twisted. The idea that he would want to do this to Matt, his brother, reminded me that he was not the Vane I knew, the one who held on to life with both hands. This Vane wanted to destroy life. He had become a monster, one I helped create. I took a deep breath. “I’ll do whatever you want if you save them.”
“You’ll do everything I want.”
“Let’s see you find him first.”
Vane’s brow rose. “Do you agree to my terms?”
“As if I have a choice.”
“That’s my girl. Always eager to sacrifice.” The drawl to his accent emphasized the sarcastic edge to the words.
I jerked away and put more distance between us. “I could really hate you.”
Vane didn’t blink. “Do so. It only binds you more to me.”
I ground my teeth harder. Another thing that always annoyed me about Vane—how I couldn’t seem to win one single argument with him.
Vane strode to the cafeteria exit. Holding the door open, he crooked his finger at me in command. “Shall we, DuLac?”
Wishing I had something to throw at his head, I trailed after him. We crossed an empty courtyard to the largest of the plain rectangular buildings, the main building of the school. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. It took me a few minutes to figure out. We went down a shadowed hallway lined on either side with tall, metal lockers.
We turned a corner. Vane went straight up to a set of grey metal, heavy double doors and heaved them open. I followed him and paused just beyond the threshold. One whiff of the musty scent of books inside and I knew immediately that Vane brought us to the right place.
The school library opened to a lobby area with ten low tables. Long, waist-high bookshelves surrounded the central lobby and made up three sides of a square. The fourth side, just to the right of the entrance, was a high bar that enclosed the librarian’s checkout area. Behind the lobby at the back of the room, row upon row of bookshelves fanned out, filling up the space. The bookshelves extended from floor to ceiling. Glass windows stretched up the back wall and let in a bit of light from one wall to breathe life onto the stacks of dusty paper, wood, and other secret worlds.
While the rest of the school was a cluster of warehouse-type buildings, the library retained the essence of Boston, the birthplace of the American Revolution. History and blood lived inside its closed tomes. Its mark on this world so deep, it escaped the confines of the page and permeated the air. It was the one room in the whole school in which Matt felt safest. His brother knew him well.
“Yes, I do know him well.” Vane tugged me farther into the room. I stopped at one of the low tables. We spent hours in here studying before the one day that changed everything in my life. I sighed.
“We don’t have time for sentiment,” Vane said, his eyes roving over the maze of bookshelves. “The longer we’re in here, the closer the tsunami gets.”
“You don’t need to remind me,” I said.
“This is taking too long,” Vane muttered, ignoring me. He extended a hand and pointed it at one of the tables. Making a fist, the table exploded with a loud boom. It burst into a million pieces, sending off a small shockwave that threw its six companion chairs across the room. One chair flew straight at me. I narrowly avoided being clobbered. Moving out of its way at the last second, I body-slammed into Vane.
He caught me. Rigid arms wrapped around my waist and prevented us both from falling. His hot breath washed over my face.
A loud growl filled the room. I turned around in Vane’s arms to face the center again. Out of nowhere, a lion leaped from the library stacks and landed on top of a table a few feet in front of us. Rather than terrifying us, the thin lion sported a ragged, auburn-colored mane. Its patchy state gave him a look of desperation... and hunger.
I groaned. “Not again.”
I saw him in his lion form once before, after Lelex, the former mermaid king, tortured him. He had to retreat into the form to protect himself.
Vane’s hands grabbed my hips, keeping me in front of him like a shield. He pushed me forward. “You’re up, DuLac.”
I stayed where I was. The lion watched us with tired eyes.
“What am I supposed to do?” I hissed