Thunder: The Shadows Are Stirring (Thunder Stories Book 1) (38 page)

 “Guys, maybe you can decide who’s gonna protect who
after
we get rid of the things?” Maddix’s taut voice brings me back.

The four amphibians move easily, almost like they’re swimming towards us through the mud. That gives me a desperate idea. The mud. I drop down and smear all my exposed skin with a thick layer of the stuff, shouting at Olivia and Maddix to do the same. The coating makes it hard to grip my sword, but it’ll have to do. The mud should put some amount of barrier between our flesh and their acidic skin. I leap back up and charge. This time Olivia lets me by and she is already shooting off another arrow. But I hear her call out behind me.

“You are absolutely infuriating, Ethan Shea Stone! You’d better stay alive enough so I can kick your rear when this is over.”

I bite back a laugh and, imitating Maddix, yell, “Yeah. If that makes you feel better.”

The kid is right behind me and together we whoop into battle.

“Go for the tails and tongues, if you can,” I holler to Maddix, over the drumming rain. “Then, go for the neck; we’ve got to take out their defenses first.” The kid is little and quick, even in the slippery muck we’re running through.

The red guy rears his body and stands on his two back legs, and I decide on a direct attack; with my blades swinging, I charge into claws, teeth, and poisonous tongue. I can feel my skin burning as my sword runs him through and I slam my shoulder against the thing’s belly, but I ignore it as I slice my sword up and out. He’s gutted but, before he collapses, he lashes out with his tail and knocks me down.

A smaller purple guy, maybe eight feet long, takes advantage of the opportunity and pounces onto my chest. I position my knife and have just enough time to slice through its tongue as it flicks from his mouth. The beast rears up in pain, allowing me to roll from underneath him and come back down with my sword. Warm blood drips to the ground and I watch in alarm as the mud where it lands hisses and blisters. Shoist. I scramble back, sliding through the mud, and run into Maddix, who’s backpedalling from a green salamander with an arrow protruding from the soft underside of its neck.

As its tail swings around to flatten Maddix, I slice upwards. My blade catches and stutters through the slimy hide. The tail thumps to the ground, twitching but bloodless. I’d forgotten salamanders could detach their own tails, but at least it can’t use it to attack us anymore.

Sensing movement from behind, I flip and spin, blades flashing in the rain. I land on the back of a yellow ten-footer. It bucks and twists, trying to dislodge me, but I grip tight with my legs and stab repeatedly until my thighs feel too burned to stay still. I jump off, purposely sliding through more of the brown muck for another coating. I don’t see him fall, but sense that one more is down for the count.

Hearing a scream, I whip around in time to see Maddix fall. His dagger is inserted to the hilt within the chest of the fourth salamander, which is beginning to drop back down to all fours. A vivid blue, it’s easy to see the streaming blood flow down its abdomen and pool to the ground; Maddix had been too slow to pull away and his hand is drenched in red. I swear and dive for him. There are two beasts left and both are wounded. And mad.

Olivia holds them off for us, launching arrow after arrow through the air. The blue guy collapses and I rip off my jacket and satchel and grab Maddix’s right arm, noting his eyes are rolling back in his head. I force myself to be calm as I use the soft inside of my jacket to wipe the blood from the boy’s fist. Thick layers of skin peel back with it, and bile rises in my throat as I see the gleam of white bone. Maddix’s screams turn to muted wails of agony and he passes out. Everything is smeared with mud and streaming water, and I can no longer tell which blood belongs to the salamander and which is Maddix’s own. Making a quick decision, I take his fist, which is little more than a ravaged stump, and cake it in fresh mud hoping the moisture can soothe it until I can get to the ointments.
God in heaven, help this kid
, I murmur under my breath.

“Ethan! Behind you!”

Jerking around, still holding onto Maddix’s limp body, I see that the one remaining salamander, the purple guy, is running straight towards us with about five of Olivia’s arrows quivering from its sides. Olivia herself is slogging just a couple strides behind. I hastily set the poor kid back down; I’ve got to draw the salamander’s attention to me. Though weaponless, I am fully coated in mud. I sprint towards my fate, planning on a barehanded attack, when I slip and probably end up saving my life.

Sliding headfirst towards the thing, my fingers claw through the sludge, attempting to slow myself down. Instead, my fingers graze along one of our dropped knives, indiscernible in the mud. I grasp for the hilt and heft it up, right as the salamander jumps for me. Remembering Maddix’s condition, I’m already rolling away by the time the knife sinks deep into its chest. As it hits the ground next to me, I’m shocked to see that Olivia is on top of the thing, her little dagger imbedded into the side of its head where an ear would be if it had them. She falls heavily from its back and scrabbles to her feet. I’m right with her as we fly to Maddix’s side.

The ground trembles and the sky unleashes a torrential rain so complete we can barely see three feet ahead of us. But the situation goes from bad to worse when we realize Storm is at Maddix’s side.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Staying Whole

(OLIVIA)

O
H FRAP
. My heart forgets to beat and my lungs don’t remember what air is. Storm’s here—without my brothers. Which means one thing. My body starts to shake and it takes all my concentration to kneel down at Maddix’s side. I try to focus on what’s right in front of me, try to keep my brain calm, try to keep my words soft. Storm’s a young kid and he’s just faced a trauma of his own. The rain is coming down in sheets and it obscures my vision, but I can feel the heat of Ethan’s hand against the small of my back as he crouches next to me. He understands what I’m thinking.

I concentrate on the strength he offers and manage to chatter out between clattering teeth, “Storm, honey, we’ll need your help soon. Are you up for traveling again? We’re going to fix up Maddix, but he needs to be taken away from here.” Storm opens his fuzzy maw to interrupt, but I forestall him with a raised palm. “I know. You’ve got a ton to tell us. We’ll listen to your story after we’ve worked on Maddix. Then, you two need to get out of here. Get to wherever he comes from. I think he said it was the Forests, near a place called Hunter’s Grove, with a bear named Oden? You’ll be safe there, too. Okay? We’ll make sure you’re both safe.”

Though he nods in agreement, Storm could very well be in shock. We’ll have to deal with that, too. Meanwhile, Ethan has already begun to work on Maddix. I dig out a spare blanket and some food and try to situate Storm on a hastily spread tarp.

“Eat and rest first,” I tell him. He needs to feel safe, but this is the best I can offer right now. I turn back to the situation with Maddix.

Ethan has pulled out our last clean spider shirt and has tied it tourniquet-style around Maddix’s forearm. The wound, which still bleeds heavily, is mud-caked. While Ethan pulls more supplies from his bag, I take Maddix’s limp arm and rinse it in the clear water of a giant puddle right next to us. At this point, the rain decides to let up.

Working together in silent horror, we pour on antiseptic, goop on Jamie’s healing ointments, and slip medicines between his deathly pale lips. We wrap his hand, up to the tourniquet, with the bandages from Lispeth Keyes. There’s no way we can regenerate all that was lost but, hopefully, this will be enough to stem the blood flow, seal the remaining skin, and perhaps save a finger or two.

I want to swear and kick and scream. The kid has already lost both his parents! Now, he’s maybe losing his entire hand? Where’s the fairness in that? He’d been training as a Healer; I wonder how this injury will affect him and his goals, since he’d been right handed.

Grimly, I take in the scene around me. The beasts were not Sliders; their corpses lie where they fell, sending up bubbles and steam where their poison leaks into the soggy ground. We’ve placed Maddix on the tarp next to Storm, who curls against him. A comfort for them both.

We’d dosed Maddix with some sleep meds from Ethan’s bag—we’d never replaced the vial the bull had eaten from mine—and we’d bundled both youngsters in all the dry clothes and blankets we could find. Ethan and I are still soaked through, covered in streaks of mud, spatters of muck. The forearms of my jacket sleeves are eaten away in spots, where blood from the arrow wounds must have spattered me when I’d jumped on the last salamander’s back. My palms are raw, but the mud worked well as a barrier from their toxic skin.

“Livs?” Ethan’s breath whispers across my cheek and I startle at his closeness. Drowning in my thoughts, I hadn’t been aware of him approaching me.

Mutely, I turn and open my arms; he draws me in and holds me tight, pressing his face into the crook of my neck. Again, I feel a flooding warmth tingle throughout my body. And I have to calm my brain for entirely different reasons. I am the first to let go, stand back. He half grins down at me.

“Still feel the need to kick me around?”

I huff and bump him with my shoulder. “Maybe a little.” Pressing my palm against my chest I gripe, “My heart can’t handle all of this. There’s way too much going on in there.” Heat rises in my cheeks. I hadn’t meant that quite how it sounded. Well, not exactly. Maybe.

Ethan clears his throat and I glance at him from the corner of my eye, embarrassed. He, on the other hand, gives me a full-faced smile that sparks the green in his eyes. Immediately, I am blinded by the full charm that is Ethan. Catching my breath, I will myself to blend in with my mud streaks. Get a grip, girl. Without a word, Ethan takes my hand and walks me to the boys. My heart stutters. But that’s because we have some hard truths to face. Right?

Sitting on the tarp, I maneuver Maddix’s head to rest in my lap. If he’d been aware of it, he may not have liked the babying—Jamie certainly wouldn’t have; but I do. I feel myself relaxing with every stroke of my fingers across his forehead, over his short curly hair.

Storm is flopped over Ethan’s legs, very much like an oversized and worried kitten. Gone is their playful teasing I’d observed on the night of our first Circle. Ethan’s face is somber. Storm’s whiskers are drooping. There’s too much ‘sad’ in the air. I steel myself inwardly for what I’m about to hear. I know what to expect, which helps, but doesn’t make it easy.

Storm’s story is quick. He tells us about the ape-like monsters, a guy named Nicholas who helped send them in the right direction, and the People of the Wind with the injured girl. How Jamie used his feathers to help her; how the People pledged to help us in return. He speaks of the boys’ attempt to reach us, how they’d been surrounded by these same type of lizard things—here he pauses and glances over to the salamander’s inert bodies. With a visible shudder, he continues. When it had become obvious to the boys that they were not going to be able to defend themselves, Sam had shouted for Storm to run, to find us. To make no stops for any reason. It took him a little while to track us down, but finally he picked up on the right currents. And here he is. But he doesn’t know where my brothers were taken, or if they’re still alive.

I’ve dreaded learning about what truths my dreams had held. Now, I’ve got the knowledge whether or not I’m ready to face it. The boys have got to be in the Volcanoes, the land of the People of the Flame. And they
are
alive. For now anyway. It wouldn’t make sense for the Flame People to kill them right off; it’s much worse for all of us to know they are being tortured. But even this gives me strength because it gives me something to fight for, something to be willing to die for. I will not fail and my brothers are getting home. In my head, I send them a cool and steady healing hand. I surround them with my love. And I offer them all of my hope. They can’t give up on hope.

“Storm, you did an amazing job,” I praise him. “What you went through was scary, and you made the right choice to listen to Sam. Now, we know for sure what happened to my brothers and we’ll come up with a plan to help them.” I avoid Ethan’s eye; he can read me too well. I explain to Storm what we’re going to need him to do, making sure he knows to wait for word from Thunder before going anywhere else, after getting to Oden’s camp.

Massaging my temples, I try to emanate nonchalance. This entire leg of our journey I’ve been feeling ill, with a twisting pain running through the core of me. I’d assumed, when we’d come across the salamanders, that it was due to them. But I’d been wrong. Even now I can feel it, along with a pull to move forward. My eyes shift up to Ethan and find that he is watching me back.

“You’re hurting,” he states flatly.

Bugger it. “Yeah, a little.”

“So?” he asks.

I force a wry grin from my lips. Hope. Positive thoughts. Deep breath. “So. We clean up, we eat, we send the boys to the Forests, and we move forward. The longer we wait, the worse things will get.”