Tempest (#1 Destroyers Series) (26 page)

Leslie shot her a look that told her she knew
she was lying. “Don't think that I'm not still your friend,
Janelle. It's not your fault you're in this situation.” She wrung
out her wrists. “So...is this what that gray spiral on your arm is
really about? I thought it was just a birthmark. It's all a bit
hard to wrap my mind around, so it might take me a while to get
used to it.”

“Yes. And I don’t blame you for doing what
you did. I’d rather not have your fingers broken,” Janelle said as
Leslie’s arms came free. “Where’d Kevin go?”

Leslie shook her head. “He put me in here an
hour ago and left. He was keeping me over in that boiler room but
that woman came down and told him to move me.”

That woman.
Leslie still didn't know
the whole truth. It might be best to keep it a secret until she
could absorb the rest.

Joey hung in the doorway, breathing clouds of
vapor like a train. “Let’s go. We still have to get the keys. This
is all pretty weird, so I don't have a good feeling about
this.”

He was right. A freezer was a weird place to
keep a prisoner.

Everyone piled out of the freezer. Janelle
raced for the door right behind Joey.

Loud crashes sounded on the other side of the
steel door. Janelle’s stomach raced up into her throat as Joey
stopped and she bumped into him.

“Hurry up, Kevin,” Andrina yelled. “We’ve got
to block them in!”

All at once, she understood the reason behind
Leslie having to sit in the freezer.

“Charge the door!” Gary shouted after a
pause, pushing against Janelle and slapping Joey on the back.

After confusion and jostling around, Joey
rammed his body against it. The door flew out an inch—enough to
reveal a mountain of storage boxes on the other side—and slammed
shut again. More thumps sounded as Andrina and Kevin stacked more
of them in front of their exit, preventing their escape. The cold
had already sapped most of Joey's strength.

“Let me try!” Janelle squeezed around Joey
and rammed her shoulder into the door, making pain explode through
it. This time it didn’t budge. The cold had done its work on her
while she was untying Leslie.

Gary joined her at the door. “Push!”

Still the door didn’t budge, and muffled
thumps continued as the boxes built up on the other side. They were
trapped, in a prison within a prison.

“Stop struggling, Janelle!” Andrina shouted
from somewhere on the other side of them. “I was afraid you'd
misbehave. You've given me no choice but to make sure you're
manageable when I come for you in the morning.”

“No!” Janelle rammed her body into the door
again. Nothing. Andrina and Kevin had sealed them in. “I don't want
anything to do with your Operation!”

Footsteps headed away from them, growing
fainter and fainter until they disappeared. Andrina's ears were
closed on her, and would never open.

Silence fell. Janelle stared at the pits on
the steel door as the cold of the giant fridge soaked into her skin
and stole away her last hope of escape.

“Well,” Joey said, shrugging, “at least we
have something to eat in here.”

* * * * *

Janelle didn’t feel like eating, not after
her last meal had knocked her out. Instead, she snuggled up to Gary
for warmth. He wrapped his arm around her and held her tight. But
this time, he didn’t speak. There was nothing left for either of
them to say.

She'd be taking her dive into the ocean at
dawn, full of that poisonous nightmare that would kill thousands.
Even if she saw her father again, she could never face him. Not
after the mistakes she'd made.

Leslie ate several slices of cheese as she
recovered from her bout in the freezer. “I’m so sorry, Janelle. I
didn’t mean to make you feel like crap,” she said between bites,
like she had seven times before. “You’ve got to feel bad enough. I
would have never thought there was more to hurricanes than just a
bunch of random stuff happening in the atmosphere.” She unwrapped
another slice of cheese. “That Kevin guy showed me his powers on
the boat. He was able to make the water choppy and made a wind kick
up so bad I nearly fell off the boat. I thought he was going to
kill me. He said he’d go back and murder my mom if I didn’t
cooperate with him. I wanted to yell for security at the airport,
but I was so scared.”

“It’s okay,” Janelle said, wrapping her
fingers in the fabric of her shirt, feeling for what Leslie must
have gone through during her abduction. “If it was just a few
degrees warmer in here, we could just walk out.”

Leslie shook her head and shrugged. “What’s
that have to do with anything? I'm still trying to piece all this
together.”

“It saps a Tempest’s strength and power,”
Joey explained to her, leaning against a shelf. “While we’re in
here, we’re no stronger than you are. Same if we’re far away from
the ocean. That’s why your friend didn’t notice anything weird
about herself until she moved down to Florida.” He faced Janelle.
“Right?”

Janelle nodded. A strange numbness had filled
her mind. That life in Michigan seemed like an eternity ago, and
now, even the brief one in Florida did, too. A dream, even.

Leslie fiddled with the plastic cheese
wrapper, which crinkled in her hands. “I can’t believe I’m sitting
in here with walking, talking hurricanes. What other disasters are
running around as people? Earthquakes? Tornadoes? Snowstorms?”

“Don’t know,” said Gary, working at opening a
cup of applesauce. “If there’s any others, they keep to themselves.
We haven’t run into each other.”

Joey cleared his throat. “That could change
after Andrina releases her video. Who knows what's going to come
out of that?”

A fresh spike of terror ran through her as
she remembered. Leslie might be okay with her status now, but would
that change if the Operation went ahead as planned?

Thump
.

Janelle’s heart leapt as she sprang to her
feet.

Thump
. Louder this time.

Dawn had come. Andrina had returned. She was
clearing the boxes away to drag her down to the water.

She stood no chance this time. Heart
thudding, she seized the cold metal of the closest shelf and braced
herself for the worst.

“Janelle.” A soft female voice floated
through the door.

“Get to the back. We’ll try to hold her off,”
Gary said, pushing her back and standing near the door. Joey joined
him.

“Janelle. I know you’re in there. Answer
me.”

This wasn’t Andrina. There was warmth in this
voice.

The handle twisted slowly, and the door came
open.

The yellow-orange light of the basement
poured into the room, framing Camellia in her navy blue suit. “Come
with me, all of you, before Andrina comes down here. We don't have
much time. Janelle, I need to speak to you.”

Janelle’s legs carried her towards the
woman—and her grandmother—as if they’d lost the will to resist this
nightmare any longer. She’d killed hundreds of people, too. She
couldn’t be much better than Andrina, but she was different
somehow.

Camellia rested her hand on Janelle’s back as
soon as everyone had left the fridge. She’d figured out what she
hadn't known back at the school, then.

“Janelle.” She let out a slow breath. “I
believe that you’re my granddaughter and the child that Andrina
told us all was stillborn. What’s your father’s name?”

“Lucas. He told me about you already,” she
said, studying the floor. Should she be grateful? Scared? Neither?
This was awkward enough.

“Good. That saves a lot of explaining.”
Camellia glared at the fridge. “I’m not going along with Andrina
anymore. It’s disgusting that she’d lock up her own child like this
and lie to me about your death. I don't care if she had to do it to
save face. If I’d known what she’d turn into, I never would have
pushed my son into marrying her.” A pause. “Not that I’m not happy
to have you or anything.”

A painful lump grew in Janelle’s throat.
Camellia was no saint, but she'd come down and freed her. Could it
be that she'd gained an ally on the side of power?

“It’s okay, Janelle,” she said, pulling her
close against the warmth of her body.
“I’m
going to take you
out to transform. On the way we’ll try to reverse the brainwashing
Andrina did, so your natural path is restored, as it should be. I’m
sure your father’s voice will work great for that.”

“My father?” She looked up into Camellia’s
wrinkled face, but it was serious. She had her dad's eyes, she
noticed. And Mr. Deville's eyebrows.

“I got a text from him half an hour ago. He
and Hank will be pulling into the lagoon any minute. They sent me
to get you, because if they came in they’d be spotted. That’s when
I knew you were probably my grandchild. Come on. We’ve got to meet
them before someone else does.”

Escape. They were getting out of here. She
wouldn’t kill thousands of people. But…“What about Leslie?” Her
friend hung near the door with Gary and Joey as if a rabid dog were
pacing around the room, freckles very dark against her pale skin.
She didn’t blame her.

“She can come, but only if she swears to keep
our secret for the rest of her life,” Camellia said, casting a dark
glance towards Leslie. “Do you swear?”

Leslie nodded with vigor. “Of course I do.
Who’s going to believe me if I tell, anyway? They’d lock me up and
tie me in a straightjacket.”

“Well, I trust you better than Andrina. I
don’t like the thought of her blowing our cover to the world,”
Camellia said. “Not all of us stand behind what she's doing. If the
humans find our location they could drop a nuclear bomb on us
tomorrow. And without us, the planet would go into chaos.” She
patted Janelle on the back. “Let’s get you out of here.
Quietly.”

The world would go into chaos without
Tempests? Janelle didn’t ask her to elaborate. That could come
later.

Camellia’s slippers made faint slapping
noises on the floor. She made for the stairs like a woman half her
age. Janelle followed her, footfalls of the others echoing behind
her. The black pit inside of her disappeared. She shot Gary a
smile, which he returned.

The meeting chamber’s doors had both closed.
“What time is it?” Janelle asked.

Camellia stopped and put her finger to her
lips. “Almost dawn. We have maybe minutes to make our escape.”

Janelle quickened her pace and urged her
rubbery legs to go faster. As soon as Andrina found the toppled
boxes, she’d send everyone in the complex searching for her,
guaranteed. Their escape boat probably wouldn’t make it over the
horizon before all four of Andrina’s started to give chase.

Camellia waved them across the entry chamber
and its gray swirl on the floor. After pressing her finger to the
glowing red pad, the exit door clicked and unlocked.

Janelle stepped out into the round, damp
tunnel of the cave. It smelled like freedom—at least from Andrina.
From everything else, there was no escape.

“So your dad came here?” Leslie appeared at
her side, the look on her face trying to comprehend. “How did he do
that when he doesn’t have a boat? He’s not a sailor. And this
island isn’t on any map from what Kevin told me.”

“Save it for later,” Joey put his hand on her
back and led her down the tunnel. “We can’t waste a second.”

Janelle turned the curve after Camellia and
let out a breath. A new yacht bearing the Bahamian flag hummed as
it moved in between the fishing boat and Andrina’s yacht. Her
father and Mr. Deville stood on board, practically glowing under
the lights. So it
was
true.

“Climb aboard, all of you,” Mr. Deville
ordered, pointing to the front of the boat.

Janelle climbed over the rail. “Dad!” She
launched herself into a hug. She’d never been so glad to see him in
her life. "I'm so sorry," she repeated, overcome with emotion and
preparing for his lecture on keeping it under control.

But it never came. He simply hugged her back
and said, “Come on, honey. We don’t have much time. Come below
decks." He released her. "The rest of you make sure that Andrina
can’t use those yachts for a while.” He pulled her towards a glass
sliding door.

Deon emerged from below decks, face sagging
from lack of sleep, and passed them. “I agree with that.”

Janelle followed Leslie and her dad through
the sliding door. He released her arm and sat in the booth, lips
pursed together. What did she say to him? Where to start? This
wasn’t going to be an easy conversation. It seemed like both of
them were having that problem. Even Leslie shifted uncomfortably as
she pressed her face to a porthole.

Crashes and thumps echoed out in the cave.
Deon and the others were getting their revenge on Andrina. Janelle
stood frozen, waiting for him to say something, but the air only
grew heavier.

Janelle joined her friend at the window, to
avoid the uncomfortable conversation a little longer, but the side
of Andrina’s yacht blocked her view. She let her forehead rest
against the cool glass as she stared at the fishing boat at the end
of the dock. It looked like some kind of sleeping cave monster
shrouded in the darkness. She wished the others would hurry.
Andrina might be heading down to the basement right now.

The crashes stopped outside and seconds
later, the sliding door slid open and Deon came through, breathing
heavily but smiling. “I think we’re good,” he said, rushing up
towards the front.

“But there’s still—” Janelle started.

Gary pulled Leslie through the door, Joey on
his heels. Mr. Deville and Camellia came in last. Mr. Deville
froze, causing his mother to crash into him. “There’s one more
boat,” he said, whirling around. “And we still need to—”

“No time.” Camellia seized his arm. “And we
can’t strand them here. They’ll either all starve or change to get
off the island. There are children here, too.”