The Dark Shore (Atlanteans) (46 page)

Authors: Kevin Emerson

After a minute, Lilly asked, “Do we leave him here?”

“No,” I said. I wasn’t sure what we should do, but then I remembered something Seven had said.

“Let’s give him to the sea,” I said. “To Chaac, or whatever.”

Lilly nodded. She looked at the rusted lock on the chains around the chair legs. “Bet I can pop that with my knife.” She went inside.

I looked at Leech. All his shaking still, his features plastic somehow, without the energy of life behind them. I half-expected him to move again, to reanimate like a horror of the cryo lab, but this wasn’t something Paul had done. This was natural. Just death. Sad, and yet merciful compared to what we’d seen.

Lilly got the lock off. We used one length of chain to tie Leech in place. We lugged the chair up over the railing, leaning it down until his feet touched the water, then we slid him in. The chair thunked into the water. For a moment it floated, bobbing out over the waves, and then it began to sink, down into the gray water. First Leech’s torso, then his head slipped under, and finally his feet.

There was a shadow of him, like a creature of the deep, and then he was gone.

We watched the waves for a minute and held hands. I heard Lilly crying. Then she turned and left. She came back holding the small silver drive, the messages from her parents. “I don’t want to see these again. My memories are enough.” She flicked it into the sea. The flash attracted a seagull, who swooped overhead.

I held up my arm and looked at the leather bracelet, the one I’d made for my dad. When I hadn’t known . . . I wondered if I’d ever know whether my parents were alive, or when and where they’d died.

I unsnapped it. Thought I’d bury it here, too. But then I stopped.

“Um,” I said. I fiddled with the bracelet and then held it out to Lilly. “There’s no romantic story behind this. I made it for my dad. I was going to throw it in the water because it just reminds me of what I didn’t know. But . . . it would be different if you wore it.”

“I’m interested to see where you go with this,” said Lilly, but she took the bracelet, turning it over in her fingers.

“Well, like, maybe you could be my memory. You’re everything good that I want to remember, everything I’ve got that isn’t broken. I’m not ready to let go of my parents, my sister, but . . . could you just take it?”

Lilly smiled. She turned the bracelet over, then snapped it onto her wrist. “I’ll be your memory, Owen Parker,” she said, and kissed me left of my mouth. She pointed to the symbol, the mark of Atlantis I’d etched in the leather. “And I’ll be your partner getting here, too. And if you promise not to let anymore leggy blondes get between us, I’ll promise to tell you when I hear weird music from skulls and stuff.”

“It’s a deal,” I said.

We hugged, letting our breaths align. It felt safe, being in each other’s close space. Then we pulled away and watched the sea for a while.

As the sun began its daily burn, we rose from the sunken building top. At first, the ship felt light, and I had to adjust my flying. It was quiet, too, without our third, Carey from Inland Haven—
That’s bloodsucker to you, mammal!—
another who would live on in our journey, the list growing longer. Leech, who’d freed me from a life of lies, and who I could only repay by finishing this.

I checked his maps in my head, wondering again why I could, what I really was, what the Terra meant by what she said . . . but we would find out.

“Any sign of Eden?” Lilly asked.

I scanned the sky. “Not yet. But I’m sure there will be.”

I caught the wind and we started south, over jungle shadow and purple sea. Once the sun was high, we stopped in the shade of a cluster of palm trees that had sprung up among the coastal wreckage, and in the evening we set off again, on until Venus appeared and shepherded her flock of stars out to play in the night sky.

We flew, and flew, Lilly and I trading turns flying and sleeping, and we stopped to eat and hide from the sun, and we even played cat and mouse with the moonlit wave tops at times.

Night became day, became night, and we barely spoke, silent with memory, silent with fear, but there was no distance. Only us, heading south, always south, toward the Andes, and the beginning of the end.

About the Author

PHOTO BY LAURIE CLARK PHOTOGRAPHY

KEVIN EMERSON
is the author of
The Lost Code: Book One of the Atlanteans, The Fellowship for Alien Detection
, the Oliver Nocturne series, and
Carlos Is Gonna Get It
. He is also a musician and has most recently released two albums with his band, the Board of Education. A former science teacher, Kevin lives in Seattle and teaches writing to teens through Writers in the Schools, Richard Hugo House, and 826 Seattle.

You can visit Kevin online at www.kevinemerson.net.

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Also by Kevin Emerson

THE LOST CODE: BOOK ONE OF THE ATLANTEANS

Credits

Copyright

Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

THE DARK SHORE: BOOK TWO OF THE ATLANTEANS
. Copyright © 2013 by Kevin Emerson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Emerson, Kevin.

The dark shore : book two of The Atlanteans / Kevin Emerson. — 1st ed.

p. cm. — (The Atlanteans ; bk. 2)

Summary: On the run from EdenWest, Owen, Lilly, and Leech cross North American deserts seeking Atlantis and find a third Atlantean, the wild child Seven, who is goddess of the Heliad-7 death cult in Yucatan.

ISBN 978-0-06-206282-6 (hardcover bdgs)

EPub Edition April 2013 ISBN 9780062062840

[1. Science fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Goddesses—Fiction. 4. Environmental degradation—Fiction. 5. Atlantis (Legendary place)—Fiction. 6. Yucatán (Mexico : State)—Fiction. 7. Mexico—Fiction.] I. Title.