Awoken (18 page)

In the depths of his mind, Michael knew her pain. He felt the stonesong take her, felt the earthbone inside her spreading like wildfire, changing her bones, muscles, and organs. It was too much. In moments, she would shatter like the crystal leaf, another victim of the stonesong’s fury.

“No!” The vehement denial bursting from his lips, Michael smashed his fist into the ground in a shower of silver sparks. He would not let this happen. Lina would not die because of him. “No. No. NO!”

Suddenly, he realized what he must do. There was too much power for him to control. So instead, he would use it. He would pull the stonesong away from Lina and send it somewhere it could do her no more harm.

Burying his knuckles in the soil, he focused as he never had before, pushing the stonesong deep into the dark earth. The power resisted, slow to give up the earthbone all around him. Snarling, he bent it to his will, merging it with the untainted rock so near the surface. He pressed deeper, down, down into the rock and stone, straining to bury every iota of his power inside the earth.

The silver fire covering the forest dimmed, and then vanished. The ropey light supporting Lina died as well, and she dropped limply from the sky.

Michael felt his connection to her break, but silver fire still bled from his fingers, and he continued to pour the deadly stonesong into the earth. His breath came in short gasps, and blood dripped from his ears and nose, but he pressed on. He touched bedrock, the hard skin of the world. Its rumbling music was slow and vast beyond measure. He drove through it, pushing, stretching, reaching, until he touched…

There was a massive surge of molten power, as if he had touched all the rock in the world in a single, blinding instant, and then a stinging backlash of white-hot energy crashed into him.

The connection broke, and Michael fell back with a pained gasp. Lowering his head, he wiped the blood from his nose and tried to catch his breath. Strange. His power was spent, but he didn’t feel sick. Maybe he was getting used to the stonesong, or more likely, the earthbone was changing him like it was changing Lina.

A few seconds later, Jericho trotted out of the brush beside him, his pale skin spattered with fragments of broken leaves and the viscous pale sap of mutated plant life. “Are you well, Awoken?”

Michael nodded. “I’ll live, Jericho.” At least he hadn’t merged with the dollman. He would have known if he had. Drawing his hand from the fist-sized crater he’d left in the earth, he pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s check on Lina.”

A lithe form with long silver tresses dropped from the foliage above them and landed next to them. “This one is well, Awoken,” Lina said.

Michael’s heart skipped a beat.

Lina’s eyes glowed like tiny green lamps and her silver hair writhed as if with a life of its own. Lifting her hand, she pushed back a strand of her squirming hair with a talon-tipped finger.

Michael’s vision blurred with tears. “Lina, I…I couldn’t…”

Her ghostly fingers touched his cheek. They were cold and hard as stone. “It’s not your fault,” she said softly. “We just have to find the tunnel. The People will fix it.”

Michael nodded, but in his mind, he cursed the day he’d first laid eyes on the dollmen. “They had better,” he choked. “Or I’ll bring their whole stupid city down on their bald heads.”

Lina smiled, revealing a mouthful of pointy white teeth. “As you command, Awoken.”

Awoken
, she called him. She sounded like Jericho.

Michael shivered. “We better get moving. With all the noise I made, VEN won’t take long to find us. Let’s find the entrance before they get here.”

“It is too late, Awoken,” Jericho said. “Come, this one will show you.”

Michael and Lina followed the dollman through torn brush and into mutated foliage that had escaped the stonesong’s destructive touch.

Seconds later, they climbed up the side of a small hill. Jericho paused near the summit to press his palm toward the earth, gesturing for them to stay low. Laying flat on their bellies, they squirmed up the last dozen yards to the crest.

Beneath a setting sun, the narrow valley below was home to a bone-dry creek bed, perhaps fifty feet wide, and a tall cliff. The face of the cliff was a smooth wall along one side of the valley, save for a narrow crack at its base just below the hill.

Lina pointed to the opening. “Is that the entrance to the city?”

“Yes, little sister,” Jericho answered. “And we are not the first to find it.”

A shadow moved inside the tunnel, then another. The stonesong jerked, confirming the identity of the animals before they even stepped into the light.

Michael swore under his breath. They had finally found the passage to the dollmen city, and VEN hounds guarded the entrance.

A low growl sounded beside Michael. “Stop that, Jericho,” he said testily. “I’m trying to think.”

Jericho gave him a blank look. “This one has done nothing, Awoken.”

“Sorry,” Lina apologized sheepishly. “I’m a little worked up, I guess. So what’s the plan?”

Michael watched the two hounds move into the creek bed. “I’m not sure, but we have to get into that tunnel.”

Lina chewed thoughtfully at her lower lip, her tiny fangs putting small indents in her pearly skin. “That creek is full of rock. You could use the stonesong.”

“No! How can you even ask?”

“Look,” Lina began, “we need to get to the dollmen city, and those dogs are in the way. You can do this. That thing in the woods was a fluke. You were tired. You’ll control it better this time.”

Michael scowled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. The earthbone is all around us, and it’s feeding the stonesong. I won’t let it hurt you again.”

“Well, we have to do something. We can’t just sit here and wait for more VEN to show up.”

Jericho glanced nervously at the cloudless sky. “More will come, Awoken. The claws of the Fallen will find us if we stay.”

“You see,” Lina said. “Even the gremlin agrees with me. Look, if you’re worried about us being too close, Jericho and I will head back into the woods. But you have to take out those dogs, and fast.”

A snail with a shell that resembled a purple acorn oozed onto Michael’s pinky. Even the colorful slug hummed with the earthbone’s call. “It’s too risky.” He pried the snail from his finger, setting it atop a nearby branch. The acorn shell split the moment he released it, and the snail buzzed away on dragonfly wings. “We’ll find another way.”

Lina met his determined gaze for a long moment, and then she sighed as if in resignation. “All right, Mike. You win.” She turned to Jericho. “Hey, short stuff. You think you can take one of those overgrown puppies down there?”

Jericho grinned. “This one has killed many of the Fallen, little sister.”

“Hang on a minute,” Michael said. “You can’t—”

“Then let’s go.” Lina sprang from her belly, racing down the hill. Jericho was only a step behind her.

The hounds took notice of Lina and Jericho in the same moment. Lifting their massive heads, they watched the intruders come, but made no move toward them.

“Come back here, you idiots!” Michael shouted. Scrambling to his feet, he ran after his friends. “Come back!”

But Lina and Jericho were far ahead. Bounding on all fours, they crossed the creek before he was halfway down the hill.

At the creek, Lina curved toward the hound on the right while Jericho went left.

The hounds growled at them, their black lips peeled back to reveal long, harsh fangs.

Michael ran faster, leaping over rocks and brush at breakneck speed. He had to stop them. Lina moved like a tigress and had skin like solid rock, but the hounds outweighed her by a hundred pounds at least. And Jericho, though agile, would barely make a mouthful for them.

Jericho reached his hound first. It lunged at him, but the dollman moved like lightning. Leaping over the dog, he alighted behind the hybrid, just out of reach.

The hound whirled and charged after the little man. At that exact moment, Lina spun away from her opponent’s back. It twisted to bite her, and Jericho struck its exposed throat as if he and Lina had orchestrated the entire maneuver. Snarling and slashing, the three tore at one another and rolled into the creek.

The second hound sprang to its brother’s aid. Seizing Jericho’s leg in its teeth, it pulled him away from the first hound’s throat and shook him like a rat.

Curling toward his attacker with a savage growl on his lips, Jericho scraped his claws across the hybrid’s sensitive nose and eyes; it continued to shake him despite the wounds.

Meanwhile, Lina locked her legs around the first hound’s ribs like a determined bull rider. The dog rolled and she lost her grip long enough for the hound’s teeth to close on her hand.

Lina shrieked. Seizing the hound’s muzzle with her free hand, she gave a sudden, twisting jerk. Its neck gave with a crunching
snap!
and it dropped to the ground.

Just then, a dozen hounds rushed out of the cave.

Lina’s eyes widened. Pulling her hand from the hound’s mouth, she rushed toward Jericho and his attacker. “Hang on, Shorty,” she yelled. “I’m coming.”

Before she could reach them, a small rock struck the head of the hound holding Jericho, opening a wide gash in the animal’s skull. The dog staggered, and Jericho fell from its jaws. The hound shook its head drunkenly, and then a head-sized boulder blasted it from its feet.

In the dry creek bed, Michael stood amidst a spinning cloud of rocks and pebbles, his eyes blazing with silver stonesong. He lifted his burning gaze to the pack of hounds racing out of the cave.

“You killed Diggs.” Rocks shattered in a rippling circle around him. “And now you want to kill my friends.” The stonesong burned like fire in his veins, tearing up his insides and filling his mouth with blood. He didn’t care. “You will not touch them!”

A wall of broken stone and earth burst from the ground in front of the charging hounds. Fifty feet long and half as thick, the wall rose like a tidal wave and then came crashing down on the hybrids like the fist of God.

When the dust settled, there was no sign of the hounds. They’d been buried completely beneath tons of rock and dirt. Michael felt them there, sensing with the stonesong the tiny hollows of fading life under the earth.

Lina and Jericho hurried over to him. The dollman limped a little. “You’re bleeding, Mike,” Lina said.

Michael touched a finger to his temple. It came away wet and sticky. A stray flying pebble or stone must have clipped him. The cut wasn’t deep. He hadn’t even felt it. “It’s nothing. How are you?”

She wiped her palm against her tattered dress. “Fine. He barely broke the skin. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Severing his connection with the valley floor, he shook his head. “I buried them alive, Lina. So no, I’m not okay. But I won’t let them hurt you, not ever again.”

Lina gave him an odd look, and then turned away. “I care about you, too,” she said shyly.

Michael’s cheeks grew warm. “Um…we should probably…” He coughed into his fist. “Let’s get going before anything else can go wrong.”

Jericho beamed. “To the home of the People, Awoken,” he agreed excitedly, running ahead. “Come, this one will show you the way.”

Michael chuckled. VEN had chased them across half the country, but here they were. They had made it. “You’ve done a bang-up job so far, Jericho. Lead the way.”

Lina’s smile was more reserved. “Mike?”

“Yeah?”

She bit her lip uncertainly. “When this is all over, I mean, if I’m normal again…”

“You will be.”

Jericho trotted happily into the crack in the cliff. “Come,” he called, disappearing into the narrow opening. “Come.”

Lina stopped just outside the opening, and Michael halted next to her. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Aren’t we…?”

Lina stepped closer to him, and he suddenly forgot what he’d been about to ask. As always, the earthbone inside her called to him, but its melody seemed strangely distant. His attention was engulfed, instead, by the ocean-green depths of her half-lidded eyes and the lavender smell of her long silver hair.

“Mike,” she breathed. She leaned into him, her lips inching closer to his own.

“That’s how we do it, amigo!” someone shouted. “Don’t stop on our account!”

Michael spun.

Approximately thirty men, led by a pair of large black hounds, were emerging from the trees behind them. Some were in camouflage fatigues and carried the harpoon-like shock rifles. Others wore grey lab coats and bore large packs on their backs. A few had the dark suits and sunglasses of belua.

Smiley waved from the front of the group, where he and another belua flanked an older man dressed in a pristine white lab coat. “Howdy, amigo!” he called. “I was just thinking about you!”

The men were roughly a hundred feet away, but Michael hesitated. He had no idea how many men and hounds were concealed in the surrounding trees, nor what lurked in the cave. Every instinct told him to run, but he had no idea which direction to take.

As if sensing Michael’s thoughts, the man in the white coat raised a hand. The majority of the men halted and began unloading packs and equipment as the man in the lab coat and the two belua continued on toward the cliff and Michael.

“Please, do not run,” the man in the lab coat called. His voice was smooth, with no hint of falsehood, and not unkind. “We are not here to hurt you.”

“And you wouldn’t make it very far,” Smiley added, grinning evilly.

The man in the white coat cast Smiley an irritated look. “This doesn’t concern you anymore, Nabal,” he said crisply. “Please, stop talking.”

Smiley’s face darkened, but he answered with a respectful “Yes, doctor,” and fell back a step.

Michael tensed, glancing uncertainly at Lina and then Jericho. They returned his gaze evenly, but said nothing, ready to follow his lead. They trusted him. Michael knew he should run, but he was curious despite his fear. The way the white-coated man had so easily cowed Nabal meant he was someone important, someone in charge. Michael knew he and his friends should probably make a break for the tunnel. But if they did, they might be blowing their only chance of getting some real answers from VEN.