Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(26)
Diana didn’t understand. Alia’s family had been targets for so long, first when people accused them of “playing God” with their research, then because of the rules the Keralis Foundation attached to any grant for aid. There was still speculation that the crash that had killed her parents had been an assassination plot. A thorough investigation had proven that there was nothing more to that terrible night than a slippery road and distracted drivers. But every few years, some newspaper or blog ran a conspiracy piece on the deaths of Nik and Lina Keralis. Alia would get an email from some curious reporter, or she’d walk by a newsstand and see her parents’ wedding photo looking back at her, and the wound would open all over again.
She remembered sitting in the backseat with Jason, his profile lit by streetlamps, her parents in the front, arguing about which bridge to take home. That was the last memory she had of them: her mother drumming on the steering wheel, her father jabbing at the screen of his phone and insisting that if she’d just taken the Triborough, they’d be home by now. Then the strange feeling of the car moving the wrong way, momentum carrying them across three lanes of traffic as they slid into a skid. She remembered the car hitting the divider, the shriek of tearing metal, and then nothing at all. She’d been twelve. Jason had been sixteen. When she’d woken up in the hospital, she still had the smell of burnt rubber in her nose. It took days for it to dissipate and be replaced by the cloying stink of hospital disinfectant. Jason had been there when she woke, a big slash on his cheek that had been stitched closed, his eyes red from crying. Their godfather, Michael Santos, had come, and his son, Theo, who had put his arm around Jason and held Alia’s hand.
Looking at the remains of the Thetis felt the same as waking up in that hospital bed, like grief rushing straight at her. You are being hunted. Was Alia the reason for the wreck? Was she why Jasmine and Ray and the others were lost forever?
Diana had set about disentangling the rigging and was now tearing the hull apart as easily as if she were digging into a lobster dinner.
“What are you doing?” Alia asked, eyeing her nervously. Maybe the cult members mixed steroids in with their chewable vitamins.
“We need a craft to get out past the boundary.”
“What boundary?”
Diana hesitated, then said, “I just meant open sea. The hull is useless, but I think we can salvage part of the deck and the sail and use it as a raft.”
Alia didn’t want to touch the boat. She didn’t want anything to do with it. “A raft? In that surf? Why don’t we wait for the storm to pass?”
“This storm isn’t going to pass. It’s only going to get worse.” Diana peered out at the water. “We could try swimming, but if we got separated—”
“It’s fine,” Alia said, helping Diana brace a piece of the hull against her shoulder and tear it free.
At that moment Diana doubled over in pain.
“What is it?” Alia asked, panicked. Without realizing it, she’d started to think of Diana as invulnerable.
“Maeve,” she said. “The others. We have to hurry. Soon it will be too late.”
They worked for the better part of an hour. The earthquakes were coming more frequently now, and occasionally bits of the cliff would shake free behind them. Alia had tried to help for a while, but eventually she’d given up and leaned against the makeshift raft, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Diana could see just how ashen she looked beneath her brown skin.
She’d seemed better when they were climbing and Diana had been close to her. Your proximity may prolong her life, may even soothe her, but it cannot heal her. She will die, and the island will live. Alia was dying, and though Diana still felt well, she could sense the pain and bewilderment of her sisters through the blood tie that connected all Amazons. What one of them felt, they all felt, and to fight, even to spar, meant to endure the pain of your opponent, even as you dealt the blow. If one of them died…No, Diana would not allow it.
“Hold on, Maeve,” she whispered.
They lashed together the raft as best they could, and then Diana raised the sail, tying strands of Khione’s mane into the knots of the rigging. With each knot, another section of the raft vanished. It would be invisible from the shores of Themyscira and the southern coast of Greece. Diana hoped to put the raft in as close as possible to Gytheio. From there it would be a two-day journey on foot to Therapne. She doubted Alia could make faster time than that in her current state. Perhaps they could acquire one of the machines she’d read about.
“Do you know how to drive an automobile?” asked Diana as she secured the raft’s makeshift rudder.
“A car? Nope. No reason to learn in New York.”
Diana frowned. “Well, even on foot, we should have plenty of time to reach the spring before the start of Hekatombaion.”
“And Hekatombaion is what exactly?”
“The first month in the old Greek calendar. It used to mark the start of the year.”
“Got it. Hekatombaion. Party at the spring. All the cool kids will be there.”
“Who are the cool kids?”
“Ouch. Okay, you and I will be there.”
Diana had the distinct sense that Alia didn’t intend to be at the spring at all, but she could worry about that later. She braided a strand of Khione’s mane into her own hair and did the same for Alia, then helped her board and bent to grab the edges of the raft.