Rising Storm: The Last Sanctuary: Book One

by Kyla Stone

  He shook his head. “A bit of seasickness. No need to worry about me.”

  “Who says I’m worried?”

  He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Certainly not me.”

  In the distance, flickers of lightning lit up the menacing black clouds. “Maybe we both need to be worried about that storm.”

  “That's miles away.”

  “Looks like we're headed right for it.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving.”

  Her dress lashed at her legs. Electrons singed the air with nervous energy. “Then why are the outside decks closing?”

  “Safety precaution.” Gabriel lit a cigarette, hooding the flame with his hand, and handed it to her. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Is that real?”

  “You wanted to be a rebel, didn't you?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Sure, you did. Here.”

  She hesitated for a moment. Silas’s words rang in her ears. You’re just like her. The world seemed to be going to hell anyway. Or at least her corner of it. She took the cigarette and inhaled. Pungent smoke filled her throat, and she gagged, doubling over in a coughing fit.

  “Relax. You inhale the smoke, not the whole damn cigarette.”

  She stifled a sharp retort. It was her own fault, anyway. “Thanks.”

  She tried again, prepared this time. He was right. The real thing was better.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You seem upset.”

  She kept her gaze on the water crashing below. She couldn't talk about the anxiety roiling in the pit of her stomach, the fights with her brother, how her father's contempt filled her with a dark, writhing shame like a living thing. “I'll be fine. I just need—I need a minute.”

  “Let me take you down to the officer's deck. It's out of the wind. They've got a gourmet coffee bar, lounge chairs, a hot tub.”

  Her stomach fluttered against her will. He was so close, she could see the stubble on his jaw, his long, thick lashes. Heat crept into her cheeks. “Aren't you supposed to be working?”

  “Aren't you supposed to be in there?” He gestured in the direction of the Oasis dining room. “Come on. Can't you feel it in the air? Something wants to happen.”

  She arched her brow skeptically.

  “What? You don't believe in fate? You don't believe some things are meant to be?”

  Her headache dimmed, a dull hammer thudding against the back of her brain. She remembered that terrible look of disdain on her brother’s face. You're as bad as she is. The whisper was still there, tormenting her. Was he right?

  She loathed how her father made her feel helpless and ashamed. Her mother never did anything. Her mother let it happen, over and over. But so did Amelia. Silas was right. She was turning into a younger, meeker version of her mother, doomed to spend the rest of her life crushed beneath her father’s iron will.

  The thought suffocated the breath from her lungs.

  No. The whisper was so deep inside she barely heard it over the roar of the wind and the waves. If she didn’t do something, if she didn’t make some choice for herself, however small, she was sealing her own fate. She felt her future snapping shut over her head like a steel trap.

  She took one last drag of her cigarette. “Yes.”

  17

  Willow

  “Told you I'd destroy you.” Finn grinned wickedly as he hefted his golf club over his shoulder.

  Willow glared at him. She planted her feet on the sleek white surface and aimed her club at New York. They’d chosen American Icons as their course, each hole a glimmering holograph of a different city or monument. She sent the neon-blue digital ball spinning between two glowing skyscrapers and over a little bridge, narrowly dodging the Empire State building. It went straight into the Hudson River.

  Finn had scored a hole-in-one, his bright yellow ball wobbling into a holo version of Central Park like it had a mind of its own. And he'd done it with his left hand.

  “Are you left-handed for real or did you do that to rub it in?”

  “Left-handed all the way. It's my secret power.”

  She snorted. “You also failed to tell me you’re some kind of mini-golf prodigy.”

  “That's the hustle, darling.” He checked the leaderboard that automatically tallied their scores and clucked his tongue. “Only fifteen shots behind with one hole to go.”

  “Seriously? I'm that bad?”

  “Well, your skills, consistency, and accuracy score is . . .”

  “Abysmal?”

  He gave her a crooked grin. “I was going for a gentler word.”

  “Save your pity.”

  He nodded at the last hole. “All right, then. Loser goes first. Remember, you're about to owe me four hundred credits. Don't let the pressure stress you out, Gwyneth.”

  She shoved her hair out of her face. She hated losing. At anything. What she hated more was the prospect of having to admit she didn't have forty credits, let alone four hundred. Which meant she'd have to admit to lying, which would end this fledgling friendship before it'd even begun.

  Even though it didn't matter, even though it was nothing—a stupid little game—she still liked the thought of being someone else, stepping into another life as easily as slipping on a pair of glittering high heels. Finn believed in her. Finn saw what she wanted him to see—what she could be, if she ever got the chance.

  The wind up here was vicious, especially with the storm boiling on the horizon. Flashes of light threaded through the clouds. The miniature golf course was located aft—she thought that was the word for the back of the ship—directly in front of the massive red and black funnel looming at least three stories above them. It blocked the entire mid and front of the ship from sight.

  Right now, it felt like they were the only two people in the world. “We're the only two people stupid enough to play games in a tropical thunderstorm,” Finn had quipped.

  Now she pinned her club between her knees and re-tied the escaped strands of hair that kept slipping into her eyes. She tensed as the ground pitched beneath her. “How can anyone play anything with the ship rocking like this?”

  Finn rolled his shoulders. His oversized polo flapped against him. “Go ahead. Make excuses for your lame-ass skills.”

  She refused to tell him she hadn't played this ridiculous game in over ten years, that even cheap distractions weren't so cheap anymore. And who had the time anyway? “You think I spend my leisure time playing mini-golf?”

  “Oh right. You're too fancy for all that.”

  “Aren't you?”

  He grinned. “My parents are kinda weird. We love mini-golf. Get this. Before the divorce, we even had board-game night. Rummikub, Sorry, Candy Land, Monopoly, the whole deal. Mega-lame, right? It was always a blast though, once you put aside your pride.”

  “I guess. My dad was really into poker back in the day.” She tried not to think of the time before, when her family was whole. Her dad would sit for hours and teach Benjie how to shuffle cards, how to use sleight of hand, how to bluff, though Benjie was terrible at it. Back before her dad had to take on a third shift to keep the bills paid during the Second Depression. In his exhaustion, he’d wrapped his ancient, manual Toyota around a tree.

  Her heart twinged. She pushed the dark memories out of her head. She wasn’t going to think about that crap now. This was her escape, her time to herself, her moment of fun. Her mom was so worried and stressed all the time, she was miserable.

  But not Willow. Not today.

  She wrapped her hands around the club and bent her knees.

  “Just concentrate,” Finn said, leaning on his golf club. It looked like a toy in his huge hands. “Try your best, and remember, you don't have a marshmallow's chance in hell, darling.”

  She blew out a breath and focused, ignoring the sloshing in her stomach when the ship swayed. “So. Not. Your. Darling.” She struck the ball and hit it over the Golden Gate Bridge, the holo flickering. It rolled up and down a few st
eep hills and came to a rest a couple of inches from the red trolley with the 3D hole beneath it. She made it in par.

  “Nailed it! Take that!”

  Finn gave her a high five. “Well played, madam, well played. Nice one-hole-out-of-eighteen.”

  She grinned up at him. “It's all in the small victories.”

  A crew member made his way out to them. Behind him, a metalhead directed a hover cart piled high with lounge cushions. “We're closing the decks in ten minutes due to inclement weather!” he shouted.

  “What inclement weather?” Finn shouted back.

  “Very funny, sir,” the guy said. “My job is to clear the decks of all potential debris.”

  “You need any help?”

  “No thanks, sir. But I'll go ahead and take those.” They handed him their clubs. “Thank you.”

  After he was gone, Finn turned to her, his eyes glinting. “Wanna tackle the climbing cave? Or is that not your jam?”

  “Definitely not my jam. And didn't you listen to what he just said? No climbing dangerous structures during a hurricane.”

  “Okay, fine. I guess it is colder than Jack Frost's balls out here.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shivering. “That's one way to put it.”

  “How about the casino? We can play the slots with the credits I just won off you. Or maybe Blackjack. Unless you're tired of getting schooled?”

  He hadn't forgotten about the credits she owed him. Crap. But she didn’t want this to end. Not yet. “Falafels at the Mediterranean Grill first?”

  “Deal.”

  They walked around the funnel. She made sure to stay a good five feet from the glass railing. She took several steps before she realized Finn was no longer beside her. She turned around, the wind a dull roar in her ears.

  He leaned over the railing, shielding his eyes with his hand.

  “Finn!”

  He didn't speak, only pointed. She edged a few feet closer and looked.

  The dark sea heaved far below them. Her stomach lurched, her head spinning. She was about to leap back from the edge when something caught her eye.

  Boats. Four—no, five—of them, speedboats traveling fast, coming up along the starboard side of the Grand Voyager. The boats looked almost like toys, if not for the cluster of men on each boat. They were all dressed in dark clothes, with little sticks in their hands.

  Her stomach dropped to her toes. “What—who is that?”

  Finn turned to her. The whites of his eyes were huge. “I'm no expert, but I believe those are pirates.”

  “What?” She imagined peg-legs, feathered hats, patches over eyes. But those were cartoons. She'd heard of pirates taking boats, but cargo ships and oil rigs over in Indonesia and Malaysia and South Africa, countries and continents she'd never been to and never would. Back in the Philippines, she had a second cousin who'd been arrested for piracy a few years ago. But she'd never imagined anything like this.

  They stood, frozen in shock, unable to do a thing but watch in growing horror as the boats closed in. Something small and dark flew through the air and caught on the lowest deck. A rope with a grappling hook on one end. Then another and another.

  The pirates climbed the ropes, hand over hand like scrabbling spiders.

  “Oh, hell,” she breathed.

  A half-dozen security officers burst onto Deck Four, gesturing wildly, guns in their hands. They aimed at the pirates. A few pirates slipped and fell into the snarling sea. But there were so many of them. Another crawled up to replace the one they lost. Past the ship's lights, the boats were skimming shadows.

  Further down the lido deck, two other officers raced to a large, dark shape. They uncovered an object that looked like a small satellite.

  “What are they doing?” Willow asked.

  “That's an LRAD, a sonic cannon,” Finn yelled in her ear.

  The security officers aimed the sonic cannon at one of the boats. The boat jerked and parried, then spun a few times and sped away. The men appeared to be falling to their knees, one capsizing out of the boat. Undeterred, the four other boats sped closer and drew parallel to the Voyager.

  “Look out!” Finn cried. He grabbed her arm and shoved her down. She stumbled and fell, scraping her elbows and knees on the deck. She lifted her head in time to see a bright orange ball carve a graceful arc toward the ship.

  A firebomb exploded on the lido deck. The world flashed orange beneath her eyelids.

  After several moments, she climbed carefully to her hands and knees. The hover cart from earlier was tipped on its side. The metalhead lay next to it. Its scorched silicone skin was peeled away, revealing the metal, wires, and nanotubes of its insides.

  Further down the deck, both security officers manning the sonic cannon were down, unmoving. The LRAD itself was broken off its base and riddled with gunshot holes.

  “We've got to get out of here!” She tried to move, but her legs were weak and sloshy as water. Terror pulsed in every cell of her being.

  “Crawl around the other side of the funnel. I think they're only on the starboard side.” Finn started to crawl, shimmying on his belly.

  She still couldn't move. She kept seeing the bodies of the security officers, their white uniforms blooming red.

  “Gwyneth, come on!”

  The use of the name she'd given him—her lie so much more grotesque now that they were fleeing for their lives—jolted her out of her fugue.

  “Willow,” she mumbled. “My name is Willow.” He couldn't hear her, but still, it seemed to matter.

  Before she turned and crawled after Finn, she saw them. On Deck Four, a dozen shadows leapt over the railing.

  18

  Micah

  Micah wiped the sweat from his brow as he pushed through the galley doors, his tray full of half-empty soup bowls and salad plates. The chefs were preparing the evening's special meal—hand-cut Charolais steak tartare placed on sterling silver trays with sparklers projecting from each side.

  Chef Jokumsen was in a foul mood. The display was for the captain's birthday, but the captain hadn't yet arrived at dinner. The Second Officer, Aisha Walsh, had simply stated the captain was indisposed and ordered the meal to go on as planned.

  Which seemed odd, but it was none of his concern. He held one of the sterling platters as a service bot lit the sparklers. There were ten waiters in front of him, each with their own platter.

  The lights went out, plunging the Oasis dining room into darkness. The crowd gave a collective gasp. They oohed and aahed as the first waiter pushed through the galley swing doors, the sparklers glittering and flashing like jewels. The string quartet started in on a rousing song.

  The waiters marched around the tables as the guests clapped in time. They threaded their way through the room until the procession encircled the table of honor. In the dark, all eyes were on them.

  Micah stopped next to Amelia's mother, Elise Black. The captain wasn't the only one missing. So was Amelia. His heart dropped. He wanted to hear her play.

  He balanced the weight of the tray carefully, watchful of the sparklers burning down their wicks, the sparks getting much too close to his uniform sleeve.

  Then he felt it. A sudden swift movement behind him.

  Several sharp cracks split the air. Multiple panes of glass shattered all at once, crashing to the floor. The quartet squealed to a halt. Guests froze mid-clap. Someone screamed as a cacophony of angry shouting filled the dining room.

  It was hard to see anything in the dark. The sparklers blinded his night vision. He shoved the platter to the table and twisted around. He glimpsed large shapes moving fast. Dark shadows erupted into the dining room from the main entryway. They came through the starboard deck entrance like a horde of ants boiling out from a kicked nest.

  Micah froze. His body went hot then cold, cold all over, like the cold was in his very cells. Guests leapt to their feet, screaming and bumbling in the dark in blind panic. They bumped into each other, struck tables, kno
cked over chairs. Cutlery and wine glasses smashed to the floor.

  There were several more shots, followed by orange flashes. Men shouted, shrieking unintelligible words.

  A bullet struck one of the chandeliers, the shattered crystals raining down on Micah’s head. The lights flickered on, revealing a scene too horrific to possibly be real.

  The Grand Voyager was under attack.

  He couldn't move. The attackers shouted, swinging their weapons, shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. Everyone was yelling and screaming. The Oasis dining room was in chaos.

  Two security guards emerged from behind the bar area, shooting at the attackers. They went down fast and easy, as easy as the rest of the wild, screaming throng. A woman in a zebra-striped mini skirt ran in a crazed zigzag pattern in front of Micah. There was a burst of gunfire, and she dropped to the floor.

  An older couple in matching white outfits who'd ordered steak and mashed potatoes stood and stared in confusion. Their bodies jittered and they fell, the old man on top of the woman like he was protecting her.

  Every person standing was a target. Instinctively, Micah crouched next to the table. He glanced up at Mrs. Black. She sat rigid in her seat, her eyes wide with terror. He tugged her arm. “Get down!”

  She didn't move.

  “Everyone crawl under the table!” he said as loudly as he dared.

  Finally, Mrs. Black scrambled out of her seat. Micah lifted the tablecloth draped half-way to the floor, and she crawled beneath it on her hands and knees. Others at the table followed her. Declan Black pushed his way in, along with the other CEOs and senators. They huddled against each other, cramped in the too-small space. Micah pressed against Mrs. Black. She trembled as she whispered a prayer. Micah whispered his own desperate prayers.

  “My daughter,” Mrs. Black gasped. “I don't know where she is.”

  “Shut up,” someone hissed. Micah’s shoulder bumped against the table leg. There was a rustle of movement. He strained his ears, his heart banging so hard against his ribs he could hardly hear anything at all.