Blueisland (Watermagic Series, #4) (8 page)

He must have caught me, b
ecause a minute later I looked up from his arms into those piercing eyes that caused a tingling sensation to shoot up my private area and release a warm flood of wetness into my underwear. That surprised me like a volcano must surprise an ant. That was the first time anything like that had ever happened to me just from a look.

“Uh, uh…” I managed to say like an idiot.

“You just fainted,” he said in a lyrical voice that caused my body to twitch a little more. It was bad enough that he looked so good—did he have to sound good too?

“No shit,” I retorted,
responding to the last time we interacted when he was such a prick. Really, I just didn’t want him to know what kind of effect he had on me. It was obvious to me that he liked to get under women’s skin and have his way with them. I wanted to run like hell back for the beach. And I certainly didn’t want to come between him and the very girl I was looking for. Like I even had a chance anyway.

Unexpectedly, a smirk rose on his
gorgeous face. He did look just like the guy in the ocean and in my dreams. And that tattoo—wasn’t that proof enough? Then to make matters worse, he chuckled. I would never forget that sexy sound from my dreams.

My body was tingling all over now. I swear each rhythm of his light laughter was like music and not the kind of
song you hear on the radio, but this was my own personal live concert that was playing my very body like an instrument. Maybe the bugs I ate earlier were aphrodisiacs. But I suspected that wasn’t the case at all. This guy was killing me.

“You can put me down now,” I muttered in an annoyed tone.

And just like that he dropped me to the ground! I fell right on my butt. What a dickhead! I guess I asked for it, but still.

“That didn’t hurt—did it?” he was smirking at me which only pissed me off further as I looked up at his eyes framed
with thick black lashes that just looked too damn sexy, especially since his lids were lowered dreamily like we just had sex and he was way too satisfied.

“What’s it to you?” I snapped at him. Actually, my ass didn’t hurt at all to my
bewilderment. From that sudden fall, I should have been crying like a baby.

But then, I was thrown entirely off guard.
Suddenly, my body started lifting off the ground and I was floating in the air. Everything happened so fast. My eyes widened in shock. What the hell was happening? People don’t just float midair.

Now I was levitating beyond my control over toward him.
Was he doing this to me? Out of my wits, I noticed his lips draw together slightly and his eyes narrowed like maybe he was concentrating on me. I was so damn scared.

For a moment
, my body spun around. My mind was whirling. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I think he chuckled. The asshole was messing with me. Suddenly my body dropped midair. I felt so dizzy like I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t hit the ground.

When I opened m
y eyes, my face was at the level of his hips. I was facing him straight on. What the hell? Arrogant prick. You’d have thought I would get mad at the innuendo, but I was so shocked to be floating that I fainted again.

***

When I woke up, groggy and out of sorts, I heard screaming and crying. The yelling stopped, but the crying continued. There were angry voices, sounds overlapping. Where was I? I felt around beside my body. I was resting on a pile of leaves. What was happening? I tried to sit up, but fell back out of dizziness. My heart was pounding against my chest. Just pull it together, Raz.

As best I could, I sucked in a deep breath. I blinked several times to regain my wits. From what I could tell,
I was back on the beach, but on another part of the island in a makeshift bed and shaded under part of what looked like the hull of the yacht. Pieces of the boat must have washed up to shore and somebody must have put forth the effort to set up this little room. What was going on? I must have originally landed at a different spot on the beach than everyone else.

I could hear people talking outside.
My body shuddered. The voices sounded familiar. Was that Logan Townsend? And I heard some girls, but I wasn’t sure who they were. It didn’t matter—there were more survivors! With that recognition, my pulse rate sped up. By now I was already sitting up in the bed of leaves. Maybe my friends had a chance. I hurried out of the shelter, rushing around the backside away from the ocean.

When
I saw the scene before my eyes, I nearly puked. Dead bodies were lined up in two rows on the sand beside some chests and wreckage from the yacht. The people must have washed up from the ocean to the shore and the survivors must have arranged them in order, maybe for burial. Limbs were torn off the torsos of some and others were half eaten like some kind of animals had torn them apart.

I thought back to the images I had seen in my mind after I plummeted into the ocean. Human beings acting like sharks, tearing people apart with their teeth. I thought I had imagined that. But now I wondered what had I seen? Was there any truth to the imagery? It wasn’t possible. My mind must have been playing tricks on me because of the stress of the situation. But something had ravaged these people.

By now, it wasn’t as hot out as before. I could handle the temperature. The big orange sun was setting behind the jungle shining like sparks of fire through the trees and giving the beach a warm, golden glow. But in that setting, there was a lot of noise and chaos, students I recognized, but didn’t know, looking for things and running past. Jason Kraft and Jeff Peterson were helping Tally Cantor. It looked like pieces of metal probably from the boat were stuck in her legs. She was the one crying. There were other people who I didn’t identify from a distance dragging more wreckage out of the ocean. And other people up by the edge of the jungle seemed to be helping other wounded survivors. I thought I saw Logan Townsend, but he looked different so I wasn’t sure.

I grabbed my throat
, my eyes drifting over the dead bodies hoping not to find Savannah, Donny, or any other friends of mine. Stacy May’s eyes were wide open, empty and vacant. My heart clenched. Parts of Stacy’s body were missing and some of her innards had spilled out. She was a freshman who went with Thomas Gonzales to the prom. I knew her because she worked in the library.

One body looked like Conrad Strothers, but half his face was torn off. He was our paperboy in middle school. Some kids made fun of him because he had a lisp, but he was a nice guy. And there was Eun Sang, a girl that had transferred to our school from Korea. She was in my history class. My stomach twisted in knots, my eyes drifted over everyone.
It wasn’t fair. I should have been the dead one—not them. They didn’t want to die—I did.

I heard voices. Maybe someone needed help. I didn’t have much medical knowledge, but maybe there was something I could do, even just be there for someone.
When I got around to the other side of a heap of wreckage, my eyelids popped open so wide you’d have thought my eyeballs might just fall out of my head. It was Savannah standing there trying to make a raft with a group of my classmates!

So many emotions rushed through me.
For a moment I just stood there dumbfounded. Savannah was alive!

But as thrilled and relieved as I was,
I couldn’t believe what she looked like. Plain Jane Savannah certainly wasn’t a wallflower anymore. There was no denying this girl was my best friend Savannah, but hell—she was as hot as a supermodel. Her shoulder length dark straight hair had grown long, shiny, and full like an actress from a hair commercial. Damn! Her nose was smaller, her lips were fuller, and her brown eyes had turned a stunning ocean blue. I didn’t even know she had cheekbones until now. No more round chubby face on this chick.

Nausea washed over me. This was too
bizarre and such an unsettling contrast to all the horror and death around me. It was like someone was playing a sick joke on us all, like some kind of twisted nightmare. Make some kids drop dead gorgeous and mutilate the others. But I wasn’t dreaming. My best friend was stunning and most of my high school class was dead or dying.

Savannah’s
new body was another story. Her hips were broader, her legs were longer, her waist was smaller, and her breasts were bigger—perfect curves. Voluptuous in all the right spots and flawlessly toned. As good as that sounds, it was not right.

My emotions and thoughts were too mixed up
to say anything. But my buddy wasn’t dead and that meant so much. Tears rolled down my cheeks. She was alive. Oh, yeah—alive, live, live. I rushed over to her and we hugged. “I thought you were killed,” I finally managed to say, my throat scratchy from everything I was feeling.

“
Oh, Raz.” She hugged me. “I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up.”

“You knew I was passed out under that debris?”

Tears welled in her eyes as she nodded. “Marcel found you in the forest and gave you to me. I’ve been checking on you. He thought you’d come to sooner than you did, but it’s only been a short while,” she said, holding me away from her by the shoulders as she looked me over. “I can’t believe it.” Her head was shaking slightly back and forth. Though I could tell she was trying to hide her feelings, she looked frightened. “That octopus was scary—wasn’t it? With all those tentacles and the bulging eyes. This is really creepy,” she said in a surprising tone. Then she kept talking, but I couldn’t pay attention to what she was saying because her voice was so strange.

Even that
seemed to have changed. Her vocals sounded huskier with beautiful undertones like that of a seductress in a sultry film. I almost felt like I was listening to a song, not exactly, but almost. Hell, it sounded nearly angelic.

My mind was whirling.
As she continued to talk to me, I looked around feeling rather stunned. The homecoming king, Logan Townsend, was tying branches together with torn fabric and attaching them to make a raft with some other guy. He didn’t seem to notice me yet, but I couldn’t help but notice him.

The strangest thing was that Logan’s already good looks were also enhanced. His nose wasn’t crooked anymore and his eyes were ocean blue instead of swamp green
. He was shirtless and his formerly attractive body was now ripped with lean muscles. I got the feeling by the way he was working and by the way he moved that he was much stronger than before. He was impressive to watch. And his brown short curls were now so long that it surprised me.

At least I wasn’t the only one undergoing strange transformation
s. Now I wondered if Emily was serious when she said I looked gorgeous. At the time, I thought she was messing with me, but now I wasn’t so sure. I should have been relieved that some of my other classmates were having unusual experiences like me, but that recognition only made me more nervous. Were we infected with some sort of weird disease? But more than anything, my curiosity was growing.

At first
, I couldn’t figure out who the guy was who was helping Logan. He also had beautiful long brown hair similar to Logan’s but his was straighter. And his body was just as perfect. The guy seemed so familiar, but I didn’t fully recognize him. Our high school wasn’t all that big. Most of the students I had seen around even if I didn’t know all of them personally. I kept studying his face, wracking my brain.

Then it came to me.
Oh, yeah! I nearly started laughing which seemed really inappropriate. Maybe it was the intense stress that was making me wacky. By accident I let out a little snort. I realized who he was. Andrew Lamar! The high school narc. He was the type of guy who never wanted to leave high school, so he started working there. Oh, crap. He used to be nothing special to look at and now he looked like a model. This was way too freaky.

Before this all happened,
Logan was already eye candy and Andrew was okay, but now they were in a whole other league. It was so fascinating how Andrew’s face had changed so dramatically. I didn’t really know Andrew other than seeing him around school campus reprimanding students, but I guessed that he was only a couple years older than us. I couldn’t remember his original eye color, but now his irises were ocean blue like Logan’s and Savannah’s. I wondered if mine appeared the same. Maybe I was losing it—I snorted again.

When
Logan glanced up at me this time, his jaw dropped. “Tomboy Raz?” After a moment, his light brown brows drew together. “So the kraken didn’t eat you and the gods made you hot!” He said a bunch of curse words as he ran his eyes down my body which would have normally bothered me, but under the circumstances it seemed appropriate.

I just stared at him feeling very off balance. This whole situation was too surreal.
And his voice was much sexier than I remembered. “Are you okay, Raz?” I finally heard Savannah ask. Apparently, she had asked me a series of questions which I hadn’t even heard.

“
Don’t just stand there,” Logan reprimanded me. “Get some more wood. We need to get the wounded to a hospital. Doesn’t look like anyone is coming for us.” His movie star voice was tense.

“I doubt if there
are any hospitals around here,” I said, thinking his idea was pathetic.

His jaw clenched and he shot a threatening look at me. His eyes were piercing. If we get out to sea
, there might be a ship out there that could rescue us. They are not going to find us here.”