Arcana Rising (The Arcana Chronicles Book 5) (2 page)

For so long we’d thought they craved liquid in any form. All this water around them, and what they truly preferred was inside me.
Bloodlust.

I was prepared to die.
Not
to be transformed into a Bagger.

The whirlpool spun faster, faster. Ever closer to them. Closer . . . One snatched my jacket!

I kicked, breaking its grip. The next rotation would be my last—

We drifted apart, the vortex weakening. How? The current swept us toward a church bell tower, the water dividing around it. Survivors, three men, clung to the tower. The bells rang in the night.

The Baggers went right of the steeple; I shot left, struggling toward it with one arm.
Can’t catch hold!
One man held out his hand for me. I screamed as my claws scrabbled across the slate roof.

Adrift. In time, the current quickened again. A mountain loomed. Instead of parting to the sides, the current rushed straight for the center. Would I be bashed against the side?

My eyes widened when I saw the path of the water drop—into a tunnel. I was heading right for it!

Seconds later, I was swept down into that pitch darkness. Total black.
Can’t see, can’t see!
I kicked to keep my head above the surface. For air—and to hear.

Wails echoed off the tunnel walls. I jerked my head around, unable to pinpoint the sounds. Debris battered me. Things moved against my legs. Were Bagmen below me as well? I whimpered at the thought.

I bumped into something afloat. With a cry, I latched on to it with my remaining arm. I clung, bobbing like a cork. My skin was so numb I couldn’t tell what it was.

The blackness lightened to murk, and rain drummed my head again. Out of the tunnel!

I blinked at my raft. Blinked again. A skull-and-bones tattoo? A bloated belly. I was clinging to a headless, limbless body.

“Ahhh!”
I flailed away, but it seemed to follow me. I kept my eyes on that corpse as it floated alongside me for what might have been days—

I collided with something hard. Metal gouged my skin. I craned my head up: a cell tower! The current trapped me against the structure, pinning my back and arm.

I couldn’t move. A pinned insect. The tower groaned in the waves, swaying.

More Bagmen sped toward me. I was completely vulnerable, laid out for a bite. If they turned me into a zombie, would I float forever?

Maybe that was how the game would be won. By an Arcana who would never quite die.

The Baggers thrashed to reach me, pale eyes frenzied. The flood defended me for once, sweeping them away like twigs.

Ah, God, a
house
rushed toward me. Adrenaline flared; I gritted my teeth and somehow twisted my body to face the tower. With one arm, I climbed the service ladder.

I imagined Jack climbing out of that lake of lava unharmed. We would both reach the top. He’d be waiting for me there, offering his strong hand and his heartbreaking smile.
Missed you, bébé.

Another rung higher. Memories surged like Circe’s wave. Agony ripped at my chest as I recalled my last words with Jack. He and I had marveled at the snow. At tiny drifts of falling white.

Another rung. The house bore down on me . . .

It passed the swaying tower within inches. I wouldn’t be so lucky next time.

Lucky? I laughed into the wind.

At the gusty top of the tower, I coiled my arm around the ladder and laughed till I sobbed.

Jack is dead.

Tess.

My eyes shot open, my shaking arm tightening around a ladder rung. Tess had the power to go back in time!

Jack might be dead. He didn’t have to stay that way.

She and I had saved his sight by reversing time; we could save his life! And Selena’s. We could save Jack’s entire Azey army. I just had to reach Tess.

She, Gabriel, and Joules had been a couple of days out of Fort Arcana. The three would have heard the attack, would’ve returned.

I had to get back there. How? I didn’t know its location—or my own. I believed the fort was in northern Tennessee. Or Kentucky. Ish.

The storm had dwindled, the winds not as fierce, and the water had receded until the depth looked to be no more than a few feet. Which meant I teetered a hundred feet in the air.

From this height, I craned my head around. In the gloomy dimness, I spied rocky foothills to my left. To my right, I could just make out the remains of a town. I could determine my location there.

Energy filled me, my mind sparking with purpose. The stump of my arm finally twitched with regeneration, my scalded skin beginning to heal. My glyphs radiated like a spotlight, a beacon in the black.

With one arm, I started climbing down. Muscles so stiff. Each time I released my grip, I had to lean into the tower to balance my body, then painstakingly place my feet lower down. So slow.

And every moment since that massacre counted. Each second that Tess went back in time drained her of life; she’d nearly died when I’d forced her to go back just eleven or so minutes. With my claws sunk into her arms, she’d withered away to a husk, her hair falling out, her bones jutting.

How much time had passed since the Emperor’s attack? I could have been unconscious for hours—or days. How far away had the flood carried me?

Why hadn’t Circe killed me? Didn’t matter.
Gotta get to Tess.

I would need so much more from her than minutes. But I could work with her until her power bloomed, until she could withstand the demands of her ability.

What if I got her to reverse time by days, yet we still missed Jack by an instant? We needed to go back long enough to take out the Emperor before he struck. We could get Circe to attack him sooner!

I frowned. I’d heard Richter’s evil laughter in my head . . .
after
Circe’s flood, not just before. How had he survived? If the Priestess couldn’t take him out, was Richter invulnerable?

I couldn’t worry about that. Not yet. Aric had killed the Emperor in a past game, so he knew Richter’s weaknesses. My grandmother would be a wealth of information as well. Because of Aric, she was alive and safe at his castle.

With their help, I could learn how to destroy Richter. For now, I just needed to get to Tess.
On a clock. Tick-tock.
No time to waste descending one rung at a time.

Sucking in a breath, I closed my eyes and let myself pitch backward, free-falling from the tower.

Falling . . .

Landing . . .

Pain!

Rebar jutted from my side.
Shit, shit! Don’t panic. . . .
I forced myself to examine the wound. Wasn’t as deep as I’d thought, but I was trapped on the ringed metal.
No time for this!

I huffed in breaths through gnashed teeth, then pushed with my arm. The bar scored me inside, inch by ragged inch, till I freed myself. I struggled to my feet, reeling for balance. My wobbly legs didn’t want to hold me. Each breath was agony.

If I could take one step, it’d be one step closer to Jack.

I took that step. And another. And another, until I was slogging through filthy water toward the town. I wound around debris—and half-submerged Baggers trapped under storm wreckage.

That could’ve been my fate. How close those Bagmen had come to biting me! No wonder Aric had held on to me so tightly.

Aric
,
where are you?

No answer to my telepathic call. No Arcana voices at all.

Baggers snapped their teeth at me as I passed. For each one I could see, how many were concealed? Would I step on one? Like a Bagmine?

Focus.
In this situation, Jack would keep his cool and work out logistics. Everything depended on me reaching Tess as quickly as possible.

When Aric had abducted me from the Hierophant’s mine, I’d believed Jack had died, and I’d decided to live for vengeance. But this time, I would simply refuse to believe he was gone.

I swung my head left and right, searching for any clue about my location. As I trudged, supplies floated past me—food, bottles of water. I never would’ve passed by these treasures when I was on the road with Jack, but I didn’t have my bug-out bag, nothing to stow them in.

I’d lost it when I’d lost my arm.

Jack’s training still resonated within me; I needed survival gear. To save him, I had to survive long enough to find Tess. So I snagged a floating tackle box and found a utility knife inside. A good start. I shoved it into my jacket pocket.

Something was already stuffed inside?

I gave a cry. The red ribbon! The ribbon he’d taken from me a lifetime ago, the night before the Flash. The one he’d saved and carried for more than a year. I was supposed to give it back to him when I chose him above all others, when I was ready to make my life with him.

I’d intended to.

Jack was . . . dead.

Not
forever.

Something else was in my pocket . . . His letter! I snatched it out. The drenched paper disintegrated in my trembling hand, and I could only watch it. He’d left me this letter, urging me to go with Aric, to live in a place with sunlamps and food and safety.

Because I love you,
Jack had written
. This might be the most noble thing I’ve ever done. Noble, for the record, cuts like a blade to the heart.

Why had I never told him I loved him? In all the months I’d known him, I’d never said those three words.

I didn’t grieve the letter, because I was going to go back in time. It would never have been lost. I shoved the ribbon back into my pocket. One day, I swore to God, I would give it to him. I pushed on with even more determination.

Finally I reached a cluster of brick buildings—the only things left standing here after the firestorm of the Flash. I limped toward the middle of them. In what must have been the town square stood a monument: a man on a horse with trash wrapped around him. Wasn’t it always a freaking man on a freaking horse?

By the light of my glyphs, I read the plaque: GREEN HILLS, INDIANA

My heart stopped. My glyphs sputtered.
Indiana???

A completely different state from the fort’s location. Reaching Tess might take a week—
if
I had transportation, fuel, and directions.

I sagged against the monument, and tears welled.

Crying is a waste of time, Evie!

Tick. Goddamn. Tock.

I wiped my wet sleeve over my face and raised my chin. My plan was still sound. I’d find Tess, and then I wouldn’t rest until she could reverse time—by months. By years! Hell, I’d go back to before the Flash and save my mom and Mel!

Step one was getting a vehicle for the journey. Step two: fuel. Step three: directions.

I had a mission. I would be like Lark, with her single-minded focus. I would have strength and fortitude. I imagined myself as a horse with blinders on, seeing only the road before me. Nothing else mattered. I would bury my grief and destroy anything that got in the way of my mission.

Vehicle.

Fuel.

Directions.

Any vehicle near this town would be sunk, stuck, or swept away. I needed to get out of the path of that flood. I needed highlands. I turned toward the foothills.

I ran.

Holding my injured side, I fought the resistance of the water, moving my legs through sheer will.

I ran until I splashed out of the edge of the receding flood. I headed upland toward the line of rocky hills. A road snaked through them. I followed it.

My deadened legs tripped. I lurched forward; only one hand to catch me. I face-planted onto a shelf of stone.

Tick-tock.
I scrambled back up. Spat blood.
Blinders on.

I ran.

“Who let the dogs out? WHO? WHO? WHO?”

Even over the freezing winds and drizzle, I heard a song blaring from over the next rise.

Maybe I’d gone crazy and was having—what had the mental-ward docs called it?—an auditory hallucination. Likely. I hadn’t slept in days. Hadn’t stopped running.

Get to Tess. Get to Tess. Get to Tess.

Though I was filled with purpose, my glyphs had dimmed, my abilities on the fritz. Regeneration was agonizingly slow—my arm had regrown just a couple inches, and the wound in my side still gaped. My broken bones weren’t knitting. Exhaustion threatened to consume me.

But my mind was all-powerful. My mind told my body not to stop, and it obeyed. The ribbon was a talisman that kept me moving.

Aric had said I possessed untapped potential. I drew on anything—everything—I had. I reminded myself that Demeter had scoured the earth looking for her daughter, never resting. My search for Tess would be just as relentless.

I ran toward the music. Music meant people. People meant victims I could rob.

Over the last several days, I’d become one of the bad guys, a black hat, threatening the few survivors I’d encountered (even though all I could manage was the merest show of a vine).