“Now,” I breathed.
Kiera’s biceps tensed, and then the pain was gone, and so was I.
30
The Beetles
Iawoke to a distant babble and cool stickiness. Before opening my eyes to face the white sky, I swallowed a steadying breath and took quick inventory of my body, relieved to note the absence of pain. This world was still despicable, but I was thankful for the strange loophole.
I flattened my palms and pressed my fingers into the squishy mud. Even though my body didn’t ache, I rose to my feet slowly, my clothes soaked in mud.
I stared at the hem of Remo’s tunic that skimmed the top of my thighs, sheltering my upper body like a poncho. I’d abandoned him shirtless down below. Our clothing wasn’t armor, but it beat bare skin. I hoisted the shirt up to dig my fingers into the tight knot of the belt he’d fastened around my waist to staunch the blood oozing from my wound. Once I got it loose, I slid it off my waist and hooked it around my neck. The tinny smell clinging to the soiled black fabric made my nostrils flare.
I was about to pull my arms through the sleeves of my jumpsuit when I remembered Remo had cut one off. Although not stifling, the air was warm in this cell, so I made scissors out of my dust, clipped off the remaining sleeve, then magicked my nifty tool out of existence and hoisted my suit back on. After threading the belt Remo had made me through the newly-felled sleeve, I retied a knot and looped it around my neck, then fit my arms through his tunic sleeves, rolled the cuffs twice to free my hands, and eased one arm through the stretchy necklace of sleeves to secure it across my chest.
Calling on mywitaagain, I fashioned a rapier. I wasn’t sure whether I would encounter the cats Kiera had mentioned up here, but I thought it prudent to be prepared. After a meaningful glare in the portal’s direction, I raced toward the watery expanse sparkling behind another tropical forest. There were nopanemtrees up here, just tall palms with ruddy bark coated in bulbs the color and size of gladeberries. As I slalomed around them, I finally computed what I’d seen down in the valley.
Kiera.
And Kingston.
Alive and untouched by age.
I couldn’t believe Joshua had been right.
I couldn’t believe Iba had been right.
I couldn’t believe Gregor had created a prison no one had any inkling about.
Except for Joshua’s source. Who the hell was Joshua’s source?
Soon the sound of flowing water superseded the swish of my needle-thin blade and the crunch of coarse sand beneath my stomping boots. Should I swim or run along the riverbank? As I contemplated both options, wishing I’d had the presence of mind to ask Kiera, my sword nicked the base of a tree. I didn’t think much of it until a low drone erupted, and the berry-like barnacles separated from the trunk.
“Aw,crap.” I joined my hands on the sword’s handle and raised it as a dozen overgrown ladybugs descended on me.
What I needed was a paddle, not a sword as thin as a toothpick. Grip slickening, I backed up, my boots sinking into softer sand, and reshaped my weapon. I dared a glance over my shoulder at the water. I was probably better off jumping in.
The buzzing grew so loud I whipped my head back toward the fleet of vamp beetles and swung, knocking out the first wave. Instead of plopping to the ground, they dipped like pollinating bees before rising anew and soaring straight at me. I batted the air, then whirled, my racket bowling a ribbon of them over.
A violent sting on my collarbone had my chin dipping into my neck. One of the bulbous things had latched on to me. The droning grew anew, and I flailed backward, one hand going to the bug and the other wrapped firmly around my paddle.
What was Gregor’s obsession with toothy flying things? Did he regret being born a faerie instead of a vampire?
Sweat pooled between my shoulder blades as I tore off the gelatinous bug and lobbed it at the tree it had come from, before whirling around to smash its incoming friends. My footing faltered, and I sailed backward, smacking into the stream. The momentum ripped the paddle from my hands.
The vamp beetles dove toward my floating body. Before any could dig their sharp teeth into my exposed flesh, I sank, and they hit the surface like toy balls. When one dipped below the rippling surf, alarm gripped me.
Please let them not be engineered to swim.
Like a buoy, the submerged bug rose back. Blood ribboned around the stream of bubbles escaping my nose. I parted my lips to take in air, forgetting I couldn’t breathe underwater. I snapped my lips shut around a mouthful of silt. Reflexively, I blew it out, along with my reserve of oxygen.
When I returned to Neverra, I would use a meat mallet and pound Gregor’s bones, and then I’d drag him to the very bottom of the Pink Sea and wait for his lungs to seize and his organs to fail. These heinous contemplations scared me, not in their atrocity, but in the lack of guilt and disgust I felt visualizing them.
My own lungs cramped, urging me to break the surface, but the red bugs droned inches from where my air bubbles popped, and where the hell was my racket? I extended my hand, summoning my dust. When no golden filaments shimmied toward me, my pulse ramped up. I kicked to go faster, scanning my blurry surroundings for an oblong shape, but the only thing I saw was the uniform layer of vamp beetles reddening the top of the river. Had they all congregated to keep me interred?
I finally understood why non-Daneelies described suffocation as feeling like your lungs had been set on fire. My insides teemed with searing heat that spread as though my veins had torn and were leakingkaliniinto the rest of my organs.
I’m done dying, Gregor Farrow.
