Page 56 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

With no shields, we were about to be ground underfoot by friend and foe alike.

And we would have been, except that my power took that moment to come surging back, engulfing me in a glittering wave I could feel in every frantic heartbeat. I dragged it to me, hugging it like a cloak in a snowstorm for a second before sending it back out again in a blast that rippled down the corridor like a sound wave. Only it wasn’t just sound that froze as solid as if a new Ice Age had arrived.

Abruptly, everything cut out: screams chopped off halfway through; raised, bloodied fists stopped partway through their arc; falling boulders arrested in the air along with a great billow of dust; and wild eyes gleamed in the sudden stillness with no thought behind them.

Because the brains they were attached to were on pause like everything else.

Even the smell had mostly cut out, as the air molecules weren’t whizzing around carrying it anymore. I gasped in a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding and stumbled backward out of the spell, my ears ringing in the sudden silence. Which was why Pritkin’s shouted “Cassie!” almost deafened me.

I didn’t answer.

I couldn’t answer.

My knees wobbled, and I would have fallen, the punch of using that particular spell after the day I’d had immediately wiping me out. Only the artificial strength that my human spell had bought me kept me upright and had allowed me to cast the thing at all. But it was fighting the nausea of that much exertion all at once like somebody suddenly deciding to race halfway up Everest.

I found myself having to fight to breathe, with my heart about to beat through my chest and spots whirling in front of my eyes. My knees buckled, and I staggered against the wall, feeling like I’d taken a punch to the gut. Pritkin grabbed me as he wasn’t frozen, having been behind me when I cast my spell, along with a lot of dead men.

And a lone fey, pretending to be dead, waiting for his moment to strike.

I guessed he decided that was it, only to encounter a magically enhanced blow from my companion hard enough to knock him out, even through the dragonscale helmet he wore. He went down, and I just stared at him, the room pulsing around me and threatening to telescope right out of existence. But Pritkin wouldn’t let it.

He grabbed me, yelling something I couldn’t concentrate on with my blood roaring like Niagra Falls in my ears. And then while I puked my guts out all over the floor, gasped for breath, and did it again. So much for the pie, I thought blearily, as Pritkin yelled, “—how long?”

Because yeah, we weren’t out of this yet.

“Not long,” I gasped because even enhanced strength wasn’t much when I was already sitting on empty. “Maybe . . . a couple of minutes?”

“Fuck!”

He waded into the frozen tableaux, which looked like something from a Renaissance painting. I leaned against the wall, exhausted and barely conscious, watching the people on the peripheries of my spell start to move in slow motion. A fist connected with a jaw, sending ripples through the flesh and splitting the lip, causing ruby droplets to spill out into the air; an older kitchen maid, one with salt and pepper hair and a rolling pin, cursed a fancy guard so hard that his face cracked as I watched, like the dirt in a long dry lake bed, with red lines blooming between pieces of flesh; and a spray of blood slowly fountained outward from a knife plunged into a neck.

They were already throwing off my spell, and the rest would follow soon. We needed to go. Only I wasn’t sure if I could even manage a stagger.

Pritkin dragged over Rhosier, who had a knife in his side and a bloom of blood on his clothes. I didn’t ask what he wanted; I already knew. I gathered what strength remained to me, took the cook’s hand, and looked at Pritkin.

“He’s going to be . . . in a world of hurt . . . when he comes out.”

“We all will be if he doesn’t.”

It was grim enough that I didn’t ask what that meant; I just tightened my grip on the guy’s arm and pulled. It felt like the threads of my spell pulled back for a moment, fighting me. Or maybe my grip was just that weak. I renewed it and jerked, and yanked, and dragged the cook back into real-time what felt like bodily and—

And that was it, that was all I knew, with a sea of gray fog rolling over me like the tide.

Chapter Seventeen

I slowly returned to consciousness thanks to a blast of stench and the strangely familiar sensation of being eaten. Someone else had not yet had that pleasure and was kicking and screaming and panicking beside me. Either because the two of us had ended up in Pinkie’s belly or because we were suddenly racing down a series of corridors like our lives depended on it.

And maybe they did.

I couldn’t tell. I was woozy, and Enid, my current belly-mate, was hysterical, and her antics were throwing Pinkie off, causing him to hit walls. Or maybe that was the blasts coming from behind us, making colors bloom against his translucent skin.

Or semi-translucent. A piece of digesting octopus floated through the thick membrane around us, confusing my already screwed-up vision. It made me wonder if we were in his stomach or just something adjacent to it, like joeys in a kangaroo’s pouch. And then to ask why I cared when I had more pressing concerns here.

But I was drifting in and out of consciousness as oblivion kept trying to drag me back under, and nudging the bit of octopus along was about all that I was up to right then. It obscured the view behind us, but there wasn’t much to see, even when it was gone. Just what appeared to be miles of hallways dug out of the mountain and almost pitch dark except for where an occasional lantern flashed by, leaving streamers of light across my vision.

It was strangely hypnotic, except for the fact that we were going stupid fast. To the point that the lanterns were almost a continual blur in the darkness, giving me no idea where Pinkie was taking us or much of anything else. Except that it was really tight in here.

I tried sitting up but had no room, maybe because Pinkie’s form had been squashed outward by the burden of carrying two. Making his top, for lack of a better word, push downward, threatening to crush us. It was stupid uncomfortable.

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