Apocalypse Weird: Reversal (Polar Wyrd Book 1) (15 page)

Sasha widened her eyes, too out of breath to speak. Soren stared up at the dark rocks that formed a gradual incline leading away from the edge of the beach to the tip of the volcano that had formed Paulet Island.

“We need to go up. Quietly. Now. This is one of the few places where the volcano is scalable. There are caves and tunnels up there. We’ll hide in those rocks on that bench there while the shooters cross the beach. I’ll send the dogs down to the end of the beach to hopefully lead the shooters away.”

Sasha decided not to state the obvious. That if the shooters saw them scaling the cliff-side that they would be easy targets. Soren ordered the dogs down the beach and told them to stay by the next outcrop while Sasha started up the cliff. The dogs milled and barked and looked back up at them, confused and upset by the change in the adventure. Sasha huddled behind the rocks that Soren had selected. All around her were rocky crags. It was scalable, but just, and it would be slow going. The dogs could not fail. When Robert and a second man rounded the outcrop, their guns cocked, Soren dropped his hand and the dogs scattered and then obediently launched over the outcrop on the far end of the beach, while Robert and the other man took aim.

Sasha closed her eyes. She could not stand to see another dog get shot.

When Robert and the other man had disappeared over the far outcrop, following the dogs, Soren and Sasha rose and started scrambling as fast as they could up the rocky volcanic slope.

“Are you sure you know this island? And the tunnels?” Sasha asked.

“Yup,” Soren responded, his lips tight, and eyes flashing a warning not to ask anything more.

They continued up the side of the mountain, the gunshots and barks growing fainter. Sasha closed her eyes against the loss of the dogs. They climbed steadily for about half an hour, rocks falling in their wake, before they sensed someone following them. The chase was not overt. Nobody shot at them, and they saw no one when they stopped to scan the bleak mountainside. But every so often they heard the steady crackling noise of a rock descending the hill, dislodged in a location that they had not been.

They froze each time, but seeing nobody, continued their ascent. The rocks were falling by chance perhaps. The barren cone of the volcano provided few hiding spots…unless the person who was following them was invisible. Sasha shuddered at the not completely impossible prospect.

The wind pummeled the upper part of the mountain, and several times Sasha thought she might be swept away and tossed out to sea. The storm had picked up, and the spray from the waves seemed to cling to the air, socking the island in. Mist hung in pockets all around the crater of the volcano. Sasha wondered if it was their mist. If they stepped through it, would they be back in the Arctic and away from this desolate place, or because this mist was not the same place they had come through, would they end up somewhere else entirely? The mist ballooned up occasionally, like it was emerging from the crater of the volcano, and sometimes Sasha caught a vague whiff of sulfur.

They didn’t discuss the smell, and Soren, absorbed in his own thoughts, seemed more taciturn than usual. He steered them to the right, following some sort of logical spiral around the cone of the volcano. He corrected their course a couple of times, always looking over his shoulder to see if they were being followed.

Barking, whimpers, and excited yelling could be heard from one of the beaches, followed by the appearance of Robert and the other man on the lower edge of the volcano. She and Soren had been spotted. Their pursuers were far off in the distance, but she and Soren hastened their pace.

“The caves are nearby,” Soren murmured. “They’re hard to find and few people know about them. If we time it right, it will seem like we just vanished. We can wait there, and then try to head home back the way we came. Or we can follow the tunnel up to the crater and see where the mist there takes us.”

Sasha nodded.

Soren drew in close to her and she could feel the puffs of warm air from his lips on her skin. He spoke really low and took her hand in his. They had both long since stuffed their mitts into the pockets of their snow pants. “We’re going to head up that way for a few seconds.” He pointed her arm up to the left. “But when I say go, I’m going to create a distraction, and you’re going to move over to the right. I want you to yell and throw rocks down the hill, just like I’m doing. The tunnel is behind that erratic that looks like a crouching crow.” He extended her forefinger inside his hand so that it was directed at a large black rock. The end of the rock jutted beak-like and Sasha could almost imagine the intense eyes of the crow. “At the last minute, duck behind the rock. The entrance is small. You’ll have to crawl, but it opens up once you get inside. Wait there for me. I’m going in through an entrance by that tree there. The tunnels connect.” He pointed her enclosed finger in a different direction. “Got it?”

Sasha inclined her head silently.

They turned and cut a sharp left. Robert and the other man had made good time and were now clambering up the rocks only a half-mile away. They would be within rifle range soon.

“Now!” Soren rose, roared in rage and threw his spare ice axe down the hill in an arcing spin. It was like it glanced off of something that briefly became almost visible and then clattered to the rocks. Soren followed the ice axe with a series of hurled rocks, yelling like a madman. Sasha tried to do the same, tossing sharp black rock after rock down the slope, making faint cries, while she worked her way over to the crow rock. Every so often, when Soren threw something, she had the sense that there was something below them, something that the rocks were glancing off of.

She aimed one more rock down the hill before slipping behind the large erratic thrown out of the volcano years ago. The opening was smaller than she had expected, and she experienced a wave of claustrophobia before making her body as small as she could and wiggling her way into the hole. It was a tight fit; a person any larger than she or Soren would not be able to get into the cave. Robert and his henchman certainly would not be able to. Even as it was, Sasha feared she might get stuck, and if she did, who would come to rescue her? Her claustrophobia doubled at the prospect of being lodged in this mountainside, unable to even move her arms until she slowly starved to death.

But with one final push she forced herself through the lip and the tunnel opened up into something passable at a squat, and then after a few more feet, it became large enough to stand. The sounds of Soren’s yells outside had diminished, and she wondered if she could not hear someone scrambling over the rocks above her. It seemed unusually warm in the tunnel, as if the whole inside of the mountain hovered at a balmy seventy degrees. She wanted to remove a few more layers, but knew that would be foolish. Soren had said the volcano was extinct, had been extinct for thousands of years, but it seemed uncomfortably active for an extinct volcano.

She had left her headlamp in the pocket of her red parka, now shoved into a crevice on the beach a mile below them. She groped in the bottom of her small pack for the candle and matches that she knew to be there. A match against the flint brought the small round tunnel into view—it was an old lava tube. Debris from subsequent eruptions had likely fallen across the exit and hardened, almost blocking it off completely.

She heard the scrabble of rocks near the entrance through which she had just crawled. Someone else was coming in. Soren had said he would come in a different way, but perhaps he had been forced or decided it was best to follow her.

“Soren,” she said in a low voice. “Soren?”

There was no answer. The scratching sound of small pebbles being rolled under the weight of a body continued.

Sasha scurried farther down the tunnel, cupping the candle against the movement and trying to minimize the flicker of shadows. She would go a short distance and hope that the sound stopped, that it was Soren. She rounded a corner and stopped to listen. Faint footsteps echoed down the tunnel. Soren would yell out, would call for her. Whoever was behind her, it was not Soren. She started to move at a half-jog, trying to keep her candle burning.

A few hundred feet into the tunnel, she came to a fork. She veered right and noted a small crack in the tunnel wall facing away from the direction she was heading. If she squeezed herself into the crack, whoever was following her might pass by and while she would be able to see them, they would not be able to see her, unless they looked back.

She blew out the candle, expecting to be plunged into complete darkness, but the tunnel, although still very dim, seemed illuminated by a faint glow coming from farther inside the mountain. The potential causes of the glow were alarming at best, but were superseded by the more immediate problem that the footsteps were getting closer.

Sasha turned and quickly scrambled into the crack in the tunnel wall.

Sasha tried to control her breathing as she watched the dim confines of the tunnel ahead of her. The footsteps seemed to be passing, then seemed to be right in front of her, but no corporeal form occupied the tunnel. Abruptly, the footsteps stopped and were replaced by the distinct sound of sniffing.

The sniffing drew closer and closer, until Sasha could feel the heat and smell the acrid breath of another being. She tried not to move, but then she realized she was an idiot. Just because whatever was in front of her was invisible didn’t mean she was. She shot her arm out in a flat-handed strike hoping to hit its neck.

Her hand glanced painfully off something solid, and the creature materialized. It was humanoid, and looked male. Horns curled out of its skull, and its nose and cheekbones were cruelly distorted. But Sasha again had the sense that she was not seeing all of it; that it extended out and filled the tunnel with his other parts, parts that were indescribable and terrifying. She also had the sense, that despite his dramatic change in form, that this was Paul in front of her.

He smiled when he saw her dismay, revealing his crooked and razor-like teeth. Paul’s teeth. “You are not so fond of this form, then?” he said. “Would you prefer this one?” He vanished, and all of a sudden Soren stood before her. He pulled his lips back to display his sharp and disorganized teeth in Soren’s mouth.

“We can appear in any form we wish. Never trust those around you at any time.” The Soren beast examined his arms. “Hmm, he is a rather little man, isn’t he? Anyway, you and your boyfriend have provided us with quite the adventure today. The human seems to quite like you, enough to abandon his dogs anyway.” Paul paused and smiled, his eyes glittery. “So much for being man’s best friend. They were really quite tasty. Not as delicately flavored as humans, but fine for a little afternoon snack.”

Sasha closed her eyes and looked away.

“So, we’ll just sit here and wait, shall we? I’m sure he’s coming to look for you, after his fine display of temper out on the volcano. You humans are so emotional and violent, with such lovely aspirations toward morality, but with egotistical, prurient, and selfish little needs at the same time—such a wonderful combination of attributes that makes you so easy to manipulate.”

Paul leaned in close and pressed his teeth against her neck as if to bite it, and Sasha braced for the tearing of her flesh, for the bleeding out of her jugular. But he just ran the sharp edge of his lower canines across her neck and then withdrew. “You should see the world at large right now. All the little veneers of civility that held humanity together, or at least kept it grinding along the bumpy road of progress littered with the remains of the poor, stupid, and unlucky, have been stripped away in a matter of days…and it really didn’t take much.”

Sasha inched her way out of the crack in the rocks, keeping her back to Paul at all times. As Soren, he was discomfitingly attractive unless his mouth was open and she could see his teeth. Still, it made her nervous, the degree to which every cell memory in her body wanted to throw themselves at him. She had to keep him talking, keep seeing those teeth, keep having him remind her that he was not Soren.

“What do you want with us?”

Paul gave her a spiky-toothed hiss. “Your polar boyfriend has spent more time on Paulet Island than most. He and his wife, Marina. He knows things.” Paul expanded his mouth into a facsimile of a smile at the mention of Marina.

Marina. So, Soren had been married before. Or was still married. Why was everyone referring to Marina? Why did anyone care?

“So?” Sasha decided that defiance was the best course of action.

“So. Ever heard of the West Antarctic Rift? There are all sorts of ways volcanoes and tectonic plate shift can contribute to global warming, ice shelf destabilization, and catastrophic sea level rise. It’s time to get this climate change party started.”

Paul had moved in close to her again as if they would be celebrating the end of the earth in some sort of more carnal way. She could feel his breath, rank and hot on her neck. She was completely repulsed, and yet he seemed to emit this strange sexual energy and expectation. Sleeping with a demon would undoubtedly be unpleasant. But could a demon be seduced enough to be distracted? Distracted enough for her to get away? Or would even starting down that path be too risky?

It might have been hunger or lack of sleep, but the ground beneath her seemed to be swaying ever so slightly.

Paul did not seem to notice the movement. “Mass extinction is such a fun way to go, don’t you think? While you humans were doing a darn good job polluting yourselves to death, volcanoes and earthquakes make for a more spectacular punctuation point to the whole human experiment.”

“Sash? Sasha?” The low voice carried down the tunnel. Soren.

“Over here,” Paul called in Sasha’s voice.

“No!” Sasha yelled. But Paul slammed her against the rock wall, one hand slapped hard over her mouth, while he curved the other around her neck. Stars flashed before her eyes at the blow, and the pain in her already aching head exploded. Any doubts she had about the risks of trying to seduce him evaporated.