Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)(12)

I raise my fist, and it burns like a star, turning me into a lighthouse and illuminating the wave, which is suddenly no longer made of water. Now it is a living mass of Rusalka bodies stampeding toward the shore.

“Run!” Fathom shouts, but when I turn to him, he morphs into Bex. She grabs my free hand and tries to pull me away.

“We can’t escape this,” I say to her, but again she’s changing, morphing into Arcade.

“Kill them! They’re not worthy of your mercy!”

When I look back at the wave, it has changed too. It’s no longer made of Rusalka. It’s made of men and women in lab coats. They hold horrible saws and hooks and cattle prods in their hands, and at their center are my parents, thrashing for freedom.

“Let them go!” I scream.

A scientist leaps out of the murky soup and lands right in front of me. He’s followed by another, and another, until I am completely surrounded on all sides. The scientists are no longer just people. They are hybrids of Rusalka and men, walking death with bloody gums; black, soulless eyes; and golden, glowing lights that dangle like bait in front of their terrible, ripping fangs.

“Make an example out of us,” they taunt, and one last time they change. The monsters are gone, and in their place are hundreds and hundreds of identical copies of myself.

I wake with a jerk, all floppy limbs and foggy brain, and then WHAM! The crown of my head crunches against something hard and unmovable. My skull is a cracked egg with searing yolk dribbling down my neck, shoulders, and spine. Fireflies swoop in and out of my vision and the coppery taste of blood fills my mouth. I’ve bitten my tongue so hard, I’m worried I might have lost some of it.

“Calm down! You’re okay. You’re safe,” a voice says from above me. Its owner is sitting on my chest.

I push off the dream, telling myself I am not a monster. This is not Coney Island. I’m in a lime-green Ford somewhere in the middle of Texas with a one-hundred-and-twenty-eight-pound girl sitting on my chest.

“Bex,” I gasp.

Bex gives me a long, suspicious look as if she’s weighing whether or not I’ve gone crazy.

“I can’t breathe,” I squeak.

She rolls off me and into her seat. She’s sweaty, and it looks like someone poured a glass of water down the back of her T-shirt.

“You’ve been having a lot of crazy dreams lately,” she says, pointing to my hand. The glove is awake and pulsating. It’s never powered itself on before without my asking.

“It was so real,” I explain as I turn it off. “I can still hear them.”

Bex points to my driver’s-side window. I crane my neck in that direction and spot a gang of burly guys sitting on motorcycles in the parking space beside our car. They laugh and shout at one another, gunning their motors so that a loud thrum rattles our windows, my teeth, the air, and probably God in heaven. One of them spots me and howls with laughter. He’s amused that he scared the crap out of me. I give him the finger and he laughs even harder.

“Where’s Arcade?”

“She’s praying,” she says, the words riding on a wave of irritation. “Were you two out training last night?”

I nod. There’s a big purple bruise on my shoulder and on the right side of my rib cage. Bex gives them a quick once-over and shakes her head.

“Do the two of you have a plan when we get there?”

“Sort of,” I say, but suddenly realize we don’t at all, unless you consider “Attack the camp, free everyone, make people regret doing evil crap” a plan.

“Sort of?” she says. “And do you have a plan for me?”

“You’re going to drive the getaway car.”

“No, for when you die.”

It’s not like I haven’t considered the possibility, but I also know I have actively avoided giving it a lot of thought. I don’t know what is going to happen or how it’s going to end. I also haven’t thought about what Bex will do if I’m killed. Who the heck plans that kind of thing? This is a unique situation. I don’t have a plan B, and she knows it.

“What do you want me to say? There isn’t an instruction book for what we’re going to do. I’m doing the best I can here.”

“For just one second, can you stop fighting me and hear what I’m saying to you?” she says. “What should I do if you die?”

I fumble with words I don’t have. I’ve been so caught up in preparing for this fight that I have forgotten about the consequences if it fails.

“Find somewhere to be happy,” I whisper.

I watch a tear tumble out of her left eye and down her cheek; then she nods as if I just answered a question for her.

“Typical,” she says.

Arcade opens the car door and crawls into the back seat.

“You have had enough rest,” Arcade says. “Make this machine go.”

I give Bex my best reassuring smile, but it misses by a mile. She turns her head away to the window again.

I start the car and pull out onto the freeway.



I’ve seen movies set in the desert, so I thought I knew what to expect: endless miles of golden sand, vultures, and some poor fool raving from thirst and hallucinations. The West Texas desert is nothing like the movies. Amazing colors are baked into everything: reds and rusts, mustards, browns and grays, and deep maroons, speckled by shocking blues and purples. It’s a glorious painting, and the artist used every hue. It’s also overflowing with life. Unfortunately, said life is freaking me out. I grew up in a place where the wildest beasts were the seven cats owned by the crazy lady on the tenth floor of my apartment building. Here, there are lizards as big as those cats. They sit in trees and lurk in the scraggly brush, spitting their lavender tongues at everything. Snakes whip their bodies into the road in defiance of my two-ton machine. Furry creatures with long tails skitter in the tall grasses that line the highway. I feel like I’m driving through a zoo.