Tempest (#1 Destroyers Series) (24 page)

Sleep. That was when Andrina would make her
listen to those hypnotic recordings, if Gary was right about that.
He hadn't lied to her yet.

Already it felt as if shadowy hands were
creeping up into her mind, turning the world into a giant, shadowy
puddle bent on drowning her.

“Ahem.” Andrina stopped at the mouth of a
hallway and patted her pocket.

Her chin quivered. There was no escaping
this.

With heavy legs she followed her to an open
door at the end of the hall. A lavender bedroom waited on the other
side. Another chandelier hung from the ceiling and a canopy bed
waited in the middle of the room, its covers pressed and smooth
from years of waiting. Clothes stuffed the closet, most of the
shirts a perfect fit for her height, but others were too small and
junior-high sized.

Andrina had been expecting her arrival for
years.

Janelle rubbed her arms in disgust as her
legs carried her into the room, pulled by the thread of obedience
that was keeping Leslie alive. She didn't see the stereo system
stood next to the bed until she was almost right on it. A CD in a
blue case sat on top, with her name written across it with the
neatest handwriting she'd ever seen.

Janelle’s heart leapt into her throat.
No,
oh no, no…

“Your room,” Andrina said, watching her and
the CD closely. “I decorated it myself years ago. I hope you like
lavender. The mattress is unused, so it should be quite
comfortable.”

The world started to blur. She had no
choice.

Janelle climbed into bed and pulled the
covers over herself. She could leave her eyes open just a little,
and Andrina wouldn’t know the difference. As long as she stayed
conscious, the recording wouldn’t work. Right?

Those shadowy hands reached up again to drag
her down to oblivion.

A mechanical click followed as the CD player
opened.

Breathe evenly. Stay awake. Whatever you do,
stay--

* * * * *

Janelle hovered miles above the earth as the
ocean churned below. A roar filled her being with an energy she had
never imagined—and it only grew stronger the more she spun over the
intoxicating warmth of the water. She wrapped more of the
moisturizing clouds around herself and turned towards a distant
stretch of land. There was something to do, something that had to
be fixed.

“
Feel the power, Janelle.” Andrina’s silky
voice seemed to echo from everywhere, fading in and out and cutting
through the roaring in her mind. “Grow strong on it...go
north...move faster.”

Yes. She swept as much of the ocean’s energy
as she could into her eye and allowed it to course through her
being, making her stronger…more powerful.

“
Faster…don’t give them time to get
away.”

The coastline drew nearer and the mouth to an
enormous river cut away into it. Gray and brown lumps stuck up from
the ground all around it. Skyscrapers. Pointed and squared, they
towered into the sky as if daring her to test them.

“
Drown the city, Janelle. They all hate
you. Show them no mercy, and make your mother proud!”

With a flex of her will, she raised a wall of
water and hurled it against the shoreline and down the river,
watching it tumble towards the huddled group of buildings in its
path. The tallest of them pointed up to her like a conical finger,
accusing her of being the killer that she was.

“No!”

Janelle sprang up in bed, flailing and
flinging the blanket off. She gripped her arms to make sure they
were still there and ran her hands across her stomach. She hadn’t
transformed yet, but that voice was still everywhere around her,
invading her ears and--

The drone of Andrina’s voice came out of the
stereo. “Flood it all. Smash everything that you can.”

Janelle leapt out of bed and hit the STOP
button before it could get out any more. The room fell silent.

Andrina had left. Some time must have gone
by. An hour? Two? The
repeat
function glowed on the stereo,
which meant that the recording could have played twenty, thirty, or
forty times by now. More than once it had burned its poisonous
message into her brain.

Janelle sat on the floor, staring at the
carpet for what felt like an eternity. The nightmare replayed
itself in her mind, like Andrina had stamped it there forever.
Terror crept up into her chest, riding on the realization that she
did have another nature after all, and that the skyscraper from her
dream had been the Empire State Building.

Andrina had appointed her New York City’s
executioner.

Janelle wasn’t sure how she managed to stand.
It took minutes. The damage was done. Operation Reckoning would go
ahead as planned.

New York City. It was always ground zero in
all those bad disaster movies. Always had a target on it for every
possible disaster. But they never got hurricanes there. At least,
not the strong ones. All the really deadly ones were in places with
palm trees. Storms that went north of the Carolinas always seemed
to peter out—right? It was why she’d told Gary to head north if he
managed to change.

But Andrina had that DVD about future
disasters out in the living room. If a powerful New York City
hurricane was really possible, it would be in there. From the
silence outside her room, it sounded like she had left.

Janelle rushed out into the living room,
where only the shark swimming in its tank greeted her with its row
of jagged teeth. The DVD sat on top of the player. She swiped it
off with a trembling hand. Sweat marks formed on the plastic around
her fingers.

Geographic Review’s Future Disasters
.
A tornado, a volcano, a tsunami, and a hurricane took up the cover.
She averted her eyes, popped it open, and pulled out the shiny
booklet inside. That would tell her, or at least give her a clue.
Pages flipped in her hands. Wildfires. Asteroid impacts. Tornadoes.
Glaciers. Death. And then—

New York City vs. Major Hurricane.

Janelle’s heart stopped.
God.

Skyscrapers rose up from a massive flood,
almost skeletal with their windows broken out. On the next page, a
gigantic hurricane spun over the ocean, anticipating its prey.

Janelle couldn’t help it. She screamed and
threw the booklet on the leather couch, burying her face in her
hands. It
was
possible after all. She was going to stand
here and cry, scream, and throw the tantrums her father hated. She
had every right in the world.

Someone hammered on the double doors.
“Janelle! You in there? I can’t open this. It’s locked, but I’ll
break it down if I have to.”

Gary.

She bolted to the doors, nearly slipping on
the polished floors. With a tug they came open, and Gary stood on
the other side with a guy in glasses of about nineteen or
twenty.

He barged in, followed by his companion.
“Andrina’s meeting with the Elder Council right now and she took
Alec and Ivanna with her, so we were able to get up here. This is
the Joey I was telling you about.”

Joey shook Janelle’s hand in a hurry. She
barely registered it.

“Hello,” he said. “I heard Andrina was going
to make you listen to her brainwashing stuff in your sleep. If you
know where she keeps the recordings, I can exchange them with these
discs.” He fished in his pocket and produced a couple of CDs in
blue cases. “I burned them on my computer. She’ll think she’s
giving you the real thing, but then they switch to some classical
music about ten minutes through. And I don’t think Mozart’s going
to make you kill thousands of people.”

Janelle stiffened and stared down at the help
that had come too late. The mask crumbled, and everything burst
forth that she was supposed to hide and control. “It’s already been
done!” she wailed, turning and pounding her fists on the leather
couch. Tears filled her eyes. She plucked the
Future
Disasters
booklet off the cushion and threw it at Gary. “That’s
what I’m going to do.”

Gary flipped it open and blanched. “Are you
sure, Janelle? Very few Tempests can pull that off. Hurricanes get
weak when they get to that colder water up around New York.” He was
trying to sound hopeful, but there was a nervous undertone to his
voice.

“But I’m supposed to be the strongest,”
Janelle said, voice wobbling. Warm tears ran down her cheeks now,
and she didn’t care, because it was true. “What else would she want
to use me for?”

Joey shuffled over and eyed the booklet. “So
this is how she's going to start her war?"

“It would get the world's attention like
nothing else would," Gary said, the last of his own mask falling
away. "I…I think she’s planning to reveal us to everybody while
Janelle’s…you know. To start it all. She wants the whole world to
be scared of us."

“Let’s put the DVD in,” Joey said, ashen. He
snatched it off the couch and headed for the TV. “We’ve got time.
Those meetings always take at least three hours, and with Operation
Reckoning it’s going to be a long one.”

“No,” Janelle pleaded over the lump in her
throat.

“There might be something in it that’s
useful,” Joey said, turning on the television.

The logo for
Future Disasters
popped
up on the screen and dramatic music played in surround sound.

Janelle stood behind the couch and sniffed.
She had to get it together. Crying wouldn’t help her situation.
Leslie was still trapped here somewhere. If any good was to come
out of this, she'd have to get herself back under control.

Gary appeared next to her. His hand wrapped
around hers and squeezed, sending waves of calm through her body.
It felt warm, safe. It was the only comfort she’d had all day.

It was short-lived. The screen filled with
the Manhattan skyline and slowly zoomed in. A man narrated with a
voice filled with doom. “New York City. Home to eight million
people and also the economic center of the country. And also a
place not commonly associated with hurricanes. And yet,” the man
paused as the screen changed to a satellite map of Long Island,
“New York City is one of the most susceptible cities to their
wrath, with damages potentially in the hundred billion dollar range
if one were to strike. And it is not a matter of if, but
when.”

When.
That word again.

The screen changed to a satellite shot of an
unknown hurricane in the Atlantic. Ominous music played. Gary’s
grip on her hand tightened. Joey flinched. Bile rose in Janelle’s
throat. No, she didn’t want to see that. She stared down at the
leather couch until it vanished.

The narrator continued. “If a Category Three
storm or higher arrived at or near New York City during high tide,
a storm surge of as high as thirty feet could race up the Hudson
River towards Manhattan, flooding the island and the subway
systems.”

Water rose in a subway tunnel, then around a
group of office buildings. “It would rise around Wall Street,
shutting down the stock exchange for weeks. The windows to all the
skyscrapers would blast out, raining glass on anyone standing in
the streets. Millions of people would need to be evacuated in a
very short amount of time.”

A woman appeared in front of a black
background. “The devastation could be incredible, dwarfing that of
the infamous Andrina. Manhattan could become inescapable with all
the flooding. Also, it’s hard enough to get around when the city’s
traffic is normal, so an evacuation would pose a great challenge.
Huge traffic jams could result as the storm bears down on the
city.”

The man returned. “But worst of all is the
fact that hurricanes moving to the north move much faster than
their southern counterparts. A strong hurricane could race north in
a day without losing its punch. Residents would have maybe a day
and a half’s warning to evacuate, which clearly is not enough time
for so many people. Deaths could climb into the thousands.”

Janelle broke away from Gary and buried her
face in the couch. "Get rid of it. Please." Every word of the show
had stabbed into her like a flying knife.

Gary’s voice rose to a yell. “Take it out,
Joey. This isn’t doing any good. We’re better off looking for the
yacht keys.”

With a
click,
the TV turned off.

Gary’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her
away from the couch. Janelle sank into his hug as his warmth
enveloped her. Only then did she realize she was crying again.

“Shhh,” he said, rubbing his hand along her
back. “We’re breaking out of here. We’ll find those keys.”

The keys. Of course. Janelle lifted her head
from Gary’s shoulder and rubbed her eyes on her sleeve. “She’s got
to have them here. Where would she keep them?”

Gary shrugged. “I’ve never been up here
before. You’re the only reason I got in.”

“Well, look everywhere.” Janelle wiped the
tears away and pulled the cushions off the couch, holding in the
urge to apologize for crying and embarrassed that she'd broken down
like that in front of him.

Joey put his palms in the air. “Um…I don’t
know if trashing the Tempest High Leader’s apartment is such a good
idea.”

“I’ll say I did it," Janelle said. "She won't
kill me. Now help."

Cupboards flew open, rugs overturned, and
books toppled from shelves as they searched every square inch of
the apartment. Janelle tossed whole drawers to the kitchen floor.
Nothing. She rushed out into the living room and flipped over rugs
while Gary took a pair of tongs and dug through the gravel on the
bottom of the piranha tank. Still nothing.

“Go through every room,” she said, pointing
down the hall.

They flipped the mattress off Andrina’s
canopy bed and tore apart her closet full of gray business suits,
going through the pockets. No keys. Janelle pawed through the
medicine cabinet and even pulled the gratings from the air vents.
The last hope drained from her as they peered into the last one.
Nothing but a cobweb.