Walk on Water

by September Thomas

  “I’m starting to see how this went so wrong,” I interjected, fingers flying to my temples. They pressed against the pressure points. Hard.

  Toren cleared his throat. “When they moved to approach her, she became violent. It says quote, ‘her eyes began glowing and the walls rattled as if the pipes shook within them.’” Toren stopped and looked up, fear bleeding across his face.

  “Geoffrey. No one has even seen a God in two-thousand years. They were trained, they knew what they were doing. But when presented with that kind of situation, you get stressed out and react.” He spread his fingers wide in open defense of his officers.

  My jaw clenched around my next words. “And that reaction was to release a canister of our most lethal gas? Does that not seem extreme to you?”

  “They thought they were being attacked.” Toren jumped to his feet, his report landing on my desk with a thud. “She has magic, she’s one of the most powerful beings on the planet. Wouldn’t you wonder if she was about to attack you? And if she attacks, you’re probably going to end up being the dead one.” His voice firmed with resolve. “I would think that. I wouldn’t hesitate to react if it was me or them. Especially since they say she pulled a ball of what looked like water out of nowhere. She was clearly ready to do something.”

  The picture Toren painted wasn’t irrational. I’d seen her myself when she was isolated, enslaved by her own magic. She’d lashed out verbally, fought back, argued. Someone with that little restraint over something so powerful could be very dangerous. Maybe she wasn’t intending to attack the officers. No, that didn’t seem to fit her personality if the paperwork about her past and my understanding of her from our short meeting was anything. But given the appearance of being threatening.

  Hell.

  I drummed my fingers on the desk, thinking. “Why did they even have Anisra?” The name of the gas was a play on the word for ‘death’ in an ancient fey language.

  The gas was specially engineered to kill both human and fey creatures. Most fey couldn’t get sick let alone feel the effects of poisonous gases. In most cases, the only thing that was truly toxic to them was the smoke from ash trees and those were in scarce supply. The Order took precautions tens of thousands of years ago and developed a gas that could wipe out the fey if necessary.

  However, the gas had been stored away in the catacombs beneath the Order’s headquarters when the Gods failed to rise again fifteen-hundred years ago. To my knowledge, it remained there, under lock and key. Few even knew it still existed. Few—save the Council and me.

  “That was under my directive.” Toren slapped a hand on the report and leaned in close. An undercurrent of fury tinged his voice. “I wanted them to have protection in case something were to happen. If she was clearly unstable and could possibly take out an entire block of people with her powers, for example, I wanted my officers to be armed in preparation for the worst.”

  I sighed and leaned back in my chair. The charged emotion slowly seeped out of me like air from a balloon. I scrubbed my hands over my face and brought them together directly under my chin, index and middle fingers pressed together. “What happened next?”

  Toren stood straight, chest heaving as he collected his thoughts. He opened his mouth, then closed it and picked up a round, glass paperweight from my desk. He spun it around and around. I imagined he wanted to chuck it at someone. Maybe Zara. Maybe me.

  “She bolted the second they dropped the canister. I doubt she knew what it was, but she probably knew it couldn’t be anything good. I’m not sure. My officers pulled their masks over their faces just in time. But it was too late for the girls in the room. There is no antidote to the gas and they were hit with its full effects almost immediately.” Toren’s tone softened and he dropped the weight into my tray of outgoing mail.

  “The officers exited and set up procedures to deal with the fall-out.” He walked across the room, hands braced above his belt. The cream and black jacket of his uniform was unwrinkled, his medals aligned on his breast. His boots gleamed mirror-bright with polish. “These aren’t just any girls, some of them are world champions. And they were all together. It wasn’t like they could disappear without a trace.”

  I swore and stood to stare out the window. Puffy, grey clouds coated the skies like frosting, smooth and even. Beneath them, members of the Order walked with purpose or clustered in small groups to gossip. Everything was perfectly normal outside, a perfect contrast to how perfectly abnormal everything was in here.

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “No, but I’ve got feelers out. If she emerges, which she will, we’ll know about it.” He faced the wall, a framed copy of the Order’s directives in front of him.

  “This is a complete and total cluster. Do you understand?” I snatched an orange stress ball filled with sand off my desk and squeezed it tight. “I’m already having a difficult enough time hiding away in my rooms to avoid being seen, and now with this…” I squeezed my eyes shut and leaned a shoulder against the glass to shield myself from the daylight.

  “I can’t hide from the Council much longer. I have meetings I can’t cancel. This was supposed to be open and shut and instead…”

  “I understand. I know I failed you. But I’ll make it right. Give me another chance, please.” He turned back to face me, arms sliding across his chest. A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I promise you I’ll make it right. Don’t tell the other Council members. You know how they feel about me and even though this is the first time I’ve messed up. They could try to use this to unseat me.”

  His earnestness was impossible to miss.

  Stars, what a nightmare. But that’s exactly what it was. A nightmare. It wasn’t an end-all-be-all. This could be fixed. Everything that went wrong made sense in the most horrible kind of way. I just needed to figure out another way to get to her, find another way to bring her in. I wasn’t ready to give up on her yet. Not over a misunderstanding.

  I heaved a breath out and moved toward a bookcase laden with legal texts. “Where are the officers now?”

  “I took care of them.”

  Dead then. It was a very “Order” way of dealing with things. Isolate the situation, kill everyone involved, protect yourself on the back end.

  “Do they have family?”

  “No. They were devoted to their work and little else,” Toren said.

  Another very “Order-ish” way of life. Complete and total dedication to the job.

  I squeezed the stress ball again and slipped a hand into the pocket of my tailored blue slacks.

  “I understand what went wrong. There were bad decisions made all-around.”

  Toren rubbed his mouth and nodded in a defeated kind of way. “I’ll prepare my res—”

  “I wasn’t done talking,” I interrupted. “You messed up. But you only messed up once. And as long as the situation involving the girls is contained, it will only be that. A screw-up. I will give you another chance to bring her in. But you better be more prepared than that. Use more force if you need to, and bring her in. But no Anisra.”

  Toren sighed and moved to a shelf where he toyed with the spine of one of the thicker legal texts I kept there. He was acting normal again. Whatever tension between us had dissipated.

  “And Toren, I have to tell the Council what’s going on. They won’t find out about this particular incident. But they will learn that she is alive. You will need to act quickly because once that ball starts rolling…”

  “It will roll right over everyone.” Despite the threat hanging over both our heads, his shoulders dropped as the tension leached from them. “Thank you for giving me a second chance. I mean it. I won’t let you down.”

  “I know.” I walked over and squeezed his shoulder. When he moved toward the door, I offered one last piece of advice: “Make sure you pay the coroner well.”

  12

  Zara

  “All your fault.”

  “Your fault.”

  “If we hadn’t met you,
you monster, we wouldn’t be dead right now.”

  “Monster.”

  “Traitor.”

  “Snake.”

  Whispers soft as feathers and sharp as razors permeated the air, barbed wire wrapping tight around my skin, pinching tight, and cutting deep. I wanted to push them away like some sort of physical being, but when I reached out I couldn’t. I was bound.

  “Beast. Demon. Monster.”

  A soft, red light flickered on, bathing the room in blood. My eyes bolted shut, but it was too late. I’d seen them. My friends, my teammates, girls that I’d laughed and cried with. All of them standing in a semicircle around my body where it hung, dangling from the ceiling by hemp wrapped around my wrists. The rope tore deep into my flesh, and blood trickled down my arms in warm streams. The bodies of my friends were contorted, cold. Their skin the glossy color of spoiled milk. More than two dozen glassy, dead eyes stared at me, accusations flaying me open more effectively than any whip.

  Directly in front of me: Kazandra. Her lank hair spilled over her bare shoulders barely covering her breasts. Her skin was rotting away, her cheeks caving in as her head tipped at an odd angle as if someone had wrenched it that way and then left her like an abandoned Barbie Doll. Her smile was more of a grimace, complete with holes where teeth used to be. Unlike her peers, her eyes were bright red, her irises an unhealthy yellow.

  They were far from unseeing.

  They saw me for everything I was.

  My true self.

  They called me a God.

  A lie.

  I was a monster.

  A cold hand slick with slime wrapped around my throat and I started to choke, eyes sliding shut to block the silent accusations. I wasn’t sure why it was my fault they were dead, but it must be. It had to be. Somehow this was connected to what I was. Guilt settled firmly on my shoulders, a weight I’d never shake. They could kill me here. And that was ok. I deserved it. All of it. A lack of oxygen sent my mind into a dizzying tailspin.

  I choked and water filled my mouth.

  Water?

  My eyes opened to reveal a wall of stone. I was submerged. Warm currents sluiced through my hair, sending it swirling. It tickled my cheeks and shoulders. The liquid surrounded me as I clutched my knees to my naked chest, my nose pressed to the bony valley created between them. I was suspended in this oddly peaceful realm where sounds were muted and images were dark and blurry. The nightmare of my dead friends a thing of the past. I exhaled softly, a waterfall of bubbles pouring from my nose.

  You’re back, the Kraken’s voice penetrated my not-thoughts.

  I think so.

  Good. I need to see you soon.

  Like that, Its presence was gone. I unfolded my limbs and reluctantly pushed off the floor of this little slice of heaven. Whatever was on the other side of the surface would be reality. Reality I wasn’t quite sure I was willing to face.

  All too soon, my head breached the surface; water flowed through my locks and over my eyes. I wiped some of it away and tread a little, slowly propelling myself toward the rocky ledge surrounding the pool. Everything felt a little out of focus, faintly skewed.

  The last thing I remembered was Finn’s worried face hovering above me as I seized. Speaking of the kelpie, where was he? I braced my arms on the ledge, noting a distinct lack of sharp rocks or edges, and looked around. I was in some sort of large pool set slightly off-center in what appeared to be a decked-out cave. Finn had mentioned some sort of sanctuary, and I believed it if the bed the size of four king beds shoved together was any indication of the luxuries within the cavern. There weren’t any windows, but it wasn’t dark thanks to glowing blue, pink, and yellow orbs that floated around the edges of the room. They were draped in silky moss hanging from the ceiling. A few trinkets, mostly shells and old cameras and dog-eared books, littered rocky ledges jutting from the walls.

  I hoisted myself out of the pool and darted toward a clothing rack by the bed. My feet left small puddles on the ground. I tugged on a red polo that dwarfed me, and feebly tugged the white string around the waist of some grey sweatpants as tight as it would go. They still barely clung to the edges of my hipbones. It would have to do. It wasn’t like I was going to actually see anyone.

  Hopefully.

  As I dressed, I took stock of my energy. The queasiness was gone, the rotting taste of death in my mouth vanished, the tiredness had retreated, my sore muscles healed. I felt invigorated. Finn had promised to get me somewhere safe. He’d promised the water would heal me.

  He’d been right.

  Now I needed to find the man himself.

  The massive room opened up opposite the wall framing the bed. Through it, I could barely make out a slip of the clear, blue sky. Or maybe it was the sea. Hard to tell from this angle. My feet ghosted across the floor, naked without my signature high-top Converse, and I clutched my sweatpants tight with one hand. I didn’t trust the string to hold.

  I squinted into the sunlight, a hand shielding the worst of the rays. Turns out the strip of blue was the sky. The sea was actually a whirling, frothing, angry mess of grey. Sitting on a ledge hanging over the waves was Finn, his legs dangling over the edge as if teasing the waves to rear up and grab him. His shirt was crumpled in a ball next to him; the summer sun glittered off his golden skin and chiseled abs. As I approached, I noticed thin, white scars scratched across the muscles of his back, neck, and arms. Other, much larger scars, crossed lower toward his hips. It looked like something had taken chunks out of him and left holes behind. I wondered about the story behind them.

  “It’s rude to stare.”

  He didn’t move as I padded over and sat down. Like him, I chose to dangle my legs over the ledge. The spray of the sea tickled my toes, and the frothy anger of the water below lightened, its intense fury diminishing.

  “It started calming down a few hours ago. That’s when I knew you were going to be ok. I’m glad. I’d be officially the worst guardian in the history of the Gods if you died within hours of officially being placed under my watch.”

  I chewed over that for a minute. “It isn’t just me controlling the water, then? It responds to me and what’s happening to me, too?” I swirled my fingers through a spray of saltwater, feeling it wrap tenderly around me in a light caress before sinking into my skin.

  His eyes opened and that now-familiar gaze washed over me. I hadn’t realized until now how much I’d needed to see that expression—a maddening combination of relief and exasperation. “Yes. Your element is an extension of you and your emotions, your abilities, your resolve, your resilience. It’s both a weapon and a defender, a lover and a fighter. And remember, it’s only as strong as you are.” He pushed his weight off his wrists and brushed his knuckles together producing a soft swishing sound. His dozens of bracelets jangled. Then he leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees.

  “How are you feeling?”

  I rubbed the side of my neck, taking silent inventory. “Pretty incredible, actually. I felt like I was dying before, it hurt so much. I felt like I was slipping away into nothingness. It’s much better now. Thank you.” I gripped his biceps hard, and it swelled under my touch. “Whatever you did was a miracle.”

  “Not me, the Kraken.” He shook his head, his hair ruffling a bit in the wind, refusing to look at me. “Water has natural healing qualities to it, and we were able to use it. Keep that in mind if you ever need to help a friend who’s in a grave situation. Since you’re the God of Water it works much better and faster, like turbocharging a battery. Given the graveness of your injuries, all that stuff on your skin, I figured it would be best to submerge you. The Kraken took over from me there.”

  “How long was I under?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. About a day, maybe more.”

  That was a long time. Gods knew how worried my parents and coach were right now. I needed to call my mom at least, try to get a hold of her and tell her I was OK. She must be freaking out.

  “Where’s my phone?” I dem
anded, grabbing Finn’s sleeve.

  “Waterlogged. I tried to dry it out, but…” He plucked it off the rock next to him and handed it over. I clicked the side buttons and jabbed at the screen. Nothing happened.

  “Why is it waterlogged?” I asked.

  He shifted and pulled a leg up to his chest, fingers curling around his knee.

  “How much do you remember?” The boy could seriously never answer a straight question.

  “All of it.”

  “You’re lying.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, his pained expression causing my heart to twist in my chest. “What happened at the hotel was no accident. I think you were supposed to die.”

  He probably didn’t mean them to be cruel, but his words echoed those from my nightmare.

  My fault.

  Despite the warmth of the sun’s rays, I felt chilled. I drew my borrowed shirt tighter around my chest as if to fend it off. “Die?” My voice was dry, crackly like fall leaves.

  He nodded and started brushing his knuckles together again.

  Swish, swish. Swish, swish.

  “Trust me when I say I know things because I’ve lived things. There are things I know I can’t explain, things I don’t want to explain,” Finn said.

  That didn’t sound good.

  “What killed your friends, what almost killed you, was a special kind of gas. I’ve never seen it in action myself, but I’ve heard of it. I’m familiar with it. All fey are because it’s designed to kill them. I mean, it’s designed to kill humans, too, but the point is that it can wipe out everyone. Kind of like a nuclear bomb, but more contained.

  “It leaves behind a particular kind of residue. When it kicks in, it makes its victims froth at the mouth. That froth has an orangeish-reddish tint. I could see it on your friends.” He swung his legs harder and did something unusual. He reached out and grabbed my hand, holding tight. “I think that gas was deployed hours before you showed up. It had started to disperse. You’d breathed in some, but the water pulled it out of you. That’s the only reason why you’re ok.”