Madly and Wolfhardt (11 page)

Bling, bling,
I heard again.

Jersey held up her hand, where she gripped a bicycle bell that some unfortunate kid had apparently lost on the beach.

“Isn’t it cool?”

“It’s a toy, Jersey,” I said wryly.  “From a bike.”

“I know,” she admitted, no less excited.
 “Isn’t it awesome?”

Bling, bling.

I rolled my eyes.  I could see where this was going.  She was going to ring that bell, day and night, until I would be forced to either steal it and hide it away or ram it down her throat until she choked to death on it.  Otherwise, I’d go slowly insane.

I was happy to see Kellina step forward just then.

“So, it’s all true?”

I nodded.

“It’s all true.”

“So what does that mean for me?”

I could tell by the frightened, bewildered look in her eyes that the full weight of what I’d told her had settled like an unwanted, leaden mantle across her shoulders.

“Well, now that you know, you can help us to find the Wolfhardt descendent before…well, soon,” I said, not wanting to scare her any more than she already was.

“But how?  How can I help?  I don’t know anything about…
anything.”

“You’ll be more help than you know.  Like telling me about the flowers this morning.  That was huge.  Huge!  Information like that could blow this thing wide open.”

“So, what do I need to do then?” she asked nervously.

“Live your life, just like you have been,” a low silky voice suggested from behind me.  A ripple of pleasure made its way between my shoulder blades and down my back. “We’ll be watching you very closely in the meantime.”

While I was having a very physical reaction to Jackson, Kellina was still digesting.

“Watching me?  Who will be watching?”

“Sentinels.”

“What are Sentinels?”

“They’re sort of like soldiers.  Mer soldiers.  I have several assigned to you.”

“Already?  You’ve got people watching me already?”

“Yes.”

I could tell that Kellina wanted to put up a bit of a fuss, but she thought better of it.  Wise girl.

Kellina looked casually behind her and then asked, “Where are they?”

“They’re around.”

“I didn’t even know.”

Jackson’s lips pulled up at the corners in the hint of a grin.  He was proud of his stealthy band of not-so-merry Mer.

“And you won’t.”

Kellina’s brow wrinkled a tiny bit, but she said nothing else.  No one liked being watched, especially when they couldn’t see who was doing the watching.

At Jackson’s urging, we made our way back through town toward campus.  Jackson, Jersey, and I went one way, leaving Aidan and Kellina to say their goodbyes and make plans to meet later. 

In our room, Jersey chattered about her bell and the duck.  Her rhetorical musings allowed my mind to wander off, toward thoughts of Jackson, as usual.

I wanted to thank him for saving me, for risking his safety for mine, but I knew what he’d say.  He would assure me that it was his job—nothing more, nothing less—and that would make me feel…depressed.  Disgruntled.  So, I kept my gratitude to myself, along with all the other myriad Jackson-related feelings that secretly tortured me.

“Madly!”

Jersey was calling my name, quite loudly I might add.

“What?”

“Were you even listening to me?”

“Sorry, I must have missed that last part.  What were you saying?”

“Coffee.  Berlin and Aken.  You’re still going, right?”

Crap!
I’d forgotten all about our agreement to meet for coffee today. 

“Of course.”

“Well, since you took a swim, don’t you think you need a shower before we go?”

As I looked down at my still-damp clothes, stringy strands of blonde hair fell forward as if to illustrate Jersey’s point.

“I suppose I do.  What time did you say we’re supposed to meet?”

Jersey’s lips thinned as her frustration increased.  She punctuated each word with an angry ring of her bell.

“I.  Told.  You.  Six.  O. Clock.”  
Bling.  Bling.  Bling.  Bling.  Bling.  Bling.

“Am I going to have to take that bell and beat you to death  in your sleep with it?” I forced through gritted teeth.

Jersey pulled the bell back out of my reach.

“Don’t you touch my bell.”

“Ring it again and I’m chewing off a finger.”

She
humphed
and turned toward the closet, flipping idly through clothes, the bell clasped securely but silently in her hand.

“You should wear this,” she said, pulling out a deep blue-green tank with sequins at the top.  “It brings out the aqua in your eyes.”

“We’re going to the coffee shop, not the red carpet.”

Jersey made a face at me.

“Grumpy,” she said under her breath as she turned back to the closet.  “Go shower.  I’ll find you something else.”

Biting my tongue, I grabbed the necessities and headed for the shower.  I silently fussed about Jersey as I deposited my things on the bench in the bathroom and turned on the water. 

My irritation with her didn’t last long, though.  The instant I stepped beneath the warm spray of the shower, I felt my ire melt away as if it had never been.

I was lathering my hair when I felt a shift in the air around me.  It was like a subtle cooling of the ambient temperature.

Cautiously, uneasily, I parted the shower curtain and looked around the bathroom.  It was still as empty as it had been when I’d arrived only a few minutes before. 

I closed the curtain and turned back toward the spray.  That’s when I felt something cold climbing up my legs.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Like thick tendrils of black smoke rising from the shower drain, the Seer seeped into the stall.  I watched, mute and immobile, as his dark, diaphanous body filled the tiny cubicle.

I looked up into the empty holes where eyes should have been just as it wrapped its barely-there fingers around my wrists and started to pull.

My heart pounded so erratically inside me I felt it against my spine, as if at any moment it might burst through my back and land on the wet shower floor.  Despite my fear, however, I was helpless to stop it when the Seer dragged me down, down, down as we followed the water into the drain.

I felt something inside me separate as if the part of me that made me
me
was being ripped away from my body.  I looked back and I could see me standing beneath the spray of water, still and quiet, like a very realistic, life-like mannequin.

And then I saw nothing.  I felt the dips and sways of travel, but my eyes could not perceive anything but blackness. 

Then we burst through…something, and the Seer was pulling me through the sky high above the waves of the ocean.   Night had fallen now and it was raining.  We drifted through the precipitation as if we were part of it, as if we were gliding from one fat drop to the next, making our way through the world.

I looked down and saw land come into view.  We were flying across Slumber.  I recognized Atlas Drive, the main road that traveled parallel to the shore.  I could see the group of buildings where Transport was located, and the Town Square with its perfectly manicured rectangles of grass.  I saw the quad in the center of campus as we zipped over it.  And then I saw tree tops come into view and knew we were nearing the forest.

We slowed as we reached the trees, gradually descending until we passed through the canopy of leaves and hovered just above the ground, drifting in the heavy mist.

I looked at the Seer, who raised one ghostly arm and pointed out into the forest.  My eyes followed his long finger. 

At first, I saw nothing more than what I would expect to see in the forest at night.  But then, as I watched the occasional raindrop disappear into the wet leaves, I saw something move.  

I focused sharply on the spot and nearly missed the ethereal shape as it climbed around the side of a tree and stopped, clinging to the bark just below a thick, twisted branch.

He was so wispy, so nearly-transparent, I could barely make out the features of the creature.  He was small, not much bigger than a raccoon, and he was barrel shaped.  His spindly arms were warped and knobby like the tree branches above his head.  His face was deeply wrinkled and boasted a sharply hooked nose and two glowing yellow eyes that stared at me through the fog.

Impaling me with his eerie orbs, the creature opened up his tiny mouth and made a hissing sound that caused my skin to crawl.  With the noise, I saw movement erupt all around me, teasing my peripheral vision.   I looked left then right and upon every tree that I could see was another of the creatures, watching me with those gleaming yellow eyes.

“What are they?” I whispered. 

I wasn’t really expecting an answer, considering the company I was keeping.  But one came nonetheless.  It was neither verbal nor physical; it was more implied, as if something impressed the knowledge upon me, planted it somehow.  It simply appeared in my brain that these were the dark spirits of the trees.  I wondered if that was the Seer answering my question.

A silvery brightness broke through the treetops and drew my attention upward.  The wind had parted the foliage and, through the break, I could see the perfect circle of a full moon.

I was just admiring the beauty of it when a crashing sound brought my eyes back to the ground.  All the scary faces of the tree spirits were turned in one direction, a direction that was straight ahead, in front of me.   So, with a little niggle of apprehension gnawing at me, I too watched the dark forest.  I wasn’t absolutely certain that I wanted to know what could catch and hold their attention so completely.

I heard the sound again, just before I saw a black shape weaving between the trees, making its way toward the space where the Seer and I hovered.

My pulse pounded in my ears as I watched it draw nearer.  In the darkness, I could see the mirrored flash of the moon reflected in its eyes as it looked around the forest like a predator searching for prey.

As it padded silently over the dappled forest floor, it passed through beams of moonlight that glittered in the pelt of a fur-covered spine. 

When it was nearly upon me, I held my breath, afraid that it might hear me breathe, but it passed by as if it had no idea that I drifted in the air so close.  I saw the lengthy nose of a muzzle and the long, pointed ears of a wolf as the creature walked in front of me.  It was walking on all fours, but I could see by its form that it could easily stand up and walk upright.

In my heart, I knew that this was no dog, no wolf, no typical wild creature.  This was the Wolfhardt descendant and I was watching him stalk the woods.

As I saw the thick tail swish by, I thought that I’d like to follow him, see where he goes.  And just like that, I was moving along easily behind the creature.