Gaia's Secret (23 page)

With a gasp I resurfaced, water slapping
against my face. I spit it out, trying to fill my lungs with air,
but my boots pulled me back under. Something grabbed my arm and I
swung at it in an attempt defend myself.

“Stop…it’s me!”

Alex stopped my hand inches from his face.
“Are you all right to swim?” He fought to suppress his agony as the
water bit his wounds.

I nodded, the blaring screams echoing from
everywhere. He guided me as we fought against the current. The
heads of Cicero and Sonya bobbed in the water ahead as they glanced
back to make sure we were following.

I swam hard, always watching Alex, making
sure his arms were carrying him. His face showed none of the agony
I knew he felt, only determination. We were halfway across the
river when my hope sank. Red eyes dotted the opposite bank, pacing
with anticipation.

When I looked back to Sonya and Cicero, I
couldn’t find them. My heart pounded as my eyes searched in
desperation. Where had they gone? Alex couldn’t swim forever.

I noticed two dark shapes hanging from a
shadow, fixed in the middle of the river. It was a rock, and Cicero
and Sonya were crawling up its side. As Alex and I approached, they
were waiting with ready hands. Alex pushed me up so that my hand
could reach Sonya’s. She pulled me onto the rock and Cicero helped
Alex up after me.

Crimson eyes lined both banks and their yips
and screams rang in my ears. The eyes paced back and forth, hungry
and seething.

“There are so many of them,” I said.

Cicero looked back at me. “They can’t cross
the water.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, but even as I
watched, I noticed none of them dared to go near the river’s
edge.

Alex’s wound burned through me and I jumped
to his side. Sonya hovered over him, eyes closed in deep
concentration as she held his arm. His entire shirtsleeve had
changed to black and was spreading fast. The flesh in his forearm
had been ripped away, revealing mangled muscle oozing with thick
blood. My stomach turned. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

Sonya stood there with her eyes closed and
Alex’s energy was fading with every drop of blood that seeped from
his open wound.

I growled in frustration, and pulled up the
corner of my cloak, trying to rip off a piece.

Alex winced. “Daria, please.”

Sonya’s eyes snapped open and fixed on me,
her expression blank. I glanced back at Alex’s arm. Not only had it
stopped bleeding, but it was coagulating along his forearm at an
unusual rate.

Sonya sighed and sank down on the rock, her
husband at her side wiping the hair back from her face. Whatever
she had done put great strain on her.

I knelt beside Alex, examining him for any
sign of further harm and wiped his arm clean with my cloak. The
wound had stopped bleeding and was protected by a solid clot. I
stared wide-eyed at Sonya.

“Sonya’s a healer.” Cicero said, examining
his wife.

“Wounds never heal that fast.”

“You’ve also never seen a wound healed with
magic. It greatly weakens the healer—especially for a wound like
his. Barghest saliva carries poisonous toxins.”

“It isn’t healed…” Sonya struggled for air.
“Not all the way. It was…all I could do…” She fought against
invading fatigue.

“Shh.” Cicero pulled back her hair, holding
her hand. “You need to rest, love. You’ve done more for him than
anyone else could. He’ll be fine.”

Sonya was hunched forward, her breathing
shallow. She’d depleted so much strength tending to Alex, that I
could hardly detect traces of her life. But that might have been
because Cicero’s anxiety was so strong it drowned out everyone
else’s emotions.

Alex’s pain was acute, but it was noticeably
fading. Relieved, I sat beside him and wrapped my arms around my
knees to keep myself from shaking. With all my worry about Alex’s
health, I hadn’t noticed the cold. The water had soaked through my
cloak and skin, and now my bones were frozen.

“We should have turned around.” Alex winced.
“Alaric will be—“

“There’s no point in arguing about it now,”
Cicero interrupted.

“…Should never have let her try magic,” Alex
mumbled.

Cicero glanced sideways at his son, his brow
furrowed as his gaze returned to the blood rimmed banks. The eyes
glowed from all directions, floating back and forth in the shadows,
watching and waiting.

“Are th-th-those things usually prowling this
f-f-forest?” I asked, unable to keep my teeth from chattering.

“No. Death hounds existed in this world ages
ago. They were created by dark wizards, from the shadows. They
couldn’t live peaceably with humans, or any creature of light for
that matter. It took decades to destroy them.”

As if to emphasize the point, the horrible
alien screaming blared all around us, the points of crimson shining
with madness. I knew this was going to give me nightmares for a
very, very long time. Probably the rest of my life. “Then wh-what
are they doing h-h-here?”

Cicero took a deep breath as he rubbed
Sonya’s hand. “Someone has brought them back.”

“The same someone that’s b-building an
army?”

Cicero was silent, contemplative as he stared
ahead.

Someone let the Pykans through the portal.
Someone was building an army to overthrow King Darius. This same
someone was sending hellhounds after me.

What had I marched my eager, ignorant self
into?

I was suddenly glad I’d decided to follow the
Del Contes. “Then, how do w-we get rid of them?”

“We don’t.” Cicero’s attentions were split
between the prowling red eyes and his weakened wife. “But they
can’t stand water, and sunlight is toxic to their skin. Until then,
we’ll wait here.”

My wet hair clung to my back, each droplet
sending shivers down my spine. Alex lifted his good arm and wrapped
it around me, holding me against him. I wanted to protest—he was
the one wounded—but my ravenous body drank in the warmth of his,
and my shivering died down.

There was just one more thing.

“Cicero, what was that light back there?”

Cicero scratched his chin as he stared out at
nothing. “Something that contained the essence of sunlight, or
enough of it to keep the barghests at bay.”

“How did you make it?”

“I didn’t make it.”

“Who did then?”

“No
human
possesses that power.” He
looked at me then, something curious in his eyes. “It appears that
Gaia wants to keep you alive.”

I
was alive.

Nature was in full glory this morning,
celebrating our victory over death. The sun was hot, baking my
leathers and shading the backs of my eyelids a burnt orange. Water
bubbled by, birds chimed through the air, and a bed of rock had
never been more comfortable. Everything was perfect, except for the
acute pain stabbing the back of my skull.

I heard a sharp scraping and forced my lids
open.

The world was white—blinding white—and the
scraping made the ache in my skull pulse. After a few moments, my
eyes adjusted and different colors came into view.

Alex was sitting beside me. His elbows rested
on his kneecaps and he fidgeted with something in his hands. His
dark hair curled around his ears and neck, hanging in his face,
shielding his eyes. And his shirt was off.

For a moment all I could do was stare. It
wasn’t like I’d never seen Alex without a shirt. We’d known each
other since we were crawling on all fours. I just didn’t remember
him looking like…that. His golden skin was smooth and perfect, his
arms and torso were hard with lean muscle. There was no lying to
myself now. He was gorgeous. So gorgeous it made me a little
self-conscious.

And I had been wrong about him. It didn’t
take away the fact he never told me about this world, but I’d been
wrong about one very important thing: our friendship
had
meant something to him. All those years of thinking my memories
were false, that I had to destroy and hide them and pretend they
never happened because he never cared. He
had
cared, and I
could hold on to that truth with confidence.

So now what?

I pushed myself up, my head throbbing like
someone was beating it with a hammer.

“Hey.” Alex turned his face to look at me.
His expression was still guarded, but there was new warmth to his
eyes this morning.

“Hey.”

“Sleep all right?”

“I…think so.” I rubbed my temples as I gazed
around. There was no sign of the horrors from last night—the
barghests. There was also no sign of Cicero and Sonya. “Where are
your parents?”

Alex raked a stone across whatever was in his
hands.

“Trying to find the horses.”

Calyx. Poor thing had been so scared. “You
think they made it?”

Scrape—scrape
. The sound wasn’t
helping my headache. “Those horses are fine. What we’re not so sure
about is if they’ll come back.”

“I wouldn’t blame them. We’re risky
transport.”

There was a gleam in Alex’s eyes as he looked
at me. I wish he didn’t look like that with his shirt off. It was
distracting.

“Those barghests are gone for good?” I
asked.

Alex narrowed his eyes at the ledge we’d
leapt from. “For now. But they’ll come back tonight. As soon as my
parents return, we’ll be on our way away from this place.” He
looked back at me then and studied my face. “How are you feeling
this morning?”

“Fine, besides a massive headache. What about
you? How’s that gash in your arm?” I bent towards him to get a
look, but he hid his arm behind his back.

“It’s fine.”

“Let me see it.” I grabbed his arm and a
surge of his pain shot through me. The gash was much longer and
deeper than I’d thought. The clot had crusted over a shade of red
so dark it looked black; the skin around it was tinged pink, filled
with a web of blackened veins. “Alex, that looks terrible.”

He grinned, pulling his arm away. “That makes
twice now you’ve insulted my appearance.”

I rolled my eyes. If he only knew. “Can’t
your mom do anything else for it?”

He flexed his arm, turning it over as he
examined it while I tried hard not to ogle. “She used almost all
her energy restricting the poison to the wound. No, it needs other
magic for the rest. Magic that’s beyond her ability.”

“There has to be something. We can’t just let
it fester like that.”

“We don’t have a choice. There’s supposed to
be a small village not too far from here. They’ll have a witch
doctor.”

He’d better not be serious. “If your mom
couldn’t heal that, I doubt some witch doctor can.”

“Witch doctors can be incredible healers.
Besides, they’ll have elixirs that would take my mom weeks to
prepare.”

He was serious. “I thought we were trying to
avoid civilization.”

“Lucky for us, this part of civilization
doesn’t stay up to date with news of the realm.”

“I don’t like it.”

We both stared at the black mass on his arm,
and then our eyes met. There was something in his gaze, something
warm and comforting and…tender. Even more than I remembered, before
my life had turned complicated and thrown me from its good
graces.

We broke the silence at the same time.

“Last night—“

“About last night—“

We grinned at each other and I felt the heat
rise to my face.

Alex held my gaze, and I fought to hold his.
“I won’t ask you to trust me. That’s something I have to earn. I
know that. But is it too bold to ask forgiveness? For leaving and
never telling you about this place—this life?”

Could I? Was it even possible for me to
forgive him for that? I still wasn’t sure I could trust him, but he
wasn’t asking for my trust. Just forgiveness. Trust
could—might—come later.

He didn’t show the hopefulness I knew he
felt, but his words were sincere—all filled with regret. I couldn’t
deny him a second chance, not when I sat there, missing him so
much. “No, it is not too bold,” I said.

He studied my face. “You forgive me
then?”

“Yes. And…I’m sorry I’ve been so
difficult.”

Hints of a grin appeared on his lips. “It’s a
good thing I like challenges.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “Challenge” was a
nice way of putting it, and by the look on his face, he’d chosen
that word with deliberate care. “And what I said to you, in your
library. About hating you…” I looked away, growing increasingly
embarrassed by my behavior.

But before I even finished what I was going
to say, he extended his hand. “Friends?”

I grinned, placing my hand in his.
“Friends.”

His fingers closed around mine. “Thank you.”
The way he said those two little words, it was as though his spirit
had spoken to mine.

A few moments passed, my hand wrapped in his.
How strange that one moment could wash over the years, cleansing
them from filth and grime. This was our chance at a new beginning,
and he was still holding my hand. I wasn’t sure how I felt about
that.

“Just so you know.” I pulled my hand free.
“You may be off the hook for leaving me out of, well, everything,
but I still don’t trust you.”

His eyes held me entranced. “Fair. I know I
deserve it. But you will someday. I’ll make sure of it.”

“You really are that confident.” I raised a
brow.

He laughed then, the sound of it massaging my
heart. “Here.” In his hand was a dagger. My dagger. “I tried
sharpening it for you.”

I took the blade from his hands. The still
dulled blade. “You said you sharpened it?”

“I said I
tried
. Apparently it’s as
stubborn as you are. Where’d you get that anyway?”

The little strip of metal flickered in broad
daylight.