Chapter 13 #2
He was grim, mad-eyed, and resolute. He looked like a man who’d been tortured for weeks who’d finally escaped and knew this was his last stand.
What had happened to him?
He was gaunt. Bearded. His clothes tattered and salt-soaked. His blond hair was wet and plastered against his head. He was scraped and bruised. He looked so far from the boyish innocence he’d worn before that he was almost unrecognizable.
He was fighting for his life. Constrictor knots hung about him in a massive net, a dozen illusions all working at once.
The impenetrable fog was Jacob’s. It was just like the fog Philoneas had conjured at the game in the north and before the duel.
The lightning was his too. But mostly, he’d built a wall of air in front of the wave and was desperately trying to keep it from washing over the city.
I could see the knots of it, thousands of them, slowly unraveling.
He was strained to the point of breaking, and he was all alone.
And . . . maybe he and I were the only ones who knew it, but his dad had just died too.
Or perhaps Philoneas had died in this battle?
I didn’t know. I only knew Jacob was holding a tsunami back from the city and fighting Finn at the same time.
Yet when Jacob looked to the sky and saw me swooping down on a terrifying stone grotesque, his expression transformed. The thick fog around us cleared. He stared at me wide-eyed, and then he laughed. It was a joyful, wild laugh. He grinned, and the tug of it was so fierce that I grinned right back.
I swooped down, the wing of the grotesque slicing through the water, splashing Jacob.
A lance of blue fire sped toward him. He was grinning at me, not even aware he was about to be sliced in half.
He’d only taken his eyes off the battle for one second, but in a fight for your life, one second of inattention was all it took.
I didn’t need the hard yank of Jagger’s blood to do what I did. I snarled and flung my mind into the space that untied illusion. It was a Smith knot. A simple square knot. Before, it may have taken three seconds to unravel. Now, it was gone almost before I’d formed the thought to untie it.
As the fire lance disintegrated, I lifted my head and looked to the lighthouse.
I was twenty feet away. It felt like twenty inches.
Finn’s gaze caught mine. His expression filled with shock for perhaps half a second, but that burned away, and all that was left was a demand: Come to me. Mari. Come here.
Another lance of fire shot at us. This one wasn’t from Finn—it was Darin. I hadn’t noticed him standing next to Finn, perched at the top of the lighthouse.
I yanked the square knot loose, and the fire fizzled and died.
Finn was surrounded by illusion. Just like last night, when he held out his hand, a thousand knots were perched there, ready to unleash Armageddon.
He threw a black swarm toward us. It was a circular abyss, ready to swallow us whole. I unraveled the figure-eight knot in seconds.
Finn shook his head. What? Telling me not to untie it?
He threw another. I unraveled it.
His mouth tightened.
That was the look he wore when something frustrated him. I’d seen it on him when he talked about things he wanted to change but couldn’t: his mom dying, people who abused animals, Luvic always drinking straight out of the milk carton and leaving the empty container in the fridge.
I narrowed my eyes on him. Felt Jagger’s hate sweep through me. I wanted to deny he’d killed Griff and sent me a message. I wanted to deny he’d set off earthquakes and terrorized the city. Yet here he was, shooting fire lances and sending black swarms at my brother and me.
Another swarm shot our way, followed by a lance from Darin. I tugged their knots free.
Then I spun the grotesque around, circling Jacob.
Last night, Jagger said I couldn’t speak to old friends, but that order had ended the moment the sun came up.
The order that had stood until he rescinded it was that I couldn’t let any conjurer know by word, action, or deed that I once cared or still did care.
I veered close to Jacob. “Hi.”
There. That was noncommittal.
He smiled. He looked so far from the conjurers’ boogeyman that I almost laughed.
“Hey.”
“What are you up to?” I asked, unraveling another bolt of fire.
“Oh. You know. Just . . . having fun.” He tossed a bolt of lightning at Finn and Darin. It hit the lighthouse. The metal railing sparked, then twisted.
“I think you might electrocute them,” I said, hovering next to him.
“Hmm.” Jacob glanced at me out of the corners of his eyes. I felt him poke and prod at the center of me, that slight knocking on the door of my power. “Ah,” he said, nodding. “I see. That’s going to be a problem, isn’t it? How much power does he have over you?”
I didn’t say anything, and Jacob nodded.
Behind the lighthouse, Justice burst through the fog. He saw me next to Jacob, batting away another giant black abyss. He kicked his grotesque and dove toward the lighthouse.
But then that boat with the idiot storm chasers broke through the fog. It was two men. One of them was young and large, with the build of a sumo wrestler. At first glance, he looked like an angry boulder. The second man was small and slight, with pale skin, a thin mustache, and a bald head.
I’d discounted them as idiots before, but now, I saw the boat was made from illusion and the men were swamped in knots.
As soon as they broke though, Darin threw a wall of fire at Justice. At the same time, Finn threw a black swarm at Jacob and me. I untied Darin’s fire. I unraveled Finn’s black swarm.
I missed the giant water hand that reached up and swatted Justice from the sky.
It smacked him from his grotesque. He catapulted through the air and then slammed into the rocky shoal at the base of the lighthouse.
His head struck a jagged rock, and he went limp.
Unconscious. That was twice in less than twenty-four hours.
He lay completely unprotected and exposed.
The waves crashed over his legs, threatening to suck him into the water.
I clenched my hand and fought the urge to fly to him and hoist him to safety.
His grotesque, riderless, flew back into the fog. Jagger had made them so that if they were ever without a rider, they returned to Hell Gate to their perch.
The men in the boat were doing something. They were conjuring, tying ropes and knots between them like a cat’s cradle. Their tiny boat was bucking on the waves, tossing about like a paper boat in a waterfall. I was certain it would capsize any second.
I didn’t know what to do. Jagger had said to side with whoever fought against Finn. That was Jacob.
But who were the conjurers in the boat, and what were they doing?
Jacob asked what I was thinking. “Who are they?”
I shook my head. “Did they”—I nodded to Finn and Darin—“kill your . . . our . . . Philoneas?”
He nodded.
My blood went hot and brimmed with poisonous fire.
“Are they trying to kill you?”
“Maybe,” he said, which I took as a yes.
“How long do you think you can hold this wave back?”
Jacob narrowed his eyes. “Five minutes. Maybe six.”
Not long.
“Do you think the Smiths could disperse it?”
Jacob nodded.
That was all I needed to hear. “Don’t let the boatmen hit me,” I said.
Jacob grabbed for my hand. Held me before I kicked the grotesque clear. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
I smiled right as a sea monster crashed toward us. I dodged, kicking the grotesque into flight.
The monster was made of water. It was black, swirling, a giant, roaring prehistoric monster. A mosasaur. One of the titans of the sea that had ruled the primordial oceans.
Its water jaws snapped, and it flung itself at the wave.
The grotesque dodged. Jacob was flung into the air, rolling on the water, but then, somehow, he landed on a bed of air. He floated back down to stand on top of his wave.
The water creature swung around, smacking its tale against the tsunami.
The mosasaur was a monster of knots. It snaked through the churning waves and bashed at the column with its tale. While it was attacking, it was also dispersing. With each violent crash of its tale, the wave broke and fell another few inches.
I don’t know if the boatmen were attacking Jacob or the wave. Since my brother seemed happy standing on the churning tower of water, tossing lightning, I left the mosasaur to its rampage.
I flew through the howling wind and the roar of water and braved the man on the tower.
Darin ignored me, throwing fire lance after fire lance at Jacob. There was death in his eyes. He wanted Jacob dead, and nothing, not even a giant water mosasaur or a tsunami threatening the city, was going to distract him.
But Finn watched me with singular intensity.
The potency of his stare filled me and nearly swept away the burning acid that ran through my veins.
I wanted . . .
Even having locked everything of him away, I still wanted him.
The grotesque swooped close to the rusted metal railing of the lighthouse tower. It banked and then crashed into the concrete ledge. Its claws dug into the concrete, cracking and breaking as it skidded to a stop a foot from Finn.
He didn’t step back. He didn’t even flinch.
“Mari,” he said, his voice a thunderous caress.
“Finn.” His name felt like knives sliding up my throat, cutting me from the inside. The urge to leap off the grotesque’s back and throw myself into his arms was so strong it felt as if I were a sheet of paper being ripped in half.
My hands curled into the stone fur of the grotesque. Finn’s navy eye sparked with lightning, while his hazel eye was the cool green forest on a summer night.
“I heard from the wind,” he said, watching me carefully. “It told me . . . Do you know what it said?”
I didn’t move. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t.
“Did you kill Philoneas?” I asked, sidestepping his question.
His expression shifted. Guilt. As clear as day. Behind him, Darin whooped. He’d nearly struck Jacob.