“He used it,” Olivia filled in. “He made himself immortal. Sort of.”
My brow drew down. “Sort of?”
I glanced to Noah. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.
“You’d understand if you saw him.”
“When,” Dave amended. He grimaced. “Olivia, if
anyone
can do what the originals did–”
“Won’t he just try to kill her?” Noah interjected, his voice a bit unsteady. “Finish that war? If this is the guy who made greliarans, then–”
“This is our best option,” Dave said. “The Beast
will
draw on your friend. I-I’ve studied this. The old stories. What we used to be. Even if we don’t know everything of what that creature is capable of, I’m still sure of that part.” He looked to me. “Chances are, the Beast will get stronger, even with you here. The storms on the coast and the earthquakes under the ocean show it already has. And the stronger it gets, the more it’ll be able to feed on what you are.” He swallowed. “That thing absorbs magic. Takes magic and makes it a part of itself. And it does that as easily as we can breathe. The longer this goes on, the weaker you’ll become, regardless of where you try to hide.”
I stared at him. “I feel fine. I’m not–”
“That will probably change as the Beast grows more powerful,” Dave insisted. “I’m sorry. Even if you
could
somehow suppress the signal coming from you, it wouldn’t matter. Some of the oldest accounts talk about the dehaians trying that. Apparently, they
were
capable of muffling the magic coming from themselves – both by their own willpower and augmented with various drugs – to the point where the Beast could barely detect it. But nothing disguised it fully. Traces still leaked out. And the reduction was never enough to make the Beast disappear.”
Zeke looked away. I glanced to him, my brow drawing down.
“The electricity in the water,” he said. “How we could barely feel it after what those bastards gave you. After what they did.”
I trembled. The Sylphaen had said something like that. Something about needing me weak. It was why they’d been fine with hurting me, why they’d given me the neiphiandine.
They’d wanted to keep me from drawing something to them…
And meanwhile, I’d just been so scared, I’d wanted to disappear. To hide from everything down in the tiniest hole I could find.
All of which might have saved my life from the Beast.
“The physicians’ tests showed the neiphiandine had suppressants in it,” Zeke continued. “They weren’t sure why.”
My stomach twisted.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Noah snapped. “That wizard guy. Won’t he just try to kill her too?”
“Probably not,” Dave answered.
Noah scoffed. “No. No
way
we’re going anywhere on a ‘probably not’.”
“Joseph has a vested interest in this too,” Dave said. “He–”
“You sound like you’ve talked to him,” Olivia interrupted.
Dave hesitated. “We email.”
She stared. “He refused to speak to any of us after the incident in ’98.”
“I-I know. He made an exception.”
“An
exception
?” Olivia repeated incredulously. “And you never felt the need to report–”
“Everyone treats him like an artifact to be studied! He hates it when people do that!”
Olivia looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be furious or laugh.
“Joseph needs this,” Dave insisted. “The Beast was targeted at his kind. No matter what he’s done since then, if it wakes further –
when
it wakes further – it’ll come for him too. And he’s our best shot. If anybody can reproduce the originals’ solution, it’s him.”
I swallowed. “But what will that mean for me?”
“You become one or the other. Landwalker or dehaian.”
A breath left me.
“But what about
us
?” Ellie asked. “The… the changing back. Being dehaian. If Chloe–”
“That was never going to happen, Ellie,” Olivia interrupted, a pained note in her voice. “I know you want that, but over time you would have realized the truth like we have. We’re too human. We’ve
been
too human for centuries and the traces left in us from our ancestors are too minute. None of us would survive a transformation back to the way we once were.”
Ellie stared at her. “We could try,” she said in a tiny voice.
The pitying look I’d seen at the house returned to the woman’s eyes. “It can’t be, Ellie. I’m sorry.”
Desperately, Ellie turned to Dave. His expression was the same as Olivia’s, though tinged with an awkwardness as if he wished the girl wouldn’t stare at him like that.
Ellie dropped her gaze to the ground.
“None of this means he won’t try to kill her,” Noah argued. “He might decide killing her is the best way to get the Beast to disappear.”
“That energy release thing,” Baylie said, her voice weak. “Won’t he know about that, though?”
Noah’s brow furrowed.
“Kill me, it releases more of whatever the Beast feeds on,” I explained, my own voice not much stronger than Baylie’s. I glanced to Zeke. “I think that’s what the Sylphaen are after. They must believe they can use it to make themselves like me. But it’ll just give the Beast more power.” I hesitated. “I don’t think they know that part.”
Dave shook his head. “Joseph wouldn’t risk it.”
Silence fell at the words and, from what I could gauge of the others, they had no more idea what to say than I did. We had to do something. We had to stop this somehow.
But this was the guy who created the greliarans. This was the guy who
designed
them to kill us. To trust him with my life, after everything else that’d happened and all the ways ‘trusting someone’ had gone so wrong…
“It’d stop the Sylphaen,” Zeke murmured, his gaze on the cave floor.
I looked over to him.
“And if you… if you became fully landwalker, then Harman would leave you alone,” he continued in the same tight tone.
“Maybe,” Baylie cautioned.
Zeke gaze’s rose to mine. “You could be safe.”
My chest quivered at the pain in his eyes.
“But what…” Baylie tried. “What would you
be
? I mean…”
I glanced to her, reading the anxiety in her tone. I could become dehaian –
new
dehaian, like Zeke – and be unable to leave the ocean because of it. I could visit her, but only if she moved to California like Noah. Only if she was within a few miles of the shore.
And speaking of Noah and Zeke…
“You’ll have time to think about it on the way,” Dave told me. “Joseph’s up on the northern California coast. It’s quite a drive.” He paused, looking to Olivia. “If we’re sending them, that is?”
“Letting her go back to the coast is dangerous,” Olivia argued.
“But it could solve this,” Dave countered. “Keeping her underground won’t.”
“You’re sending them alone?” Ellie asked.
Dave and Olivia glanced to her.
“What if Noah’s right and this guy… I don’t know, gets upset having Chloe there or–”
“It’ll be fine,” Dave said. “I’ll call him. Let him know they’re–”
“But why don’t we just go too?” the girl interjected hurriedly, like she was afraid she wouldn’t get the words out. “We could, you know, have Chloe help us get there. If she wants to, I mean. Or we could take those medicines.”
Olivia regarded her. “Those medicines are dangerous, Ellie. People have died from the side effects, and there’s no need for that desperate of action here. And as for Chloe… it’s an unnecessary gamble of our safety and hers. We don’t know anything about this.”
“But the Beast is out there,” Ellie implored. “If something goes wrong and you could’ve helped…”
The woman paused. Her gaze flicked to me, considering. Questioning.
I looked away. This was insane. I didn’t know what I’d done to let Zeke come inland with me; it’d just happened. But while Ellie had a point – and maybe it
would
be better for the elders to come since they knew Joseph – doing anything
remotely
non-human worried me right now. And as for the rest of it…
I couldn’t be a landwalker. Baylie had been right; all the craziness of the past few weeks aside, I loved the ocean. And to
never
be able to see it again… it was too much to bear.
And that wasn’t the only thing…
My gaze skidded across the floor. I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at Zeke or Noah. If I was a dehaian, it didn’t really affect anything where they were concerned, which meant the questions about them both were still out there. But it also meant all the other issues would disappear. To some extent, in any case.
And that counted. A lot.
I nodded, trying to show no hint of how sickened I felt. “Okay, yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s go.”
~~~~~
Olivia led the way from the cave, while Dave reluctantly trailed her. Staying close to me and Baylie, and managing to keep a distance from each other at the same time, Noah and Zeke were a bit slower to follow.
I glanced around when we left the shelter of the curve in the mountainside, hoping Chief Reynolds was still on the wild goose chase that Olivia described. I’d be happy if I never saw that man again.
Nothing moved in the forest and Noah gave no sign of hearing anything beyond birds. The trail continued downward, following a steep path from the cave opening. The ground was rough even on the trail, with rocks and depressions where rain had worn away the soil. Keeping my footing was nearly as difficult as it’d been when we were forging through the underbrush, though, really, my shoes didn’t help. I was tempted to remove them and let the soles of my feet change enough to handle the terrain, but that’d probably just freak Baylie out.
And there was no telling what could send more energy to the Beast.
I swallowed, working not to think about it. We’d get to this Joseph guy, and then the Beast wouldn’t be a problem. Eventually, anyway. I remembered Ellie saying something about how, even after the landwalkers and dehaians had split, it’d taken time for the Beast to lose energy and fall asleep or whatever it was the creature had done. But still… we were making progress.
It’d be fine.
A cacophony of buzzing rose from Ellie’s phone, the alerts tripping over one another to be heard, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Looking startled as well, the girl came to a stop and tugged the cell from her pocket.
Her brow furrowed. “Same number. There’s like ten missed calls from when we were in the cave.”
The alerts stopped. She looked up at us, appearing confused.
Another buzz came from the phone.
“Oh good grief,” Baylie said, leaning over to glance at the screen.
She blinked, and then her gaze rose to me. “It’s your mom and dad.”
“What?” I asked.
Ellie tilted the phone toward me.
Mom and Dad’s number stared back at me.
Baylie made an incredulous noise. “How’d they get Ellie’s–”
“Give that here,” Olivia interrupted.
Ellie handed the cell to Olivia. The woman regarded the buzzing phone for a moment before thumbing it on.
“Hello?”
She paused.
Noah’s brow rose, alarm written across his face, and his gaze snapped to me.
Fear made my stomach quiver. Whatever he heard, that look couldn’t mean it was good.
“I believe you have the wrong–” Olivia’s brow drew down. “Say that again.”
Noah looked like he wanted to grab the phone away from her.
Olivia lowered the cell and covered the speaker with her hand. She turned to me, her expression taut with careful control. “The person on the other end claims he knows you.”
I waited, confused.
“He says his name is Wyatt. He…” Olivia’s brow furrowed as though she couldn’t believe her own words. “He says that he and his family have your parents… as their hostages.”
Ice shot through me.
“He insists upon speaking with you.”
She extended the cell.
My gaze flicked to Noah. To Zeke. The greliarans had my parents. My crazy, hysterical, backstabbing parents.
Noah’s homicidal relatives had my parents.
My hand trembled as I took the phone.
“Hello?” I managed.
“Hey, pretty.”
I could hear the grin in Wyatt’s voice and picture it on his face. Lascivious slime practically dripped from his tone, and spikes crept from my forearms at the sound.
“What do you want?”
He chuckled. “Here’s how it’s going to go. We have your mommy and daddy. They’re in the back, and they’ve been there for about a day. I can’t say it’s going well. So you’re coming to us. You’re going to give yourself up – you and the other scum-sucker – and we’ll let them go. Get it?”
I couldn’t breathe and at my silence, the chuckle came again.
“Now, it’s no good being all quiet like that. I want to know I have your attention.”
A rustling came from the other end of the phone, and then a muffled shriek.
“Talk,” I heard Wyatt order in the background. “It’s your little fish.”
“C-Chloe?” Dad gasped.
A choked noise left me.
“Chloe, don’t listen to him. Just get–”
I flinched as his words cut off with a pained sound.
“You there?” Wyatt asked.
I was shaking so much it hurt. “Yes.”
“Good. So this part is what I like to call our ‘leverage’. We’re taking your parents on a bit of a joyride. Today we’re in Wyoming. Tomorrow we’ll be home on the Washington coast. And you know what happens to their kind if they get too close to the sea. So you come as fast as you can from wherever it is you’re hiding, and maybe I won’t throw them into the ocean. You get me? I’ve heard
all
sorts of stories about what happens to landwalkers when they touch seawater. Skin peeling off, blood pouring out, their heads just–”
“Stop it!” I snapped.
His smile carried through his voice again. “Where are you?”
I hesitated. Noah shook his head hard.
“You hear me, pretty?” Wyatt prompted.
“Arkansas,” I answered, giving him the first state name that came to mind.
“Well, then, we’ll see you on the coast. Just ask Noah where to go. I’m sure he’s there with you.”
“Don’t hurt them,” I whispered.
He laughed. The phone clicked and the line went dead.