Page 102 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

Make that a lot easier, I thought, as we sped through the middle of a sizeable group of guards. It should have been a death sentence, as no one had instructed them to bother with capturing me. But I was lashing the ones on my right-hand side before they realized what had happened and draining those on the left so that I didn’t lose power in the process, and Enid was cursing those in front of us to clear a path.

Allowing us to plow through a dozen of Nimue’s elite troops as if they weren’t even there. I laughed; I couldn’t help it. Power was singing in my veins, my movements had evened out and become fluid, and I could breathe for what felt like the first time in days.

No wonder everyone had feared the gods so much!

Including me, when I glanced behind us and saw the red-eyed fury right on our tails.

Well . . . shit.

“Hurry up!” I told Enid, whose head jerked around to tell me off, only to see the same thing I just had.

“Aggghhhh!” she screamed, because if I’d ever seen death on anybody’s face, it was on Bodil’s. Guess that whip had brought back memories, I thought, but I didn’t reabsorb it, even though it was boiling the water to our right and obscuring our view. I had a feeling I would need it again in a second.

And I did, but not for Bodil.

We suddenly surfaced again, breaking into the air without warning, leaving me confused and seriously battered. Because what we’d surfaced into was an all-out gladiatorial match. One that was quickly spreading red all over the churned-up surface of the water.

The same water we’d left from, I realized through the steam my whip was sending up. The track must have looped back here. This would explain the roaring crowd, the blaring music, and the announcement from someone’s enhanced voice that my translator decided to wake up and feed back to me.

“—yes, indeed! It’s anyone’s race, lords and ladies, anyone’s at all, as we wait to see which of our bold challengers will cross the finish line first—”

“What finish line?” I asked Enid, who was cursing the crap out of someone. I didn’t get an answer as she was pulled under a second later, until I shot my whip into the churning waves after her captor and dragged her back out.

“My thanks,” she spluttered as I shook her hard enough to get her attention.

“What finish line?”

“That one,” she said, looking off to the right, and then she threw up.

But for once, I didn’t join her. For once, I had my eyes on the prize and the silver-haired son of a bitch who was about to cross the line ahead of us. Æsubrand had lost his mount, parts of his armor, and a good chunk of his hair, which appeared to have been burnt off, probably by someone’s spell. But he was wading that way and not a chance in hell!

My whip reached out and curled around one armored leg, and I jerked. And forgot that the power I was momentarily wielding made everything easier. Æsubrand came flying into me from halfway across the pond, and we both went under; my whip went out because that sort of thing eats power like nobody’s business and I was bottoming out; and then we surfaced and the bastard got me in a neck lock, trying to murder me.

Bodil pulled him off, possibly because she wanted that pleasure for herself, which was how the three of us were watching when Pritkin and his mount tore away from the snarling pack and darted across the finish line.

The crowd went crazy, and I screamed and yelled along with the rest, caught up in the adrenaline of the moment. That and being half-strangled is my excuse, anyway, for not seeing what happened next. Although, in retrospect, I don’t know how I could have possibly predicted it.

There was a crack like thunder; there was a fat, familiar face; there was an eye-widening second of recognition—

Then a time spell grabbed me . . .

And it wasn’t mine.

Chapter Thirty

I hit the ground hard as if falling from a height and landed in what felt like a bowl of cold mud. As stunned as I was, I couldn’t tell much more than that, but I wouldn’t have been able to anyway, as it was also dark. A second ago, it had been broad daylight, with a raucous, shouting crowd in every color of the rainbow under a brilliantly blue sky, but now. . .

My eyes registered only pitch black, and my ears, still ringing from all those cheers, picked up nothing past the echoes except eerie silence. I swallowed, my mouth strangely cottony, and stayed put, trying to get my bearings. I thought I heard a faint trickle of water from somewhere, along with the sound of the wind.

That was it.

That was all.

It didn’t help.

And neither did this, I thought, as I started squelching around, trying to find purchase on the spongy ground and mostly failing. The mud felt like it went all the way down, with no firm bottom anywhere. That left me less crawling than swimming, although that might have had more to do with the state of my head than the muck.

Something was wrong with me—something was wrong, period. I could feel it, shuddering through my body like the grip of a giant’s hand. An evil giant who was squeezing, squeezing, squeezing all of the air out of my lungs, making me squirm and thrash and beat against what felt like a skin on the air.

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