Recruits (Keeper of the Water Book 2) (44 page)

BOOK THREE IN THE KEEPER OF THE

WATER TRILOGY

Within minutes, everything I’ve tried to accomplish the last seventeen years of my life has suddenly gone to waste. Cassie’s memory returned, though as far as I know, it’s been back for several days since she was kidnapped. There’s no point denying her past as Queen Isabella of Castille, though facts about her former life
not
known by history books are more significant to me. Cassie not only rejoined her alliance with the Queen Clan, she was also on her way to reclaim her role as Keeper of the Water. With humankind’s essence of life under her control, there was no telling the havoc she could reek on the world by using the water.

With the water
I
was sworn to protect. I don’t exactly have time to contemplate the big picture of what just happened if I plan on surviving. I may have failed the Amazons but I’m not the only one. Celeste – Cassie’s mother in this life and the woman formerly known as Cleopatra – also couldn’t keep the past from her and we both paid for our failure. An arrow sticks out of my shoulder, sending waves of painful agony ripping through my body; it’s not as bad as what happened to Celeste. Her own daughter shoved an arrow through her back before letting her body plunge off the swamp buggy and into the swamp.

The air in the Everglades is heavy and thick. The chorus of buzzing insects is louder than the groans of pain from the three people sprawled in the airboat around me. Each breath I take burns my lungs and as much sweat runs down my body as blood from my shoulder. But pain and discomfort aren’t enough to keep me down. I struggle to crawl to the side of the airboat, avoiding broken shards of the boat’s fan recently demolished by a dozen arrows fired by the queens.

Light from the moon doesn’t shine brightly but I try to search the water for any sign of where Celeste splashed down. But the only movement in the swamp water is a slight rippling of the swamp buggy’s wake. The vehicle roars off into the distance.

“We have to help Celeste,” I say, my voice not much louder than a whisper. It’s all the strength I can muster.

I suddenly see something near the surface, slight movement back and forth, back and forth, heading toward the area where Celeste splashed down. My heart sinks at the thought of gators rushing toward her body. These waters are infested with the beasts. They nearly got me several times since I started chasing after Cassie; I’m fairly certain one has torn apart John Leon, my boyfriend, the love of my life. I saw a burst of red in the water earlier where he fell in. The idea of the same beast getting Celeste
and
John enrages me.

Foolish as it is, I start climbing over the edge of the boat. I don’t know how to possibly stop a massive gator – and it may claim me as another meal in the process – but I can’t let it get to Celeste without trying to help. Before my fingertips even touch water, a pair of hands clamps around my ankles and pulls me back into the airboat. As I’m dragged back, the arrow imbedded in my shoulder bangs against the boat, sending white-hot stabs of pain shooting through me. I cry out in agony and for a moment can’t move. But that pain quickly turns to rage and I turn around, ready to fight whoever’s trying to stop me. But if the quick turn and resulting dizziness weren’t enough to slow me down, the look of concern on Amelia Earhart’s face stops me in my tracks.

“Don’t, Mentor, it’s too dangerous in your condition,” she groans. She should know a thing or two about being in bad shape; an arrow sticks out of her chest. If she’d been a normal person and not a thick-skinned, water-fueled Amazon, Amelia would’ve been long dead. Even
with
enhanced strength and toughness, I know there’s a chance my recruit could still die, that
I
could still die. “You’re in no condition to fight off predators at the moment.”

I
hate
being told what I can and can’t do; tell me I can’t do something and I’ll try to do it just to prove you wrong. In the back of my mind, I know Amelia is looking out for my best interests. But it’s hard to sacrifice my self-pride – as well as give up on Celeste, the woman who’d been my Keeper more than a hundred years – since I was foolish enough to lead everyone I loved into an ambush.

It also doesn’t help to hear chuckling nearby, though that sound is mixed with just as much gurgling. Jack Fawcett coughs and blood spatters from his mouth; his laughter stops abruptly, his eyes still burning with hatred. I can’t believe he’s lived this long.

“Let her tangle with the alligator,” Jack moans between coughing fits. “Unless she
wants
Celeste to die.”

I know what Jack’s doing, I know he wants me in even more danger. Though Cassie also played him for a sucker, Jack had a big role in luring us into the middle of the swamps, where he hoped to kill every Amazon. Though I saved his life nearly a hundred years ago, he still blames the other Amazons and me for tearing his family apart, for stealing his father.

But before he’d been able to hurt me, Amelia shot him with an arrow. Amelia and I may have suffered life-threatening wounds but we still have a chance to survive. There’s no doubt in my mind that Jack
will
die from his; the arrow impaled his chest, the tip sticking out of his back. That’s the difference between being shot by someone from the Queen Clan and being shot by someone with bow skills taught by me. Still, Jack somehow clings to life and seems determined to torture me until his last breath.

I consider speeding along that process – twisting the arrow in his chest until his heart stops would be satisfying – but that’s only the anger talking. I’ve never been so cruel as to torture someone, even an enemy. Besides, the longer I allow him to distract me, the less likely I am to save Celeste. I shake out of Amelia’s grip and head toward the water again.

“Nia, stop,” another voice pleads, this one much weaker than Amelia’s. But I don’t turn around, knowing that if I do, she might be able to stop me. “Zannia, please… Sacajawea.”

The name stops me in my tracks. It’s the first time my mother has ever called me that and hearing her say it leaves me unexpectedly sad. My memory has been returning for weeks, dreams and recollections of my past as one of America’s most well known women. It’s still hard to accept that I was once her – that I’m
still
her – but hearing my mother call me that makes it realer. I slowly turn and look at Katina, whose face is pale and covered in a sheen of sweat. An arrow sticks out of her side and blood spreads across her shirt but her wound isn’t in as bad a spot as mine or Amelia’s. But as she looks into my eyes, her face skews in pain and I don’t think it’s purely physical. Calling me by my
real
name must have the same meaning for her as it does for me.

Zannia Ammo was never real. The last seventeen years were a farce. My father from
this
life is dead, as is my current existence. Katina will always hold a place in my heart as the woman that raised me during my
second
childhood but in reality, she is my distant granddaughter and it’s time
I
start worrying about
her
.

“Please, Sacajawea,” she says. “Celeste is gone. You must try to save…” She stops and grimaces, her face growing paler by the moment, her breaths coming in ragged gasps. “…try to save yourself now.”

I look back to the area of swamp where Celeste’s limp body plunged. The water is once again calm, flat, not the slightest trace of movement. As much as Katina has been a mother figure to me in this life, Celeste was just as important during my hundred-plus years as an Amazon. She bestowed upon me the job of Keeper, the most important duty an Amazon could fulfill for Mother Earth. Therefore, it sickens me to accept the truth, which my mind knows is real though my heart doesn’t want to believe.

Celeste is dead. Cassie plunged an arrow through her back and must’ve pierced her heart in the process. Amazons are difficult to kill; drinking the water of life gives us strength and powers a normal human could never imagine. But we
can
die from a bad enough wound, a fact that’s taken several of my Amazonian sisters through the years. As much as I hate to admit it to myself, I know Celeste was gone
before
she ever hit the water. Her body had gone completely limp when she fell from Cassie’s swamp buggy; nothing I can do will help her now.

But that’s not the case for three of us in the airboat. Losing Celeste makes it even more important to save Katina. I turn away from the water, focusing on life rather than death.

“What are we going to do?” I ask.

The Queen Clan made sure to shoot enough arrows at our airboat’s fan to render it useless. We’re miles from the mainland and sure to bleed out if we wait here for help to stumble across us. Making matters worse, the waters are teeming with more beasts. I may not be able to see them but I sense gators lurking nearby, ready to swallow anyone foolish enough to get into the water.

I no sooner think this when there’s another bump against the side of the airboat. I’m so woozy on my feet that it nearly knocks me over. I wonder if it’s the same gator that finished off John when he fell into the swamp. A surge of anger explodes within me and I wish I had the strength to kill it.

“We’re all gonna die,” Jack mutters, his eyes becoming unfocused, as if watching something in the distance. “I might not have destroyed all the Amazons, but at least Queen Cassie seems destined to do just that. I only wish I could live long enough to see it happen, though at least I’ll get to see you three die…”

“The water,” Katina whispers.

“But we don’t have any,” Amelia says.

“Neither did Celeste when she saved John,” my mother says.

The mention of Celeste
and
John stings me doubly. But I remind myself to put those feelings aside; I
must
save my recruit, my mother, myself. More importantly, I have to stop Cassie, who’s already had too much of a head start. I recall the incident Katina refers to: when John was close to dying before, Celeste rowed him upriver of our former house and brought him to a spring that had once been the water of life’s home. There’d been just enough life force remaining in the water source to heal John’s wounds and save his life.

I suddenly realize what my mother is trying to tell me. I look through the airboat’s busted fan at the other side of the swamp. At the time of the Queen Clan’s ambush, we just entered a long inlet in the middle of the swamp. Surrounded on three sides by raised strips of land, water at the end of this inlet is unlike anything else in the swamp. The rest of the water is murky and muddy and dark in the night but the faintest glow of blue swirls at the end, the faintest sparkle of light glistens. I don’t know if the water over there can save us but it’s the best chance we’ve got – the
only
chance we’ve got.

There’s more splashing in the water nearby and another bump against the side of our boat. I don’t know how many gators surround us but it’s only a matter of time before they attack the flimsy fiberglass hull. The thought creeps into my mind of the beasts eating John but I push that idea away. There’ll be plenty of time for mourning later – if I’m lucky enough to
have
a later. The brighter water is about a hundred feet away but it may as well be a hundred miles.

“We can get there,” I say weakly, more to motivate myself than the others.

“Why don’t you jump in and try swimming over?” Jack rasps. How can such a vindictive jerk be the son of the loving man I was proud to call my father?

I struggle to my feet. My head spins and it’s tough to stop from swaying. Standing causes more blood to ooze from my arrow wound but I’m not bleeding as much as Katina. I pick up my bow and kneel by the side of the boat. Despite the excruciating pain, I lean over the side and dig the end of my bow into the swamp floor, careful to stay balanced while looking out for gators. I push on top of the bow with all my agonizing strength, moaning as I slowly turn the airboat.

By the time we’re halfway to facing the water source, I’m sapped of energy. It’s awkward trying to move with an arrow in my shoulder and it doesn’t help that I have difficulty breathing, too. Though the arrow sticking out of Amelia is closer to her heart, she summons the strength to help turn us all the way around. Another bump pushes her off balance and I grab her before she plunges over the side.

“Be careful, Recruit,” I whisper to her. “The gator is still out there.”

Amelia nods and I help her to the other side of the boat. A pile of shards from the busted fan litters the boat floor and I grab the biggest one I can find, which I thrust in Amelia’s hand. She’s in no position to help but I’m out of options; my mother’s breathing has become raspier and her eyelids flutter. Me using my bow and Amelia using her shard, we try paddling to no avail. It grows so desperate that I risk putting my hands in the water, trying to propel us forward. But the boat is too big and we hardly budge; we accomplish nothing more than draining ourselves of energy.

“Let me help,” my mother says though her eyes are already rolling into the back of her head.

She struggles to stand but doesn’t make it halfway up before her eyes close and she collapses, landing near Jack’s feet. The only good thing is that she lands on the side opposite where the arrow sticks out of her so she doesn’t make her wound worse. Still, Jack begins to laugh, which enrages me. I rush over to help my mother and
mistakenly
bump into the arrow sticking out of his chest. Jack’s laughter changes to groaning but it only makes me feel worse.