Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(29)

“I can swim!” Alia protested.

“It’s dark out. I’m not taking any chances,” said Diana. And now that they were back in the mortal world, she wasn’t entirely sure that Alia wouldn’t just paddle away on her own.

Diana plunged them both into the river, and her whole body recoiled. The cold she had expected, but the water felt wrong. It was dense and clammy, like a moist palm clenching around her.

“Hey!” Alia complained, wriggling in her grasp. “Whoa, whoa, head east, toward Manhattan. Otherwise we’ll end up in Jersey.”

Diana kicked hard, eager to get them out of this…soup as fast as possible. Suddenly, Alia stiffened in her arms.

“What is it?” Diana asked. “Are the poisons of the water affecting you?”

“I remember.”

“Remember what?”

“This. You saving me from the wreck.”

“That seems unlikely. You were unconscious.”

Alia’s back was to her, but Diana felt her small shrug. “I remember the water turning warm.” She paused. “I remember thinking everything was going to be okay.”

Diana could hear the relief in her voice, the conviction that things had turned out all right. She thinks she’s safe now, Diana realized. She thinks this is over.

“There,” Alia said, craning her neck. “Straight ahead. That’s Battery Park.”

In the gray light, Diana could just make out the hulking shape rising from the water, and as they drew closer…She squinted. “Are those cannons?”

“They used to be. There’s a war memorial.”

Her mother had told her the mortal world was pocked with memorials and monuments to loss. They build with steel and stone and promise to remember, she’d said. But they never do.

“That’s the ferry,” said Alia as they crossed the wake of a slow-moving ship. “If they see us—”

“Take a breath.”

“But—”

Diana didn’t wait for an argument. She dunked them beneath the surface, continuing to swim. She wasn’t sure how long a mortal could hold her breath, but she counted twenty seconds.

As they reemerged, Alia hauled in a long breath and spat river water. “Oh God, water up the nose,” she gasped. “You’re lucky I’m so happy to be home.”

“I’m glad you’re in such a good mood,” Diana muttered.

“I’m being crushed by a grumpy giant and I probably just swallowed toxic waste, but, yeah, I am.”

Diana eased her hold slightly. It wasn’t fair to punish Alia for her desperation to return home. But that didn’t change the predicament they were in. Hekatombaion would begin with the rise of the new moon, and it was possible that they’d lost more than just a few hours when they’d broken through to the mortal world.

Diana saw ships moored near the park, their decks and masts still lit by a glittering spangle of lights, but would a ship be fast enough to get them to Greece in time? Diana thought of the planes she and Maeve had sometimes glimpsed above Themyscira. That was what she needed. She just had no idea where to get one.

When they reached the dock, Diana shifted her grip on Alia and grabbed hold of a pylon.

“Hold on to my neck,” she instructed. She’d expected an argument, but apparently Alia’s happy mood had made her compliant. She locked her arms over Diana’s shoulders without a single complaint. Even her grip was stronger away from Themyscira. If she was faring this well away from the island, Diana could only hope Alia’s absence would have a similar effect on Maeve.

Diana climbed the pylon and hauled them up to the dock, depositing Alia on the pavement with a thud. Alia flopped onto her back and flapped her arms back and forth.

“What are you doing?” said Diana.

“Making snow angels.”

“There’s no snow.”

“Okay,” admitted Alia, “I’m celebrating.”

Diana turned her back on Alia and the slate expanse of the river, intending to declare there was absolutely nothing to celebrate about this debacle, when she got her first real look at the city.

Her breath caught. She’d thought Ephesus and Bana-Mighdall were cities, but if that was the case, then maybe a different word was needed for the massive, spiky, dazzling thing before her. It rose in peaks and ridges, a jagged mountain range that should have run a hundred miles, but that had been crammed into a single narrow space, folded onto itself in hard angles and bright reflective planes like some grand formation of mica. And it was alive. Even in what should have been the still-sleeping hours of dawn, the city was moving. Motorcars. Electric lights blinking in different colors. People on foot with steaming paper cups in their hands, newspapers tucked beneath their arms.

It was like facing the Oracle all over again—the terror of staring into the unknown. The thrill of it.

“You all right?” asked Alia, pushing herself up from the dock and trying to wring some of the water from her bedraggled yellow shirt.

“I don’t know,” Diana said honestly.

“You’ve really never left that island?”

“You saw how easy it is to leave my home.”

“Good point.”

A man jogged by, wiping the sweat from his brow and singing loudly to himself. He was tall and lean and hairy.