Sadie closed her eyes and pulled her head back, just as the Minotaur lunged forwards and—
Licked her cheek. Its rough tongue sandpapered the line of her jaw.
Before Sadie could complain, there was a terrific crash overboard and she was alone on the front deck, with nothing but a length of rusted chain.
From the stern, she could hear spluttering. She thought it might have been Jake, coming around, but the coughing belonged to Tom. Jake sat astride him, holding him down by his throat. Seeing Sadie, he released his grip.
‘A bit disorientated,’ he said, getting to his feet and helping Tom up. ‘I thought he was attacking me.’ He vigorously shook Tom’s hand. ‘My apologies. And thanks. You’re a good man.’
Sadie threw both arms around Jake, causing him to stagger back under the impact. His skin was cold, but he was alive. They were both alive.
Tom cleared his throat.
‘Sorry,’ Sadie muttered, tightening her lips in an embarrassed smile.
Tom shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
Jake was standing back from both of them. He wasn’t celebrating. His hands were in pale fists by his jeans pockets, his face grim. He was watching the skies, waiting.
Sadie went to stand beside him. ‘You think we’re still in trouble. Are the Gods coming?’
He nodded. ‘I can feel them,’ he said.
At that, the sky seemed to shake. It was as if some great hands had lifted it by invisible corners to scatter the clouds like crumbs. The warm morning blue was gone, replaced by a darkness pricked by cold stars. The air hummed, then buzzed, then rumbled. The sea flexed and buckled. Sadie, Jake and Tom were thrown to the deck.
This was it. The Gods were here.
For some reason, Sadie’s first instinct was to apologise. To nobody, to everybody. She had tried. She had played by their rules. She had asked the demon for nothing. It wasn’t fair.
‘No,’ she said. Once with disbelief, then again with anger. ‘No!’
Her hands gripped the edge of the yacht, pulling herself upright. She stood on the pitching deck and thrust her chin at the heavens. ‘No!’
There was a rush of water and the boat lurched several metres in the air. Sadie felt she was being thrust into the sky to meet the descending army. Then the prow dipped and the boat dropped—a few seconds ahead of its crew’s stomachs.
Then nothing.
Quiet. A clear sky was pulled tight above them. The sun made Sadie squint. The wave had flattened out. Once more the horizon was marked with cargo ships waiting to dock and the flat beaches of Rottnest Island.
‘Is that it?’ Sadie asked, looking at Jake, who was finding his feet. ‘They’re gone?’
He looked about, cautiously. Waited. ‘It seems so.’
‘I really thought they were going to do it. I thought we were all going to die.’
‘Not today.’
Jake still didn’t seem all that relieved. Maybe it was hard to let go of that much fear, that much anxiety, after so long.
‘What changed their minds?’ Sadie asked.
‘You did.’
‘The shouting?’
‘No.’ Jake gave her the smallest of smiles. ‘You changed their minds because you changed my mind. Nobody born on this planet used that demon’s power. Only I did. If they still have a problem, they’ll take it up with me. In the end, they had no reason to be angry with you. Nothing to prove, no threat to vanquish.’
‘But they peeled back the sky. The sun disappeared.’
‘A bit of sabre-rattling, that’s all. A final warning. You did it Sadie, you did the impossible. You saved your city, and the world too.’
‘So they’ve forgiven us, for ever challenging them? For Lysandra?’
Jake’s teeth tugged at his bottom lip. He nodded.
They were safe. There would be no war.
Sadie smiled. Laughed. Relief fizzed up into her shoulders. She pulled Tom to his feet and hugged the air out of him. He hugged her back.
Along the coast, low dark clouds boiled away into nothing. Sparkling sunlight began to clear away the mess. That wasn’t all. Tom switched off the engine and unfurled the boat’s white sail. The sea breeze had finally arrived, ready to take them back to shore.
Tom dropped Jake and Sadie at the harbour, pulling in at the quay behind a Norwegian container ship. He was planning to sail the boat upriver, back to the yacht club, but all Sadie could think about was her grandparents. She needed to be home.
Sadie kissed Tom’s cheek and Jake shook his hand. The two of them clambered up the tall, rusted ladder to stand on the quay. They waited for Tom to pull away, his boat dwarfed by the freighter in the neighbouring dock.
No trains were running, so Sadie and Jake walked. For an hour and a half, they held each other’s hand and said absolutely nothing.
On the corner of Swan Street, Jake stopped. He wasn’t coming with her.
Sadie couldn’t bring himself to let get of his hand. To let go of everything that had happened. Her legs trembled but her hand was steady.
Gently, Jake unpicked her fingers from his. ‘You know where to find me,’ he said.
The front door was open, letting in the long-awaited breeze. As soon as Sadie closed the front gate, Ida rushed out onto the veranda and threw her arms around her granddaughter.
As her cheek brushed her nan’s, Sadie burst into tears. It was relief, but more than that, it was the warm love she felt for and from her grandmother. She knew then that she was already forgiven, that there would be time later to explain the last few days.
‘Oh Sadie, my poor love, look at you. Are you hurt?’
‘I’m fine, Nan. Just a few scratches.’
‘Come inside, and I’ll run you a bath.’
Stan was waiting by the door. He looked over Sadie’s injuries as she was led inside, and his top lip tightened. He was angry at her for putting herself in danger. It was love, Sadie realised. He was angry because he cared. She wanted to explain, then and there, to tell him everything, but knew she couldn’t. Not now. Maybe not ever.
She was home. But it wasn’t quite the same place she had left.
26
A NEW GRAVITY
Sadie slept. A new gravity pulled her into the depths of slumber, where no sunlight could reach her. Her body was heavy and useless, sinking her to the ocean floor and making a mattress of the seabed. Her parents were there. She tried to call out to them, but the heavy water muffled her cries. She tried to swim towards them, but her limbs were tired and useless. As she watched, the current took them away from her.
When Sadie finally woke, there was stark afternoon sunlight behind the curtains and voices in the hall.
‘Let him in, Nan,’ she called, recognising Tom’s voice.
Tom came in, a newspaper under one arm, a denim jacket under the other, and a mug of tea in each hand. He put Sadie’s down on her bedside table and sat down on the end of the bed. There was a new recklessness to his movements, a new ease, that Sadie quite liked.
‘I can’t stay,’ he said. ‘Dad’s down the road, getting a quote on the 4WD. You wouldn’t believe how much it cost to tow it home. The back axle is completely busted. I am in some serious shit.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘What do you reckon? I told him it was all your fault.’
Grinning, he threw the newspaper across the doona cover. A special wrap-around was plastered with images of destruction: crushed cars, flooded homes, broken buildings. Overleaf, there were a few blurry photographs of the tsunami waiting off the coast, evidently snapped on someone’s mobile phone.
‘You should check out page fifteen,’ Tom said.
Sadie thumbed through, finding the breathless story of a car chase through the university grounds. Agatha was mentioned
by name, as was someone Sadie didn’t know. For a moment she was puzzled, then she twigged—Vincent. Both had been released on bail, the story noted with disappointment. There was no mention of the twins. It helped to have a lawyer for a father.
‘There was something on the radio too, driving here,’ Tom said, frowning. ‘About Stephen Cooper. They’re saying it was some kind of wild animal. Escaped from a private zoo, got freaked by the storm.’
‘Just like at the hospital?’
‘Old stories are the best, I guess.’
Sadie looked up, hearing an off note. ‘Are you worried?’
‘Yeah, a bit. I don’t want to have to explain, if someone comes asking.’
‘We didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘Maybe. Still, you know.’
‘I know.’ He just wanted to forget. She couldn’t blame him.
Outside, a horn honked.
‘What’s he going to do, your dad?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Send me off to boot camp.’
‘I’ll write every day.’
‘Yeah, right.’ Tom got to his feet and remembered the denim jacket he’d brought with him. ‘Don’t know whose this is, do you? I found it on the back seat.’ He threw it at Sadie. It landed on the floor.
‘It’s Vincent’s.’ Sadie crinkled her nose. ‘Probably won’t fit him now.’
The horn honked again. Puffing his chest with exaggerated courage, Tom waved and left her alone with the paper.
After four pages of disaster reports, there was a second front page, where the paper proper commenced. The lead story startled her. There had been another shooting, this time a taxi driver, Isaac Thompson, gunned down in his driveway as he finished a night shift.
Sadie had forgotten about the murderer. She read through the report, allowing her tea to go cold. Someone was killing Jake’s people.
She swung her legs off the mattress and planted both feet down on Vincent’s jacket. Something hard and flat pressed against her right heel. Scooping the jacket up, she tugged the object free from its pocket. It was a small, hardcover book—a diary, she thought. No, it wasn’t a diary. It was an address book. Frobisher’s address book.
Sadie flipped through the pages and found her own address near the middle. Why would Vincent have Frobisher’s book? And when would he have taken it?
The truth landed on her like a slap—brutal, surprising, frightening. She opened the book and found Patrick’s name and address. She snatched the paper from the bed and checked the lead story. Isaac Thompson. She found his name, and Maud and Agatha.
Sadie remembered what Jake had said, the night Mrs Mitchell turned up. He had been convinced the killer was using the address book to hunt his squadron down. But they had found Vincent hiding like the others, tucked away in the garage.
Hiding, Sadie wondered, or waiting? If he’d really been that scared, he could have run, with or without Frobisher’s help. But he hadn’t run. Even when the Minotaur had killed him, he came back. Like he still had a job to do. He had helped Lysandra, all those years ago, hadn’t he? It was no stretch to imagine him helping her again.
But why kill his own squadron? His own friends?
Sadie glanced at the page her finger had bookmarked: Agatha. Agatha had told her what would happen, if Lysandra started a war. Jake’s squadron would fight alongside the Gods. Is that why Vincent killed them? Was he bumping off the opposition? That made a terrible sort of sense.
She needed to tell Jake. Vincent might still be a threat. He would know now that Lysandra had lost. He had lost. She couldn’t really see him crawling back to beg forgiveness. He might be angry, might even—
The book fell from Sadie’s hand. She dropped to her knees and grabbed her boots from underneath the bed.
That bike of hers had never moved so fast. Sadie wasn’t even sure she breathed more than twice before she got to the top of the hill at Broome Street and hurried down to the sea. At the old house, she threw the bike on the kerb and sprinted up the cracked brick path. The front door was ajar.
There were no lights on in the hall. As she edged the door open, cold air surged out against the morning heat. She listened to the old house’s whispers and complaints. From the front room, she could hear whimpering.
Maud was hidden behind an armchair, clutching Tenielle to her breast. The young woman’s cheeks were flushed with tears, but the baby was sleeping. Seeing Sadie, Maud squeaked, then sighed with relief.
‘It’s Vincent,’ she whispered. ‘He had a gun.’
Sadie nodded. ‘Where is he?’
‘Upstairs. He wanted to speak to Jacob.’
A shot rang out from the first floor. Something heavy crashed down, shaking dust and plaster from the ceiling.
‘Jake!’
Sadie forgot her caution and ran for the stairs. She took three steps at a time, arriving breathless on the landing.
From the end of the hall, another shot. Again, Sadie ran, ricocheting off the walls in her haste. She burst into Jake’s bedroom. He was on the floor, a wound in his side and another in his thigh. Blood was pooling around his knees. ‘Sadie,’ he said, his eyes watering, ‘get out of here.’
Vincent turned to her and the gun followed. He held it loosely in his hands, almost as if he couldn’t bear to touch it, as if it were leading him on. His eyes were red and his cheeks were swollen. ‘You,’ he said. ‘This is all your fault.’
‘I found Frobisher’s address book.’
‘You got me killed by that thing. That animal. You have no idea how much that hurt.’
‘Vincent, please.’ Jake’s forehead shone in the light through the window. ‘She doesn’t matter. Not to you.’
Vincent rounded on him, jabbing the gun towards Jake’s chest. ‘You ruined everything!’ he shrieked. ‘We could have torn down the heavens!’
‘You were working for Lysandra,’ Sadie said.
‘She came to me three months ago. She promised to share her power, if I helped her get her revenge. On him.’ He jabbed again at Jake. ‘On the squadron that betrayed her.’
‘Your friends.’
‘They were never my friends. They’d have happily done the same to me.’
‘And you weren’t worried about what the Gods would do?’
Vincent sneered at her. ‘Don’t you get it? We would have been Gods. An army of new Gods, rising up against those who wronged us.’
Jake shook his head. ‘Laying waste to this world…your battleground.’
‘It wasn’t just Lysandra who was wronged,’ Vincent spat. ‘I too deserved vengeance.’
‘But why sell the relic to the God squad?’ Sadie asked. Her hands were up now, just. She was moving into the room slowly, calmly. ‘Why not just hold onto it?’
‘Jacob would have taken it and run,’ Vincent said. ‘So I made sure it was somewhere he couldn’t find it. Not until we were ready.’
‘Not until you’d kept your side of the bargain?’ Sadie suggested.
Jake’s eyes were closed, his head down, but he shook his head. ‘Not until I met with her…she needed to make sure…make sure I would open it…she needed me broken…’
Sadie understood. ‘She knew you couldn’t stand by and let another city sink. Just like I knew.’
‘She was…counting on my guilt…’
‘Funnily enough, I really wasn’t sure you’d care,’ Vincent said.
Sadie ignored him. ‘And that’s why Vincent came here that night. He wanted us to find him so he could lead us to the relic. Because he knew the Minotaur was waiting.’
‘Waiting to take me,’ Jake said. ‘And the demon…’
Vincent turned to face him, the gun pointed at Jake’s heart. ‘The thing is, I understood Lysandra. I understood how much she needed this. That’s why I helped her.
I know what you think, but it wasn’t just for glory, for power. It was because I understood.’
‘But it’s all over,’ Sadie said. ‘Lysandra’s dead. There is no war. There’s no point in killing anyone else.’
For a moment, the gun dipped in Vincent’s hand. He glanced sideways at Sadie, never quite taking his eyes off Jake. ‘You’ve wrecked everything. Wrecked me. What am I now? Just a traitor. A fool who picked the losing side.’ His teeth set, fingers tightening again around the gun. ‘This, this is the only revenge I have left.’
Jake opened his eyes. They had never seemed so blue, Sadie thought. For some long seconds, he stared at Vincent up the barrel of his weapon. There was no anger left, no fury. If anything, Sadie thought, it was a look of pity.
‘Do it,’ he said.
Sadie wasn’t sure she had heard him right. What did he think he was doing?
Vincent was just as confused. He tilted his head. ‘What?’
‘I opened the relic. I used the demon’s power. We’re both traitors. Both doomed. But let Sadie go. Do one good thing.’
Oh God. Sadie felt sick. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he thought he was being noble, heroic.
‘Jake,’ Sadie hissed, ‘shut up. Please.’
He still wasn’t looking at her. ‘I have always wondered what it felt like to face death. Now I know.’
Sadie was crying openly now, spluttering salt and snot and steam. ‘Jake, please, shut up.’
Jake smirked. ‘And, you know what, Vincent, you’ll never understand that. You think you understood Lysandra? All you recognised was yourself. We don’t belong in the heavens. This is all that matters, here. We were meant to live with our feet on the ground. To know what it was like to be human.’ He looked at Sadie. ‘Well—I know. After all these years, I know.’
Vincent was shaking with anger, his teeth grinding. He held the gun to the bridge of Jake’s nose.
Jake was perfectly calm. He waited some long seconds, then allowed himself a chuckle. ‘You won’t do it. I’ll tell you why.’
A muscle twitched in Vincent’s jaw. ‘Why?’
‘You’re too scared. I’ve looked after you too long.’
Fire in the Sea Page 20