Revel (32 page)
I leaned on the shovel and waited for her. By this time she would have discovered that I had already destroyed the dry trapweed in the cellar too. My shoulders ached and the lump on the back of my head still throbbed from where I’d struck the door in Sean’s room. But the fierce anger that had kept me going was leeching away. I was exhausted and yearned for the cleansing feel of the water.
And to see Jax.
“You shouldn’t have walked all this way, Gran.”
“What have you done? Have you lost your mind?” Gran cried. She put a hand to her covered eye as she turned, looking
at the ruined field. “They’ll die without the trapweed! They’ll all die.”
“It’s an addicting drug. It’s turned Sean into something awful. And you’ve been helping.”
Gran slapped my face.
I reeled back from the sting of the blow.
“What do you know about love?” she cried. Her face crumpled in red blotches. “He’s out there. Charlie’s still out there. Counting on me.” She wrung her hands together and rocked her upper body back and forth as she paced along the edge of the field. “What’ll become of them?”
“You’re talking about my grandfather, right?” I held my throbbing cheek and straightened up. “Maybe he’s lived like an animal long enough.”
“No. Not an animal. He knows me still. Inside. I know he does.” Gran put a hand to the scar on her neck. “He just can’t control himself.”
I took a shaky breath. “I have to save Sean. This is the only way I know how.”
“And what about all the others? What gives you the right to kill them?”
“It won’t kill them!”
“You don’t know that,” she said in a grim voice. She strode into the smoking field of trapweed, stamping with her heavy shoes to put out the glowing embers, peering among the blackened vines. She was obviously looking for viable plants.
She bent down near the edge and lifted a leaf. It was still green.
I should have known I wouldn’t be able to eradicate all of it. Maybe this had been for nothing.
“You didn’t see him, Gran.” I broke off, tears blurring my vision like seawater never had. I pressed the balls of my hands to my eyes, trying to make them stop, but they wouldn’t. “He’s turned into something so ugly. It’s not even him anymore.”
Gran came to me, holding me tight and rubbing my back as I wept.
T
he Glauks went crazy.
They still came to the place where they’d been fed. After two days without trapweed the water roiled with their thrashing bodies. They were suffering from withdrawal—lack of trapweed had them tearing at their own flesh with their clawed fingers. It was painful to watch them. Even if I hadn’t known that those were human beings, their suffering was horrific.
I prayed for it to be over soon. Somehow.
Gran still went to the bluff every morning. And I made myself go too, partly as punishment for what I’d done, partly in hopes that some miraculous change would occur.
I stayed after Gran left, looking down at the Glaukos. Their eyes were trained on me with pain and pathetic hope
that I had the plants their bodies were screaming for. But I had nothing to give them.
It was true that a few frail plants had survived, but it would be weeks before Gran could cultivate enough to provide even a small amount of trapweed.
Down below I saw a black dog standing on some rocks, barking frantically at the water.
It was Buddy.
Sean came out of the water.
He stepped onto the rocks and strode quickly over to the path that climbed up to the bluff. I watched in horror, unable to move from the spot. He’d changed even more dramatically in the days since I’d last seen him. It didn’t seem possible but he was taller and much broader across his chest. He moved like a predator. Head forward, heavy muscles of his chest and arms tensed, prepared for conflict. His posture was stooped. Almost as if the massive enlargement of muscles in his torso was dragging him down.
His skin had darkened, and his hair was so thin his scalp showed through in patches of dark, roughened skin. But it wasn’t only the changes in his body.
I stared at him, searching for some glimpse of the boy I had met when I’d first come here.
“You stupid girl,” he said as he reached me. His voice was like sandpaper and his eyes glittered, unnaturally bright and wide. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You’ve put everyone here at risk.”
“I was trying to save you.”
Sean snarled, “Do I look like I need saving?” He struck a closed fist against his chest. “We protect this island. I’m not ashamed of what I am.”
“You’re sick, Sean. You need help. Maybe we could find a cure for this.”
He grinned, and the smile split his face into a leer. “You didn’t really want that guy I used to be.” He grabbed my arm in a grip that was too much like a wrestling move for comfort. “The nice guy.”
I wrenched away.
“Come on,” he said, his voice rasping with the increased rate of his breath. “You might like me better now.”
“Let go of me.”
“The trapweed made me strong. Maybe that’s what frightens you,” he said.
I was chilled to see the look of wary calculation in his eyes.
“You’re afraid that I’ll become as powerful as you, or Jax.”
He turned and raced away, moving amazingly fast, and dove off the bluff.
He fell, it seemed like forever, before cleaving the water. I lost sight of him.
He was gone, I thought. Off the edge of the world.
“There’s a break in the reef,” Ed Barney said later to the people who had gathered in the village square. The mayor of Trespass spoke with his chin jutting out and a look of
satisfied outrage on his face. “Just got word from the Council. A section of the Hundred Hands,” he barked, “twenty foot wide, busted right open. That’s how these things got through. And more coming. They’re swarming here like there’s some kind of a signal calling them.”
“How’d it happen?” demanded a voice from the crowd.
The mayor scowled. “I’ll tell you how. We got a traitor here. It’s her fault,” he said, looking accusingly at me. “Ever since she came here, there’s been trouble. You know what she is? She’s a siren. She seduces them with her voice. They can’t resist her. As long as she’s here, they’ll come.”
“That’s crazy,” I said. “I didn’t call the Icers. Why would I do that?”
“Why did she destroy all the trapweed?” demanded the mayor, throwing up his hands. He didn’t even address the question to me, but to the rest of the people. “It was the only way to control the Glauks. Now they’ve gone crazy. Even the First Ones won’t be able to handle them. They won’t be able to defend us, to fight off the Icers.”
“When this island needs our Glaukos most, this girl is killing them,” someone shouted.
“The Hands were our primary defense,” said another man. “If there’s a breach, there won’t be any stopping the Icers from attacking the island.” He turned to Ben Deare and asked, “Ben, have you seen it? Do you know how it happened?”
The old man adjusted his Red Sox cap, and his wrinkled face pleated up as he squinted. “Don’t know for sure. It
would’ve taken something mighty powerful to blow up stone coral like that.”
“Could a siren’s voice do it?” demanded Ed Barney.
Ben glanced at me. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I didn’t do it!” I said. But angry faces were turning toward me.
A hand gripped my elbow and pulled me back from the crowd.
“Delia, run,” said Gran in a low voice.
I ran.
I went to Wreck Beach, searching for Jax. It was getting dark now and I didn’t know where else to go. The villagers were afraid of the Icers, afraid of me; who knew what they would be capable of? I couldn’t go back to Gran’s house. There was no place to hide on this island where they couldn’t find me. The only place was the sea.
Fear slithered between my ribs like a snake, coiled around my heart and squeezed. In my terror there was only one thought that kept me sane, kept me hopeful.
Jax
.
I wanted Jax beside me.
“Delia.”
I spun around.
“Jax, thank God it’s you.” I ran into his embrace and felt the warmth and strength seep back into me. I burrowed my face beneath the angle of his jaw. “I don’t know where to go. Please help me.”
He held me close. “Shh. It’s all right. You’re safe,” he murmured. “I’m going to take her back.” I looked up at his face.
He was speaking to someone else. Someone behind me. I twisted in his arms.
“No!” said Jax. He gripped me tighter.
The blow snapped my head forward. The dark exploded in my head, transforming into bright red pain and then finally a gray dimness.
Somewhere in the gray I heard low voices. Only bits and pieces, very distant.
“… cannot be controlled … must be silenced … never be peace on this island while she …”
Then one phrase that I heard more clearly:
“You are the true leader of the Aitros, Jax. Now is the time to prove it.”
Then nothing.
C
onsciousness was just out of reach. It came to me slowly, letting in sharp little jabs of pain through a fuzzy cloud. My mouth felt swollen, and it hurt horribly when I tried to swallow.
I was aware of darkness and a cold pressure digging into my shoulder. Pushing up on one elbow, I felt around me. Bare, damp stone met my searching fingers but I couldn’t make out anything in the murky black. Where was I?
No, I did remember something. Jax had been there. Holding me. Then something had hit me from behind. His voice had been in my head, whispering in my ear. But after that, nothing. I winced at the pain in my mouth and tasted blood. I must have bitten my lip.
My fingers pressed against the moist rock, sensing the faint
vibrations of churning waves. The dank scent of trapped seawater wafted over me, and I heard the distant whistle of wind through a tunnel. I was somewhere deep underground, in the sea caves.
With a painful effort I tried to sit up but felt a scraping, rattling sound close to my ears, then the pull of something heavy on my wrists. In the darkness I touched them. Metal cuffs. Panic swelled in my chest as I yanked against them, testing the bonds. I was chained to the wall. I wriggled my feet. The same heaviness cut into my ankles.
Gradually, my eyes became accustomed to the dim light. I found a shard of stone on the ground, lifted it in two hands and scraped weakly at the wall. There must have been some glow stone in it; a faint gleam illuminated the space.
It was a dark, square room of stone, maybe ten feet in each dimension. The walls ran with streaks of evaporated salts and green slime. Small puddles of water pooled on the uneven floor.
I was more fully awake now. Something was wrong. My mouth throbbed and again I tasted the coppery tang of blood on my tongue. Heart pounding, I raised my fingers to my mouth. Something was—
“Ah. You’re awake.” A voice drifted through the darkness. “Good.”
I recognized that voice.
I tried to scream. The agonized cry began in my gut and swelled up through my chest, to my throat. Then it stopped.
I couldn’t open my lips. There was a tearing, searing agony when I tried to force them apart.
I pulled myself to a shallow puddle of water and saw my reflection.