The Key to the Warriors (completed)

Chapter 25

25Charlie

Now that I knew what it was, I could feel the tapping coming on. It was a bubbling beneath my skin, a burning anger that woke me in the middle of the night. Sitting up, I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes until they hurt, and my vision was blurry when I lowered them. Blinking to clear my eyes, I stared up at the moon that was slowly disappearing from the edges of the skylight, its remaining half bright and glowing, flooding the room with bluish haze.

My gaze fell on Zyirah beside me. She was sprawled on her stomach, naked with the blankets pulled up over her lower half. Both arms were buried beneath the pillow, and I smiled as I reached out to stroke her hair, only to violently yank my hand back as fury flooded through me. It crushed the smile that'd been forming, and I squeezed my eyes shut, my hands balling into fists against the sudden desire to hurt her. To resist it felt like someone trying to break my skull.

I couldn't keep it up. The tapping had to stop. With hatred and disgust warring for dominance within myself, I slid from the bed and donned my armor. It took me a few minutes to figure out the plates, but in the end, I secured them and slid from the room, tiptoeing out into the battlefield, where I leaped into a run at the river trail.

As hard as I could, I tried not to think about the coming war, anything I had discussed with Zirlic, our plans, and most importantly, the message for help that Austin was currently flying overseas. I didn't want Jackal, or whoever it was tapping in my brain to get a whiff of our actions and thus be able to counter them. So, I concentrated on the grass as I ran, allowing its color, look, and texture to fill my thoughts. I could only hope that whoever was in there with me hadn't already sampled my memories.

I could feel the pressure of the tapping pushing inside my head. Aside from the blinding headache I got trying to resist, it was an odd sensation, similar to what I imagined it would be like if my brain were one big fish bowl, and the goldfish was repeatedly bumping against the glass, trying to get out. I felt angry and annoyed, feelings that I knew were not my own, but that I could not keep at bay. Somehow, I had to get to Sola, no matter what it cost me.

The moon was lower than I thought it was, and the morning sun had just peeked over the horizon when I broke out onto the cliff. A strong wind blew across the water, sending tall waves crashing toward the beach and hurtling into the lighthouse.

The lighthouse...

Looking at it sent shivers through me as I examined it. It was missing a generous portion of the back wall, the roof holding on by barely two-thirds of what remained, and I shuddered, remembering that I had been the one that destroyed it.

Goosebumps broke out on my skin as I inched toward the cliff's edge and look down into the water. Familiar feelings of panic slid in to make me tremble with something other than cold, and I hugged my arms around myself as I grimaced at the crashing sea. What was I thinking...? I couldn't swim, and even if I could, a panic attack would drown me long before I could kick to the surface. If I went in there, I was as good as dead.

But then I thought of the friends I'd made, the family I'd adopted through Zirlic and everyone else. I thought of what they'd told me I'd done to Zyirah, and how I was thoroughly capable of doing it again, and I almost puked at the thought. I had to find the mermaids. It was the only way to stop it.

It took me a moment to pull myself together, then I lowered onto the stairs and took them at a run, pushing faster and faster toward the water before I could talk myself out of it. With shaking fingers, I adjusted the metal plates of my armor, hoping they were heavy enough to hold me down, then with a deep breath, I plunged into the waves.