Abnormals underground 01.., p.74
abnormals underground 01 - one to five, page 74
I would never stop being a monster.
“Alyssa!” Xavier shouted after me.
I didn't run far, only a couple of streets over. Things were too unsafe for me to wander off. I came to a small park that was completely unlit. It was so dark that my gray vision kicked in. I wondered if Janine could see the same way now. I ran in and sat underneath a tree. My sword dug into the ground, where I wanted to go.
I didn't know how long I sat there, looking at the darkness behind my closed eyelids, but eventually, Xavier's footsteps approached. His scent had changed. He had eaten a few bites of the TV dinner. Janine must have made him eat before he set out. Xavier must have known that I hadn't gone far because he was in no hurry.
“Alyssa,” Xavier said.
I lifted my head. I knew he'd deliver another pep talk. Xavier would tell me that none of this was my fault.
But instead, he sat down next to me and said nothing.
I had screwed up big time, and we both knew.
We both looked out at the darkness together for minutes. At last, Xavier spoke.
“The world needs to stop kicking you when you're down.”
I sighed, glad he hadn't given me a talk. There was no room for one. Nothing would make this situation better.
“It hasn't been great to you, either,” I said.
“Janine doesn't hate you, Alyssa. She was willing to take the risk of getting bitten to help stop the world from ending. I think that's a pretty good trade off.”
“But now her mother is going to reject her, and she's going to know what it's like to have no one.”
Xavier snorted. “You have more people than you think you do. You have me. You have Janine. You will have Trish and Thorne and the others once we get them freed. Your dad, too. And Janine will have us.”
I knew his words should comfort me. I couldn't remember a darker night. It felt even thicker than the one Russell Fox had emerged from so long ago. It was as if the atmosphere was already changing.
“I know I have you,” I said, resting my head on his shoulder. "I'm glad."
“I'm never going to leave you," Xavier said, rubbing his hand through my hair. "I don't care what happens. And don't you dare say that you don't deserve me. Stop listening to what everyone says about you."
His words hit me deep in the chest. Xavier knew me. "That's hard when society, the media, and your own family all say you're a monster."
"I know that it is," he said. "It wears you down. Hey, I'm supposed to be an idiot. A reject."
"You're not," I said, thinking of how Thoreau liked to taunt Xavier. "Maybe we should all run away so Thoreau can't find us." I felt like a coward, but it was logical. If Thoreau needed me, removing myself from the picture might help.
Xavier sighed. “I don't know if that plan will work. He did use your blood to track you down once. That's why that banshee attacked you in that store. He might still have some of your blood.”
“Then why hasn't he tracked me down again?” I asked. Panic rose inside of me. Allunna had taken my blood to Thoreau after my fight with her. He might still have some of it. The mayor could be toying with me, making me easier to handle. I answered my question. "Maybe it's because he didn't have to track me down. He just had to wait until I did what he wanted."
Deep down, I knew that running away wouldn't work. The mayor would draw me in. Thoreau had plenty of bargaining chips. He'd set everything against us. The only way out would be to try something he wouldn't expect.
“Alyssa, you said something about finding new fighters when we first got back to the beach. Remember that?”
“Never mind about that. I haven't had fantastic ideas lately, as you can see.”
“No. I want to hear it. One of your ideas saved my life.” Xavier leaned close to me. His breath caressed my cheek. “I'm so happy that I'm still here with you.”
“You were mad that I went to Thoreau and then let him send me to Death's underworld.”
“You didn't have a choice. At the time, I didn't want us to get too close." He leaned closer, kissing my cheek. Tingles raced through my body like happy flowers. Xavier wrapped his arm around me, pulling me to him.
We were full battle partners now, locked in for life. Everyone knew that battle partners often took it further.
“Come on,” Xavier said. “We should get back to Janine. I left her alone in the kitchen. Janine said that she heard you come to this park.”
I stood, unsure how long Janine had before she became a full vampire. My Turning happened when I was two. The memory was fuzzy.
It took everything for me to return and face her.
Janine still stood in the kitchen when Xavier and I entered the house. My best friend picked at another TV dinner, pushing around the food with a plastic fork. I watched as she brought a carrot up to her mouth, took a bite, and grimaced at the taste. She managed to swallow. Janine could still eat regular food.
Soon, she would throw up when she tried.
"Hey," she said.
I couldn't remember the first time my parents had to feed me out of a blood bag, but I did recall trying chocolate cake when I was five. I threw up. Soon, Janine would have to explore other food options. That would make it real.
“You're back,” Janine continued, spearing another carrot with a fork. She chewed that one and swallowed, eyeing the mashed potatoes like they were liver and onions. A look of worry came over her face. “Are you okay?”
“I should be asking you that question,” I said, fighting not to flee again. “How are you feeling?” My words were sharp. I was angry at someone, and it wasn't the person in front of me. Maybe it was Thoreau. Maybe I was furious with myself.
Janine turned away. “My stomach's not liking this food. Too many preservatives."
Xavier shot me a look. The full situation hadn't hit her yet. Janine still grasped onto denial.
Xavier slipped his hand into mine and squeezed.
He didn't want me to run. Xavier had lost a battle partner before. He was scared of repeating the experience.
“We should rest and think," Xavier said. He spoke more to Janine than me. “Tomorrow we need to figure out how to stop Thoreau from merging the worlds. He's very, very close. You haven't heard yet, Janine, but things are going downhill."
Janine looked up. “What happened at the bunker? You haven't told me yet."
I had to deliver my bad news. A tremor swept over me. “I don't know what to do,” I managed.
I told Janine everything.
“What?” Janine asked, walking over to me. “That can't be true.”
And even though I had ruined her life, she let me collapse into her arms.
Chapter Five
I lay on the floor of the living room again. Janine had returned to her room. I didn't shed tears very often, but tonight I had, all over Janine's shoulder, for more reasons than one. I finally had Xavier, but I had lost everything else. He was the only thing holding my sanity together. My father was still captive. Thoreau had enslaved the Underground. Janine didn't understand that she couldn't come back from where she was going. The world just might end. And there was nothing I could do about what Thoreau had told me.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him laughing at me.
The only course of action I could take was to avoid going into the Infernal at all costs. As long as I stayed out of there, I wouldn't go demon.
But could I stay out of there? Thoreau probably still had a sample of my blood. If I ran, he could use it to track me with one of his Dark Mages. I had the feeling he reserved that tactic for whenever I wouldn't fall into his plans.
I stared at the ceiling of George's living room for a long time. I had memorized all the little patterns on it. In the other room, Janine tossed and turned, trying to sleep as her body continued to change. Soon, she would only need an hour or so per day.
The fangs came in last. I remembered that part. Once those arrived, you had officially Turned.
Mom had screamed when she peeked into my mouth a few days after fleeing the hospital.
Then she filed them down with something metal, and it was horrible. An awful grinding filled my head, and my teeth ached. I remembered the ugly brown curtains in the hotel room we'd stayed in at the time. That color, and the grinding.
I didn't know what had happened to my set of files. I had left them at the house when Thoreau had broken in with the ATC.
I wondered if Janine would like them.
Eventually, when the first light appeared outside, I got restless and turned on the TV. My thoughts were driving me insane. I needed something to distract myself.
The news was on. A couple of anchors were talking in low voices about the new water park that was opening in a couple of days. They both had big smiles on their faces, maybe because most of Cumberland's Abnormals were gone. I turned the volume up a little, sure that Janine would hear it. I wanted her out here. I had to know for sure that she didn't hate me, even though she had every reason to.
Janine emerged from the guest bedroom five minutes later, fully awake, the sunglasses back over her face. I hated sunglasses. Thoreau wore them.
“What's going on?” she asked.
She moved faster and with more grace. Quicker. It wasn't something a Normal would notice, but I could see it. She sat down next to me as if I hadn't destroyed her Normal life. I couldn't tell if there were any changes to her teeth yet.
Meanwhile, Xavier still breathed from the computer room, exhausted and knocked out.
“Nothing. Things are all happy in the Normal world,” I said. “They're talking about a water park instead of how bad Abnormals are.”
“I've wanted to go to that park," Janine said. "Maisha and I have been talking about it for months. We were planning on going swimsuit shopping just for the opening. Maisha's all excited about sunbathing and checking out the shirtless boys.”
Janine stopped right there. She tripped on the word sunbathing.
There would be no more of that.
Ever. It was beginning to hit, and the person at fault was sitting right next to her.
“Janine, I--”
It was my turn to choke. The screen changed to a recording of Thoreau, dressed in his suit and sunglasses and his full human glamour. The sun reflected off his bald head as he gave the camera his charming smile and gestured to the water park behind him. It was obvious this had been filmed late yesterday, well after the scene at the bunker.
I didn't have to turn up the television. I could hear what the mayor was saying, even though the volume was minimal. I didn't want to look at Thoreau, but I had to force myself. I had a bad feeling about this.
“Now that the Abnormal problem has come under far better control, this is a perfect time to celebrate the victory for the City of Cumberland,” he said. “It's predicted that one or two thousand people will attend the opening ceremony for Water Adventure right here in the Grand Plaza at midnight Friday. It's been months of planning, and I've been working with the design team to bring the people of Cumberland this amazing gift. After the events of the last few weeks, the people need a reason to celebrate. I'm looking forward to speaking at this ceremony."
I forced myself to avert my gaze from Thoreau to another part of the TV screen. I focused on the water slides in the background, the fake mushrooms that spouted sparkling water, the curvy river filled with inner tubes and the food stalls in the distance. It was an excellent park, sure to fit thousands on the hottest days. Spotlights were everywhere, shining down on a gigantic, perfectly round swimming pool right behind Thoreau. It must be as wide as half a football field and able to fit hundreds of people. I had never seen a pool that big.
The dread feeling exploded in my gut.
“Janine,” I said. “Look.”
“I'm watching this for you,” she said. “I understand if you don't want to see this.”
“No. Look. Behind the mayor.”
She did, lowering her sunglasses to do so. Her eyes were a tiny bit redder.
“Oh." She frowned. "That pool looks like what you said portals look like."
“Exactly,” I said. “We have to wake Xavier up.”
Thoreau continued to speak about rewarding the people of Cumberland. He gestured to the pool behind him. There was a load of open sidewalk around the pool, enough room for tons of guests to stand. It was a strange setup for a water park. A platform had already been built on the far side of the pool, complete with a podium and a microphone where Thoreau would speak.
I didn't like this one bit.
The news cut to another story as I raced down the hall and invaded the computer room without asking. Xavier was asleep from sheer exhaustion, and Liliana was in a sleeping bag. I had to step over her, and I gave Xavier a gentle nudge with my foot. “Up,” I whispered as he blinked. “Sorry for the rude awakening, but Janine and I just got a rude awakening.”
Xavier dressed and joined us two minutes later, blinking sleep out of his eyes. By then, the news story had finished, and they were talking about a new dog park instead. It was all feel-good stories now. The missing ATC agents hadn't even been mentioned this morning as if Thoreau had coerced the news into not mentioning it. It was media at its finest. We told Xavier what we'd seen, and Xavier's eyes got huge.
“They've been planning the Cumberland Water Adventure for years,” Xavier said. “They started planning it when I was six. I remember my parents telling me how fun it would be to go.”
“Well, there's going to be a giant portal in it,” I said. “And room for about two thousand people to stand around it. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”
“A huge sacrifice,” Xavier said, paling. “The ritual to bring together the worlds must require a big one.”
“Exactly,” I said. “There's going to be up to two thousand people there. At midnight. Under the full moon.” I didn't say what else he meant. Thoreau had set a date two days from now. That meant he was confident that I'd be there to help him with it. I wanted to throw up. I checked the house, making sure that he and no one else was watching us. Every sense sharpened. I heard nothing but a bird skittering around in a nearby tree.
Xavier paced and shook his head. “I thought they kept pushing the date back for the water park due to money problems. That was always the story. They were originally supposed to finish it years ago. Then they'd stop working on it. Now they're about to finish it again.”
“It's because of me,” I said. "The mayor wanted to wait for me."
Hell would spill into the world through Cumberland's Water Adventure. Then it would turn into Cumberland's Fire Adventure. I wondered if Thoreau planned to keep it open that way. I knew what he'd say: that he liked the idea.
Janine turned the TV off. “Time to hit the Internet,” she said. I checked out her teeth as she spoke, but they still looked the same. The final stage of her Turning hadn't arrived yet. She got up and fished her phone out of the couch cushions, then thought better of it and grabbed her laptop off the coffee table.
It didn't take her too long to look up the plans for the Water Adventure park. The three of us gathered on the couch, me on one side of Janine and Xavier on the other. No one else was up. The light outside got gray, then pink, as she pulled up the ground plan for the park.
It looked pretty ordinary at first. Colorful sketches of water slides and even a roller coaster filled the screen. Puffy trees dotted the landscape.
But my enhanced vision had a way of bringing out details that most Normals missed.
“It looks like--” I said.
“A pentagram,” Janine said. “It's not the upright one, either. I heard that they're only bad if they're upside down, and this one--”
“Is upside down,” I finished.
She was right. At first glance, the map of the Water Adventure park looked ordinary, like something you'd see in a brochure. But there was an inverted pentagram there if I looked at the smaller details underneath all the rides. The sidewalks. The fences. Even the trees and shrubs contributed. They formed a giant star that wasn't visible right away because some of the rides and trees overlapped the walkways. The park itself was round, and a fence encircled it all.
The big pool where the ceremony would take place was right in the center of the park. As if that wasn't disturbing enough, the attractions seemed to be a part of the horror as well.
Death's Dive was the name of the water slide at the bottom point. The water tunnel in the bottom right point of the star was called The Dragon's Lair. The one roller coaster in the entire park was in the top right point and labeled the Baron's Barbecue. It was complete with fire jets around the ride that could be illegal. To the left of the Barbecue was a water funnel ride called the Vampire's Castle and in the bottom left point of the star was a final water slide named the God of War.
I think Xavier and I spotted that at the same time. He lifted his finger and pressed it to the name, mouthing the words.
“Oh. The two of you are right. I see it now. This map is a giant ritual circle,” Xavier said, removing his finger from the screen. “All five members of the Dark Council are represented here.”
“It's got to be the biggest ritual circle in the world,” I said. “This is where the Dark Council is going to meet, isn't it? The ruins at Turkey were a distraction.”
“It has to be,” Xavier said. He wouldn't take his eyes off the God of War water slide. “This must be their improvement over their old haunt at the ruins. Way to make it modern.” His thoughts were elsewhere. He was thinking about those three words and what they could mean.
I'd cut right to it. “Xavier, do you know the origin of War Mages?"
He shook his head. “I don't know the story. We're just here.”
“Dark Mages were made by Death thousands and thousands of years ago,” I said. “How long is your history? All types of Mages had to start somewhere.”
“I don't know that, either,” Xavier said.
“Someone must have started your line,” I said. “And you said that your family is supposed to be the most powerful War Mage family out there.”
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