by Mia Strange
Eli pulled from our kiss, breathing hard. He grabbed his bow and shoved me behind him. I swept my weapon from my shoulder, loaded an arrow, looked down the sight, pulled the string, and stepped out alongside Eli.
I glared at him and then? Took aim. “Kissing does not negate fighting,” I whispered to him through gritted teeth. “I still know how to use a crossbow.”
Eli stood in a stance that mirrored mine. He too was locked and loaded. “Sorry. I just–” he stopped.
“What?”
“I didn’t want anything to happen to you–don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Academy members are equal in all things. Your words. Nothing has changed.” I heard Eli sigh as I kept my eyes trained on the direction where the unnatural, spooky sounds had come from.
“Fine,” he said. “But don’t get hurt. I just got you well. Lost a lot of sleep over it too.”
“True,” I agreed. He had. Traveler and Eli had pulled an all-nighter and then some, battling the ins and outs and back-ins of a very complicated transfusion. One that left me blood bound to a vampire.
“And–” he paused.
“And?”
“And promise me you’ll stay alive today. And I promise you, I’ll keep you alive tonight.”
I thought about vampires and silver, and oh what the hell. I could only process so much at one time. And right now, I was still processing that Dr. Elijah Dark had just given me the kiss of my life. I smiled. “That’s pretty much my plan, why?”
“So we can take up where we left off.”
A smile tugged at my lips, lips that still stung from the intensity of our kisses.
“Promise,” I whispered.
“Ready?” He shifted his bow.
“Yep.” I shifted mine. “Ready.” And may the growls and snapping metal and creepy sounds in this tunnel, be damned. Right now? With my lips tingling and Eli’s residue magic stroking me in secret dark places, my smile got a whole lot bigger.
7
Side by side, Eli and I walked deeper into the subterranean ruins of the Seattle Underground. There were no more scary sounds, but the maze of passageways that snaked under the historic, Pioneer Square, was at times spooky. At other times, fascinating.
Stories of days long gone, a history of gambling, opium dens, speakeasies, prostitution, and dark, depressing hiding places, were meshed with more legitimate storefronts. Signs advertising pawn shops and tobacco stores still hung in place, although most were barely legible.
The smell of dank rotting wood, mildews and molds filled the air around us. The scent of the sea, salty and briny, was strong and ever-present. Eli said it was from the old drainage systems, ones that funneled to Elliot Bay and the waters beyond.
“Do you think she uses the drains to reach Puget Sound?” I asked.
“Most definitely. She would need a constant water source. This version of Pioneer Square was built on tidelands. I would guess on occasion, even today, these streets flood.”
“Wouldn’t that be dangerous for her?” I thought of these tunnels filling with water, a flash flood, trapping her, tumbling her end over end. Drowning her. I rubbed my arms to keep the chilling thought away.
“Water for her, is like oxygen is for us,” Eli continued. “Unless she was badly injured, crushed, broken, unconscious, she would survive.”
“Then why would she stay here? In a place that could be a deathtrap?”
Eli shrugged. “Everyone needs a home.”
We walked silently, following the stream of Eli’s light source. He held the beautiful, egg-shaped moonstone from his curio shelf cupped in his hands. A pale glow, like the color of a rare blue agate, traveled from the stone and gave off just enough light to follow the wood- planked trail ahead.
“The color from the stone is beautiful,” I whispered, not wanting to let my voice echo through the tunnels ahead.
“That’s why I brought it. A mermaid is drawn to a moonstone.”
“Why?”
“She’s ruled by the pull of the moon, by the master of the tides. A moonstone, for one such as her, is like a talisman, a good luck charm. She won’t be able to resist it. I’m hoping she doesn’t have one.”
I stopped short, kicking up a cloud of dust that flew up only to settle and cover my Docs, yellow lacings and all. “Eli?”
He turned and looked over his shoulder. “What?”
I frowned and lowered my bow. I tapped it along my thigh in thought.
“Skye?” He asked again. “What is it?”
“Until now, until this very minute, I only thought of her as a puzzle piece, ya know? Like a clue. Just, Chapter Three in your fancy damn book.” I wasn’t sure where my anger had come from, I only knew it burned deep in my gut and clawed to get out. I could tell it caught Eli by surprise. Hell. It caught me by surprise.
“She is all that,” Eli said, a confused look clouded his expression.
“But if we find her–”
“When we find her.”
“Okay. When. What right do we have to take her away from her home? Really? What gives us the right?”
Eli walked back to where I stood and put his hand on mine. “We have no right.”
“Then how can we do it?”
Eli sighed and shook his head. “We must. There is more at stake here than one, lone, magical girl.”
“You sound like The Gov.”
“I guess. When you look at it that way. But we are no more than the sum of all we collect. Like Darius is fire, she is water. And we need all the elements. We are nothing without her. We must continue to collect, to set the world back where it should be. Where it must be. Before it’s too late.”
“But at what price?” I thought of Emma being ripped away from her family, from the only home she had ever known. The anger instantly disappeared, and tears pressed behind my eyes and threatened to tumble.
“It’s a high price,” Eli said in that lyrical voice that made me crazy-desperate to believe anything he said. “But it’s the right one.”
“Right how?” Thinking of my sister, I felt sick with guilt. How could we hunt this girl like she was some trophy to hang on a wall?
“Because. She not only helps us. But we, in turn, help her.”
“Help her how?” Now I was getting angry again.
“Skye,” he ran a hand through his dark hair. “She is dying. I only hope we can find her in time.”
“Dying?” I jerked to attention. Gone were the maudlin emotions. Gone was the red-hot rage. Dying was serious business. Hell. I knew a thing or two about dying. Or at least almost dying. Might even know more after tonight. “How do you know this?”
“It’s written–”
“Don’t tell me.” I held up my hand. “It’s written in Chapter Three.”
“Yes,” Eli took my arm and pulled me off to the side where we were hidden in shadows. “But it’s only a theory. An–for lack of a better word–a study.”
“What kind of study?”
“A worst-case scenario. A what-if.”
“And the mermaid?”
“By all my calculations, is following the theory.”
“Which is?”
“She can’t survive on her own. And besides, before you go thinking I’m a genius or something, Traveler Hale spotted her a few nights back. All I had to do was find the Ley line.”
“He what?”
“He caught a glimpse of her in the Sound one night when he was flying-”
I raised an eyebrow. “He flies? What’s next? Does he turn into a bat?”
“That’s ridiculous, Skye.”
“Oh. Like raising the dead and having cursed blood? And come on, people turn into wolves.” I thought about Anastasia and her mean-girl furry butt.
He shook his head. “People turn into a lot of things. But Hale is no bat. What he is, Skye, is danger walking. Always remember that.”
Well shit. This is not something I wanted to hear.
“Look. This is not about Trav
eler Hale. I simply asked him to do a little surveilling for me–”
“Spying.”
“What?”
“Spying for you.”
“No. Think of it as keeping an eye out for me. And now I know what she looks like. I know that she is just a girl, maybe sixteen. I know she has red hair the color of shaved carrots. I know her name is Annabel Lee.”
My mouth must have been hanging open because it took me a moment to respond. “Annabel Lee? In a Kingdom by the sea? Like, the ‘Poe’ poem? You’re kidding, right?”
Eli smiled. “I’m not. And once again I see you were paying attention in old school Lit.”
He looked pleased. I rolled my eyes. “We should move,” he tipped his head toward an ominous tunnel ahead. “We need to find her, before, well, in time. We need to find her in time.”
Hoisting my bow back over my shoulder, I got ready to move. There wasn’t a bigger motivator for me than, “in time.”
The Bone Man had found me, “in time.”
I had to find Emma, “in time.”
We had to save the world, “in time.”
Elijah Dark, whether he knew it or not, had just spoken my language.
I began to walk.
Eli caught up with me. The moonstone once again lit the way. Looking over my shoulder I couldn’t help but notice we had picked up a handful of ghosts tagging along behind us. I smiled. One ghost, a pretty girl dressed in saloon attire, waved. I waved back.
“What’s wrong with Annabel?” I asked turning away from the spirits.
“The same thing that’s wrong with our world. Her oceans are too warm, the pollutants too great. She is slowly being poisoned by her own environment. But because she loves the sea, she can’t keep away. And it’s killing her.”
I thought about this as I walked. A mermaid without water. A big sister without her little sister. It’s a wonder either of us kept going. I didn’t know who this Annabel was. I didn’t know what she looked like, and I didn’t care.
I only knew at that moment, that I would like her.
We picked our way along the boardwalk, navigating rotting facades and passing under falling timbers that were once arched with grand, double doors. Every so often we would pass beneath a skylight, embedded in the streets above. The glass blocks, made with manganese, sent prisms of purple and pink light dancing around our feet.
It was a moment of stark beauty in an otherwise depressing atmosphere. The scent of the sea continued to swirl around us. A constant reminder of Annabel Lee.
Keeping our conversation to a minimum, we listened as a strange series of clacks, clanks and squeals escalated. Something, or things, were vocalizing, planning . . . watching?
With every step, we came closer and closer to the source of the strange sounds. I knew zombies didn’t frequent these hidden streets. The climb down was not possible for the dead, in some places, the entrances exceeded a 35-foot drop. And zombies? Not so good on a ladder. Safe to say, just like The King’s Street Station, we were traveling in a zombie-free zone.
So? That left the hybrids. And if that was what walked the tunnels with us, Eli and I were in a lot of trouble. Again.
With extended, hooked claws made from steel and iron enhanced jaws patterned after bear traps from the Klondike gold miners, the wild dogs were a product of a Gov experiment gone horribly wrong.
We called them Micas, named after the Gov Tinker that had bred them, enhanced them, and infused them with blood magic. That last step? Blood magic? Would prove to be a fatal mistake.
Mica Sam, a Native American Skinwalker, put too much of ‘himself’ into his work. The result? He was a short-lived, Gov hero in our post-apocalyptic history. The hybrid dogs proved unpredictable. Unmanageable. Insatiable.
On the night the blood magic fused with the canines, in true Skinwalker fashion, the dogs turned on their creator, attacked, and ate his heart. Escaping from kennels that were inadequate to hold them, the dogs now roamed our landscape, breeding, multiplying, hunting in packs, and seeking the hearts of any and all magical beings.
With each kill, their magic became stronger. With each kill, their hunger grew. Patterned after an African hunting dog that looked deceptively like a hyena, the dogs weighed in at around 150 lbs. Their bite force was such they could sever bone and sinew with one horrific chomp.
So much for man’s best friend.
Next to a Dead and Done Zombie? These dogs were the hungriest on the food chain. And the human heart was first on their doggie menu.
One of my worst memories, happened when I was nine, locked in Gov Care. Two sadistic guards had ‘fed’ an inmate who had proven to have no usable magic to a Mica. Still, the man had a whiff of magic, which was enough to entice the monster. I’d never been able to erase the image from my mind. And sometimes, deep in the night, I still heard the screams in my nightmares.
Another round of loud clanks and snaps echoed around us. Yeah. Micas. Some called them Clankers, because of the sound the iron jaws made when opening and closing. While tearing and severing. I shivered.
I knew the Mica’s secret language, had heard it before. And I was pretty sure we were walking right into a pack of them. I looked at my short bow and suddenly felt–inadequate.
“Why don’t we have Ray Guns?” I whispered to Eli.
“Aether Guns. They’re called Aether Guns,” he whispered back.
I thought about the elaborate weapons hidden back at the train. We had an entire arsenal of guns. Automatic pistols, long shot rifles, repeaters. Made of iron and hammered brass, with triggers of gold and barrels of shiny steel, the weapons, elaborately engraved, were beautiful, fanciful, and deadly.
They looked out of this world. They looked like they were right out of one of Jin’s Sci-Fi movies.
Last year, when she had picked the lock to the railcar hiding the arsenal, I followed her. She did all the breaking and entering. Me? Just an innocent observer. Kinda. Sort of. Okay. I might have been the lookout.
Still, they looked like Ray Guns. Powerful. Lethal. Fun? And damn it, I could use one about now.
“But-”
“But nothing, Skye. You know they haven’t been invented yet.”
“No. I’m pretty sure you invented one. Or a hundred.” I frowned at him.
“And no one is supposed to know it. Not you. Not Jin. Not the Academy–”
I cut him off. “Wait. The rest of the Academy knows?”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course. And next time? Just ask. I’ll lend you the key.”
Heat climbed into my cheeks. Well, that was embarrassing. Eli didn’t seem to notice and went on.
“If we got caught with Aether Guns away from the train, The Gov would want to know how we keep them loaded. How they fire. And that would entail a demonstration. And that would lead–”
“To Pilot.” I sighed. “Our never-ending source of aether.”
“Exactly. We have them, yes. To protect the train. Although I would deny it. We need them, especially to use in the Ash Lands against the growing hordes, where–”
“No one sees,” I finished.
He nodded. “Or tells.”
Well. Jin and I were sneaking idiot ninjas, weren’t we? Eli was right. My crossbow would have to do. Shit. Would do. I needed to suck it up. Still, I had a question.
“Are they fun to shoot?”
His face broke into a broad smile, his dimple dancing to the surface. He was proud of these ‘Ray Guns.’ I could tell.
“Amazing,” he said. “They’re just amazing. Next trip to the Ash Lands, I’ll let you shoot.”
Now that brought a smile to my lips. But it was fleeting. The Micas were talking again.
“Worried about the dogs?” Eli asked.
“No.”
He gave me, the ‘LOOK.’ “You should be. You know that, right?”
“Okay. Yes. Hell yes. You?”
He nodded. “That’s why I left Dagger behind. He’d go right after them. He’d be outnumbered. And Dru’s wa
rds are–”
“Fading,” I finished unhappily.
“Indeed.”
“How did you know Micas would be here?”
“I didn’t. I hoped not. But what could be more magical, or more tempting, than a mermaid’s heart?”
“Thanks a lot Eli. Because that statement? Nearly stopped mine.”
“Understood. I’m working at eradicating them every damn day. But Skinwalker magic…
His voice trailed off in thought. Like always.
We kept going, further and further, passing an old bar, the floor littered with broken bottles and shards of glass. I saw a ghostly group of gold miners drinking at a table. They raised their mugs and blew kisses at the sexy saloon girl that still trailed behind. And she was. Sexy that is. She wore a red leather corset I would die for.
We walked through a flophouse, and I held my nose as we stepped on and around damp and molding mattresses. Rusted bed springs reached up and caught on my ankles, snagging my shoes. As if on cue, my toe caught on a spring and I fell to my knees. Another fallen seamstress sign, this one made of rotting cedar, bit into my hands. I felt the wicked point of a splinter gouge into my palm. “Damn it,” I said. “Just shit.”
“You okay?” Eli stood over me offering a hand up. “Yeah. This place just makes me swear. A lot.”
“Like that’s new?” Eli hid a smile.
“Funny.” I motioned his hand away and flopped down cross-legged on a dusty pillow to pull out the splinter. Damn. It was a long one.
“Light?” I nodded, not looking up.
Eli bent over, holding the moonstone close. I pulled at the splinter in one quick motion. It stung like one of Turk’s bees that he had tattooed around his eye. A small stream of blood pooled in my hand and Eli looked away to find his silk handkerchief. Guess that was a piece of Dr. Dark’s wardrobe he forgot to pack.
The blood in my hand swirled, and moved in slow motion, backing right back into the ragged hole of the wound. The last drop disappeared, and my flesh fused. Healed. Like it never happened. I sucked in a surprised breath. Traveler Hale’s blood. Traveler Hale’s magic. My mind raced.