by Karen Lynch
I stood as soon as he disappeared from sight. Picking up my duffle bag and the dog carrier, I took them to the concession stand and asked one of the workers to hold them for me. She looked at me like I was nuts until I showed her my Agency ID.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I told her as I turned for the stairs.
I ran up the stairs and slowed as I reached the top so I didn’t draw attention to myself. The middle deck was only half-full, and a quick walk-through turned up no sign of Tate. He’d either continued to the top deck, or he’d slipped past me and gone downstairs. I headed for the stairs. I’d start at the top and work my way down if I had to, but I’d find him before we docked. He wasn’t getting away from me this time.
I shivered in my lined leather jacket when I emerged onto the open top deck, where not even the afternoon sun could take the bite out of the river breeze. At least thirty passengers had braved the cold to enjoy the view, including several families huddled together with their children. I was glad for my scarf and cap as I searched the deck for Tate.
It didn’t take me long to locate him standing at the front of the boat, facing the city as he talked on his phone. I had expected to find him with someone, but he appeared to be alone. It made no sense unless he’d met up with someone on the island. Odd location for a meetup, but what did I know about the behavior of a fugitive black market dealer?
I approached him quietly. When I was a few feet away, I could hear him talking, and I slowed to listen.
“I don’t want to hear your excuses. Do you know what a risk I took coming here today to see you?” Pause. “You said you had a lead on who stole it.” Pause. “No, it wasn’t Brian. He’s still in custody, and he would have spilled if he had it.”
My pulse jumped. Was he talking about the ke’tain? It had been stolen from him before the raid?
He hunched his shoulders. “Screw Davian. My only way out of this mess is to find it and turn it in. And remember, if I go down, you go down.”
Tate hung up and turned around, bringing us face-to-face. He stared at me warily but without a hint of recognition.
I reached up to pull down the scarf covering the lower part of my face. “You owe me a pair of shackles.”
Panic flared in his eyes. “How do you keep finding me?”
I could have lied and told him I was just that good, but I went with the truth. “Luck.”
“No one is that lucky.” His eyes darted around as if he was expecting a dozen agents to materialize behind me. “It was Cecil, wasn’t it? That bastard set me up.”
“Is that who stood you up today?” I asked.
“As if you don’t know.”
I stuck my hands in my pockets, and my fingers touched the cool metal of the shackles there. “You’ll be happy to hear that Cecil didn’t rat you out. The Agency will be very interested in hearing about your business dealings with him, though.”
“You can’t take me in.” He looked to the side as if he was contemplating jumping.
I took a step closer, ready to grab him if he made a move. “You’ll freeze to death if you don’t drown.”
“Better than what the Agency or the faeries will do to me.”
The sound of an engine reached me, and I glanced over his shoulder at a speedboat headed in our direction. I should have known someone like him would have a backup plan.
Without warning, Tate rushed me. He shoved me hard to the side, but I kept my balance, thanks to hours of training with Faolin. I tackled him, and we hit the deck, drawing gasps from the other passengers.
I wrestled with him for a minute before I was able to straddle him. People were standing now, and I flashed my ID at them. “Agency business. Nothing to worry about.”
“Whoa!” A teenage boy said as I shackled one of Tate’s wrists.
A girl’s excited voice joined in. “So pretty!”
“What is that?” a man called.
I looked up and saw the people nearby were not looking at me. They were pointing and staring at something in the sky.
Turning my head to follow their gazes, I did a double take. The sky had darkened to twilight in a matter of seconds, and above us was the same undulating light display I’d witnessed from my bedroom window weeks ago. The river reflected the colorful lights, giving the illusion we were at the center of a magical dome. It was breathtaking, yet at the same time, it filled me with dread.
People held up their phones, recording the strange phenomenon. I was about to do the same when a flash of purple light lit up the deck. I jumped to my feet in time to see a bolt of purple lightning strike the surface of the river near the New Jersey side. Water erupted into the air as the electricity from the lightning streaked in our direction.
It reached the speedboat approaching us, and in the next second, the boat exploded. I hit the deck, and around me, people screamed. A roar filled the air as the lightning churned through the water toward us. Any second it would hit, and the ferry would suffer the same fate as the speedboat.
In the next instant, the noise was gone.
“Oh, thank God,” said a man’s shaky voice.
He had barely uttered the words when a powerful gust of wind slammed into the ferry. The boat tilted, knocking people off balance, and I lunged for Tate as he rolled away from me.
The ferry rocked violently, and I had to grab the rail with one hand to anchor us. A teenage boy in one of the seats closest to me threw up, making me gag. The wind carried away the smell, but my roiling stomach couldn’t handle the sight of vomit.
I rose to my knees and peered over the side at the city moving past us, as the boat spun slowly from the force of the wind. From what I could see, the strange storm was centered over the river, and everything inside it was lit with an eerie purple glow. Above us, jagged lightning cut through the lights in the sky. I caught sight of a private tour boat and two smaller boats also caught in the storm with us, but they were too far away to see how they were faring.
One of the small boats suddenly vanished in the swells. I searched frantically for it, and it reappeared as the other one blinked out of sight.
The boats disappeared from view as our ferry continued its slow spin. The water around us grew choppier, and we began to dip and sway as it got steadily worse. The wind howled, but it sounded wrong. It was hollow, like what you would hear in a sea cave.
I pulled Tate up until he could grasp the rail. “Hold on,” I yelled as cold spray hit us in the face.
A second later, the ferry pitched heavily to one side. It was all I could do to cling to the rail as passengers were thrown from their seats. More screams filled the air, and I watched in helpless horror as some people went over the side into the river.
The boat swung back to lurch in the other direction, tossing passengers around like rag dolls. A child’s terrified scream rent the air, and I spotted a little boy clinging to the leg of a nearby seat, his legs dangling as the ferry tipped.
I let go of the rail and slid down the deck to the boy. My arm circled his small waist just as he lost his grip.
“Grab on to me,” I shouted. I latched onto the metal seat bolted to the deck and braced my feet against the rail as the boat continued its downward swing. The boy’s arms went around my neck, and his thin legs tightly squeezed my waist. I grasped the seat with my other hand and held on for dear life.
The ferry shuddered, and my feet lost purchase on the wet railing. Fear ratcheted through me as the boy and I dangled above the churning river. More people went over, but all I could focus on was us. I was a strong swimmer, but I knew from experience how cold that water was. Even if I managed to keep us on the surface, neither of us would survive long in the frigid temperature.
For the longest moment of my life, we were suspended with the ferry almost on one side. The boat groaned, and I was filled with the awful certainty that we were going under. My mind raced as I planned for what to do when we hit the water.
And then the boat dropped back to land in an upright position. It
kept swaying from side to side, but it was no longer spinning. I rolled over to look up at the blue sky through my wet glasses. The storm was gone as if it had never happened.
I sat up with the boy clinging to me like we were fused together. His blond hair was plastered to his head, but other than that, he seemed okay. Around us, it was chaos. People cried and called out for each other, and some leaned over the rail, shouting names of those who had gone into the water. A blonde woman screamed for someone named Owen as she tried to climb over the rail. It took two men to hold her back.
“Mommy,” the boy cried against my throat.
“Ma’am,” I called to her.
She continued to wail, and it took several shouts to get her attention. When her eyes fixed on the boy in my arms, she let out a cry and ran to us.
“Owen!” She fell to her knees and pulled the boy to her. He released me to latch onto his mother as they sobbed together.
I moved to get up, and she reached out to grab my hand. “Thank you!”
I squeezed her hand and stood, unsteady on my feet. My left hand hurt, but I ignored it as I took in the scene around me. Couples held each other, and parents comforted their frightened children. A lot of the passengers sported cuts, and a few were more banged up. One man lay on the deck with his leg at an odd angle, and several others were cradling their arms.
The sound of engines drew my attention to the dozens of harbor patrol boats speeding toward us. Half veered toward the other vessels that had been caught in the storm, and others surrounded us. One boat stopped, and the people on board pulled someone from the water.
A somber silence fell over the deck as we watched harbor patrol searching the river for survivors. How many had gone into the water? How many would not come out alive? Those of us onboard might have some injuries, but we were the lucky ones.
The captain’s voice came over the speaker to tell us we would be at the ferry terminal in less than ten minutes. He requested that passengers try to stay seated for the duration of the ride. Emergency personnel would be waiting for us to see to anyone injured in the storm.
It was then that I remembered Tate. I ran to where I’d left him, but he was gone. He’d either fallen overboard, or he’d somehow made it downstairs.
A teenage boy with a bloody lip waved to catch my eye. “If you’re looking for the guy you shackled, I think he went down below.”
“Thanks.”
I ran to the stairs. When I reached the middle deck, a ferry employee with a gash on his forehead stopped me.
“Miss, you need to sit down until we dock.”
I showed him my ID. “I’ll sit as soon as I find the man I was taking in.”
He nodded and let me pass. I didn’t bother to search this deck because Tate would have gone to the bottom deck. It was his only way off the boat when we docked.
The ferry was slowing its approach by the time I found Tate huddled with some other passengers, wearing a hooded parka he must have stolen from someone. He was pretty banged up, and he didn’t put up a fight when I shackled his other wrist. It was a good thing because I wasn’t sure I had the energy to chase him down.
Instead of docking at the slip where we’d boarded, the ferry pulled into the Whitehall Terminal. EMTs and terminal personnel came on board to take care of the injured and to make sure people didn’t trample each other trying to disembark.
I reached for my phone to check it while I waited, only to discover it was gone. It must have fallen out of my pocket when the ferry had almost capsized. I sighed. Better the phone than me.
An EMT came to check on Tate and me, telling me it was procedure when I argued that I had no injuries. I suspected I had a mild sprain in my left wrist, but I didn’t tell her that and risk being sent to the ER for something so minor.
“This one might have some fractured ribs and a concussion,” she said after she’d looked Tate over. “He’ll need to go to the hospital.”
“Do you have a phone?” I asked her. “I lost mine, and I need to call the Agency to tell them to meet us there.”
“No need. The terminal is swarming with agents.” She pulled out a radio and gave me a questioning look.
“Tell them there’s a bounty hunter with you, who has Lewis Tate in her custody.”
She relayed the message to someone along with our location. Within two minutes, we were surrounded by four agents. Three of them escorted Tate off the boat while the fourth went with me to retrieve my duffle bag and the dog carrier from the harried concession stand employee.
I was never so happy in my life to get off a boat. In the terminal, I was taken aside by the agents who wanted my account of the storm and Tate’s capture. They were especially interested when I mentioned Tate was supposed to meet with Cecil Hunt, who had stood him up. The lawyer was a slippery one if he’d been able to evade arrest by the Agency this long. I had a feeling that was about to end. Lewis Tate would give them whatever they wanted to cut a deal for himself.
It was almost two hours after I left the ferry that I was finally allowed to exit the terminal. Outside, I was confronted by a mob of reporters shouting questions at anyone who left the building. I put my head down and pushed through them. I just wanted to get out of there.
My Agency ID had secured me parking at the Coast Guard building next door, and I trudged past police cars, ambulances, and curious onlookers. My movements were sluggish when I climbed into the Jeep, and my hands shook so much all I could do was grip the steering wheel. I stared blindly out the windshield as images flashed through my mind. The one that played over and over was of the rescue boats pulling people from the water. How was I sitting here warm and safe while others might have lost their lives tonight?
Someone knocked on my window, and I looked into the concerned eyes of a police officer. I lowered the window, and it wasn’t until the cold air hit my wet cheeks that I realized I was crying.
“Are you okay, Miss?” the older man asked kindly.
Nodding, I blotted away the tears. “I just…needed a minute.”
Understanding lit his eyes. “You were on the ferry?”
“Yes.”
He rested his arm on the door. “Is there anyone you can call to come get you?”
I didn’t know why my first thought was of Lukas. I shook my head and showed the officer my Agency ID. “I have a carrier full of trows I need to take to the Plaza before I go home. I promise I’m okay to drive.”
“Alright. You drive safely. We’re getting reports of traffic accidents all over the city. Guess everyone was too busy looking up at the lights in the sky to watch where they were going.”
“I will, thanks.” I raised the window as he walked away. Talking to him had calmed my frazzled nerves, and I felt better as I started the Jeep.
The police officer hadn’t been kidding about the traffic. There was chaos all over Manhattan, making the drive to Queens take twice as long as it normally would. At the Plaza, I ran into Bruce, Trey, and some other hunters, who asked a ton of questions when they found out I’d been on the ferry. I answered a few of them and made my escape. All I wanted was a shower, food, and sleep. Anything else could wait until tomorrow.
* * *
Hello?” I called as I walked down the hallway dimly lit by two flickering wall sconces. Stumbling on the uneven floor, I braced a hand against the cold stone wall to steady myself and felt a mild current of energy go through me. What a strange place this was.
I entered a large, round room as lightning lit up the sky above the glass domed ceiling. Before I could get a good look at the room, it disappeared, and I was outdoors, standing on top of a hill overlooking the ocean. I turned in a full circle and discovered I was on a small rocky island with little vegetation and no mainland in sight.
Lightning flashed again and raced across the sky. Only it didn’t look like normal lightning. Instead of branching out or zigzagging, it moved in a straight line, like a knife cutting through the very fabric of the sky. And it was bright green instead of
white.
I gasped as cold rain hit me, plastering my hair to my head and soaking my pajamas in seconds. Out of nowhere, a strong wind picked me up and blew me out to sea. I looked down at the water as I flew over it, surprised to see it was calm, despite the storm raging overhead.
I blinked, and suddenly, I was no longer flying. I found myself standing at the mouth of a wide valley, surrounded on three sides by a mountain and walls of glassy, black rock. Lights dotted the mountain and the valley floor, telling me people lived here.
Overhead, the strange green lightning coalesced into an undulating display of colored lights above the valley. The air around me sizzled with static electricity, making my hair fly out in all directions.
A terrible roaring filled the air, forcing me to cover my ears. I watched with a growing sense of dread as a tear formed in the sky above the mountain. I ran toward the mountain, shouting a warning to the inhabitants, but I was too far away.
The world went deathly quiet as if all sound had been sucked from it. Then an explosion rocked the air, and the mountain began to crumble. My scream was cut short when the shock wave hit me, slamming me into the ground. I lay there unable to move and gasping for air as the ringing in my ears blocked out the distant screams.
“Jesse, wake up.”
I opened my eyes and blinked to focus. The shadows above me took the shape of a person, and I let out a small scream as I rolled off the couch. I tried to stand, but I was wrapped up in my quilt like a burrito. I would have crashed into the coffee table if the stranger’s hands hadn’t caught me.
“Let me go.” I pushed away from my rescuer, and surprisingly, they released me. Heart pounding, I fell back on the couch and stared up into turbulent blue eyes. “What the hell, Lukas?”
“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” he demanded.
“What?” I asked dumbly, trying to slow my racing heart.
He let out an impatient breath. “I’ve been calling you all evening since we saw you on the news.”