Heart of the Storm by Michael Buckley
I tossed the sack into their midst, grasped my spear, and swam as fast as I ever had, desperate to get away from the feeding frenzy below. Upward I went, stretching every muscle as the milky yellow sun grew closer and closer. Something brushed against my foot, but I tried not to panic. I knew a shark might spot me, but there was no way to prepare my nerves. I was suddenly on the food chain.
Still, I hadn’t survived so long to die like that. When the shark brushed my hip, my instincts took over. I stabbed at the great white’s eyes with my spear, missing but knocking several of its teeth out in the effort. It veered off and circled back, but I stabbed at it again, and it gave up, or at least that’s what it wanted me to think.
I resumed swimming, hungry for the surface, desperate to get to the safety of my island. When I broke out of the water, it was with enough force that I nearly breached. I bobbed several times as my lungs took over, then freestyled toward the island, lifting my head up to take a breath every few strokes. It wasn’t far, but with hungry predators below, it felt millions of miles away.
You’re almost there, Lyric. It’s only a little bit farther.
A thin gray fin rose up between the island and me—another shark, maybe the first one, maybe the one who’d been following me, I couldn’t tell. I pivoted, forcing the spear out in front of me just as the shark veered into my path. It slammed into the tip and gored itself in its pink gills. The end of the spear broke off inside it, and blood shot out like a fire hydrant. The shark flailed as if trying to eject the weapon from inside its body, then sank. I didn’t wait to see if it was going to come back. I swam like the devil and finally scampered onto land. Once there, I lay on my back, breathing hard. My jumpsuit’s pant leg was shredded. In a panic, I searched my skin for a bite, bracing to find an enormous chunk missing from my calf, but there was nothing. It had missed me by an inch. I lay back down, trembling like a flower in a storm, and I sobbed. I couldn’t help myself; I cried until I couldn’t make another tear. The sky sat like an ugly purple bruise across the world. A storm was coming, but I had nowhere to go. A light rain fell, then quickly turned violent, falling in sheets and soaking me to my core. Being wet wasn’t a problem, but the wind that whipped up threatened to knock me off the island. There was nothing out there to slow the storm’s aggression. One blast caught me off guard and sent me spinning off the side. I climbed back on, desperate and terrified.
“C’mon!” I shouted at the sky.
A loud howl rang out of the sea, followed by a familiar sound I hadn’t heard since Coney Island—a thrum. It grew and grew, vibrating the air and water around the island and jostling my bones. It was a call for war, but who was fighting?
There was a terrible crash behind me. I spun around to find something that should not have been possible. A dead shark lay there, gutted and bleeding. How the hell did it get there? Another splash, and a crunching collision brought a second dead shark carcass shooting out of the water onto the island. Like the other, it had been clawed open, its insides spilled out onto the porous rocks. A third shark crashed so close I had to leap out of the way, only to dive again when a fourth shark slammed nearby. They fell like rain until there were fifteen of them, and then the horror stopped. All was silent. I crouched down, terrified by what new monster was lurking below, when a Rusalka leaped out and planted itself in front of me. Ten others joined him, forming a line. Splashes in the water told me I was surrounded. There was nowhere to go, so I stopped, dead in the middle of my island. It was over. They had me.
Minerva rocketed out of the sea. I watched her body morph as it trailed across the sky. When she landed, her tail was gone and she was on two legs, wearing armor like I’d seen before when the Alpha arrived in Brooklyn. It hung midthigh, like a summer dress, but it was made of claws and teeth. She stood over me. Blood splashed down on her feet. Her hands held her belly. They were crimson and wet.
“Murderer!” she shrieked.
“No,” I said.
“How did you do it? Magic? Did you conspire with your filthy human gods?”
“Minerva, I—”
“You took the last piece of my beloved husband from me. How hateful you are to destroy the greatest bloodline in the history of my people.”
“I didn’t do it,” I cried.
“An attack on the heir is an attack on all. It is a challenge to my rule. Let my people hear me. I will show you now what I do to any who are so bold as to stand in my way!”
Her hands were on my collar before I could stop her, and she dragged me to my feet with little effort. She was so damn strong, it took my breath away. I must have felt like a doll to her. I’d seen my mother do incredible things too. She pushed a police car aside once, and could lift our couch over her head, but Minerva’s strength made my mom seem like a weakling.
“I should have dismissed Husk’s bargain. The Great Abyss called for your blood, and I denied it,” she raged until a choked sob freed itself from her chest. “This is my punishment.”
She slapped me in the chest, and my body heaved backward, ten, fifteen, maybe twenty yards. When I landed, the sharp rocks tore my jumpsuit and drew blood on my thigh.
“The heir had a great destiny,” she bellowed as she charged at me. I tried to stand, hoping to run, but everything ached. The best I could do was roll, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. I could fall off the island into the water and vanish into the dark, but the Rusalka would find me, or the sharks.
She stomped forward, preparing another attack. Somehow I stood, and when she was close, I took a desperate leap forward and caught her in the jaw with my fist. I can’t say she fell from my sheer strength—it was probably from surprise—but there was satisfaction in seeing blood dribbling out of her mouth.
“Stay back,” I shouted.
She moved so fast my eyes couldn’t follow, but I felt her for sure. My chest absorbed her fist, almost wrapped around it, then my face was next. When I hunched over, she kicked me in the belly so hard my body left the ground. I saw stars. I was about to pass out, my brain’s way of protecting me from the beating, but I fought to stay conscious. If I blacked out, I was dead for sure.
“At least have the dignity to die on your feet, bottom feeder,” she said.
“I’m working on it,” I grunted as I struggled to stand.
Minerva laughed at me, and the Rusalka cheered and pounded on their chests, eager for the killing blow. I should have probably stayed down, curled up in a ball, and done my best to fend off her attack, but there was too much Brooklyn in me to give up. I got it from my mother, the secret warrior, and my father, the professional hero. But most of it came from Bex, the strongest person I had ever met, who faced down the world with a smile and an extended middle finger. It dawned on me that I had always been surrounded by fighters, even before Fathom and his people walked into my life. I came from a long line of people with clenched fists, and I had two of them at that very moment.
I gave her everything I had, a punch in the face so mean the blood from her nose splattered on me. I landed a kick in her belly, and when she leaned over, my knee crushed some more bones in her face. Blood rained down on the black stones as a stunned Minerva staggered back and forth, swaying on her feet. I’d seen enough fights on the beach and after school to know that when the bully is hurt, you don’t let up. You hurt the punk more, so he or she doesn’t come at you the next day. I charged at her, firing one punch after another, putting what Fathom taught me in the pool at Trident to work. This was the fighter Doyle wanted me to be. This was why Arcade pushed me so hard in the desert. I had felt small and helpless for so long but no more. I had finally found my secret stash of second winds.
I slammed my elbow into her eye. Punch after punch landed, until she tumbled to the ground. She looked up at me, exhausted and stunned.
“You should never have brought your tired ass to Brooklyn!” Admittedly, I know I sounded pretty cool in my head and probably like a maniac in real life. The wind was screaming, and the rain
“Are you here to tell me to stop, Husk?”
“No,” he said. “I am here to make certain you kill her. She is not fit to rule the Alpha.”
Minerva shrieked with betrayal.
I stared down into her bloody face. If I didn’t do it, she would never stop trying to hurt me and the people I loved. She would make it her life’s mission to hunt us down and kill us one by one, but I just didn’t know how to do it.
I took a step back and turned to the gathered Rusalka. I could see they wanted death. This was how conflicts were remedied. Spilling blood was the way things were settled, but they would have to get their satisfaction somewhere else. I talked a big game, but murder was a skill I wasn’t willing to learn.
“I just want to go home,” I said to them in their language. “You take the ocean, and I’ll take the land. I won’t even go swimming at the YMCA. Just say this is over.”
They watched me and waited, confused that I had not taken the killing blow.
“I’m leaving here. This place is death. The Great Abyss is not what you think it is. It’s not a god. It’s poison. You should leave too. You don’t have to follow her any longer. You can go and rule yourselves, but leave the city. Get away from the volcano. Husk can help you if you let him.”
My body buckled from behind when Minerva slammed into me. The two of us tumbled into the water, kicking and punching as we fell. Her hand found my ankles, and she dragged me downward, despite my thrashing. Nothing I did to break free worked. She was too strong, and too determined. One look into her eyes was all I needed to know her plan. The fire of the volcano was mirrored in her pupils. She was going to throw me in again, and this time nothing would stop her.
“A gift for the Great Abyss,” Minerva shouted, pulling me directly over the opening of the crater. When the volcano started its hungry inhale, she let me go, and I spun out of control. I reached for her in hopes of trying to stop my descent, but when I missed, she raked my back again with her nails. A howl erupted from the deepest part of me. Pain cooked my skin, but somehow I managed to grab her by the tail. If I was going in, she was going with me.
Deeper and deeper we were pulled, with the water getting hotter and hotter. She tried to kick me off, but we were in it together. I was hoping she’d see I meant business and that she’d rescue us both to save her own life, but when her struggling ceased, I started to panic. Was she really going to sacrifice herself to make sure I died?
No, unbelievably, her attention was somewhere else. I craned my neck to look at what had her so hypnotized and realized that she and I were not alone inside the Great Abyss.
Clinging to the interior walls of the volcano, like an outbreak of blisters, were tens of thousands of huge, grotesque creatures. Each was like a massive tick, fat and bulbous, only with skull-white skin. Their faces were eerily alien, cut into geometric shapes—triangles, squares, ovals—with only tiny black eyes to hint at awareness. Each had a terrible mouth, a jagged crisscross of open wounds, and the four corners peeled back to reveal a cone of teeth that descended into a spiral.
“CHILDREN HAVE COME FOR A VISIT.”
The voice rumbled in my head, under my skin and fingernails, inside my veins, and beneath my teeth. It was loud and crushing. It sparked an F2 on my migraine scale, a shocking return to a pain I’d been sure was behind me. Most troubling of all was that this voice seemed to belong to all of them, joined together in a single chorus.
Minerva brushed too close to one, and it turned its massive head toward her. In a slow, almost sleepy gesture, it reached out to her with a paw covered in sickly pink suction cups. It clamped down on her arm, and once it had her locked in, it yanked her with frightening speed right up to its face. Because her hand was clasped tightly on my wrist, I felt the pull as dramatically as she.
“THE MINERVA CHILD RETURNS.”
“Yes! It’s me. Minerva, Daughter of Sirena, prime of the Alpha empire. You remember.” Minerva wept with joy as if the horrid thing were a heavenly angel, and I realized that to her, it was divine. These things, combined, were the Great Abyss. They were her god.
The creature tilted its head left and right as it examined her.
“THE VOICE IS SILENCED. THE LINK IS SEVERED. THE BROKEN ONES HAVE DESTROYED OUR GIFT.”
The creature leaned forward and let its mouth curl open.
“Yes, my lord,” Minerva said in a panic. “I have brought the one responsible here for your judgment. Allow me to make her pay for her crimes against you.”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but I understood she was going to try to kill me. I tried to pull away, but Minerva’s grip on me was unbreakable.
“THE BROKEN CHILDREN CANNOT HEAR THE VOICE THAT OFFERS PEACE AND SERENITY. THEY ARE DISCONNECTED AND ADRIFT. THE GIFT DID NOT RECONNECT THEM AS WE HAD HOPED. THEY REMAIN BROKEN AND MUST BE DESTROYED. ROOM MUST BE MADE FOR A NEW FAMILY.”
With a speed and viciousness I could hardly understand, the creature wrapped its jaws around her head and bit it off her shoulders. Her torso fell backward, down toward the bubbling lava below. A flowing sheet of blood followed behind us, like a banner in a parade. All the while, I pulled and kicked, still locked in her grip as we sank. Finally her dead hand released me. Exhausted and still suffering from the fresh wounds to my back, I swam upward in that brief moment between the volcano’s breaths and watched as Minerva’s body hit the surface of the molten lake. Her corpse blackened before disappearing into the deadly soup.
Swim, human! Husk was in my head. I looked up and saw him once again swimming down to save me. He was lightning fast and had his hand wrapped around mine in no time. Together, we shot upward, as the monsters lifted their lazy heads to study us.
“THESE TWO ARE CONNECTED. THEY HEAR THE VOICE AND HAVE JOINED IT,” the voice bellowed. “THEY WILL LEAD US TO THE BROKEN ONES.”
Husk and I kept swimming, but both of our minds were assaulted by visions. I saw these creatures lumbering onto shore, tearing into innocent people, bent on the destruction of everyone. Rivers of blood roared through my mind. Killing was natural and orderly. It was a necessity, a chore they had put off long enough.
When the volcano exhaled, Husk and I rode its power out of the crater. I looked down one last time to see the horrible beasts tilting their heads to watch us.
“WE WILL FOLLOW,” they promised.
Husk pulled me out of the volcano, and we swam back to the surface. Together we dragged each other onto the island amid the waiting Rusalka. One of them growled, not a word really, more an exclamation of surprise. I braced myself for another attack, but nothing happened.
Husk bared his fangs. He grunted a few words at them, which I understood as “accept her claim.”
“What are they doing?” I asked Husk when the Rusalka huddled together to talk.
“Deciding,” he said.
“Deciding what?”
He lifted my hand above my head and growled in their language. “The prime is dead. Lyric Walker’s rule begins. Bend your knee to the new prime. Long live the Alpha empire.”
The Rusalka turned to me and stared for a long, aching moment and then, together, they knelt.
“I don’t want this,” I said.
“You are the rightful owner of the Alpha throne.”
“I didn’t kill her. Those things down there did.”
“Weaker claims to the throne have been made and respected,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially. “You must do this or chaos will erupt. You alone can save my people.”
“Why don’t you be the prime?” I cried. “You’re more Alpha than me. You care about their future.”
He shook his head. “They will not accept me. I am other.”
“I am other, too!”
“They do not fear your presence the way they do mine,” he said. “I am an abomination.”
&n
He nodded and silently contemplated my comparison.
“Charlie Gordon and I share a similar experience. What happened to him?”
“It’s depressing. The operation wears off, and he goes back to how he was, but he remembers. It’s sad. I hated the ending.”
“My people do not want Charlie Gordon. They want you.”
“I really don’t understand them. This morning they would have killed me if Minerva ordered it, and now they’re all in the Lyric Walker fan club.”
“Fan club? I do not know this term.”
I waved him off, too irritated to explain. “Fine, I’m the boss. I command you to take them someplace where the water is not poisonous. You can rebuild the empire on your own! You can make it what you want!”
“I cannot do that.”
“I thought you said I was in charge!”
We stayed on the island for days, taking the full force of a brutal storm. It blasted us mercilessly, and without trees, the wind and rain hammered our bodies. Thunder boomed. Lightning zapped the sea. My ears were battered by the endless howl, and I was nearly blind from the downpour.
Eventually, the storm lost its fury, only to be replaced by a cruel sun. It cooked us all day long, until I wished the storm would return. Then the winds came up off the ocean. They cooled us, but acted like a sumo wrestler, trying to push us off the rock.