Everbound: An Everneath Novel (17 page)

I kept my focus on the man. He had a desperate look in his eyes.

“Yes or no? Your heart for my silence?”

Cole’s voice was even. “How do I know you’d keep your word?”

Suddenly two more Wanderers showed up, from the same place the first one had come from. One man and one woman. Both dressed in raggedy clothes. The woman’s hair was knotted and sticking up from her head.

Three Wanderers. Three of us. Would they attack now?

Just then shouts came from behind us. Warning shouts. Probably from Max.

Ashe and Cole turned around, following the sound, and for a split second they had their eyes off of me. A split second was all the first Wanderer needed. He lurched forward and dived at me, catching me with his shoulder in my stomach.

I landed with a thud on the wet ground. The Wanderer pounced on top of me, his mouth open and his teeth bared. He used his knees to pin my arms. I struggled, but he was surprisingly strong. He dipped his face so it was within an inch of mine and inhaled deeply.

I felt the breath go out of me, and then I screamed at the sudden pain in my chest. A pain I hadn’t felt since the Feed. That scraping inside of me.

Somebody ripped him off of me, and I caught a glimpse of Cole sailing through the air above me and colliding with the other two Wanderers. In one continuous movement, Max incapacitated the first Wanderer with a blow to the side of his head with his brass knuckles, then grabbed the woman’s arm, wrenched it, and slipped behind her with a knife pointed at her throat.

I couldn’t watch anymore. The pain in my chest made me squeeze my eyes shut. What had the Wanderer done to me? I rolled over onto my side and curled up in a ball, my hands pressing against my chest, trying to blunt the pain.

Everything inside of me was dark. It felt as if every bit of peace inside of me had been ripped out, every moment of light, every glimmer of hope, forced through my chest and away from me. There had to be a gaping hole right above my heart; but when I brought my hands to my face, they were dry. No blood.

Cole’s face was over mine. “It’s okay, Nik. We’re taking care of them.”

“What did he do to me?”

Cole frowned. “He fed on you. All the good stuff.”

I heard a muffled scream, and despite the pain, I sat up. Ashe and Max each had a Wanderer by the neck, and they were holding their heads under the water of the wall. Two of them kicked their legs in protest. The third one—the one who received the blow from Max, I assumed—was still.

“What … what are they doing to them?”

“They’re drowning them.”

I felt weak and started to tip over, but Cole put his arm around me and righted me. “They won’t die, though. Dead bodies will just attract attention. They’ll just be filled to the brim with the water. They’ll forget everything they’ve known and felt.”

“For how long?”

He frowned. “Long enough for us either to finish, or fail.”

Ashe and Max were doing their best to keep their faces turned away from the splashing water. They breathed hard.

A fresh wave of pain hit me in the chest, and I looked up at Cole as I tried to catch my breath and assuage the pain. “Why did he take the good emotions? I thought you said the bad ones always rose to the top.”

“That’s on the Surface. Here, all emotions carry the same weight. The Wanderers can pick and choose, so of course they pick the good ones.”

Hope, joy, love, patience. It was as if the Wanderer had cut them all down to tiny stubs inside of me and replaced them with the black oil of despair, self-loathing. Hatred. The black hole tore through me, snaking through my veins, encasing my heart. I groaned.

“We’re not going to make it,” I said. My face twisted in despair. I could feel it, but I couldn’t help it.

I caught blurry glimpses of the other two Wanderers as they relaxed their frantic kicking, and then they stopped moving altogether.

Ashe and Max pulled them out and laid them faceup on the ground. I rolled away and curved into a ball.

Max came over to us and held out a hand to me. “We have to move. I was on my way to warn you. There are more Wanderers on our trail.”

More Wanderers. We were able to fight off three, but any more?

I didn’t take his hand. I couldn’t move. Without the lighter emotions to counteract the heavy ones, my guilt—at least, I think it was my guilt—had become crippling. It had turned my heart to cement. “I can’t. It’s never going to work. I’m never going to find him. If a Wanderer can take all that from me, what have the Tunnels already done to Jack? Do they take all of his hope first? All of his love?” I put my hand on my chest. “How can anyone live with only what’s left?”

Cole crouched down before me and grabbed my shoulders, shaking them a little. “Nik. Look at me. We did not come this far to have you lose hope now. Wanderers are after us, and we have to move.”

His words made sense, but they weren’t reaching my body. I didn’t respond. Somewhere deep inside my brain I knew I had to get up and get moving. But I couldn’t. Every cell of my body was filled with heavy guilt, and it was weighing me down like a lead balloon.

Cole shoved his hands under my arms. “Get up. We can’t stay in one place. Jack needs you.” He hoisted me up.

“Jack,” I said. It wasn’t that I had forgotten. It was just that I couldn’t do anything.

“Yes, Jack. Of the
ever yours
Jack. Remember the boy who captured your heart by reading a book under a tree? Jack.”

He put one of my arms around his shoulder and wrapped his own arm around my waist.

When I was upright, Max looked down at my tether. “Um, am I reading that right?”

I followed his gaze. Not one, but two tethers. One pointing to the right and one pointing straight ahead.

Ashe came running up. I guess he had gone back to check on the Wanderers.

“We’re out of time,” he said to Cole.

Cole grunted. “Which one is it, Nik? Which one is your tether to Jack?”

They looked exactly the same to me. I closed my eyes, but that clear connection to Jack had been wiped out. “I don’t know.”

Cole squeezed my arms. “Concentrate! We can’t fight off a dozen Wanderers. Which way do we go?”

I stared at the tethers, looking for any sign that would show me which one led to Jack. The one pointing straight ahead seemed to be darker, or was that just my imagination?

“Which way?!”

“That way,” I said, pointing straight ahead. We took off running, just as the first Wanderer appeared from around the corner behind us. I was still heavy from the attack. Each footstep felt as if I were running through quicksand.

I fought for breath. I knew they would be relentless.

As we ran, I looked down at both of my tethers and wondered if I had made the right decision.

I could feel us getting nearer to something. As if my tether were really an elastic band that was contracting as we went. The pain in my chest, however, was still strong, and tears continually ran down my face. If I didn’t have a purpose, I would’ve probably curled up and cried for days.

I wasn’t getting tired, though. The farther we went, the more the crippling cement in my veins dissipated. My legs felt as strong as when we’d first set foot in the maze. Cole started to fall back, but I kept running as fast as I could.

“Slow down, Nik!” he said in between pants.

“But I’m close to something. I can feel it.” The harder I ran, the better the pain in my chest felt. I realized that maybe I was following that pain.

“Wait! Nik!” Cole called out. I could hear his footsteps behind me, but I was outrunning him. Whatever power it was that beckoned me forward, it was strong.

“Trust me. It’s this way!” I called out to him over my shoulder.

I ran at a flat-out sprint. Cole shouted for Max to catch up to me, maybe because he had the longer legs of the two, but I was too far ahead. Even Jack wouldn’t have been able to reach me.

Jack
.

My feet faltered, but only for a moment, and I glanced down at my hand. I was clutching a piece of paper; but I didn’t know what it was, and I couldn’t think about that because I was so close to my destination. I made one more turn before the maze opened to a clearing and a large, beautiful lake.

There was one moment of warning, a split second when I knew that everything about that lake said
stay away
; but before I could pass that message along to my feet, I was running—sprinting—to the water.

The Everneath. The Ring of Water
.

I
heard Cole shout my name, but it didn’t make any sense. When I was a few yards away from the edge, I sprang off the ground and hovered above the surface for a moment before I descended.

As I hit the water, I had just enough brain power to notice that the lake didn’t quite look right. But it was too late. I was underwater.

Only it didn’t feel like water. It felt thicker.

I tried to open my eyes; but it was dark, and the liquid stung. Where was the surface? My arms and legs flailed about, but I couldn’t figure out which way was up. I stretched my legs, trying to feel for the surface with my feet, but the lake seemed bottomless.

My lungs seized up, and I knew I needed air. Involuntarily, my mouth opened, and the liquid poured in.

It wasn’t water. It was too rich. Too smooth. It had a metallic taste to it.

Blood.

Blood
.

The realization triggered my gag reflex, but that just made me take in another deep breath.

Frantically I struggled to right myself, but I couldn’t. The blood coagulated around my limbs. It was like trying to swim in a vat of cement. The more I fought for the surface, the more I sank.

So I held still. I let the blood settle between my fingers, my toes. I didn’t sink or float, and then the blood didn’t taste so bad.

I forgot how I’d gotten there, and then I forgot where I was. No more struggling.

Suddenly, something grabbed me around my waist. I was too tired to fight as the something dragged me farther under. Down to where I didn’t need oxygen anymore. I’d never need it again.

At that moment we broke through the surface of the lake. “Nik!” Cole was yelling.

I was lying on the muddy beach. Someone was slapping my face.

“Nik! Can you hear me?”

I tried to speak, but only a gurgle came out.

“She drank it,” I heard Max say to Cole.

“Shit.”

I coughed some more and tried to open my eyes. There was a red film over them that cast a deeper scarlet glow over everything I could see.

Then there was Cole’s face above mine, his eyes tight with worry. He was cradling my head in his lap. “You’ve got to kick her, Max.” His voice sounded strained. Reluctant.

“Why me?” came Max’s reply.

“Because I can’t.” Cole leaned down and put his lips to my ear. “Nik, remember when I told you the maze runs on Surface time and we would kick you to the Surface every night?”

I nodded but still couldn’t speak.

“I’m going to do that right now. It’s not quite time, but if you stay here, you’ll drown.”

I tried to open my mouth to tell him I wasn’t in the lake anymore and that I couldn’t drown, but my vocal cords had clamped shut. My body was acting as if I were still underwater. I started to panic. What if being on land didn’t matter anymore? What if I never caught my breath again?

“It’s okay. You’ll be okay once you reach the Surface.”

“You sure about that?” Max said.

“Yes,” Cole growled. “If you do it now!” Then his lips were at my ear again. “Remember to sleep, and I’ll find you in the morning.”

He yanked me to my feet with Max’s help, and the next seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. Max took a few steps backward and then ran full-out toward me, cocking his leg back and sending his foot flying into my stomach with such force that I left the ground. My lungs crushed together, and I didn’t have any air left in me to scream. Everything around me disappeared.

There was no light. There was nothing. Until the moment my cheek hit something hard and cold.

“Mmph.”

Footsteps neared my head.

“Nikki?”

I opened my eyes. A man’s face was staring down at me. Ezra. The clerk at the Shop-n-Go. “Is that blood? Why are you covered in blood?”

I shut my eyes again. Max had kicked me back to the Surface.

The Surface. Outside the Shop-n-Go
.

I
staggered out to the street, with Ezra’s shouts following behind me, demanding to know who was going to clean up all the “red stuff” on the floor.

The natural sun was bright even though it was beginning to dip below the horizon, and I raised my hand to shield my eyes. That’s when I saw how red my hand was. But not wet. The blood, or whatever it was, now looked like a dried powder. And it was all over me.

But at least I could breathe again.

I tried to brush it off my arm, but it was like a stain. People were staring. I must’ve looked like a giant raspberry walking down the street. Even my clothes were stained red. I was still clutching the
Ever Yours
note. How had I forgotten what it was?

I ducked down a side street and leaned against an abandoned brick building, trying to get my bearings.

I ticked off on my fingers what I knew:

I was in the Everneath
.

A Wanderer fed off me, and two tethers appeared
.

I took a swim in a lake of blood
. Now that I thought about that one, I couldn’t believe I’d jumped in.

Max kicked me
.

I landed in the Shop-n-Go
.

Why did he kick me? I rubbed my forehead, trying to remember what Max and Cole had said about it. The time in the maze ran concurrent with the time on the Surface, so they said they’d have to kick me out to sleep at night.

I looked at the stretching shadows along the ground. It was dusk now. But hadn’t I left for the Everneath at night?

Two recycling bins stood at the end of the alley. With my head down, I walked over to read the dates on some of the papers scattered in front of them. Most of them were dated Wednesday, but then I found a couple of newer-looking ones. Thursday. I’d left on Wednesday night, and now it was Thursday night. I’d somehow missed a night of dreaming.