“Show me what’s in your hand,” he said, slamming his wooden pole into the ground.
She did as he said, and he stared at the bag full of lotus fruit, his face twisted with anger.
“Where do you think you’re going with that?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” she said. “I was just keeping it so I could have some more tonight. It’s so delicious that I wanted to make sure I had enough.”
The others in our group surrounded her now, their backpacks full as well. Danielle’s hand drifted to the hilt of the sword hidden beneath her clothes, and Blake reached for his lighter.
“Edith,” the man in the toga called, and the flapper lady who had blown lotus smoke in my face stepped to his side. “Is she telling the truth?”
“No.” Edith shook her head, her bobbed hair hitting her chin. “She isn’t.”
“Edith is a demigod—a daughter of Aletheia,” the man explained. “Aletheia is the goddess of truth. So Edith here can sense when someone is lying. And she’s always right. We were so lucky when she found us recently.”
Judging by Edith’s clothes, she must have gotten to the island a hundred years ago. But I supposed, given how some of them seemed to have gotten here over a thousand years ago, that their sense of time was extremely warped.
“We weren’t doing anything wrong,” Kate said, holding her hands up. “I promise.”
“Except that you were.” Edith smiled sweetly, but her eyes were anything but kind. “Because no one is allowed to leave the island with the lotus fruit in their possession.”
The man tightened his grip on his wooden pole and said, “At least, they’re not allowed to leave while still alive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Lotus Eaters’ eyes, which moments ago had been glazed over and hazy, were now sharp and livid. They stood up and clenched their fists, hissing with what appeared to be the intent to fight.
Not wanting to bring attention to myself—I could help my friends more if I wasn’t being targeted—I stood up with everyone else. But my mind was spinning. The Lotus Eaters were supposed to be lazy and spaced out. Why had no one warned us that they would go crazy if they realized we were trying to take the lotus fruit off the island? If we’d known, we would have taken more precautions than one weapon each.
I glanced over at Ethan, who at least had the wits to follow my lead and stand up as well. But he appeared as surprised as I felt.
I slowly stepped closer to him, careful not to make any sudden movements. “This is going to be a problem,” I whispered. “We need that lotus fruit.”
“Then we’re going to have to fight them for it,” he said. “You’re all demigods, right?”
“Only me,” I told him. “But the others are just as powerful—or more so.”
Doubt crossed his eyes, but he nodded, his jaw hard with resolve.
The big man in the toga picked up his stick and swung it at Kate, but Blake raised his hands and the bonfire exploded, covering toga-man and the nearby Lotus Eaters in flames. They screamed and jumped around, running to the ocean to extinguish themselves. A few of them didn’t make it, and they collapsed into wailing, burning blobs on the beach. Then a gust of wind rushed through the beach, knocking most of the Lotus Eaters onto the ground.
“That’s our cue,” I said to Ethan. “We’re going to hold them off. Grab your sister, and follow us back to the yacht. And hurry!”
I ran to join the others, but a pair of hands reached for me out of nowhere, pulling me to the ground. My bow was squished between my body and the sand, impossible to reach. I tried to push against whoever was holding me down, but there were two of them—one was holding me by the neck, the other pinning down my legs. They were so much stronger than I was that struggling was futile.
“We have you now, girl,” the man clawing my neck hissed in my ear. His breath was sickly sweet with lotus, and he tightened his grip around my neck so that I couldn’t breathe. “This is what you get for trying to take the lotus off the island. Stop struggling, and this will be nice and easy.”
My lungs screamed for air, and I tried desperately to suck in a breath, but it was impossible. I dug my nails into his hands, trying to pry them off me, but he just cackled, his eyes wide and manic as he suffocated me. A haze danced over my eyes, and all I could see was his rotted, blackened teeth hovering over me as my vision started to dim.
This was it. He was going to kill me. So without the physical strength to stop him, I did the only thing that I could do. I thought about all the hate I currently felt for this man—this man who was laughing as he strangled me—and I pulled as much black energy as I could into my body. I was already drained from healing Ethan, so once I’d gathered as much as I could manage, I reached up and touched the man’s face, pushing the black energy straight into his soul.
His eyes went blank, and he dropped to the ground. Dead. I didn’t have to check. I just knew.
I sucked in a long breath, feeling the sweet burn as it filled my lungs. I’d never been so grateful for something as simple as breathing. My hands rushed to my neck, to the swollen skin where the man had choked me. It was going to bruise, but I couldn’t expend the energy on healing it right now. That would have to wait until later.
The man holding down my feet stared at his friend, his mouth dropped open. “What the—” he said, looking at me in shock. “What did you do to him?”
I sat up and looked him in the eye. Judging from his garb, he and his friend had both been pirates before landing on the island. And from the murderous glint in his eyes, I could tell that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, either. “Nothing that you have to worry about,” I said, grabbing an arrow from my quiver at the same time as he lunged for me. He barely had time to realize what was happening before it pierced through his skull.
The life drained from his eyes, and I pulled out the arrow, letting his body collapse on the ground. Then I stuck the arrow back in my quiver. After all, there was no need to lose a perfectly good arrow.
I stood up and brushed the sand off my clothes, surveying the damage. More people were ablaze, wailing and screaming as they tried to run for the ocean. Danielle held her sword in front of her, swinging it at anyone who got in her way. Kids squirmed in the trees, vines wrapped around their wrists. I recognized the girl—Marion—who had greeted us when we’d arrived. Her eyes were raging mad, like the other Lotus Eaters, and she struggled against the vine to free herself. But she and the other kids appeared unharmed. Thanks to Kate’s quick thinking, they would be fine once we were off the island and they returned to their normal, peaceful selves.
Ethan ran towards me, carrying Rachael in his arms. “She tried to attack me, so I had to knock her out,” he said. “I hated doing it, but I had to.”
“It was your only choice,” I told him, and he nodded in affirmation. “But the others can’t hold the Lotus Eaters off forever. Come on. We have to go.”
We ran for the others, and relief washed over Blake’s eyes when he saw me. He ran to me and pulled me in a huge hug, holding me so tightly that I thought he would never let go. “You’re okay,” he murmured in my ear. “You have no idea how worried I was.”
“Of course I’m okay.” I said it lightly, as if it should be obvious that I could defend myself, even though that man had been moments away from strangling me to death. I pulled back to look into his eyes, my breath catching as I saw how he was looking at me—as if I meant more to him than anyone else in the world.
“We can’t hold them off for much longer!” Danielle yelled, ending the moment between me and Blake. “Come on! We have to get back to the yacht.”
Chris held his hands out, and a gust of wind rushed across the beach, pushing all the Lotus Eaters back towards the woods.
“That’s all the energy I’ve got,” he said. “Let’s go!”
We ran back the way we came, with Kate and Blake at the tail, shooting at anyone who got too close.
“Everyone get on the dingy!” Danielle said o
nce the raft was in sight. We followed her instructions, jumping in without a second thought. Ethan laid Rachael down in the front. Since we were two more people than when we began, the fit was tight, but we all made it.
A few of the Lotus Eaters got closer, but Kate, Blake, and I were able to hold them off. We were careful to hit in places that weren’t fatal—like their legs—since we didn’t really want to kill these people. It wasn’t their fault that they were trapped here, under the spell of the lotus. We just wanted to get off the island—with the bags of lotus fruit that we’d collected.
“I’m going to count to three,” Danielle said. “Brace yourselves.”
She started the count off, and I gripped the side of the dingy, planting my feet firm on the floor. Once she reached three, the water around us swelled into a huge wave. It lifted us up, and moved away from the shore, so we rode the crest toward the yacht. We arrived in seconds—just as the last sliver of the sun sunk below the horizon.
“I was just about to go after you all.” Hypatia peered down from the railing, her mouth dropping open when she saw us.
I looked around at the others—who had ripped clothes and were covered in soot and dirt—and I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. I imagined that I appeared to be in a similar state as well.
Panic crossed Hypatia’s eyes when she noticed the two additions to our group, but she pressed her lips together, as if holding back her thoughts. “You all look like you’ve been to Hades and back,” she finally said. “Let’s get you on board and cleaned up, and then you can fill me in on what happened on that island.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
We all got showered and changed, and met back with Hypatia in the living room area of the yacht. We were all there except for Rachael, who we’d had to lock inside one of the staff rooms. She’d been given yellow energy water and had stopped trying to attack us, but since she’d been eating the lotus for over a year, she was still doped up on it and begging for more. She needed me to heal her to clear it from her body, but I wouldn’t be able to do that until tomorrow, when my energy would be replenished. For now, she had to stay locked up, so she wouldn’t try to attack us or eat the stash of the lotus fruit that we’d taken from the island.
It didn’t take long to catch Hypatia up on everything that had happened to us in the Land of the Lotus Eaters. We each took turns telling different parts of the story. Of course, I left out the part where I killed the pirate with black energy—I said that I attacked both pirates with my arrows.
No one could ever know the truth about what had really happened.
“You could have warned us that the Lotus Eaters turned murderous if anyone tried to take the fruit off the island,” Blake said. “Then we could have been prepared.”
“I’m sorry,” Hypatia said, shaking her head. “I didn’t know. No one who’s landed on the Land of the Lotus Eaters has ever returned.”
“Except for Odysseus and his men,” Kate pointed out, patting her copy of The Odyssey that she’d laid out on the table.
“But Odysseus and his men didn’t try to take the lotus fruit with them,” Danielle said. “So the Lotus Eaters didn’t turn psychotic on them.”
“Those people were pretty determined to kill us,” Chris added. “If we didn’t have our powers, and our weapons, and if we hadn’t been training to fight… well, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“The gods wouldn’t have sent you on this mission if you didn’t have a chance of succeeding,” Hypatia said confidently.
“So you’re saying that we have nothing to worry about?” Chris asked. “We’ll make it out of this—even the part where we have to fight the hydra—and be fine?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t promise that,” she said, her expression grim. “Just that you have a chance. It’s up to you to make the most of that chance.”
Dread settled in my stomach at the reminder that this mission put our lives at risk. How was it that two months ago, I was living in Georgia, and my biggest worry was if I could lead our high school tennis team to victory in the state regionals? Sometimes none of what had happened to me these past few weeks felt real. Was I crazy, going on such an insane mission, knowing that it might not end well for us? Perhaps. Then again, if we didn’t try, the portal to Kerberos would open, and the Titans would unleash their wrath upon all humanity.
So we didn’t have much of a choice. We had to do this. And we had to succeed.
“The good news is that you were successful in acquiring the lotus fruit, so one third of your mission is complete,” Hypatia said with a tight smile. Then she turned to Ethan, and added, “I’ll speak to the Head Elder of Australia as soon as possible to get her up to date on what’s going on. Once Nicole heals your sister, I’ll open a portal for the two of you to return home. I’m sure your mother will be relieved to discover you’re alive.”
“Thank you,” Ethan said, although he didn’t look as happy as I’d imagined he would at the prospect of returning home. “But since Nicole risked her life to save my sister and me from the island, we want to return the favor by staying here and helping her and the others complete their mission. Once the mission is complete, then we’ll return home.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, even though the possibility of them helping was what had convinced the others to take them off the island in the first place. Ethan and his sister had been gone for two and a half years—I wouldn’t blame them if they wanted to go home immediately.
“I know we don’t have to.” He held up a hand to stop me from arguing any further, his eyes hard with determination. “I want to. It’s the least I can do to thank you. If you hadn’t saved us, my sister and I would have been trapped on that island until the end of time. Helping you with your mission is the least we can do in return.”
“Thank you,” I said, my voice cracking with how much I meant it. “We won’t let any harm come to you or your sister. After our mission is complete, the two of you will be returned safely home. I promise.”
It was a huge promise to make, but I flexed my fists, determined to follow through with it. After all, I had the power to heal. If anyone could promise safety, it was me.
“I appreciate it,” Ethan said, his eyes only on me. “My sister appreciates it as well, even if she can’t say so right now. We’ll do everything we can to help.”
“Good,” Blake said to Ethan, his jaw tight. “Now… let’s get you up to speed on the plan. Because the fight we just had with the Lotus Eaters will be nothing compared to what’s coming with the hydra.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I was able to heal Rachael after dinner, and due to all the energy I’d used that day, I fell asleep pretty soon afterward. But because I’d gone to bed so early—and because I’d always risen with the sun—I found myself wide awake before everyone else the next morning.
Not wanting to disturb Kate and Danielle, who were still sleeping soundly, I went up to the main deck to see if anyone else was awake. The only person there was the chef, who was busy in the kitchen. He was a heavyset, older man, and from what I’d seen of him so far, he absolutely loved his job.
He looked up, smiling when he saw me. “Awake so early?” he asked. “Breakfast isn’t for another hour.”
“I know,” I said. “But I couldn’t fall back asleep, and I didn’t want to wake my roommates. So I figured I would come up here.”
“Can I get you anything?” he asked. “Tea? Coffee?”
“Tea would be great,” I said. “Thanks.”
Once my tea was ready, I thanked him and took it out to the picnic table on the front deck. I didn’t want to disturb Chef while he was cooking, and after the craziness of yesterday, I relished the time to myself. This time of day—early morning, when the birds were starting to chirp and the sun was preparing to rise—was always so peaceful. I loved being awake when the rest of the world was still asleep.
For the first time since arriving here, I was also able to look around and appreciate
the fact that I was in Greece. It was still dark, and there wasn’t much to see right now—mostly the sea, and a few small islands that appeared deserted—but I was here. In a different country. For the first time in my life. Even though this mission was top secret and I could never tell anyone else about it, it was amazing to sit back for the first time since I’d arrived and appreciate where I was.
After about twenty minutes alone, the door leading out to the deck opened. I turned around, my breath catching when I saw Blake walking toward me. He was also holding a hot drink, and as he got closer, I could smell that it was coffee. His eyes were bleary, with circles under them—apparently he needed the caffeine. From the way he trudged along the dock, I doubted he was a morning person.
I sat there, frozen with my mug of tea in my hand, unsure what to say. I hated the thought that Blake might be upset with me for what had happened with Ethan—so much so that seeing him made my lungs tight with worry. If he’d come out here to take back everything he’d told me last week about wanting to give it a chance between us, I wouldn’t be able to blame him.
“Hi,” I eventually said, since I had to say something. “Why are you awake?”
“Chris’s snoring kept me up all night,” he said, running his hand through his already mussed up hair. “Eventually I gave up trying to sleep, and I was hungry, so I came up here to grab some food. Chef told me you were out here. You don’t mind if I join you, right?”
“No,” I said, scooting over to make room. Even though Blake’s being here broke my pact not to be alone with him, I was relieved that he still wanted to be around me after seeing me with Ethan. Knowing that I might have his forgiveness made breaking the pact worth it. “Of course not.”
“Good.” He smiled, his eyes alert for the first time this morning. He joined me on the bench, his arm brushing mine as he sipped his coffee. The slight contact sent tingles shooting up my arm.
“Did Chef give you any food?” I asked. “Since you said you came up here to get it.”
Elementals 2: The Blood of the Hydra Page 10