Everbound: An Everneath Novel (26 page)

Actually, betrayal seemed to be a theme with the Everliving. I reached into my pocket and felt Nathanial’s medal in there. Cole seemed to be in a sharing mood now. Maybe it was the right time to ask him about Adonia.

“Cole?”

“Nikki?” he replied.

“You know Ashe …” I paused as I figured out the question I wanted to ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to reveal that I knew Ashe had his Forfeit killed. But I wanted to find out Cole’s place in it all.

“Yes, I seem to recall him.”

“Do you think he escaped the Siren somehow?”

Cole sighed. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

“You said you did something for him. And that he owes you.”

“Yes.” He wasn’t offering anything.

“Well, what did you do that he would owe you?”

He was quiet for a moment. I could feel Max’s eyes on us. “I helped him find something he had lost.”

My breath caught in my throat.
Something he had lost
. Something, or someone. Adonia.

“What did he lose?”

Cole hesitated. “It doesn’t matter now, Nik.”

It mattered to me. “This thing he lost, was it a person?”

Cole grabbed my elbow and jerked me back. “What did you say?” He stared at me, apprehensive.

I stood my ground. “Was her name Adonia?”

At the mention of her name, Cole closed his eyes. “How do you know?”

“I visited Mrs. Jenkins. Adonia was her ancestor. She has her ashes in an urn above her fireplace.”

Cole opened his eyes and watched me. “It was a long time ago.”

“You hunted her down? And turned her location over to Ashe?”

“It was a unique circumstance.”

“You were a different person then?” I said, not even trying to mask the sarcasm. “You’d never do it again?”

“I
didn’t
do it again!” The quiet after his outburst was intense. Cole backed away from me. “You’ll notice
you’re
not in a jar on someone’s fireplace,” he said.

“Were you there?”

“Was I where?”

“Were you there when the queen found Adonia?”

He shut his eyes again. “No. But I hunted her down. Told Ashe where he could find her. And he told the queen.”

“And you knew she’d be killed.”

He opened his eyes. “Yes,” he said simply. “But, Nik.” He stepped forward and put his hands on my good shoulder. “I didn’t do it to you.”

Staring at him right then, I didn’t put voice to the word in my head.
Yet
. He hadn’t betrayed me to the queen
yet
.

The Everneath. The Ring of Fire
.

S
ilence filled the next few minutes as we traversed the fiery corridors, dodging the occasional rogue flare. I kept a steady pace until we came to yet another archway. The others passed through without hesitation, but something about it made me stop. An uneasy feeling gripped me as I looked up at it. We’d already been through several archways, but this one was different. The flames at the top formed strange shapes. Mostly round ones, with stems sticking out.

As I passed underneath, I finally realized what the shapes looked like: fruit. Grapes, apples, cherries, all formed out of flames. I realized how long it had been since I’d eaten anything, and yet I’d never felt hungry. Mrs. Jenkins told me not to eat, but she didn’t have to worry. Until now, eating had been the last thing on my mind. But as the archway faded behind us, I felt a new hole in my stomach.

I tried to think of something else. I focused on the story of Ashe and Adonia. How was I supposed to feel about it all, knowing Cole’s role in her death? He didn’t do it to me. But he could. Would that possibility be hanging over my head for my entire life?

His actions had resulted in someone else’s death. But that was a way of life here. And Adonia was headed to the Tunnels anyway. Was I excusing his behavior because my feelings for him had changed? With everything we’d been through down here, it was hard to remember that for so long Cole had been an adversary. His history with Adonia simply reminded me of what Cole’s role was supposed to be.

But I couldn’t help thinking again that despite his protests, he would’ve made an excellent hero in somebody else’s story.

We didn’t say anything else about Adonia or Ashe. In fact, we didn’t speak much at all, until suddenly Max stopped.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“Me too,” Cole said.

I looked from Max to Cole, confused. I thought of my own empty stomach and how I’d become acutely aware of it only after passing under the archway with the fruit. But the hunger wasn’t strong enough to make me stop. “Do you mean … hungry hungry? As in, for food?”

“Fooooood,” Cole said, drawing out the word.

“But, I thought you guys didn’t need to eat. Down here.”

Cole shook his head and gave me a pacifying smile, as if I were a toddler. “Of course we need to eat. And it’s been a long time.”

Max rubbed his stomach. “Potato chips,” he said in a moan.

I looked behind us. We’d been standing in one place for too long, and up until this moment, Cole and Max had been the ones saying we needed to keep moving.

“Let’s go, boys,” I said. “Remember, we’re in a hurry.”

They looked at me as if I were speaking in Latin. I pulled on Cole’s hand, but he didn’t budge.

Did the fruit arch have a stronger effect on them than it did on me? Did I make a wrong turn by going under it? I thought I’d been watching my tether the whole time. But maybe in my obsession with the Ashe-and-Adonia story, I’d missed something.

“Stay here,” I said, which was pointless because they looked as if they’d never move again. I ran back toward the arch to see if we’d taken a wrong turn or if there was another way we could go, and that’s when I saw them.

Wanderers. More than a few. Walking in single file to avoid the flames.

“Crap,” I muttered. I darted back down the path toward Cole and Max. They were in the middle of a fight, each accusing the other of forgetting to pack a snack bag. “Guys, we have to move now. Wanderers are coming.”

They didn’t even look up. They hadn’t even noticed I’d been gone.

“Guys! Move!”

Cole shot me an annoyed look. “Eating should be our number-one priority, don’t you think, Nik?”

Exasperated, I put my hands on their backs and shoved them forward. They took maybe two steps before they stopped again.

Whatever was happening, it was affecting them but not me.

“Crap … crap,” I said, spinning around, trying to think of a way to get them moving. The ground was empty of anything except dirt. My pockets held a cell phone and Nathanial’s medal. I hadn’t thought to bring an apple I could use to entice them forward.

“Crap!”

The Wanderers hadn’t been moving fast, but I knew they had to be right on top of us now.

“Cole! Max! Move!”

By now they were ignoring my existence completely.

I looked down at my feet and realized I hadn’t counted one thing in my list of assets.

My projection.

Cole always said my projection was strong enough to be tangible. Maybe if I focused on it, I could make another projection, one that could help us.

I closed my eyes and focused on an object. It couldn’t be too complicated. There wasn’t enough time.

With every ounce of my energy, I focused on a simple image: a stick.

I felt a tiny whoosh of energy leave my body, and when I opened my eyes, there, lying next to my tether, was a stick.

I crouched down, put my hand around it, and grabbed it. It was real!

I shoved the pointy end into the flames of the wall to my right and left it there until I saw a faint red glow at the end. When I took it out, the end was charred, and the tip glowed red. A tiny flame materialized.

And right then the first of the Wanderers appeared from around a bend.

I faced Cole and Max. “Sorry, guys.”

I lightly touched the hot poker to Max’s back. He screamed and ran forward. Cole looked at him with an amused smile on his lips, then I did the same thing to Cole’s back, angling it under the hem of his jacket. He lurched forward.

We ran this way for several long minutes, and eventually I didn’t have to prod them as much. They were sprinting. So fast that I had to work to keep up with them, and even then I was losing them around corners.

“Wait!” I called out; but they didn’t hear me, or they ignored me.

I dropped the stick, and it disappeared in a poof. My tether was pointing in the direction I should be going, but it wasn’t following where Max and Cole went.

I couldn’t lose them. Digging in my feet, I scrambled around turns and juts in the pathway, catching glimpses of Cole’s black leather jacket.

“Wait!” I screamed.

Finally, I turned a particularly acute corner and stopped dead in my tracks. There, in the center of a large chamber surrounded by the fire walls, was an ornate wooden table with a large bowl of fruit.

Bent over the bowl, shoving apples and bananas into their mouths, were Cole and Max.

“No!” I screamed, but it was too late. They’d both already swallowed.

Cole stood upright and looked at me for a split second, recognition of what he had done painted on his face.

“Nik.” The word was all he got out before he collapsed to the ground. Max followed moments later.

I heard noises coming from behind me. The Wanderers.

The only other exit from the chamber was on the opposite side. I couldn’t face the Wanderers by myself. I raced across, leaped over Cole, and hid in the exit behind the wall of fire.

I said a little prayer.
Please pass us by. Please choose another way
.

The wait seemed interminable. I convinced myself that too much time had passed. That the Wanderers had indeed taken a different route, one that led away from this chamber.

And then the first foot appeared in the entrance, followed by the face of the Wanderer who had been leading the pack. He eyed Cole and Max, lying there immobile on the ground, as if they were fresh meat.

One by one the wanderers filed in, and I got a look at just how many had been following us.

Twenty. At least.

They swarmed over the lifeless bodies of Cole and Max.

I ducked behind the wall out of sight.

What do I do? What do I do?

I couldn’t take them all on by myself. Max and Ashe could barely handle one at a time, and they were much stronger than I was. I looked down at my tether. Could the cattle prod approach work with them?

Again, no. Too many.

Confronting them would never work. I needed to get them away from Cole and Max, and then I could outrun them.

I needed a distraction. But what?

I thought back to everything I knew about Wanderers. They were missing their Surface hearts, but it wasn’t as if I could tell them I had twenty extras just around the corner. It had to be something that wouldn’t require a lot of thought on their part.

Then I remembered what Cole had told me. Wanderers could make a meal out of Everlivings, but they wouldn’t be able to resist the freshest energy from an actual human.

My tether was a manifestation of my energy. When I’d first come to the Everneath, my energy had spilled out all over. I could do that again.

I stepped into the chamber, closed my eyes … and focused on everything about Jack that I loved.

Every memory, every quirk of a smile, every wink of his eye, every embrace, every kiss. I jammed them into my head all at once. Every word he’d ever said to me, the first time he’d snuck into my bedroom, the way he’d held me and told me he loved me in his uncle’s ski cottage. Everything.

When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by a cloud of memories: pictures of Jack and me, movies of him under the tree at the cemetery, waiting for me at his locker, spotting me in the crowd from the bench at the football game.

His image was everywhere, swirling around me. It didn’t form the canyon in the Fiery Furnace that it had the first time I’d let it all out, probably because I had more control now, or because I didn’t have as much energy. But it was enough. Beyond the energy cloud I could see that every Wanderer was turned toward me, and only a split second passed before they lunged for me.

I turned and took off running.

I ran and ran, but my legs were aching. Pure adrenaline kept me going, but I was losing focus. I turned around to see how far ahead of them I was and ran smack into a dead end of fire.

Pain tore into my chest. I recoiled from the wall and again heard that sizzling noise. I’d reacted quickly enough that the burns wouldn’t be as severe as the last one, but I still had to pat out the tiny flames that had jumped onto my shirt. How far had I gone? Were Cole and Max dead? Would I ever find them again? Every turn I made was one turn farther away from them. But at least the Wanderers were following me and not feasting on them.

I backtracked and then turned down another corridor, and that’s when I saw something reaching up above the wall of fire on my left. It was a dark wall shooting high into the sky. Not made of flames or wind or water, but made of black stone.

I took every turn that led me to the left, and several seconds later I exited the maze and found myself standing on grass in front of the giant black stone wall. I glanced at my tether, but it pointed toward the wall. I looked to either side, trying to figure out which way to run, but maybe fifty yards away in each direction I saw dark figures swirling in the air.

Shades.

I bowed my head. A solid wall in front of me, Shades to the left and right, and a maze of fire behind me filled with Wanderers.

There was nowhere left to run.

I sank to the grass. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

The Everneath. The Ring of Fire
.

I
wasn’t about to run toward the Shades, so I turned around and faced what I knew was coming out of the maze.

I didn’t have to wait long. The herd of Wanderers appeared from the Ring of Fire. There was no escape. I shut my eyes, and before I knew it, they had piled on top of me as if I were the opposing quarterback in a football game.

I couldn’t tell which Wanderer was feeding, but I felt my energy leaving my body, as if I were in a giant vacuum that was sucking out everything that made me alive.