The Water Queens (Keeper of the Water) (34 page)

Cassie doesn’t remain bewildered for long, her lips curling into an angry sneer. I expect her to attack now that she no longer struggles with the painful decrease of Keeper powers. With the return of her regular Amazonian strength and speed, I might not be able to fight her off. We both must think the same thing because I reach for my bow as she hurls the short sword. I see the flight of the sharp steel and my brain still works fast enough to give the command to move. My body, however, is still sluggish and weak. In my panic to make sure Janey remains shielded from danger, I can’t turn out of the way quite fast enough.

The blade slices my arm, sending a fiery wave of pain through my body as I cry out. I immediately regret giving Cassie the satisfaction of admitting weakness. I turn back to face her – and the follow-up assault I expect to be coming – but she once again proves that she prefers doing her fighting from afar. Instead of battling me with her fists, Cassie turns and runs.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

She’s not running
from
a fight but running
toward
something else. With the water of life unattended in Generalife’s courtyard, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out her intentions. I could
never
consider breaking thousands of years of Amazon tradition by becoming Keeper a second time – I’m not even sure it’s possible – but Cassie has shown no qualms about trying to make her own rules. I quickly lay Janey on the ground and grab an arrow from my quiver, pulling it back in the bowstring.

I aim for her back, knowing full well I could pierce her heart with a single arrow and destroy my biggest enemy once and for all. My heart pounds yet in this moment I feel overwhelmingly relieved – I don’t experience the slightest tingle of warning now that Cassie is no longer Keeper, now that I no longer feel the intense urge to keep her alive.

But maybe that’s also because I know deep down that I’m not going to take
this
shot. Regardless of the danger she poses to the world – not to mention the countless heartache she’s caused me and my loved ones – I can’t bring myself to shoot her in the back. When I look down at Janey, she stares up at me, serenely; somehow, I can tell she agrees with my decision. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let her escape. I sling the bow back over my shoulder and scoop up Janey before running back toward the palace.

This isn’t the first time Cassie and I have raced back to the Keeper-less water, though I’m afraid the outcome might be the same. She’s got such a big lead on me that I lose sight of her in the trees after less than a minute. I try to run faster, to push myself harder than ever, but the huge gash on my arm pours blood and doesn’t help with the weakness I already suffer. Janey squirms in her blanket until she frees one of her little hands.

“Stay still, baby,” I whisper to her between heaving breaths. “Mommy needs to stop the bad woman.”

Janey’s fingers reach up and touch my neck, giving me a burst of energy I sorely needed. I don’t know how she does it – or if she even
realizes
she’s doing it – but there’s no time to ponder her powers as I emerge from the heavy section of forest and see smoke rising in the distance. Fire and rescue teams have gotten as close to the palace as possible and begin to help the injured. I spot a large group of rescue personnel standing near the large hole where Cassie and I escaped. They try to stop her from reentering and hold her up just long enough for me to get closer. By the time I rush through the rocky fields and reach the palace wall, I see the bodies of several policemen and firefighters joining the slashed guards who tried to slow Cassie earlier.

I hate the thought of carrying Janey back into the inferno but I can’t trust leaving her with a stranger outside the walls. As I fold the blanket into a sling and put her on my back again, I can only hope that she continues being more resilient than any of us. Once she’s firmly in place, I hurry past the few policemen left near the wall and leap through the busted corridor.

It feels like I’m entering a furnace, temperatures rising substantially since I left minutes ago. I feel parts of my cloak catching on fire but I rush through the shimmering air and burst into the courtyard, which is only slightly cooler. Cassie is already standing by the fountain in the center of the garden but it’s not so easy to see her now that the water doesn’t glow. Cassie tries to dip her hand to swirl the water but even in the dark, I see that the water is boiling.

“Leave it alone!” I call to her.

“This water is
normal
!” she screams.

In a rage, she turns and rushes toward me, desperation finally making her snap. I see in her eyes that she fully intends to kill me and my daughter so I no longer feel any hang-up about using my weapon. I pull the bow off my shoulder, loading an arrow in one smooth motion, trying to ignore her horrific scream of pure insanity. In that split second, I notice that the crown on her head has started to melt.

She’s faster than I expected and the gash on my arm – and baby strapped to my back – slows my normal shooting motion just enough so my aim is slightly off. I fire the arrow a moment before Cassie crashes into me. It impales her shoulder and pushes her back for only a second but nothing is going to slow her down. She tries to punch me with her bad arm and barely connects; the side of her body without an arrow isn’t so impeded and she lands a shot squarely to my jaw, knocking me back. The care she once had for Janey’s safety is apparently a thing of the past; she comes after me with such reckless abandon that she’s obviously trying to kill us both, whether there’s a strange connection between them or not.

I can’t fight back the way I want and risk hurting Janey so I absorb the next punch and try to escape through the nearby flames. The fire rages furiously around us so I hope Cassie has as much problem seeing me as I have seeing her. I scramble behind a large section of collapse stone wall, which I hope to keep me shielded for a few minutes to catch my breath. I trip over something along the way and realize it’s a dead body that nearly takes me off my feet. But it’s no
normal
dead body.

I stare down into the unblinking eyes of a woman with a short sword lodged deep in her chest. Her hair is splayed across her face, dislodged from its usual place pulled high above her head. I’m never happy to see a fellow sister-in-water having been killed but it seems appropriate that Catherine the Great died by her own blade. It’s hard for me to think she’s
actually
dead; I can’t take my eyes off her, the angry sneer still across her lips in death, as if rage might snap her back to life at any moment. I wonder if she was more pissed off about dying or about who finally managed to slay her…

This is a good sign since my recruit won the battle and must’ve taken possession of the water. Hopefully she’s already far away from here. But I don’t have time to look around for Harriet before I sense movement nearby. Too late, I realize Cassie has found me and I can’t avoid her next strike. She hits me in the side of my head and my vision flickers to blackness as all strength is instantly sapped from my body and legs. The most I manage to do is turn my body and hit the ground on my side so I won’t land on Janey…

The heat and
crackling
fire and even Janey’s cries seem to fade into the distance. A heavy fog clouds my vision, fog that has nothing to do with all the smoke filling the courtyard. Every bone in my body feels like it’s made of heavy steel and my eyelids want nothing more than to close. It’s nearly impossible to form a single cognitive thought but a tiny voice in the back of my mind screams at me to stay awake, to fight back. But I barely have the strength to lift my head and focus on Cassie, who tosses a broken piece of stone wall – splattered with
my
blood – up and down, up and down. She could bludgeon me to death with enough hits but her eyes turn on something that could do the job much quicker.

As she yanks the short sword from Catherine’s chest, she doesn’t even flinch or look upset about what happened to her second-in-command, the woman who rescued her from Jack Fawcett, made sure she remembered her past, helped her ascend to power. Cassie never showed loyalty to
anyone
and a part of me – albeit a very
small
part – actually feels bad for Catherine.

“Don’t do it,” a voice intercedes.

Through a heavy cloud of smoke stumbles John, who barely looks like he can stand. Most of his clothes are burned away and blood flows from several nasty gashes on his body, none more serious and potentially life-threatening than the one near his shoulder. His arm on that side of his body hangs limp. The fear of seeing him resemble the walking dead has the same effect on my woozy mind as if someone stuck smelling salts under my nose. I want to rush over and help him but barely manage to sit up and reach back for Janey, whose crying calms as her tiny hand grabs one of my fingers.

“Won’t you just
die
already?” Cassie snaps at him.

John shakes his head. “I hate to admit it but I think you and I are too connected for that to happen. We shared too much water meant for you only; I don’t think I can die while you’re still alive.”

Cassie raises an eyebrow, giving this a moment of thought before slowing shaking her head.

“And what of your two soldiers?” she asks skeptically. “They drank water meant for me as well and I had no problem shooting an arrow into one of them.”

John coughs, the effort forcing him to sway on his feet. I don’t know if his theory about shared water could be true but he certainly seems in no position to defend himself from an attack. Luckily, Cassie hesitates to swing the sword to test that theory.

“I don’t know,” he says weakly. “Maybe it’s because they got it from me instead of straight from you. Or maybe it’s because I never had the same sort of… connection with them that you and I shared.”

When he says the word ‘connection,’ he turns to me and looks guilty. Of course Cassie doesn’t miss this and begins to laugh cruelly.

“So you
literally
can’t live without me,” she says with great delight.

“I think so,” he says sadly. “Which also means
you
can’t live if I’m dead.”

John looks at me as he says this. I know what he’s trying to tell me and I shake my head. Tears well in my eyes but never get the chance to roll down my face before fading in the extreme heat. Cassie, however, is thrilled with this news, further proving that she doesn’t know John at all. I’ve never felt worse in my life about being jealous of their shared past.

“Do you know what this means?” she asks excitedly. “It’s even
more
reason why the two of us should be together, why we were
always
meant to be together in the end. Our connection is stronger than
anything
you could’ve shared with that peon.”

Cassie points the sword at me, the tip of the blade just inches from my heart. But she doesn’t even look in my direction, instead staring at John. When he speaks, he gazes into my eyes and I’m reminded of the first time we were ever in the woods alone, the first time I ever realized that
I
was the one he wanted…

“
Nothing
could ever be as strong as what I have with my wife,” he says.

Before Cassie can yell again, John attacks, showing surprising quickness despite his wounds. But Cassie is just as fast and raises the sword so it enters his side. John cries out in pain but does not go down. Instead, he punches her in the chest and her crown flies off her head.

“Are you a fool?” she yells. “If you’re right about the water linking us, we’ll
both
die. Let me get you help!”

But that only motivates John to fight harder. Within seconds, they disappear through a cloud of smoke as I struggle to my feet. With the water gone and the queens defeated, I look toward the busted section of palace wall and consider taking Janey away. I can’t leave John, though; I can’t let him do what he thinks he must, even if it means letting Cassie live. I don’t pretend to understand all the mysteries of water – Janey’s abilities are clear proof of that – but his connection with Cassie is one I’m willing to live with. As Queen of Spain, she’ll still have power beyond my wildest imagination but she’s not nearly the same threat without her queens and without the water.

I follow the trail of blood through the burning garden, hear John’s grunts of pain and Cassie’s angry screams. I finally find them near the corner of the courtyard, where John is down on the ground with Cassie standing over him. She pulls the sword from his side and lifts it high above her head, ready to strike a final blow against him, consequences be damned. I grab an arrow from my quiver and shoot, watching it impale Cassie’s hand, causing her to drop the sword. She cries out and spins around. I fire another arrow, though I’m still hesitant to shoot her in the heart. Instead, the arrow lodges into her side, the exact spot where she stabbed John. She crumples to the ground beside him and I rush forward.

Both are pale, their breathing similarly shallow. Even with all the water they’ve consumed over the years, I imagine death must not be far.

“Stay with me, baby,” I whisper to John as I kneel beside him. “We can get you out of here.”

He shakes his head vehemently and grabs my hand. “Leave me, it’s the only way. Take Janey and get far away. Let me do this for her… for
both
of you.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Cassie moans. Now that she’s so weak, the anger and cruelty are gone from her voice. She’s exposed in a way I’ve never seen before, not even when we were kids. “Please, you can help us, you can save
both
of us.”

“But I don’t have the water,” I say, telling John as much as Cassie. “Harriet must’ve claimed it after killing Catherine. I’m sure she and the water are long gone by now.”

John smiles, clearly relieved.

“We don’t need Harriet, you have the girl,” Cassie says, wincing as she touches the arrow sticking out of her. “Mary told me what the girl did at the former water source in Greece. Bring her to the fountain, let her touch the water. She can change it, she can save us.”

“You mustn’t,” John groans. When he speaks again, his voice is stronger, firmer. “You
mustn’t
.”