Awaken

5

When they arrive before the precipice,

There are the shrieks, the plaints, and the laments,

There they blaspheme the puissance divine.

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto V

What?”

I whirled around to see for myself.

The first ship — as large as the ferryboat to Martha’s Vineyard my parents and I used to take on vacation, which could easily fit hundreds of people as well as their cars — was churning straight at us through the mist, looking like a great white shark headed for its prey.

The second boat was plowing through the water towards the dock on which Frank and Mr. Liu were still toiling.

John was right. Both ships were making a direct path for the docks.

I spun back towards John. “Can’t you contact the captain and tell him to turn, or … or drop anchor, or whatever it is boats do?” My knowledge of nautical terms was limited to things written on raunchy-joke pirate shirts I saw the tourists wearing around Isla Huesos, such as Give up your booty or Prepare to be boarded.

“There is no captain to contact.” John’s mouth was a grim, flat line.

“Then who’s steering them?”

“Normally? The same forces that decided to put me in charge,” he said, his lips now curving into a bitter smile.

“The Fates?” I cried, appalled.

Of course. Who else was going to ferry the souls of the dead to their final destination?

John lifted a warning finger to his lips, pointing at Kayla and the others, all of whom were watching the boats, completely unaware of the impending danger. John evidently wanted to keep it that way, since he took me by the arm and pulled me closer towards Alastor, from whom everyone always steered a wide berth, so we’d be out of their hearing range.

“I don’t want to cause a panic,” John said in a low voice.

I highly doubted Kayla or Alex knew what a Fate was — at least in the context I’d used the word — but I nodded anyway.

“Of course,” I said. “But I don’t understand. After all you’ve done for the Fates, working like a slave down here for nearly two hundred years, this is how they repay you? Why would they do that? It’s so unfair —”

My indignant sputtering on his behalf wrenched a smile out of him … a smile I recognized all too well from some special moments we’d shared in his bedroom the night before.

“So you do still care about me,” he said. He slipped an arm around my waist. “I wasn’t sure. You never answered my question.”

“What question?” I asked. What was wrong with boys? They got romantic at the weirdest times. “What are you even talking about?”

“You know what I’m — what’s that?” He sprang away from me as quickly as he’d pulled me towards him. I felt something reverberate at my waist.

“Oh,” I said, pulling my mobile phone from the sash of my dress. “It’s nothing. I have my cell set on vibrate. I keep getting these text alerts about the storm back in Isla Huesos.”

I turned the phone off and tucked it away again.

“What about that?” He pointed at the whip on my hip. “Why are you still carrying that?”

I looked down at it. “Oh. I don’t know. To keep it out of the hands of children, I suppose.” I laughed to show him I was joking, although I wasn’t really. My cousin Alex’s behavior still bordered on the childish sometimes.

John didn’t laugh, however.

“That whip was my father’s,” he said, his face carefully devoid of emotion. “He used to use it on the ship when he … ” He seemed to want to say something, but decided better of it. “Well, he used to use it quite often. I have no idea how your cousin found it. I thought it went down with the Liberty along with everything else belonging to my father.”

“Oh, John,” I said softly, touching the side of his face. Now I understood why the sight of the whip had upset him so. John’s relationship with his father had been what my therapists would call challenging. “I’m sorry. I’ll get rid of it.”

“No,” he said, and managed a smile, though it seemed to me one wracked with the pain of memories best forgotten. “Everything that’s ever turned up from the ship has always done so for good reason, like your necklace.”

As he spoke, he’d reached out to tug my diamond from the bodice of my dress, with the confident proprietorship of a lover. But when the grape-size stone tumbled into his hand, the smile faded.

The diamond was the color of onyx.

My heart gave a sickening lurch, the kind it gives when you hear the siren to an emergency services vehicle going down your street and you realize the reason it’s so loud is because it’s stopped in front of your house. It’s your house that’s on fire, someone you love who’s sick or in trouble or hurt.

Normally? The same forces that decided to put me in charge, John had replied when I’d asked who was steering the boats.

Who was steering them now?

Furies.

No wonder my diamond had turned black. It had nothing to do with the weather.

“John, what’s happening?” I asked, feeling as sick as if someone had punched me in the stomach. “I thought Furies could only possess humans on earth. How could they come here, to the Underworld? We told Alex and Kayla they’d be safe here, but we may as well have left them in Isla Huesos if Furies —”

“Don’t worry,” John interrupted, dropping my diamond and reaching for my shoulders to give me a little shake. “They are safe here. Or at least they will be. I’m going to fix this.”

“How?” I tried not to let my doubt show, but all I could think about was Mr. Graves’s warning: pestilence. If this wasn’t pestilence, I didn’t know what was. “If the docks are destroyed, all of these people — Chloe, Reed, everyone — their souls will never get to where they’re supposed to go.”

“Yes, they will,” he said, firmly. “Because the docks aren’t going to get destroyed.”

“But if the Furies have control of the boats —”

“You’ve got to trust me. I know I’ve let you down before —”

“What?” I shook my head. “No, you haven’t.”

“I have. But I’m not going to this time, I swear it.”

“John.” This was exactly like him. He always took everything on himself, convinced he had to save the world and do it single-handedly. “No. Let me help you for once. That’s what I’m here for, at least if everything Mr. Smith says is true —”

“You can help me. Here.”

Surprised, I held one of my hands out to meet the one he stretched towards me. Except for the mooring lines, this was as close as I could recall to John ever requesting help from me. It wasn’t his fault he was so stubbornly intent on protecting me. Back when he’d been born, women were put on pedestals and told to do nothing all day but look pretty (except for all the women who got worked to death on farms or in cotton mills or having a baby every year because there was no birth control). Even though John knew things were different now, he still tended to think of me as one of those pedestal ladies.

So it was a bit of shock when what he handed me were the reins to his man-eating horse.

“Take Alastor,” he said in a low, urgent voice, “and get back to the castle. Whatever happens, you’ll be safe there, behind the walls.”

“Um … what?” I said, more out of astonishment than from any need for further information, since I had a pretty good idea of what he’d said and absolutely no intention of following his instructions.

“Alastor knows the way,” he went on. “If you’re on his back, no one will dare interfere with you. People,” he added, “tend to be intimidated by Alastor.”

“I can’t think why,” I said dryly, looking up at the stallion’s ink-black eyes, which at that moment happened to be rolling towards John, as if to echo my own skeptical thoughts about his plan. The horse had laid down his ears, a sure indicator that he was displeased … enough so that Hope, my pet dove and full-time protector, sensed it and flew down from the cavern’s ceiling to scold him, fluttering around the stallion’s head and trilling her disapproval.

Alastor’s ears flicked forward as he eyed the bird, looking as if he’d like nothing more than to make a bite-size snack out of her.

“Alastor,” John said in a warning tone, and the horse whickered innocently.

I shook my head. “John. That’s a very nice plan, but I think I can do more than run away and hide in the castle. And what about Alex and Kayla?”

“Take them with you. And I’m not asking you to run away. I’m asking you to —”

“What about all these other people?” I interrupted, looking around the beach. It was hard to keep my temper, but remembering my job as a consort, I tried. “There must be a thousand of them, at least, and more souls coming every minute. We can’t just abandon them.”

“I have no intention of abandoning them.” He’d begun to peel off his black T-shirt, a sight which simultaneously confused and thrilled me. It also made me angrier at him, because he was using unfair weaponry against me. “Get yourself to safety. Leave the rest to me.”

“You think I’m just going to — I’m sorry, is it too warm in here for you?”

He stared at me uncomprehendingly, his hair adorably mussed from where his shirt collar had ruffled it coming over his head. “What?”

I didn’t know whether I wanted to grab him by those wide, muscular shoulders and kiss him or shake the living daylights out of him.

“Why are you undressing?” I asked.

“Pierce, there isn’t much time,” he said, sitting down at the edge of the dock. “You’re a skilled rider. You should be able to handle Alastor without any problem. He’s not really as wild as he acts. He’s simply not used to polite society. He only needs a little taming.” Bending over to unlace his tactical boots, he glanced up at me from beneath some of the long dark hair that had tumbled across his eyes. “A bit like his owner, as you keep assuring me.”

I shook my head again. “How could you know anything about my riding skills? You’ve never seen me on a horse. I used to ride back in Connecticut, but you couldn’t possibly have seen me then, because you and I weren’t —”

My voice trailed off. Together, was what I was going to say, until I remembered that just because we hadn’t been together didn’t mean he hadn’t been watching me … or watching over me, as I’m sure he’d have preferred to think of it. Death deities couldn’t always be counted on to follow modern social niceties, such as “Don’t spy on people.”

Remembering how often I’d eavesdropped on my parents, I realized humans couldn’t always be counted on to follow this rule, either, so I didn’t hold it against him.

“John,” I said. “Why are you taking your shoes off?”

He’d neatly folded and draped his shirt across his boots, lined up side by side next to the closest post.

“I don’t want to get them wet,” John explained matter-of-factly, climbing to his feet. “Here, take care of this for me while I’m gone, will you?” He passed me his tablet. “I know you don’t need it — you have your own. But maybe your cousin could use it … or your friend Kayla. That way she won’t have to keep shouting across the beach at Frank ….”

I assumed he was joking. I remembered a time when he never joked, just brooded, and could only attribute the change — like the fact that refreshments and blankets were now being given out along the docks — to my influence.

But I was going to have to teach him that there was a time for jokes and a time to be serious, and now was a time for the latter. The sight of his clothing stacked into such a tidy pile made my pulse stagger. After my friend Hannah had died, I’d spent a lot of time online, researching suicide. I’d wanted to figure out how she could have done what she’d done, only realizing later that I wasn’t going to find the answer on a website.

One thing I did learn, though, was that people who take their own lives by leaping off bridges and cliffs often leave small stacks of belongings next to the place from which they jumped, things they feel they won’t need in the afterlife, such as their shoes, eyeglasses, and wallets. The police called them suicide piles.

The sight of John’s shirt and shoes piled up like that — not to mention the fact that he’d given me his precious tablet — instantly reminded me of those piles.

“Where are you going that you think you don’t need it?” I asked John, thrusting the tablet back at him. “And why do you think you’re not coming back?”

“Of course I’m coming back.” John tucked the tablet into the tight sash of my gown, next to my cell phone. His smile was reassuring. “I told you. I’m going to fix this.”

“How?” I demanded, my voice beginning to rise. “By sacrificing yourself for everyone else, exactly like in my dream?”

He stared down at me, confused, the smile wavering a little. “What dream?”

“Remember that morning I woke up in your arms, crying? It’s because I dreamed about how you died,” I said. “I was on the Liberty. There was nothing I could do to save you. I watched you drown.”

It was the first time I’d admitted to him that I’d known every detail of the stormy night he’d been thrown overboard from the deck of the Liberty: how he’d been left to be tossed about on the waves as punishment for the crimes he’d committed at sea: mutiny … and murder. Even though he’d committed those crimes for a very good cause — to save the lives of his fellow crewmates, Henry, Frank, Mr. Graves, and Mr. Liu — he’d still been found guilty in the eyes of the law … and apparently in the eyes of the Fates as well.

But knowing they hadn’t felt guilty enough to let him die — they’d granted him the gift of eternal life, after all — hadn’t made my dream any less horrifying … or the fact that during it, it had felt as if someone had carved out my heart and thrown it, still beating, into the waves after him.

Now it appeared that nightmare was about to be reenacted while I was awake.

“Pierce,” he said.

He attempted to raise his hands — to touch my face, I suppose — but I wouldn’t allow it. If he touched me, I’d shatter like glass.

“Admit it,” I said, my voice gruff with emotion. “I’m about to watch you drown all over again. You’re going to go out there and try to stop those boats from wrecking. Isn’t that how you got yourself killed the last time? It’s what you do.”

“No,” he said. He seemed to be having a hard time suppressing a smile. “Because I can’t die. I already did and came back, remember?”

“You can still be hurt,” I reminded him. Now I did touch him, but only to hold up one of his own hands to show him his knuckles, thick with scars.

“True,” he said. His eyes were glinting way too brightly. “But I heal very quickly, remember? And someone has to try to stop them.”

“You said there’s no way to slow them down at that speed.” Icy tendrils of dread began to squeeze my heart. “So what good is it going to do if you try?”

“I didn’t say slow them down.” I recognized the glint in his eyes. It was the same dangerous look John always got right before he was about to do something reckless. “I said I’m going to try to stop them.”

I sank my fingernails into his hand. “John. No.”

“Pierce, it’s the only way,” he said. The dangerous gleam grew into another one I recognized: stubbornness. He was going whether I liked it or not. “At least I can protect the docks.”

“But what about you?” Cold slivers of dread now arced out from my heart to travel down my spine. “Who’s going to protect you?” I nodded to my diamond. I didn’t dare release his hand to point at it, for fear he might disappear. “My necklace — you saw what it does to Furies. Take me with you. I can kill them.”

His fingers were already slipping away from mine, despite how tightly I’d held on to them.

“I know you can, my bloodthirsty little love,” he said, his grin wider than ever. “The problem is that the Furies know it now, too.” Instead of moving away from me, he wrapped his arm once more around my waist, drawing me close to his bare chest. “The last place you should be is out here in the open where they can find you. You’re our weapon of last resort. We can’t afford to lose you.”

I looked up at his lips, hovering just inches above mine. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed those lips until they were as close as they were now. I could feel the heat from his thighs through the thin material of my dress, the strong sinews in his arms beneath my hands.

“I’m the one who can’t afford to lose you,” I said.

“But I can’t die,” he reminded me. “I only know what it’s like to feel dead inside. That’s how I felt until the moment you appeared on this beach … remember? You marched up to me and started telling me how unfairly you thought I was treating everyone. That’s when I started feeling alive again for the first time in … well, a long time. That’s why it hurt so much when you left —”

“Why do you have to keep bringing that up?” I asked. His close proximity was making me feel a little breathless. “I’ve apologized a million times for throwing that tea in your face —”

“Because that was my fault. I didn’t handle that situation, or others involving you, in the” — he searched for the word he wanted — “gentlemanly fashion I should have. But I swore if I got a second chance, I’d make it up to you. It hasn’t been easy. Sometimes it’s seemed as if I’d lost you. That made me feel dead again inside.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off his lips. “So then why are you in such a good mood?”

“Because,” he said. He was holding me so close, I could feel his own heart beating against mine, strong and steady. “I think I have the answer to my question.”

“What question?”

“Whether or not you’ve forgiven me. You must have, or you wouldn’t be so concerned for my health.” He was openly grinning now, his teeth flashing even and white against skin that was almost as dark as mine due to the amount of time he spent wandering around the Isla Huesos Cemetery. “Tell me you love me.”

“No,” I said. It was difficult to keep my voice from shaking, but I was determined not to fall apart in front of him. I figured that was what a consort would do, stay strong.

The smile faded, his face awash in sudden uncertainty. “No? No, you don’t love me? Or no, you won’t tell me?”

“I mean, no, I’m not telling you that. See, this way you won’t be able to do anything stupid like sacrifice yourself for the rest of us. You’ll have to come back to find out how I really feel about —”

He didn’t let me finish. He lowered his lips to mine, kissing me so deeply that the cold shards in my spine turned to warm tingles, rippling from the soles of my feet all the way up to the base of my neck. Even my frozen heart began to thaw. Every inch of me melted at his touch, became soft in response to his hardness, alive in a way it hadn’t been the second before his mouth met mine.

It wasn’t only because he had the ability to raise the dead and heal wounds (and I had a lot of wounds to heal — my scars simply didn’t show on the outside, though, so no one could see them), or even because he was so incredibly attractive.

It was because of what I hadn’t told him: that I loved him. I don’t know how he couldn’t tell from the very first second our lips touched. Every beat of my heart seemed to shout it: I love you. I love you. I love you.

But I knew I was right. I didn’t dare say it out loud.

Then, just as abruptly as he’d started kissing me, he thrust me away, as if I were something he’d suddenly remembered he needed to resist. Which I was, at least for now. He was something I needed to resist, as well, because like he’d said, the Furies weren’t only on those boats. They were everywhere.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

“Don’t worry,” he said. The smile had returned, but it wasn’t quite as cocky as it had been before. “I’ll be back.”

Then he leaped over the dock railing and dove towards the dark, churning waves, vanishing from sight right before he struck the water.

If only I’d realized then that I’ll be back were the last words I was ever going to hear him say.