Nil on Fire Read online

  Skye’s smile was wan.

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think the island’s too happy with you either.”

  “Good.” His jaw was hard.

  “Well, this has been fun,” Lana said.

  Hands on her hips, her expression was haughty. She glared at Skye. Paulo stood a few meters away, leaning against the black rock wall of the mountain, studying us. Not angry, just curious. Like he was either giving us space or trying to figure out what to do. Piles of clothes dotted the black rock. Small sets, freshly left. A stack of sandals sat near Paulo’s feet.

  He planned ahead, I thought.

  Now I understood how Zane had scored clothes so quickly. Lana had obviously taken advantage of Paulo’s consideration; she already wore an island skirt and chest wrap. He seemed to notice that detail at the same moment I did.

  “You’re welcome for the clothes, Lana.” Paulo’s voice made Lana’s head snap to him.

  “Paulo.” His name was distasteful on her tongue. “I heard you took your brother’s place.”

  Paulo smiled, his arms crossed but relaxed. “No, Lana. It was my place. My time. My journey, not his.”

  Lana raised an eyebrow, respect creeping across her face. She nodded. “I see that. So it is. Good luck with your journey, Paulo. Now it’s time for mine.”

  “Wait.” Paulo moved to stop her, his expression calm. “The island isn’t what it once was. It’s not what you were told. The island, it’s cruel now.” He paused. “I don’t think it’s a place you want to be alone.”

  A blast of burning air punctuated Paulo’s words.

  “Well, that’s new.” Zane pointed to a steam vent adjacent to the platform. “I guess Nil’s just blowing off a little steam.”

  Lana snorted. “This is your group? Did you come to save them, Paulo, or greet me? I’m fine, Paulo. I’ve waited to come for seventeen years. Let me go.”

  “Your choice, Lana.” Paulo’s expression stayed neutral, but his eyes were sad. Older. The last three months had inflicted invisible Nil scars. “I won’t stop you. But here, I promise there is safety in numbers.”

  She laughed. “Nice try. But I’m fine. See you around the island.”

  And then she stalked off.

  Only Zane watched her go.

  “We okay?” I asked Thad quietly.

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “Man, I did not see this coming.”

  “That’s Nil,” I said crisply. Maybe Thad had his own blind spot too. Only his blind spot wasn’t here; she was safe, back home.

  My worst-case scenario was unfolding in front of me.

  Paulo didn’t look too happy either. “Why did you come back?” he asked Skye.

  “Nil wouldn’t let me go,” she said.

  “What does that mean?” Paulo frowned.

  “Exactly how it sounds.” She smiled. “And now here I am.”

  Paulo shook his head. “I wish you hadn’t come.”

  That makes two of us, I thought. His troubled expression heightened my already elevated fear quotient. No one chose to come back to Nil, except of course, Skye. No doubt she was a first. She always did things her way, something I loved about her. But here, the thought wrecked me. Nil had its own agenda, and it didn’t like to share. It liked to keep its prizes, its toys.

  Which meant us.

  But that part we knew. The rest of Nil’s daily grind shifted like the wind. The island was unpredictable, an ever-changing variable, like us; I had yet to find the constant.

  Maybe Skye’s the constant now, came the unwelcome thought.

  No, I thought savagely. Now Paulo was frowning at me.

  I shrugged. I wasn’t inviting Paulo into my head too. It was too damn crowded as it was.

  Get yourself together, Rives, I thought. Daydreaming on Nil was a fast track to death, and it wouldn’t help Skye, either. For her part, she didn’t look like she needed a bit of help. Chin lifted, gaze sharp, she was slowly surveying the platform. I realized she was cataloging the items on the ground, taking care to keep anything useful, a smart-Skye move.

  I missed my knife. Or rather, Thad’s knife.

  My hip felt dangerously bare.

  Glancing around, I swept the platform for blades and came up empty. “Paulo, the knives that were here,” I said. “Do you have them?”

  “Not with me. I gathered everything and took it back to the City. Spears, knives, clothes.” He shrugged. “Seemed a waste to leave it all behind, when it was really all anyone had.”

  I nodded, more than a little impressed, knowing that haul would have taken more than one trip.

  Thad stepped forward and offered his hand. “I’m Thad.”

  Recognition flickered through Paulo’s eyes as he shook Thad’s hand. “Thad, as in after William and before Hiroto? On the Wall?”

  “That’s me.” Thad nodded.

  “Paulo.” He shook his head. “And welcome back. I can’t believe one person would come back, let alone four.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.” Thad’s voice still had an edge.

  “No one was,” I said. A point worth repeating, because I sensed Thad hadn’t fully let Skye off the hook.

  “Dude, I don’t really even know what happened,” Zane said. “I saw—” He broke off, staring at the steps where Lana disappeared.

  “What?” Skye asked.

  “Not what, who,” Zane replied. He glanced at me. “I’d swear Lana turned around inside the gate and crooked her finger at me. It’s crazy, because she won’t give me the time of day now, but I’d swear she called me. And I couldn’t say no.” He turned slightly red. “Did any of you see Lana in the gate?”

  “I saw someone else.” A ghost, I thought. A cruel trick.

  “Me too,” Skye said quietly. “Only I saw a girl I’ve never met. Her name was Talla.”

  Thad sucked in his breath.

  Skye glanced knowingly at him, then smiled wanly at Zane. “You’re not the only one who sees dead people.”

  “Make that three of us.” Thad rubbed his forehead. “I saw Li.”

  “Like Charley,” I murmured, remembering Charley’s question as she stepped toward the gate. “That makes six of us,” I said. “Zane and Michael saw Sy; Skye and I saw Talla. And Thad and Charley saw Li. So six of us have seen people walking and talking even though we know those people died on Nil.”

  “It’s like The Walking Dead without the zombie part,” Zane said.

  I shot Zane a sharp look. “The point is, Nil has some new tricks. New head games.”

  “Very true.” Paulo nodded. Turning toward Skye, he drew something out of his satchel and offered it to her. I recognized it as her rock sling immediately.

  “I’ve taken care of it, but it doesn’t belong to me,” he said. “If you want it, it’s yours.”

  Smiling, she slid the weapon over her shoulder with an ease that was both reassuring and disturbing. “Now all I need is a rock.”

  He returned her smile, his caramel eyes light for a brief moment. “That I think you can find without me.” His smile faded, his gaze still on Skye.

  Her eyes had returned to the ground. To the sand-filled lines gouging the rock.

  “Skye?” I stepped closer. “Do you see something?”

  “No.” She sighed. Striding forward, she scooped up a scrap of twine off the ground and tied back her hair with force. Her expression turned lethally calm.

  “Now what?” Zane asked.

  “Now we have three months,” she said. “Three months to survive, three months to find others. Three months to figure out the last of Nil’s secrets. The biggest one, the one we missed last time.”

  “Which is?” I asked.

  “Which is how to end Nil once and for all.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  NIL

  NOON

  These humans were such fun. Completely predictable, until the moment when they acted inexplicably foolish, delightfully exposing their weaknesses and fears and vulnerabilities for the island t
o see.

  The island would use each one toward its own purpose.

  Acquiring the male, Thad, had been a delightful surprise, his bitterness extraordinarily refined, his fear palpable. He’d brushed the gate with his elbow, a careless mistake, and the island had been unable to resist. It had wanted the female, Charley, a female stolen from the island by her male. For a moment, the island had been abruptly furious. It had been tricked, denied Charley by her mate for a second time; it did not want them both: their connection was too strong, their bond too great. Individually they would be easier to break.

  So the island had closed the gate. The biggest regret was the loss of the male, Michael; his strength had tempted the island, so much that the island had called him, a call made easier by the blood trail left by the male, Sy. Both Michael and Zane had worn Sy’s blood like a marker, and it had used that marker to pull them back. The unpredictability of the humans frustrated the island immensely, and yet, this same unpredictability brought the island such pleasure when it turned in the island’s favor.

  Soon it would toy with the ones freshly called. It would use their weaknesses, prey on their fears.

  But first, it would observe the ones denied. Noon cost the island, yet noon also cost those left behind. The pain of noon always proved entertaining, on both sides of the seam, a fact that had not escaped the island’s notice.

  Like now.

  *

  Charley stared at the black rock platform. It was empty, not counting an unhappy goat and a mewing snowy kitten. The white flowers littered around the platform mocked her. They should be wilted, she thought, staring at a handful of flowers where the gate had just been. It was so wrong that the flowers looked fresh, and alive. The blossoms were already dead; they just didn’t realize it yet.

  Reality rushed in like cold wind.

  The gate was gone. Thad was gone.

  And she was still here, denied the chance to help or choose for herself.

  “What just happened?” Charley said, turning slowly to the boy beside her, whose name she couldn’t remember. His eyes were locked on the place the gate had vanished. “Tell me that did not just happen. Please tell me this is a nightmare and I’ll wake up any minute.”

  “It is a nightmare,” he agreed, finally turning to her, “but a living one.” His eyes were sympathetic. “Thad—he was your boyfriend, yes?”

  Boyfriend, Charley thought. A weak word for how she felt about Thad. Soul mate, partner. A gift from Nil, now taken by Nil.

  Abruptly she was blindingly furious.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice shockingly cold. “And I’m going to get him back.”

  Michael nodded. “This gate. It will reopen in three months. They will appear here”—he gestured around the rock—“in three months.”

  Three months, Charley thought.

  Thad. She thought his name with all her might. I love you. I believe in you. Be smart, be safe, be strong—and I’ll see you in three months. She couldn’t bear to think of anything else. She also had the thought that if Skye could hear Nil here, maybe Thad could hear her there. It gave her small comfort. Stranger things had happened.

  Charley lifted her chin. “Then let’s get ready. But in the meantime, we need a way off this island. Our rowboat sank.”

  Michael nodded. “I have a canoe. Two, actually, because Zane had one too.”

  Figures, she thought. I guess we got the canoes after all.

  “Time to go,” she said, picking up the tiny kitten, her tone resolute. “We’ve got three months.”

  Tick tock.

  Later she’d wonder if that thought was hers. But for now, it didn’t matter.

  The clock was definitely ticking.

  *

  Lana found the cave easily.

  Her grandmother’s directions had been clear. Circle the mountain, trace the cliff. Look for the gap in the black rocks, the trailhead of a path. On the ledge, look for the giant ear. She’d obeyed without hesitation, and now she was here: The cave mouth yawned a few meters away.

  She moved toward the entrance, wasting no time. Here, time was not to be wasted; it was to be treasured. Used. Explored.

  To explore within.

  To invite the island in, as her grandmother had advised. And for Lana, it was all to begin at the Listening Cave, as it had begun for her grandmother, the one Lana herself was named for. Her grandmother, Alana, was one of the last seers to return from the island. Too many island women had not found the Sight in recent decades, or if they had, they had not returned. Lana’s own aunt, Lina, had not returned, her fate a family mystery and secret wrapped in one.

  Lana would be different. She knew it. She felt it.

  Still, at the cave’s entrance, she paused. She studied the mouth of the cave with a critical eye. Lana was loath to admit it to herself, but she was slightly unsettled by the ease with which she’d found it, yet at the same time, her success stoked her already glowing confidence. She could see how the cave would be easily overlooked, easily missed. An overhang shaded the mouth, rough and slanted. The actual opening faced east, opening toward the mountain, gaping as if to welcome lava in one big swallow. But no lava flowed this far; the lava that had carved this cave was long gone. Far to the north, lava still dropped into the sea with a silent hiss, but the molten river was too far away to be heard or seen; the clouds of steam in the distance were the only hint of heat at all.

  There was no danger here, only safety.

  Or so her aunt had promised.

  Remembering Paulo’s warning, Lana stepped into the cave with caution. As expected, the mouth opened to a surprisingly generous room on the left. Its ceiling sloped away, sloped in, a pocket crafted from lava or water or some other force of nature in the island’s history. The small cavern matched her grandmother’s description perfectly, except that the cavern wasn’t bare.

  Someone had been here recently.

  A pile of coconuts and pineapple sat in a corner, beside a gourd and small coconut shell cup. Two stacks of cloth were folded neatly next to the fruit. A bag leaned against one stack. Nothing else was here, and no one besides Lana herself.

  She was alone, as she had expected to be.

  Relaxing, Lana moved around the cave, getting acquainted with her new home. She picked up the gourd, pleased to find it full, and sniffed. No smell. She poured a bit into the cup, and dipped her finger in for a taste.

  Water, she thought, pleased.

  She drank it all, then set down the cup and gourd as she inspected the rest. The stacks of cloth were bedding, plus a bandana and two pairs of shorts. The bag contained knives. Mostly wood, but one was metal, an odd surprise.

  Paulo had obviously taken pains to prepare this place for her. Considerate, but unnecessary, although the stash of knives could prove useful. Picking up the metal knife, she studied the blade with the same care she’d used to inspect the water gourd. Primitive, raw, and unabashedly metal, the knife seemed out of place. Rust coated the edges, adding to its aged look.

  With a start, Lana realized the rust wasn’t rust at all; it was dried blood.

  “Put it down,” a sharp voice behind her demanded.

  Lana jerked her head up to find a girl pointing a matching metal blade at her heart. Luminous dark eyes set in a thin face regarded her coldly. A thick brown braid fell across the girl’s shoulder. She matched Lana in dress and stance, only the girl radiated hostility.

  “Now,” the girl snapped. She flicked the knife once for emphasis.

  Lana didn’t move.

  Still gripping the knife, she watched the girl carefully, surprise turning to outrage in her belly. This was her journey, her cave. Her time. Who was this girl to demand anything of her?

  “Why?” Lana’s voice stayed calm.

  “Because I told you to.” The girl’s eyes remained fixed on Lana, like her knife.

  Following some silent cue, two boys stepped from the shadowed entrance to flank the girl like lieutenants. Both were fit, with taut stomachs and
lean muscles, but the similarities ended with their abs. One had dark hair, straight and sleek, capping light eyes and light skin that had recently turned tan. He wore a cocky smile like a prized accessory. The other boy had dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes, and no expression at all. He reminded Lana of a living shadow. He was, by far, the most alarming of the three.

  “I said put it down,” the girl repeated. Her icy tone warred with her lilting Spanish accent.

  “I don’t always do as I’m told,” Lana said coolly.

  A glimmer of respect flashed through the girl’s eyes. “Neither do I,” she said. She lowered her blade slightly.

  Lana followed suit.

  Abruptly the girl dropped her knife to her waist.

  “Carmen,” the girl said, still holding the knife. She tipped her head slightly toward the boy who was one step from blending into the shadows. “This is James,” she said. “And this is Ace.” Now Carmen pointed to the boy with the slick hair as his insolent grin broadened.

  “Hi,” Ace said. He winked.

  Lana would’ve rolled her eyes or snorted but she didn’t dare look away from the girl, or from James. Unlike Ace, James didn’t acknowledge her. He had a predatory look about him that was deeply unnerving. No, not predatory. Piercing, as if he saw right through her.

  “Lana,” she said, fighting the urge to step back. She’d just realized that her back brushed the wall as it was; she was outnumbered, and trapped. In her own cave.

  Her fury flared anew.

  “So how long have you been staying here?” Lana bit back the words in my cave.

  Carmen’s eyes flicked to the side wall, where slashes marked the rock like graffiti.

  “In this cave? Eighteen days,” Carmen answered. “A few more on the island.” She cocked her head, her eyes on Lana’s. “And you?”

  Tradition tied her tongue. Rives and Skye had warned her that the island had changed; Maaka too. He’d told her of the wild gates, warned her that she would not be alone. But she’d never anticipated that her own cave would feel so crowded, that she’d be trapped by bodies and weapons and the weight of a history she was forbidden to share. And the fact that it was all crashing in on her on her very first day was almost more than Lana could bear.