Revel (8 page)

“Yeah. Something like that.” Without another word he turned, went to the front of the boat and began to wind a rope into a stack of neat coils at his feet.

I was just trying to make conversation. Maybe they actually spoke a different language here. It
sounded
like English, but there were subtleties I couldn’t hear.

“Thanks for the Band-Aid,” I called over my shoulder, and went toward the side. No way would I ask him for a hand over to the dock. He’d made it clear he was so busy. I spotted Gran, who’d already gotten off the boat.

I was about to step across the short distance to the dock when the
Widowsong
revved to life and began to pull away.

“Hey! Stop! I have to get off!” I shouted.

Sean slammed the throttle, or the clutch, or whatever it was, forward and made me skitter backward, my sneakers squeaking on the deck. “Sit down!” he yelled.

The dog promptly sat on my feet.

Grabbing the side of the rail, I stared as the dock withdrew and the expanse of swirling black water between me and land widened. “Gran!” I shouted. But Gran only stood there, hands clasped together up on her chest. As I watched she raised one hand in a stiff, silent farewell.

Really?

She wouldn’t do this. I didn’t have any of my stuff. How could she do this?

I untangled myself from Buddy and crossed to Sean’s side. “Turn the damned boat around! I want to get off!”

He looked down at me, his face infuriatingly calm. As if he couldn’t imagine what I was making such a fuss about. “You will. Just as soon as we get to the mainland. Now go sit down.”

“My grandmother put you up to this, didn’t she?”

“Yeah. Maisie asked me to bring you back. So what?”

“So I
don’t want to go
,” I yelled, trying to overcome the loud noise of the motor and keep my whipping hair out of my mouth. “Turn it around!”

“Nope.”

I glared up at him. “I’ll pay you, okay? C’mon.” I staggered against the roll of the deck before planting my feet. Back at the house, I still had those little gold coins. “A hundred dollars to take me back. Please?”

Sean looked down at me and for a moment there was a look of kindness in his brown eyes, like he wanted to help me. But he shook his head. “Sorry. Believe me, this is for your own good.”

When I didn’t move, he added, “Attention, passenger. We’ve turned on the No Smoking sign. The captain requests that you sit your ass down.” He turned his attention back to the open stretch of water.

Jaw clenched, fists tight, I held down my temper by calling
Sean Gunn a string of dirty names in my head and made my way back to the edge of the boat. It wasn’t that far, I thought, looking toward the dock. I licked my lips and eyed the rolling drop to the water. Maybe I could swim it.

Ugh. No way.

Buddy began to bark at me.

“I
really
wouldn’t do that,” Sean called over, obviously thinking I was a whole lot braver than I was.

“Look,” he said louder, “you’ve got to sit down. No kidding. We’re coming to the Hands. It’s gonna get rough.”

I just crossed my arms and remained standing; I was mad about being surprised—no,
kidnapped
—like this and felt weirdly pleased about the uneasiness in his voice. He
should
be nervous.

“I came through the Hands before with Ben Deare just fine,” I shouted. “And his boat is a lot smaller. So just how bad could it possibly—”

An earsplitting scrape sounded along the length of the hull and the
Widowsong
slammed to a lurching stop. I pitched forward, scrabbling to catch hold of the curved railing even as the boat tipped sideways. Then, unbelievably, I saw the opposite deck begin to rise out of the water. Like the empty end of a seesaw.

I screamed and tumbled over the side.

The shocking cold of the water was a hammer strike on my skin. Seawater burned in my nose. Eyes shut, I swept my arms forward and kicked, reaching blindly for
up
. I opened
my eyes. There was no bright surface above. Just swirling dark water and bubbles. Panic exploded in my chest and I flailed, trying to right myself. With relief I saw the large white form of the boat’s bottom looming nearby. And then I saw what was under it.

While my mind couldn’t really process what I was seeing, my eyes were forced to absorb it.

Two huge, scaly animals gripped the bottom of the
Widowsong
, their shapes like the dark silhouettes of a nightmare. Webbed hands. Claws. Spiked tails. One of the monsters swung and fixed me with reptilian yellow eyes. Its jaws unhinged like a bear trap, showing rows of curved, sharp teeth, and it screamed at me. The obscene roar reverberated through the water and suddenly the creature swam toward me with rapid undulating movements and a bobbing motion of its head.

I screamed, and a rush of bubbles frothed from my mouth. The creature stopped abruptly, as if startled, and swung away.

The next thing I saw was its long tail with spiky side fins whipping through the water, coming at my head. It would have been a great shot in a 3-D sci-fi movie. Unfortunately, this was real. Before I could move, the tail struck me on the side of the head and sent me spinning, drifting. The world went dark, as if someone had cupped a hand over the end of a kaleidoscope.

Stunned, I floated down. A buzzing noise filled my head, and I had the awful dreamlike sense that I couldn’t move.
I had to move, to get air. But I couldn’t. My arms and legs wouldn’t answer the frantic commands of my brain. As a heavy burning weight filled my chest, the need to breathe became unbearable. I prayed in that moment for it to stop.

Then I saw it. From the black depths below me, something small and white and shimmering appeared. It grew larger, floating up toward me, glowing against the murk. It was an angel.

The angel was dark. Black hair floated around his face like plumes of glistening raven feathers. And he had only a single, gleaming wing. That didn’t seem to matter. His deep blue eyes were all I could focus on. Brilliant and intense as a lightning strike, they fastened on me and didn’t let go.

He’d come to take me.

Whether to save me from the edge of the world or take me to the other side, I didn’t know or care. My chest and throat were on fire, bursting from the need to breathe.

He floated closer, his arms open. The angel’s hands were warm on my skin, like the warmth of a fire when you come in from the cold.

He pulled me to him and kissed me.

With the press of his mouth, I felt a gasp of breath. Sweet, intoxicating air rushed into me. But not enough. The little taste of it brought a spasm of desperate need, an animal panic for more, and I clutched the angel’s head and drank the breath from his lips in coughing gulps until he broke away. Then his long fingers cupped the back of my head. He laid a
hand against my chest, calming me, slowing me down. Now his mouth returned to mine and I breathed him into me. Inhale. Exhale.

Bliss.

I wrapped my arms tighter around the angel. Something was happening to me.

Every inch of my skin pulsed with sensation at the touch of the water, his hands, his lips. The angle of his mouth on mine changed, became something else. Something dark and sweet and just as elemental as breathing.

I felt myself being pulled deeper and deeper. Into the kiss and oblivion.

Something struck the water and surged beside us in a white plume of froth. But I couldn’t focus on anything but my consuming need for air. For this kiss.

A hand grabbed me and I was yanked sideways and pulled upward, upward.

I broke the surface of the water gasping. My chest ached and the side of my head throbbed. Weakly I kicked at the water as small waves lifted and dropped me. The air felt good, so cool in my throat.

But I was tired. Somehow all I wanted to do was float down once more.…

“Delia!” someone shouted. A strong hand grabbed the back of my T-shirt and supported me in the water.

“Are you okay?”

I sputtered and nodded, unseeing, to the voice. “Y-yes.”

“C’mon.”

It was Sean. He was beside me in the choppy sea. I could hardly move as he gripped my arm and dragged me toward the
Widowsong
, which rose as high as a skyscraper before us.

Back on the dock, I sat on an empty wooden lobster trap. I was swaddled inside a thick gray blanket, my hands clamped around a cup of hot liquid that I drank without tasting. I couldn’t stop shivering. Or thinking about the creatures that had clung to the bottom of Sean’s boat. Or the angel. I put shaky fingers to my lips as I remembered his mouth on mine.

Maybe he wasn’t real. Maybe I’d just had some kind of freaky near-death experience.

I dismissed that. No one ever says, “Go toward the light—and the really excellent kisser.” Whatever he was, he was real.

“Thank goodness you’re all right,” Gran said. “I should have known, after seeing what they did to Ben’s boat, that something like this might happen. But I thought maybe—” She broke off.

What they did to Ben’s boat
. The words drifted over me like a vague, black cloud.
They
.

The memory of those monstrous faces swam before me again: green and black, their heads looking obscenely human. Like men, but with veiny, bald scalps and black sunken holes where their ears and noses should have been. They had elongated torsos and short curved legs that had clung to the boat.

“M-monsters,” I said. My voice came out in a high-pitched waver that didn’t even
sound
like me. “There were sea monsters under the b-boat.”

I blinked up at the two of them, waiting for a laugh or a slap on the back to jar me out of this nightmare. I waited for them to tell me I’d imagined the whole thing.

Sean Gunn simply gave a nod. “Yeah.” He looked over at Gran. “It was the Glaukos. Two of them. The First Ones don’t want your girl here to go.”

Gran nodded. “Guess they made it clear enough.”

I could only stare at the two of them for a few slack-jawed seconds. “You mean you
know
about this?” I finally snapped. “About what’s out there?” I pointed a shaky finger toward the water and then snatched it back under the blanket again. “The monsters?”

“Glaukos,” replied Gran. “They serve the First Ones.”

“Ow!” I winced and pulled away from Sean, who’d tilted my head and was exploring the lump on my temple with gentle fingers.

“I couldn’t see much down there, but I was afraid the Glauk’s tail might have gotten her,” he muttered, moving my head this way and that. I felt like a melon being inspected for ripeness. “No,” he said after a moment’s probing. “None of the spikes broke the skin.” He gave my hair an encouraging tousle. “That’s good.”

I cradled my head against one hand to peer up at him. “Why? Would that hurt more?”

“No,” he said calmly. “But you’d probably be dead in
twelve hours. Either from the flesh-eating infection they usually carry or the convulsions.”

“Oh,” I said weakly. When I managed to get past the image of my gangrenous head falling off during a seizure, I asked, “Why did they attack your boat?”

Gran looked to the water with a worried frown. “The Glaukos only do what they’re ordered to do.”

“There was a First One down there. He obviously told them to stop the boat,” said Sean. “I’ll bet it surprised them when you fell out.”

“Gee, I hope I didn’t scare them too much,” I muttered, automatically reaching to adjust my glasses. They were gone. “Just great,” I muttered.

No
wonder
everything looked so fuzzy. Now what was I going to do? I didn’t have another pair with me, and I was practically blind without them.

I wasn’t too nearsighted to see Sean grinning at me, though. He was probably thinking
See? I told you to sit down
. It was nice of him not to say it. I’d put both of us at risk with my idiotic plunge off the side of the boat.

I pulled the blanket tighter. “That was really brave of you. You could have been hurt. Thank you.”

“No problem,” said Sean, wrapping the towel Gran handed him around his neck.

“Who
was
he?” I asked. “The one down there who—” I broke off, not sure of how to put it.
French-kissed me back to life?

“He was one of them. A First One. He’s called Jax.” Sean’s smile faded and he looked uncomfortable. Despite my chilled state, I felt hot color creep into my cheeks. I wondered how much Sean had seen of the rescue operation.

“Trespass Island belongs to the First Ones,” said Gran. “I tried to tell you before, but it didn’t seem like it would matter if you weren’t going to be staying here. The folks who live here … well, we’re sort of tenants, I guess.”

“First Ones?” I repeated. “Are they some kind of monsters too?”

“Demigods of the sea,” said Sean.

“Demigods?” I was starting to sound like a not-very-bright parrot, but I just couldn’t help it.

“Of the sea,” Sean added, apparently trying to be helpful. “Those’re the only ones that seem to have survived to the present day. Only ones we’ve got
here
, anyway.”

It was like some bizarre dream. But the throbbing pain in my head, the texture of the woolen blanket on my skin, those felt real enough.