Under Zenith (9 page)

“I can’t do it,” I called up to him, setting aside my hate in favor of my logic that told me I somehow needed to climb.

“Yeah
, I know,” he said, not encouraging me at all. “If you can’t even do this, there’s no way you’ll pass the other tasks. You might as well just give up now.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be rooting for me?” I asked incredulously.
“Don’t you need me to make it to my Destination so you can get a raise or something?”

“After listening to all your whining
, I’m not sure it’s worth it,” he told me, shrugging his shoulders and walking away from the ledge.

He couldn’t be serious. There was no way he wanted me to drop off a cliff just because I had whined a little (rightfully so might I add) about being dead.

Slowly and carefully, I released the tree root with one hand and stretched it skyward toward the next root, closing my sore fingers around it and finding that I was still completely stuck. I couldn’t look down to see where I should put my foot. I couldn’t just hoist myself up and hope the root held me.

Unless I was willing to suddenly become daring, there wasn’t really much I could do but stay there like a squirrel stuck halfway up a tree trunk.
In this scenario, I saw Hayden as the mean little kid with a BB gun, repeatedly trying to fire at me.

I definitely couldn’t die here (again) so I took a deep breath, steadied my nerves, and pulled myself up to the next tree root.
My feet scrambled for purchase for a minute, but eventually found it, however unsteadily. The boots hadn’t been a great choice for my little mountain climbing experience. They had no tread, and were completely stiff and inflexible. I couldn’t have picked worse footwear if I’d tried.

It was a slow long process to get myself up to the edge of the island. I was sweaty and terrified by the time the grass was within my reach and my entire body shook with the constant effort of keeping my
self from falling. I wasn’t sure exactly how long it had taken me, but it felt like hours had passed in silence as I maintained a slow and steady panic.

“About time,” Hayden said, peeking his head over the side of the grass and looking completely bored.

“Hayden, I need you to give me your hand. There are no more roots and I can’t grab the grass without pulling it all out,” I told him evenly.

I knew he was a complete jerk
, but could it really be that difficult for him to just reach out his hand and help me up? I’d made the entire climb myself and now needed one small favor from him that would barely expend an ounce of his energy.

“No can do, kiddo,” he
said simply, getting down so that he was lying on his stomach with his chin resting on his hands.

“Seriously? I need one thing. You can’t just do this for me?” I asked, now getting mad.

“I told you, I can’t help you.”

“You pushed me off the other island. Wasn’t that helping me?”

“That was purely recreational. If I didn’t push you off the edge in a productive way, I probably would have done it later on down the line just for sport,” he informed me.

“Hayden
, please,” I pleaded. “I’m so tired. I don’t think I can pull myself up. I’ve done so much, just please help me with this one thing.”

I didn’t really want to beg, especially when it came to him. But I also didn’t want to die again and go wherever the task failures went. If this was what purgatory was like, I could only imagine wha
t the other place would hold in store for those who failed.

As I clung shakily to the ledge
, I couldn’t help but think that it was odd that we’d walked so far yesterday and I hadn’t even broken a sweat, but now I was exhausted; though walking a long distance and suddenly becoming a pro mountain climber were definitely two different things.

Hayden shrugged his shoulders at me once more from his position on the grass and I tried my hardest not to cry. I wasn’
t sad by any means, but I could feel the tears of rage building inside of me and those were the worst kind. That was what preceded an ‘ugly cry’.

Burying
my emotions deep within me, I reached my small hand up as far as I could and closed my fingers around a fistful of grass that I was sure would rip from the earth the second I put any weight on it. I brought one foot up to a higher root, trying to find purchase on the wet earth and hoping that I wouldn’t accidentally propel myself backward off the edge of the island right when I’d almost made it to the top.

“You do realize you’ve doubled the time we normally spend in a cycle and you aren’t even close to the end of this task yet
, right?” Hayden asked, now rolling over onto his back and placing his hands behind his head lazily. “You still have to do this all over again on the next island.”

He wasn’t very good at encouraging
people. He could definitely check motivational speaker off the list of things he might have done before becoming a Guide.

I didn’t really have enough strength to yell at him and climb at the same time so I opted
for the one that kept me alive…sort of.

Taking one last deep breath, I hoisted myself up onto the top of the island. The handful of grass pulled away from the earth a bit
, but held firm enough for me to complete the action, and the second I touched the top soil I fell onto my back next to Hayden, breathing heavily and having no idea how I could possibly do that a second time.

“Ready for the next one?” he asked me, tilting his head so that he was facing me
, his nose almost touching my cheek.

“I want to hit you so badly right now
, but I’m too tired,” I said, furrowing my brow and ignoring the sweat I could feel beading there.

“Stop being such a baby. Besides, the next one isn’t nearly as bad,” he said,
getting up and walking away from me.

Apparently he expected me to follow behind without taking a few moments to rest first. I knew that arguing with him was futile
, and even if I did try to point out the fact that I’d just completed a very difficult task, he’d just say I was being weak, or something equally as obnoxious.

“Oh and by the way, you got your dress dirty,” he called as he continued to move away from me.

Looking down at my mud streaked white lace dress, I could see that he was right, though it seemed like a cruel thing to point out when he knew full well I couldn’t do anything about it.

I stood from the grass and turned to take one last look at th
e sheer cliff I had just scaled, and then looked back at Hayden’s retreating form. Maybe falling from the island wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.

Chapter 9

I could feel the damp grass slowly soaking the bottom of my dress as I sat with my bare feet dangling over the edge of the island. I knew I’d have a very unattractive wet spot right on my bum the second I stood up, but I wasn’t planning on standing any time soon so it didn’t really matter. At the moment I was too preoccupied with tilting my head up toward the non-existent sun in the foggy sky, my eyes closed and a small smile on my lips.

Maybe I’d get one of those overcast tans you get at the beach, that way I wouldn’t look like such a ghost with my pale skin.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Hayden asked me, working himself up into a rage as he paced back and forth on the grass.

He had some serious anger management issues.

“This task is ridiculous, Hayden,” I responded, almost laughing as I said it. “What in the world does climbing a floating cliff have to do with motor skills? It doesn’t make any sense and I refuse to participate in the madness any longer.”

“So
, what? You’re just going to sit here and rot away?”

“This place is beautiful,” I answered simply.

“Get up,” he said quietly, his voice actually quite threatening.

“No,” I replied primly.
“I like it here and I don’t have the energy to climb another cliff. If that makes you mad then you can leave. You haven’t been the most pleasant company to have around anyway.”

It was true that Hayden was ‘sort of’ trying to help me, but he’d been so rude since the first second we’d met that I really wouldn’t have minded getting rid of him at that point.
My afterlife would have been a much more pleasant place without him in it and I couldn’t deny that after my last terrifying climb, I could use some alone time to just relax.

Hayden didn’t say anything, but instead hooked me under each arm and pulled me to my feet, almost accidentally knocking me over the edge of the cliff in the process.

“Go,” he commanded, pointing to the adjacent island like I was a dog he was scolding.

“You’re not the boss of me,” I said like a five year old, sticking my chin out defiantly.

I wasn’t a weak girl. I didn’t have to take crap from this guy no matter who he was. Daddy would have had a fit if he’d heard half of the things Hayden had said to me.

“Isla, so help me, if you don’t jump to that other island
, I’m going to push you over the ledge,” he said, bringing his face close to mine and letting his eyes bore into my soul.

“Oh no! Hayden’s going to push me over the edge,” I mocked, bringing my hands up over my mouth and making my eyes wide.

I wasn’t quite sure where I’d gotten all that courage, especially when I didn’t doubt for a second that he’d follow through on his threat. Maybe it was because the idea of falling to my second death was actually more desirable than having to climb up another cliff side that would probably have the same result.

“If you’re not going to complete the tasks then you’re of no use to me. And if you’re of no use to me there’s no reason for me to keep you around, wasting my time,” he whispered, his face still close to mine.

“Is that speech how you woo all the ladies?” I asked, quickly giving him a kiss on the cheek, then laughing at how hard he was working to maintain the bad boy image on my behalf.

Without warning, I felt his hands on my side in a motion that knocked the wind out of me,
and then I felt nothing but my stomach dropping as I went over the edge. I didn’t make a sound in that second of free fall before Hayden’s hand closed around my wrist, catching me just before I fell out of his reach. I swung like a pendulum into the side of the island, hitting it painfully.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked breathlessly, still dangling by the one limp arm Hayden held.

“I warned you already, but you didn’t believe me. Now are you going to complete the task or not?” he asked. “I can’t hold on to you forever.”

“Hayden, pull me up!” I screamed.

“I’m already losing my grip on you,” he threatened.

“I’ll do it!” I yelled, terrified that he might actually drop me.

“That’s more like it.”

Almost effortlessly, Hayden pulled me back onto the grass and released me.

“Now get to it,” he said, nodding to the island that held another step to my Destination.

I didn’t speak, now actually quite scared of Hayden and his completely unstable moods.
When he was pretending to be all dark and brooding he wasn’t all that scary, but what kind of psychopath dangled a girl over a ledge just to get her to cooperate?

He clearly had some unresolved childhood issues that he liked to take out on women. Maybe he had been some creepy serial killer in his past life. That would explain why he was now sentenced to a life guiding the lost. Perhaps it was supposed to be ironic punishment.

Giving myself enough space for a running start, I stared at the adjacent island. Luckily, this cliff side wasn’t as sheer as the last one. Small ledges and overhangs jutted out of the earth every few feet, making me believe that if I could just jump far enough, my climb up to the grass wouldn’t be all that difficult.

My legs were shaking and I knew normally I’d have to do my ‘run and stop at the last second’ routine a few times. But the way Hayden had looked at me as I was swinging over the ledge, my life completely in his hands, made me feel like the risk of falling was better than staying here with him for one more second. Besides, if I stopped before jumping he’d probably count that as the final straw and toss me overboard.

Taking one last deep breath, I ran as fast as I could and propelled myself forward off the relative safety of the grass. I flew through the air for one breathtaking moment, letting the breeze buoy me up a bit, before landing hard on one of the outcropping ledges. It had escaped my notice until that moment that I’d left my boots on the other island, but I’d just have to do without them. There was absolutely no way to go back and I knew Hayden would already be waiting for me at the safe house.

Climbing from ledge to ledge and refusing to look back at the fall I’d have to face if I slipped, I considered my options.

Once I reached the top of the cliff side I’d be forced to spend time in the safe house with Hayden and his multiple personalities. I couldn’t refuse to join him or refuse to do the tasks because I was pretty sure he’d murder me if I did.

Like I’d said, I wasn’t a weak girl, but I also wasn’t a stupid girl and I’d seen enough of my friends date guys with short tempers to know that Hayden was more dangerous than I’d originally thought.
He really might have been a full blown crazy person.