Hydra (24 page)

On top of my fear that Ed might not come back, I’m trying not to let my fear of the water yagi get the best of me. That’s not easy, considering that I’m in a boat, surrounded by water that’s roiling with their bodies all around us, and the screen on my lap shows hideous underwater footage of their teeth, their grasping hands, and their unrelenting hunger.

I can’t say how many yagi I’ve seen eat other yagi—more than I want to think about—when a wave surges beneath us with such suddenness, one moment we’re sitting calmly in the boat, and the next we’re gripping the seat with both hands as the fragile craft rises twenty feet in the air, shooting up on a wave that’s almost like a geyser, or tsunami, or something very violent and aquatic.

I’m aware of several things all at once. One, the lake water lit up, an eerie purplish-orange color that doesn’t belong to nature any more than the water yagi. And two, that wave wasn’t caused by the yagi and their boat-tipping antics. It was caused by a power surge, an explosion, something so strong, it made my eardrums pop and shocked all the water yagi in the lake.

Their bodies clutter the lake’s surface like so many dead fish. They’re floating in thick layers, yagi upon yagi, all around us, unmoving. So gross.

I’m not sure if they’re dead, or just stunned. At any moment they might come back to life, like zombie water yagi—in case water yagi weren’t creepy enough.

But far more than zombie water yagi, I’m worried about Ed. The screen has gone black—no doubt the explosion ruined the camera equipment—and I have no idea where Ed is or even if he’s hurt. I’ve lost my last link to him, the last tenuous thread that kept me from freaking out.

Here’s what I know: that explosion was powerful—so powerful, all the yagi in the lake are floating lifelessly all around me. I don’t think anything in the water survived. Our boat rose up on a wave and smacked back down, but more than that, a concussive force like wind blew up from the water and slapped me. And I’m not the one
in
the water.

“Ed?” I call out, looking all around for some sign of him, but there’s nothing but these stunned yagi everywhere. “Ed?”

Seconds tick by—sickening seconds that I fear could mean the difference between life and death. Where is Ed? What if he’s injured, hurting, trapped, alone? What if he needs me?

I stand on trembling feet and balance myself against my father’s shoulder as I kick off my shoes.

“What are you doing?” my dad asks.

“I’ve got to find Ed.”

My dad gives me this look like I’ve gone completely mad, but I don’t have time to argue with him. I’ve waited too long already. How long has it been? Twenty seconds? Thirty? A minute?

Pinching my eyes shut against the sight of prone water yagi coating the surface of the lake, I rise up on dragon wings, point my noise toward the water, and dive.

Even stunned and lifeless, the water yagi are creepy, especially considering they’re floating several layers thick. I dive past them, wincing, hoping they won’t jostle back to life, roused by my brushing against them.

But honestly, the water yagi are the least of my concerns. Once I’m under the water, I open my eyes and look in the direction of the cave. It’s completely dark, but I turn up the glow of my scales (fortunately a sense of urgency is an excellent catalyst for scale glow) and I can discern the cave opening deep in the water. The current feels like it’s streaming from there, too, so I know it’s the right spot.

I can’t hold my breath anywhere near as long as Ed can, so I don’t waste any time. I swim for the cave, into it, through it, through some kind of underground tunnel full of water which, to my disappointment, doesn’t appear to have any pockets of air anywhere along its length.

Air is important. I can feel my lungs burning, pleading for air. It’s all too reminiscent of the time when the water yagi attacked me on the Caspian Sea—the event that started this whole adventure.

I swim for all I’m worth, which isn’t that impressive. Ed is so much better at swimming than I am. I just hope he’s okay. I hope I can find him. I hope I’m not too late.

I’m swimming, half blind from the darkness and lack of oxygen, swimming for all I’m worth, when finally, the darkness of the tunnel ahead of me gives way to a flicker of orange light. I swim toward it, faster now, desperately, because I know my lungs are going to burst or I’m going to pass out, or whatever it is that happens when a dragon runs out of oxygen underwater.

The orange glow grows bigger. It looks like fire. It’s not just in front of me, but up, above me. I crane my neck and strain upward.

My face breaks the surface and I gasp for air. There are water yagi here, too, floating lifelessly on the water, but they’re smaller and fewer in number. Juvenile yagi, probably from the source Ed was seeking to destroy.

There’s also smoke—swirling white smoke, growing ever thicker, rising from the burning thing on the shore.

The smoke is mostly swirling high in the cave. I keep my face low, near the surface of the water, and suck in deep breaths as I scan the cave for some sign of Ed. I’m in a vast space. The ceiling is somewhere high above me, lost to the smoke. The stream opens up like an underground lake, with a beach in front of me. On one side of the beach is a massive tangle of tubes and wires and gears and parts and shiny metal. It’s on fire—a slow, smoldering fire—but I suspect this massive contraption may have been the source of the explosion that stunned all the water yagi.

And I also suspect Ed was behind making the explosion happen. But where is he now?

My oxygen levels mostly restored, I swim swiftly toward the bank. I’m nearly ashore when I spot Ed, in human form, lying on his back, feet pointed toward the smoldering contraption as though he was thrown back when the explosion occurred.

Has he been lying here all this time?

Is he even breathing?

I run to him, turning into a human so I can assess his injuries, and cup his face in my hands. “Ed? Ed! Are you okay?”

Nothing. His skin is warm, but then again, the cave is hot from the burning contraption, which stinks like seared water yagi, which is even nastier than un-burnt water yagi. Ed doesn’t move, doesn’t groan or twitch or anything.

“Ed! Wake up! We’ve got to get out of here!” It’s occurred to me that, besides the possibility that the water yagi might rouse to life at any moment and pull us underwater or eat us, there’s a strong likelihood the burning contraption might not be done exploding. Even if it is, the fire is using up our oxygen, which can’t be good. We’re in a highly unstable place.

I really, really need Ed to wake up.

My tears splash against his face as I grope his neck with numb fingers, trying to find a pulse. He’s got to live. He’s
got
to. I haven’t ever had a chance to tell him how I feel about him. It can’t be too late.

What was it he said before he dived into the lake? Something about the world not even missing him? He knew he might not make it out alive, didn’t he? But he did it for me.

He did it because he loves me.

And I never got a chance to tell him how I really feel.

He has to wake up!

Besides that, he has to get up so I can get him out of here. How are we supposed to escape, anyway? The only way out that I know of is the way I came in, and I barely made it through then, before I was tired and breathless. And I wasn’t trying to haul Ed’s lifeless body. I don’t think I can make it with him, not if he’s unconscious.

And there’s no way I’m going to leave him.

Sometime in the midst of thinking all these things, my hand finds a place on his neck that’s throbbing with a sort of steady throb my fingers recognize as a pulse. I cram my hand against it to make sure, then realize maybe I’m cutting off the blood flow to his brain, which probably isn’t a very nice way to repay him, considering he destroyed the contraption that was spitting out yagi, and from the looks of it killed off all the yagi in the lake at the same moment.

“Ed!” Now that I know he’s alive, I’m back to screaming at him. “Come on! You’ve got to wake up!” And it occurs to me that I should also check if he’s breathing, so I watch his chest closely. It’s an awesome chest, all muscular and manly. But it’s not moving.

Now I feel like a total idiot. I have to give Ed rescue breaths! Of course! I should have thought of this long seconds ago.

I pull in a deep breath (I’m still catching my breath, myself, having just crawled out of the lake maybe ten or twenty seconds ago—yes, I know it feels like longer than that, but that’s because everything is so intense right now) and I clamp my lips around Ed’s lips, and blow.

Okay, so I had my eyes shut that time, so I don’t know if it did anything. I take another deep breath and try again, this time with my eyes on his chest.

And…it sort of rises a little.

I check his pulse.

Still pulsing away. That’s good, right? I tip his head back further in an attempt to open up his airway a bit more. Then I suck in my deepest breath yet, clamp my lips around his, and blow like crazy.

His chest rises, a good clear rise, this time, and then he makes a strangled gagging sound, followed by coughing.

I have never been so happy to have someone cough in my face.

“Ed? Are you alive?” When he doesn’t answer, I clamp my lips around his again, because, frankly, I’m feeling a little panicked right now, and regretful that I didn’t think of the rescue breathing sooner, and also because, gagging and coughing aside, I rather like having my lips on his.

And also because, long before the lip clamping has a chance to get awkward, Ed’s conscious again underneath me. At least, I’m pretty sure he’s conscious, because he’s kissing me back.

Did I mention that I’m kissing him? I must have forgotten to note that. We’ll blame the lack of oxygen, and also my total absorption in the task at hand, which is to kiss the very hot Scotsman who I moments ago thought I might never see again, and then moments after that feared was dead.

In between kisses, I ask him, “Are you okay?”

“Never better.”

I giggle. Yes, this is what I’ve been reduced to. Me, mighty dragon, giggling and kissing. I knew love was going to turn me into mush. I knew it! I just don’t mind so much right now, on account of the kissing.

“Wren! Ed? Are you down there?” Mom’s voice echoes from somewhere not so far away.

“Mom?” Sadly, I have to break off kissing Ed long enough to stare into the smoke (wow, that smoke is getting thick up there) to find where my mom’s voice is coming from.

“Wren? Honey—follow my voice. You’ve got to get out of there!”

I look down at Ed, panicked again now because while I was having a romantic interlude and otherwise not paying attention, the cave has been filling with thick smoke, and the water yagi contraption is sparking and sputtering and making ominous noises like another explosion might be imminent. “We’ve got to get out of here,” I inform Ed, just in case he didn’t hear my mom. “Can you move?”

“I dunno.” Ed clambers to his feet and I stand alongside him, but now we’re in the thick smoke, so I bend low again as Ed takes my hand and we run together toward Mom’s voice.

“Wren? Can you hear me? Are you coming? Are you okay?”

I try to answer her, but it’s all I can do to cough. Then we’re clambering up some rocks and Mom’s still shouting for us (it’s a good thing she’s shouting, too, because I can’t see anything but white smoke and Ed’s shoulder two feet in front of me). We sort of stumble into Mom all of a sudden, and she leads us down this twisty chasm of a path, and the smoke thins slightly, and then we’re in the cave, the one in the woods on the north side of the lake, the one where Zilpha and Felix were supposed to wait for the yellow dragon to show up.

We climb out of the hole and double over coughing.

“Come on!” Mom leads us back around the lake at a run, in the direction of the spy cabin. “We’ve got to get away from here. The smoke is still pretty thick.”

She’s right, of course, even though all I want to do is double over and cough and breathe. But the breathing won’t do me any good until we get to fresh air, so Ed and I run and cough until suddenly, the ground gives this unsettling rumble and a jet like shooting fire erupts upward into the night from the direction of the cave.

I stop running and stare at the shooting jet of fire for a second, realizing Ed and I would have been shooting out of that hole
with
the fire had Mom not gotten us out of there.

Ed pulls me snug against his chest, his arms comforting around me. He’s warm, which is nice, because in case you missed it, we’re in Siberia in the middle of the night, and I’m not wearing much and I’m still damp from swimming through the lake.

“Let’s get back to the spy cabin. Your father is going to be worried,” Mom urges.

I hurry forward through the dark woods, holding tight to Ed’s hand, not because I need him to help me find my way, but because I need the comfort of his touch.

“How did you know where to find us?” I ask Mom as we’re running.

“The explosion lit up the cave and the lake simultaneously. That’s when I suspected the two were connected. I ran in to look for Ed. I didn’t even know you were in there.”

“You went in to save Ed?” I’m panting, my lungs still not properly recovered from the smoky cave, but it feels good to force clear Siberian air through them, now that we’re far enough from the smoke to breathe clearly.

“Yes. I was worried about him after the explosion.”

Okay, maybe this is silly, but my mom’s thoughtfulness and concern hit me in a tender spot. She went into the fiery cave—a place most safety-minded folks would widely avoid—to rescue Ed. And I don’t have to ask why, because I know why. She cares about what happens to him because she knows I love him, and she loves me.

It hits me in little gasping waves, so that by the time we reach the spy cabin, my face is streaked with tears. Mom’s about to run up the steps and inside, but I grab her sleeve and pull her back into a big hug.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For caring about Ed. For rescuing us from the exploding cave.”

Mom hugs me back. “It’s okay.”

And then I realize something else—something important. “You know, you’re pretty tough, for a mom.”

Mom gives me a knowing look. “I’m a dragon. And what do you mean,
for a mom?
Our lives don’t end when we have kids, any more than they end when we marry.” Then she tweaks my cheek like I’m a little kid, because she’s my mom and she can do that, and she hops up the steps and into the cabin.

Ed has been standing silently behind me this whole time. I turn and catch him smiling wryly. “Our lives don’t end when we marry?” He repeats, his tone questioning.

“All the movies, you know,” I shrug, feeling sheepish. “They always end when the couple falls in love and rides off into the sunset together. And I didn’t want to end so I didn’t want to get married.” It sounds foolish, saying it out loud, now that I’ve realized it isn’t true.

But Ed doesn’t look at me like I’m a fool. He looks at me like he understands. “Aye, ‘tis the great unknown. Would ye think less of me if I told ye, I was a bit skeered to leave Scotland with ye? Hadn’t been off the island in many long years, not since yer grandmother Faye went missing, and I searched the world as best I could, but never found her. Felt the big world was just a place to get lost in, after that.”

It’s hard for me to imagine Ed being frightened of anything, considering how amazingly strong and brave he is. “Why did you go, then?”

“With you?” A smile spreads across his lips—a hunky kind of smile that makes me want to kiss him again. “Because ye let me. And I wanted to help. I wanted to be with ye.” He dips his head toward mine. “I’d follow ye anywhere.”

I’m tempted to kiss him again, but it’s different this time, because it would be a real kiss, not just rescue breathing gone lovely. But there’s more I need to say. “I think I’d follow you anywhere, too—since I kind of did, in the cave.”