Page 15 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)

Chapter 15

Kit

I’d have stopped the car the moment the ground started to tremble, I knew. It was what you were supposed to do when there was an earthquake. Not that I had a ton of experience with driving during them, but I’d have done it out of instinct if nothing else.

Who wanted to be moving forward at sixty miles an hour while the ground shook under their tires?

But Nikka and I had discussed The Plan step-by-step hundreds of times over the years, fine-tuning things like this moment. Hit the brakes the moment you pass mile marker four. Not the second you see it, definitely not any later than when you pass it, but the exact second the nose of the car passes it.

And we were alive.

To what end, precisely, I wasn’t certain yet, but alive was better than the other option.

Are you okay? Nikka’s shaky voice asked, small and nervous.

Was she worried I was going to be angry with her? Surely she could tell that I was fine.

That was when I realized that I was laughing out loud.

Hm.

Okay, her concern made more sense.

I stopped myself, gulping down one deep breath after another. Then I forced my fingers to let go of their iron grip around the steering wheel, and slowly, deliberately, put the car in park before turning it off.

I was the one shaking now, rather than the ground.

Adrenaline , I promised Nikka, trying to placate her with half of the truth. Like after a duel. I’m just...it’s one thing to plan a moment to death like we did, it’s another entirely to succeed when you get there .

But you did , she pointed out. You were perfect. You did it all exactly right, and we’re fine .

For myself, I thought that “fine” remained to be seen, as we were currently trapped on a stretch of road about a hundred feet long, on the side of a mountain that still kind of wanted to kill everyone in the whole world.

Thank fuck for sports cars that stopped on a dime.

Still, everything was going to plan so far. I had to keep telling myself that for as long as I possibly could. It was the only thing keeping me sane. It sucked, but it was correct. It was what we had needed to happen. One foot in front of the other until the path was done, because it had been the only path Nikka saw that led to the right outcome.

It was still unnerving, letting someone else look at all the possible futures and decide which was best, but she was Nikka. She was one of two individuals in the world that I trusted completely, so if she said this was the best outcome, then it was. The only way I’d have questioned her was if she’d said Frost was wrong about something.

Why would I say that? she asked, fully distracted from her earlier worry. Frost is the smartest human in the world. Disagreeing with him would be illogical .

I had to choke down another laugh, though this one was slightly less hysterical than the last. Of course she would think that. They were basically the same, just one was a stone and one a human. But that was why I trusted them both.

Staring at the mess of rocks across the road before us, I trusted her more than ever before. If not for The Plan, which she’d forced me to go over again and again in exact detail, we’d be dead.

It was odd, but my mind sort of snagged on that in the moment, and I gave a whole-body shiver.

Dead.

We could be dead.

I’d been in dozens of duels, and in each of them, my life had been in danger. I’d protected Huxley Dawnchaser for years, and every moment I’d stood at his side had been dangerous. I’d been the only stop between everyone who wanted him dead and their goal, and however competent or (over)confident I might be, I was still just one man.

But here we were, sitting between a yawning chasm and a rockslide, and for the first time, I felt it like a creeping shadow at my back: my own fucking mortality.

Next to me, Aubrey was breathing deep and seemed to have stopped shaking, this time without passing out or falling down. That was good, because I had no idea whatsoever how to deal with seizures.

Sure, I’d been confident I knew what was causing them, but that didn’t make me a doctor. It didn’t mean I knew what damage they might be doing to his body or brain. I only knew that he was going to live until this moment. I hadn’t known whether he’d be healthy for it.

I still didn’t know?—

In my pocket, my phone started to ring. I hit the button on my seat belt so I could slide my hand into my pocket more easily, and answered the call with hardly a glance at the screen. “You all right, little brother?”

“We’re fine,” Frost said, though his voice was a little shaky. “You?”

“Yup,” I agreed, opening the car door and stepping out onto the pavement. “Just peachy.”

Behind me, Aubrey scoffed, but I heard him move to get out of the car as well.

Frost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, which was a little odd, but endearing as ever. “Okay. Well, you can’t come back.”

“Can’t we?” I glanced over at Aubrey, who was looking at me in question over the hood of the car as he rounded it toward me, shaky on his feet but determined. He had no idea what was happening, I remembered, and looked down to my phone, pressing the speaker button.

“No,” Frost’s volume increased to echo across the rocky landscape. “The bridge to the chalet is out. You can’t get back in, and we can’t get out.”

“Well, that is why I offered to be the one to go to begin with,” I pointed out. “I’m not a family stone holder, after all.”

Aubrey lifted a brow at me, like he wasn’t sure what the hell I was up to, and hey, I wasn’t up to anything at all. This was one of those rare times that was true, and I was a little offended that he assumed otherwise. I shot him a glare, and he returned it with a purse-lipped schoolmarm expression that said I was eternally full of shit.

Asshole.

On the phone still, Frost sighed. “Yes, well, obviously, they’re even more worried than before. We haven’t gotten word of any outside damage yet, but it was pretty bad here.”

“Oh, there’s damage,” I assured him, glancing back at the chasm behind us. “There’s definitely damage. They might have to send a helicopter up to rescue people at the chalet. I don’t think the roads are going to be functional for—fuck, maybe ever.”

“Ever?” Frost asked, and bless him, he didn’t sound dubious, but horrified. “What happened?”

“I’ll send you a picture,” I promised. “They’ll probably have to build a new bridge or something. But for now, are you lot safe to get up the mountain?”

“It’s...well, we’re going to take the climbing gear, just in case. We can’t tell from here if the path has been damaged. They want to go this afternoon, because obviously, it can’t wait any more. I’ll let you know when we get more information. But you...I’m sorry, Kit, but it looks like you’re going to have to sit it out.”

I refrained from laughing again, but just barely. I just smiled at the phone for a moment, then sighed and shook my head. “You be careful, Frost. No matter what happens, you need to be okay. Take care of yourself.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “They’re all worrying about what they have to do, so it’s up to me. And Fawn and Adair. We can handle it, I promise.”

“I know you can, little brother. I’d trust the three of you more than anyone else.” I had, in fact, already entrusted the three of them with the fate of the whole world, but it wouldn’t help to tell him that in the moment.

It never helped to hear just how much was riding on your actions.

“So I guess you should just get a hotel room. If, um, if they have a hotel in Yomi.”

I did laugh at that, and Aubrey was looking between the rocks and the chasm, then back at me. He mouthed, “Aren’t you going to tell him?”

So I met his eye and mouthed back, “Why?”

He stopped and cocked his head, looking at our surroundings again, and finally nodded.

“You let me know how things go, okay?” I told my brother. “For now, Aubrey and I are going to get our shit together and figure out what to do next. We’ll be in touch.”

“Of course,” Frost agreed. “Please . . . please do keep in touch.”

“You’re not losing me again,” I assured, before hanging up the phone.

Aubrey looked at me, then at the bags in the back of the car. “I don’t imagine you have anything that’s going to be useful while we’re trapped out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Aubrey, my friend, it just so happens you’re in luck. I mentioned that Nikka sees the future, didn’t I? Well Nikka and me, we like to be prepared when she says we’re going to be trapped in the middle of nowhere.”

I opened the back door of the car and started pulling out bags. “Sleeping bags, water, candles, fire starters, flares, first aid kit”—I paused, pulling out one bag and glaring at it, then tossing it to him—“fucking granola bars.”

The bag hit the center of his chest, and he caught it easily, which I had to admit settled my nerves a little. He raised an eyebrow at me. “Problem with granola bars?”

“Not if you enjoy punishing yourself,” I shot back. “I didn’t bring a hair shirt, though, so you’ll have to suffer with normal clothes.”

He raised a brow, but didn’t respond to that, just unzipped the bag and pulled it open. The absolute asshole, his eyes lit up when they hit the fucking granola bars, and he pulled one out before closing the bag back up and slinging it onto one shoulder. “What else can I carry?”

He sounded positively fucking chipper about the idea of trekking through the mountainside carrying bags.

“I’ve got a whole set of backpacking rigs in the trunk, or whatever the hells you’re supposed to call them, so you can carry your sleeping bag and other stuff. And there’s some light climbing gear too. Nikka said we wouldn’t need the heavy-duty stuff, thank fuck.”

I only hoped she was right about that. I knew enough about climbing that I might manage it myself, but I didn’t know enough to teach Aubrey how to do it on the fly. Not without probably getting both of us killed.

The area we had to get through wasn’t terribly steep, though, since we were still at the base of the mountain. We just had to get to the path behind the chalet, and while it was going to be a pain in the ass, coming at it from the direction we were, we’d be able to ignore the bridge being out and head straight to the mountainside and skirt the edge toward the goal.

From the path, well, Nikka always said, “the rest wrote itself,” so I kept hoping that meant my job was done once we got there.

Optimistic, maybe, but I was allowed that once in a while.