by Amy Braun
What I did register were the walls of water around me, cocooning me in the single open space on the street.
Horror filled my aching body. Mr. Cortez’s corpse was no longer in this space.
But I wasn’t alone.
I flipped over, a scream hitching in my throat.
The Stormkind towered over me like some ancient ocean god, its glowing white eyes searing my own retinas. Water cascaded around its featureless body, making the beacons of light in its skeleton shiver.
It reached for me, and I raised my arm uselessly, opening my mouth to scream–
A flash of light seared my vision. It concealed a dark shape that crashed into the ground inches from my feet. I shrieked and scuttled back. My heart couldn’t take much more of this. If I didn’t pass out, I might become one of the only twenty-one year olds to die of a heart attack.
The light between me and the Stormkind faded. In its place stood a man.
Not a Stormkind, but legitimate man. He was tall and broad, his hair the same silver as the long-sword in his hand. He was as drenched as I was, rainwater running across the black leather and steel plating of his armor. On the metal plate covering his back was some kind of insignia– a series of jagged waves sliced in half by an upturned sword.
I could barely comprehend what just happened, who this man was, and why he looked like he was on his way to some kind of Renaissance Fair for Badasses. But I did know that the Stormkind didn’t attack him.
It moved away from him.
Whoever this man was, the Stormkind was terrified of him.
“You have devoured already, Wild One,” the man said, his voice deep and raspy, like gravel mixing with smoke. “This one is not yours.”
The man turned on his heel and looked at me. My heart skipped another beat.
He was in his late forties, and alarmingly handsome. The shockingly silver hair was tied at the back of his neck, displaying a hawkish face of sharp angles. His skin was paler than my own, and he didn’t have so much as a single blemish or age-worn scar. The man looked perfect, in a harsh way.
Except for his eyes.
They were so dark they appeared black to me, twin voids that threatened to suck the life from me if I stared into them for too long. I saw nothing in them, no emotion that I could recognize. This man chilled me worse than any part of the storm I was trapped in.
When he spoke again, I felt my heart freeze.
“This one is mine.”
I must have heard him wrong. He couldn’t have meant me. I was nobody. A waitress struggling to pay her way through college. I didn’t have any big connections and had never gotten so much as a parking ticket.
But this man didn’t see me that way. He eyed me like I was prey.
A panicked breath strained out of my chest and I flipped around, desperate to get to my feet. The man grabbed my ankle and pulled. I landed hard on my stomach. He pulled me across the concrete. My fingers scrabbled and skidded over the road, burning and slipping away from traction I didn’t have.
He let go of my ankle and grabbed my hair instead. I yelped at the sharp pain as he pulled me back to meet his eyes.
They weren’t just dark. They were black, so deep I couldn’t even see his pupils.
I wanted to beg, fight, do anything to make him let me go. But I knew I was mercilessly trapped.
Helpless.
His inky eyes traced my body, scrutinizing instead of leering.
“You are not ideal,” he growled. “But I am short on time. You will have to do.”
I didn’t know what he meant, didn’t even know how to start asking, when he reached for his belt and took out a dagger with a light in the crystal blade.
I didn’t have time to admire the weapon’s beauty before the man stabbed it into my chest.
I screamed at the pain, but it wasn’t just because I’d been stabbed. I only felt that initial sharp, burning punch for a single second.
After that, I felt everything else.
Agony whipped through my body in a blistering wave. A sharp, hammering sensation pounded through my chest, spilling into my veins like a violent flood. My insides thrashed viciously, as though they were being electrocuted. Hot and cold needles stabbed into my bones and skull. It felt as if my insides were charred, broken into pieces that would never be whole again.
I couldn’t see past the white spots snapping through my vision. I couldn’t hear anything but my screams. I had never wanted to die before.
Now it was the only thought on my mind.
Just when I was certain the splinters of torture had finished destroying my very being, something dislodged from my chest, a weight lifted from my heart.
I had no more breath to scream. My body had lost all tension. Then there was nothing at all.
Chapter 2
Alarms. There were too many damn alarms. Wailing sirens that just wouldn’t stop. I wanted to go back to sleep. My waterbed must have been punctured by something as I slept, because I was soaked–
Wait. I didn’t have a waterbed, and the alarms I heard were sirens.
Police cars. Ambulances. Fire trucks. God knows what else. I recognized every sound.
I was still alive.
And I hurt everywhere.
The first thing I did was open my eyes. Who knew that something so simple and common would feel like peeling back a layer of raw skin?
Light stabbed into my vulnerable eyes and sent a fresh pulse into my throbbing head. Apparently a construction crew had taken up residence in my skull while I was unconscious.
I closed my eyes, then opened them again slowly. It still hurt, but after a couple seconds, I was able to keep them open.
The sky over my head was crystal, perfect blue. Not a cloud could be seen in it. The SPU told us this happened after the Centennial Storm, that once it was over, the skies were wide and open. Peace always came after calamity, they said.
I felt as if I were lying on a grassy hilltop to see the sky without obstruction. But I didn’t feel grass at my back. Whatever I was lying on was wet and hard.
I had to be on the road still.
A memory threatened to push past the delirium in my head. I pushed it right back.
Sitting up was embarrassingly difficult. Somewhere during my ordeal, my bones had turned into metal. The muscles in my back and hips stretched like strained bruises. I grimaced and rubbed them, only to find the feeling had spread to my arms as well. I turned my head to look down the road–
There were no houses, and I wasn’t on the road.
Twisting around, despite the tension in my body, I realized I wasn’t even on the ground. I was on the top of a building.
I scrambled to my feet, my head spinning from vertigo. I staggered drunkenly, quickly shutting my eyes and evening out my breathing. I opened my eyes slowly, relieved that the world was no longer spinning. I turned and saw the rooftop door behind me. At least this building was intact. I could probably use that door to get off the roof.
But how the hell did I get up here?
The memories threatened again, phantom pain shuddering through my chest and slithering to the tips of my toes. I closed my eyes and breathed in a shaky whisper, murmuring to forget. This wasn’t the time. Don’t think about it. Not now. Not yet. Focus on the bigger problem– finding out where exactly I was.
Lantana wasn’t Florida’s biggest city, so I just needed to peer over the ledge and see where I was. I could only imagine the damage, but I would probably still be able to find my house. I knew the city pretty well.
Taking slow, steady steps, I walked to the edge of the roof, in the direction of those still blaring sirens. I was amazed at how quickly they’d responded. Policemen, paramedics, and firefighters all received training courses from the SPU when they confirmed the Centennial would hit us this year, and the Army provided specialized vehicles to each state in an effort to expand its aid, but getting them out of storage was supposed to take a few days, depending on the level of debris.
The
n again, maybe the rumors were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe…
I jerked to a stop at the roof’s ledge. My legs turned to water and I buckled. A gasp hitched in my throat as I collapsed back onto the concrete. My heart pounded as I scrambled to the edge of the building.
In school, they showed us photos of the damage from the last Centennial Storm. A way of preparing us for the devastation we could be facing.
Seeing photographs was one thing. Seeing it from a bird’s eye view was… I couldn’t even comprehend it.
Nothing remained standing. Nothing. Every single house was flattened into piles of crushed bricks, shattered stone, and splintered wood. Windows from apartment buildings and businesses were shattered, leaving dark, gaping holes in their wake. Palm trees lay across the streets in crumpled heaps. Flattened beneath them were telephone lines and power poles, their wires wrapped haphazardly around overturned cars and trucks like pythons squeezing around their prey. It was like a rain of giant fists had pounded into the city, hammering without mercy until only shambles remained.
Complete devastation spanned as far as I could see, all the way to the horizon and the ocean beyond. The water was calm and placid now, but I saw upturned boats and remnants of the docks bobbing helplessly in the water.
Ocean water sloshed over the roads. Emergency vehicles struggled to drive through it. The black SPU SUVs were parked wherever the damage was at its worst, whether it was beside the houses that had meshed together during their collapse, the lower levels of flooded apartments, or the shopping districts with caved-in boutiques. Dozens of red lights flashes below me, their sirens wailing together into one unending cry.
The sirens were loud, but not loud enough to conceal all the screams.
Hundreds, thousands of people waded through the streets, weaving awkwardly around the debris. They huddled on piles of broken housing, waving their arms and begging for help. Groups of desperate families tossed refuse aside to find their lost and loved, dozens of names shouted into an incoherent echo.
Some survivors were pulled from the wreckage. Their screams of fear and relief were almost as loud as the sirens.
My eyes traced over the chaos, searching for my house. All I could think about were my parents and brother, trapped and terrified in the storm shelter. What if the house had been demolished in the hurricane? Their exit would be covered by debris. Would Dad’s cell phone be able to get reception underground so he could call for help? Every shelter was supposed to have an emergency alarm installed to alert the SPU, but the power had to be out. How would they get help? How many inhalers did Mom have for James? What if the floor caved in? Our house was old and needed renovations. It might not have been able to withstand that kind of destruction.
My family could be trapped. They could be dead.
Tension knotted around my heart like a noose. It was painful to breathe. I shoved my hands through my hair and gripped it tight. Tears pricked my eyes. The city below me blurred. I didn’t know where I was. This landscape had been replaced by something strange, something unfamiliar and horrible.
A sob wrenched up my throat as I tried to get my bearings. A steady, cool wind brushed my drenched clothes. The wind began to push the water inland again.
I closed my eyes and breathed in short, jagged pants, but I managed to stop hyperventilating.
I had to get home.
Okay, I had a goal. First things first: get off the roof.
Easy enough.
I turned and ran toward the access door. My legs felt like wooden planks encased in iron, so I didn’t run very far. Jogging wasn’t an improvement. I settled with a brisk walk.
Better than nothing.
I pulled the access door open and peered inside. There wasn’t a lot of light, so I fumbled along the edges of the wall until my hands circled the cold railing. My footsteps echoed as I stomped down the corridor. The roof access led to the emergency staircase, so I followed it all the way to the bottom.
I was huffing and puffing the whole way down, my legs burning with every step I took. God, wasn’t it supposed to be easier going down stairs instead of up them?
Oh well. At least I would get my exercise in for the day. I had been complaining that I wanted a better beach body this summer, but this wasn’t exactly the workout I’d had in mind.
Maybe, if it were still stocked somewhere, I would let fantasies of a beach body slide and find some ice cream.
I jerked to a stop on the staircase. Phantom pain drifted through me. A blistering, agonizing cold wrapped itself around my limbs, smothering them with ice.
I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed through the memory.
Not here, not here, don’t think about it, Ava. Don’t think, don’t think…
I cracked my eyes open and continued my descent.
Light streaked through the open door and rippled through the water flooding the exit of the apartment building. I slipped into the cool, salty water that covered my knees. I tried not to think about how heavy my clothes were on my body or what was in the water.
I wanted to shower, but this wasn’t the kind of water I wanted to use.
Nudging through the door, I entered a world of chaos.
Spinning lights, blaring sirens, terrified screams, crashing rubble, and cool water coalesced into the worst kind of symphony. I thought I was disoriented when I was staring down from the roof, but now I wasn’t so sure. Nothing was familiar, and I knew Lantana like the back of my hand. I’d never left the town, never had a reason to. Working at the restaurant meant a lot of tourists asking where they could find certain shops or hotels or clubs, so I committed myself to knowing where all of them were.
Now I couldn’t even tell what the building across from me had been when it was still intact. I spun in a circle, trying to orient myself. Honestly, I felt like an alien. Maybe I’d been picked up by one of those brutal winds and thrown into another planet.
No. That’s not what happened to you. What happened was–
I shut it out. I had to. I couldn’t face it. Couldn’t break down here. I needed to get home. Then I could have a meltdown.
One foot in front of the other. That’s what I had to do. That’s what I would do. Nothing more, nothing less.
My gut pulled me to the left, so to the left I went. Salt water splashed against my thighs and stomach. I spotted volunteers everywhere, authorities and civil workers and rescuers combining forces with the black-clad SPU officers to drag whoever they could from stone and wood wreckage. Some of the people they found were screaming and holding their hands up to the blaring sun. Some were disoriented and bleeding. Some weren’t moving at all.
Ambulances were loaded up and sped toward SPU hospitals. Dozens of them had been set up underground for when the general hospitals and medi-centers in Florida were destroyed. I dreaded to think how packed they must be now, and how difficult and terrifying it would be for the survivors to be lowered into the ground after suffering injuries that crippled or nearly killed them. My stomach churned at the thought of all those helpless bedridden people, unable to escape when the worst of the Centennial hit.
Hearing so many anguished cries broke my heart. I wanted to do something, but I would just get in the way. I didn’t know CPR, stood barely over five feet tall, tripped over my own feet more often than not, and didn’t know the first thing about search-and-rescue. The last thing I needed was to get yelled at because I moved something the wrong way and hurt someone. Right now, my priority was getting home. Once that was over, I could focus on helping others.
Floating in the water on my right was half of a snapped wooden sign. I grabbed it and held it up. The board was missing both its ends, but I read the letters –EAFOOD BA– perfectly.
I recognized the sign for The Seafood Bar, a place my best friend would take me to for special occasions.
The Seafood Bar was in West Palm. At least a thirty minute drive from where I lived.
How the hell had I gotten into another city?
Ima
ges flashed across my mind. Water circling my legs. Drowning in a current. The hard, cold road. The Stormkind–
The sign slipped from my fingers and splashed into the water. Dizziness swam through my head again. I closed my eyes and breathed through it. I couldn’t think about how I’d gotten so far away. The hundreds of questions and barely restrained trauma were eating at my brain, but I wouldn’t let myself be devoured.
Not yet, anyway.
Gathering the last of my composure, I started walking again. Lantana was south of West Palm, so that’s the direction I went. It would probably take close to four hours to walk home, but I would make it.
I forgot my ordeal as I looked around, witnessing rescues and hearing shouts for help. After an hour of walking, the water on the street grew shallower. My sneakers squished against the concrete, plastic rubbing against my skin above my ankle socks.
So I was going to get blisters and soggy feet. Great.
Still, I kept walking. I wanted to ask someone from the SPU for a ride home, but there was no way I would bother them when they were working so hard to rescue people who actually needed help. I was just lost.
But so were thousands… maybe millions of other people.
When I found Olive Avenue, I knew I would make it home. From here it was just a straight walk down the highway to Lantana. From there, I’d orient myself.
The further I went, the more shelters I noticed. They weren’t much– military grade tents propped up and guarded by police and SPU volunteers. Emergency vehicles led the homeless and injured to seek food and medical help.
The smell of cooking food drifted over the air, and my stomach growled violently. I winced and pressed my hand over my middle. I had no idea what time it was, but hours must have passed since my last meal. I needed to find something to eat, and soon.
I looked at the dozens of dark green tents lining the highway, amazed and grateful that a tent city had been set up so quickly. I mean, the storm only happened yesterday. Tent cities like this took a while to set up, didn’t they?