Equinox

Chapter Twenty Five

"Fang," I shouted boldly. She had only put him under her trance for a few seconds. He could still pull himself out of it. He had to pull himself out of it.

But it seemed he had no intention of doing any such thing.

He approached her with staggering steps. She cooed and offered her arms to him. I'm not sure what she looked like to him, but all I could see were the malicious angles of her face and the cruel twist of her lips. He reached out, resting his hand in hers. I seethed. What was with this kid and getting seduced?

I had to divert my attention from them, then. The troll was still poised for an attack. He had halted, club raised, and was glancing uncertainly from me to Angel. The lamia hadn't been specific enough in her instructions, and the confusion was clear in his muddy yellow eyes. Finally, with a grunt, he decided on Angel. He rotated with a motion so forceful that he caused a rift in the uneven stones littering the ground and lumbered toward her.

I sprinted after him, clutching the hilt of my dagger tightly. The thought of touching a troll was revolting, but if I could just jump high enough on his back, then I could slam the blade right into the top of his head. The tips of Angel's white feathers fluttered nervously, and her feet lifted from the ground. As tall for her age as she was, she would never be within close enough reach to deliver a blow to the troll before his spiked mallet found her first.

I was only a few feet away when I felt a whoosh of air unsettle the hair at the top of my head. With a near silent impact, an arrow embedded itself in the back of the troll's skull. He made a "hmpf" of surprise and tottered unsteadily, before crashing face first to the ground with the jarring impact of a fallen tree. I whirled, shooting Dylan a thumbs up.

Angel directed my attention back to Fang and the lamia. The bright red of her lipstick had left a stain in the vulnerable space just above Fang's collarbone. Judging by his enamored expression, he didn't seem to mind. She was leaning in for a kiss, probably aiming to bite off his tongue (shudder) when Iggy suddenly landed just off to their left.

Whether he too had managed to contract the symptoms of her spell solely through the sound of her voice or Angel had relayed the situation to him through thought, he threw his next words toward the lamia.

"Hey, lady," he shouted drunkenly. "Forget him! I'm wayhotter. Check out these guns."

He began flexing every which way. I choked over my laughter. He even shook out his feathers for effect. The lamia was staring in a mixture of horror and bewilderment. That meant she had completely forgotten about Fang, who was still gazing at her in a daze. Nudge swooped down and grabbed him beneath his arm pits. He was too heavy for her to lift much, but she managed to drag him a safe distance away.

The lamia didn't respond well to that.

"Meddling kids," she hissed. Her tongue flicked over the words in a very serpentine fashion.

I'm sorry, was she a thwarted villain in an episode of Scooby Doo?

Her entire figure was transforming. Green scales were erupting along her arms and chest. The sound of her gown tearing gave way to the slither of a long, curling tail. Sharp fangs elongated from her gums and a second flick of her tongue revealed that it had thinned and gone forked at the tip. She was morphing into the version of a lamia that didn't attract the young fellows quite as well, but was infinitely more practical for murder.

Angel stepped toward her, palms held loosely at her side. I opened my mouth to bark a warning, but the look on her face forced me to silence. Her entire expression had darkened to a roiling storm. It was kind of terrifying. I regarded their standoff apprehensively.

"Sleep," she commanded.

The lamia's red, slitted eyes rolled in the back of her head and she slumped to the ground with a muffled thump.

"Okaaay," I muttered, eyes wide and teeth cemented together in a half cringe of a smile.

Angel gave me a, well … angelic grin.

"Can we please go now?" Nudge begged, glancing anxiously toward the black mouth of the cave. She had landed and still had a restraining hold on Fang, who was shaking his head and ridding himself of the last dregs of his stupor.

I nodded in affirmation. The further we were from this place, the better I'd feel.

Fang, though still looking very disconcerted, grabbed me beneath the arms in much the same fashion that Nudge had gripped him. Without even hesitating to ask for my permission, he beat his large black wings and we rose haltingly into the air. After a fair amount of dipping and swerving, we joined Dylan and Gazzy atop the cliff face. The rest of the flock flapped over to join us.

"You got the ash?" Dylan asked, not meeting my eyes as Fang released me.

Gratefully, I shifted, my feet back on solid ground. I held up the container for all to see. "Yup. Now we need to get moving."

They all agreed, but there was still a bit more to discuss.

"Where exactly are we heading?" Gazzy inquired.

I began to chew that thought over when Fang interrupted. He pointed at a ring of tall structures in the distance, saying casually: "That looks like the closest thing to a summit on this island. If we're going to find the flower, it'll be there."

-o-o-o-

Trudging through the jungle for hours took a toll on one's mind and body. The mountains hadn't seemed that far at first, but in retrospect, they were likely rimming the very opposite end of the island. As we blundered through the undergrowth, I could feel the morale of the entire group plummeting. It was hard enough just to keep our feet pointed in the right direction. Fortunately, our resident birdkids had extremely accurate inner compasses.

When you're walking laboriously along, with nothing but the rustles of the natural environment infringing on your thoughts, it was hard to keep doubt from creeping in. After all, we seemed to be on an impossible mission as it was.

Plus, it was so hot. I felt like lava was boiling through my veins. Sweat dripped down the small of my back and glistened along my collar. I swiped irritatedly at my forehead and rearranged my hair so that it rested on one shoulder. A dull ache pulsed in my calves and down my spine. For the five-hundreth time, I swatted a lazily circulating insect away from my ear.

I was miserable, so I could only imagine how everyone else was feeling.

"We can't be too far," Fang remarked quietly. His hooded eyes scoured the forested area to his right.

A few moments later, Dylan announced: "I think it's starting to clear up ahead."

Without instruction or conscious thought, we all picked up our pace. Finally something other than the identical monotony of the jungle. The presence of so many paranormals had sent the wildlife of the island into hiding, so there hadn't even been any exotic species to gawk at as we hiked cross country. Just plants and trees and more plants and trees.

I was caught slightly off guard when Iggy suddenly careened to a halt. He threw one hand out and the other held a finger flattened against his lips. We stilled to statues, barely daring to breathe. His icy blue eyes were solemn as he listened, an ear tilted to the north. Impatience mounted as I waited for him to regale us with what he was hearing.

With a perceptible hitch in his breath, he murmured: "They're looking for us."

I cursed. Either the lamia had woken up or someone had come across her, because the alarm had been rung and now there was entire island's worth of supernatural creatures on our trail. As if this day couldn't get any worse.

"Move," I ordered grimly.

I replaced Angel at Iggy's side. He put his hand on my shoulder and together we vaulted over a patch of mud and hastily dashed toward the thicker rays of light ahead.

"How many?" I asked through gritted teeth.

"Just three," he muttered. "At least that are close enough for me to hear."

The gears began to whir calculatingly in my head. Three adversaries within Iggy's detection, but still far enough that they were out of my range. If we made it to the mountains we could maybe find somewhere to hide just long enough for them to pass. Then we'd have to find the rest of the ingredients needed to summon the phoenix- quickly.

The otherwise flat earth we had been treading abruptly sectioned off into rough, choppy hills of gray rock. Guiding Iggy, I picked my way over the uneven ground. The sense of dread pooling in my gut congealed as my ears registered the snap of a tree branch only a scant hundred yards away. Fang and I's gazes met in alarm.

Fearfully, I looked up. The slope we were slowly ascending was rapidly evolving into a sheer cliff. Through slices of jagged rock, I glimpsed the mouth of a cave about twenty feet up. Dylan, who was in the lead, had already begun climbing toward it.

I whipped around to face Fang. "Go."

He paused like he was going to object, but then thought better of it. With a curt nod, he unfolded his wings. The force of it sent strands of my dark blonde hair scattering. Bending at the knees, he leaped onto an outcrop of stone and shoved off, rising powerfully into the air. Those also with feathery appendages followed his lead, leaving Dylan, Gazzy, and I to scale the wall of rock manually.

My palms were not the smooth and dainty surface of a girl passing her days locked in a bedroom, dreaming of the real world around her. I had weathered hands-scarred hands. I had the calloused hands of someone that routinely held a weapon tight, that punched and jabbed, that scraped against the hard floor. I had hands that were no strangers to pain, blood, and intense stress- all of which I felt as I scrabbled for sufficient holds in the rugged surface of the cliff.

I was almost to the top when our pursuers burst from their cover of trees. Hazarding a glance down, I took stock of our opponents. A vampire, a warlock (judging by the very obvious stain of ink on the inside of his wrist- being the male version of a black witch), and what appeared to be another lamia. Ooh, they had sent someone special for Fang.

I struggled to find a proper foothold in the rock. Once I felt relatively balanced, I reached down with one hand and unsheathed a slender hunting knife from my boot. Tongue in cheek, I took aim. With a single flick of the wrist I sent the blade slicing through the air and directly into the lamia's chest. She was only in mid-conversion when she toppled to the ground, a rivulet of blood soaking her blouse. Her eyes had condensed to unnaturally red slits and copper scales peppered her wrists and neck, never to spread entirely over her body again.

With that, I hoisted myself onto the landing. Fang was immediately at my side, pulling me away from the edge. Dylan, who had already made it to the top, was poised to loose an arrow, his broad shoulders squared and the muscular curves of his arm coiled. I brushed to a stand just as the twang of his shot rippled in the atmosphere. The arrow lodged itself in the vampire's chest. He glanced down at it, unfazed. In fact, he had begun to laugh when the area around the wound began to sizzle and burn. He yanked out the silver arrow and pawed anxiously at the lesion, but it wouldn't be any use. He was going to smolder and then incinerate from the inside out.

Dylan grinned and flashed the bottle of holy water he had stashed in his pocket at me.

"You cunning little devil," I smirked.

He was still smiling when he suddenly staggered and toppled off the lip of the cliff face.

"Dylan!" I screamed, lunging forward. My knees scraped painfully against the sharp corners of the pebbles littering the ground.

Flat on my stomach and dangling dangerously out over the sheer drop to the jagged pillars below, I managed to snag Dylan's outstretched hand just in time. Strain contorting the furrows in my brow, I struggle to maintain my grip. It was the only thing between him and a violent death being splattered on the rocks. Grunting, he scrabbled against the cliff, his shoes scraping the slate as he searched earnestly for better footing. Crimson stained his sleeve and rained in thick droplets onto the ground. I had barely registered the familiar shining blur of my knife grazing his bicep as it hurtled past and smashed against a boulder.

Below, the warlock turned and fled. His shot, though slightly imprecise and no doubt aided with magic, had been effective.

"Lay off the cookies," I hissed, sweat beading at my temples as I exerted all my strength into holding him aloft.

I felt hands on my feet, and then Fang was hovering above me. He reached for Dylan's other hand, which had gone bone white at the knuckles and was clutching tightly to the edge. Fortunately, Dylan didn't hesitate in taking it. Together, we hauled him to safe ground.

He sprawled, spread-eagle, in the soil. Oxygen pumped through his lungs in heaving breaths. I perched, half sitting, half laying, beside him, trying to ignore the twinges pinching at my back. The flock and Gazzy regarded us with wide eyes.

"Let's …" I panted. "Let's get into the cave. We can talk once we're out of the open."

Everyone shuffled inside, though not further than the light reached. Various hushed conversations were being initiated, so I took that time to examine Dylan's injury.

"It's not too deep," I determined, peeling back the sleeve of Dylan's gray t-shirt. He cringed slightly, but didn't make any comment.

I rummaged in my pack, which I had miraculously retained through our vigorous activity. I found a few crumpled bandages in a side pocket, so I extracted those, a rare packet of tissues, and a bottle of water. After I had drizzled some of the water onto the cut, I passed the bottle to Dylan. He took a swig, watching intently as I dabbed away the blood. His turquoise eyes were uncomfortably intense on the top of my head as I applied two of the bandages to his wound.

"There, all patched up." I stepped back with an approving nod.

The corner of his mouth twitched. He was still staring at me with an unreadable mixture of emotions playing across his face. "You ought to be careful. Someone just might mistake you for caring about me."

"I do care about you," I stated, unhesitating and unflinching. "Just … maybe not in the way you want."

The meaningful edge to my words did not go missed by him. He turned away with a curt nod. His jaw was tight. I wanted to say more, to comfort him somehow … but what could I do? It was his own fault for going and developing feelings for me that I could never -would never- reciprocate. It's not as if I had done anything to encourage him.

Right?

I mean, there had been a couple times … okay, more than a couple … when he had looked at me or touched me or done something that made me feel a little tingly inside. But that didn't mean anything. It certainly didn't mean that I was in love with him. Dylan had grown into a strong, attractive young man: tall, muscular, blonde hair, blue eyes. As a teenage girl, I could appreciate that without developing more lasting attachments. He was my friend, and my partner, and I had trusted him with my life time and time again. But that was it.

"If we were screwed before then we are abso-freaking-lutely swimming in disaster now," Iggy grumbled pessimistically. Whether it was by a strange accident or not, his penetrating gaze was directly on me.

I suppressed a sigh, rubbing the back of my neck. "I have to admit, their radar was set off a lot faster than I had wanted. We needed time before, and now we've got even less of it."

"We barely know what we're looking for," Nudge crowed, hugging her knees to her chest. "I mean, even if we do manage to truck our way up this entire freaking mountain, there are still probably a bajillion different kinds of flowers on this island. How are we supposed to know which one is right? How are we supposed to find the stone? Who's going to retrieve the 'bone of the earth goddess' because I am so not going near that one. What does that even mean, anyway? Like literally bones or some figurative made-up mythological crap?"

Angel picked quietly at the frayed string on her shoe. Fang slumped with his arms crossed against the smoothly eroded cave wall. Dylan was sitting with his elbows propped on his bent knees. Nudge had rambled herself into silence and Iggy was still staring unnervingly at me.

Gazzy, however, had pulled out the book again and was pointing at a tiny illustration. "There's a picture, if that helps."

I couldn't help it. I laughed. I laughed because I was exhausted and sort of famished and driven to my wits end and honestly kind of scared for what the future may hold if we couldn't manage this one task. I laughed even though the sound of it was intrusive and made me seem borderline hysterical. They probably thought I had finally gone insane but I just kept laughing … laughing until I physically couldn't because the noise got caught in my throat and then overtaken by a strangled yelp of pain.

I collapsed to my knees and then rolled onto my side. An excruciating fire ripped up my spine and gripped every nerve ending in what felt like barbed wire. I writhed and gritted my teeth to prevent my screams from escaping. Perspiration littered every crevice of my body. I felt like I was having a heat flash and my back was pulsing in discomfort. My lungs burned as my clenched jaw prevented any air from gaining passage.

Then, just as suddenly, the pain was gone.

I gasped, my face pressed into the dirt. Unknowingly, I had curled into a fetal position. With nothing but a dull ache remaining, I untangled my limbs and pushed myself from the hard ground. Immediately, Dylan and Gazzy were at my shoulders, stammering and panicked. Fang was already crouched before me, concern rippling through his obsidian eyes and peeking through the creases around his lids and mouth.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," I insisted, brushing away their grasping palms. "Give me some space. I'm fine."

"What was that?" Fang demanded. I couldn't help but notice that his knuckles had gone white, tightly clenched as they were. His black hair curled around his angular jaw and cast a shadow across his face.

"Nothing," I said lightly. More like I have no idea. "I think I might have pulled something earlier when I was trying to lift Dylan. No more dessert for you, mister," I teased, flashing him a smile.

Dylan was not amused.

"Um, guys."

Angel gazed timidly at us. She was perched practically on tiptoe, her slender arms waving to keep her balance.

"I hate to interrupt, but you might want to see this," she announced, pointing over her shoulder.

I jumped at the chance to avoid any further discussion of my weird episode. Reluctantly, the others crowded after her. She led the way, clutching Iggy's hand- led the way right into the pitch black of the cave. I opened my mouth to establish my uncertainty. I didn't know who all I was touching, but we were all shoulder to shoulder and stumbling over one another's feet. I couldn't even see the part of my nose that you always see but that your brain ignores.

"A few more feet," she trilled.

Just as promised, a sphere of light eclipsed the darkness, and we lurched from the dank darkness of the cave and into paradise. The craggy peaks of the mountains surrounded a cove of water in a compact ring. We stood on a grassy outcropping near the thundering cascade of a waterfall that originated somewhere higher in the mountains and plummeted a dizzying height into the rushing river below. Palm fronds swayed in the misty breeze and condensation gathered on the petals of richly colored flowers.

"Angel," I breathed, eyes flitting from one thing to the next in rapid succession. "How did you know this was here?"

She shrugged, the blonde curls framing her shoulders tousling with the movement. "I didn't. I just … I couldn't hear any thoughts, per say. Not like when I usually read minds. I can just feel something is here." She approached the cusp of the rock we occupied and pointed to the frothy waters below. "Something is down there."

Dylan and I exchanged a look. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"A stone blessed by the River," he quoted. "Sounds like something a nymph or a river god might be able to handle."

I nodded, strategies already churning through my head. "Maybe the water is interfering with Angel's telekinetic signal."

"Wait a minute," Nudge cut in, waving her hands in a 'halt' motion. "You're telling me somebody's got to go down there."

I followed her pointed finger to the edge of the outcropping. Landing on the water from up here would be like hitting concrete. The impact would probably kill a lesser man. Plus there was the matter of the surf itself, which was choppy and violent from the force of the waterfall. Not to mention what the current could be like. The river's exit from the pool was narrow and framed by jagged stone. If you didn't drown in the tide then bashing against one of those babies would surely do the job.

"I'm going," I said decidedly.

"No."

Fang's response was quipped before the last syllable had even passed my lips. He seemed to have been waiting for me to make such a proclamation. I turned on my heel and gave him a hard look, but it was no match for the steely glare he was already giving me. The boy was a master of stern stares.

"Oh?" I remarked. "And who exactly do you elect for the job?"

He folded his arms across his chest. "Me."

I spit out a laugh.

"It should be me," he insisted. His voice was low and grating. "I'm the one with wings. At least the fall won't kill me like it would either of you."

"In that case we should just send Angel, because the both of you have equal inexperience dealing with water spirits." I dispelled his meager attempt easily.

Dylan stepped toward me, ready to supply what I'm sure was a very thought out argument, but I'd nix any rebuttal he offered. I'd be the one and that was final. It was a huge risk. I knew that, which is exactly why I wasn't willing to let anyone but myself take it.

"You can't do this."

Fang spoke softly. He didn't sound angry or pleading. He stared at me with those dark eyes that sent shivers down my spine, that wrestled a blush to my cheeks which had otherwise never done such a thing, that made me feel like I was melting into a pile of goo with just the barest hint of something I had never really dared to hope for when a guy looked at me.

I reached to my chest. I ran my finger down the bump of the chain beneath my shirt and pressed my palm against the feather suspended around my neck. How could I have known then -the day I plucked it from the air- what I know now? How could I have known its owner would be standing before me, struggling to remain totally impassive despite what his words contradicted? Briefly, I reflected back on my thoughts of Dylan- about the limitations between us. And I knew. I knew why there could never be anything more for us. There had never been a choice.

The feather I had worn around my neck since that day had been proof all along.

Slowly, I unclasped the chain and drew it from my shirt. Never mind the fact that there were five other people watching and that I would totally regret and feel embarrassed about this later. Fang's eyes narrowed incrementally in confusion upon first sight, then widened with recognition.

I took a halting step toward him, and then I didn't really care anymore. I closed the space between us in a heartbeat. Curling my fingers in his hair, I pulled his head down and crushed my lips to his. One of his hands flattened against my lower back and he pressed us even closer together. The other, calloused and rough, found my chin. He tilted it up, kissing me harder, hungrily, like he had been waiting to do just this his entire life. My heart seized up. I couldn't breathe and I couldn't care less. I was kissing Fang. His lips were satin as they parted mine. I wanted more. I wanted everything he had.

Instead, I pulled away, turned, ran, and dove head first into the roiling surf below.