Night Forbidden (4 page)

Oh my God
.

Mangled was an understatement, for that implied fresh wounds. But whatever had happened to make her thigh and calf look like that, twisted and deformed, her foot curled at an awkward angle and clearly impossible to dance on—let alone to fence—had happened a long time ago.

Fence swallowed, words suddenly disappearing from his mind. He felt like a damn fool. “I—uh,” he began. “Here, let me help you,” he said, offering her his arm.

As soon as the words came out, he realized it was exactly the wrong thing to say.

A
na couldn’t help the flare of annoyance, and she knew it showed on her face. “I’m fine, I don’t need your help,” she said, knowing, too, that the words came out sounding sharper than they should have.

The guy—Fence—had a stricken expression on his handsome face, and she felt a twinge of sympathy that his easy, flirtatious mood had disintegrated into shock and embarrassment. But not too much. He was clearly an expert at this game, and much as she’d enjoyed the interlude, she had more important concerns than this guy’s ego.

On the shore. Washed up on the shore.

Worry propelled her to navigate past him, inelegant as she always was when on two feet, and she brushed against his arm. Further annoyance that he hadn’t given her enough space, and that her own shortcomings made her less than graceful, made her movements even sharper and more labored.

For pity’s sake. She rarely noticed the awkwardness of her own body anymore; after all, she’d lived with her injury for more than twelve years. She didn’t even try to hide it under jeans or pants; she wore whatever was comfortable—even if it showed all of the puckered mess. Over the years, she’d gotten used to men who wouldn’t come near her once they saw the scars, or others who treated her like an ailing child, and even those who thought she was desperate and would be easily intimidated once they got her in a dark corner. As if she would settle for assholes like them.

Now, all of a sudden, this big hulk of a man with his wide, white smile had teased her into a warm flirtation, and then with a mere offer of assistance plunged her into a sea of ineptitude.

“Excuse me,” she said, pushing on with her uneven gait. She could move quickly when and if she needed to, and although it wasn’t a pretty sight, her mobility was efficient.

She felt Fence behind her, which made her feel even more awkward,
damn him
. As if she either needed to rush—although she was moving at a good pace—or that he was there, hovering behind, as if waiting for her to fall so he could catch her.

Ana ignored him. She’d made an excuse to her friends that she needed to go to the restroom, hoping they wouldn’t follow her outside to the beach.

Washed up on the shore
.

It could be anything. It was probably nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to be concerned about.

But if it had to do with the sea, she’d recognize it. And . . . things had been odd out there lately. There was something unsettled about the ocean, deep in its cold, dark depths. She knew her, the Sea, the way she knew her own body. And if something was wrong, if She’d spewed something out that was cause enough for concern from the people here in Envy, then Ana needed to know about it.

Once outside, Ana didn’t need directions to find her way to the water: of course she could smell the salt and sense the tug of its briny depths. The sun had just begun to set, to her left, and the big orange ball sat, bisected, on the edge of the world.

Straight ahead and to her right would be the moon when it rose; tonight it would be almost full and magnetic. She could almost feel the fat tugging of its pull on her and on the ground beneath her feet. The sensation of the waxing moon was even stronger when she was in the water . . . and then when it began to wane, the pull ebbed and relaxed.

“This all used to be a desert,” came a deep voice in her ear. Fence was ambling alongside her now. He was tall. Much taller than she was. “Did you know that? Before the Change, this was a huge, loud, exciting city surrounded by arid land and rugged mountains. And now . . . it’s practically the Caribbean.”

Ana spared him a nod. While she didn’t know what the Caribbean was—although she’d seen those pirate DVDs—she’d heard vague stories about the place called Las Vegas, and how the main street that divided it, called the Strip, had fairly separated during the Change. According to legend, one side of the Strip had been dumped into the ocean, along with places called California and Washington. She believed that part, having seen vast examples of submerged cities and towns when she dove and scavenged beneath the surface where no one else could hope to go.

That was how she made her living: dragging things up from the deep, like an ancient Greek pearl diver.

“It’s pretty crazy, the way this environment has changed,” Fence was saying, and she got the impression he was speaking more to himself than to her. “Now it’s green and lush, with lots of rain and water. And the frigging ocean right here in the middle of the desert. And Vegas . . . half of it underwater. The Venetian, the Bellagio, North Vegas . . . gone.”

She glanced at him, pausing in her rushed trek. “You sound as if
you’re
missing it.”

He’d stopped, too, and now he looked down at her, as if recalling that he wasn’t alone. “Yeah,” he said vaguely. “It’s just . . . impossible to believe.”

Ana looked up at him for a moment and felt a little ping in her belly. He was so good-looking, she just wanted to stare at his strong, chiseled features: his broad nose, square chin, almond-shaped eyes. And he had such beautiful skin, so dark and smooth: the color of strong tea. He was bald, with a perfectly shaped skull, and thick, full lips that looked as if they’d be amazing to kiss.

The ping inside turned into full-blown regret. Grief, for what she couldn’t imagine ever having. A superficial flirtation and bit of bantering was one thing, but anything more would be an incredible risk.

The briny smell on an uptick of breeze reminded her of more pressing matters than her self-pity, and she murmured, “Must have been terrible, the way it all happened.”

She’d heard the stories, of course, about what occurred. About how the Atlanteans and a group of men called the Elite had worked together to create a new Evolution. Yes, that was the word they used. Evolution.

Her belly twisted and she blocked her mind from traveling down that familiar path, even as she felt sick at the knowledge of what her ancestors had done. Tightening her lips, she continued walking down a street that she knew had once been lined with tall, gaudy buildings flashing bright lights of every color.

Ana had seen pictures of Las Vegas, but surely those static images weren’t an accurate portrayal of this brightly lit city Fence had spoken of. A limited number of neon lights still glowed weakly. The red and blue illumination was a beacon of welcome to any travelers who might stumble upon the town, which was enclosed by a twenty-foot wall to protect its inhabitants from the zombies and the lions, tigers, and wolves that roamed beyond.

A small crowd of people stood in front of Ana, at the spot where the thoroughfare ended, just beyond the protective wall, right at the sea. She inhaled the welcoming scent of salt and tried to edge her way through the crowd to see what they’d found.

The wall that enclosed Envy was built of old cars and massive signs called billboards, huge segments of rubble or roofs, and many other remnants from years ago that had been dragged into place. However, along the oceanfront, the wall had several gates to allow access to the fishermen and anyone else who wanted to walk along the beach. Because Ana came from the northeast on the very rare occasion when she visited Envy, she normally entered the city through one of those gates. They were left open during the day, for the walls were meant to offer protection to the inhabitants—not to keep people out or in.

As she approached, it was an automatic thing for her to slip off her shoes and allow her feet to sink into the sand. The uneven yet forgiving molding of the grains helped stabilize her bad foot and hip, and she moved even more readily through the crowd.

Ana was considerably taller than most women, just over six feet, and even before she got through to the center of the group, she could see the dark spot on the sand. A little uneasy flutter prickled when she saw the faint sparkling.

A pleasant rush of waves licked her bare feet as she made her way around the group on the sea side, and she curled the toes on her left foot into the damp sand. Her right foot, the twisted and deformed one, didn’t have that sort of dexterity anymore, although she could feel the sensation of the sand.

Ana saw Fence’s large, dark figure following in her path around the group. He, too, stood taller than most people, but instead of coming all the way around to the water where she stood, he turned and cut through the crowd. They parted for him, and she watched from a distance as he approached the mayor and his companions.

“What is it?” asked someone in the group.

Even Ana couldn’t answer that question, whether she wanted to or not. The substance on the shore looked like a rubbery, oozing mass of melted plastic. It was gray-blue and it glittered and gleamed. About six feet in diameter, it sat on top of the sand without sinking into it, and when she sniffed, she could smell more than just the salt and vegetation of the sea. Something unpleasantly murky and old.

She hovered in the shadows, her gut tightening and an uncomfortable trickle of sweat suddenly rolling down her spine. She didn’t know exactly what it was, but she knew one thing: it didn’t naturally occur in the sea.

It had to be from Atlantis.

Chapter 2

T
he odd, sticky substance looked like something from a kid’s joke shop—glittering boogers or fake magical slime.

“I don’t see how it can have any connection to the Strangers,” Quent said after looking at it, swirling a pencil through it and then sniffing the oozing blob. He’d already tried touching it with his bare hand to see if he could “read” its history, but for the first time ever, his mind came up blank. “But I sure as hell want it to.”

“It doesn’t look very threatening,” Fence said, sliding his own finger through it. Remnants of glitter clung to his skin.

They’d already tested it for flammability, and no one seemed to have had any odd reactions from touching or smelling it. It didn’t burn or sting or adhere like glue. Not even Fence, however, had volunteered to taste it.

Vaughn’s rugged face was sober. “We’ve never seen anything like it here before.”

“It did come from the ocean,” Elliott reminded them.

The four men nodded, and Fence was sure they were all thinking the same thing: Had it come from Atlantis?

The very thought would have been crazy if they and the Waxnickis hadn’t been putting the pieces of the puzzle together for months. They’d learned that a small group of the richest, most powerful people in the world before the Change had been part of a secret society called the Cult of Atlantis. These people, one of whom had been Quent’s father, were now the Strangers—or the Elite, as they called themselves—and had not only lived through the catastrophe, but had the crystals to keep them forever young. Crystals, as Quent had reminded them, were the source of energy in many an Atlantean legend. That, along with the new landmass in the Pacific Ocean, had created the unnerving suspicion that somehow, Atlantis really did exist . . . and that it had somehow erupted from the bottom of the ocean.

Impossible. Fence knew it was scientifically impossible. He knew the Earth, and she didn’t move like that.

But somehow . . . the pieces fit, and there seemed to be no other explanation for it.

“I’ll increase the patrol along the shore side of the wall,” Vaughn said, looking tense. “We don’t go into the sea very often on the north side of Envy, or very far out when we do. Too many people have gone, and never come back.”

Fence wasn’t one bit surprised.

A
week after the gray glop appeared on the beach, Fence was a little more than fifteen miles north of the city. He’d guided a group of travelers to a small settlement a bit farther east, and on his way back, he was stopping in a little seaside town to obtain some supplies for Elliott.

He was not only alone with the song he was humming and the pack on his back, but he was at last moving at his own speed—without having to make constant pit stops. Every shift in the leaves, every new smell in the breeze, every sound of an animal, gave him information. He absorbed it like a starving man.

This was his world, his life: in the bosom—
heh
—of Mother Nature. Fence grinned.
I crack myself up.

The salt of the sea tinged the air, and when he came to the top of a rise and was able to look down to see the rolling waves with their foam surging onto rocks and remnants of 2010, he paused and watched. The prickling of his skin and the nauseating flip of his belly warred with his admiration of the infinite expanse of the sea.

The town he was looking for lay to the right of his peak, and he saw about ten neat little houses near the edge of the water. New construction, built after the Change, which was fairly unusual; for most people simply maintained or scavenged old buildings. Small boats lined up along one side of a dock parallel to the beach. Trees, ruined houses, cracked roads, and even a rusted-out car with branches thrusting from its windows were scattered along the shore.

He wondered oh so idly if this happened to be the little town “up along the coast” where the sun goddess lived. Fence had learned that she—her name was Ana—came from a seaside village northeast of Envy. In the excitement over the gloppy gray stuff onshore, she had disappeared.

He wasn’t sure if it bugged him because they’d left things so awkwardly, with his inept reaction to her handicap and her sharp words . . . or because she’d taken off without so much as giving him her name. And with all the other stuff going on, he hadn’t felt compelled to go after the woman or even to hunt her down . . . but he
had
taken on the task of traveling up the coast knowing he could possibly see her again. Just because.

A shout from below and to the east caught his attention, and Fence turned to listen.

“Tanya! Tanya, where are you?”

Because the voice sounded urgent and a little panicked, he began to scramble down the hill, surefooted, with his backpack clunking rhythmically against him.

“Tanya?” came another voice, from a different direction. “Tanya!”

And then a male voice, from the original location: “Tanyaaaa!”

Fence followed the first voice, and as he came closer heard others calling the girl’s name. When he emerged from between two overgrown houses, one whose roof had been flattened by a massive tree trunk some years earlier, he was conscious of his large size and the fact that his entrance was the sudden appearance of a stranger, so he slowed to an efficient amble.

“Hello,” he called as the man and woman spun to look at him. Hope died from their faces. “Can I help you?” He smiled and stepped across a cracked driveway, its asphalt puzzle pieces outlined by tall grass and a few wild orchids.

“Who are you?” asked the man, but he seemed less nervous about Fence’s unexpected presence than concerned about Tanya.

“My name is Fence, I’m from Envy. If you’re from Glenway, then I’m in the right place. I’m looking for a guy named George.”

“Yeah, he’s here, back there,” said the man, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the town. “Have you seen a little girl? About so tall”—he showed a hip-high height—“dark hair?”

Fence shook his head. “I heard you calling her and figured I’d come and help. I’m pretty good at tracking, following trails and stuff.” It wasn’t lost on him that despite the fact that a very large man, a stranger, had suddenly appeared in the woods where a young girl was missing, neither seemed to regard him with any suspicion or unease. He relaxed a bit. “If you can tell me where you last saw her, I’ll be happy to help.”

“This way,” said the man, who introduced himself as Pete.

“We’re her mom and dad,” said the woman, whose name was Yvonne. “You’re a friend of George?” she asked, her eyes wide and hopeful, her words falling on top of each other without logic.
“Tanya!”
she shouted, then turned back to him. “You’ll help us? The last we saw her was about two hours ago. At first, we didn’t worry . . . she knows to stay here in the play area. But . . .”

“I haven’t met George yet,” Fence explained, following Pete. “But he knows a friend of mine, and—”

“Here,” said Pete. “This is where she was the last we saw.”

A playground of sorts, a clearing beneath about half a dozen tall pines, with their lowest branches well above Fence’s head. Their rust-colored needles made a soft, soundless cushion beneath tire swings and a few ropes strung between them for climbing and hand over hand swinging. Someone had taken more old tires and pieces of plastic and built an intricate play structure around three of the trees.

Fence nodded and started to look. “What color hair? How much does she weigh? What was she wearing on her feet, and how was her hair done—in pigtails or long or what?”

He needed to get a mental image of her so that he knew what to look for—how high she might brush against something, what color thread or fuzz she might leave behind, whether her hair was loose—to lose a strand more easily than if it were confined—how deep an imprint her feet would make and what the prints would look like. There were plenty of hours of daylight left. He didn’t allow himself the distraction of worrying about a little girl lost in the woods or, worse, climbing into and through rickety old buildings. Or coming upon a cougar—the only wild cat that hunted during the day.

Not yet anyway.

Absorbed, Fence looked around and found an obvious trail leading from the playground, wishing that Dantès, the big wolf dog that Wyatt, his buddy from the cave, had sort of adopted, was here. But Wyatt was over in Yellow Mountain with Theo and Lou, and Dantès’s owner, Remington Truth.

A quick glance at the sky told Fence that it was past noon, and the sun would remain high for another eight or nine hours. This whole shifting of the Earth’s axes deal was a pain in the ass when it came to estimating sunrise and sunset, as well as location, but he was getting better at adjusting for the change.

As he followed the trail, looking for shoe prints and the threads of a pink shirt, the voices calling for Tanya faded into the background. Pete and Yvonne had gone off on another trail, everyone spreading out in a wide radius around the village and playground.

Reading the little girl’s trail was nearly as simple as reading a book for Fence: he found broken sticks, rumpled bushes, scattered leaves, and footprints that led him farther from the playground. He jumped over a four-foot tree trunk and then skirted a rusted mailbox, its official royal blue paint and USPS logo long since peeled away, and called for Tanya, figuring he’d already gone more than three miles. An eight-year-old girl ought to be getting tired by now, and wanting to sit down and rest.

When he smelled damp in the air and heard the unmistakable sound of lapping waves, he began to get uneasy. Tanya’s trail had led around a battered strip mall, with every one of the ground-to-roof shop windows broken, allowing trees and bushes to grow inside a hair salon, a café, a video store, and maybe a drugstore. But behind the strip mall he could see a pretty good dip in the ground.

“Tanya!” he shouted, the sound of water filling his consciousness so that it almost drowned out the small voice calling back. “Tanya!” he shouted again, listening intently as he started down.

“It’s me!” He heard the little voice. “I’m here!” It didn’t sound distressed, and he felt a little bump of relief in the vicinity of his chest.

But trees and a few old cars crowded the space around him, and he couldn’t get a good view as he hurried down into the small ravine. At the bottom, a large pool of water looked as if it might have been a quarry, and as Fence peered around the trees, he saw the flash of pink from the girl’s shirt. It seemed higher than it should have been, and then it was gone. Was she in a tree?

“Tanya!” he called, “your mama and daddy are looking for you! They’ve been really worried.”

“I’m here! I’m okay,” she shouted back, and then he came through the brush and saw her.

Oh crap.

She was walking on a tree trunk that had split and fallen into the pond—no, correction: she was
dancing
on a tree trunk above the water. His heart stopped, his body freezing. He slid the pack from his back and dropped it on the ground.

“Tanya, sugarbear, you need to get down from there right now,” Fence said, fighting off the panic.
If she falls, if she falls . . . oh God if she falls . . .

“I’m not a bear. I’m a tree fairy,” she said, and did a little spin on her toes atop the broad trunk, and then a little jump as if to emphasize her words. His heart surged into his throat. The tree branch was about three feet above the water, and extended to the middle of an acre-sized pool.

“You’re going to fall off there,” Fence said, his voice more strident as he made his way around the edge of the pool to the fallen tree. “Please come down before you fall.”

“No I’m not!” she shouted back. “I never fall!”

As she said that, her foot slipped on the bark and she did exactly what Fence had feared.

A little scream left her lips and she slid right off the tree and splashed into the water below, quick as a blink. Until her entire body went under, Fence wasn’t certain how deep the pool was—but when she disappeared and didn’t immediately reappear, he knew it was deeper than he could handle.

His heart in his throat, Fence ran to the tree trunk, cursing and swearing like a motherfucker.
No, no, no, not this, not this, not me, not here, not now.

A sturdy branch in hand, he was out on the tree limb with quick agility, forcing himself to ignore the fact that there was water below. He was still dry and out of it, he was good. She was going to come back up in a minute, and he would hand her the end of the branch and she would grab it and he’d pull her out of the water.

Right? Right, God?

A little splash caught his attention, and Fence saw her hand come up, then a shoulder and the top of her head, a little mouth, gasping for air . . . but she was too far away for him to reach even with the branch. She slid back under with hardly a sound.

No, dammit, come back here
.

His stomach heaving and lurching, Fence reached as far as he could with the branch, calling Tanya’s name, his heart pounding in his chest. His fingers clutched the branch as if he were about to fall. Her face emerged again and for a moment he thought she’d heard him, but her arms flailed helplessly, reminding him of Brian all those years ago, and she eased back under the water.

No. Not Brian again. No.

Everything was so eerily silent; there were no splashes, no cries for help . . . yet dark terror crushed down on him.
I can’t
.
I can’t, I can’t . . .

“Help!” he shouted, bellowing with every bit of air in his lungs, even as he stared at the water, willing her to reappear. “Help!”

Christ.
How could he be calling for help? What the hell sort of pussy was he?

Just dive in.

I can’t. I can’t.
Cold sweat broke out over his forehead, trickling down from beneath his arms.
Brian.

The hands flailed again above the water, and she was even further from the tree branch, and Fence’s whole body was turning cold and numb.

It can’t be that deep. You’ll probably be able to stand up.