His father glanced at him. “No. My tribe, the Aquoian people.”
Hunt harrumphed. “I thought you were Eastern Band Cherokee. That’s what they told me.”
More lies. The explanation went unspoken.
“My ancestry—your ancestry—lies to the west. The blood that runs through my veins is all Aquoian. It’s their secrets and power that the rich white man wants, that he kills for.”
“Then we need to get you out of here, right now,” Griffin said, and I nodded as a sense of urgency undulated beneath my skin, urging me to move.
The man stared at Griffin, then me again, next Layla and Brady, before his gaze returned to his son. His brow furrowed, causing his eyes to narrow. “I don’t understand how or why, but my ancestors have chosen all of you.”
His attention focused solely on me until the force of it made me shudder. But I refused to look away. Something about this man made me want to draw closer, to learn every possible thing there was to know about him.
“Especially you,” he told me. Then to all of us, “You’ll defend the knowledge entrusted to us.”
He stopped as if to listen to something—perhaps the ancestors—that I couldn’t hear. Frantically now, I glanced behind him at the admin building; still no one appeared to be in pursuit.
He smiled sadly. “For many generations, my tribe’s given everything to keep what we know safe. I speak with the ancestors. You’ll protect our secrets now too.”
“We, uh, can come back from death,” Hunt admitted.
The man’s eyes widened again, this time tinged with panic. “A gift of the sky people,” he whispered in a thready pitch I could scarcely hear. “Shit. It might already be too late. We have to hurry.”
“Yes,hurry,” I repeated, all too happy for us to get moving.
I turned and started jogging back toward the car with Bobo at my side, prepared to pile up into each other’s laps to make room for this man, when a hoarse scream rang out before quickly stuttering to a strangled end. Whirling, my mouth dropped open.
Blue light crackled and sizzled as it wrapped the body of Hunt’s father, now rigid as a board. A web of blue trapped every hair and every limb. His features were twisted with pain, his skin cast in the eerie hue of lightning—
And a dude I’d never seen before, with Magnum right behind him, stood at the crest of the hill the man had run down, with strings of a haphazard blue light wrapping his bare forearms to shoot from his fingers—straight into Hunt’s father.
The father gurgled helplessly and shook all over. His eyeballs vibrated and even seemed to swell—not fucking good—before they rolled into the back of his head.
I sprinted back toward him. The loose strands of his hair stood on end as he staggered and pitched forward, unable to do anything to catch himself, and fell straight into my open arms.
The electricity jumped from him to me, racing into my own body, and then into Bobo’s as he pressed his snout to my bare arm in a worried whine.
No, Bobo, no! Don’t touch me!But I couldn’t get out my warning. Either way, it was too late.
My teeth clamped together; I couldn’t get them unstuck. Even my eyeballs felt like they rattled in their sockets. My head trembled uncontrollably atop my neck. Everything was too tense, too tight, too overwhelming.
My friends screamed—maybe I did too—while I struggled to keep my eyes open long enough to save Hunt’s father.
But his eyes took on a glassy and empty sheen as the tattoos that wove down my forearms leapt from my skin to his. Somehow, some inexplicable way, they climbed across his fingers and hands to latch on to his arms. My tattoos hooked in, hung on, trying to keep him with us.
Crackling blue coated our bodies and Bobo’s as I gawked at the inked lines distorting from their usual geometric patterns of Layla’s design to snake around the man’s arms like vines. Was I hallucinating? Was the current making me see things that couldn’t possibly be?
Arms wrapped around me. I heard more whining and cries and realized with a start that I was no longer staring at my tattoos as theymoved, but was now blankly studying the sky. At some point, Hunt’s father had slipped from my grip and I’d slumped to the ground. Around flashes of my friends’ faces that I couldn’t get myself to focus on, the air vibrated, differentiating itself into an infinity of sparks and fractals. The air, which I’d always believed was just empty air, as it appeared to the naked eye, was actually composed of millions—bajillions!—of geometric designs. The air was a puzzle made up of more pieces than I could ever possibly count, each fitting into the next with perfect precision. I was staring at translucent designs more wondrous than any mandala, a beautiful reflection of the many symmetric and harmonious patterns all throughout nature, both in plants and animals.
In a way I’d never imagined,the air was alive. Writhing, interlocking, inhaling, exhaling, moving, dancing, pulsing,being.
As I gaped and gawped and stared at the designs filling my vision, desiring to memorize each and every one of them, I tried to decide:Am I dying again?Or was I becoming more alive than I’d ever been before?
19
Somebody Wake Me the Fuck Up Already
Groggily, I blinked awake to discover I was lying in my bed at the mansion. The room was bright despite the drawn blinds, suggesting it was the middle of the day. But was it the same day?
