Kicking her way to the surface, Alex felt a stab of alarm when she drew in a lungful of air and could no longer see Kaku tearing into the dead beast. The water was once again still and silent.
“HURRY!” Hunter bellowed, running along the bank towards them. “HE’S COMING!”
Heart pounding, Alex mermaid-kicked through the tangles of grassy reeds that pulled at her body, forcing them aside with her free hands as she wrestled her way through the deep water. Bear was barely keeping ahead of her, but he finally reached the bank where Hunter was waiting to haul him up to safety.
Two strokes behind, Alex arrived only a second later, but just as she threw an arm up for Hunter to draw her out, she was jerked back, hard, and submerged underwater again.
With the murkiness of the creek making it nearly impossible to see anything, Alex could only just make out the figure of the massive Kaku tugging her down to the creek bed and continuing to drag her upstream. Like a dog with a bone, his ferocious teeth were attached to the vine she’d cut herself free from, the one keeping her feet bound. It was a miracle he’d gone for the trailing vegetation and not latched onto her flesh—a miracle Alex was certain wouldn’t last for much longer.
Her adrenaline spiking, she pushed past her all-consuming terror and her screaming lungs to summon A’enara. When Kaku gave another vicious tug, she used the momentum to her advantage and swung her body around to slice through the trailing vine.
Now free, she released her blade and moved desperately upwards, her legs kicking wildly and her arms frantically stroking through the dense water. She managed to get her head above the surface and gasp in a lungful of air right before she felt the telltale current of movement beneath her heralding Kaku’s approach.
Knowing she was about to give the fight of her life, Alex called A’enara back just as the beast breached the surface with his teeth bared, ready to snap her in half. But she didn’t get a chance to do anything before a shadow launched off the bank and landed on the creature’s neck—a shadow that turned out to be Hunter, who plunged a dagger straight into Kaku’s eye socket.
“GO!” Hunter shouted, hanging from atop the now roaring beast, struggling like a cowboy riding an enraged bull. “Go, go, go!”
Alex didn’t need to be told twice. And she also didn’t need to swim far, because Bear threw a vine from his position on the bank and when she grabbed hold, he used it to swiftly tow her to his side and up out of the water.
As she lay there panting from shock, exertion and oxygen deprivation, Bear threw the vine again and yelled, “Hunter!”
Another roar was followed by a splashing sound, and then Bear was pulling Hunter out as well.
The teacher moved straight to Alex’s side, dripping water down onto her as he slid his dagger through the vines binding her feet. With concerned eyes, he looked her over from head to toe and asked, “Are you hurt?”
Still lightly panting, Alex shook her head and said, “I’m okay.”
“When he took you down and you didn’t come back up, we thought…” Bear couldn’t finish his sentence, his face pale even in the darkness of the now dusky light.
“I’m okay,” she repeated, quieter, using a shaking hand to swipe wet hair from her face.
“You won’t be if we don’t move,” Hunter said, hauling her up with him, water flying from them both. “The Jarnocks will be here any second, and they won’t be happy that their god is missing an eye. Can you run?”
“I’m fine—just go!” Alex said, wanting a repeat of her encounter with the Jarnocks only slightly less than a second round with Kaku.
Her teacher didn’t need further encouragement before he tore off into the jungle. His pace was swift, but when Alex’s ears picked up the furious cries of the Jarnocks discovering their missing quarry—and seeing their maimed deity—she feared they weren’t running fast enough.
Hunter’s thoughts apparently mirrored hers since he picked up speed until they were full on sprinting through the vegetation. He may have been human, but his awareness gift coupled with all the other stealthy tricks he had up his sleeve allowed him to move with almost as much ease as a Meyarin, if not as swiftly.
Alex was able to keep up thanks to her immortal blood and relentless training, but Bear wasn’t gifted in a way that would help him in their current environment, nor did he have any experience as a student in SAS. It soon became clear that he was finding it harder and harder to make his way through the dense shrubbery. But he didn’t lag behind and he didn’t complain. He just put his head down and remained right on their heels.
As dusk turned to night and darkness fell over the jungle, their escape became even more challenging. Alex could barely see a thing, and that was with the advantage of her enhanced vision. Just as she was about to point out that they needed to slow down, the inevitable happened.
Alex actually heard the crack of Bear’s bone snapping when he yanked his leg free from being wedged between two boulders. An almighty scream ripped from his vocal chords before he was able to muffle the sound out of sheer willpower.
“Hunter!” Alex cried as she ran and kneeled beside her friend, but her instructor was already doubling back before the call left her mouth.
Uttering a very un-teacherly word, Hunter dropped down beside them and rolled Bear’s jeans up to his knee. Running his hands carefully along the bone, he repeated his curse word and said, “Feels like you’ve fractured your fibula. But it hasn’t breached the skin, which is good news.”
Alex could hear from the strain in Hunter’s voice that the ‘good news’ was still extremely bad news since they were in the middle of enemy territory with Bear now handicapped.
“Can you hear anything, Alex?” Hunter asked.
Knowing he wasn’t referring to the normal jungle noises, she listened intently, but she couldn’t hear any approaching Jarnocks. “Nothing.”
“We’ve made good ground. I don’t know if we’ve lost them completely, but I think we’re safe for the moment,” Hunter said. “Let’s rest up for a few minutes, strap this leg and decide our next move.”
Alex nodded her agreement, placing a comforting hand on Bear’s chest.
“You’re doing great,” she told him when Hunter tore a strip off his own clothing and bandaged Bear’s leg between two sturdy branches in a makeshift splint.
“I’m sorry,” Bear hissed between his teeth, his voice filled with agony so acute that Alex could almost taste his pain. “I’m slowing us down.”
“Don’t be silly,” Alex said, wishing she had some water or something she could offer him. “We all needed a break. You just gave us a good excuse.”
Somehow he managed a huff of laughter. “Maybe my lucky jeans aren’t as lucky as I thought.”
She was able to muster a smile, but it disappeared when Hunter tightened the splint and Bear released an anguished moan. Stomach roiling, Alex watched as his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he blacked out from the pain.
With a shuddering exhale, she turned her accusing gaze to Hunter. “Was it necessary to make it that tight?”
“You’ve had enough first aid experience to know the answer to that.”
What he said was true, but Alex hated seeing her friend suffer. Because of that, she lashed out at the only person currently close enough to receive her wrath. Releasing the last few hours of fear, frustration, tension, stress, pain and absolute terror onto his shoulders, Alex didn’t hold back—she just launched straight into a verbal attack.
“They’re freaking cannibals, Hunter! Did no one think to mention that to us before we left?”
“Alex—”
“Was it too much to ask for a little warning? For one of you to offer a quick, ‘Hey, by the way, they might want to cook you into a stew or sacrifice you to their underwater dinosaur, but don’t worry—we’re sure you’ll be fine’?”
“We—”
“You all claimed to be worried about our safety—what a load of rubbish!” Alex cried, interrupting him again. “If
you were really worried, you would have said something!”
“Would you have listened?”
“And even then—What?”
Fully into her rant, Hunter’s words only processed for Alex when he repeated them.
“Would you have listened to us? If we’d told you about the Jarnocks, would you have decided not to come?”
Alex opened her mouth to say of course she would have listened, but then she snapped it shut again, realising he was right. She’d been so determined to carry out her plan that nothing would have stopped her from at least trying to make them see reason. And that was exactly what she’d done—just without the heads-up first.
“You still could have warned us,” she said, deflating slightly but not quite ready to acknowledge his point aloud.
“We could have,” Hunter agreed, wrapping a second strip of torn cloth around Bear’s splint for extra support. “But you were so resolute with your course of action that we figured it best to let you do what you needed to do without interference and just keep an eye on you in case you needed help.”
“I’m guessing that explains your presence here?”
Ripping one final strip from his shirt, Hunter said, “I chartered a vessel from the mainland and picked up your trail when I arrived.” He knotted the material around Bear’s leg and added, “I didn’t anticipate you finding the Jarnocks and getting into trouble so quickly, or I would have left much earlier.”
“To be fair, they found us,” Alex replied. “It all went downhill from there. Even if you’d been around, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything except get trussed up beside us as part of Kaku’s dinner.”
The volatile surge of emotion left her in a rush until all that was left was the memory of being dragged along the bottom of the creek bed by the monstrous creature. She began trembling as delayed shock set in, and she lifted her eyes through the darkness until she met Hunter’s. “You saved my life.”
“To be fair,” he said, repeating her words with a hint of a smile, “you were managing all right on your own.”
Alex shook her head firmly, knowing that if Hunter hadn’t intervened when he had, she would currently be in a state of digestion somewhere deep within Kaku’s small intestine.
“Thank you, Hunter,” she told him quietly. “I’m sorry for what I said before. Just—Just thank you. For coming after us, and for saving me.” She gestured to Bear and amended, “For saving both of us.”
He seemed to realise it was important to her that he accept her gratitude, so he didn’t brush her thanks aside and claim that he was just doing his job as her teacher. Instead, he said, “You’re welcome, Alex.”
She smiled at him, and then turned her eyes to Bear when he let out a low groan and regained consciousness.
“So it wasn’t a nightmare, then?” he said, the pain still clear in his tone.
“The sooner we get back to my vessel, the sooner we can leave the island’s anti-Bubbledoor wards and return to the academy, leaving your nightmare as nothing but a memory,” Hunter said in an attempt to be comforting.
“How far is your vessel?” Alex asked.
“About an hour from here,” he answered.
Alex’s gaze flicked back down just in time to see Bear blanch at the idea of having to walk for another hour on his injured leg. He was quick to school his expression, but she hadn’t imagined the dread flashing across his features.
“Isn’t there another way?” she asked quietly.
“Not without leaving him here,” Hunter replied, just as quietly.
They both ignored Bear when he grumbled, “There’s no point whispering. I broke my leg, not my ears.”
“We can’t leave him here,” Alex said to Hunter, not even considering it as an option.
“I know that,” Hunter agreed. “Which is why I said we have an hour to go. Normally it would only take half that time, but I’m accounting for the slower pace.”
“Good of you,” Bear grumbled again, his normally cheerful humour tempered by his pain. “But how ’bout an alternative?”
Both Alex and Hunter looked at him, a sliver of moonlight streaming through the canopy and splashing across his face.
“If I’m right,” Bear said, “we’d only have to walk five minutes in that direction”—he indicated to his left—“before we’d be back at the Library doorway.”
Alex gaped at him. “How can you possibly know that?”
“I told you, I spent a lot of time in survival VRs as a kid,” Bear answered. “And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.”
“But we’ve been unconscious for most of our time here!”
“I can’t explain it,” Bear said with a shrug that turned into a moan as it jostled his leg. “Either trust me or don’t.”
Hunter studied Bear closely. “How confident are you?”
“’Bout seventy-five percent.”
Before Hunter could agree or disagree to the new plan, Alex heard something that caused her to speak up first.
“We’re going to have to take those odds,” she said, bending lower to pry her way under Bear’s upper torso and wrapping his arm around her shoulders.
Sensing her newfound haste and repeating the move on Bear’s other side, Hunter helped haul her friend painfully up to his feet and said, “What is it?”
“The Jarnocks,” Alex said. “They’re coming.”
Nineteen
The next five minutes spent sloughing through the jungle felt like an eternity to Alex. With each groan that Bear tried his hardest to repress, she felt the phantom pain in her own body. She feared her friend would pass out again from their hurried, jolting movements, but he managed to pull through, guiding them until they all but tripped over the pile of wintry clothing they’d removed when they’d first arrived.
Not wanting to panic the others about how close the Jarnocks were on their tail, Alex didn’t say anything, but she also didn’t delay in calling forth their return doorway. When Bear slurred something about grabbing their clothes, Alex cried, somewhat hysterically, “Forget them!” and hauled him through the door right along with Hunter.
They stumbled out into the foyer of the Library, the only place Alex had thought to deliver them to at a moment’s notice, but thankfully there was no one other than the librarian to witness their magical arrival—or the darts that flew through the doorway, missing them by sheer luck alone. The librarian, of course, only sniffed and turned his nose up at them before wandering off.
“I’ll go and get Fletcher,” Alex said, helping Hunter ease Bear to the floor. There was no way she was making her friend walk one more step now that they were safe.
“Wait! Alex—”
“I’ll have him here in a jiffy!” Alex yelled over her shoulder as she sprinted up the staircase and out of the Tower into the night.
It was only when the biting wind and buffeting snow lanced across her exposed flesh that she understood why Hunter had called for her to wait. Dressed in her cut-off shorts, cami and boots, the little she did wear was soaked with both creek water and sweat—hardly appropriate attire for journeying around the wintry campus. But she wasn’t about to go back now, and she sprinted on through the freezing cold towards the Gen-Sec building, grateful for her Meyarin speed.
As she ran, she wished she could go up to her room and grab some laendra for Bear, but she couldn’t risk being asked how it had come to be in her possession. While not as instantaneous as the Meyarin flower, she knew Fletcher’s medicines would fix him swiftly enough, so she continued onwards, barely slowing in time to burst through the doors of the Med Ward.
Fletcher, fortunately, was there, and upon learning of Bear’s injury, he didn’t waste time before grabbing a bag of supplies and hurrying towards the exit.
When Alex made to follow, he held up his hand in a ‘stop’ gesture.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Confused, she answered, “Coming with you.”
“Not dressed like that,” he said firmly. “
You’ll catch your death out there.”
“I’m—”
“We can stand here and keep arguing or you can agree to stay so I can go and help Bear,” Fletcher said. “What’ll it be, Alex?”
Knowing every second they argued was a second longer Bear remained in pain, Alex grudgingly said, “Fine. I’ll stay.”
With a warning in his eyes that if she reneged, there would be consequences, Fletcher took off, leaving Alex alone.
Only—she wasn’t alone.
In her haste to alert Fletcher to Bear’s injury, she hadn’t so much as glanced around the rest of the Med Ward—a mistake she was now deeply regretting.
I hate my life, she thought with a resigned sigh as she noted the two others standing in the room. Perhaps Kaku was a deity, and one who had cursed Alex to have bad luck for the rest of her life. Because, of all the people in the world, it just had to be Kaiden and Declan who now stood before her, both visibly shocked by her appearance.
She could hardly blame them. Thanks to her mad dash through the jungle, her skin was scratched enough to look like she’d been in a vicious catfight—and lost. Her body was coated in muddy grime from the creek, her hands were sliced from A’enara, and her wrists and ankles were chaffed raw from her bindings. All in all, she was one hot mess.
Alex had to admit, seeing Kaiden and Declan while looking like she’d stepped off the set of a Tomb Raider movie was right near the top of her ‘Things to avoid in life’ list. But she somehow managed to hide her embarrassment—or so she hoped.
“Hey,” she said, giving an ultra cool head nod that was anything but ultra cool.
“You look terrible,” Kaiden said, walking straight over to her with Declan following close behind.
“Just what every girl longs to hear,” Alex quipped, but her heart wasn’t in it.
She didn’t fight him when he gently guided her to sit on one of Fletcher’s beds before retrieving a vial of green pain reliever from across the room.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Alex said, taking the proffered medicine when he pointedly nudged it closer. “Really. I have something back in my dorm that’ll help take the edge off.”