Thunder: The Shadows Are Stirring (Thunder Stories Book 1) (37 page)

And Ethan. I remember Ethan should be around somewhere.

I do a quick scan of the room and my eyes land on his sleeping form, slumped down in a chair placed at the head of my bed, his chin dipping to his chest, an arm stretched out across the blanket like he’d recently released my hand. Though he’s sound asleep, daylight filters through the round window. Knowing Ethan, he’s been staying close to protect me from my nightmares. Judging by the state of my blankets, I’d been pretty active in my sleep, and he’d have been able to guess what that meant.

I’d wonder how long I’ve been sleeping, but my head aches too much to try to work it out. Shifting my arm, I lace my stiff fingers back through Ethan’s and close my eye, in order to regroup. Almost immediately I slip into an empty and weightless place where dreams leave me in peace at last.

The next time I wake up, the sun is rising, its warm glow stretching across the wooden walls and floor highlighting their golden tones. It should be beautiful, but I still see the horrors of my mind. On the positive side, I no longer feel achy or sick. I figure my body has adjusted to being tied with Queen Viola. That’s the last coherent memory I have, the queen explaining what was happening to me. Now, no matter where I go, the People of the Lake (and through them, the other fairy clans) will be able to trace me and appear at a moment’s notice. Perfect for when I find the rift.

I turn to my side and can’t hold back a twisted grin. Somehow, the Lake people must have known I was better; the room now looks exactly like our cell had, with my canopied bed and a bunk across the way. Ethan and Maddix are still asleep; I slip out of bed and tiptoe from the room, heading to where I can scrub away the stench of fear and illness from my body. When I’m done, a stack of fresh clothes appears at my feet. That earns another smile and a heartfelt thank you because they’re making me feel human again. When I get back to our room, both boys are awake. Maddix reminds me so much of Jamie in the way he moves that the sight of him makes me want to cry. Instead, I bite my lip. Hard. Now, if I tear up, it’ll be from pain.

I pull myself together as I step back through the doorway and I take pleasure in the fact that Ethan’s whole face lights up. “Morning, guys!” I call out.

“Morning yourself,” returns Ethan, crossing the room and giving me a breath-hitching hug. “How are you?” He pulls back, hands still on my shoulders, staring intently into my eyes. I can’t lie.

“I’ll be fine. Really,” I insist, trying not to sound shaky. We have to move on. Time isn’t waiting for me to get settled.

Chapter Thirty-Two: Reality

(ETHAN)

M
ADDIX, OLIVIA, AND I
are mashed together under an overhang of rock, waiting for the rain to pass. The water streams down in dense sheets, and it’s so ridiculously cold our breath stutters from our lips in puffs of white. Jax had brought us to a point along an eastern face of the Esperer Mountains, which is, according to him, called Haven’s Peak. The red guy asked Olivia if she wanted him to hang around, but she said we’d be fine. Which was the right answer because Jax is a complete punk. He “accidentally” misplaced me when we landed. Whatever. I can’t believe Olivia hugged the guy. Yeah, I shook his hand because he did end up helping us. But still.

We need to go on foot from here on out because we’re apparently getting close. Olivia says she can sense the pull in the air flow. When I ask her what the sensation feels like, she explains that there’s a heavy feeling inside of her, a yearning for something just outside of her grasp.

I watch idly as she and Maddix use sticks to scratch out a game of tic-tac-toe on the muddy ground. Olivia seems way too calm. I’m still bothered by her dreams. She won’t talk about them like she’d done in the past. What guts me is, when she was sick, all I could do was hold her hand and talk like she could hear me. I mean, she’d been screaming in agony, calling for her brothers, her parents, God, anyone; and there I was, holding onto her hand and saying, “It’s okay, Livs; it’s okay.” Like some sort of schmuck. I hate platitudes; no way was it even close to being okay.

Since I can’t shake it, I ask out loud, “Liv? What was the deal with your nightmares? Why won’t you tell us about them?”

Her sigh comes from her toes. “Because they weren’t my dreams.”

“Um. What?”

 “The nightmares! It was like watching a bunch of horror movies. Awful stuff, but they weren’t connected to me.” She goes on to explain everything she’d witnessed, concluding, “Remember when we were talking about how Jamie dreams of the past, things he wishes to fix, and I dream of current or future things that can affect what I’m doing, what choices I make? It’s like I’d been having Jamie’s dreams. Or even Sam’s. Is it possible the Sliders were feeding me my brothers’ nightmares?”

I glance over at Maddix, whose bewildered expression mirrors my feelings.

“But why would they do that? They already mess with your own dreams, why give you your brothers’?” he asks. His forehead creases, though, since her brothers are his friends, too.

“Because I’ve been learning to have some control over mine, and maybe the Sliders could only do it while I was sick and my defenses were down.” Olivia pauses and swallows hard; when she speaks again, her voice wobbles. “And maybe they want me to know they have my brothers. As a threat to say if I go forward with our plans, they will kill Sam and Jamie.”

Maddix’s face pales and I feel the pit of my stomach drop. That sounds all too likely.

“That’s a reasonable thought, but how do you know they were your brothers’ dreams and not just false ones sent to spook you? Maybe they’re trying to lay a trap for us. Make you change your plans about where we’re heading, assuming you’d want to go after your brothers first.” I mean, the situation doesn’t have to be as bleak as it appears; the guys could be fine.

“I s’pose it’s possible, but, see ….” Olivia counters, “You remember how it feels when Thunder does his whole mind-speak thing? How it’s like you’re having these thoughts cross over your brain, but you can tell they don’t actually stem from you? You can recognize it’s his voice you’re hearing? Well, these dreams were in my brothers’ voices.”

I swear before I can catch myself. “Sorry, but—man, Olivia; that means ….” I let my voice fade away. “What’s our next move?” She must have been hoping I’d disagree with her theory because she seems crushed by my question. Seeing the pained expression on her face makes me want to smash my fist into something. Or someone. My choice would be the creep himself. She’s hurting more deeply than she’s letting on.

“Criminy,” Olivia mutters, rubbing her hands over her face. She drops her arms, and I’m afraid she’s losing confidence, but then she sets her jaw. “The fact is the Sliders can obviously mess with my head to make me feel inept and helpless. But you know what? They won’t stop me from sealing the rift. It’s taken me long enough, but I’ve figured it out: No matter what, I’m holding on to
me
.

“Their plans are gonna blow up in their creepy faces because, whatever they do to me and the people I love, they’re making me more determined to get to the end. I have no doubt my brothers are being tortured, and that freaks me out. But if I gave up, how would that help them? It’s not like Sliders would ever hand them back to me and apologize. The best chance my brothers have is for me to do this. Now.”

“As in
now
, now?”

“Well, when we can see through the rain, but yeah. We can’t detour to my brothers right now. ”

Maddix, who’d gone silent while Olivia was talking, stares at me, his pupils huge. When he speaks, it sounds like his voice is coming through a slow-motion time warp. “You know, in the stories about the People of the Flame, they’re salamanders. I mean that’s what the ‘People’ actually are ….”

I can almost feel Olivia’s neck snap as she whips her head around to face the kid. Salamanders and lizards look almost identical.

Throwing her mud-covered stick to the ground, Olivia states, “That’s it, guys. Now there’s even more to figure out. We’re eating and getting comfortable. The rain’s not going anywhere and until it slows down, we’re stuck.”

Maddix grins wickedly, “Is that ’cause I just beat you for the fourteenth time, or ’cause you’re scared?”

Olivia rubs his head with sisterly zeal. “As if! And I totally let you beat me.”

Maddix snorts. “Yeah. If that makes you feel better. But food sounds good to me, anyway.”

“Yeah. I’m in, too.” I say, “What’ve we got?”

Olivia digs out some ham, potatoes, and apples. We try to roast the apples over our sad excuse of a campfire. The wood we’d used was damp, so mostly we hold them in the smoke or burn them in the smoldering embers if we aim too close. We all flop down on our little tarp and search through Maddix’s memory for everything he can tell Olivia about the salamanders. It seems to help. Before long, both Olivia and Maddix are asleep. I lean back against the damp earth wall and watch the rain come down.

~~~

T
HE NEXT MORNING
starts as dismally as the night had ended. Our sleep had been sketchy at best, and we awoke to ground covered with a thick layer of white frost.

Crunching our way up a barely visible path, I voice a concern I’ve been carrying for a while. “Livs, do you know what you need to do to seal it?”

As much as we talk about everything else, I haven’t let myself touch this. It’s the one point that concerns me the most. I don’t know if anyone’s told Olivia or not but, the way I’ve heard it, not many Seekers are the same when they’ve finished whatever it is they do. Some are never heard of again. Callie’s a good teacher though; I don’t think she’d leave out information like that.

Olivia shrugs her shoulders, “Callie trained me the best she could. But ….” She bites her lip. “There really aren’t any old Seekers around to get tips from, you know? Callie says it works differently for each Seeker, anyway. Guess I’ll know soon enough.”

We start to plan what we can. We figure Olivia will be most vulnerable, not when she finds the rift, but when she begins the process of sealing it. If they try to attack, my body’s going in-between her and whoever’s coming for her. If something happens to me, she’ll only have Maddix covering her. At some point, the rest of the troops will show up. I just need to be able to last until they do. I’ve given my word to her brothers that she’ll get home, and I don’t renege on my promises.

By noon, Maddix coughs and scowls at the sky, bleary eyed from lack of sleep and hours of trudging through the thin cold air. Shielding his face, he comments, “Ah, man. It’s starting to rain. Again.”

Olivia sighs and pulls her jacket tighter around her body. Her face is strained and, instantly, I’m uneasy. Silently, I slip my sword from its sheath across my back and my dagger from my belt. Maddix watches me and pulls out his knife. Olivia’s face spasms like she’s going to hurl, but she grabs an arrow and readies her bow. We press forward, and I know it’s not the cold that raises the goose bumps on my skin.

None of us talk. The rain begins pelting us in icy bites and pretty soon we’re all sopping.

Without thinking about it, we’ve formed a triangle, with me in the lead, Olivia back to my left, Maddix to the right. I may not be tuned in to the air flows or whatever like Olivia, but I have certainly learned how to be aware of incoming danger. And my radar is just about pinging off the hook right now.

The ground had already been muddy from the melted frost, but the frozen dirt underneath had held firm; with the rain, the sludge has become deep enough to suck at our boots. Each footfall ends in a resounding belch, which I know is acting as a homing beacon for anyone who might be shadowing us. Even the leaves, pliable and soggy from the downpour, seem to amplify our own presence while muting anything else. I can tell something is coming, but I’m not sure how close it is until a roll of thunder makes us all jump. Turning as one unit, we’re right in time to see four huge crocodile-sized salamanders step into a clearing about a quarter-mile away.

Olivia makes a choking sound in the back of her throat, but she lets an arrow fly true. It nails a big red guy in the neck. Instead of lodging there, the arrow wobbles and slips to the ground. I don’t know if the amphibians had simply been planning to trail us, or what; but they’re gonna get a fight. We know from Olivia’s dream how lethal they can be and that is an advantage over Olivia’s brothers, who were apparently blindsided.

I move forward, but Olivia jumps in front of me and aims again.

“What are you doing?” I demand angrily, trying to dodge around her back.

She releases her shot and turns a grim face towards me. “Ethan. They will kill you. They can’t get me yet because I’m not broken. And I’d rather not give them the chance to try here. I won’t be okay if something happens to you right in front of me. So stay back; I’ve got to be the one to do this.”

I’d feel all warm and fuzzy inside, except she’s crazy to think I’d cower behind her. I turn my voice to steel. “You’d better look away then, Livs, because I’m going.”

Her gasp of shock is a stab to my gut; I hadn’t meant to sound callous but—well. Seriously, did she think I’d listen to her? Still, I do feel a little guilty. I soften my voice and add, “Or we do this together. But I’m sure as heck not going to stand back while you defend me.”