” Mokai says. “Say a talker is behind it. That means we’re even worse off than we were before. She’ll just keep it up until we starve to death. Or get crushed by more trees. The only way to stop it would be to kill her, but we don’t know where she is.”

He’s right. Even if I dared to test my own small abilities against her, it would be a pointless endeavor. I know from painful experience how unruly the wind is during a storm, how impossible to control. All I’ve managed to do is squelch whatever hope we had left.

“So we have two for and two against,” Hana says, bringing the conversation back to Rye’s fate. “Your call, Kit.”

My call.
I dig my hand into the pouch around my neck to hold my
hiri
. But instead of my necklace, my fingers close around Mokai’s tiki pendant. I’m startled to find it’s still warm.

Baffled, I pull the stone pendant out of my pocket and study it. The jade seems greener than it did before, almost as if it’s glowing, and when I close my fist around it, I feel a deep calm settle throughout my body—like when I form
honga
, only weightier somehow. Earthier.

With the comparison in my mind, I reach out to the wind. I’m surprised to discover that not only can I can feel the currents with a sharp precision, but the frantic doubts that were plaguing me only a moment ago have been replaced with total peace. My fear gone, I can see the wind a hundred times more clearly than usual. And not just the currents slipping into our shelter. All of it, all around us.

“Kit?” Hana presses.

But I’m not listening to her. Her concern seems so inconsequential, nothing compared to what I’m suddenly experiencing.

I close my eyes, the way Miri taught me, and it’s as if I enter a higher level of consciousness. Even without sight, I see the wind everywhere. I know exactly where the warm air is rising, leaving pockets behind to be filled by the cycling currents. Where the air circles through the storm before cooling and sinking back to the earth. Where the rain bands form around the eye. Where the violent eyewall tears up the forest. Where the spiraling arms of the cyclone spin out across the jungle. I see how an aberration in the tradewinds is feeding the storm, sending it more water from the ocean so it won’t die on the land. So it can keep us trapped.

Maybe there’s still hope. Maybe, with this new understanding, I can do something to stop it. I concentrate on seeing the storm, how it operates. The winds revolve around a low-pressure center. A core of warm air cycling upward.

It’s big. Frighteningly so. I never imagined a storm of this scale would be possible. I can tell that the hurricane has been building for days. Whoever’s controlling it has been getting it ready long before we attacked the convoy.

Despite the calming warmth the jade pendant is pumping into my chest, I feel my hopes sink yet again. How can I attempt to match the windtalker’s ability?

The memory of my earlier failure slices my confidence further. I couldn’t save anyone then. What makes me think I can save anyone now? The size of this cyclone makes my amateur attempts to influence the wind look like the flapping of butterfly wings beside the turbines of a supersonic jet.

Butterfly wings.

That’s it!
The peace in my chest rushes to fill my whole body, washing away my doubts for good.

“I can stop it,” I announce.

“What?” Hana asks.

“I can stop it,” I repeat. “Wait here.” I turn around and begin to crawl out of the cave.

I hear Kai call after me, “Kit, are you out of your—”, but by then the wind is screaming in my ears, and I can’t hear him.

For the second time, I climb up the rock wall, choking on the heavy rain gushing down my mouth and nose.

When I reach the top of the sinkhole, I stand on the rim and clutch Mokai’s tiki figure. The whirling twigs and stones leave welts on my face and neck, the lashing rain obscures my sight, the shrieking wind overpowers all other sounds, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to feel or see or hear. With the jade pendant in my hand, I am completely calm. And I know exactly what I need to do to disarm the cyclone.

It’s simple really. I don’t have to take control of the storm. I don’t have to overpower it with a new system. I just have to make one small move.

Gripping the pendant and keeping my eyes sealed shut, I reach out to the wind.
One current
, I think.
All I need is a single current.

“
Tūtira mai katoa katoa
,” I sing loudly, drawing on the strength of my tribe, on the people below me, on those who gave their lives today. “
Tātu e tātu e
.”

There’s no such thing as a lone breeze.

In my mind, I sort through the winds that are spinning through the jungle. I find one near the outside of the cyclone, furthest from the eye’s pull, and latch on. I let it continue spinning for a moment without disturbing its present course, and then, when it begins to loop back to the center, I strike. Tugging on the current with all of my mental power, I direct it straight at the center of the storm.

“
Tātu e tātu e
.”

The wind speed at the core’s base is currently matching the speed at its pinnacle, powering the spinning motion of the hurricane. All I need to do is disrupt the continuum. By manipulating this single current, I can shift the heat engine away from the center, displace the source of power. The cyclone will be crippled.