Awoken (The Lucidites Book 1) (35 page)

Joseph’s voice from a few days ago trails into my head, rescuing me from paralysis.
Flashes are just potentials. You always have the ability to change them.

Chapter Forty-Two

I
shoot through a short tunnel, free fall briefly, and land with a heavy thud in the open square. Crouched, I note the slick bricks under my feet. It’s just rained. Daytime in Moscow. The Red Square, as planned, is filled with people. They hurry in different directions, ignorant of the war about to be waged for them so they can continue their busy affairs and sleep blissfully at night.

“Ready?” I bark into the headset.

“Yeah,” echoes a collective response from my team.

A flash: Zhuang strides at my three o’clock. His black and white robes flap around him like flags as he charges through unaware Middlings. Water displaced from his slippered feet splashes onto nearby bricks.

I turn, ball my fists and clench my jaw. This is it. The moment I’ve prepared for. Strangely I have no fear, only rampant adrenaline and also an odd sense of belonging. I belong in this moment. What happens next is a part of a fate I can’t avoid and don’t want to.

A gust of wind trumpets his arrival. The air smells ancient, like the inside of a tomb full of mummies and dust. A thousand déjà vus
spring to my mind as he strides forward. I expected him to tower over me and his gait to rock the earth like thunder. However, he’s smaller than I envisioned. All lean and sinewy muscles, he moves through the air like a fish through water.

Zhuang’s eyes snap to mine. His long, black goatee whips in the wind. Gracefully, he draws his hand up above his head and holds it there. I quicken, readying my defenses, wondering what he’s about to do. He clasps his fist shut and the air around him freezes. The wind that blows through my hair, scattering droplets of rain in the nearby puddles and riffling strangers’ scarves, has no effect on him. He’s conquered this element. An ounce of annoyance seeps from his face as he takes in the stillness of his robes. Satisfied, he measuredly scans the square, not meeting my gaze until a full minute has passed.

“Are you ready to die?” he snarls.

I take one calculated step forward, leaving only five feet between us, and his menacing eyes slither across me for the first time. Large slitted black pupils hang in an all-encompassing gold.

“Yes,” I growl.

One by one a duplicate projection of me explodes from the bricks until four Royas accompany me. They spiral until we’re back-to-back in a circle. My body levitates off the ground three inches. “But you’re going to have to find me first.”

We spin, my doppelgangers and I, like cups in a magic trick. I hold tight, knowing my rigidness makes it easier for Trent to move me. Forty times we rotate at lightning speed before we drop onto the bricks and take off running in different directions.

I sprint, momentarily blinded as I pass through people. Hoping the illusions have worked, I don’t look back. My only focus is on springing forward, ensuring I put enough distance between Zhuang before the next phase.

“It worked!” Samara reports eagerly. “He’s following Whitney’s projection of Roya. He already sliced through mine.”

“Joseph,” Trent breaks in. “Send your projection in Zhuang’s direction, if you find him. This could be helpful for when he kills the second Roya.”

The thought of Zhuang murdering illusions of me all over Red Square makes me want to vomit. Shaking this off, I close my eyes and focus on my next location. The idea wraps around me first, like water in a bathtub, and then my body springs forth with a jolt. My mind relaxes slightly, knowing I can count on the tunnels to do the navigating. The journey to the next layer is short.

A furious river gorge churns under my feet. The bank I stand on descends roughly 500 feet to the rocky and violent currents below. A bird sings in the distance and a beautiful row of lush trees stands on the opposite bank.
Not a bad place to die
.

“I’m here,” I say with an even tone. “Trent, I’m ready when you are.”

I flex every muscle in my body just as we practiced. Steadily, I rise off the ground and gradually float. My feet drift over the edge of the bank and my pulse quickens. The water below licks at the banks, hungry to swallow new life, chew it up, and spit it onto sharp rocks. Bile rises in my throat. My life’s in Trent’s hands. Although his ability is unmatched, he can’t see me now, only where I’m headed. I know this complicates matters. Inch by inch I make progress. It’s sluggish. I worry Zhuang will track me before everything’s in place.

Panic begins caving in the vast space around me. I wrestle with hounding Trent to move faster, but decide that might be deadly to his concentration. Instead I close my eyes and begin counting back from one hundred. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until my feet land on solid earth. All at once my eyes spring open and my lungs take a generous gulp of air.

“She’s in place!” Trent bellows.

“Nice work!” Joseph exclaims.

I turn toward the river’s edge, staring across to where I’d been moments prior. “Ready, team?” I command. “On my count.” I take a full inhale. “One. Two. Three.” It flickers, like Christmas tree lights being turned on for the first time in a season, and then becomes solid. A bridge, large and sturdy, ripples into existence, joining the two banks. The team can see it on their monitors, but only George can feel my overwhelming sense of pride. I don’t get a chance to express it before something moves on the opposite bank. Zhuang. He’s tracked me.

Pushing the ground away like a bull, he glowers at me. “Clever trick, little girl. You can die now or later. Your choice. But you
will
die tonight.”

A flash: A spear whizzes through the air, pushing through the molecules of space, forcing its way to its intended target. For a second I think it might actually find it.

My mind retracts to real time just as Zhuang jerks out of the spear’s trajectory. It continues on its path, sliding though the air until it smoothly lands in my hand. I flip it around. “Thanks, Trent.”

Zhuang narrows his brooding eyes. “Looks like I’ll have the pleasure of killing your friends too,” he says. “First things first, let’s take care of you.” He sprints forward, clearing the first half of the bridge in less time than is humanly possible.

“Now!” I scream when he’s only fifteen feet away. The bridge dissolves as quickly as it appeared. Zhuang scrambles through the air once he realizes his error. I wrench back my arm and fire the spear at him. He wrestles with his inevitable fall. The weapon sticks into his side, and he takes it with him as he free falls toward the rocky rapids. Over the thunder of the torrents, I hear a roar echo through the canyon. He’s falling fast, but dream travels just before entering the water.

I step back away from the edge, shaking with adrenaline. Knowing I have to move I travel three layers, hoping to get a chance to recover.

“The first two phases are complete,” I say, catching my breath. “He’s injured. Now phase three begins. Where is he?”

There’s a long silence. “Samara? George? Does one of you know where he is?” I ask again.

Another long pause. “I’ve got nothing,” Samara says, disappointed.

“I’m getting something, but it’s confusing,” George says after a few seconds. “It feels like he’s at Graceland in Memphis.”

“Great,” I say, trying to concentrate.

“But,” George adds, “there’s an energy to the place. If I’m reading this right then Elvis is there.”

“Oh, shit.” I sigh. Tracking him in the past is complicated and deviates from the plan. “What’s the date?’

“That I don’t know,” George admits after a pause.

Damn it!
I’ve lost him. Frustration sits at the back of my head, making me feel heavy. I can’t travel into the past at random to find Zhuang. I need to know specifically, down to the second, where he is. I fidget, hoping a brilliant idea will manifest in my foggy head. “Come on, guys,” I urge. “I need something.”

Silence follows.

“Samara?!” I yelp. “You were supposed to have a hold on him by now.”

“I’m trying,” she whimpers. “He’s got me blocked. I keep trying to find a back door that he doesn’t have locked, but he’s thorough.”

“I’d expect no less,” Trent says.

“Just pick a random date in the past and travel,” Joseph suggests.

“What?” I say. “Are you mad?”

“Yes,” he chirps in his usual light tone. “But that’s beside the point.”

“Joseph, I can’t just randomly travel to find Zhuang. There’s like a one in a million chance I’d pick the right day and time,” I explain.

“Right!” he says triumphantly, like he’s given a sufficient rebuttal.

I shake my head, disappointed. Kind of surprised I failed so fast. I’ve lost Zhuang and the one chance anyone has had in centuries to destroy him.

“Stark, would you stop the self-loathing for a second?” Joseph says. I picture him wearing his typical sideways smile. “It was forecast that the Lucidites’ challenger and Zhuang would battle today, right? What did Trey call it, ‘a static moment in time’? He can’t escape it and unfortunately, as the challenger, neither can you. If that’s correct then no matter where you go you’ll run into him. It’s destiny,” he says simply, like giving directions to a store down the road.

“You know, for once ol’ Joe’s actually making sense,” Trent says.

“I’m gonna go ahead and take that as a compliment,” Joseph says, a smile in his voice.

“By all means,” Trent encourages.

“All right,” I finally say. “I guess this is worth a shot.”
I have nothing to lose.
“Wish me luck.” I close my eyes and clear my mind. The lens of my mind goes blank. I push my consciousness back, further and further into the past. Like skimming through a book and randomly stopping on a page, I do this with the points of time. When the urge strikes I stop, crease back the page of this slot in history, and tunnel through the grayness.

Chapter Forty-Three

August 15, 1977, 10 p.m.

A
two-story house stands in front of me at the other end of a grassy lawn. Light from inside illuminates the house, casting it in a jubilant glow. Crickets chirp in the distance, a sound I once loved but now prickles my skin with irritation.

A sensation grows until it radiates up my spine and tickles the back of my neck.
I’m being watched
. I spin around, sweeping my eyes across the grounds, searching for Zhuang. Darkness masks everything like a painter’s cloth. Squinting through the blackness I wait for my eyes to adjust and listen to my pulse race in my head.

I back toward the entry of the house. A shadow lurches beside me. With a jolt I stagger until I back into a bench flanked by regal lions. Another shadow, maybe a different one, flickers in the distance. Just as I realize that Zhuang wouldn’t cast a shadow, I hear a hissing cackle behind me. As I wheel around, my eyes seize upon a figure sitting on an opposite bench.

“It’s true then.” I wheeze, suddenly out of breath. “We can’t escape each other.”

Through the darkness he shows jagged teeth as he smiles crookedly. “No, it’s in fact, not true,” Zhuang counters. The side of his robes where I speared him has already dried, leaving a dark stain.

“What?” I sputter. “But I found you. Just now. At this specific point in time.”

“Wrong.” His voice is a hush among the orchestra of crickets. “I found you.”

“No, that’s not true,” I argue. “You were at Graceland in the past. I found you.”

“Yes, I was, but not at this date and time. When I was ready, I found you, little girl.”

Reflexively I back away.

“And what an interesting date you picked.” He sneers.

George’s voice fills my ear. “He’s feeling playful and enjoying the game. He doesn’t want to kill you yet, which is good, but…there’s something really dark he wants. I can’t pin it down.”

“Thanks,” I say, taking in his words and also the comfort his voice provides.

“The King should be in that house sleeping right now,” Zhuang says sharply.

The foreboding night air creates pockets in my reasoning, making it impossible for me to strategize. My eyes shift over the grounds, looking for an opportunity. I need to run, to travel, to get him to follow me, but the timing has to be perfect.

“Do you know why Elvis can’t sleep?” Zhuang asks, looking amused.

“He hasn’t taken his meds yet?” I say, scanning the estate.

Half a smirk registers on his face. “Every time he closes his eyes he has nightmares.”

I have to figure out a plan, but unfortunately nothing has magically come to me. “Maybe he should stop staying up watching scary movies.”

“We both know nightmares don’t come from scary movies,” Zhuang says without hesitation. A brilliant bolt of lightning streaks the sky, casting an electric glow on everything. “
I
create nightmares!” Zhuang growls. Then the thunder rains through the air.

The sound is deafening, as if the lightning has struck me in the temples. I clap my hands to my ears, willing the ringing to disappear as quickly as it erupted. Through my hands, through the ringing in my head, I hear Zhuang’s words as his lips move. “Very soon those nightmares will kill the King.”

I grip my head, pushing away the ache in my ears. I can’t help Elvis, and even if I could, I can’t change the past. Lucidites can observe, but we’re not allowed to change events that have already taken place. My job is to secure the future.

“I do love a good cat-and-mouse game,” he almost sings in his salient tone. “But I’m tired of being the cat. Your turn.” And he’s gone.

Without hesitating I dive forward to the place Zhuang had been seconds prior.

“NO!” Joseph shouts in my ear. “It could be a trick!”

“Confirmed,” George says grudgingly.

“Doesn’t matter, I can’t lose him,” I say. “And I’m ready to kill that son-of-a-bitch.”

The complaints that follow are drowned out by my sheer focus as I step into Zhuang’s ripple. His tracers are like flecks of ash drifting in a breeze. Each grasp I make for the tiny bits of consciousness pushes it further away.
Stay still
, I urge the tracers and myself. For a second it feels impossible to do nothing, knowing the ripple will dissolve at any moment, but it’s what my instinct advises. Nothing happens. Still I remain fixed on the ripple. Something invisible settles on top of me like dew on a blade of grass. I seize it before it has a chance to evaporate and I fall at once, blindly.