I felt a little noise of horror escape me and clamped a hand over my mouth as I settled back on my haunches, sitting down in a pool of wet blood. I didn’t even know whose it was. I didn’t care. I stared at Athena’s lifeless body and tried to process it all, tried to fight back the horror.
“Sienna?” Scott’s voice came from down the hall in the direction I had been heading only a moment earlier. “Sienna, are you all right?”
I pulled myself together in an instant, pushing aside the shock, the horror, pretending there was a hole somewhere deep in my soul and I could dump everything down into it. This was no time for tears; there were others waiting for me on the other side of the barricade, the last barricade from the sound of Scott’s voice. “I’m coming,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”
I stood on unsteady legs, shuffling with as careful a balance as I could, dodging around the last overturned desk. I could see the recreation room behind it, full of metas, the survivors of our little band. There were far more of them than there were of the dead, I knew that much, and I felt a rush of gratitude. I let out a weary sigh, mixed with more than a little relief to see so many still standing, peering out into the hallway, looking at the spot behind the desk—
I came around the desk to find Scott just sitting there, his back against it, his face red and shot through with emotion. I started to say something but stopped myself just in time. There were little sobs coming from the recreation room, the sounds of mourning and fear, and as much as I wanted to reassure them, I couldn’t when I saw what they were weeping about.
There was another body next to Scott, a man whose face was at peace in spite of the angry red wound in the middle of his forehead. He wore a slightly upturned smile—just a hint—under his waxed mustache. His once-lively eyes were now staring off into the distance, and his distinctive cologne had been overcome by the heavy odor of gunpowder that still lingered in the air. The sobs of the survivors drowned out any other noises, and my knees gave out and I fell to his side. He did not respond even as I shook him, Breandan’s head lolling around with the motion of his body as I tried desperately, desperately, to shake back to life a man whose luck had finally run out.
Chapter 29
Jon Traeger
Lake Superior
November 10, 1975
They nicknamed the ship the Mighty Fitz. He’d barely made it on board; just in time, really. The wind was howling and the squall was pitching the sides of the massive freighter he’d found passage on at the last moment. They didn’t normally take passengers, even though they had two cabins for it, but a lot of money had changed hands and the deal was done just moments before the Fitzgerald left port. It was worth it for Jon to get her out of here, to get her away from the Midwest.
“We’re safe now,” Jon said to the woman who sat a little distance away from him. He’d been reassuring her since they’d gotten on board, but it didn’t seem to be having much effect. Not that he could blame her.
Her name was Elizabeth, and she was huddled against the chill that was seeping into the passenger cabin. The steady wash of the water against the sides of the ship was getting more dramatic as the hours passed, and the freighter was listing to the side. They’d been awakened in the early hours of the morning and been unable to get back to sleep. The storm seemed to have worsened. A couple of hours earlier when Jon had tried to talk to the captain, the man had ordered them to stay off the deck.
She shook her head, her dark hair and smeared makeup distinctive. “I don’t know that we’ll ever be safe. Not from him.”
Traeger felt the swell of uncertainty as he stared at the walls of the freighter’s cabin. There was a drape covering the porthole, and every few minutes he’d find himself pacing the deep-pile carpeting to pull it back and look out into the darkness, where the rain and waves lashed at the ship. “He’s not invincible. He’s not infallible. We lost him in Duluth, before we crossed the Wisconsin line, simple as that. You’re free now.” He sank down to the bed as the ship rocked to the side again, almost throwing him against the wall. “He can’t hurt you now.”
She swallowed so heavily he could hear the gulp! over the sound of the storm outside. “I don’t think he wanted to hurt me, exactly.”
Traeger could smell the oily residue of the ship’s reprocessed air. “No? Why do you think he wanted you?”
She started to answer when a grinding thud and the squeal of metal cut her off. A shudder louder than any the storm had produced ran through the ship. Elizabeth’s eyes went wide, and she jumped for the bundle on the bed next to her, laid out asleep. Jon moved for them both, protectively, as another grunt of stressed metal echoed through the whole ship and the world pitched on them, turning sideways, the hardest list of the ship yet.