A Trail of Echoes (3 page)

After everything I had seen of Ben’s behavior, I was beyond nervous at the idea of him being stuck on a boat surrounded by possibly hundreds of humans. I wouldn’t be able to leave his side for a moment.

I gulped, then looked toward the small cabin in the middle of the harbor buildings that, going by the sign above its door, was a ticket office.

“Well, first, let’s see if there are even tickets available,” I said. “They might be fully booked.”

We headed down to the building and I was surprised to see it was open so early. Ben moved close behind me, one arm around my waist as I pushed the door open and we stepped inside.

There was a bleary-eyed Arab man sitting at a desk.

“Hello,” he said, forcing a smile.

Ben motioned to take a seat next to me behind the desk, but I sat myself on his lap so that the back of my neck was pressed hard against his face. It was too early in the morning for me to witness another slaughter.

The man raised a brow at me as I looked at him, unfazed.

“Good morning,” I replied in Arabic, clearing my throat. “What cruises do you have available today?”

He pulled out a pamphlet from one of the drawers. “There are quite a few leaving and stopping by this port. Where would you like to go?”

“Uh, any ship traveling north or eastward.”

He frowned. “That’s a little vague, ma’am.”

“What is the earliest you have?”

“
The Empress
should be stopping here for a short break in… about fifteen minutes, actually. I might be able to find a spare cabin.” He handed me a pamphlet about the cruise and squinted as he eyed his computer.

I glanced through the pamphlet, waiting with bated breath.

“Hm, no… I’m sorry.
The Empress
appears to be fully booked.”

“Then when would the next—?”

“Oh, wait.” He held up a hand. “Yes, there is a spare cabin. But it’s a very expensive one—the executive suite on the top level of the vessel.”

“Will it be making any stops this evening, after sunset?”

“One stop at about 9pm, though only a very short one.”

“That’s fine,” I said immediately. “We’ll book that.”

When the man told me the price, I barely batted an eyelid. We had more than enough.

Daring to shift my weight from Ben for a second, I reached for the backpack and then sat back down again. Reaching into the bag, I counted the cash and handed it to the man. He issued us the tickets and instructed us where to wait. But the sun’s rays had begun to trickle down upon the harbor.

Although I was anxious to get Ben far away from this man, I asked, “Would it be possible to wait in here until it comes?”

He nodded. “Do you have any luggage that you need help with?” he asked, looking through the window outside as if wondering if we had left it out there.

“No,” I said. “We, uh, travel light.”

He raised a brow and then looked back at his computer.

Ben and I waited in tense silence until a large ship came into view and stopped at the edge of the harbor. It ended up being sixteen minutes late. I thanked the ticket agent before Ben and I hurried out of the office and toward one of the nearest entrances of the long boat that had just opened up.

Since it was early in the morning, apart from the man who greeted us at the entrance and gave us our key, we only met a handful of other humans on our way up to our room on the top level of the boat. Of course, human blood surrounded us, and I kept a tight grip on Ben in the hallways.

Arriving at our suite, I closed the door behind us and locked it. Now that Ben was inside, I could breathe a little more easily.

I moved farther into the room with Ben. It was luxuriously decorated with wide tinted windows, filled with traditional Egyptian furniture and a large four-poster bed. There was a dining table for two—upon which was a platter of welcome food—that looked out onto a small balcony.

I glanced at Ben.

He still looked so tense he was clearly in no mood to talk. I eyed the food laid out on the table. Removing my veil, I took a seat and began digging into the food.

Ben sat opposite me and swiveled in his chair to look out of the window, his back to me. We didn’t talk at all for the next ten minutes as I stuffed myself. When he did swing back around to face me, he looked disturbed.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Hear what?” I asked, swallowing a mouthful of juice.

His eyes narrowed and he seemed to be listening to something. For all my supernatural hearing, I couldn’t understand what Ben had noticed. All I could hear were quite ordinary sounds of the ship and the humans around us.

“That,” he replied.

I stared at him. “What?”

He paused again. Then he shook his head.

“I guess it was nothing.”

T
he sounds echoing
in my ears didn’t match my surroundings. It was as if invisible walls came down around me, blocking out the sounds of the cruise ship, and all went quiet… but for a few sounds. Chillingly familiar sounds.

The wind sighing above me. The dripping of water. The echoing of footsteps against marble. The distant strumming of an instrument. All these might not have been so peculiar in themselves, and I might have even believed that they were noises from the cruise ship, but then came the dull grinding. The same grinding River and I had heard before we escaped. The sound was unmistakable to me.

It felt like I was back in The Oasis.

And then the noises faded away as suddenly as they had arrived, being replaced with the bustle of my current surroundings. I wasn’t sure whether to tell River what I had just experienced, or wait until I had a grasp of what was happening. I had scared her more than enough in the past twenty-four hours, so I decided not to. Just in case what I’d heard, or thought I’d heard, had been my imagination—some strange return to the past. Perhaps the noises were imprinted in my mind due to spending weeks down in that atrium.

“What is it?” she pressed, this time reaching for my forearm.

I shook my head again. “I’m not even sure what I heard.”

She frowned at me, then rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her food. We didn’t discuss it again until the noises echoed in my ears for a second time later that evening. They remained in my head much longer than before.

This time, I told her.

“You haven’t experienced anything like that?” I asked.

She shook her head, her eyes wide with alarm. “How can you be hearing those noises?”

“I have no idea,” I replied.

After we discussed it for the next half-hour, River came up with the theory that I must be manifesting some kind of post-traumatic symptoms from being trapped there. I had my doubts about that, but since I wasn’t ready to share any theories of my own, I kept quiet.

During the hours that followed, I kept expecting the sounds to return and surround me again, and from the look on River’s face, she was expecting it too. But I did not experience it again.

As we waited, although I kept close to River, I found myself occasionally needing to draw her closer to me, lower my face inches above the curve of her neck and breathe in deeply.

About an hour before sunset, River wanted to rest on the bed. I didn’t have a choice but to lie with her on the mattress. She slid beneath the sheets and bunched up the blankets around her, and then I settled next to her, close enough that her knees almost touched mine but not too close that I might disturb her. I intended to remain in this position until she’d finished resting. I was surprised that she was the one who drew nearer still. Raising her head from the mattress, she shuffled closer to me, and then rested her head against my shoulder.

“I’m scared to let you out of my sight,” she muttered. “At least if I’m touching you, I’ll notice if you slip away.”

She was right, of course. I was still a wild animal around human blood. The closer I was to her, the better. I just hadn’t wanted to overstep a boundary by moving nearer to her myself. Now that she had broached it, I slid an arm around her and rested my hand against her hip.

“I think you’ll definitely notice if I slip away now.”

She chuckled, then closed her eyes, apparently comforted by my gesture. My chin resting against the top of her head, I could feel her breathing grow deeper and steadier, until finally she was asleep.

I remained still, careful not to wake her as I looked out of the window, watching the river bank.

Once the boat began to slow, it was time for us to move on. I looked down at River’s face. She had an expression of serenity, her pillowy lips flushed. I paused for a moment to admire her beauty, then removed my hand from her hip and brushed her shoulder. When she still didn’t stir, I shook her gently.

Her eyelids flickered open, her turquoise gaze fixing on me through her long dark lashes.

“Hmm?”

“The boat’s stopping.”

She shivered a little as she pushed the blankets away from her, and then stood up. Her eyes were distant as she brushed a hand over her forehead and swayed slightly on the spot. She looked in a daze.

“I had a… strange dream,” she said, furrowing her brows.

“What?”

“My mother, two sisters and brother were in it. They had moved to a pretty part of Manhattan, and were living in a nice apartment. And my brother… He’s nineteen and severely autistic, but in the dream, I… I had an actual conversation with him for the first time in my life.”

Her words hung in the air as she continued standing, lost in her own thoughts. Then she shook herself and snapped out of it. She walked to the table, poured herself a glass of water, and downed it. Then she took my hand and we moved toward the balcony and looked out. The boat had almost stopped and there was a small harbor nearby.

“Let’s go,” I said.

River looked at me nervously as I led her to the door.

There was hardly anything I could say to comfort her when I was a bag of nerves myself. I swallowed hard, my mouth watering just at the thought of passing by a human in the corridor. Clenching my jaw, I swung the door open and we stepped outside.

To my anguish, we passed many more humans on the way down than we had on the way up. It was early in the evening, and the ship had come alive with people going to dinner and heading up to the deck to participate in the nighttime entertainment.

River gripped me so hard, if she’d had claws, they would’ve pierced right through my flesh. But thanks to River’s conscientiousness, we made it off the ship and onto the jetty without any bloodshed.

A
s soon as
our feet hit the ground, we hurried across the harbor toward a tourist shop. We stopped here to buy another, more detailed map of the area, and then we made our way toward the nearest road. This time, I didn’t run. I allowed Ben to carry me, which meant that we moved a lot faster. Racing partly on the road, and partly through the desert, he carried me through the late hours of the night until we ended up in a harbor in Ismailia. I was relieved that we hadn’t got caught out in the desert when the sun rose without any shelter for Ben, but it also meant that nobody was around, so we’d have no choice but to take another boat.

Ben chose a vessel that was much larger and sturdier than the speedboat we’d found before, and equipped with lots of extra fuel. I headed below deck to have a look around while Ben figured out how to start the boat. As soon as the engine stuttered and the boat moved forward, I froze.

Footsteps sounded outside, and then three guttural voices shouted in Arabic at once.

“Hey! Stop!”

I shot back up to the deck to see three men dressed in uniform racing toward us carrying guns.

Oh, crap. Security.

I hurried toward Ben, who’d poked his head out of the control room at the commotion. On eyeing the men, he looked ready to pounce. I stood in front of him, blocking his view of the men as they each boarded jet skis and began speeding toward us.

“Just keep the boat moving,” I called back to Ben. “I’ll try to… deal with this.”

Even as Ben ramped up the speed, the men were quickly gaining on us.

Guns began firing as they continued to yell and demand that we stop.

If we ignored them any longer, they’d catch up with the boat and try to board it. And then they’d be directly within Ben’s reach.

I rushed down the stairs to the storage room beneath the deck and looked around frantically. I was relieved when I found what I’d hoped to see—a weapon. A rifle to be precise. Grabbing it, I made my way back up to the deck.

I had only practiced using a gun once before in my life, and it was nothing this large, but I didn’t have time to doubt myself. As I arrived back on the deck, I ducked down and crawled toward the edge of the boat. I sensed them only feet away now.

I didn’t want to harm these people. But we needed to get them off our tail.

Using all the speed that I possessed, I raised myself and began firing wildly over their heads. I was scared that I might actually hit one of them because my hands were so unsteady, but thankfully, my idea ended up working. Having no cover at all, the men had no choice but to fall back and return to shore.

Thank God.

As I made my way back to the front of the boat where Ben was, my hands were still shaking. I sat next to Ben and looked at him. His eyes were set forward, fixed in concentration.

Then he eyed the gun I was holding, and raised a brow. “Did you kill them?”

“No. I could have just let them climb aboard and come near you if I’d wanted to do that… I just scared them off.”

Leaning the rifle against the dashboard, I put thoughts of the men aside.

“So now we’re headed for the Red Sea,” I said. “Do you think this boat will last us?”

“I hope so.”

I hoped so too, because I really didn’t fancy stopping by another port to meet with more security personnel. Or stealing another boat for that matter.

I tried not to think too much about it, and instead just focused on the immediate stretch of journey ahead of us.

I leaned back against the wall, and to my annoyance, started shivering again. This coldness was really becoming tiresome. It wasn’t even cold outside.

I left Ben and went back down to the lower deck. I entered the bedroom—a small, basic room that could have done with a good refurbishment. But at least it was clean. I tore off the blanket from the double bed and wrapped it around my shoulders before leaving the room and heading back up to join Ben in the control room.

But as I climbed the stairs, I stopped short.

Noises filled my ears—noises that didn’t belong on this boat. The echoing of footsteps, the dripping of water, the murmuring of people talking around me, the sound of… grinding.

My tattoo prickled uncomfortably.

I scrambled up the steps and ran toward Ben. He looked at me in surprise as I clutched his shoulders.

“I hear it,” I said, my eyes wide. “I hear what you hear. It’s like… It’s like we never left.”