The Pursuers

by Sarah Jaune

  “I just hope the wedding isn’t today,” Eli said as the fear gnawed at him. He swatted at a fly, accidentally moving his hand faster than he’d meant to and smacking the bug straight into the brick wall across the room.

  “Elijah,” Ivy stared at him in a mixture of disgust and amusement. “That fly wasn’t hurting you.”

  “Yeah…” he stared at the spot where the dead bug’s body clung to the wall. “It was an accident.”

  “Uh huh,” Ivy intoned, clearly not believing him. “Well you- Eli! Look at your arm!”

  Eli glanced down in confusion, but saw immediately what had caught Ivy’s attention. The bite mark, the one that he’d sustained in the bar fight, was now red and puffy. “Infected.”

  “Badly infected,” she said in horror. Ivy went for the bag and dug through it again. “Oh thank goodness, he grabbed the first aid supplies. Here,” she took his arm, thankfully the good one, and dragged him outside the bricked up room.

  Ivy dug a hole in the ground, about two inches down, then beckoned the water from the earth. Only the pure water that she called for came, and it flowed up like a fountain from the dark dirt. “Let’s clean this out.”

  It hurt almost as much as getting stitches after the wolves had attacked them. Almost. What was worse, though, was Ivy scrubbing out the wound with soap, then applying ointment to it that burned. His whole arm was throbbing by the time she wrapped it in a clean bandage and made him swallow a couple of pills.

  Eli shook his head when she tried to get him to go back to sleep. “I’m fine, Ivy! It’s just a small infection.”

  Ivy cocked her blonde head to the side, crossed her arms, and gave him that same look his mom gave him every time he was being an idiot. It made his innards shrink. Ivy and Maia looked scarily similar at that moment.

  Mercifully, he was saved by Thane’s voice calling out, “I have a boat!”

  CHAPTER 22

  BOATS

  Ivy cleaned up as much as she could so that an hour after Thane arrived back, she was able to go into the nicer part of the city and grab information.

  Thane’s boat, if one could call it that, needed a lot of help. The major problem was the gaping hole in the stern which was how Thane had found it discarded along the boggy shore down towards the sea.

  “I thought I was going to have to steal one,” Thane admitted as they attempted to close up the hole.

  “We may still have to,” Eli told him honestly. “I don’t know anything about making a boat water tight.”

  Neither, unfortunately, did Thane. It wasn’t until Ivy was back that they had any good news.

  “The wedding was supposed to be yesterday,” she said as she clomped down the embankment towards them. “Thankfully, it’s been put off a week. I couldn’t figure out why, but the merchants who are supplying everything are all annoyed because the Overseer is demanding goods, then postponing without giving them any more money for their work.” She stopped at the side of their dilapidated boat, hands on hips, and studied their project.

  “That’s really weird,” Thane said as he looked up at her. “No one questioned why you were asking?”

  “Nope,” Ivy shrugged and pointed towards the hole. “You’ll need tar or something. Even if you put a board on it, it’s just going to leak through.”

  Eli groaned. “Where are we going to get tar?”

  “We could also use pine tar,” she mused, ignoring his question. “I wonder if I could find that here.”

  “What would we need to make that work?” Thane asked quickly.

  “Well,” she pointed towards the seams. “Can you see the wedging between the seams, the old way of doing things was to soak cotton or hemp in pine tar and stuff it into the cracks. Honestly, I don’t think we have time for that, though.”

  “Why do you know that?” Eli questioned in amazement.

  Ivy frowned down at the boat. “I find boats fascinating, same way you find cars fascinating. I learned about them. This isn’t going to work. I can see too many holes. We have to find another way.”

  “At least we have a few days,” Thane pointed out.

  “We shouldn’t push it, though,” Ivy sighed as she turned her gaze around to scan the water that meandered along down towards what Eli assumed must be ocean. “That’s a swamp over there,” she told them, pointing towards what looked like an overgrown island. “This is actually the rest of the lake,” she explained as she made a wide circle with her arm. “The bridge bisects the lake a bit, with the Overseer’s house on the north side of the bridge, but I’m wondering what’s in that swamp.”

  Eli was not wondering what was in that swamp. It didn’t take a genius to know that there would be alligators there, along with poisonous water snakes. Eli hated snakes.

  “You think a boat might have been lost in the bog?” Thane wondered.

  “I think it’s possible,” Ivy nodded as she squinted off towards the rising sun. “I think it’s definitely worth checking out.”

  Eli kept quiet.

  She turned to him. “You coming?”

  He closed his eyes, pulled in a deep breath, and stood. “Yep.”

  If she could face her fear of storms, he was going to face his fear of snakes.

  Or run screaming like a little kid. It would definitely be one or the other.

  The walk to the swamp took almost three hours through overgrowth, downed trees, and mud that tried to eat them several times. Ivy was forced, twice, to save Eli from quicksand type mud that wanted to suck him in. Unfortunately, when she pushed the water from the mud, he ended up stuck in the dirt. He’d had to use magic to force the dirt out. It left him tired and edgy way before they made it to the wetlands.

  “Are you okay?” Ivy asked after almost thirty minutes of tense silence.

  “Fine,” he said without meaning it.

  Ivy snagged his arm and pulled him to a stop, her green eyes filled with concern. “No, you aren’t. What’s up?”

  He tried to meet her gaze but found himself staring at the ground. “Snakes.”

  “You’ve been in a mood for two days now,” Ivy said with a shake of her head. “This isn’t about your fear of snakes. If a snake gets near you, you just have to flick your fingers and it goes flying away like that poor fly.”

  She had a point there. It was actually very reassuring.

  “Elijah,” she squeezed his arms lightly. “Is this about Thane?”

  He couldn’t do more than scuff the toe of his shoe into the dirt. “No.”

  The silence between them hung thick with humidity and unsaid truths.

  “Alright,” Ivy replied finally. “Let’s keep going.”

  They reached the outskirts of the swamp a few minutes later, and Ivy told Eli to follow along in her footsteps in the hopes of avoiding another sinking into the mud. It was miserable, hot, and infested with mosquitoes that appeared to have not drunk from a human being in years by the way they were attaching themselves to Eli and Ivy. Ivy smacked one on her neck and a tiny trickle of blood dribbled down her skin.

  “We could look for years,” Eli said in frustration.

  “We won’t,” she assured him. “I can feel something up ahead.”

  “You feel it?” he repeated her words because it was such an odd thing to say.

  She nodded as a shaft of light caught a leaf that was stuck in the messy knot of blonde hair that was piled on top of her head. Grime coated her skin, giving her the appearance of someone a lot darker than she normally was. She was, in fact, closer to Eli’s skin tone at the moment. The annoyed glare she sent his way stopped him for a single moment. She looked fierce, covered in dirt, and as banged up as she was. The year before, when they’d run from Chicago, Ivy had been scared and it showed. Now, however, she looked almost like a warrior.

  It made Eli grin.

  “What?” Ivy asked in exasperation.

  “You,” he pointed to her. “You look like you could lead an army.”

  She gazed down at herself, a little myst
ified. “I look filthy.”

  “That, too,” Eli laughed. He felt considerably better, but he couldn’t point out why. “About Thane… I think I’m jealous.”

  “Is it because he’s so good looking?”

  Eli blinked in stunned disbelief. “What?”

  She punched him lightly in the arm, thankfully not the arm with the bite mark, and turned around. “You didn’t notice that, huh?”

  He hadn’t noticed it, actually. But thinking about it now, he supposed that Ivy was right. “Great,” Eli muttered darkly as he continued to follow her further into the swamp. “That’s just great.”

  “Tall, muscular, smart, handsome, powerful,” she mused. “Your sister is a lucky girl.”

  “You’re having fun rubbing this in,” he blurted out accusingly.

  “Of course I am!” Ivy promised with a short chuckle. “What kind of friend wouldn’t tease you about your sister’s boyfriend?”

  That was the crux right there. He’d been away from Beth for so long that he had no idea who she was or what she was doing. The same could be said for her.

  It wasn’t right to be so separated from his twin. It never felt right. “I feel like I’ve been replaced.” The thought came out unbidden, fully formed, and laced with agony. They couldn’t ever go back. He was never going to get his sister back, either one of them. In Naomi’s case, Eli was pretty sure she didn’t want him back, which hurt straight to his core.

  Ivy, who had stopped, pulled him into a short, hard hug. “You were always going to be second, Eli. It was never going to be the two of you forever.”

  She was right, of course, but it didn’t make it hurt less. “He’s just so perfect!”

  “I don’t think he’s perfect,” Ivy corrected gently as she continued on over a moss covered log that was uncomfortably sponge-like under her feet. “I’m sure there are flaws in him. Everyone has flaws. He’s probably nervous around you and trying hard to hide it, though, so you won’t take him out for being with Beth.”

  Eli opened his mouth to say that there was no way he could beat Thane, when he spotted the boat. “Well…”

  Ivy pointed in triumph. “I told you I felt it! It was this weird presence on the water.”

  “The trick now will be getting it out into the open area of the lake, without being spotted,” Eli said as he studied the surrounding terrain. “How the heck did it end up back here, anyway?”

  “That’s a really good question,” Ivy sighed as she picked her way over to the boat. “Stay back, this isn’t very stable.”

  Eli watched as she moved, almost catlike, from one branch to another. That was another thing Ivy couldn’t have done six months before. When she’d set her mind towards getting in shape, she hadn’t messed around. She set one foot in the boat, which rocked a bit, but otherwise stayed stable. “I don’t think it’s caught up on anything. It’s definitely water tight.”

  “I can move it out,” Eli offered. “If I lift it out of the water, I can get it through the trees.”

  Ivy turned around, surveying the dense forest around them. “We may have to clear a path.”

  “You tell me where,” he said as he hopped up onto another log.

  It took them almost two hours to get the boat out to the lake. At that point, the sun was already starting to set.

  “Thane is going to be worried,” Ivy observed as they set the boat into the water. “He probably won’t even see us coming if we stick close to the shoreline.”

  “I could run back,” Eli offered, but she shook her head.

  “You’d get stuck in the mud again, which wouldn’t help anyway,” she reminded him with a laugh. “I am never going to be able to get that image out of my head.” He’d gone down almost to his waist once before she’d managed to stop the quicksand.

  He smiled as he settled into the back of the boat. “I may never get the mud out of my skin. I’m still amazed we didn’t run into any alligators.”

  “There were a few,” Ivy said as she used the water to propel the boat down the shoreline. Eli’s heart skipped a beat. “There were a lot of animals, actually, but I set off a kind of shockwave into the water. I’ve noticed that when I do that the fish will swim away and stay away. When we first made it into the swamp, I felt the currents moving under a large animal. I assumed it was an alligator and warned it off. Everything else that was in the water left as well.”

  He silently thanked her for saving him from any water snakes. “How did you call the mermaids to you?” Eli wondered as the trees passed by on their left.

  “That’s a little different,” she said with a sigh as she sat back in the boat. Her face was drawn and Eli knew why. It had been a lot of magic that day, getting the boat. “I sent out a sort of ping into the water. I was hoping they’d come, and they did. It was the kind of thing that an intelligent being would be curious about.”

  “Here,” Eli fished in the backpack and pulled out some food. “Eat something.”

  It was moments like this that Eli wished he could use his own magic to move them, but his telekinesis did nothing with water. His power only worked on solids, not liquids or gas. On top of that, they didn’t even have any oars, so he couldn’t row. “Do you think this will be big enough?”

  “I think so,” Ivy said around a mouthful. “Unless they have ten children, we should be fine.”

  They fell into a comfortable silence as lightning bugs flashed on in the exposed roots of the trees that lined this part of the lake. Eli watched them as the bridge loomed ever closer. He spotted Thane almost immediately. The guy stood out, as big as he was, and Claire jumped up and down on the sand, waving at them.

  He let out a long, slow breath and pulled in the calm he’d fought so hard to achieve. “Tonight.”

  It was impressed upon him again that he was fighting to save these kids’ lives as well as their souls. The kind of people who clung to the system of power and brutality could forever warp a child into believing that was the only way to be. Cole had first saved Eli’s life, then Maia and Pablo had helped save his heart.

  All of which were thoughts too deep to be thinking before a mission, except to embrace again that what he was doing was vitally important. Of equal importance was keeping what they were doing secret.

  The boat bumped into the shore as Thane rushed down to pull it further up into the sand.

  “This is definitely better,” Thane whistled as he surveyed what Ivy had found. “You’re back in time, too. I wasn’t sure if you would be.”

  “We almost weren’t,” Eli said as he stepped up onto the shore. “The boat was stuck back in the woods. Are we ready?”

  “You two need to eat something,” Thane ordered. “Then we can go. We have to wait for full dark anyway.”

  “The mermaids came,” Claire told them in excitement. “They were able to talk to one of the kids in the house. They’ll sneak out to meet us tonight.”

  Eli froze as he turned to Thane, who shrugged helplessly. “I know.”

  They were exposed, now. One of the kids might decide to tell someone what was going on. They might not want to leave. “This could be bad.”

  “Or it could be good,” Claire argued immediately. “The mermaid said the girl wants to go. They said thank you for opening the hole for them.”

  Eli turned to Ivy, who had doubt written all over her face. “We have no real choice,” Ivy reminded him. “We have to try to save them. That’s what we’re supposed to do.”

  “Maybe we should leave Claire back—”

  “No!” Claire interrupted Eli. “You said I could help. I want to help.”

  “She’s coming,” Ivy said without hesitation. “We’re probably going to need all three of us to get the kids out without getting caught. We can’t risk leaving her behind.”

  The last bursts from the setting sun faded off to the west as Eli nodded. “Okay. One hour.”

  He really hoped they weren’t making a huge mistake.

  CHAPTER 23

  PHASE TWO<
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  Things went wrong almost immediately. The moment the sun was fully down, Eli and Thane picked the boat up and started to climb up the embankment to head across the bridge.

  “Duck!” Ivy cried before they reached the top.

  Eli and Thane did, nearly losing the boat. It would have gone sailing down the hill if Eli hadn’t caught hold of it with his magic, freezing it in place.