Riding The Wave: (Dragon Within Book Three)

by Kyra Dune

  I stared out the window as we drove to the airport. The silence in the van was so thick I swear I was breathing it in. This was my fault. All of it. Kyle dead and the rest of my friends trapped in the nightmare my world had become. All because they helped me.

  I hated the situation. I hated myself for dragging them into it. But most of all, I hated Alastair. It was my paternal grandfather who sent Alice and Zack after me. It was because of him my life was turned inside out. Funny how it took having everything come crashing down on my head for me to figure out how good I had it.

  Curtis slid his hand into mine. “We’re going to figure this out.”

  “Sure.” What I really wanted was to ask him how he was feeling about what happened to Kyle. Was he hurting worse than he was showing because he didn’t want anybody to know? Maybe. Maybe not. I didn’t know how deep his feelings for Kyle went. And it bothered me we couldn’t talk about it.

  “Try to think about something else,” he said.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak again. Think of something else. How was I supposed to do that? People were trying to kidnap me. My friends were in danger because of it. My mind couldn’t go anywhere else. And now this desperate plan to hunt Megara down which might not do anything but put us into even more danger. It was all such a mess.

  The airport parking lot was nearly full, so we parked way at the back and walked in. All together, like a group of friends, but none of us were talking or smiling. Or even looking at each other.

  Derek and Zack walked on either side of me, closer than the others. And I knew why Derek was doing it, but Zack I wasn’t so sure. And then my brain did find something else to think about. The kiss. Did it mean anything? Did he kiss me because he felt the same way I did? Because I sure hadn’t seen any sign of it since. If only we could be alone so I could ask. A scary thought. What would I do if I asked and he said the kiss meant nothing? What would I do if he didn’t? It was all so confusing.

  I knew if I were to talk to Brandy about it she would say I had much more important things to be thinking about than some insignificant kiss. Only it didn’t feel insignificant to me. It felt vitally important. If you’ve ever been in love, you know exactly what I mean.

  The airport lobby was a mass of people milling around like ants in a disturbed hill. I’d been in lots of crowded places before and it never bothered me. But this time all I could see around me was potential enemies. Any one of them could be a tracker or a human sent to hunt me down and force me back to the compound.

  My chest got really tight. My face was hot. It felt as if all the air was being sucked out of the room but at the same time it was pressing in on me. I couldn’t breathe. All I wanted to do was run. It took every ounce of willpower I had to hold myself together.

  “You okay?” Derek asked, keeping his tone low.

  “Yeah.” I surprised myself with how easy the lie came, especially with the way I was feeling. “But I, uh, I need to go to the bathroom.”

  “Do you want someone to go with you?”

  I forced out a laugh, doing my best to keep it sounding light. “I think I can handle going to the bathroom by myself.”

  “Okay,” he sounded doubtful, but he didn’t press. Which I appreciated. “We’ll go ahead to the ticket counter and you can meet us there. Keep an eye out. I’m pretty sure we don’t have to worry about anybody following us yet, but it’s better to be cautious.”

  “I know. Don’t worry,” I said. “With so many people around I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I don’t know who I was trying to convince more, him or me.

  I broke away from my group and headed toward the bathroom. I figured there I could take a minute to breath and maybe splash some cold water on my face before I had a full on panic attack.

  Busy as the airport was, the bathroom was empty. I went to the sink and turned the cold water on. Being alone helped a little, but I still felt panicky. Everything was spiraling out of control so fast and I couldn’t make it stop no matter what I did.

  I gripped the sides of the sink and breathed slowly in and out. Staring down at the water I saw it start to... twist, is the only way I can describe it. You know how if you touch a stream of water coming out of the faucet you can kind of make it change direction? Well, that’s what the water was doing. Only I wasn’t touching it.

  The mirror rattled. I raised my head up to look at it. “Stop.” I whispered. It only rattled harder. “Stop. Stop. Stop.” It was rattling so hard I thought it was going to fly right off the wall. I backed away and the glass shattered.

  I gasped, raising my hands instinctively to protect my face. But the glass fell into the sink where the water was starting to froth. I jumped forward and turned the faucet off. I stared down at the glass, my heart pounding.

  “Calm down, Abigail” I muttered to myself. “Just calm down.”

  “Good advice.”

  I spun around at the sound of the voice. A woman stood behind me with a pistol leveled at my chest. “W-who are you?” I have no idea why this was the first thing to pop into my head. She was clearly an enemy and that’s all I really needed to know.

  “Follow your own advice and stay calm,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “I’m here to take you home. If you come quietly, nobody has to get hurt.”

  As if I had never heard those words before. And then I realized something amazing. She was afraid of me. A grown woman with a gun was afraid of me. I’m not going to say the idea made me happy, but it didn’t exactly make me feel sad either.

  She was afraid and it made her way more dangerous than she would otherwise be. She was going to shoot me. My brain was convinced of it. I was going to do or say something wrong and she was going to pull the trigger before she could stop herself.

  The air swirled around me and before I time to consider what I might do with it, it was already surging forward. It lifted the woman off her feet and threw her into the wall. She hit with a sickening thud and then she slid down to the floor, trailing blood after her. She lay slumped there, her mouth hanging open, her eyes staring sightlessly at me through a tangle of brown hair.

  I clutched both my hands to my mouth and stared at her in horror. I hadn’t meant to hurt her. Certainly hadn’t meant to kill her. I couldn’t move. I was frozen in the moment. Unable to look away. Unable to think. Barely able to breathe. What had I done?

  “Abigail, are you in there?”

  Zack’s voice was the last thing I expected to hear right then. It was also the best thing I could have heard. I tried to answer, but only a squeak would come out. The door opened a crack. “Abigail?” Then he saw her and he saw me. He looked over his shoulder and stepped into the bathroom, shutting door.

  He crouched beside the woman and touched his fingers to her neck. For a second I dared to hope she was still alive. Until he looked up at me and my hope was dashed. “Oh, god,” I moaned.

  Zack stood and firmly gripped both of my arms, putting himself between me and the sight of the dead woman. “What happened?”

  I dropped my hands to his shoulders. “I...I couldn’t breathe. I just needed to breathe. Then the water was....and the mirror and... and she had a gun.” I stared into his eyes expecting, even wanting, condemnation. But I only saw understanding. “I killed her.”

  “You were protecting yourself,” Zack said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “But she’s dead.” I tried to look around him but he shifted his body so I couldn’t.

  “And you’re still here. But we need to go. Now.” He drew me toward the door, still blocking my view.

  “What will we tell the others?” I asked.

  “We don’t tell them anything.”

  I planted my feet, forcing him to stop. “What do you mean, we don’t tell them anything? I... I can’t keep this a secret from them. Brandy will take one look at me and know something is wrong.”

  Zack stared hard back at me. “Do you want to tell them you killed this woman?”

  My lips parted but the ans
wer I wanted to say wouldn’t come. They were already afraid of Zack, did I want to make them afraid of me too? I swallowed. “No.”

  “Then don’t say anything at all.” He opened the door and ushered me out. “Stay. Make sure no one comes in. I’ll take care of this.”

  "How do I--" Before I could finish the sentence, he shut the door in my face. With a sigh, I leaned against the wall to wait for him, sure someone was going to come along any second and catch us. It couldn’t be this easy to walk away from a murder.

  Zack came out a few minutes later and took hold of my arm. “Let’s go.”

  “What did you --”

  “Don’t ask.”

  The others were loitering around the ticket counter waiting for us. When I saw them all I wanted was to break down in tears, but I held myself together. I didn’t want any of them to know what I’d done.

  “We arrived here in good time,” Brandy said. “The next flight to Los Angeles leaves in fifteen minutes.”

  “Let’s find somewhere to sit while we wait,” Derek said.

  There weren’t enough seats for all of us to sit together, so we had to separate. I used the chance to pull Curtis away from the others. I wanted to talk to him, though not so much to check on how he was doing as to help me take my mind off the woman I’d killed. I was terrified someone was going to find her and then the cops would close down the airport or something. I needed to talk to Curtis to keep myself from freaking out.

  It was noisy in the airport, as I’m sure you can imagine with so many people around, but I leaned in close and whispered when I spoke to my cousin anyway. “Hey, how are you

  doing?”

  Curtis was staring at something on the screen of his camcorder, but he had it tilted away so I couldn’t see what it was. “I’m fine.”

  “Come on,” I said. “You know you don’t have to hide anything from me. If you’re upset we should talk about it. Holding it all inside isn’t going to make you feel any better”

  He sighed. “Okay. Yeah, I’m upset. Only not, you know, really upset. It was only a crush, I wasn’t in love with him or anything. I’m sad he’s dead and all but he was kind of a jerk. We weren’t even friends. It’s Brandy I’m worried about.”

  “Me too.” I looked over at my best friend, who was watching people pass by with an expression which clearly showed she wasn’t seeing them at all. Was she thinking about Kyle? Blaming herself? She shouldn’t have been. Not when it was all my fault.

  “What are you watching?” I asked, hoping Curtis could offer me something to help get my mind off the dark track it was running down.

  Curtis hesitated, then turned the screen so I could see. It was Trudy crouched by the tidal pool, all smiles saying something I couldn’t hear because the volume was muted. Curtis pushed the button and rolled the volume up enough so we could hear.

  “Don’t you ever come out from behind that thing?” Trudy asked, looking up to the camera.

  “What do you mean?” Curtis asked.

  “I mean,” Trudy stood and the camera pulled back, “aren’t you ever in your own movies?”

  “No. I’m not an actor. I’m a director.”

  She grinned. “Lots of directors are actors. Come on out here with me. Please?”

  “Well, uh... okay. I guess.” The scene was jostled as Curtis moved around. He held the camera out at arm’s length so it showed both he and Trudy. I could tell by his flushed face he was embarrassed, but he didn’t look upset.

  “See, it’s not so bad,” Trudy said. “Sometimes people want to see the man behind the--” A sound cut off her words. At the low volume, it only sounded like a pop, almost like a firecracker heard from far away. But I had a feeling it was something way more sinister.

  “What was that?” Trudy turned toward the entrance to the cove.

  “I... I think it was a gun.” Curtis lowered the camera so the lens was pointed at their feet in the sand.

  “What? No... no it couldn’t have been a gun. Who would be shooting a gun out here?” Trudy sounded scared. “M-maybe we should go and see.” Her bare feet moved out of view.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Curtis said. “We should stay here.” He had raised his voice, so I figured Trudy was still moving away and he was trying to call her back. After a couple seconds, he followed her.

  Without taking my eyes off the screen, I slipped my hand into Curtis’. I knew what we were about to see, but I didn’t expect the sound of a scream and it made me jump a little, even as quiet as it was. The camera started to bounce as Curtis broke into a run.

  A few people in the chairs next to us must have heard the scream as well, because they were giving us curious looks. I smiled weakly at them. “Horror movie.”

  Curtis paused the video. “I’m not sure I should show you the rest.”

  “I don’t want to see it, but I need to,” I said. “I think I owe Kyle that much.”

  “It’s not about Kyle,” Curtis said. “You aren’t going to see him get shot or anything. It happened before we got there. It’s about Zack. And it’s... scary.”

  I thought about how antagonistic Steve had been with Zack earlier, and the way Trudy edged around him. They saw him kill the people who killed Kyle. I was sure of it. It was what Curtis was afraid to show me. But it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him kill before. “Show me.”

  “Okay.” Curtis hit the play button. “I don’t know why I recorded it. I think it was a reflex.”

  The camera swung up to show me a scene straight out of a movie. I swear if I hadn’t known better I would have said it was staged. Things like that don’t happen in real life.

  Bodies were strewn across the beach. Aside from Kyle lying face down in the sand, three other people were on their backs. One of them was a woman. Trish, I had to presume. Two more men were kneeling in front of Zack with their hands behind their heads. Both were visibly trembling.

  An icicle formed in each of Zack’s hands as he stepped closer to the men. I knew what he was going to do and I didn’t want to see it, not again. But I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  “We surrender,” the man on the right said, his voice raw with terror. “We’ll be your hostages. We’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just... don’t kill us. Please.”

  Zack lifted the icicles. The man who’d spoken tried to get out of the way. The other man never even moved. Not that it mattered either way. They both ended up skewered. Trudy screamed and the screen went blank.

  “My battery died,” Curtis whispered.

  I sank back into my seat. Like I said, I’ve seen Zack kill before. And I’m not just talking about Mitch and Hal. I saw him kill a wounded and unarmed man who probably wasn’t any further threat to anybody. It doesn’t mean I’m cool with killing helpless people. Far from it. No wonder my friends were so freaked out by Zack. But they didn’t understand him like I did. I didn’t like the side of him that killed without thinking twice, but I accepted it as part of who he was. It wasn’t something he could help.

  We sat there without saying another word until a woman’s voice on the intercom informed the airport the flight to Los Angeles was ready to board. I don’t know what Zack did in the bathroom, but it was pretty obvious nobody had discovered the body. I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad one.

  Once again, we had to scatter to find seats. But this time I sat alone. We were all alone, except for Steve and Trudy. I think Brandy probably fixed it so they could have the only side by side seats. Maybe their antics annoyed her, but fact focused as her brain could be it didn’t mean she was without empathy toward other people.

  My seat was by the window. A middle aged woman with bleached blonde hair sat down beside me. She didn’t so much as offer a hello before she buried her head in a romance novel with a shirtless dude on the cover. Fine by me if she didn’t want to make conversation. I’d only have to lie anyway.

  Before the plane took off, I looked around the cabin to see where my friends were. I didn’t think we
’d have any trouble at thirty thousand feet but I wanted to check on them anyway. Brandy also had a window seat and was staring out across the tarmac. Curtis had put his headphones on and was leaned back in his seat with his eyes closed. Hannah was flipping through a magazine and looking completely bored. Steve and Trudy were holding hands on the armrest between them. Derek sat rigid in his seat with his hands clasped in his lap and his jaw clenched. I wondered if he was afraid of flying.

  And then Zack. He briefly caught my eye when I looked his way, but then he frowned and turned his head. What was up with him? First, he kissed me and it seemed as if he liked it as much as I did. Then he practically acted like I didn’t exist. He came to the bathroom to check on me so he was obviously worried, but then he was all brusque and annoyed. Now he didn’t even want to look at me.

  What would you think if the person you gave your first kiss to acted the way he was acting? It made me wonder if it was bad, or if maybe he was mad because I broke things off. Should I have let it go further even though I wasn’t ready? Should I be angry at him for the way he was acting, or was I getting overly emotional? Should I confront him or let it slide? My brain was a whirlwind of confusion.

  I was angry, whether I should have been or not. I almost wished he’d never kissed me at all if it was only going to leave me even more twisted up inside than I was before. Was this the way love was for everyone? Somehow, I thought the answer was no. Otherwise everybody would be crazy and single and own a hundred cats.

  It was stupid to be obsessing over some guy when my life, and the lives of my friends, was in real danger. My brain knew this, but try telling my heart as much. No organ in the human body is more stubborn. It’s like a pit bull. Once it gets its teeth into something, it never wants to let go no matter how much damage it does. And I had a feeling being in love with Zack could do a lot of damage way before anything good came of it. If it was ever going to.

  See, I knew he was bad for me. But ask anybody and they’ll tell you, it’s the things that are bad for us that we want the most.

  CHAPTER FIVE