Everbound: An Everneath Novel (27 page)

The hole I’d felt when just one Wanderer had fed on me was amplified throughout my entire body. A dark cloud appeared behind my eyelids, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I passed out. There were too many.

I heard them growling, groaning with satisfaction as if they were at a buffet. One of them, in the heat of the frenzy, started to gnaw at my shoulder. Another at my fingertips. When they drained me completely, would they finish me off?

Panicked voices reached my ears. Cole and Max … and someone else?

I couldn’t tell. Another moment and the pain stopped. Maybe they had reached a point where they had taken away all feeling whatsoever. The neurons no longer shot to my brain. I was left with only my mind, and one last thought.

It was over so quickly. I’d made it through the maze. I’d made it to the bull’s-eye. I was so close to Jack. So close. So close to seeing my brother again. And my dad.

But in a split second, I’d failed them all.

The darkness kept me reeling in a blackout haze for a long time. Or maybe it was only seconds. But when I opened my eyes, expecting some sort of afterlife, I caught a glimpse of that same tall black wall. The same flames from the maze.

The Wanderers were no longer on top of me.

A pungent odor hit my nose, like the smell of burned, decaying flesh, and I coughed and then dry heaved.

Once I’d stopped, I saw the blurry outline of a figure holding something with a flame on the end. It looked like a torch. He was waving it toward the ground, lighting things on fire, and then he would wave it in the air. I squeezed my eyes shut and then blinked a few more times. When I opened them, the image came into focus. A familiar face …

Ashe! Was it really him? I couldn’t believe it. He’d escaped the Siren. He must’ve found Cole and Max and somehow revived them. He had the torch in one hand and his sword, red with blood, in the other. There was another figure with a torch too. Max. He was on the other side of me. They were standing over bodies of Wanderers, bringing the lit end of their torches down to the bodies and then waving them toward something dark and swirling in the distance.

Right then I realized someone was stroking my face, and soon I became aware of other sensations. Especially the pain in my chest.

“Nik?”

I could see Cole’s face in the periphery of my vision. I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t have any energy to form the words.

“Hey,” he said. “I thought I’d lost you.”

He glanced toward Max and Ashe. “The Shades are closing in. I’m going to kick you to the Surface.”
The Surface?
I shook my head as violently as I could. It was still a weak effort. “Shh. It’s the only way. Max and Ashe can keep them at bay for now with the fire. But you have no energy. You have to go to the Surface to recover. And it’s almost night. You have to be there for Jack.”

I tried to get words to my mouth, but it wasn’t working. I tried to grab Cole’s hand, but my arms felt as if they were made of cement.

“It’s okay, Nik. We’re going to try to hide from the Shades overnight. We can go into the maze again. The Shades hate fire. They won’t follow. And then in the morning we’ll bring you back down and regroup.”

But Jack hadn’t appeared in my last dream. If he wasn’t appearing, no amount of me sleeping could help him. He was out of time. He’d been out of time for a while. Cole couldn’t kick me out. Here in the bull’s-eye, I knew time ran slower. This was where the Feed caverns were, where a hundred years only equaled six months on the Surface.

Now that we were here, we couldn’t go back to Surface time. We couldn’t go back in the maze.

I would lose Jack.

I used every last drop of energy I could muster to bring my teeth down to my lips to form an
F
sound. “Feed me.” The words were so soft, I couldn’t even hear them.

But Cole had been watching my lips. “What?”

I could tell from his confused expression that he knew what I’d said.

“Feed me,” I said again. Taking in a deep breath, I put the tip of my tongue on the roof of my mouth to form the next words. “Jack’s gone … from my dreams. No time.”

Realization dawned on Cole’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The blackness started to invade my eyesight, and I fought to stay conscious. “No giving up,” I said.

Cole looked up desperately at Ashe and Max, flanking us, lighting fires. They wouldn’t burn forever.

His eyes met mine again. “If we don’t go back into the maze, we’ll be surrounded by Shades.”

I could only nod.

He lifted my head even closer. “And that might be it. If we can’t hide in the maze, it could be our last stand.”

I blinked and nodded again.

It hit me what I was demanding of Cole. Here we were, about to face the Shades, and I was asking him to make himself weaker by feeding me. I was asking him to stay and fight instead of run for the relative safety of the maze.

He pressed his lips together, his face showing his resolve, then dipped his head down and put his lips on mine.

That same whoosh of energy that I’d felt when I’d kissed him in the Siren’s lair came rushing through me, or, more accurately, from him to me.

He moved his lips against mine, pulling me even closer to him, supporting all of my upper body with his arms.

A scene slipped into my mind. The view from a stage, with fans on the floor below, jumping and dancing, their hands in the air. Only one out of the sea of faces was clear. My face. I was near the back, moving to the music but not as animatedly as the fans around me. Cole watched me, only breaking my gaze to glance down at his guitar strings.

Euphoria overshadowed any other emotion; and I realized I was feeling what Cole was feeling on that night, and part of it was because I was watching him play. It was a rush for him.

Max started yelling and Cole pulled away, and again I was in the Everneath.

“Cole!” Max said. “We need to get back in the maze—” His voice cut off when he saw us and realized what had just happened.

“We’re not going back,” Cole said. The color had drained from his face, and his cheeks looked hollower. I wondered if he knew which memory he had just shared.

I felt strong. I disentangled myself from his arms and stood then reached down to pull Cole up after me.

“We’re making a stand,” I said.

Ashe’s eyebrows shot up, but he composed himself quickly and reached into his pocket. “We’ll have a better chance with this.”

He pulled out a note. My note. My
Ever Yours
token.

“Where did you find it?” I said incredulously.

“In the maze. The wind had carried it over several corridors.”

“I can’t believe it!” I grabbed the note and pressed it to my palm. “Finally, fate is on our side. We can’t fail now.”

Cole gave me a tired smile. Ashe and Max looked at me as if I were bonkers.

“Whatever you’re going to do, make it fast,” Ashe said. The torch in his hand barely held a flame, and several Shades blocked him from the wall of fire. Max’s torch had already died out, and the three of us were huddled behind Ashe and his torch, which was now more like a candle.

“Can we fight them?” I asked Cole.

“We can’t even grab them,” he replied. “They’re made up of a different substance entirely.”

We backed against the dark stone wall. My tether pointed to the right, but the Shades had formed a semicircle around us. Every way was blocked. Ashe waved the torch wildly, but the Shades were venturing ever closer.

The last remnant of the flame disappeared, and Ashe threw aside the torch, swearing. He pulled the sword out from the sheath at his back.

“Which way do you need to go?” Ashe asked, looking over his shoulder.

“To the right,” Cole said.

Ashe eyed the Shades at our right … and then he charged. He swung his sword wildly. It cut through the Shades as if they were made of smoke. None of them even flinched away enough to give us room to run.

He threw the sword to the ground, and right then the closest two Shades darted toward him.

I don’t know if it was a reflex action or what, but Ashe made a fist and swung toward the place where their faces would be if they had heads.

And he made contact.

The two Shades flew back from the blows from Ashe’s fist. They landed on the ground in a heap.

Everyone froze for a split second. Obviously we weren’t the only ones shocked that Ashe could fight them.

And then Ashe’s fists were flying.

“Go!” he shouted, making an open pocket in the midst of the Shades to our right.

We didn’t stop to figure out what had happened. We just sprinted along the wall, on the wide strip of grass that separated the wall from the Ring of Fire.

My tether grew darker, as if it was urging us forward. “Keep going!”

Up ahead, something shimmered on the horizon. It looked like a small lake.

I started to veer to the right, figuring that the best way to pass it would be between the lake and the stone wall; but as I veered, my tether dimmed, and the pointed end tugged counterclockwise, toward the lake.

Maybe the best way was to the left, between the lake and the Ring of Fire; but when I veered left, the tether dimmed again and tugged clockwise, again pointing to the lake.

“It’s pointing to the water!” I said to Cole, who was running beside me.

He shook his head. “Can’t be. The Tunnels aren’t in a lake.”

The closer we got to the body of water, the more my hope plummeted. The side of the lake butted up against the black wall on one side and the Ring of Fire on the other side.

There was no way around it. But I knew what the water did to people here. There was no way I could swim across it. Even Cole couldn’t. The water would make us crazy, until we drowned in it.

We slowed to a stop just outside the reach of the lapping water.

Max caught up with us moments later. We turned around. Ashe was booking it toward us, followed by several more Shades. I couldn’t count how many because they swirled together, joining and separating as they pursued us.

There was one exit point from the Ring of Fire right near us. I wondered why my tether wasn’t pointing to it.

I motioned to the exit and tugged on Cole’s sleeve. Maybe we could take shelter in the maze for a few moments and then come back out past the lake. We took two steps toward the fire.

Cole saw her before I did. I was watching his face, trying to gauge if he had enough energy to last ten seconds in the maze. His eyes widened as he stared ahead. He skidded to a stop, and I turned to follow his gaze.

Stepping out of the maze in high-heeled black boots and glowing white robes was a woman with fire-red hair, pale white skin, and dark, ruby lips.

I told my feet to stop, but it was as if they were working in slow motion. I slid to the ground at her feet. She glared at me, and I scrambled backward, trying to get my clumsy legs to put as much distance between her and me as I could.

It was the queen.

She smiled, showing teeth that were whiter than the summer clouds in Park City.

Cole grabbed my arm and yanked me to him and away from her. The Shades that had been pursuing us went still. I could hear my own blood pulsing in my ears.

Ashe and Max coiled, as if ready to run for it, but then Max thought better of it and lowered his head toward the queen in a subservient bow. Ashe watched him and then did the same. Cole’s breaths came out in anxious, shallow pants. We stood there, the lake to our right, the stone wall to our backs, the Shades to our left, and the queen of the Everneath in front of us.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her face, and I remembered how she had so calmly obliterated that man in the square.

He became red mist. With a nod from her, I would become a cloud of red mist.

Cole squeezed my arm, and I realized I was shaking uncontrollably.

“I heard someone was trying to come through,” she said in a voice that was amplified as if she were speaking into a microphone. “I had to see for myself.”

Cole pulled me back and stepped in front of me. It was the wrong move.

Her piercing eyes tracked him like a hawk’s. “Who are you trying to protect? Show her to me.”

I peeked out from behind Cole.

She studied my face. “Ah. The human from the Ouros square. Tell me, human. Why did you come here?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My voice was paralyzed in the face of the queen. I had no idea what to say. Telling her about Jack in the Tunnels was out of the question. Who knew what she could do to him?

Then I realized that she had no idea I’d survived the Feed. There was nothing to give me away.

Except my tether.

I glanced down at it. Still pointed directly into the middle of the lake. Cole stood close enough to me to partially absorb the tether and block it from the queen’s view.

“Speak, girl. I’m used to having my questions answered.”

I couldn’t let her see the tether. I ducked my head behind him again and closed the distance between me and Cole so the tether completely disappeared.

I showed my face and forced my mouth to make words. “I wanted to become an Everliving … Your Majesty. To be with him.” I tilted my head toward Cole. “But he didn’t want me. So I tried to get down here by myself, through the Shop-n-Go; but he caught me. He promised he would make me like him, then he betrayed me. I escaped to the maze, and I’ve been running ever since.”

The queen looked from my face to Cole’s, then to Max’s and Ashe’s. Her gaze stayed on Ashe’s face for a moment longer than the rest of us, but she quickly turned back to me.

“Then why is he protecting you now?”

Cole spoke up. “Because, Your Majesty, she doesn’t deserve to die just for being foolish. I was going to take away her memories and drop her on the Surface.”

I glanced at Cole. Good thinking.

The queen narrowed her eyes and then shrugged. “Shades, take them away. We’ll feed them to the Everlivings of Ouros.”

“Wait!” Cole shouted. “You have to believe us!”

“What does it matter if I believe you? You still face the same fate.”

“But I love her!” Cole said.

The queen froze. I held my breath.