Awoken (17 page)

Something tugged on Michael’s shirt.

“You must awake, Awoken,” a distant voice said.

He groaned, but didn’t open his eyes. A hammer was beating a painful rhythm against the inside of his skull. “Hang on, Jericho. I’m up. Just give me a minute, okay?”

“No minutes, Awoken. The Fallen come. The People must flee.”

The Fallen?

His eyes snapped open. “Where…?” He blinked. “Jericho, why are you standing on the ceiling?”

Jericho glanced down at his feet. One of them was covering the pickup’s cracked dome light. “Because the ceiling is the ground now, Awoken.”

Michael frowned, confused, but then noticed the scattered fast food wrappers lying on the ceiling. Either gravity had reversed or the pickup was on its roof. “What happened, Jericho? Why are we upside down?”

“We fell far, Awoken. And you have slept too long. The People must flee.”

Michael lifted his head. The inside of the pickup was a crumpled wreck of broken plastic, dark mud, twisted metal, and glass. Lina was hanging in her seatbelt next to him. A shaft of wan daylight bled into the pickup from a jagged hole in the floor, painting her silvery hair with a pale luminescence. Her eyes were closed and there was a nasty swelling on her left cheek.

“Lina, wake up. Lina!”

She grimaced. “Not so loud. Sheesh.” Opening her eyes, she squinted against the light. “Well, that was fun. Can I get off the ride now?”

“Me first. Anything broken?”

She touched her swollen cheek. “Just a little banged up, I think. What happened?”

“Jericho says we fell. I think we got pushed off the highway when we hit the SUV. We must have gotten knocked out for a couple hours. It’s morning already.” He turned in his seat. “Diggs, are you…?” His heart dropped into his stomach. “Oh no.”

The driver’s side of the pickup had gotten the worst of the fall. The roof was touching the steering wheel and the door and hinges were just jagged ends of torn metal stained with a brownish-red substance that could only be blood. There was no sign of Diggs.

Lina tried to look around him, but her seatbelt held her in place. “What’s wrong? Is Diggs hurt?”

“I don’t know,” he replied thickly. “His door is gone. He could have gotten thrown out during the crash.”

“Do you think so?”

Swallowing back tears, he shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Diggs had warned him this might happen, had made him promise to find the dollmen and then convince them to close the tunnel. But could they really make it without Diggs? Jericho knew the way to the city, but the VEN was on their trail. And now they had to travel on foot.

He felt lost, too numb to think.

Jericho darted forward, closing his glassy fangs on Michael’s seatbelt. “The Fallen come, Awoken,” he mumbled. “The People must flee.”

The resilient fibers tore open and Michael landed with a
thud!
on the pickup’s ceiling. His head ringing like a dinner bell, he resisted the urge to throttle the dollman. Jericho was right. If VEN was coming, they needed to move, Diggs or no Diggs. “Thanks, Jericho. Now, cut Lina loose, and hurry. The light means it’s morning. We’ve been here too long already.”

Lina braced her palms against the ceiling while Jericho cut her free.

Michael found his backpack wedged behind the backrest and tugged it clear. Pushing it ahead of him, he squirmed out the passenger window on his belly. Lina followed, with Jericho bringing up the rear.

Outside the truck, a faint morning mist was rising in a small glen surrounded by evergreens and pine. A trail of upturned soil and torn foliage climbed a steep slope behind the pickup. The wreck had taken them quite a ways down from the highway above. The path of devastation left by the wreck disappeared in the brush several hundred yards uphill.

Michael shrugged on his backpack. There was no sign of Diggs, or the highway for that matter. They really had fallen far.

Lina began brushing wet dirt from her knees and hands. “The highway’s got to be up there somewhere. Should we start looking for Diggs?”

The stonesong twitched.

Michael went down to one knee. “That sounds like a good idea,” he said. “Just let me tie my shoe first.”

“We must flee, Awoken,” Jericho argued. “The Fallen are near.”

“We can spare a few minutes, Jericho.” Michael released a small portion of the stonesong into the ground as he fiddled with his shoestrings. He felt Lina first; the earthbone in her blood called out with seductive harmony. He pushed past her, downward and outward. The hills were filled with rock, sandstone mostly, and a throbbing hummed just beneath the soil. Flowing across it, he sought out the melody that did not belong.

The stonesong was stronger than ever. It took only seconds to find the cluster of discord near the top of the slope. But there was something else, something closer…

There.

He leaned over to Jericho.

“Something is watching us from those trees, Jericho,” he whispered.

The dollman’s eyes glimmered. “This one shall find out what, Awoken.” Dropping to all fours, Jericho sprinted away into the brush.

“Where’s he going?” Lina asked.

Pretending to finish the knot on his sneaker, Michael stood. “He’s too antsy. I sent him to scout ahead.”

Lina looked upslope, and her eyes grew troubled. “Maybe he’s right, Mike. There could be VEN agents up there. Maybe we should just—”

A bloodcurdling shriek pierced the air, and Lina dropped to all fours. Teeth bared, she growled at the trees like a cornered cougar. Michael made calming motions with his hands. “It’s all right, Lina,” he soothed. “It’s only Jericho back there. We’re all right.” But the words left a sour taste in his mouth. Lina was getting worse. The whites of her eyes were getting greener, and her skin was the snowy white of polished marble.

Lina’s growl trailed off, and she slowly rose to her feet. She stared at her muddy hands as if she’d never seen them before. “What’s happening to me, Mike?” she whispered. “What am I turning into?”

He swallowed down the dryness in his throat. “We’ll fix it, Lina,” he promised. Taking her hands, he began to wipe away the mud with the edge of his shirt. She didn’t resist, but her eyes looked dull and hopeless. “The dollmen will make it right.”

Jericho loped out of the trees. There was blood on his claws. “The tracker is dead, Awoken.”

Taking her hands from his, Lina gave Michael a tired smile. “I thought you sent Jericho to scout.”

“There was a VEN cat hiding in the trees,” he explained. “It would have led the others to us. I sent Jericho to deal with it.”

Jericho wiped his wet claws clean on his kilt. “Shall this one search for the friend of the People, Awoken?”

“No, Jericho. We aren’t going to look for Diggs.”

Lina frowned at him. “Why not? You think he’s dead?”

“I don’t know,” Michael looked up toward the unseen highway, his expression grim. “Maybe. Maybe not. After the crash, we were both unconscious. Diggs might have decided then that the only way to protect us was to lead VEN away from the crash. Either way, I don’t think we have time to look for him. The stonesong is telling me there are a lot of VEN agents up there.”

“You can feel them?”

He nodded. “I don’t know how. Maybe it’s because they use earthbone to make the hybrids.”

Jericho sniffed at the air, and then made a face. “This one cannot smell the Fallen.” He swiped impatiently at the thin mist all around them. “The floating water conceals their scent.”

“Good,” said Lina. “If you can’t smell them, they probably can’t smell us either. The question is, what should we do now?”

“Like Diggs said,” Michael replied. “We get you to the dollmen. After they fix you, we seal up the entrance to their city to keep any more earthbone from leaking out. How far is it to the entrance, Jericho?”

Jericho’s flat nostrils flared, as if he were testing the air. “Not far, Awoken. This one will lead you.”

“How long before we get there?”

Jericho pointed north. “The friend of the People brought us close. If we make haste, we will find the entrance before nightfall.”

Michael turned to Lina. “One more day. We can do this, Lina. We can fix you and save the world. Will you trust me for one more day?”

“One more day,” Lina echoed softly. She glanced down at the waystone in her palm, and her bleak expression hardened into something that resembled determination. “I’ll race you both.”

Michael smiled. Diggs might be gone, but VEN hadn’t won yet. “Last one to the city has to kiss a dollman.”

Lina snorted a laugh. “You are so losing this race.”

Jericho trotted toward the trees. “Come, Awoken. Come, thief. The city of the People waits.”

With Jericho leading the way, they left the clearing and disappeared into the trees.

“Hold up, guys,” Michael said.

On the trail ahead, Jericho and Lina skidded to a halt.

“What’s up?” Lina asked. Tense as a wary mountain lion, she sidled up next to him. Her jade gaze flicked this way and that as she searched the surrounding foliage for whatever danger might be lurking nearby. “What do you see?”

Jericho sniffed the air. “Is it the Fallen, Awoken?”

Michael leaned heavily against a crooked tree and shook his head. “No. I just need a minute to catch my breath. You two are killing me.”

Lina’s posture relaxed. “Well, as long as we’re stopping, maybe you should check to be sure.”

He groaned. “I’m beat, Lina. I don’t know if I could hold onto it.”

They’d been on the run for what seemed like hours, along narrow deer trails and treacherous goat paths, on and on, ever deeper into the mountains. Occasionally, they stopped to drink from icy streams or to allow Michael to use the stonesong to locate and avoid the VEN agents speckling the countryside like a dark pox. But controlling the stonesong grew more difficult with each passing mile.

“Take a few minutes to rest,” Lina suggested. “You’ll get a handle on it.”

“Thanks.”

Michael’s legs felt like two lumps of lead, and a painful stitch had been growing in his side for the last ten minutes. He didn’t know how much longer he could keep on. Exhausted, he rested his forehead against a nearby tree

The stonesong surged, and he jerked back. The humming was coming from everything lately, even the tree. It was hard to think straight. “How much farther, Jericho?”

“We are very close, Awoken.”

Lina pulled back her hair. Using a small strip of cloth torn from her dress, she tied her silver tresses into a gleaming ponytail. “You’ve been saying that all day, Shorty. Do you even know where you’re going?”

Jericho gave her a petulant look. “We are close, thief.” Plucking a leaf from a nearby sapling, he trotted over to Michael. “You see, Awoken. Behold, it is the touch of earth and bone.”

Michael took the leaf, and suddenly forgot all about his fatigue. The leaf was hard and nearly transparent, like thin crystal or glass. He held it to his nose and inhaled a peculiar scent reminiscent of fresh cinnamon and hot asphalt.

Lina gasped. “Look at the tree.”

Michael stepped back from the tree. What he’d taken to be bark was in fact a rough fur. His gaze rose slowly up the hairy trunk. High in the tree’s branches, grayish pinecones opened and closed in a slow, steady rhythm.

“I think…I think it’s breathing,” he said.

Lina shrank back, and then gave a shriek as a cluster of ten-legged mushrooms scuttled away from her feet. The cry drew an angry whistle from above them. A blue-feathered squirrel exploded from cover and flapped away on four overlapping wings. Bizarre animal calls followed the squirrel until it disappeared in the distance.

Lina crouched low, her gaze darting from one mutated plant to the next. “What is this place?”

Michael rubbed his thumb against the crystal leaf, sampling its seductive melody. “It’s the earthbone. It must be mutating all of this. We must be getting close to the source. I think—”

A spark of silver leapt from his thumb to the leaf, and suddenly, his hold on the stonesong flexed and cracked. His eyes blazed silver and he fell to his knees. Clutching his head in his hands, he fought to contain the roaring in his mind.

Lina ran over to him. “Mike, what’s wrong?”

He couldn’t answer her. The earthbone was everywhere—in the leaves, the ground, even the air. It was like fire in his head.

“What is it, Mike?” Lina hovered over him, her expression tight with concern. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Jericho’s eyes widened and he began to back away. “You must not, Awoken. You have no waystone!”

Michael fought against the stonesong’s swell, but it was too strong. He couldn’t hold it. Steeling himself, he forced words through his trembling lips. “Get…away.”

“What?”

He smashed his fist into the dirt, and the ground bucked like a waking dragon. “Get away from me!”

Jericho darted into the trees.

“Run!” Michael screamed. Thick ropes of silver fire burst from his body, snaking into the ground and over it, merging with every earthbone-tainted thing they touched.

Finally, Lina ran.

The furry tree split with a thunderous crack, its grey pinecones detonating in quick succession. The scuttling mushrooms burst, and the forest shook as if caught in a tornado.

Lina swerved, narrowly avoiding the stonesong’s fiery tendrils. The silver vines followed her, drawn by the singing earthbone in her blood. One snaked in front of her, and she sprang over it and into the trees. Leaping from branch to branch, she fled as the world erupted in silver fire beneath her.

Still kneeling in the dirt, Michael rode the stonesong, bearing helpless witness to the violent destruction of hundreds of plants and thousands of insects. Every death sickened him, but he couldn’t stop, even when he began to feel the power tearing things inside him. The stonesong had been feeding on the earthbone for hours. Now, it was too powerful to control.

A line of silver shot up from the forest floor, striking Lina in midair and merging with her ivory skin. She screamed, but did not fall. Held up by a crackling net of silver light, she writhed in agony ten feet off the ground.