Текст книги "The Underworld"

Автор книги: Jessica Sorensen

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

Chapter 37

The water tore at me at me from every angle, cold and rough, violently trying to steal my oxygen. I tried to hold onto Alex, but the water was making my hands slip loose. Alex was kicking, trying to break us free from the undertow. But we just kept getting pulled in all different directions.

Eventually, the water started to settle, and our bodies became less tangled. He swam us upward, and finally we broke through. I gasped for air, and so did Alex. He opened his mouth to say something, but I was tugged downward by a set of bony fingers that had snatched hold of my ankle. My hands slipped from around Alex’s neck, and I was submerged by the dark water again. I tried to kick the Water Faerie off of me, but all it did was tighten it’s grip.

And then Alex had my arm. I knew it was him because of the buzzing. He was pulling on me, but the Water Faerie was too. My body felt like it was going to tear apart. Then, Alex was beside me, underneath the water. Our bodies tangled together, along with the Water Faeries. There was a lot of tugging and spinning, and then suddenly I was no longer being pulled down, but whooshing upward and bursting out of the water.

Alex swam faster than I ever thought was humanly possible. Especially while hauling me along with him.

And before I knew it, we were lying on the shore, out of breath and panting loudly.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked, out of breath.

I coughed up some of the water I swallowed. “Yeah, I…Wait. Where’s my mom?”

In the snap-of-a-finger, we were both on our feet and searching. But I couldn’t see her anywhere; the only thing in sight was the grey stone castle, the tall-

treed forest, and the haunting…Water Faerie filled lake.

“Oh my word,” I breathed.

Alex followed my gaze and his jaw nearly hit the ground.

Across the dark water, the Water Faeries floated.

The sight would have been all uring—they looked like ball erinas dancing. But knowing what they really were, and what they could do, the sight only made a chil slither down my back.

“They can’t come up here?” I asked. “Right?” He nodded, but his bright green eyes were still locked on the water. “I’ve never seen so many of them up here before, especially when no one has summoned them.”

As I watched the Water Faeries swim around, a thought abruptly smacked me in the head. “Wait.

What if my mom’s still in there?” And then I was running toward the lake, my brain too irrational to process the consequences if I stepped in.

Luckily Alex grabbed me, and pulled me back.

“Are you freaking crazy!” he exclaimed, shaking me by the shoulders, with a look of what could only be described as terrified. “You can’t go in there.” It took my brain a second to grasp the severity of the situation I had just about gotten myself into. “I’m sorry, but what if she’s in there?”

His harsh expression slipped to a semi-sympathetic one. “If she is, then there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We can go back,” I said, my tone razor sharp. “We have to save her.”

He shook his head. “There’s no way we’re going back there after what happened. Now that they know something’s different about you, they’re going to be all over you if you even step foot in their world again.”

“So what.” I was trying with all my might to wiggle my arm free from his grasp. “I don’t care. How do expect me to just let her stay down there after I saw how horrible of a place it is.” I could feel the tears stinging at my eyes. “Let me go!”

“No,” he told me, just standing there, holding on to my arm, my yanking not even fazing him the slightest bit.

“Let me go,” I growled.

He shook his head, tightening his grip. “You’re not thinking clearly right now.”

I stared him down with a determined look. “You have to let me go. You don’t need to protect me anymore now that the star’s power is probably not going to save the world.”

He stared at me with this strangest look. “I think you

–”

Then we heard it. An earsplitting bang that rocketed through air.

“What the heck was that?” I asked, glancing around at the trees.

Alex looked over at the castle, and then at the ground. I followed his gaze and saw what he was looking at. Footprints, printed across the mud, leading toward the castle.

We took off, tromping through the muddy grass, and running up the hill, until we reached the door to the castle. Alex seemed a little uneasy as he turned the doorknob and creaked the door open. The stale air immediately surrounded us.

“Does anyone live here?” I whispered as we stepped inside.

He shook his head and dropped his hand from the doorknob.

It looked as if no one had been inside the castle for ages. The banister that guided the stairs had a thick layer of dust on it and cobwebs ornamented the ceiling like a haunted house on Hall oween.

Alex went to the bottom of the stairs and glanced up. Another bang shattered the air and his gaze darted down the hall, where the noise had come from.

“What if it’s not my mom?” I whispered.

He held up a finger and then crept down the hall. I stayed behind him, keeping my footsteps light. There was another loud noise that sounding like glass being shattered, and then I saw her.

She was in the room where my soul had been detached; the room with the stone fireplace and tiled floor. She was standing in the midst of a pile of broken glass, her bare feet, I’m sure, getting cut by the sharp edges.

“Mom,” I said softly as I stepped cautiously into the room.

She’d been staring at the broken glass, but blinked up at me when I said her name. Any acknowledgment she had of me was gone, and I could see it in her bright blue eyes that she, again, did not know who I was. She grabbed a vase from off a nearby desk and threw it at the floor.

“Jocelyn,” Alex said, and she looked at him, tears dripping down her cheeks. Alex took a slow step toward her, but froze when she screamed.

Then her eyes slipped shut and she collapsed to the floor.

Chapter 38

This was not how I pictured my reunion with my mom. Maybe I had been delusional, but I always pictured it as much more welcoming and filled with hugs, despite the fact that Alex had warned me that the Jocelyn everyone knew might be no more.

Instead of giving me hugs, she’d lost it and had passed out on the floor in the middle of the broken glass.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked Alex, who was leaning over my mother, checking her wrist for a pulse.

“She’s alive…” he said, setting her arm down gently. “I don’t know what’s wrong with her, though.”

“She didn’t just pass out.”

“I don’t know, she could have, but…”

“But what?” I hated it when he trailed off like that, leaving his sentences hanging in the air.

“But with where she’s been, and how long she’s been there, I can’t say for sure what’s wrong. She could be in shock or something.”

I felt so frustrated I could have screamed. I kicked at some broken glass. “So what do we do now?” He shrugged. “I guess we go back to Maryland—to Laylen and Aislin and wait until your mom wakes up.”

“And, what if she doesn’t?”

He didn’t answer.

Thank goodness my Foreseer gift was working again. Otherwise we would have had a very long drive back to Maryland. I managed to get us back to the beach house without any problems. My mom was still out when we arrived, and Alex carried her back to an empty room, leaving me to explain what had happened to Aislin and Laylen.

All three of us sat in the living room, and they listened to me ramble on and on about our journey to The Underworld. By the time I finished giving them the details, Alex had returned. He looked tired. There were bags under his eyes, his hair was messy, and the lake’s water had crinkled his clothes. It had crinkled mine as well and the fabric felt dry and rough against my skin.

“So, all the Water Faeries just passed out?” Aislin asked, her bright green eyes wide.

I nodded. "Yeah, one moment they were trying to do some kind of torture thing on my soul with that diamond we took down there, and the next moment they were on the ground.”

“Was it because they were trying to do something to your…soul?” Aislin asked worriedly.

“I don’t know what happened exactly.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if my soul had done it, seeing as how it was broken.

“I don’t think it was your soul that did it,” Alex interrupted, sitting down beside me. “I think it was because of the overload of fear you shot at them.”

“What overload of fear?” I looked at him funny. “All I did was scream.”

He looked as though he was choosing his next words very carefully. “I think because your emotions are so new to you that sometimes they come off a little….strong. And with the excessive amount of fear you shot at the Water Faeries, I think it sent them into shock.”

“Strong,” I said, insulted.

He pressed his lips together, doing that thing that he hadn’t done in awhile. You know the one where he is trying to hide the fact that he finds my irritation amusing.

The look—which used to make me angry—was having a different effect on me. It was making my skin tingle, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t from the electricity. But I refused to let him know this, or he would probably do it to me all the time, which honestly, wasn’t sounding that bad to me at the moment.

“So how are we going to get my mom to wake up?” I asked, changing the subject.

The looked Alex was giving me was quickly erased.

“Gemma…I don’t know for sure that she will.”

“But you don’t know for sure that she won’t,” I pointed out.

Everyone looked at me, and I could see it on their faces. They felt sorry for me. Even Laylen looked at me this way. But why? Because they all thought my mom wasn’t going to ever wake up.

“Gemma,” Alex started to say.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I told him. “She’ll wake up. I know she will.” Then I stood up and headed back to my mom.

She looked dead. I wasn’t even going to try and sugarcoat it because that’s how she looked. She lay in a bed with her eyes shut. Her veins were a dark purplish-blue against her pale skin. The rise and fall of her chest was the only thing that let me know she was still alive.

“Mom,” I whispered, staring down at her. The prickle traced down my neck, and suddenly the word

“mom” didn’t seem so awkward. “Mom,” I said louder, tears soaking my eyes “Mom.”

And then I was falling down on the bed next to her, crying. And I cried until I fell asleep.

When I woke up, dawn was hitting the windows.

The ocean’s waves were swishing outside, and the house was silent. My eyes felt puffy and swol en, and I wondered how long I had been crying before I fell asleep. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

“Gemma.”

Her voice scared the crap out of me, and I fell out of the bed.

“Ow,” I said, rubbing my elbow as I got back to my feet.

My mom was sitting up in the bed, staring at me in alarm. “Are you alright?”

I nodded at her, giving her the same look of alarm.

“Are you alright?”

She swallowed hard and then started coughing. “I think I need some water.”

“Okay, I’ll go get you some,” I told her.

I quickly went into the kitchen, took a glass out of the cupboard, and flipped on the faucet. While I was filling up a cup of water, I thought I heard someone move up behind me, and I nearly screamed at the top of my lungs when I turned and came face to face with a very tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired vampire/Keeper.

“Holy crap.” I pressed my hand to my racing heart.

“You just about scared me to death.”

“Sorry,” he apologized like it was his fault I was so jumpy. He had on a pair of jeans and a dark red t-shirt, so I was guessing he had been awake for awhile

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay…” I glanced around the kitchen. “What are you doing?”

He shrugged, looking so sad it made my heart hurt.

“I don’t know…I heard someone get up, so I came to check who it was.”

“Oh.” I shut off the faucet. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

He shook his head. “I was already awake.”

“So is my mom,” I told him, excitedly.

“Is she…okay?”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to go find out.” I headed to leave, but stopped at the doorway. “You want to come with me?”

“Wouldn’t you rather go wake up Alex,” Laylen said, still standing over by the sink. “I’m sure he has a ton of questions for her.”

I had a ton of questions for her, but I needed to make sure she was alright before I started bombarding her with them, which was exactly why I wasn’t going to go wake up Alex. “I’d rather you come.”

“Okay.” He nodded and followed me out of the kitchen.

During our thirty second walk to my mom, I asked Laylen how things had been while Alex and I were gone. He told me they had been fine—that everything was fine—but I could tell that they weren’t. He seemed really unfocused. I decided that a little later I would ask Aislin how he had been while we were gone. But first, I needed to check on my mother.

She wasn’t in the bed when we entered the room.

She was out on the deck, staring out at the ocean. I carefully approached her, the floorboards creaking underneath my weight, but she didn’t turn around.

I came to a stop beside her and handed her the cup of water. She took a few swallows and set the glass on the railing. I waited for her to say something, but all she did was look out at the ocean with a lost expression on her face.

“Mom,” I said, concerned she might have slipped into a state of shock again.

My mother turned and looked at me. Then her eyes moved to Laylen. “Laylen…is that you?” He stepped up beside me. “Yeah, it’s me.” She smiled, but it looked wrong, like she had to work really hard to make the corners of her mouth curve upward. “You’ve grown up so much.” She looked at me, and in the brightness of the rising sun, I could see her eyes held a deep sorrow in them. “And you…” she burst into tears, alarming me. “You’re—

You’re still …” she trailed off, thinking about something as tears continued to stream down her cheeks. Then she let out a sigh. “You’re still you.” I wasn’t sure what to tell her—that I wasn’t still me, but someone trying to figure out how to be me. But I was afraid saying this might break her heart, and she already looked really broken.

“So what’s been going on,” she asked and took another sip of water, “while I’ve been gone.” What happened? That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? I took a deep breath and started to explain.

*** I tried my best to get everything right and fill her in on everything that had happened. There was so much though, and truthfully, I really didn’t know much. But I told her everything I knew. I told her about my lifeless years and how the prickle came and freed me. I told her about the Death Walkers and how Stephan was working with them. How he had the Mark of Malefiscus and how he put the mark on Nicholas. I explained to her my special Foreseer gift and the visions I saw. And even though I didn’t want to, I gave her the details of how Stephan had tried to take it all away from me again. And how the locket—the locket she gave me—had saved me.

She took it all in, processing my every word. When I struggled with certain details, Laylen jumped in and aided me through them. We also had to explain to her what Laylen was, even though it really didn’t have anything to do with any of this. But I felt like she should know everything—after being trapped in a place of death and fear for as long as she had.

When I was done, she sat there in silence. We were still out on the deck. The sun was beaming down. The ocean was roaring and people were out on the beach, splashing and playing in the salty water without a care in the world.

They were lucky—not having to know the dangers that were out there.

“Gemma,” my mom said after I finished talking. “I’m so sorry.” She reached over and tentatively took my hand. I could feel her pulse racing through her touch.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through this.” I swallowed hard, feeling my insides lurch. “It’s not your fault…I—I know you tried to protect me.” She shook her head. “I should have tried harder.” I didn’t want her to feel responsible. She did what she could—I watched her do it. Before I could try to convince her, it wasn’t her fault, though, she said, “I need to talk to Alex.”

“Alex,” I gave her a quizzical look. “Why do you need to talk to him?”

“Because,” she looked at Laylen then back at me. “I need all of you here—including Aislin—before I can explain what I know about what’s going on.” When I still looked at her strangely, she added, “I need all of you here, because what I’m about to tell you involves all of you. Each of you plays a part in it.”

“Plays a part in what?” I asked. “Stephan trying to open the portal.”

“Oh, Gemma.” My mom shook her head exhaustedly. “There is so much more to Stephan’s plan than just opening a portal and releasing the Death Walkers.”

Chapter 39

You know those moments where time seems to stop? Well, I was having one of those moments right now. Laylen, my mom, and I sat there as the words my mother had just said sunk in. Laylen had been right when he said that my mother probably knew things, but I’d never expected her to say there was a lot more to Stephan’s plan than just opening the portal, or that she would say all of us played a part in whatever Stephan was planning to do. I’d always assumed it was just me.

Me and the star.

I guess I was wrong.

Laylen got to his feet and told us he would go wake up Aislin and Alex. Then, he left my mother and I sitting out on the deck alone. For awhile, neither of us spoke. We just sat there, listening to people laughing out on the beach.

“So, how have you been really?” she finally asked.

“And don’t say okay, because I know it’s not true.”

“I don’t know…” I said, searching my mind for a way to change the subject. “I don’t get something. Why was I able to undo what Sophia did to me…when she detached my soul, I mean.”

“That’s a question I can’t answer just yet,” she said, tilting her head up toward the sun. “I will, though, just as soon as everyone gets here.”

“Okay.” Not the answer I was expecting, but it worked.

Laylen returned seconds later with a very sleepy-eyed Aislin and Alex. Alex and Ailsin each grabbed a chair and dragged it to where my mother and I sat, and Laylen hopped up and took a seat on the railing.

Aislin was the first to speak, seeming kind of nervous. “Jocelyn, I can’t believe you’re here…It’s just so…” She looked like she was going to burst into tears

My mom, despite the fact she had been locked away in The Underworld, still possessed motherly instincts and reached over and placed a hand on Aislin’s hand. “It’s okay. I’m alright. Everything’s alright.”

I highly doubted that was true. In fact, I was fairly sure my mom was about to drop a not-all-right bomb on us here pretty soon.

Alex seemed less tolerant toward Aislin’s emotional behavior, and I even caught him rolling his eyes.

“So, Laylen said there was something you wanted to tell us?” he asked impatiently.

My mother nodded. “There is. But I need you to tell me what you know first. Gemma’s already told me what she knows, but I think you might know a little more.”

Shocker? I think not.

He pressed his lips together, his arms crossed over his chest as his eyes wandered around to all of us.

“Alex.” My mom’s voice was persuasive. “I understand your initial reaction is to keep things a secret—it’s what you’ve been taught to do. But it’s important that you tell me what you know, so we can stop the end of the world from happening.” He still seemed hesitant. “Where do you want me to start?”

My mother considered this. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“But, what is the beginning?” Alex asked, like he was asking a riddle.

My mother was patient, though. “Why don’t you start with the day that Gemma’s soul was detached. Do you remember what happened that day?”

He glanced at me, and I raised my eyebrows at him, implying to go ahead, because boy was I dying to hear this.

“The day Gemma’s soul was taken away…” He shut his eyes for a moment and then opened them back up. “She and I were hiding out in that little fort in the side of the hill, because earlier my father had told us Gemma had to go away.”

I touched the palm of my hand where the faintest of scars resided, remembering the vision I saw. How he had cut my hand and his, saying the words forem as he pressed them together. It was a word I still didn’t know the meaning of. One of these days, I think, I was going to have to invest in buying a Latin Translator Pocket Dictionary, if such a thing existed.

Alex must have noticed me touching my hand, because he clenched his own. “But he ended up finding us and took Gemma away. I never saw her again...Well, until my dad made me enrol in school to see if I could get to the bottom of why she started to feel.”

“And what happened between all those years when you didn’t see Gemma,” my mother asked, urging him for more details.

He was holding back—I could tell, but my mom asked him again, and he gave in. “Basically, my father trained me and Aislin to be Keepers, but he focused more on me because Aislin was busy getting taught how to use her witch power.”

My mom nodded. “And what happened while your father was training you to be a Keeper? Did he teach you to be emotionally closed off?”

“Emotionally closed off,” I gaped at my mother, wondering if she was losing it again. “No mom that was me.”

My mom kept her eyes on Alex, and he swallowed hard.

“Not so much emotionally detached,” he said, really struggling to keep his voice under control. “He would always tell me emotions are overrated, and that to be a good Keeper, I had to keep my emotions under control and only show them on the outside, but not feel them on the inside…something that’s not always possible for me to do….at least sometimes.” Alex looked more confused than I had ever seen him look, as if he was trying to figure something out, but just couldn’t get there. Then, he glared at my mother. “I really don’t get what any of this has to do with the star’s power and the end of the world.”

“It has everything to do with it,” my mother told him and rolled up the sleeves of the ratty old shirt she was wearing. “I just have one more question before I explain what I know. The day Gemma started to feel, were you there at her house?”

I’m pretty sure that everyone’s eyes, including my own, widened in shock.

“Why the heck would you think that?” Alex asked, baffled. “I wasn’t allowed to be near her.”

“I understand that,” my mom’s voice was calm. “But I need to know if, by some chance, you decided to break the rule your father set of not being allowed to go near her.”

Everyone waited for him to answer, but I’m sure I was the one most eager to hear what he was going to say.

Alex gazed out at the ocean, his bright green eyes twinkling in the sun like emeralds. “It was something I couldn’t help…going there.”

“I understand that,” my mom said. “More than I think even you do.”

I didn’t get what was going on here. Why hadn’t Alex told me this? Then again, why was I getting surprised over this? This was Alex. But, I don’t know, I thought he’d been a little better about not keeping secrets. I guess I was wrong.

“So, you were at Marco and Sophia’s the day my emotions returned,” I asked Alex, angrily. “And you never told me.”

He avoided looking at me as he shrugged. ‘It wasn’t that big of a deal. I mean, so what if I went there.”

“Alex, I’m fairly sure you’re the one who brought Gemma’s emotions back to her,” my mom said as patiently as ever. “See there’s a connection between you two, which is where the electricity comes from.”

“What’s the connection?” My words rushed out.

She took a deep breath, and said two simple words. But they were two words that would change everything.

“The star.”