Bonds That Break (The Havoc Chronicles Book 3) (12 page)

I didn’t recognize him, so I could only assume he was either a random creep stalking two teen girls, or someone tracking a Berserker and Binder. Either option was a problem.

I nudged Onaona and discretely whispered my concern to her. She took a look and nodded to let me know she had seen him as well.

We tried to move closer to the man to get a better view, but apparently we weren’t quite as stealthy as we had thought. The man suddenly spun around and began walking quickly in the opposite direction.

Onaona and I started following him. When he turned a corner, he risked a glance towards us and saw we were still pursuing. He disappeared around the corner and by the time we got there he was lost in a crowd of people milling about the food court.

“What do you think?” I asked. “An actual threat or just a creepy guy embarrassed to be caught checking out two young girls?”

Onaona peered through the crowd for a minute before answering. “I’m going to go with creepy guy checking us out,” she said. “But all the same, let’s get back to the others.”

“Agreed.”

***

We saw no sign of the hoodie guy as we walked back to our gate and met back up with everyone. The more I thought about it, the less sinister it seemed. Really all I saw was just a guy checking us out. While I still was not completely used to it, it certainly wasn’t something to worry the others with. Especially my dad. He tended to freak out about these kinds of things, even though I was much more capable of protecting myself than he was. Something like this would cause the overprotective parent in him to rear its bossy head and start telling me what I could and couldn’t do. So, unless we had more proof than what we currently had, I wasn’t going to say a word.

The second half of the trip started out just as tranquil as the first, but a few hours from our destination things began to change. The flight got more and more bumpy – which wasn’t too unusual – but the captain was forced to turn on the fasten seatbelt lights and we couldn’t leave our seats. Never a fun thing on a long flight. Especially when you’ve been drinking a lot of water and are not known for your ability to “hold it in.”

Once Josiah realized I needed to pee, he thought it would be funny to make all kinds of water jokes in some lame attempt to make me need to go more. While it didn’t have the desired effect, it did annoy me to the point that I wanted to punch him hard enough to breach the hull of the plane.

Luckily for him I restrained myself.

The Captain spoke over the intercom giving us the bad news. "We have just been given notice that there is a large storm over the city of Puebla and they are ordering an evacuation even as we speak. All flights into Puebla are being diverted to Mexico City for the time being."

We all looked at each other uneasily. This could hardly be a coincidence.

It was time to tell them about my dream.

Chapter 7

A Meteorologist’s Worst Nightmare

It didn’t take me long to relate the key points from the dream to the others, particularly the part about “disruptions in weather patterns” the man had warned me about.

“Do you have any idea who the man was?” Dad asked.

I shook my head. “None. To be honest, if it weren’t for this storm over Puebla, I would still assume it had just been a weird dream.”

“And he wouldn’t tell you his name?” asked Rhys.

“He said I wouldn’t believe him if he told me.”

“That sounds as if he believes you had already heard of him,” said Shing.

I hadn’t thought about that during the dream, but looking back it did sound like that. Leave it to Shing to pull extra meaning from a simple phrase.

“But why wouldn’t I believe him?” I asked. “It’s not like I haven’t already been exposed to some seriously messed up things since I became a Berserker. I’ve had to deal with more weirdness in the past year than most people do in a dozen lifetimes. What could possibly be so strange that I wouldn’t believe it?”

But that was a question none of us had an answer for.

Miguel broke the silence. “So, does this storm mean that Thuanar’s bond was even weaker than we had thought?” he asked. “How much time do we have before it breaks on its own? I’m not from Puebla, but I’d prefer not to have a large crater where the Cathedral is.”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said. “It didn’t sound like the bond would break before we got there. At least, it didn’t sound like the man thought that. Maybe he didn’t really know either?”

An hour later the plane landed safely in Mexico City, but the airport was a mess. We were forced to stay in the plane for another hour while they figured out the logistics of unloading us.

The good news was, that once we landed, they allowed us to get up to use the restroom. That made the rest of the wait tolerable and lessened my desire to punch Josiah in the face.

The airport was packed with other planes that had been diverted because of the storm, and we were informed that it would be at least a day before there were any more flights down to Puebla. If what the guy in my dream said was true, it would be a lot longer than that unless we found a way to get down there and fix the binding.

With the help of some cash incentives given to the right people, we managed to get our bags, clear customs, and find a rental van despite the chaos around us.

In all actuality, we weren’t that far from Puebla – eighty miles or so. Ordinarily it would be a one to two hour drive. Given the fact that we were headed straight into a storm where everyone was being evacuated from, I guessed it would be considerably longer.

The winds outside the airport in Mexico City were already bad, and they continued to get worse as we drove towards Puebla. Rain pelted down from the sky in sheets. It almost felt like a giant bucket of water was continuously being dumped on us. Being from Washington I was used to rain, but nothing like this. Rain in Washington was a constant drizzle, not this hurricane-like downpour.

The van we rented was cramped with all of us in it, but we managed to make pretty good progress since most of traffic was headed in the opposite direction we were. I could only imagine the thoughts going though the heads of the people trying to escape from the storm as they saw us driving into it.

We passed several checkpoints where uniformed officers informed us that we needed to turn around because of the mandatory evacuation. But each time, Miguel managed to talk our way though with the language of cash. Most of the officers seemed quite willing to take money in exchange for letting us head recklessly into obvious danger.

The winds became very strong as we reached the outskirts of Puebla. Powerful gusts pushed the van in crazy directions, but Miguel somehow managed to keep us on the road despite the slick roads and poor visibility. I was quite impressed with his driving skills.

Once we got into the city, there were very few people or other cars to deal with. Most of the residents had taken the evacuation order very seriously and the city was an empty ghost town.

But what it lacked in cars and traffic, Puebla more than made up for in windblown obstacles and swirling trash. Downed trees and power poles were everywhere. Fortunately we had a van full of Berserkers, so clearing them out of the way would only cost us warmth and dryness. Much to my delight, Josiah actually volunteered for most of it, and the rest of us were more than happy to let him have at it.

The clouds up in the sky were an angry purple tinged with red as the sun attempted to filter through. The closer we got to the cathedral, the more funnel-like the clouds were. When we were finally close enough that we should have been able to see the cathedral it was obscured by a swirling vortex writhing around it. The vortex was at least ten blocks in diameter – a massive funnel cloud that swirled in place, picking up objects and hurling them out again. Most tornados or hurricanes had some sort of forward motion to them, but this one didn’t. It stayed in the exact same place, swirling and undulating dangerously. All around the perimeter of the vortex cars were over turned, buildings had collapsed, and debris was strewn everywhere.

“Now that’s a twister!” Josiah said, his eyes wide with excitement. “It that where we need to go?”

“I’m afraid so,” Dad said. “I’m just not sure how we’re going to get through it to find Thuanar. Berserkers are strong, but if the wind picks you up, it won’t matter how strong you are.”

“Well, I’ve seen my fair share of twisters before,” said Josiah. “Even been inside a few, just for kicks.” He winked at me. “I’ve got a little trick I’ve used before.”

He ‘zerked and hopped out of the car. He ran over to a collapsed building, grabbed a heavy chunk of cement with one hand, held onto his hat with the other, and dashed into the vortex.

A few seconds later he ran back out, whooping and laughing. “Come on in,” he shouted over the rushing of the wind. “Grab something heavy to keep you from flying away, and run on through. The wind wall’s not too thick.”

I ‘zerked, grabbed a piece of cement foundation with rebar sticking out of it to use as handles, and made a dash into the vortex.

I hardly had time to blink before I was through. The extra weight helped me gain enough momentum to push through the wall of wind without getting swept away. Once I was through, I dropped the cement and looked around in awe.

I was in the eye of a tornado. There's a phrase I never thought I would say.

The sounds of the world seemed to have disappeared as I crossed the boundary. The silence, while totally welcome, was also a little eerie after so much constant noise.

All around were white walls of swirling wind rising thousands of feet into the sky. Bolts of lightning flashed inside the walls, moving with the wind. Chunks of buildings, ripped up trees, and other debris punctuated the whiteness of the walls, showing just how fast the vortex was spinning.

The rain was still falling, but much more like the drizzle from back home instead of the bucket-dropping deluge of earlier. Through the fine mist, I could now see the Puebla Cathedral a few blocks away and a beam of light that shot up from the courtyard. I wasn’t in position to see, but I was willing to bet the light was coming from Thuanar or possibly his seal.

That was our target.

Shing brought in Dad, and Miguel carried Onaona through the vortex wall. Rhys and Josiah came through last, completing our numbers. Rhys looked a little unsteady on his feet, and through the glow of his power, I could see his expression twisted into a grimace of pain.

I zipped over to Rhys and wrapped my arm around his waist for support so he didn’t fall over. “What’s wrong?”

Rhys pulled away and shook his head. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “I’m fine.” But the fact that he said it between gritted teeth and wouldn’t even look at me, made it possibly the least convincing lie ever.

I reached out to pull him back to me, but he shrugged off my hand. “I said everything’s fine. Just drop it!”

He ran off in the direction of the cathedral.

I didn’t move, too stunned to even think about following him. Rhys had never yelled at me like that before. What was happening? Was he sick? Did this have something to do with the headaches and other problems he had been having lately?

I completely lost my desire to fight Thuanar. I just wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Or maybe throw up.

Dad came over to me and gave me a hug. Apparently he had seen what had happened. He leaned in close and whispered into my ear.

“We’ll figure out what’s happening with Rhys when this is over.” He pulled back and looked me in the eye. “Right now I need you to focus on the task at hand, ok? This is dangerous enough without you being distracted. Can you do that?”

I nodded and hoped the Berserker glow and falling rain would hide my tears.

I took a deep breath and stood up straighter. My situation with Rhys would have to wait while I took care of business. I could put my feelings aside while I did this task. There would be plenty of time afterwards to figure out what was going on.

And believe me, I was going to figure it out.

The rest of us ran through the streets, zipping around corners and jumping over cars that blocked our path until we reached the cathedral and stopped next to Rhys. He stood completely still, his hands on his hips, surveying the scene before us.

The first thing I saw was the seal. It glowed with a blinding light that shot up into the sky, so it was kind of hard to miss.

Beside the seal, Thuanar reared up on his hind legs, the other two sets of legs with long talons pawing the air. When last I had seen him, he was insubstantial – completely drained of color and substance. Now every few seconds his outline seemed flicker and for a few seconds he would look completely solid, before flickering again and going back to insubstantiality.

Thuanar paced around the courtyard, his sinuous form still reminding me very much of a Chinese dragon, with two rows of sharp spikes running completely down the length of his back. His face was flat and squashed looking, but the eyes were wide and bright with a clear intelligence behind them.

I remembered last time I had been here. I had touched Thuanar and had a vision of a red-headed man wearing a metal glove and a one-eyed man with two black birds perched on either shoulder. The vision had ended with the one-eyed man throwing a spear through me. It had been an unsettling moment, and not one I was looking forward to possibly having again.

Rhys, Shing, Josiah, and myself approached Thuanar cautiously, not sure what to make of the flickering. Would Thuanar be insubstantial and harmless like normal, or when it flickered did it turn solid and therefore become very, very dangerous?

Dad and Onaona stayed back since they didn’t have any Berserker powers to keep them safe, and Miguel stayed with them just in case anything happened. Dad didn’t like it, but he was smart enough not to let his pride get in the way of the mission’s safety.

Once we got closer, Thuanar charged us, head down, running full speed.