Raging Sea (Undertow, #2)(71)

What happens next, I might truly never understand. It all seems to happen at once, yet I witness everything as if it is its own exclusive event. Spangler spins and slams his free hand on a button inside the door of the electrical shed, and all at once I don’t feel the connection anymore. Doyle fires his gun. Spangler’s eyes roll into the back of his head, and he falls to the ground. He stares up at the stars and dies.

“It’s over,” Doyle says.

There’s another gunshot, and Doyle falls. His body lies next to Spangler’s, and the two of them leave this world together. I turn to find a wheelchair rolling into the light. Calvin is pushing it along, and in the seat is Governor Bachman, her hand wrapped around a pistol. Her body leans sharply to the left, as if her spine has been cracked and put back together by a child. Her face is marred by a jagged purple scar that cuts a wide canal from the corner of her mouth up to her dead white eye. Despite it all, she’s got the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen.

I can’t believe she’s alive. When the Rusalka arrived on our shore, the Navy sent ships to intercept them, but the creatures used their gloves to lift a battleship out of the water and hurl it onshore. Bachman was in its path. The fact that she’s breathing is a miracle.

Her eyes hold me in place and burn with hostility. Her hands tremble as they lift a red, white, and blue megaphone to her mouth. Then an ear-piercing feedback whine stabs my ears, and a series of ugly barks and mumbling moans flies into the desert. I have no idea what she actually said, but the tone is crystal clear. She hates me.

She gestures to the guard, and Calvin jumps into action, walking over to Spangler’s body and taking his tablet. He hands it to the governor, who trades him the gun. She taps on the screen and hands it back to Calvin.

“‘I’m the client,’” he reads. “‘If you understand that, then we can move on. We’ve got a lot of packing to do.’”





Chapter Twenty-One


I SIT IN THE CAFETERIA, SHAKING UNCONTROLLABLY. Riley sits next to me, with my hand in his. He’s trying to comfort me, but I need more than a hand to feel better now.

The governor sits at our table in her chair while Calvin empties the contents of a plastic bag into a cup. It’s a murky green substance that smells both sweet and foul at the same time. Calvin inserts a straw, and she slurps it. Most of it dribbles down her chin, and Calvin is there to wipe her clean after every attempt. All the while, she taps on her machine.

“Everyone was captured and placed back into holding cells for their safekeeping,” Calvin explains.

“What about my family and friends?” I ask.

Bachman shakes her head.

“She still needs you to live up to your commitment and suspects that taking them from you would only cause delays,” Calvin says. “The Rusalka attacks have escalated, and we no longer have time for a battle of wills. We’re leaving today.”

“Today?” Riley cries.

“What do you mean ‘escalated’?” I demand.

Bachman presses some buttons and then spins her tablet so we can see. What appears are images of the prime walking onshore while hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Rusalka swarm behind him.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Riley says, exasperated. “Who is telling the truth? Is any of this real? Are we really under attack?”

Calvin nods. “The governor and I, along with several of our intelligence agents, will escort you to the front, where you will be placed under the command of Major Tom Kita of Marine Special Operations Forces.”

“What about the others? What about our families?” Riley cries.

Calvin takes Bachman’s tablet after she taps into it, then reads her response.

“‘Your parents, along with Lyric’s, will accompany you. As will Ms. Conrad, the Triton prince, and the Triton girl. Everyone else stays.’”

“No way!” Riley shouts. “Everyone goes free.”

“Here is the deal on the table,” Calvin says. “You fight. You kill the monsters. Your Alpha and human parents go free. Everyone else stays. If you tell the other children any of this, we will kill all of the human parents. They are expensive to the bottom line of this company anyway.”

“We can’t win!” I say.

Bachman taps on her tablet.

“‘I know,’” Calvin reads. “‘You are grotesque to me and the rest of America, but you may kill a few of them before they kill you.’”

I stand up and lean over Bachman. “What did you do with Doyle?”

She shifts uncomfortably.

“If you bury him—all of him—then I’ll go,” I say. “He was a soldier. He deserves a burial.”

She shrugs.

“You got it,” Calvin says.

“I’ve got your back,” Riley says as they escort us to our rooms.

I lean in and kiss him. Maybe it’s inappropriate. Maybe it’s sending the wrong signals. Maybe I’m not thinking straight and I’m scared and in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Or maybe I just want to kiss somebody who wants to kiss me, somebody who’s not in a loser triangle. It’s a nice kiss. It doesn’t pull me into an undertow, but it’s got potential. It’s probably the last one I’ll ever have.



The story Calvin tells the children is that Mr. Spangler and Mr. Doyle have the sickness and, during the crisis, Riley and I raced to get them to the infirmary. Only a moron would believe that story. It makes zero sense, but the kids don’t question it. Their blind acceptance makes me fear for them all the more.