Forgotten (36 page)

Five dark shadows knelt on the ground
before me. Dark liquid seeped from their ears and eyes. Marco and
Zalen disappeared the moment I stopped screaming telepathically.
The icy girls hugged onto each other. Jace panted. He was on his
hands and knees, looking up at me. His delight glowed as his white
silhouette returned.

“
You’re learning to fight,”
Jace said, proudly.

Analee charged me. I braced for impact
when she suddenly fell to her knees. A thin, gray object, stuck out
of her back, as well as her chest. Her white shape faded
immediately; a dark liquid grew around the gray object sticking
through her chest.

“
Get the Healer!” Analee
ordered, as she collapsed.

Jace’s voice echoed in my mind as he
raced toward me. He searched the beach, looking for whomever it was
that had attacked.

“
Analee is dying!” I said,
looking back at the spear sticking out of her chest.

He acted like he couldn’t hear me or
was dismissing my pleas; I hated Analee, but to watch her die
without trying to help was another thing entirely. I grabbed Jace’s
hand and screamed that the Master was dying. He said nothing.
Hoping to convey my message, I told him she was power in a dainty,
maddening bottle. Yes, we needed her and her ability, but no matter
how much we despised her, we couldn’t let her die. She was
powerful; we needed her. He swore, but agreed with me. The moment
he touched the thin, gray object, it disappeared.

“
The Rippler’s spear,” Jace
said, and then cursed. “I swear I’ll kill him if he hurts you,
Gwyneth.”

Shoving his hands onto the shadow
growing on Analee’s chest wound, he spoke telepathically. Within
seconds, her chest had begun to rise and fall. Without warning,
Jace jerked his hands away from Analee’s chest and tackled me.
Another spear drove into the ground inches from my head. Jace’s
hand grazed it, causing it to disappear.

“
Don’t move,” he said, and
took off running toward the direction it came from.

Something was wrong. This attack was
planned. They baited us, not the other way around. I looked in the
opposite direction and saw two figures in the distance. We were
surrounded!

Pushing off the sand, I ran for cover.
The ground shook under my feet. Sand erupted as a sound wave
rippled through the air. It lifted me off the ground only to
body-slam me back onto it. Sand gathered in my mouth, scraped my
skin, and burrowed into my eyes. Zalen’s laugh ripped through the
air.

He was enjoying this? Was he a
traitor? Who was on my side?

I looked around me. Analee’s body was
tossed beside me. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. I crawled
over to her, reaching her as another sound wave followed Zalen’s
laugh. It demolished the beach, flipping mounds of sand over. The
air darkened, clouded by the sand storm he’d created.

Sand flew through the air. I pulled my
shirt up over my nose, hoping to keep too much of it from getting
into my lungs. I didn’t dare to open my eyes. My skin burned as if
it were on fire; it wasn’t just from the sand scratching me. Jace
was furious. I raised my head, trying to see his hazy outline, but
in the sand storm, he was hidden. Another blast sounded; my ears
instantly started to ring. I shielded my eyes and looked
up.

A mass of blackness that I hoped was
Marco, rushed my way as countless pieces of sand and stone
ricocheted around me. He gained speed and then pinned me on my
back, just as the sound wave started to throw me through the
air.

My head pounded when I slammed into
the ground. Shooting pain spread through me as rock collided into
my flesh. My breathing was labored as the weight above me buried me
deeper into the sand. Darkness encased me. I couldn’t push Marco
off. A putrid scent grew around me as I sunk deeper. Everything
reeked of rot and death. Sand slipped into every crease, up my
nose, into my mouth as I screamed for someone to hear me. I took a
deep breath when the slop filled my mouth; I gagged, taking in
sickly flesh and sand. I was being buried alive under dead
weight!

Was Marco my enemy too?

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

I held a knife to Marco’s
throat. He was larger and stronger than me. His eyes were bright
green, unnaturally beautiful. His face was unshaven. His hair was
in distress, but somehow incredibly attractive. I never fought my
own battles before, but I refused to let him bring me to the Master
again. He gripped the knife that I held to his throat. He hadn’t
even flinched when the blade sliced through his skin. A thick scar
trailed across his knuckles – moving like it wasn’t attached to his
skin. It slithered under his wrist, hiding itself from
view.

My reflection shone off
the blade. Wrinkles creased themselves around my eyes. Even as he
kneeled before me, the red -haired man was still at chest height. I
pressed my lips together and breathed through my mouth as the
stench of rot and decay filled the air.

His skin peeled away from
his face as if it couldn’t stand it. Yellow puss and orange
infected blood seeped from his tissue. It slopped to the ground.
The liquid flesh sprayed my legs. The rotting man vanished and
stood behind me a second later. His decaying hand held the knife in
my hand. It was now pressed up against my throat.

“
I won’t allow you take me
to her, at least not alive,” I said.

“
It’s not for her, Ocean
Eyes,” he said. He pronounced my nickname like it was a joke.
“You’ll want to grant this one. Think of it as a gift.”

“A gift for whom exactly?”
I asked.

“
Give your sister’s voice
to us, and you’ll give all of us deities a way to speak up against
the Master.”

I’d awakened to the repeating vision
while lying on my side, spitting up mucus. Sand coated me, jarring
me from my thoughts of what the vision meant. My eyes stung from
the debris wiping around me. My clothes were soaked. I tried not to
think about how the blood-stained mark must’ve looked. Blood
crusted the cuts over my arms and legs, which restricted my
movements. Marco’s voice trickled into my mind - calming me, even
though the world exploded around us. He held on tighter, blocking
the particles. Sand pelted my flesh. I cried out when a large rock
hit my leg. Marco cursed and then leaned in closer to protect
me.

“
You scared me there, sweet
cheeks,” Marco said cheerfully, like we were having a casual
conversation at a diner instead of having to shout to hear each
other while blasted in a sand storm. “I thought I’d lost you there.
I forget how vulnerable you are compared to the rest of
us.”

“
Get me out of here,” I
demanded.

“
I can’t shift you out of
here unless Jace is nearby, because humans have difficulty
shifting. He needs to be close to heal you, and he’d have my head
on a platter if I shifted him when he’s so close to getting his
revenge.”

The beach jolted when another sound
wave blasted. Water rose up from the sea and rained down on us.
Each drop felt just as hard as the sand, drenching us in a mixture
of sand and salt-water. When the shower slowed, Marco slid off of
me.

“
Jace is taking entirely
too long, and I’m getting bored. Try not to die while I’m gone,” he
mumbled, and then vanished.

Thanks for the advice.

Brown curls twisted over
his pale blue eyes as he laughed. My aging skin crawled as he
wrapped his hand around my wrist. He was taller than me but only by
a few inches. Another woman with tanned skin and coffee brown hair
watched as he lifted me from my seat on the grassy field. The sweet
scent of lilies filled the air.

Three spears shone in the
light. Their tips were thrown into the ground. The woman with wavy
coffee-colored hair walked over and touched the spear. It
disappeared instantly.

“
You won’t be threatening
my sister with these, not yet Rippler,” she said.

The athletic man danced me
around the meadow. “You recall everyone’s past, even the darkest
parts?” the Rippler said softly.

My throat rattled like I’d
just spoken. I stared at the scar trickling down his neck.
“Especially the darkest parts, Rippler,” I answered, gazing at his
scar. “Why? Is there something you’re trying to keep
hidden?”

I breathed a sigh of
relief when he pulled away. His touch unnerved me.

“
Many of us keep things
buried deep. The Master would say you ask vague
questions.”

“
Analee has vague answers,
as do you,” I said, reaching for his scar. He disappeared just as
my pinky finger brushed against the end of his scar on his
neck.

The vision of the Rippler
cut out as an excruciating scream echoed in my mind. Jace knelt on
the ground; a thin, dark object intercepted his usual glowing
silhouette – another spear. I gasped. The general shape looked like
a spear I’d seen in my vision of the Rippler and like the one
sticking out of Analee. A broken-off spear stuck through his
shoulder. Following the angle of the spear, I looked up to find the
Rippler standing on the cliff’s ridgeline. Zalen plucked another
spear from the air behind his back, like he’d been hiding a stash
of them – from nothingness, he formed a weapon! He created
something out of nothing –
did every deity
defy the laws of nature?

I forced myself to breathe
slowly through my nose; my heart raced. I hadn’t known a lot about
fighting tactics, but I knew height was an advantage. Jace needed
help.
Where had Marco run off to? Surely
he wasn’t bored enough to ditch us?

An excruciating scream echoed in my
mind as Jace jerked out the broken-off spear. The wood ground
against his bones as he twisted out the spear. I wanted to throw
up. Why hadn’t the spear disappeared the moment he touched it like
the others? Zalen laughed; it haunted my soul and tore at my
eardrums. I covered my ears and buried my face in the sand, waiting
for the vindictive amusement to end. When I looked up again, Jace
was in mid-run and tearing off his shirt. He bunched it together.
Flames crawled over it until it became a fireball. He chucked it at
the Rippler, traveling at a speed that my gaze couldn’t follow.
Zalen flung himself along the ridge like his life depended on it.
Before he hit the jagged edge, he threw the spear. Jace easily
dodged it, slowing his pace. I pushed off the ground and raced
towards him, hoping he wasn’t losing too much blood from the
wound.

“
Don’t die,” I repeated in
my mind over and over again. The sand shifted under my feet,
preventing me from covering ground quickly. I looked back up at the
ridgeline. I was sprinting directly into Zalen’s firing range, but
I couldn’t just leave Jace.

While Zalen was distracted, Marco
appeared on the ridge next to him. He charged the Rippler, as Zalen
tried plucking another spear from the air behind his back. They
plummeted off the cliff. I heard myself scream. It echoed in my
mind. They soared toward the ground, gaining speed – courtesy of
the Earth’s gravity. They vanished and reappeared several times, as
they neared the sandy beach. Since they both could shift, it was
like they were fighting each other to reposition themselves on the
planes of this dimension. I’d almost reached Jace when they
collided into the ground.

The impact threw me off my feet and
onto my back, knocking the wind from my lungs. I rolled to my side
and looked up, frantic to find the others. My mouth dropped. Marco
held Zalen in place while Jace used him as a human punching bag.
Jace might have been wounded, but his adrenaline surged through
him, empowering him through any weakness he should have had. The
injury he sustained should have demobilized him, yet, he wasn’t
acting like any wound was slowing him down.

Zalen laughed. “Time has not been good
to you, Healer. You’re not the gladiator I remember.”

Jace paused. The fire jumping off his
skin grew so hot that the grainy shape of the beach melted away in
a smooth pool of glass. The smell of burnt flesh accompanied the
beating of Jace’s fists. Zalen screamed out in pain. I clenched my
teeth, covered my ears, and prayed Zalen would stop. My ears bled.
My sight, that had been getting more defined the longer I was
around the deities, started to blur into shapeless mixes of blacks
and whites. I wanted to black out, from the rippling effect Zalen
held over sound waves.

“
Mercy, Jace!” I yelled. I
couldn’t stand the torture any longer. My mind refused to pass out,
but my body was bleeding. I couldn’t breathe in deeply, without
smelling the sickly scent of burnt flesh and rotten
tissue.

I gasped for air the second Zalen’s
torture ended. Consumed in his fire, Jace rushed over to me and
helped me up from the ground. I lost my balance upon standing
upright. His grip around me tightened until I regained my
composure. His hands skimmed as much of my skin as he could touch,
searching for injuries and healing my cuts and bruises immediately.
He covered my ears with his hands. The ringing ceased immediately.
He gently traced his bloody thumbs over my eyes. The sharp sting
vanished into nothing. My sight returned to what it once was – the
shapes of people and objects became more defined. With a soft
touch, he healed all my injuries.