A beautiful song, and Nat was enchanted. But the boys heard the song differently. They held their hands to their ears and howled in pain. Zedric was doubled up and Daran’s face was red.
“STOP IT! STOP THAT THING!” Daran cried angrily. “It’ll call the wailer!” He reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out his pistol, aiming for the bird.
“NO!” Nat cried, trying to protect the creature. But it was too late. Daran’s bullet met its mark, and the bird let out a plaintive cry as it fell to the deck, blood flowing from its white breast.
Nat knelt to revive it, but its small lifeless body was already cold. Dead. It had been so beautiful, and now it was gone. She looked up and glared at the soldier. “You killed it!”
“Hey—” Daran said, stepping back.
But Nat was upon him. She had only meant to push him a little, but without her laying a hand on him, he flew across the deck, nearly tumbling over the edge.
“Daran!” Zedric yelled, and he pulled his brother back to safety. He dragged Daran onto his feet, breathing heavily. “What happened?”
“She did it,” Daran said, pointing to the girl in their midst.
The two soldiers stared at Nat, who was still holding the dead bird in her hands. She was cooing to it. Come back to me, come back to me, my little friend.
“Downstairs, now,” Daran said. Nat looked up and saw that the two of them had their guns pointed her way.
“Move it!” Zedric yelled.
As gently as she could, Nat dropped the bird into the ocean and marched downstairs, wondering how she would get out of this one.
“Don’t touch her!” Daran warned as they hustled Nat into the crew cabin and shut the door.
“Everyone, calm down,” Nat said, thinking fast. “That was an accident—it wasn’t me—the ship lurched.” She’d never been alone with them before, and Wes was nowhere to be found. Where was he? And where were Shakes and Farouk? In the engine room, she realized, where they would never hear her.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Yes, you did!” Daran said, waving his pistol, his face menacing. “I felt it. You pushed me—but with your mind. I should’ve known.”
“We never should have taken up with this crew; everyone said Wes was crazy—soft—and now we know for sure!” Zedric was close to hysterics. “What are we going to do? We’re all going to die!”
“Shut up!” Daran urged his brother. “Calm down, no one’s going to die. But we have to make sure.”
“Make sure what?”
“That she’s marked.”
“I don’t—I swear—I’m not marked,” Nat said, horrified. “Look at my eyes!”
“You could be wearing lenses,” Zedric said. “I heard about those, they cover up the colors, turn marked eyes gray.”
“I’m not!”
“Prove it,” Daran said. “Show us you’re not marked.” He leered.
“What do you mean?” Nat asked, feeling shivers up her spine. She’d noticed Daran had locked the door behind him; she was alone with them, and Wes was all the way at the other end of the ship. She was so freaking stupid. It was true what she’d said—she hadn’t meant to push Daran—she didn’t know how to control her power. She wasn’t even sure if she could summon it now—the voice in her head was silent; it had abandoned her once again.
Daran glowered. “I said, prove it.”
“No. No. No way.” Nat shook her head. “Are you serious? Is this a joke?”
“Go on now . . . show us you don’t have it,” he grunted menacingly, ripping her jacket off her shoulders, and his brother actually grinned.
“No!” She tried to appeal to them in a different way. “You guys don’t want to do this. You know what they say about what happens when you come in contact with—”
“Hold on. My, my, what is this?” asked Daran, zeroing in on the stone around her neck that had come into view when her jacket was torn. “What do we have here?”
“You heard what Shakes said,” Zedric said.
“Oh yes, we did. Old Shakes talks too loudly, and we heard him ask Wesson about the stone. You can hear everything they say by that railing. Wind carries sound up to the helm, don’t it, Zed? What did Old Shakes say? ‘Did you ask her about the stone, boss?’” he said, mimicking Shakes’s voice in a cruel fashion. “And we all know what stone it is, don’t we?”
Daran was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek, and she shuddered in revulsion. “Oh, I get it, you don’t like me, but you’d hand out the lot to him, wouldn’t you? Hand yourself on a platter, most like, to our fearless leader,” he said, and stepped even closer, peering at the stone. “Just like Wesson to hold out on us again, right, Zed? Not much of a boss, is he? Keeping this from his boys? When we could be back in Vegas now, rich as kings—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nat said, covering the stone protectively, taking a step backward.
“Give it here,” Daran growled. He reached for the stone—
“DON’T TOUCH IT!” she screamed, and in an instant, she was fire and flame, and her eyes blazed green and gold, burning away her gray lenses, and Zedric was screaming and Daran was holding out his hand, which was on fire.
Someone kicked the door open and Wes stood at the entryway. “What’s going on in here?” he asked, and when he saw what was happening, with one powerful move, he slammed Daran hard against the wall.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Wes growled, his voice soft and dangerous.
“Taking what’s rightfully ours,” Daran sneered, his hand smoking and red. “Look what she did! LOOK WHAT SHE DID TO ME!”
“She’s marked! She’s a monster!” Zedric cried, cowering from the corner.
Daran grunted and Wes stared him down, his dark eyes flashing with a piercing anger. He slammed Daran against the wall again, so angry he couldn’t speak.
“You knew what she was and you brought her anyway,” Daran accused. “She got a treasure greater than god and you let her keep it!” he seethed. “You didn’t even try to take it away from her! What kind of runner are you?”
Wes punched him in the face and Daran crumpled to the ground.
“SHE’S ROTTING!” Zedric screamed.
“SHUT YOUR MOUTH!” Wes ordered. He turned to Nat, who was back on her feet and had put her jacket back on. “You okay?”
She nodded. Wes moved to help just as the boat began to heave sideways. Boxes slid across the metal floor; the hammocks and lamps swung wildly.
“Trashbergs that weren’t on the map, has to be,” Daran croaked from the floor.
“Shakes can’t hold the wheel alone,” Zedric said nervously, eyeing his brother, who shrugged.
Wes glared at his soldiers. “LEAVE! But we are not done here,” he promised, as the boys brushed past Nat on their way back up the stairs.
24
“YOU ALL RIGHT?” WES ASKED, WALKING slowly toward Nat, keeping his balance as the ship lurched starboard. “He didn’t—hurt you—did he?”
“No,” she said bitterly. “Don’t worry, I’d never let him touch me.”
“The boys only know what they’ve seen on the nets. I could toss them overboard now, but they’re the only crew I’ve got,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t do more than promise I’ll make damn certain they keep away from you for the rest of the trip.”
She shook her head. “How long have you known about me?” she asked, her fingers shaking a little as she zipped up her jacket, making sure the stone was hidden underneath many layers once more.
Wes gazed to the ceiling. “I didn’t know, but I suspected.”
“You didn’t care? You don’t think you’ll—catch it? And rot?” She pulled her jacket closed, zipped it to her neck.
“No,” he said softly. “That whole thing is bunk anyway. You can’t catch the mark. Either you’re born with it or you’re not, right? It’s not a disease.”
She was still shaking from the heat and the fire—she could have kil
led Daran. Worse, she wanted to kill him, wanted nothing more than to set him ablaze, and she felt the shame then, of being who she was, a monster. She didn’t say anything about the stone, although Wes knew about it, that was clear. So why hadn’t he tried to take it from her like Daran had?
“That’s why your friend—Mrs. A—tried to get you out of the country, wasn’t it? Because you were marked.”
Nat raised her green-gold eyes to his dark ones. “I was three years old when I understood people were afraid of me.” She told Wes about playing in the neighbor’s apartment that day; Mrs. Allen sometimes left her there when she went to work. Nat didn’t like the boy she was meant to play with—he was older and mean, pinching her when no one was looking, making sure she never got the cookie she wanted, telling her she had to stand in the corner for a myriad of trivial infractions. She was scared of him, and one day he told his mother a bald-faced lie, that she had been the one who had thrown the ball through the window and let the cold in. Then when his mother left the room Nat pushed him. She hadn’t laid a hand on him, but she had pushed him with her mind—slammed him across the room, so that he hit his head on the wall and he crumpled to the carpet, wailing.
“She did it! She did it!” he’d screamed.
“I didn’t touch him!” she’d yelled in her defense.
“Did she push you?” his mother demanded.
“No,” David had said. “But she did it.” He’d looked at her with those mean black eyes. “She’s one of them.”
After that, Nat was no longer welcome in their home, and when Mrs. Allen found out what had happened, the old lady began planning their escape.
* * *
“They sent you to MacArthur, didn’t they? When they caught you at the border?” Wes asked, lifting her chin with his fingers and softly wiping away the tear on her cheek. His skin was rough against her smooth face, but she found comfort in his gentleness. “That’s where you’re from. You broke out.”
“Yeah.”
He whistled. “I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t put me in there.”
“So that’s why we couldn’t find anything on you,” he said. “Farouk’s pretty good on the nets; I thought it was strange you didn’t have an online profile.”
“They keep us off it. It’s easier to disappear someone if they’ve never existed,” she said.
“MacArthur’s a military hospital. You were part of the gifted program?”
She looked up at him, startled. “You knew about that?”
He grimaced. “Yeah. I ran one of the first teams.”
“We might have worked together, then,” she said.
“Is that why I look familiar?” he asked.
“Maybe.” She hesitated. “I was under Bradley. My commander.”
Now it was Wes’s turn to look unnerved. “He was mine, too.” He knitted his brows. “What kind of work did you do for him?”
“If only I could remember,” she said. “They mess us up, you know, to keep things confidential, to make us forget . . . they used to put us in ice baths, to freeze our memories somehow. I don’t even know who I am, what my real name is,” she said bitterly.
“I like ‘Nat,’” he said with a smile. “It’s as good a name as any.”
“So, now you know what I am for sure, what are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“Take you where you want to go. You’re headed for the Blue, aren’t you? You can admit it now.”
She exhaled. “Yes.”
“Well then, that’s where we’re headed. I’ll take you there or die trying. Okay?”
“Okay. I’m fine, you can go now.”
“You’re sure?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“So you keep reminding me.” He sighed. “Listen, maybe it’s best if you get out of the crew cabin—you can bunk with me in the captain’s if you’d like.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she found herself giving him an awkward hug, surprising them both. She pressed her cheek against his chest. This was not like the other day, when she was toying with him. She wanted to hug him because being close to him made her feel better. She never realized how tall he was; she only came up to his chin, and she could hear his heart beating underneath the many layers he wore.
“You don’t need to thank me,” he said, patting her back somewhat stiffly. “I’m taking your credits,” he joked.
“So you keep reminding me,” she said quietly.
They stood in the middle of the room, simply holding on to each other, and she found solace in the warmth of his embrace. “You knew from the beginning, didn’t you?” she whispered. “That I was marked?”
“If I did, does it matter?” he asked. “You don’t have to hide anymore. Not on my ship, at least. Besides, it would be a shame to cover up your eyes.”
She felt his breath on her cheek. “Why?”
“Because they’re beautiful,” he said. Their faces were inches apart, and she trembled in his arms. He leaned in and she closed her eyes . . .
Then the ship lurched to the port side again, throwing them against the far wall. They heard an unbearable sound—like a scratch on a chalkboard—a high-pitched whine of discord and then a grinding crash, as they parted from each other.
“Go,” she said, pushing him away. “Go!”
Wes shook his head and cursed as he ran out of the room to see what had happened to his ship.
25
THE SOUND GREW LOUDER AND MORE unbearable. Wes held his hands to his ears as he ran up the deck toward the bridge. He hesitated for a moment, paralyzed, when he saw what had happened. It was worse than he’d thought. Towering above him were two floating mountains of junk, twin trashbergs composed of rusted machinery. Souvenirs from a dead civilization and a different way of life—leather luggage with gold lettering, chromed espresso machines with complex levers and dials, soap bottles with French labels, and designer sunglasses—things Wes had heard about, but never seen. It was all junk now. The metal rusted, the leather faded, the paper rotted with mildew, even the plastic that was meant to never degrade had now cracked and melted. It all blended to make a new kind of landscape, a mountain of floating refuse.
First Daran and now this—could his day get any worse? Or was he just irritated that he’d lost another opportunity to kiss her? He’d meant what he said, but he was surprised at the depth of his feelings for her. He’d been worried when he hadn’t seen her reading on the upper deck—and the lack of the Slaine boys disturbed him as well—and when he’d heard the screams he feared the worst—and to see her like that, her jacket torn off her shoulders . . . he could have pounded Daran’s head against the floor until he was still. Wes felt sick and ashamed of his crew, and wondered if he’d made the right call to take on those boys.
Farouk stood by the navigation system and looked up nervously as Wes approached. “They weren’t on the radar—I swear it—they came out of nowhere,” he said.
“How bad is it?” Wes asked, directing his question to Shakes, who was at the helm.
Shakes couldn’t answer, as he was throwing his full weight to pull the wheel starboard with the help of Daran and Zedric on either side, the three of them fighting to steer the ship as the trashbergs squeezed Alby between them, the piles of broken steel and shattered glass digging a long ugly gash along the ship’s hull, biting into the thick metal.
“Move!” Wes yelled as he took the helm. “You can’t steer your way out of this!” He pulled on the gearshift levers. The two engines and their propellers were side by side, and he figured if he threw one into reverse and the other forward, they would force the boat to pivot.
But the hull continued to tear. Wes powered both engines as high as he dared.
“She’ll hold!” Wes said. “STEADY NOW!” The bow was starting to turn, forcing half the ship to push through a mound of trash. He scrambled to keep his balance as the trashberg pushed from below, lifting the front of the boat precariously out of the wa
ter.
“We’re losing her!” Shakes warned.
Wes glared at the wheel. “Not on my watch! HOLD ON!” He jammed both engines into reverse, and the hull vibrated as he fought for control of his ship; the screeching grew louder as the boat pushed against the behemoth. The water behind them began to bubble as the propellers spun wildly, captured in their own wake. It looked as though the trash mountains would claim their ship for their own.
Shakes yelped as a wave of debris tumbled over the deck, but that was the worst of it. Since the engines were both taken from ex–military tankers, they would tear the boat apart before they stopped turning. But Wes understood he could make use of their power by jamming the starboard engine back into forward while he let the other rev in neutral for a moment. He was using the two engines to pull them out of the trashbergs by force alone.
They watched as broken refrigerators, rusted toasters, waterlogged couches, and a coffee table missing two legs fell from the sky, crashed onto the floorboards. The furniture slid together, forming grotesque living room sets before washing back into the ocean as the ship tilted to the other side. A moldy Barcalounger remained on the deck, its leather pocked with holes.
Wes kept a firm grip on the wheel, wrestling with the breakers, and steering away from the trashbergs until they were in relatively calm waters.
Farouk slapped him on the back. “We did it.”
He nodded and relaxed his hold. “Take it,” he told Shakes. “I’ll check out the damage.”
Once on the deck, he saw Nat there, helping the boys clean up. The Slaine brothers were smart enough to keep their distance, he noticed sourly. He would have to deal with them later. Put the fear of god into them if they thought they could get away that kind of crap on his watch.
“How bad is it?” Nat asked, pulling a scarf around her neck.
“We got stuck in the middle of a trashfield.” Wes sighed. “We’ll need to go around; it’s dangerous running too close to them. We could end up stuck on a pile of junk, or worse, buried underneath one.”
Shakes came out to help and pushed a lounge chair off the deck and into the churning waters. “Guess your trip just got extended,” he said.
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