Tempest (#1 Destroyers Series) (18 page)

Her throat locked up. Good mother or not, she
had still murdered hundreds. Did she regret it at all? Did it
bother her at night as she drifted off to sleep?

Her father shifted in his chair to face his
brother. “That’s why Andrina’s after her. Janelle must have
inherited Mom’s power.”

His words came down on her like a life
sentence, but before she could react, a woman near the gate opened
the door and announced that the flight had started to board. Her
father stood, pulling Janelle to her feet.

A flash of terror surged through her. Her
father knew she might slaughter hundreds, and yet he was still
pulling her towards the gate. She tugged. Her wrist didn’t slip.
"Let go!"

Her father glanced at her. One of his eyes
looked a little wet around the corner. “I can’t. You’ll run.
Andrina might still be here. Please, control your emotions.”

Gary let out a breath as they drew closer to
the gate. No one spoke. What if they went straight to the boat when
they left their flight? It seemed likely—her father wouldn’t want
to hold onto her arm for long.

Hank and Gary handed their tickets to the
woman and moved down the tunnel to the plane. Gary shot a glance
back to Janelle before vanishing from sight. He'd given up the hope
he had
Sorry, Janelle
.

Her father handed the tickets to the
attendant with one hand. “Come on,” he whispered, pulling her
towards the mouth of the gate.

A woman called out from behind them. “Oh,
Lucas.”

Uh, oh. Not again.

Her father whirled around, releasing
Janelle.

She took a step to run but stopped cold.
Andrina stood ten feet away, hands folded over her chest. Fury
churned in her eyes as she stared at her father. “Come here.”

“Janelle, go,” he said. “They won’t let her
on the plane.”

Janelle found herself unable to move. The
plane--and Gary--waited behind her. Her transformation was waiting
there, too, on the other side of that flight. Escape might wait
down that hallway and past Andrina, but the
might
was too
risky. Her father wouldn't want her to kill hundreds, even if he
had betrayed her in every other way. That, she knew somewhere down
on the bottom of her chest.

Andrina walked closer, taking each step slow.
She gave a friendly smile, but it was a deception. "Hello again,
Janelle." She turned to her father, not dropping her friendly tone.
"I can't believe you thought you could hide her from me for so
long. I have every right to--"

“Stay away from Janelle.” Her father’s voice
took on a trace of a growl.

Janelle flinched. She was seeing another
aspect of him for the first time, one he had kept hidden under his
own mask for decades.

Silence. Andrina stared right at her, gray
eyes boring right into her soul. The corner of her mouth twitched.
Like she wanted to say something that she’d held in for a hundred
years. Something crushing.

A prickle raced across Janelle’s skin. She
couldn't risk it. “Come on, Dad.” Her heart hammered against her
ribcage as she pulled on his sleeve. “I’ll go.”

The ticket woman looked from Andrina to her
father and back again. “Please, sir. The plane can’t wait for you.
And if you don’t have a ticket, ma’am, I’ll have to call
security.”

The friendly face dropped away as Andrina's
eyes seemed to darken to a more ominous gray. “Fine,” she snapped,
storming back towards the hallway. Pulling a phone from her pocket,
she crossed the room and vanished into the thickening crowd of
travelers.

* * * * *

“How come she gave up so easy?” Janelle sat
near the window and watched her father take the aisle seat,
effectively blocking her in. At the moment, she didn't care. At
least she was away from Operation Reckoning.

“What happened?” Gary asked from across the
aisle.

Janelle twisted in her seat to answer him,
but her dad interrupted, keeping his voice down to a mumble she
could barely understand. “She’s not stupid, Janelle. An airport’s
the worst place to cause trouble, even for our kind. There’s no way
she could’ve fended off all the security. They shot a guy one time
for trying to run onto a flight he wasn’t supposed to be on.”

“If she’s not stupid, how come she came after
me at the school? She has to know only your parents can pick you up
from there. It's the policy in every school.”

“Good point,” said Gary, leaning forward in
his seat.

Her father started to wipe off his glasses.
The wall of silence had gone back up, and with the vacationers
filling the seats around them, she couldn't tear it down anytime
soon. They wouldn't be able to talk much on the flight about any
more Tempest business.

Janelle sank back into the seat and looked
ahead at the vacationers surrounding them. If she wasn’t a Tempest,
she’d be going on vacation, too. Enjoying the beach and the water,
not running from it. The silence finally got so awkward that she
had to say something, even if it was generic. "At least we’re going
to be away from her.”

“I didn’t say she was done coming after us.
She has money and contacts and she knows where we’re headed, which
is why we’ve got to meet Deon faster than ever. That includes a
private jet."

The plane took off. Gravity pushed Janelle
back into her seat. Houses and car headlights grew smaller below
her. She stifled back a cry as she remembered what was waiting for
her at their destination. When they landed, they’d be in the
Bahamas and she’d be mere hours—or minutes—from her
transformation.

Gary started to snore after fifteen minutes.
The exhaustion had finally claimed him, and there was nothing he
could do now, anyway. Her own eyelids drooped, but she couldn’t
stop staring at the carpet of clouds below them as the sun rose.
What did it feel like to be a hurricane, anyway? Was it anything
like this, drifting miles above the earth and looking down at the
land below? Her stomach turned at the thought of becoming one. She
might be the next Andrina or Camellia, even without Operation
Reckoning. Her father had to understand that, and yet he wasn't
turning back.

Hot tears gathered in the corners of her eyes
and threatened to start spilling out. Turning away from her father,
she wiped them away on her sleeve. No. She wouldn’t bawl. When the
time came, she’d fight with all she had.

The clouds parted some time later, and the
ocean sparkled miles below. Another tingle swept through her body
at the sight of it. For a moment she imagined diving into the clear
waters. Letting them sweep over her. Allowing her full power to
burst free of this tiny, restrictive body and to—

The urge. It was happening, like Mr. Deville
said it would. Janelle scooted away from the window.

Her father wrapped his arm around her. “It’s
okay. I know you’re nervous.”

She didn't pull away. Better him than the
ocean and its pull. Janelle closed her eyes and listened to her own
breathing. She could pretend to sleep and think up a plan. She’d
have more strength in the Bahamas, being closer to the ocean. So
would Gary. But nothing came. Her money was gone, so she'd never
make it back here.

Minutes passed, then an hour. After a while,
the hum of the airplane quieted as the pilot started to cut the
power. Panic blossomed in her gut, forcing her eyes open.

The sun had come up by now. The plane
descended through puffy clouds. Land—and ocean—whizzed by out the
window.

Gary woke and jumped as the plane landed with
a jolt. Pavement flew past outside and the sun beat into the
window. They’d arrived.

The plane swung around quickly—too quickly—to
the terminal. Janelle prayed for some kind of delay. A psychotic
passenger. Some kind of quarantine for a strange disease. Anything.
But no luck. The plane stopped and the pilot welcomed them to the
Bahamas.

Janelle’s father took her arm again as they
disembarked and entered the airport. Gary and Mr. Deville dragged
their feet behind them, yawning.

“You awake, Gary?” she asked, trying to sound
casual.
You ready to make a break for it, Gary?

But Gary seemed to get it. His eyes darted
back and forth. He was looking for a good place to run. His gaze
landed on a maintenance hallway to the left. That might work.
Janelle tensed, ready to break away from her dad as soon as the
crowd parted.

But no.

“Lucas!” A tall, dark-skinned man weaved
through the crowd with a wide smile splitting his face. He took her
father’s hand and shook it, slapping him on the back. “I haven’t
seen you in sixteen years!”

Her father turned his head to face her. “This
is Deon. Deon, Janelle.”

The man beamed at her, showing huge teeth.
His gray spiral birthmark stood out on his left arm. “And I haven’t
seen you, well, ever. Your dad never had time to introduce you to
anyone.”

Janelle tried to shrink away and scowl at
him. She had no reason to hide her anger now. She wanted them to
know what this was doing to her. Wanted him to know she hated him.
How many unsuspecting Tempest teenagers had he taken on fake scuba
diving lessons?

Deon looked to her father, his smile
vanishing. “She knows, doesn’t she?”

Her dad lowered his voice. “We’ve got to get
to the boat
now
. Andrina knows we’re here. Do you have it
ready?”

“Uh, oh. It’s at the marina. Come on.” Deon
waved them through the crowd. “Sorry about the short
introduction.”

"That's okay," her father said, dragging her
along.

Mr. Deville squeezed in between her and Gary
again, bumping him out of the way with his larger mass and seizing
her other arm.

“Do we really have to rush like this?” she
asked, scraping her shoes against the carpet to slow down. It
wasn’t helping much.

Her father stared straight ahead through the
crowds, so intent it seemed he was trying to part the crowd with
his gaze. “Yes, we do. We don’t have time for anything.”

They moved through the security checkpoint,
jostling past vacationers. Her father kept his lips pressed tightly
together in this tight crowd. Mr. Deville made an off-hand comment
about the weather, for the benefit of the people around them more
than her, but nothing came from her dad. No generic words of
comfort. No assurance that there was a good reason behind this. No
anything.

A pair of security officers pushed bins of
shoes through the metal detectors. Janelle shot one of the men a
wide-eyed glance, but he turned to hand a really loud family their
stuff. The hallway widened into a huge main plaza where voices
echoed everywhere and luggage rolled past. Morning light poured in
through glass windows and cast bright rectangles on the floor. Food
smells filled the air, but they only made Janelle’s stomach feel
worse.

Deon picked up his pace and held the doors
open. Fresh air with a faint salty smell washed over Janelle.
Another tingle swept through her body, and with it, a spike of
panic. It was close. The ocean—and her transformation.

Her feet slapped against the pavement as they
neared Deon’s car, a little gold one under a palm tree. The sound
grew louder and louder in her ears.

“In, honey.” Her father opened the door and
steered her into the backseat.

Janelle slid along the leather, going for the
door on the other side. It was her last escape.

But no. Mr. Deville opened it and took the
window seat as her father came in behind her. She was stuck sitting
between them. They’d blocked her in.

Gary slammed the door once in the front
passenger seat. “Why can’t you give Janelle a break?”

He was still trying after all. It gave her
hope. She couldn't give up yet.

Her father swallowed. “We’re not Andrina,
Gary. And you know the law.”

“But you’re doing the same thing she did.” He
pounded the glove compartment, which fell open to vomit Deon’s
papers and CD’s all over the floor. The anger and the pain
emanating from him rolled back and filled the entire car, making
her tense

“No, we’re not.” Her father sucked in a
breath and spoke louder, for her as well as him. “I’m just making
sure things aren’t any worse than they have to be.”

Aren't any worse than they have to be.
Something about the way he said it made it sound like this was her
inescapable fate after all, that that it had been stupid to even
try to avoid it. Maybe he was right, and there really
wasn't
a way out? He must know more about this kind of stuff than she
did.

Janelle felt too miserable to argue. All she
could do was hug her knees as Deon started the car and made his way
out of the lot.

“I can't do this,” Janelle blurted as her
vocal cords started to unlock.

She looked past Gary’s messy hair and ahead
at the palm trees, blue skies, and pink buildings as they rolled
through traffic. Paradise. If she had stayed ignorant of her
Tempest status, she would have come here happy. With no escape from
her fate, but happy. It would have saved her a lot of suffering,
because there was nothing anyone could say to her now that would
make her feel better.

Her father started to say something, but Deon
slammed on his brakes as a green truck cut them off and sped
through a yellow traffic light. “What an idiot! What’s so important
that they have to nearly kill us?”

“Calm down,” her father said as the car
stopped at the light. He took a deep breath. “We’ll be sailing soon
and it won’t even matter.”

Sailing soon.
Janelle seized the
armrest, watching her fingernails blanch. She thought of that scene
from the
Wizard of Oz
, with the red hourglass running down
and rapidly draining its sand. “If this really has to be done for
some reason, pick someone else to change instead of me. The Elder
Council won't know the difference, right?"