I had to find Jon.
The thought repeated, irrational.
Rain had begun to fall, along with soot, white ash, pieces of fabric and paper. I heard screams all around me...I closed my eyes, still trying to get my limbs all working in the same direction, when someone grabbed my arm.
When I turned, Chandre’s reddish eyes met mine.
She looked afraid. I gazed up at black-tinted clouds, a white tower rising from the middle of the ship where a blue, tail-like fin rose to meet the sky. A burning figure stood on the fourth deck, fighting to climb the railing. The wind flared the fire on his body.
Chandre yanked harder on my arm. “Come. This will get ugly, and fast! The Rooks are exterminating witnesses...”
She began to drag me through the water, and I let her. A plane skimmed overhead, lights ablaze. No one paid any attention to us.
Revik’s face rose in my mind. My sight flared, bringing even more pain. More death. Images of falling bodies ripped apart by ice-cold water. Mom’s face. Dad’s. I missed Jon so badly it hurt. I needed him, had to find him. I floated, fighting to push past it, dragged through the current. Chandre didn’t stop pulling on my arm. It felt like she’d pull it out of the socket.
“There’s some chance,” I managed, talking to her, or maybe myself. “I saw him alive. Terian could have him. He could still have him...”
Chandre looked at me. She struggled words out between breaths as she stroked hard with her free arm, pulling me with her.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. Bridge...you must face facts. I am sorry. Dehgoies is dead...different light signature. We tracked it...we saw him die...”
I shook my head back at her, trying to free my arm, but she only pulled harder.
“You must feel it.” She looked at me. “...Separation sickness...it will get worse. You have to stay out of the Barrier. Do whatever you have to, only don’t go in. He will have died for nothing. Don’t let them see you...”
I didn’t answer, remembering Eliah saying the same thing.
When I didn’t fight after a few seconds, her expression softened.
“I am sorry, Bridge,” she said.
I didn’t look at her again.
We remained a few hundred yards from shore when a sudden, sharp boom jerked both sets of our eyes back towards the ship. Like something from a dream in the rising light, yellow and orange plumes billowed upward. The ship sank fast after that. I saw glass blow out as windows exploded, pouring water, flames...more smoke. The wind changed, bringing us more screams, the smell of charred flesh and burning plastic.
Chandre resumed swimming.
Between strokes I heard her speak through clenched teeth.
“Hopefully they will believe we are dead, as well...”
A wolf runs on the tundra, tongue lolling past its blood-stained grin—
When I came to, I was aware of hands on me, people pulling me out of the water. Rough gravel and dirt met my bare skin, and nothing ever hurt so much. My legs dragged like dead weight. I couldn’t move my knee and my thigh felt like it was bitten to the bone by some kind of sea monster or shark. Someone wrapped a coarse blanket around my back, talking over my shoulder to Chandre.
I felt grief on the man holding me and realized I didn’t know him, or the woman standing next to him, watching me with pity in her dark eyes.
Only Chandre’s voice remained.
The rest stood silent, emotional despite their weapons and training, unable to tally what they’d lost.
...and the wolf still runs, his feet sending up puffs of white snow.
I want to tell them it’s all right, I know I’m safe.
For now, at least, my body at least. The wolf is no longer looking at me, but runs at a single dark form marring the white plain. Again it is dawn, and a black shape burns in the distance on a flat horizon that sparkles like diamonds...and my chest feels as if someone has taken an ice pick to it, hitting it again and again, digging out a pale light at its core.
It is a feeling worse than death.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
22
INDIA
News feeds ran nonstop in the background.
I tried not to look at their fast-moving images, or hear anything the avatars said. Still, broken pieces reached me, burning me like heated stones.
“...dead now tallied at four hundred and sixty-two...with over a hundred still missing, most of whom are also believed to be dead...”
“...believed to be the work of the terrorist Alyson May Taylor and her organization of renegade seers. Initially thought to be killed in the attack, it is now believed Taylor escaped alive and is still at large, following...”