Brewing Storm, page 14
“Anytime. By the way, you did a great job back there,” he said. “We could use a few more like you.”
I laughed. “Sorry, Sarge,” I said, “but I’m still in training.”
“Coulda fooled me, sweetie!” he said as he walked away.
It was nice to receive the accolades, but I wasn’t naïve. I knew I still needed more training, and I wasn’t completely battle ready. I couldn’t wait to work with Dylan, to learn from the best, so I wouldn’t have to wing it so much in the next face-off. It wasn’t lost on me that Cindy, Logan, and Fred never ventured too far from me, that they still considered me a rookie who wasn’t skilled enough to go to war on my own.
“Sophie,” the commander called, “the wolves have been rescued, and the vampires have been dealt with, but six wolves are still AWOL. We figure they’re being held on the south side of the island. Alpha Team B needs your magical protection on this.”
“I’m happy to help,” I said, flattered beyond belief.
“Great. The Jeep’s waiting.”
I glanced around. “I just have to tell my friends so they don’t miss me.”
Beep! Beep!
“No time!” the commander barked. “Once we’re sure those wolves are out of harm’s way, we’ll have clearance to leave this godforsaken lump of rock. Now move it on out!”
Before I could obey his orders, Cindy broke through the brush and spotted me. “Hey, where are the guys?” she asked.
“Still sweeping the island. The commander wants me to go with Alpha Team B to rescue a few more wolves.”
“Yeah, he called me too.”
“Great. The more, the merrier.”
“Let’s go!” the commander shouted.
We jumped into the Jeep Wrangler, squeezed ourselves between several bulky, sweaty, cursing soldiers, and held on tight to each other as the vehicle bumped and jerked through the rough jungle terrain, with two other Jeeps in tow. I stared out at the lush, beautiful greenery, with only a few beams of sunlight breaking through the leafy canopy above us. It would have been quite tranquil and serene if one of the soldiers didn’t ruin it by spitting his tobacco out right next to me, only for the wind to smack it right back into my face.
“Manners!” Cindy screamed, but he didn’t hear her over the buzzing engine and the thudding tires as we traversed through deep potholes and bounced over unexpected bumps.
I flew up at one point and slammed back down into the seat with a groan. I peered out the dusty windshield as we crossed a stream, and my sore rump felt every single pebble and stone beneath our wheels.
“We’re close, Commander,” the driver said into his walkie-talkie.
A few minutes later, we pulled over in a clearing, and all the troops jumped out of their respective vehicles. Their leaders motioned this way and that, and one team went left while the other went right. “Secure the perimeter, fellas!” someone shouted with authority.
Our team was ordered to move straight ahead, and we soon encountered what appeared to be an abandoned outpost. Our leader motioned, and two men went to the door and disappeared inside, with guns drawn.
“It’s all clear,” one shouted when they exited a few minutes later.
Cindy turned toward me. “Ready?”
“Yep.”
We walked through the rusty metal door, into a creepy corridor. It was so hot inside that it was difficult to breathe, and I could feel perspiration rolling down my back. We walked single file down the long, twisting hallway, our boots click-clacking on the cement. The place was like some ancient labyrinth, and there was an eerie vibe there as we trekked deeper and deeper into the jungle structure.
“Send one team to the basement and another to the second floor,” the leader ordered.
We explored carefully, peering into every nook and cranny, but we saw nothing.
“We’re all clear here,” someone said over the crackling radio. “Not a sign of life.”
Our commander stopped and held his hand up for the rest of us to do the same. “No wolves here either,” he said into the radio. “Back to the boat, boys.”
“Roger that.”
“I bet the guys are waiting for us,” Cindy said as we followed the soldiers.
I nodded. “I hope so. I’m ready to get out of here, and I need a shower.”
She sniffed the air. “Between me and you, Sophie, I think everybody in here needs more than one!”
I jumped when the lights flickered; that was always an ominous omen to me, since it was my first sign of terrifying things to come on my eighteenth birthday. “What was that?” I asked, my gaze jumping to Cindy.
“Electrical short maybe,” she said with a shrug. “It doesn’t look like there’s been anybody around here to pay a light bill in a while.”
I wanted to be as carefree and nonchalant about it as she was, but I couldn’t. I was a worrywart by nature, and I’d foolishly ignored signals of trouble in my past. Nowadays, I knew better, and I always paid attention to even the tiniest details.
When we got to the end of the hallway, the door we had come through was locked.
“I don’t like this,” I whispered.
“Me neither,” Cindy said, pushing through the crowd to try the handle herself, to no avail.
“Don’t worry, pretty lady,” one of the men said. “This is man’s work. By the way, has anyone ever told you that your French accent is very sexy?”
“And has anyone ever told you that you are a cochon chauvin?” Cindy said. “Now move!”
He laughed but stepped out of her way. “Be my guest.”
Cindy eyes glowed as she rammed into the door with a grunt, splintering it from top to bottom.
The man’s jaw dropped. “What are you? Vampire?”
“No,” she said, wiping wood fragments off her clothes. “I’m a gargoyle, and I eat guys like you for snacks every day.”
His eyes wide with fear and his cheeks red with embarrassment, the man quickly made his way to the back of the line.
“I love your spunk, Cindy,” I said, grinning at her.
“For the record, I would never eat someone like him,” she said. “He’d give me a tummy ache, I’m sure.”
I laughed.
“What did you call that guy in French?” I asked.
“A chauvinist pig.
I smirked.
One by one, we walked through the shattered door, and the men aimed their guns in every direction. When the lights went out, I swallowed hard, but I kept my wits about me enough to create a yellow ball of light, just enough to see that I was awfully and suddenly 100 percent alone.
Chapter 20
Cindy spun in a slow circle. “They’re gone, all of them! How?”
My stomach fluttered. “I-I don’t know,” I said, grabbing her arm. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“We must not have gotten all the vampires,” she said. “They must have traced in here and grabbed the soldiers when the lights were out.” An angry expression overtook her pretty face, and she yelled, “If any of you bloodsuckers are listening, know that I will stake every single one of you before all is said and done!”
“It couldn’t have been them,” I said. “The men were gone in seconds. Plus, I didn’t see, hear, or feel any sort of scuffle.”
“Maybe it was Falcar. They can swoop in and out of dimensions unseen. They simply use their demon DNA.”
“I still don’t think it was them.”
“Why? Because you trust Vincent’s lame promise of protection? He is not stable, easily infuriated. Perhaps he is mad at you for saving the sun elf.”
“Al has a name, you know.”
“Fine. You saved Al’s life, and now Vincent’s got a stake up his cold, dead ass about it.”
“Think about it. Why would they come all the way to this island to kill us? They could have captured us anytime, anyplace between here and the castle. We were vulnerable the minute we stepped off castle grounds.”
“Hmm. If it wasn’t Vincent and his mongrels, maybe it was the adversary who sank the boat, the one who left you that little love note about wanting you dead.”
“Or maybe there’s something on this island we don’t know about.”
“Like what? Dinosaurs? King Kong? Haven’t we warned you enough to stop getting your information from the movies and that Googler?”
I had to laugh at that. “It’s just Google.”
“Whatever. This has vampire or Falcar written all over it,” she fumed.
“Whatever happened, it’s probably not safe to stick around. C’mon.”
“We should do a perimeter sweep before we leave,” Cindy suggested, “like those military types do.”
“If all those strong werewolves fell victim, what good will we be? There are only two of us.”
“Perhaps, but you’re magical. Besides, you know we never run from trouble...or vampires.”
“Cindy,” I said, blowing out a long breath, “sometimes you are too brave for your own good.”
“For good. That’s the whole point. We can’t let them get away with kidnapping our soldiers.”
“Fine. Just one quick look,” I finally conceded.
With extreme precaution, we walked around the building, but we didn’t see anything. The flesh-baking sun and the noisy exotic birds gave us migraines, and my nerves were more on edge with every step I took. In the end, all we could do was return to the beach to report what happened.
Cindy ran to one of the Jeeps and squealed with delight when she saw the keys left in the ignition. “Hop in!”
I jumped into the passenger side and fastened my seatbelt on.
Cindy drove like a maniac, swerving and hitting the bumps harder than we hit them before. “What the hell is going on around here anyway?” she asked.
“Other than a bad case of whiplash, I haven’t got the foggiest,” I said. “Where’d you get your license anyway?”
“License? What license?” she said with a smirk that left me wondering if she meant it. “Anyway, I hate to leave them behind.”
“We technically aren’t. There was no one there anymore.”
To make matters worse, the beach was just as empty as the place we came from, without a soul in sight.
“Where is everyone?” Cindy asked while I scanned the area, peering into the jungle and out at the ocean.
“I’ve got no idea, but I don’t like this, not one bit,” I said. I ran to the water’s edge and felt it lapping gently against my boots. “Look, out there!” I said, pointing. “Speaking of leaving people behind. They’re taking off without us!”
Like deranged castaways, we frantically screamed and waved our arms, but they paid no attention to us. I even threw blazing fireballs high in the sky like flares, but they didn’t seem to notice those either.
“Surely they realize an entire team is missing,” Cindy said.
I peered long and hard at the boats. “Not only that, but Logan and Fred would never leave without us.”
“I say we stay in this exact spot. They might realize the mistake and come back. I don’t want us to get lost walking around this dreadful island.”
“Can you fly us out of here?” I asked.
“At nightfall, yes, but you’ll have to ride bareback. Maybe you can enclose us in one of those energy bubbles, so you don’t fall into the ocean and become shark food.”
“Wow, you sure know how to take the edge off,” I said.
“Freddie calls me a realist.”
“I’m sure he calls you all sorts of things, my friend, but I don’t want to know about those!”
She smiled at the mere thought of it.
We sat on the sandy beach for some time, so long that I began to wonder how long I could survive on coconuts. Finally, the monotony was broken when two figures approached from a distance.
“I see something!” I exclaimed.
Cindy had no trouble making out the familiar faces with her immortal eyesight. “Logan and Fred!” Then, before I could say anything, she ran over to greet them and actually jumped into Fred’s arms.
“Hey, don’t be so touchy-feely with my fiancée, man,” Logan joked as Fred spun her around.
“Give them a break. We’re just glad to see you,” I said, “so glad that I’m almost willing to get touchy-feely with her fiancé.”
“Are you now?” he said, moving closer to me.
“Where is everyone else?” I asked, quickly changing the subject.
“They left. But me and Fred refused to go without you two. We were told you were back on the main boat, but we didn’t see you when we got there. We searched everywhere and asked everyone. You were nowhere to be found. So we took a boat back to the island to come and look for you. If we hurry, we can catch up with the others. We weren’t sure where you two wandered off to.”
“We didn’t wander off,” Cindy said. “Our whole team went missing.”
“That’s weird,” Logan said. “The rest of them were on the boats, all accounted for. We demanded that the commander wait for you, but he refused, so we just took a boat without permission and came back.”
“That doesn’t explain how the men disappeared the way they did.” I then went on to explain the entire story.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Logan replied. “They said they blacked out from a gas leak, but then they woke up and made their way back to the beach.”
“Why would he leave us behind then? And why would a gas leak cause the lights to go out?” I questioned. “Furthermore, why—”
“I don’t know,” Logan cut in, sounding quite exasperated. “Let’s just catch up with them, and we’ll figure it all out.”
His reassuring squeeze wasn’t very reassuring to me, and questions continued to fill my head. “Were all the captured wolves rescued?” I asked.
“Every single one of them.”
“So we came here to rescue them, yet we ended up needing rescue ourselves,” Cindy said.
Before Logan could respond, his mouth fell open, and the reflection of flames waltzed in his eyes. “What the hell?” he said, staring in horror at the ignited boat.
Chills shot up my spine. “Obviously, somebody is trying to keep us on this rock.”
Cindy stared at the burning wreckage. “I do not like this, not one tiny bit.”
“Yeah, that was definitely not some random gas leak,” Fred said.
“You’re our resident expert on gas,” Logan responded, always ready with the comebacks, even at the worst possible moments. “Anyway, let’s take a walk down the beach. The vampires set up a little marina down there. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“We’re lucky all right,” Fred complained when we arrived and didn’t see a usable boat anywhere, “bad lucky.”
“I don’t get it,” Logan said. “What’s the point of a marina if they didn’t have any boats?”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
Fred shrugged and looked at Cindy. “Guess we wait here for our taxi to sprout wings.”
Cindy laughed.
“Well, we scouted this entire island,” Logan said. “There’s no one left. The vampires were all taken out, and all the wolves were freed. I didn’t see any threatening wildlife either. We can leave when it gets dark, but it seems strange to me that someone’s trying to turn this place into our own personal Alcatraz.”
“We’ll just have to stay on the lookout for anything suspicious,” I said.
“Too bad nobody brought a griffin whistle. Maybe that elf’s fleabag could have come in handy,” Fred said.
“Al,” I corrected, “and Maverick.”
“Whoever,” Fred said with a roll of his eyes, still not thrilled with our new roommate. “C’mon, babe. We may as well make the best of it.”
Cindy giggled and grabbed his hands, and the two of them went for an ocean-side stroll.
I rolled up my pants, took off my boots and socks, and stepped into the water, and Logan followed suit. “I love the ocean. It reminds me of good times in Florida. I remember the palm trees, the smell of coconut suntan lotion wafting over the salty breeze, and seagulls squawking over the lullaby of waves lapping the shoreline.”
“Well, you can enjoy this tropical paradise till nightfall.”
I grinned and playfully splashed him. “Yep.”
“Surf and turf, huh? I think this qualifies as normal, right?”
“I don’t know. I feel shipwrecked.”
“As long as you don’t start talking to a volleyball, you’ll be all right.”
I threw a handful of water on him again. “Maybe playing in the ocean is normal, now that you mention it.”
Laughing, he splashed me back. “And maybe normal is overrated.”
“Prove it,” I said.
“I will. Hop on.”
He turned to offer his back to me, and I gladly accepted the ride. I grinned from ear to ear and squealed like a child on Christmas morning as he ran down the beach with supernatural strength, a mist of sand and water spraying up beside each of his powerful legs and hitting me in the calves with each stride. The sun warmed my face, and a cooling breeze swept over me. For just a minute, I forgot about the stress of our supernatural world. I actually laughed, and I hadn’t felt so carefree in a long, long time. I waved to Cindy and Fred as we passed them, and they laughed and pointed at us.
“Hey, thanks for the piggyback ride,” I said when I finished laughing after our crash landing.
“Anytime,” he said with a wink, helping me to my feet and dazzling me with that heartbreaking smile of his.
LOGAN WRAPPED HIS ARMS around me and I stared into his eyes, his face aglow with the last orange rays of the day. Birds darted across the magenta sky as the blazing ball slowly descended toward the ocean.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I have more peanuts, granola bars, and other snacks in my backpack.”
“I ate enough of your food.”
“I brought it because I knew we wouldn’t have food here on the island.”
“You’re lucky we even found it.”
“I set it down by the big palm trees, then went straight into battle.”
“That was smart thinking. Or we’d be cracking open coconuts.”
