Everbound: An Everneath Novel

by Ashton, Brodi

“What happened to you?”

  I shrugged, glancing at the windows in her office and wondering if I could maybe squeeze through one. But we were on the second floor.

  She inhaled loudly. “Nikki, your father found you on the side of the road, your pants covered in … something, and talking incoherently about alternate dimensions. I know you don’t feel safe with anyone; but if you want to get out of here, you’ve got to give me something.”

  I thought about it. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Close your eyes. Count backward from ten. Let your mind go.”

  Dr. Hill called this a guided imagery exercise. She had me do it at every appointment. It was supposed to get the conversation flowing. I nodded and then did as instructed.

  “Now open your eyes.”

  I did, but it wasn’t Dr. Hill’s therapy face that caught my attention. It was something else, in the corner of the room. Behind Dr. Hill’s rolling chair. A hand, pale and ghostly, coming out of the floor.

  A phantom hand. Crap. Maybe I am crazy.

  “Talk, Nikki.” Dr. Hill was losing patience.

  I tried to keep my eyes on her, but the hand was waving toward me, as if it was trying to get my attention.

  “Nikki? You have to give me something.”

  The hand pointed to the side wall, opposite the entrance, where the bathroom was. I tried not to stare directly at it and risk Dr. Hill seeing it. Or maybe it really was a hallucination.

  The hand made insistent gestures toward the bathroom.

  “Um … may I please be excused?” I said.

  “No more excuses.”

  “I can’t help it if I need to use the restroom. I won’t be able to think until I do.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Make it quick.”

  I stood from the couch and started walking toward the door, and the hand followed me, slinking along the floor and up the one step that led to the bathroom.

  What the … ?

  I went inside and shut the door, and the hand came through the wall. It reached out, fingers together, thumb up, as if it would shake my hand. I crouched down and noticed markings around each of the fingers on the hand. Tattoos.

  I hadn’t seen them before because the hand itself was practically translucent. There was only one person I knew with those tattoos.

  “Cole?”

  The hand went limp, as if exasperated, and then gave me an exaggerated thumbs-up signal.

  I stood up to consider. Would I really be able to get to the Everneath from my doctor’s office bathroom?

  And how would my doctor explain it?

  I was pretty sure there would be a manhunt after this; but Jack was down there, and Cole was waiting.

  I had no choice but to grab the hand.

  I took it as if I were shaking it; and within an instant I was gone again.

  TWENTY-ONE

  NOW

  The Everneath. The Ring of Water.

  I landed hard on the dirt pathway, my lungs compressed painfully. I coughed a few times.

  “You okay, Nik?” Cole patted my back.

  My eyes watered, and I sniffed. “No.” I pushed myself up. “I am not okay. What happened? What did you do to me?”

  “I told you we’d have to kick you to the Surface for the nights.”

  “But without warning?”

  He pointed to the red lake. “You were covered in blood from the Lake of Blood and Guilt.”

  My chest constricted at the memory of that drowning feeling. “The Lake of what?”

  He stared at the lake with a faraway look in his eyes. “The Lake of Blood and Guilt. It’s an apt description, really, since it’s made up of blood. And guilt.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Max interrupted. “We need to get moving, Cole. Considering how long it took us to get here.”

  “I know,” Cole said. He went to grab my hand, but I yanked it away and he gave me an exasperated look. “I’ll tell you what happened, but we need to keep moving.”

  Ashe was standing by one of the four entrances that led to the lake. He seemed to be pacing in his mind, throwing occasional anxious glances toward Cole.

  The four entrances all looked alike. Even as I studied them, I couldn’t be sure which one we had taken to get here.

  “Did all of you stay here the whole time I was gone?” I asked Cole.

  He nodded. “It was the safest place, because the Wanderers avoid the lake. But this place wears on us too, so everyone’s pretty much ready to leave. Like now.”

  Ashe looked at his watch. “What time is it?” I said.

  “One o’clock,” Cole said.

  One o’clock? My heart sank. So much time gone.

  Cole nodded as if I’d spoken. “It took a long time to find you. Which means we need to go,” he said. “Where’s your token?”

  I pulled the note from my pocket. It was stained red from the lake, but it didn’t matter. Once it was in my hand, my tether appeared. The night on the Surface must have refilled the more positive emotions, because the tether glowed bright and true, and it pointed away from the lake, toward the leftmost entrance. But the night away didn’t do anything for my energy level. I felt as if I was moving at half speed.

  “This way,” I said.

  We started off in the same formation as before, with Ashe in front and Max in back. The walls were still running water, and I wondered if we would ever get to the Ring of Wind, let alone to the bull’s-eye. A whole day had already passed, and we hadn’t even gotten through one ring.

  Cole walked beside me. His face looked worn, and there were dark circles under his eyes that I’d never seen before.

  “You’re tired,” I said.

  He gave a sad smile. “The Lake of Blood and Guilt will do that to a person.”

  “What was that? What happened?”

  I hadn’t realized I’d started to veer to the side, and Cole pulled me toward the center of the path again.

  “When the Wanderer … fed on you”—he struggled to get the words out—“I’m guessing that the strongest emotion left in you was your guilt. It was even stronger than your connection to Jack, hence the second tether. Guilt’s kind of a big thing around here. So big that all of the collective guilt from the sacrifices in the Everneath pooled together and formed a lake. The Lake of Blood and Guilt.”

  I thought about the symbolism and remembered something I’d read. “Wasn’t there a Frozen Lake of Blood and Guilt in Dante’s Inferno? It’s made of blood, because blood symbolizes guilt so well.”

  He almost smiled. “You have been doing your research. In Dante’s poem, it’s the farthest place from warmth and light. The worst sinners are frozen there. Faces out. Mouths sealed shut.”

  “But my lake wasn’t frozen.”

  “Dante always did like to romanticize everything. Besides, like most of our enduring myth makers, he was working off of a rumor of a rumor. But he did have one thing right.”

  “What’s that?”

  Cole smiled. “It’s an eternal punishment. It’s hard to escape it; and if you’re not careful, every path leads back to it. We just have to hope your tether to Jack is stronger than our attraction to the lake.”

  I wouldn’t have believed him if I hadn’t experienced it myself.

  Beside me, Cole yawned. He looked so exhausted, so sickly compared with the last time I’d seen him. “The lake hurts you too,” I said.

  He gave me a sad smile. “Everything in here will affect me. The lake draws out my guilt. Brings it to the surface.”

  “I thought one of your charms was that you never felt guilty for the things you’ve done.”

  “Not true. I just keep it buried as far as possible, down inside what you would probably refer to as the ‘black hole that is my soul.’” He glanced at me sideways, and I feigned nonchalance and shrugged. He grinned. “The lake is like a magnet for the guilt. But your guilt was already strong. Your tether to Jack and your own guilt fought for your attention, hence two te
thers. And you chose guilt. I didn’t realize where you were leading us until you decided to take the world’s most melodramatic swan dive.”

  I thought back to that moment when I jumped in. What was I thinking? “You could’ve given me a warning before Max kicked me.”

  “There was no time. Once you were immersed there was no bringing you back. You would have drowned from the inside out. You swallowed the blood. You were about to be swallowed by guilt.”

  I thought about it. How I’d drunk the blood. How I pictured myself disappearing in it. “If I drowned here, would I be dead?”

  He frowned. “This isn’t a dream, Nik. You’re you here. If you die here, you’re dead.”

  I took a deep breath. “So explain to me the kicking part again?”

  “Kicking you out was the only way to save our place here, because we aren’t allowed to land anywhere in the maze or in the bull’s-eye. I can’t go to the Surface with you because then we would have had to start all over at the beginning again. After you were clear of the lake, I had to try to locate you by making jumps to the Surface and following my connection to you. Max and Ashe had to stay here, grounding my connection to them so I could find my way back. But if my whole body had gone to the Surface, I wouldn’t have been able to find Max again. It was a very delicate balancing act, and I would hope you’d appreciate the effort.” He seemed to be growing impatient trying to explain it.

  “I do, I do. But if you have the ability to reach to the Surface, why don’t you just grab people? Yank them down and force them to become sacrifices?”

  “Nik, don’t you know anything about the Everneath? They have to be willing. The Forfeits, the sacrifices, even you just now when you grabbed my hand. They all have to be willing. Can we walk faster, please?”

  “One more question. Why did Max, and not you, kick me?”

  He blushed. “It should be obvious.”

  Obvious? “It’s not obvious.”

  He looked away, toward the waterfall wall. “I would prefer not to be the one who has to kick you in the stomach.”

  I stopped in my tracks. “Seriously? You Feed off of me for an entire century, take away any future I could possibly have, but you draw the line at a little aggravated assault?”

  The words had poured out before I realized how they would sound. But then again, it was true, wasn’t it?

  He frowned. “Nik, when are you going to realize that I never hurt you? I never will hurt you. I only did what you asked.”

  “You ‘never hurt me’?” I said, incredulous. Anger started to boil inside my chest, and it felt larger and more defined here, maybe because every emotion felt bigger in the Everneath. It was magnified; I knew this. But I couldn’t stop myself. “You took away everything!”

  His eyes were fierce. “Don’t fool yourself. Yes, I wanted you to become an Everliving, but I left the choice up to you.”

  I scoffed. “I know it was my choice. But I didn’t know what I was choosing. And you knew what it would do to me.”

  He grabbed my arm and yanked me back. His eyes searched my face. “Whatever you think of me, I was honest with you. Just because you want to live the mortal life doesn’t mean that my path is any less moral.”

  “You feed off of people,” I said.

  “But it’s their choice.”

  “You sacrifice humans.”

  “But it’s their choice.”

  His face was so close to mine. His cheeks were bright with rushing blood underneath his skin. He was close enough that I imagined I could feel his connection to me. Feel the pull that was holding him fast to me. And for the first time, I realized that, for him, that connection would never break. Because I felt it.

  I looked deep into his eyes. “If you tell yourself a lie enough times—that it’s okay to steal other people’s energy to stay alive—it becomes the truth. Even for you. They’re only willing because they’re weak. You’re preying on the weak.”

  We stood face-to-face for a few tense moments. His dark eyes were tight, the circles under them more pronounced. “That’s quite an indictment of the person you’re trusting with your life right now.”

  My lower lip trembled. “I know.” And I knew my culpability too. But I wasn’t about to admit it.

  He took a step forward, as if he wanted to grasp me, but he was trying to hold back. Was he worried he would hurt me? A large drop of water fell onto his cheek, and he flinched.

  A few more drops fell hard on my head. Tilting my head back, I looked into the sky. It was clear blue. But the walls of the maze were suddenly bulging.

  Cole brought a finger to my cheek and then examined the drop of water with a curious expression. Right then, the rocks beneath our feet began to shake. Cole’s eyes went wide. The walls swelled, expanding into the pathway.

  Max appeared from around the corner, sprinting.

  “Run!” Max yelled.

  The sound of thunder crashed around our ears, and then the first waves of rapids erupted from behind him. Instantly, the white foam from the churning water exploded up the maze walls. It was an ocean, crashing toward us.

  “Nik!” Cole grabbed my hand, and we were running. Full sprint. No time to care if we were heading in the right direction. We caught up with Ashe and pushed him forward. He stumbled.

  “Go! Go!” Cole shouted, shoving him from behind. Ashe scrambled up. The path darted left. Then right. I was following behind Cole when he came to a screeching halt. I crashed into his back.

  “Why’d you stop?!” I shouted, but then I saw the reason. My mouth fell open.

  A giant waterfall blocked the pathway. It was a dead end.

  We were trapped. We turned around. Max appeared. He caught sight of the dead end.

  “Shit!” Max said.

  The enormous white wall of water burst into view, a bullet train of power aimed directly at us.

  “Cole!” I yelped.

  Cole pulled me in front of him and wrapped both arms around me, putting his back toward the dead end. He didn’t have to explain. He was putting a cushion of space between me and the impact of whatever lay behind the wall.

  “Deep breath!” Cole shouted in my ear.

  I had a moment when the faces of my brother and my father flashed through my head. Then a wall crashed into my back.

  It threw us into the dead end. The jolt snapped my neck forward. There had to be something solid behind the dead-end waterfall.

  Cole took the brunt of the impact. The water kept coming; the rapids closed over our heads, forcing us farther from the ground but not high enough to get our heads above the surface. My shoulder hit something jagged, and I opened my mouth to scream; but a gush of water rushed in and down my throat.

  I kicked and waved my arms against the current, the force from millions of gallons pouring on top of me.

  My lungs burned with the lack of oxygen. I saw a slice of light coming from what had to be the surface, and I kicked and kicked toward it.

  Finally I broke the surface, only to discover that the flood had pushed us to the top of the dead-end wall. As I gasped in my first breath of air, we were thrown over the apex and surging toward the ground in a waterfall of flailing limbs and debris.

  I landed on the ground, feet first, and then crumpled. The impact shook my bones. It probably would have shattered them if it hadn’t been for the couple of feet of water that had accumulated at the bottom before we went over.

  The current from the rushing water dragged me a few yards before it became too shallow. The sound of crashing waves subsided, and the sound of wind rushing through a canyon took its place.

  I gulped in a few deep breaths until my brain stopped bouncing around in my head.

  The tidal wave was gone, and the rest of the water turned into little streams, trickling down any declines it could find. A strong wind created ripples in the water, and then, before my eyes, the water dried up.

  Someone coughed a few feet away. It was Max, sitting on the ground, his head between his knees as if he wa
s trying to catch his breath. Ashe was in a similar state. Cole was flat on his back.

  There was no rise and fall of his chest.

  “Cole!” I shouted. I scrambled over to where he lay. Max weakly tried to follow me. Ashe couldn’t move.

  I shook Cole’s shoulders. “Can you hear me? Cole?”

  I lightly slapped his face, but there was no response. Mining the deep caverns of my mind for the CPR class I’d taken as a freshman, I put my ear next to his mouth.

  “No breaths,” I said.

  I took my finger and traced his rib until it met his sternum, put the heel of my hand against it, and interlocked my fingers together.

  “One … two … three …” I started compressions. Was I supposed to do five or fifteen? I split the difference and stopped at ten. Then I tilted Cole’s head back and plugged his nose. I covered his mouth with mine, and breathed. Twice.

  Please, Cole. Breathe. If I lost Cole, I lost Jack.

  I repeated the whole thing three times before he finally coughed.

  “Cole!” Placing my hands behind his back, I helped him turn over so he could cough up the water.

  Color rose to his cheeks again.

  He opened his eyes to find me staring down at him. He mustered up a faint, lopsided grin and said, “Was it good for you too?”

  We’d been drenched in the Everneath waters. I kept waiting for the emotional roller coaster that should’ve come from being covered in it, but it never happened. Maybe that was because, by the time Cole started to breathe again, all of the water had dried up. Even my hair was dry. Back on the Surface, it would take twenty minutes to dry my hair, but right now I couldn’t have squeezed a drop from it.

  The wind here was fierce, and that’s when it hit me.

  “The Ring of Wind!” I said.

  We were here. One ring down. Two to go. One ring closer to Jack.

  Cole coughed and nodded. The walls were no longer made up of water. They looked like minitornadoes made up of swirling dust and flying debris.

  I blinked several times, trying to clear the thin film of dust that suddenly coated everything.

  “How did that happen?” I asked.

  Cole turned to Ashe, who was staring at the wind wall we’d just come flying over. A light mist hovered in the air at the top.