Undertow Page 28

  And like the flick of a switch, the three of us have control over the Rusalka’s killer wave. It’s so sudden, it’s startling, but it’s ours. In fact, when I reach out into the sea, I can feel that the Rusalka’s gloves have been turned off completely. Somehow, we have shut them down.

  A black figure springs out of the wave and charges forward, punching me in the chest. It doesn’t hurt, but it knocks me off balance and I fall backwards. It’s a Rusalka. Ghost and Arcade attempt to stop the creature, but it leaps on top of me, kicking my ribs until they are on fire, trying to stomp on my neck and face with its horrible webbed feet. I try to stand but it knocks me back again. This time my head smashes against the wall, and the monster takes advantage, leaping on top of me and using its hands to slam my head into the filth over and over again. The world is going black. All I can see are its broken fangs and the glowing orb hanging from its head. It’s going to kill me and eat me. It’s saying as much in its fierce, gurgling language. I should be scared. I should be in tears. Instead I am angry. Angry that this is how I end: not knowing where my father is, not knowing if my mother and Bex are safe, watching the boy I love die in the fight.

  I hear a crunch and then a slice and assume it’s my skull, but then the Rusalka’s body is thrown back off of me. I get to my hands and knees and see that a long, jagged strip of metal is impaled in its chest. It dies fumbling with the steel. I look around for the Alpha who killed it, but there is no one, just me.

  “Lyric, we’re losing the wave!” Arcade cries.

  I hear her, but my brain is still trying to recover. I look at the wall behind me. The wave that crashed against it soaked everything inside. It’s full of water, water that can cling and hold on to objects, water that does what I want it to do.

  “It’s coming!” Ghost cries. “We can’t hold it back!”

  The Voice keeps whispering its secrets to me. You can’t stop the wave, but you can make sure another one doesn’t come. See the sharp things I kept for you in the sea? See how you’ve stacked them? They can fly and stab and cut and kill.

  “Ghost, Arcade—get everyone out of the water! Now!” I say.

  “What are you talking about?” Ghost snarls.

  “Pull them out. Every single one of them, before the wave hits. I’m going to end this right now.”

  Arcade nods, but Ghost is enraged. “Have you lost your mind, human?”

  “Ghost, just do it!” Arcade shouts.

  Ghost raises his arms higher, and I watch hundreds of my people flying out of the water, held aloft above the waves.

  “Whatever you plan, do it now, Daughter of Sirena!” Arcade says. “Because the Rusalka are coming to finish us off.”

  I lift my gloved hand.

  You cannot fail, Lyric.

  No, I can’t. Not now. I let loose all my anger, all my joy, all my frustration, all my hopes and dreams and energies, all the love I have for a fallen prince. I let the wild thing loose. Javelins of trash fly out of the wall and zip through the air like missiles. Car bumpers, umbrellas, stop signs, poles, nails, loose change, driftwood, broken bottles—anything that can hurt them is snatched up by the water and flung as hard and as fast as my imagination will allow. They crash into the water like torpedoes, and the ocean turns red.

  “Lyric, it’s coming!” Arcade warns.

  I keep flinging my jagged missiles until the tidal wave roars over me, coming down like a massive fist from God himself. Water invades my throat and fills my lungs. I’m going to drown. I can feel it. If only I can focus, calm myself, maybe I can use the gauntlet to help me, but the water is too loud, too chaotic. I can’t get it to talk to me.

  I sink deeper and deeper. I’m dying.

  Then I feel a hand on my waist. At first I think I’m imagining it or hallucinating from lack of oxygen, but then there’s another one, slowly spinning me around. I open my eyes, and in the shower of sunlight piercing the depths I see Fathom. He is wounded and bleeding but he is alive.

  He smiles and then kisses me, blowing air into my lungs. It’s just a little, just for a few more seconds of life, so I use it for a last, dying wish. I kiss him. I pull him to me, ignoring our wounds, and hold my mouth to his. If I am going to heaven or the Great Abyss or wherever, this boy’s kiss is what I will take with me. His arms encircle me, and we drift lower and lower, together, breathing in each other as we go to whatever awaits us.

  There is a feeling in my stomach like I’m going to be sick, and I pull away. He takes my arm and tries to pull me toward the surface, but I struggle. The pain is searing, around me, stretching the skin on my arms and neck, ripping into my throat.

  Fathom calls out, but I cannot understand what he is saying, and then I realize I’m breathing. I open my eyes, but I’m not on the beach. I’m still underwater. Is it the gauntlet? Fathom takes my hand and raises it so I can see my skin. It is covered in scales.

  He smiles, kisses me gently, and then swims away into the dark water. I call out to him, but he does not respond. I want to chase after him, but the gauntlet is glowing again. There are people who need help. I have to get them out of this bubbling soup. I swim to the surface and take in a deep breath of air. The sensation of pain returns, though it’s not quite as intense, and just like that, I’m breathing air again. I’ve changed. The thing I feared the most has happened. I have taken on some of my mother’s qualities. I look out toward the shore. The Rusalka’s wave broke through the Alpha wall. The water roared into the streets of Coney Island and leveled entire blocks. The boardwalk, the amusement park, possibly even my school are all gone, washed away like they were never there. I look for the rise of my apartment but can’t find it.

  Mom! Bex!

  I ask the water, begging it to tell me where they are, hoping it will find them alive. My mother is not out here, but Bex!

  There.

  She’s far off and in trouble, so I sink under and swim, cutting through the water like I’ve got a motorboat engine strapped to my body. I’m as fast as a bullet. Is this the new me? No, the gauntlet is working again. It’s moving the water around me, firing me like a cannonball. When I reach Bex, I grab her with my arm, but I’m going so fast that the two of us rocket out of the sea, high into the sky—twenty, thirty, forty feet—then come crashing down in a painful splash.

  I hold her head above the water and listen to her pulse. She’s breathing. I search for something that will support her. There’s a door floating nearby and I pull it to me, then hoist Bex’s body onto it. She’s safe.

  I scan the water for Ghost, then Luna, then Thrill, just in case they managed to survive, but they’re gone. I can’t tell if they’re alive or dead, which is strange, because I can feel dead Rusalka twenty feet below me.

  Fathom! I reach out to the Voice, asking it to help me find him, but he’s gone too. Did I imagine him? No, that kiss was real. I sink under, hoping to spot him, but there’s nothing. The gauntlet cannot find him, but it finds Arcade. She’s alive. I blast through the water again, wrap my arm around her, and drag her to Bex’s makeshift raft.

  Bex awakens, coughing up enough water to fill a bathtub.

  “Bex, where is my mother?” I beg.

  “When the wall came down, soldiers stormed the shelter. Terrance tried to fight them, but there were so many. They took them both,” she says, then stares at me. “What is going on with your skin?”

  “Some kind of Alpha puberty, I guess.” But suddenly terror races through me. What if I have a tail? I have always worried that someday I would make the transformation and wake up with my mother’s tail flopping around under my sheets. I drop under the surface, cringing at what I might see, but my legs are normal, even if my skin looks like a Fourth of July fireworks display.

  “You are unique,” Arcade says when I surface.

  She’s right. Once again I do not fit. Not human. Not Alpha. I don’t belong to either. I am something new.

  “I am Lyric Walker, Daughter of Summer.”

  “What now?” Arcade says.
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  “We didn’t beat them. There’s more out there, right?” Bex says.

  “The Rusalka are great in number,” Arcade warns. “I suspect they retreated, but they will regroup and return. They are relentless. They will kill every Alpha until there are none, and your people if they get in the way.”

  “We can’t beat them ourselves,” I say.

  She nods in agreement.

  “Then what?” Bex asks.

  We rescue who we can. There are around three thousand Alpha survivors, and when we have them gathered we explain that they have to leave the shore. They need to find somewhere else to hide, a place where people cannot get in the way. Flyer agrees to lead them, and when he leaves he tells Arcade that he will miss her. I sense there is more in him that he would like to share, but he doesn’t. I don’t think she even notices. We find Ghost, though there’s no sign of Luna or Thrill. The little Nix takes the loss of his love particularly hard. I wish I could say something to make him feel better, but I’m feeling it too, and there’s nothing to say that could mend my heart. There is no sign of the prime or Minerva, or the high minister or Nor. No one has seen Braken. It’s too dangerous to go ashore and search for Terrance’s family, or for Mr. Ervin and Mr. Doyle. I realize I can never come back here.

  “I will never know if Tammy is alive,” Bex says as I push her along on the raft.

  “Your mother is a survivor, Bex,” I assure her.

  “That she is,” Bex says.

  Together, the three of us agree to move along the shoreline, heading south. When it’s safe, we’ll climb out of the water and figure out what to do next.

  “I saw him,” I tell Arcade as the last sights of Coney Island disappear on the horizon. “Fathom appeared right after the big wave and saved me.”

  She looks at me, then looks out at the cresting foam. Then she nods.

  “He’ll find us,” she says confidently.

  I’m not sure how far we go, if we’re even still in New York by the time we step onto the beach. It’s deserted, but it won’t be for long. The soldiers will come for us with their guns and fear, just like they did before, but it’s okay. We aren’t staying long anyway. We break into a parked car and steal a cigarette lighter and a handful of change. There’s a huge bag of potato chips in the back seat and a can of Mountain Dew. Dinner. Then we slink back into the woods and build a fire with the lighter, hoping it will dry out our clothes.

  In the morning I’m stiff and sweaty. Arcade agrees to wait for us, and Bex and I head toward a street lined with little shops. We fall into some outside seats at a Starbucks, unsure of what to do next.

  “I guess we can beg for change,” Bex says.

  I nod. It’s an option. Maybe our only one.

  “What’s next, Walker?”

  “We find our parents,” I say.

  “Hey, would you two mind watching my computer for a sec? I gotta use the bathroom,” a guy at a nearby table says.

  I shrug, then notice he’s got a phone just like mine.

  “If you have a charger,” I say.

  He reaches into his backpack and hands one up, rolled tight into a ball, and then he darts inside.

  “You should have asked him for a sandwich,” Bex grouses.

  I unravel the cord and plug it into a socket on the wall, then I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. It was underwater for a long time—there is just no way it still works, but I have to try. I need to see the picture, our picture. I need to know that he was real. I attach my phone and wait. The screen is dark and silent.

  “They die when you get them wet,” Bex says.

  “I know. I just—”

  Suddenly, there’s a hum and a tone and the screen lights up.

  “No way!” Bex cries, scooting her chair closer to get a better look.

  A moment later the whole thing is glowing. It works. I flip on my picture file and spot Fathom’s confused face pressed close to mine. It still exists. And then the phone buzzes with a text.

  TEXAS—MR. COFFEE

  “What’s that about?” Bex asks.

  I smile. “I know where we’re going,” I say.

  Somewhere there is a camp hidden in a desert in Texas where my parents are being held. It is filled with kids just like me, the offspring of humans and Alpha, a brand-new clan, all of whom I bet suffer from terrible migraine headaches they cannot explain. They are my people now, my nation. I have to find them and set them free so I can teach them to hear the Voice of the Great Abyss, and when they are strong and ready, we will go back to Coney Island and save the world from the monsters, whether they come from the water or walk on the land. Nothing will stop me, because I am bigger than the world; I make the sea tremble. I am a wild thing.

  End of Book One.

  Acknowledgments

  My beautiful wife and agent Alison Fargis was the first person to believe in this book. Quite possibly she was the first person to believe in me. I feared I could not write such a thing, but she told me to be brave, so I was. Aside from her, two other people were instrumental in taking it from an idea to an actual book. The first was Reka Simonsen, who acquired it, loved it, raved about it, and helped me steer the first draft through murky waters. When Reka left for a new adventure, Sarah Landis came in to captain the ship into the harbor with clever ideas and just the right amount of hand holding. I want to thank everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for making it an effortless transition.

  I didn’t leap into this assuming I could do it. I studied the works of people who do this better than most. Libba Bray, E. Lockhart, David Levithan, Adele Griffin, Andrew Smith, and Laini Taylor stand out as inspiration. Their writings were my silent lighthouses guiding me away from the rocks. Then there was the thoughtful encouragement of writers I actually know and trust. Julia DeViller was endlessly supportive and eager to read, and much to my joy, Adele Griffin was as amazing in real life as she is on the page. So nice to be friends with your hero. Rebecca Serle allowed me to pick her brain to see if I was dwelling in the world of a teenage girl. Few write the hearts of young people as well as Rebecca, and she was a patient, brilliant sage on all things love and literary. I hope that I managed to attain that “just above the knee” approach. Thanks.

  As always, I thank my best friend, Joe Deasy, who reads and loves what I do, yet laughs hysterically at my atrocious grammar and spelling.

  And I thank my son, Finn, my little man, who keeps getting older despite my many requests that he not. I love you, and I love the stories you tell me. You’re my favorite author.

  About the Author

  Michael Buckley’s two best-selling series, the Sisters Grimm and NERDS, have sold more than 2.5 million copies and appear in twenty-two languages. He has also worked as a standup comic, a television writer, an advertising copywriter, a pasta maker, and a singer in a punk rock band. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Alison, and their son, Finn.

  Visit his website at

  www.michaelbuckleywrites.com.