like Aunt Maia did? I could never ask anyone else.”
A king keeps his promises , my grandfather told me. I guess I
should be careful of the promises I make.
A fat drop of rain hits me right in the eye. The knot in my
stomach that started in homeroom is growing with the darkening gray
clouds. I point at the sky. “I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen
anymore.”
She stands with her hands over her eyes like visors. “It isn’t.
Something is wrong.” She breathes in long and deep. “Do you smell it?”
I smell damp air. Mist rises around us. Clouds roll in front of
the sun, and everything inside me turns. Just like before the first
storm, the first wave.
Angelo is the first to run past me, yelling something about his
hair and how he’ll see us losers back in the lunchroom. Ryan holds out
his hands and cries out with excitement. It’s something that comes
from deep inside him, as if he’s waking up for the first time.
The sky turns black, the wind pushing the clouds fast across the
sky. The only light comes from the stadium lights and the lightning
cracking open the sky. Car alarms go off all along the block. For a
moment, it feels like the earth is shaking around us, but it’s
actually the metal fence around the field that’s shaking.
I grab Layla by the shoulders. “Please go inside. Please.”
“What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
Thalia’s glamour is fading slightly, or maybe she’s just green
with sickness as her yellow-green eyes widen at what they see. She
points at the other end of the field. “There!”
Three of the ugliest creatures I’ve ever seen are ripping the
fence open. Damp air mingles with the scent of sea sludge, like a
manhole just threw them up into the street. The tallest one has the
head of a hammerhead shark on the body of a human. Yellow eyes glow on
either side of his head. His gills open at the touch of rain, and a
smile like crushed glass grins right at me. Beside him is a creature
that is blue from head to webbed feet. His elbows end in long red
spikes, and his mouth opens to rows of canines. The smallest one of
the three is round with the head of a blowfish whose cheeks constantly
puff in and out.
Kurt takes aim with his arrow and shoots before I can even blink.
The creatures are fast, and Kurt only grazes the blue one in the arm.
They jump high and scatter around us.
“Layla, please do as I say!” I fumble to unzip my backpack for my
dagger.
“No!” Kurt shouts over me.
“What do you mean no?”
“They’ll follow her. Chase her. They’re fast, whatever they are.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
The round one shows himself in front of us. He breathes hard and
puffs his body out. Shit.
“Get behind the targets!”
I pull Layla down, shielding her with my body behind the wooden
target. The needles hit like darts into the wood.
“Lord Sea, stay down,” Kurt says. “Thalia, aim!”
She reaches for a bow, stands quickly, and lets the arrow fly.
Ryan has his back against the target. “What the hell! What the
hell are they?”
I peek around the target ring. They’re just standing in the
shadows waiting, like this is a game.
“Ryan,” Kurt says as he kneels and pulls his arrow into place.
“You can hit them. Go on. On my count. One.”
“Two.”
Thalia’s hands tremble as they search her backpack. She pulls out
two slender daggers and throws one to Layla, who catches it in midair.
“She can’t fight.” My voice is frantic, and I hardly recognize it.
This is not how a champion should sound.
“She has to.”
Layla pulls the dagger out of the sheath and holds it up, her
knuckles with a vise grip on it. She nods surely. This isn’t like
fencing during spring recess. This is something else, something we’ve
never faced before.
“Three!” Kurt and Ryan shoot. The creatures spread out instantly,
howling as Ryan’s arrow pierces the hammerhead in the arm. The
creature howls in pain, but just for a moment, before pulling the
arrow out with one tug, dripping black blood and red flesh.
“Holy shit!” Ryan says, holding his chest as if to keep his heart
from coming out.
I want to tell him it’ll be okay, but even I don’t know that. As
Kurt yells something over the thunder, the creatures charge right at
us. I shove Layla out of the way, so the blue creature pushes the
target on top of me. The ground is muddy and wet. I slip when I try to
push the wooden target off me. The blue one does it for me. He pulls
the red spikes out of his skin and stabs at the grass around me. I
kick his gut with the full force of my legs, roll over, and reach for
my dagger.
Up close, his eyes are dirty yellow. His permanent smile reveals
bloody gums. He raises his fists in the air and brings them down hard
on the ground, shaking the field right under me. I swing and catch him
on the side, and he winces. The barnacles around his neck suck at the
air like suction cups. Layla runs around us, and as he reaches out
with his spikes, she brings the dagger down through his back.
The creature’s body shakes, and black blood dribbles out of his
mouth. The body goes limp over me and falls slack on the ground. I
take his red spikes and stab him through the chest to make sure he
stays there.
“Where are the other two?” I push myself off the ground.
More car alarms go off after another blast of thunder. The few
students who didn’t make it inside are screaming behind the bleachers.
Up inside the school, crowds are gathered at the windows.
Kurt and Ryan hold their arrows at the ready. The five of us stand
in the middle of the field. The other two are still out there. I
breathe in air heavy with their stink.
“There!” I turn and the guys let their arrows fly up at the fence
where the hammerhead has climbed. He ducks to the right and jumps on
the ground and charges at me. For all their strength and speed,
they’re really uncoordinated and stupid. His yellow eyes are focused
on me and only me. I punch him with all my strength; my knuckles come
away bloody from the sharp scales of his cheekbones. I slash my dagger
out with both hands, but he jumps back from every swing.
Kurt’s voice thunders over the car alarms, the screams, and the
clapping thunder. “Tristan, get down!”
I throw myself on the ground as he takes one clean shot. The
creature falls backward with Kurt’s arrow pierced right through his
throat. A guttural wail sounds through the field. Layla runs up to me
and helps me stand. She takes my hand and examines it where my
knuckles are cut open. “It’s just a surface scrape.”
Ryan stands over the blue guy’s body. He taps it with his foot. It
doesn’t move. He bends down and uses the tip of an arrow to prod at
the still body. “What are these things?” He jumps back as the body
convulses and then starts to decompose into the grass, stinking of
rotting fish.
“Ugh, that’s disgusting.”
“Let’s get back inside,” I say, holding my hand out for Layla to
grab. She raises the dagger in the air so the rain will wash away the
slick, black blood on the edges. Kurt’s violet eyes are luminous in
the darkness. I wonder if mine look the same way. I can tell he’s
still listening for the other creature, because I am too.
Thalia stands nervously just inside the gate leading back inside
the building. Her voice is small as her eyes flicker around the field.
She pushes her wet hair away from her eyes. “Come, Ryan.”
He cups his hands at the sky and lets the rain pool in them, then