It didn't come.
Eventually, I gave up trying to take it easy on Tez. Three strokes later I had sliced his shoulder for the second hit.
The third hit happened thirty seconds after the second one.
Tez threw his sword in disgust. It slid across the floor and clattered against the wall, making a horrible racket. Tez pulled out the three Honors he lost and threw them in Rhys’ general direction before stomping off. Miguel gave us an apologetic shrug and followed him out.
Rhys broke out in a huge grin and tried to give me a hug. I hit him instead. Probably harder than I should have.
"Why didn't you stop that?" I asked.
"Once the bet was made, there was no way he was going to give up," said Rhys.
"But why did you set it up in the first place?"
"Honestly? I was testing him. As the sword master around here, I had been hearing rumors that he had stopped practicing and his skills had dropped. I needed a way to assess that."
"And what did you discover?"
"That you are a truly remarkable fighter." He bent down and picked up the three Honors Tez had thrown. He placed them in my hand and closed my fingers around them. “You earned these. It's hard to judge your progress sometimes when I have been working with you for so long. Seeing you fight someone else gave me a better perspective of your overall progress. You easily outclassed him, and Tez is actually one of the better Berserker fighters."
"But he hates me now," I said, fingering the heavy coins. "Was that really worth it?"
"Don't worry about Tez," Rhys said. "He burns hot, but he'll cool off quickly and everything will be fine.”
I sure hoped he was right.
***
That night I had a strange dream.
It started off normally enough – I was running through a forest chasing after Bringers. Ok, maybe that isn't exactly a normal dream, but it was normal for me.
I used my varé to slice through the Bringers, until I destroyed them all but one. Before I could attack the final one, it turned around and spoke to me, its monstrous mouth opening wide and dripping nasty juices.
"Madison, I have a message for you," the Bringer said. The voice was smooth and deep – almost like a radio announcer or audio book narrator. It didn't sound anything like the gross, slimy monster it actually was.
I held my varé at the ready in case this was some sort of trick. "What do you want?"
The Bringer opened its arms wide and actually smiled at me. "I just want to help you," it said. "I come bearing information that may be of use to you."
"Interesting idea, but since I wouldn't trust a single thing you told me, I think I'm just going to stick my varé through your head instead." I took a step toward the Bringer.
"Hey, hey, hey, let's not be so hasty," the Bringer said. It stepped back several paces. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to enter a dream like this?"
"Not my problem." I gave the Bringer a cold smile. "I just want you dead."
"Oh, fine. Maybe this will help." The Bringer's skin began to bubble and slowly melt off its body. I wasn’t sure what this was supposed to help, but it certainly wasn’t helping my appetite. The melted skin ran down the Bringer in rivulets until it revealed a man underneath. He had spiky black hair, bright green eyes, and a smile even more mischievous than Eric's had been.
"Who are you?" I asked.
The man leaned casually back against a tree. He folded his arms and rested one foot against the trunk of the tree. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you, so let's leave names out of this for now," he said.
“Then what do you want?”
The man rolled his eyes. “I tried to tell you before, but clearly you were too busy threatening to kill me to pay attention. I’m here to help you, Madison. I have information for you.”
“Help me, how?”
“I know how to rebind Thuanar.”
That made me pause. He knew how to rebind Thuanar? How could he possibly know that? If none of the Berserkers or Binders knew, how could this guy?
“Ok, who are you?”
The man let out a sigh and put his face in his hands. He rubbed his temples, as if he were massaging away a bad headache, then looked up and spoke. “There is no time for names. I can’t stay here much longer. I’m going to tell you my information and then you can do with it what you want. It’s just the fate of the world hanging in the balance after all.”
Either this man had some critically important information, or he had a serious flare for the overdramatic – I still wasn’t sure which. “Ok, let’s pretend I’m going to believe you,” I said. “What’s the secret?”
“The Havoc bonds are starting to corrupt and become unstable,” the man said.
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Tell me something I don’t already know.”
The man continued on as if he hadn’t heard me. “The bonds contain large amounts of energy. As the bonds weaken, some of that energy will start to be released. Earthquakes, fires, disruptions in weather patterns, and gravitational fluctuations are all possible outcomes. If the bonds completely break, well, it wouldn’t be good. Releasing that much energy at once would be extremely destructive.”
“Why is it any different than when a Berserker gets sacrificed? The bond breaks then but there’s no other destruction.”
I thought I saw just a hint of a smile on the man’s face before he answered me. “I don’t have time to go into it now, but think of it this way – if you cut a balloon that isn’t inflated you just get a hole in the balloon. If you do the same thing to one that’s inflated, the whole thing pops. As the bindings weaken, the tension on the magic increases. If that tension gets to be too much...”
“It pops,” I finished.
“Exactly. The magic on Thuanar’s binding is weakening and the binding is under tension. You need to sever the binding before it breaks on its own. Then you can safely rebind Thuanar.”
I didn’t like the implications of what he was saying. I had to die or else Thuanar’s binding was going to cause an explosion? “What do you mean ‘sever’ the binding? There’s only one way I know of to do that, and if I’m dead there’s no one to rebind him.”
“The binding is weak,” the man replied. “You won’t need much blood to free him. Once he is free, you can then re-forge the binding. But you must hurry, the binding is already starting to break. There isn’t much time.”
Before I could ask any more questions, the color drained out of the man and he turned to dust or ash – something dry and gritty. A strong wind came from nowhere and began blowing directly on the man, causing him to quickly dissolve into particles and float away.
***
When I woke up the next morning, I still remembered the dream. A talking Bringer that morphed into a man who told me how to rebind Thuanar, how could I forget? At the time I remembered it feeling very real, but in the harsh light of day the entire thing just seemed kind of silly, so I kept it to myself.
There were plenty of yawns and sleepy expressions that morning as Dad, Rhys, Shing, Josiah, Miguel, Onaona, and myself all hopped on an early flight to Mexico. I promptly fell into a dreamless sleep after the flight took off and slept through most of the first leg of the trip. By the time we arrived in Los Angeles I felt more rested and was ready to get out and move around.
We had a two hour layover in LA so Onaona and I decided to browse through some of the stores. I hadn't been alone with her since she left with the Azark yesterday so this was the first time we had a chance to catch up.
“Did you get rid of it?” I asked.
Onaona nodded. “It took me several hours, but eventually I got the Azark to disappear. Or maybe it just disappeared on its own – I’m not entirely sure. Either way it’s gone now.”
That made me feel much better.
We continued to browse through the stores looking at overpriced souvenirs and electronics, but nothing seemed to stand out for me. It was strange to think that I could purchase anything in the
airport without making a dent in my bank account. Back when I didn’t have money – really only a few months ago – I would look around a store and fantasize about one day having the money to buy the dozens of things I wanted, but couldn’t afford. Now that I could afford to buy whatever I wanted, the idea of buying all those things had somehow lost its appeal.
The first few weeks had been fun. I had bought a lot of clothes and jewelry that I didn’t really need. Most of it was still in my room with the price tags on – never worn or used. Part of it was the fact that we had been traveling in search of Margil for much of that time, but I was also discovering I seemed to like having a lot of things more in theory than in actual practice.
Why was that? I was starting to understand what Rhys had meant when he said that having all the money you wanted lost its thrill after a while.
When you could have anything you wanted, nothing was special.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a man watching us. He had dark curly hair, a full beard, and a mustache. He wore a black zip up hoodie and was doing his best to not let us know he was watching.
I didn’t recognize him, so I could only assume he was either a random creep stalking two teen girls, or someone tracking a Berserker and Binder. Either option was a problem.
I nudged Onaona and discretely whispered my concern to her. She took a look and nodded to let me know she had seen him as well.
We tried to move closer to the man to get a better view, but apparently we weren’t quite as stealthy as we had thought. The man suddenly spun around and began walking quickly in the opposite direction.
Onaona and I started following him. When he turned a corner, he risked a glance towards us and saw we were still pursuing. He disappeared around the corner and by the time we got there he was lost in a crowd of people milling about the food court.
“What do you think?” I asked. “An actual threat or just a creepy guy embarrassed to be caught checking out two young girls?”
Onaona peered through the crowd for a minute before answering. “I’m going to go with creepy guy checking us out,” she said. “But all the same, let’s get back to the others.”
“Agreed.”
***
We saw no sign of the hoodie guy as we walked back to our gate and met back up with everyone. The more I thought about it, the less sinister it seemed. Really all I saw was just a guy checking us out. While I still was not completely used to it, it certainly wasn’t something to worry the others with. Especially my dad. He tended to freak out about these kinds of things, even though I was much more capable of protecting myself than he was. Something like this would cause the overprotective parent in him to rear its bossy head and start telling me what I could and couldn’t do. So, unless we had more proof than what we currently had, I wasn’t going to say a word.
The second half of the trip started out just as tranquil as the first, but a few hours from our destination things began to change. The flight got more and more bumpy – which wasn’t too unusual – but the captain was forced to turn on the fasten seatbelt lights and we couldn’t leave our seats. Never a fun thing on a long flight. Especially when you’ve been drinking a lot of water and are not known for your ability to “hold it in.”
Once Josiah realized I needed to pee, he thought it would be funny to make all kinds of water jokes in some lame attempt to make me need to go more. While it didn’t have the desired effect, it did annoy me to the point that I wanted to punch him hard enough to breach the hull of the plane.
Luckily for him I restrained myself.
The Captain spoke over the intercom giving us the bad news. "We have just been given notice that there is a large storm over the city of Puebla and they are ordering an evacuation even as we speak. All flights into Puebla are being diverted to Mexico City for the time being."
We all looked at each other uneasily. This could hardly be a coincidence.
It was time to tell them about my dream.
Chapter 7
A Meteorologist’s Worst Nightmare
It didn’t take me long to relate the key points from the dream to the others, particularly the part about “disruptions in weather patterns” the man had warned me about.
“Do you have any idea who the man was?” Dad asked.
I shook my head. “None. To be honest, if it weren’t for this storm over Puebla, I would still assume it had just been a weird dream.”
“And he wouldn’t tell you his name?” asked Rhys.
“He said I wouldn’t believe him if he told me.”
“That sounds as if he believes you had already heard of him,” said Shing.
I hadn’t thought about that during the dream, but looking back it did sound like that. Leave it to Shing to pull extra meaning from a simple phrase.
“But why wouldn’t I believe him?” I asked. “It’s not like I haven’t already been exposed to some seriously messed up things since I became a Berserker. I’ve had to deal with more weirdness in the past year than most people do in a dozen lifetimes. What could possibly be so strange that I wouldn’t believe it?”
But that was a question none of us had an answer for.
Miguel broke the silence. “So, does this storm mean that Thuanar’s bond was even weaker than we had thought?” he asked. “How much time do we have before it breaks on its own? I’m not from Puebla, but I’d prefer not to have a large crater where the Cathedral is.”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “It didn’t sound like the bond would break before we got there. At least, it didn’t sound like the man thought that. Maybe he didn’t really know either?”
An hour later the plane landed safely in Mexico City, but the airport was a mess. We were forced to stay in the plane for another hour while they figured out the logistics of unloading us.
The good news was, that once we landed, they allowed us to get up to use the restroom. That made the rest of the wait tolerable and lessened my desire to punch Josiah in the face.
The airport was packed with other planes that had been diverted because of the storm, and we were informed that it would be at least a day before there were any more flights down to Puebla. If what the guy in my dream said was true, it would be a lot longer than that unless we found a way to get down there and fix the binding.
With the help of some cash incentives given to the right people, we managed to get our bags, clear customs, and find a rental van despite the chaos around us.
In all actuality, we weren’t that far from Puebla – eighty miles or so. Ordinarily it would be a one to two hour drive. Given the fact that we were headed straight into a storm where everyone was being evacuated from, I guessed it would be considerably longer.
The winds outside the airport in Mexico City were already bad, and they continued to get worse as we drove towards Puebla. Rain pelted down from the sky in sheets. It almost felt like a giant bucket of water was continuously being dumped on us. Being from Washington I was used to rain, but nothing like this. Rain in Washington was a constant drizzle, not this hurricane-like downpour.
The van we rented was cramped with all of us in it, but we managed to make pretty good progress since most of traffic was headed in the opposite direction we were. I could only imagine the thoughts going though the heads of the people trying to escape from the storm as they saw us driving into it.
We passed several checkpoints where uniformed officers informed us that we needed to turn around because of the mandatory evacuation. But each time, Miguel managed to talk our way though with the language of cash. Most of the officers seemed quite willing to take money in exchange for letting us head recklessly into obvious danger.
The winds became very strong as we reached the outskirts of Puebla. Powerful gusts pushed the van in crazy directions, but Miguel somehow managed to keep us on the road despite the slick roads and poor visibility. I was quite impressed with his driving skills.
Once we got into the city, there were very few people or other cars to deal with. Mos
t of the residents had taken the evacuation order very seriously and the city was an empty ghost town.
But what it lacked in cars and traffic, Puebla more than made up for in windblown obstacles and swirling trash. Downed trees and power poles were everywhere. Fortunately we had a van full of Berserkers, so clearing them out of the way would only cost us warmth and dryness. Much to my delight, Josiah actually volunteered for most of it, and the rest of us were more than happy to let him have at it.
The clouds up in the sky were an angry purple tinged with red as the sun attempted to filter through. The closer we got to the cathedral, the more funnel-like the clouds were. When we were finally close enough that we should have been able to see the cathedral it was obscured by a swirling vortex writhing around it. The vortex was at least ten blocks in diameter – a massive funnel cloud that swirled in place, picking up objects and hurling them out again. Most tornados or hurricanes had some sort of forward motion to them, but this one didn’t. It stayed in the exact same place, swirling and undulating dangerously. All around the perimeter of the vortex cars were over turned, buildings had collapsed, and debris was strewn everywhere.
“Now that’s a twister!” Josiah said, his eyes wide with excitement. “It that where we need to go?”
“I’m afraid so,” Dad said. “I’m just not sure how we’re going to get through it to find Thuanar. Berserkers are strong, but if the wind picks you up, it won’t matter how strong you are.”
“Well, I’ve seen my fair share of twisters before,” said Josiah. “Even been inside a few, just for kicks.” He winked at me. “I’ve got a little trick I’ve used before.”
He ‘zerked and hopped out of the car. He ran over to a collapsed building, grabbed a heavy chunk of cement with one hand, held onto his hat with the other, and dashed into the vortex.
Bonds That Break (The Havoc Chronicles Book 3) Page 9