Stormchaser

by Cherry Adair

  “It’s not too fucking late.” Jonah handed the gun to Callie, kept her an arm span away from Trakas, and hastily slid his feet into the sandals. “We’ll die here together if you don’t hurry.” Crouching, he did them up. Too small; his toes hung over the front edge. Better than barefoot. Rising, he took the gun back from Callie.

  Once the fat guy managed to get down, he and Demetriou fought with the buckles, sweat running down their red faces.

  Once the sandals had been handed over, Jonah shoved them at Callie. “Hurry.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice.” She retained her dry sense of humor—a woman used to keeping cool during tense situations. He couldn’t think about the fact she’d been shot. She had guts. Heart. And a deceitful tongue. Couldn’t think about that, either.

  “Out of the way,” he told the three men, voice grim. “Last warning.”

  They parted, and he and Callie pushed past them, clustered just outside the door. “You’re fools. Run!”

  He didn’t wait to see if they were smart enough to leave. He and Callie raced out into the corridor and turned left, running flat-out. Opposite from where they’d been brought in. He knew what was in that direction, and it didn’t lead out. He hoped to hell left was freedom. At this point they had nothing to lose. Yet another gray cement corridor, and up ahead, dusk-like daylight.

  Moments later, like a giant beast waking from a centuries-long nap, another quake rippled beneath their feet. Jonah held Callie tightly against him as they slammed into the wall. His shoulder and side throbbed with the impact. He shot a concerned look at her. Stoic as ever, jaw clenched, gaze focused. Lines of pain bracketed her mouth.

  “Don’t stop for anything!” he yelled, scooping her under his arm as the floor continued to undulate.

  “Does that feel like an aftersho—” An incredibly loud percussion cut her off. Whether this one was human-made, or nature was simply pissed at the previous interference, this quake put the ones before it to shame. A series of thunderous pops and bangs sounded like a combination of heavy artillery and industrial-grade fireworks.

  Bursting through the narrow door, they jettisoned into the great outdoors, onto a dirt road, and into the jaws of hell.

  The long-dormant volcano, reactivated by the human-made earthquakes, shook and spewed. Turning day to night, filling the air with dust and flaming projectiles. The fragments, semi-molten when airborne, landed still smoking hot around them.

  The stink of sulfureted hydrogen saturated the heavy air. The sulfur instantly made his eyes water. The shrill screams of terrified men, running like ants at a picnic, joined the cacophony of falling projectiles and the horrendous creaking of the earth splintering. The sun should be shining. Instead, a dense black cloud cover hung suffocatingly low over the small village.

  Jonah recognized the path leaving the village. “Windward.” Confused, frightened Guardians ran up the mountainside, arms protecting their heads, black robes billowing around them while shit flew in the air around them. “Damn fools! They should be running down toward the sea to escape.”

  “Watch out for fumaroles,” Callie cautioned, indicating a smoking hole opening up six feet in front of them as they ran. She pulled him sideways, so they narrowly missed being hit by molten volcanic bombs.

  “Come with us!” Callie tried to grab a man’s arm as he ran passed them in the wrong direction. He shook her off, yelling invectives.

  “It isn’t the stink of sulfur that’s going to kill them, it’s the CO2—” They crested a hill, the ocean spread out below them. At least two miles away. But it wasn’t the distance or the view that captured her attention. She’d turned to look back at the Guardians’ progress up the mountainside. It was a gentle slope to the top of the—“Oh, my God—look at that!”

  An eruption column.

  The top of the volcano spewed a three-thousand-foot black mushroom cloud of smoke with a fiery base. Projectiles peppered the way as they skidded and slipped, hauled each other upright, and kept running. “Is that it?” Jonah shouted as there was a momentary lull in flying projectiles.

  “That’s just the warm-up! This could go on for days.” A powerful explosion lit up the underside of the smoke cover.

  “Then we better be long gone by the time that happens.”

  They held each other as the earth shuddered beneath their feet, and as soon as it settled enough for them to run, they did so.

  “There’s laundry on the line,” Callie shouted, tugging him off their path to investigate. “We should cover our faces as best we can. Water would be great … The goat trough will do. Grab that robe.”

  Jonah pulled it off the rope line. It was still damp. Taking it to where Callie bent over the trough trying to catch her breath, he started tearing it into pieces.

  “Those stupid bastards set off all those damn tremors, and now those human-made quakes are setting off natural quakes, and their tame little molehill has morphed into a mountain about to erupt!” Callie yelled over the sound of animals squawking, bleating, and crying, and the percussion of rocks falling.

  A rough tremor shook the ground as they soaked the strips in the water. “That smoke cloud must be at least two hundred feet, and she’s shooting stone bombs now, but in minutes the magma is going to start bubbling up through all these cracks and we’re all in deep shit!”

  Squawking chickens ran across their path, and a dog barked frantically nearby. “Don’t see any sign of magma. Not yet anyway.” He scanned the area as he wrung some of the water out of the cloth.

  “A red glow up that way.” Callie pointed while covering her nose and mouth with her free hand. “Could be the dome waiting to crest and blow. Magma’s not far behind.”

  Taking a handful of wet strips from him, she wrapped her head and face then bent to cover her feet as best she could. Jonah did the same. Callie’s eyes lit up with humor. “We look like the Mummy.”

  “Hands, too.” He wrapped his own.

  A blizzard from hell, gray ash swirled around them, dense enough to fucking chew. The stench of sulfur permeated the air. The terrified, agonized screams of the black-garbed men running up the street, some with robes in flames, was just part of the nightmare of fleeing humans and animals.

  “Hurry, neoprene doesn’t degrade until after two hundred degrees. Right now the worst we have to deal with are boulders and ashfall and the smaller falling debris.” Anything else, and they, and all the islanders, would be toast.

  “Great. About a hundred times less than the temperature we’re going to run in if there’s a magma flow!”

  “One thing at a time, all right?”

  She didn’t need to explain to him the inherent dangers of being this close to an active volcano. Lava tubes networked beneath the island. Fissures would open up, dome fountains—this was bad, and hell was going to rain down on their heads, and open under their feet, at any moment.

  “One stray spark…” The wet suits weren’t going to protect them from falling rocks or molten lava, but they’d protect their skin from some of the fallout. It had to be enough.

  “What’s our risk?” he yelled, heading over a small rise.

  “Right now? We’re in the medium-risk zone … But in the next fifteen minutes? I’d say high-risk. Or kiss our butts goodbye. The lava, when it comes, will most likely follow the ancient flows to the sea.”

  “When we get to the windward side, we’ll stay as close to shore as possible. First boat we see, we get the hell outta Dodge and head out to the Stormchaser.”

  If the insane fucking Guardians hadn’t sunk his ship while he’d been busy.

  He tangled his fingers with hers, both wrapped, so it wasn’t skin-to-skin. But he needed the contact. “Then haul ass.”

  * * *

  “Keep going, I’ve got you,” Jonah yelled. Sweaty, dizzy, and numb, Callie kept pace alongside him.

  She ran without seeing where they were, or what she was stepping on, or through. She ran because Jonah refused to let go of her hand. He flew
down hills, up hills, and down a steep incline without breaking stride. Smoldering, burning shrubs and grass were no deterrent, Jonah plowed through anything in their path.

  Yelling stop wasn’t an option.

  She smelled the heat creeping behind them. The stink of sulfur filled her world. Overpowering, her fear even more so.

  Her steps faltered. Jonah pulled her upright, kept her going. She was vaguely surprised her shoulder wasn’t dislocated. It was the same arm Jonah had yanked, tugged, pulled, and grabbed all day.

  The stitch in her side took over her entire body. Or that could be the bullet wound in her side. Was she bleeding to death with every step she ran? Gritting her teeth, determined to keep going, to keep up, she suddenly felt her knees buckle and she dropped, a painful skid along the rocky ground.

  The abrupt cessation of movement jerked her hand free from Jonah’s, radiating pain up her arm. Chest heaving, she sat back on her haunches, struggling to suck in a breath. God, it was hot, so hot the air was hard to breathe, searing her nose and throat on the way to burning through her lungs. The earth was on fire. The air was on fire. She was on fire.

  “Get up.”

  Callie tried, but her body refused to move. Depleted. Done. She blinked streaming eyes, to see Jonah standing about six feet away, magical and mystical shrouded in swirling dust and smoke. “Minute.” It took everything in her to push out that one word.

  Darkness, not from the swirling ash and billowing smoke alone, crowded out the clarity of her field of vision. She’d lost too much blood and she knew it. This was it. Endgame. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”

  “Stand the fuck up. Now, Calista.”

  She’d never heard him use that tone. She lifted her head.

  Stabbing a finger at the ground between them, he raised his voice, sounding furious and terrified at the same time. “See that?”

  A fissure had formed between them, a glowing lightning-bolt-shaped glint of dark bubbling red that opened so quickly, they both had to jump back and retreat. The snake-like crack split the ground in a long jagged line from the volcano behind them, and made a crazy zigzag path to the sea in the distance.

  In the crevasse, bubbling magma pulsed like the living heartbeat of a demon beast struggling to escape.

  The heat scalded her skin, made the moisture in her eyes dry out, made her lungs burn. The frantic pounding of her heartbeat almost blocked out the crackle of the grass burning and the loud thumps of smoking projectiles plummeting to the ground nearby.

  The rift went from a foot to two feet wide.

  “Jump,” Jonah shouted, voice cold and lethal.

  Callie staggered, sweat stinging her eyes, side on fire. God. His feet were inches from the edge. She put up both hands. “Go back! Please, Jonah—” Sandals, already dry rags, no protection between him and the magma.

  His gaze held hers. Like hers, his eyes were bloodshot, streaming. But the blue was still vivid and compelling as he held out his hand. “You have to be on this side.” He walked backward as the gap widened, four feet wide, jagged and fiery between them. “Do you understand, Callie? You have to jump over, and come to me. Now!”

  Even as she looked, the fissure grew at an alarming rate. Five feet. The earth rumbled, the rolling vibration like an ultrasonic cleaner beneath her feet. “I can go around,” she shouted desperately.

  She was in no shape to jump that distance. Even fighting fit and well rested she wasn’t sure she could jump—

  Oh, God. Six feet.

  They were right in the epicenter. If they got out of this alive it would be a miracle.

  “No,” he told her grimly. “You fucking well can’t. Look where it is. Jump before it gets too wide. You can do it, take a running jump and you’ll be in my arms. I’ll catch you. For fucksake, now.”

  She needed a minute. An hour. A month. She took several steps back as the fracture crept toward her toes. The heat was intense; it burned her skin and snaked a scorching path down into her lungs.

  “Dios. This is no fucking time to be indecisive. I’m making the call for you! Jump, goddamn it.” There wasn’t an iota of gentleness in his voice. He watched her from cold, hard sapphire eyes. “Time’s run out. I’m not leaving you there. Jump, or I’ll come over to you and we’ll both be trapped.”

  She knew better. She was the only one trapped. He could walk away now and live. If he waited they both would die: Her for trusting him. And him for being a damn fool idiot trying to save her ass. “Give me one good reason to trust you.” She trusted Jonah. It was herself she didn’t trust. Afraid, deathly afraid, she knew she was making excuses, trying to buy time so she could think it through.

  Jump to my death.

  “I can only think of one.”

  Be with Jonah.

  She had to move back. So did he. The distance between them widened. A nearby bush burst into flame, the grasses around it sparking in the breeze she couldn’t see or feel.

  Run like hell to see if there was another way around the problem …

  She smelled her burnt hair. “We’ll be burned to a crisp?”

  “Okay. Two reasons. That and I love you. Everything else can be worked out.”

  The longer she waited, the more intense the heat became, the wider the gap. The more in danger they both were. “It’s about damn time you told me, Jonah Cutter.” Crazy talk. Oh, God, she had to jump, she knew she did. If she kept debating the pros—being safe in Jonah’s arms—with the cons—falling into the molten magma …

  “I’ve been a little busy, Calista. Now damn it, run and jump to me before that gets too wide for you to cross.”

  She looked up and down the length of the wide fissure, at the lava oozing up around it. “I suppose you’re expecting me to say the same?” She paced. Could she jump that distance? If she jumped short … if she didn’t jump at all …

  “That you love me? Hell yes, you do. Fuck it, Doctor! We can discuss that later when we’re the hell off this misbegotten island. Right now I’d rather you moved your ass so we can both do that.”

  Callie turned and used every ounce of energy she didn’t have running back up the hill. When she figured she was a reasonable distance away, she turned and raced back as fast as her legs and momentum would carry her.

  She leapt across the hot river of bubbling lava.

  Twenty-one

  Heart in his throat, Jonah willed Callie to make it as she practically did the splits to jump from her side to his. It probably took her seconds, but to Jonah, too afraid to blink, arms outstretched, feet braced, it felt like her movements were caught in slo-mo.

  Arms and legs flailing, she wasn’t graceful, but she got the job done. When she slammed into him, nearly knocking him to the ground, he closed his arms fiercely around her, staggering from the impact, sucking in air. Dios, he’d never let her go.

  His skin already felt as though he suffered from an intense sunburn. Callie’s face, under the dust and sweat, looked red and painful. Helping her when she staggered, he took a firm grip on her hand. “We’re going to have a chat about your inability to make fast decisions, but we’ll save that for another day. Now run, damn it!”

  Angling away from the crack in the earth, he made a beeline for the small inlet he remembered seeing when he’d come with the guys, a lifetime ago. Not far. Steam rose in giant, billowy white plumes with a magnified hiss as magma hit water up and down the coastline.

  “Almost there.” He jumped with her over a small fiery vein, then another. The grass and shrubbery farther up the mountain burned, adding to the powerful, choking stink of charred wood, oregano, thyme, and sulfur. His stomach roiled in protest.

  The going was harder on the soft sand, especially given that they’d already used up most of their reserves. “Shit.” The magma had already beaten them to the water. A slow-moving bubbling black-and-red tide ate up sections of beach, then hissed and steamed as it kissed the waves.

  Turning in a half circle he spotted the Astondoa moored at a small jetty beneath an ove
rhang.

  “There!” Callie pointed to Anndra’s fast motor yacht at the same time. A giant, red-hot boulder the size of dive tank hit the sand. Close enough for them to feel the heat. More followed.

  They ran.

  * * *

  Maura and Gayle had seen the dense black eruption column of smoke and headed south. A call from the Astondoa to Stormchaser gave Jonah the location of his ship some sixty miles south of where she’d been anchored. After doing a cautious circuit of the island in the hope of finding any of the Guardians, they headed out to sea at full throttle.

  An hour later they were on board Stormchaser. Callie wanted to drop to the deck and kiss it. Jonah helped her onto the dive platform, then up the ladder to the first deck where everyone waited. He held up his hand as crew and dive team pressed forward, clamoring for answers. “We’ll fill you in later. Bring the first-aid kit to my cabin in twenty minutes,” he instructed Maura.

  “Shower or bed?” Like two drunks, she and Jonah went down to his cabin. “I don’t care if we get the sheets dirty, I’m not sure I can move.”

  “You’ll feel better after a shower. Then we can look at your assorted injuries. How’s your side?”

  “As exhausted and beat up as the rest of me,” she murmured as they entered his cabin. She knew she should insist on showering in her own room. But she didn’t want to be apart from him. Not until she absolutely had to be. And since he didn’t suggest she cross the corridor, either, Callie followed him inside and shut the door behind her.

  “I can’t tell the difference at this point.” The room was cool, dim, and clean. “Everything looks weirdly … normal.” Tears pricked her eyes. God, she needed normal right now.

  “We don’t look so normal.” Jonah’s smile was very white against his dirty face. “Come on.” Without touching her, something Callie desperately needed, he headed to the bathroom.

  “I’d advise you not to look at yourself in a mirror until we’re done.” His tone was dry, but she couldn’t summon the energy to smile. The bathroom was small, and she was all elbows and knees as she grappled with the zipper down the front of her wet suit with fingers made clumsy by exhaustion and a sudden spate of nerves.