Chapter 46 - Reid #2
I drop down onto an office chair and grimace at the feel of my wet jeans, dripping everywhere.
He kneels in front of me and pulls apart the rip in my jeans to get a look at the wound and I realize it doesn’t even hurt.
I look down and frown at what I see. My leg was bleeding before, I know it was.
Now? All I see is a thin pink line on my skin.
Jules falls back on his ass with a grunt and drags up the cuff of one of his pant legs.
“What…how?” He rubs at the skin that had a deep red welt from the wire that wrapped around it. All that’s there now is smooth, tanned skin. His icy blue eyes lift to look at me in confusion. “What is this? What’s happening?”
All I can do is shrug. “You mean the killer whale? That talked to me telepathically? Or that we apparently can heal like superheroes now? No clue, Jules. Just my brain cracking under the pressure, maybe.”
He pushes back to his feet and gives me a look. “That’s not funny.”
“Wasn’t trying to be. I thought I was hallucinating, except it didn’t feel like that. It felt real.”
He opens his mouth to respond but something outside the cracked window catches his attention.
We both edge closer and peek out. Below, a tiny boat bobs in the flooded street, flanked by five massive black shapes.
Killer whales. They’re nudging it forward, guiding it through the water like they’re on a fucking mission.
Julian mutters, “No way.”
The air feels charged as I watch the pod work together, moving with eerie purpose. One of them lets out a high whistle that vibrates in my chest.
“Magic,” I whisper. The word just slips out, and for the first time today, it doesn’t feel crazy.
I whip toward Julian. “Jules. When you got pulled under... when the wires wrapped around you. What were you thinking about? Right before the water pulled back?”
He looks thrown. “What? I... I was thinking about not dying, obviously.”
“No. Be specific.”
He hesitates, then runs a hand through his wet hair. “I was thinking about you. About not dying that way. I didn’t want to leave you alone. I felt... angry. Desperate.”
“And then the water just moved?”
He nods slowly. I let out a breath and laugh, sharp and disbelieving. “Come on.” I grab his arm and drag him toward the stairwell again. “We’re doing a test.”
“What kind of test?”
“A biblical one.”
Back at the flooded lower floor, I stop just above where the water creeps up the stairs. Julian stands beside me, arms crossed.
“This is stupid,” he says.
“Maybe. But if you are the water whisperer, I wanna see it.”
“Reid—”
“Just try it. Tell the water to move. I dare you.”
“You want me to just... yell at it?”
“Pretty much. C’mon, Moses. Let’s part some shit.”
He rolls his eyes so hard I’m shocked he doesn’t fall over, but then he steps down until he’s ankle-deep. He faces the flooded stairwell.
“Move,” he says flatly.
Nothing.
I smirk. “Wow. So commanding.”
He turns and glares at me. “Sorry, I forgot my staff at home.” He spits sarcastically and then huffs out an annoyed breath. “Fine. You want drama? Here it is.”
He throws his arms wide and yells, “MOVE!”
A breeze that shouldn’t exist inside a building flows past us and the water shudders. That breeze turns into a hard wind, causing the water to pull away like it’s been yanked back by invisible hands, climbing the walls and leaving a narrow, clear path down the middle of the room.
I burst out laughing. “Holy shit! You did it! Jules, you’re the new Moses!”
He stares at the parted water, face pale, breathing hard. “What the fuck.”
“Exactly!”
Jules shoves his wet hair back as the wind pushes it into his eyes and he turns to look at me with a stunned expression. “I don’t think I controlled the water. I think I controlled the air that’s pushing it back.” He frowns, closes his eyes and mutters, “Stop.”
I feel the wind slow to a stop and the water being held against the walls flows back to cover the floor and creep up the stairs again.
We both back away from the wet stairs as a loud squeal echoes from outside.
We run back to the window and look down in amazement.
The whales are back, this time with the little boat floating just outside the shattered windows of the level we came in through.
Jules and I exchange a look, each of us asking the other if we are really going to do this, trust a bunch of killer whales?
Almost as one, we both shrug like, fuck it, and move down the flooded stairs to the next level and over to the broken window we originally came in through.
I reach out and drag the boat in closer until it bumps into the building’s floor and hold it steady as Jules climbs in.
He grabs the frame of the broken window to keep the boat in place while I get in and sit down.
It’s not a very big boat at all, more like the size of a paddle boat you would find in a lake.
Don’t care. It’ll get us to shore if these whales do what they said they would because there are no actual paddles to be found.
The pod surrounds us, clicking and chirping.
“You gonna name them?” Julian asks with a smirk.
“That one’s definitely Carl,” I say, pointing to the closest whale.
Carl nudges the boat forward like he agrees, making me hum a surprised laugh. This is so beyond real right now. I should be losing my shit, but for some reason, I’m calmer than I’ve been since waking up in a saltwater soaked bed this morning.
As the whales guide us toward the edge of the flooded zone by bumping the boat ahead, I can’t stop staring around me at the destruction.
This shouldn’t be real. None of it should be.
I look away when I see a few more bodies floating face down in the water and turn my face up to the sky.
My shoulders immediately hunch lower at the huge, way too close, cracked moon that fills the sky.
How the fuck did that even happen? Something must have crashed into it for it to move so much closer to Earth and crack like that.
But we have satellites and telescopes. You’d think there would have been some kind of warning from NASA or astronomers?
I pull my gaze away and focus on Julian who is looking from whale to whale nervously.
Julian murmurs, “What do we even say to them?”
“Thank you?” I whisper. Then louder, “Thank you, Carl and friends!”
The whales let out one final burst of whistles and chirps before diving and a sense of contentment flows through me, but they don’t speak to me in the same way as earlier.
I panic for a moment that they’re leaving us stranded until I realize that we’re almost to where the shore is now and they had to stop because the water was too shallow.
I hop out first and turn to help Jules. “Come on, Moses. Let’s go find dry socks and answers.”
He snorts. “Sure, Steve Irwin, but if I start growing a beard and hearing voices from above, I’m blaming you.”
We step onto solid ground and for the first time all day, I believe we might actually survive this.