“I’ve been waiting for you for many years, my dear,” he said meditatively. “And Kephalos assured me that your return was foretold. Not that he ever knew the use I planned to make of you. Ever since I learned that a siren had been conceived in these waters, I knew that you would be the key. You see, I mean to be leader of the Aitros and bring about the return of our power.”
Xarras removed the cuffs from my ankles but left the ones on my wrists. With a hand on my arm, he helped me to my feet. I hated the fact that I stumbled against him and required support as he led me out of the small stone prison cell and down the narrow passageway.
“It took me years to memorize these passages. I may actually be the only living thing that knows this maze,” said Xarras. “There are benefits to being dismissed from people’s minds.” He glanced at me. “Be sure to stay close, won’t you?”
As if I had any choice. He gripped me tightly by the elbow. Besides, I didn’t think I could have even made it back to the cell without support.
“You’ve been out of the water for some time, haven’t you?” Xarras murmured. “It’s weakened you.”
I tried to keep track of the directions we took, but after endless turns and switchbacks, I got so mixed up it was all I could do to lift my feet and take the next step.
After what seemed like an eternity, Xarras came to a wall. To me, it looked like every other wall in this endless warren of tunnels. But there must have been some subtle marks that only he knew.
“It’s behind here,” he said, nodding to the wall. “This is it.” He pressed his palms together. “Finally. This is the Archelon, my dear. You will open this wall.”
There was a sound behind us and I turned.
Jax stood a few yards away. He held a sword in one hand. He was staring at me, and his face took on a look of wild fury.
“By the gods, Father,” he whispered. “What have you done?”
A momentary look of anger distorted Xarras’s smooth, chubby face. “I told you she needed to be silenced, Jax. She needs to be controlled. And we need her to open the Archelon. That’s the only way we’ll win.”
“Win what?” demanded Jax. “What is worth such a cost?”
“Please don’t be tiresome, Jax,” said Xarras. “Win this battle against the Icers. And thereby win control of the clan.”
“How?” Jax demanded.
Xarras sighed. “Do you remember anything from the readings I gave you? From Sun Tzu’s The Art of War? This was the only way to tip the balance. The Aitros will never accept new leadership unless a crisis demands it.”
Disbelief twisted Jax’s features. “It was you, wasn’t it? You destroyed the reef. You brought the Icers here.”
“Yes, I created the war—once I knew I had the weapon needed to win it.” He glanced at me.
“Delia.” Jax looked into my eyes. “Don’t be afraid. He’s not going to hurt you. I’ll take you home.”
The strength and calm of Jax’s voice had such an effect on me that for an insane moment I thought everything was going to be okay.
His father snorted. “It’s a bit late to play the gallant, Jax. Don’t pretend that you didn’t want to use her.”
“Not like this,” Jax argued. “I was fool enough to listen to your lies. Encouraging me all these years. Making me think that you would support me. I wanted to lead this clan, to bring it out of darkness.” Jax looked at me. “With Delia beside me.”
“I’m afraid I won’t allow that. Not then. Not now.”
“So it’s true,” said Jax in a quiet voice. “All this time I’ve tried to put aside my suspicions. Tried not to believe it. It was you who told the clan I was a traitor.” He glanced down at the scars on his chest with a frown. Almost as if he needed physical proof, a reminder of his father’s betrayal.
“Of course it was,” said Xarras gently. “And I was quite surprised by your tenacity in the trenches. You do surprise me sometimes. But really, I don’t have time for this, Jax.”
“No time?” Jax pointed his sword toward the roof of the cave. “You have no idea what’s going on up there. Many Aitros have died today. You’ve murdered your own people.”
Xarras shook his head. He looked to the wall beside him and laid a reverent hand on it. I could see them now, faint but visible, the Greek symbols I’d seen throughout the island. “Those are not my people. Poseidon, Zeus, Hades, Triton—these are the ones that I would align myself with.” Xarras’s mouth pressed into a grim, cruel line. “All of our ancient powers will be renewed once the Archelon is opened. The Aitros will be true gods once more.”
“Father.” Jax shook his head wonderingly. “You’re insane. This is finished. Delia, come to me.” He held out one hand to me. With the other he raised his sword against his father.
Xarras bent his head, snapped his hand forward and somehow, with the lightning speed of a bullet, threw a small dart at Jax. A trickle of blood ran down Jax’s throat.
“You should know I would never fight you that way,” said Xarras with a contemptuous glance at the sword.
Jax touched his hand to the tiny projectile at his throat and then stared at the smear on his fingers. He staggered and fell to his knees.
“A paralytic agent,” commented Xarras as he watched Jax slump to the floor. “Concentrated from the venom of the Rudolpho sea urchin. The urchin injects the poison into its prey, rending it immobile as the creature feeds on its flesh. Power cannot be shared. That is the final lesson I have to teach you, Jax.”
Jax lay there motionless, seemingly unconscious.
“Now,” said Xarras, turning to me. I let out a moan of agony as he began to loosen some kind of a clamp that held the ring tight on my lips. “You will serve me, Siren.”
He pulled the ring from my lips gently, but still the pain made me cry out.
I staggered back from him and went to kneel by Jax, touching his still form. I shook him gently but there was no response.
“Dead?” I whispered through bloody, swollen lips.
“No, not yet, I think,” said Xarras, standing over me. “It’s a common misconception that the Aitros are difficult to kill. You just have to know how. His breathing seems to have diminished, though. It won’t be long.”
The man’s calm comments about killing his own son were the most malevolent thing I’d ever heard. I tried to speak.
“What was that?” Xarras asked.
“Monster,” I said, spitting the word through my own blood.
“Come now.” Xarras hauled me to my feet. “It will be easy to open. Childishly easy. You only have to use your voice. I overheard what Kephalos told you. Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “I was there in the tunnel. Well hidden from my son’s search.”
He dragged me to the Archelon. “Here before you, Siren, is the treasure of Trespass Island. The power of Poseidon lies within. You yourself are the living key to this door.”
I raised my eyes to Xarras. “I could kill you now,” I rasped.
Xarras smiled gently. “Open the Archelon and I will tell you where to find the antidote for the poison. You can save Jax. If you hurry.”
I looked back at Jax. His eyes were closed and I saw no movement of his chest or gills. His skin was a horrible bluish color.
“Stand back.” I stared at the wall of symbols to focus my thoughts. But the pain in my mouth was torture. And Jax was lying on the floor. What would happen if Xarras got control of Poseidon’s power?
I didn’t know. And I couldn’t worry about that right now. Everything else shrank beside the fact that Jax was going to die.
Open it, Delia. Concentrate.
“Open.”
At first nothing happened. Then the symbols shifted in the stone. Faster now. Concentrate.
“Open.”
Dust sifted down from the ceiling.
“Open!” I screamed, unleashing my voice. But my voice didn’t even sound human anymore. It wasn’t my voice. It was some kind of archaic scream that echoed through me from an ancient past. I wa
s only the transmitter.
The Archelon began to open.
CHAPTER 37
With a thunderous crack the walls parted. Xarras came forward, pushed me aside and stood in front of the Archelon, eager for its gift.
This was the treasure, the power of Trespass Island that he’d schemed for. Killed for.
I didn’t know what I expected to see inside. Something otherwordly or magical, perhaps. Rays of light emanating from a fantastical realm of the gods. A spill of gold and jewels. Or even Poseidon himself. But it was none of those things.
It was the sea.
When the first fissure in the wall opened, water shot out. A thin stream, pushed with such force and velocity that it cut through the air.
It was a knife of water.
Hiss. A fine blue blade cut Xarras’s head from his torso.
A mist of blood rained into the air and Xarras’s face flew past me, his mouth open in surprise. I could have sworn he blinked.
The torrent of water, beneath unimaginable pressure, cut into the far wall of the tunnel and gouged into the stone, practically melting it away. Another heartbeat and it surged to a thick column that blasted into Xarras, shooting his still-standing body across the room with the force of a hundred fire hoses.
Seawater. It was nothing but seawater coming through the Archelon. Thundering. Raging. Millions of gallons, and every second flooding the tunnels.
The floor shifted beneath my feet. Clutching the irregular, lurching surfaces, I slipped through the deepening surge of water toward Jax. I still had the cuffs on my wrists, which made my movements awkward. I grabbed on to him, trying not to panic at the feel of his skin. It was cold.
He slumped against me as deadweight. There was no pulse in his neck, no flutter of life in the gills on his abdomen. And as the water washed over him there was no answering change in his body. No fin emerged from the spiny processes on his back.
We had to escape before the entire system of tunnels collapsed. Xarras had been wrong about the Archelon; it didn’t contain the power of Poseidon. Or maybe this was his power unleashed. The earth-shattering force of the whole ocean itself sweeping through this portal.
Kephalos’s words came back to me. My destiny on this island was not only betrayal.
It was destruction.
I pulled Jax’s limp body to me. He sagged to one side, his arm weighed down by the sword that he still somehow had in his fingers. Stubborn even now. I pulled the sword away and let it sink in the whirling rush. I was still hampered by the heavy cuffs on my wrists.
I couldn’t see Xarras’s decapitated body; he was gone, swept away. I wouldn’t find the antidote to the poison. And I would never find my way out of these tunnels.
And Jax was going to die. My dark, scarred angel.
For a moment I let myself sink down into the whirling chaos around me. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the roar of the water. It would be all right to just stay with him and hold him. We would stay here together. Until the tunnels collapsed and buried us.
No.
I thought about Gran and longed for her strong, no-nonsense presence. She wouldn’t lose her head or panic. Where was she now? What would she tell me?
That I didn’t need to be brave. I just needed to keep going.
But I didn’t want to. Not without Jax. He was paralyzed. He couldn’t breathe on his own.
So why don’t you do something about it?
I had to get the cuffs off. Now. I was so desperate to help Jax that my mind became hard and focused on each step that I needed to do. If only it wasn’t too late. I concentrated on the dark metal rings.
The water swirled over our heads now. Probably from the effect of glowstone in the exploded portions of the tunnel, there was the faintest of green lights illuminating the eerie scene around me. But fear put blinders on my vision. All I saw, all I cared about, were those cuffs.
I funneled my thoughts into a single command and let my voice out.
“Break!”
The cuffs shattered like eggshells.
Done.
With my hands free I did the only thing I could think of. I breathed for Jax the way he’d done for me at our first meeting.
I kissed him.
As the water swirled around us I kissed Jax, pressing air into his mouth gently over and over. It seemed like minutes passed with no change. His skin was icy and there was no movement of his chest or the gills on his abdomen.
The green light was nearly extinguished. I felt the water churn around me, pelting us with rocks and debris. I tried to maintain my position, clinging to whatever seemed solid as I puffed air into Jax’s mouth. It was dark. So dark. There was nothing in the world for me now except Jax’s heavy weight in my arms and my fervent prayer, spoken to him over and over with every bit of will that I could summon.
Breathe.
Until at last I felt him stir. Inhale. Exhale. And he kissed me back.
Between our minds the thoughts passed. And I heard him speak to me.
“Kardia mou,” he said. The same thing he’d said to me on the beach. Somehow I didn’t need a translator. I knew what it meant now. I could sense the meaning in my mind, in my soul.
My heart.
His hands grasped my shoulders. “My father?”
“He’s gone, Jax. We have to get out of here. The tunnels are breaking up!”
When he didn’t respond, I knew. We were trapped. If the tunnels had been mazelike before, what condition would they be in now? Blown apart by the force of the Archelon opening, they would be reduced to rubble and dead ends. Impossible to navigate even if I had a clue which way to go. Which I didn’t.
But in the darkness a faint glow illuminated Jax’s face, and I saw his gaze fixed on something in the water.
“Look.”
I turned. I was hallucinating. There were flowers floating in the water around us.
No. Not flowers. It was a multitude of tiny glowing fish, their semitransparent bodies sparkling with neon colors of the rainbow. They flitted past and lit the dark water like tiny beacons.
“Follow them,” said Jax.
CHAPTER 38
When Jax and I emerged from the mouth of the caves, the sea was alive with destruction. Fiery pieces of rock and ash rained down into the water, hissing steam as they struck. All over the island, spouts of sulfurous gas spewed into the air, blanketing everything with an eerie yellow haze. And every few moments I could see the ground tremble, rocked by some hidden disturbance.
“I can’t believe it. The Archelon was empty?” said Jax, supporting me next to him in the water. The color had returned to his skin and the dorsal fin of his water form fluttered against the rippling surface of the sea. He was still weak from the effects of the poison, and I think the supporting part was actually mutual.
“I think so. Empty except for seawater. Opening the chamber and releasing that pressure only created giant sinkholes to the underground caves.”
A booming crack made us turn, just in time to see a wedge of the cliff face tumble into the sea.
“The island is collapsing,” said Jax. There was disbelief in his low tone.
If I had ever wondered what it would take to impress a demigod, now I knew. Jax’s eyes were filled with horrified wonder at the scene before us. I put my palm against his chest. The island had been his home too.
But the island was still swarming with people. “Could they use the boats?” I asked.
“There won’t be enough to get them all off the island,” said Jax. “And the Icers will attack anything in the water.”
There were Icers on the beach as well. I could see at least three of their hulking forms stalking through the wreckage.
“We have to go help them,” I said. “Where are the Aitros warriors?”
“They’re out there,” said Jax with a toss of his head to the open water. “Trying to defend the breach in the Hands.”
“Then find the Glaukos if you can. Bring them here.”
“Are you insane?”
“No, I’m just a monster, trying to make things right,” I said. Then I gave him a quick soft kiss. It had to be only that: my lips were still swollen and tender from the iron ring that had torn through them.
I swam for Wreck Beach.
The Glaukos swarmed in the water before me as I stood on the sand. Teeth gnashing, they screamed in fury; the sound was deafening.
“Don’t do this,” said Gran, standing beside me. I should have known she wouldn’t stay home. She’d found a black patch to wear over her injured right eye, and the effect was intimidating. The shotgun she carried by her side helped a bit too. Every so often she would raise the gun, sight coolly along its length with her good eye and fire a shot at an Icer. So far it had been effective in keeping them away so I could approach the Glaukos.
“They’ll kill you if you get near them,” she said. “They’ve gone mad with pain.”
“That’s my fault. I have to try to help them.”
My voice is my will.
I stood at the edge of the water. Never in my life had I felt so small or insignificant. What was I, compared to the power and the number of these things?
I was so tired; my lips were still bloody and so swollen they felt tight against my teeth.
It felt like my body might collapse as this island was doing, from the inside out.
“Men of Trespass,” I shouted, “listen to me.”
The thrashing and screaming continued unabated.
“You’ve been slaves to the First Ones,” I cried out. “They’ve used you. You’ve sacrificed your lives for this island. For the people you love.”
I might as well have thrown a feather into a hurricane and expected it to fly against the wind. They couldn’t hear me. They couldn’t hear anything or feel anything except their own pain.
My voice is my will.
Unfortunately, my will had never sounded so weak or insignificant. Between the noise of the Glauks, the underground rumblings of the island and the crash of the surf, I could hardly hear myself think. But I tried again.
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