The island is important and will appear once more in this memoir after the next handful of horrible chapters—which will no doubt make you want to put this book down and find something more pleasant. I visited the place myself after Tobias MacClain’s escape from the penitentiary, thinking he had returned there to hide. It was empty then, and at this point of the story, it felt empty to the three heroes.
The plane, branded as one of Peregrine’s Flight’s fleet, circled above the blackened mess. The jagged spire of the central volcano jutted from the Earth like a barnacle, its toothy mouth wide open, its insides devoured by black smoke that chugged upwards like the cough of a coal-driven train. A small beach encircled the place with barely five feet of black sand circumference, dotted with no more than five widely interspaced coconut palms.
A large black mass pooled in the sea where a stream of hot magma flowed out and cooled.
Tobias couldn’t look out the window to see the great black mass of land, for he had closed the shade and clung tightly to both his seatbelt and his parachute. His eyes were shut. He never flew with them open, nor did he ever fly without taking every safety precaution there possibly was.
There was, after all, always a chance of the plane crashing, and Tobias could always see that chance. On that trip, the heat draft from the volcano caused an upward air current which had made staying on course more turbulent than usual in the little water plane.
It ploughed down, kicking up spray, and slid its barrels onto the beach. Poppy stretched out and secured her whip and poison beads to her belt before exiting. Benjamin followed, squeezing through the small doorway while shaking out his golden gloves. Tobias made sure his glasses were safe in his medical bag and strapped the thing around his shoulder before he joined his team. He cleansed the fog from his prescription goggles and fixed them over his eyes. The ash in the air gained resolution.
Fists in the middle, fists to the sky.
“Let’s do it, Defiance!” Benjamin cried, fully decked in the blue spandex that his fans fawned over. He pulled his own goggles down, the team’s signature “tie-together”, due to Tobias’s impaired vision and aversion to taking the chance of losing a contact lens on duty. He started to lead the way towards the volcano, throwing large boulders and chunks of hardened magma aside to clear a path.
Poppy, in her green and brown “peace-inspired” mesh, loped after. Leather tassels swung from her waist and ribs as she walked, keeping close to him. She had painted small flowers at the corners of her goggles’ lenses.
“When’s that volcano going to erupt, PJB?” Benjamin asked over his shoulder.
“It’s Tobias,” Tobias returned, climbing awkwardly over the large rock that the great Mr. Might had rolled inadvertently into his path. “The volcano is volatile, and the chances that it will erupt in ten minutes are the same as the chances that it will erupt in fifteen, twenty, or even thirty. I’ll let you know when I know.”
The island shook and the trio stopped to spread their arms and hold their balances. The earth trembled underfoot and the volcano growled like an animal. A stream of lava dripped over the mouth’s edge and trickled down the volcano’s side, slow and thick as honey.
Three pairs of eyes locked on the red-hot glow.
“Toby?”
“There’s time,” Tobias insisted. He looked uneasily at the volcano and scurried to catch up with the others. “But it would be best to hurry.”
“Right.”
Benjamin started smacking rocks aside faster, ploughing through the hardened land like snow. Black chunks of basalt flew around them. Ash rained from the sky and made it hard to breathe. It fell across their goggles so that they had to continuously raise their hands to clear the lenses.
“There!” Tobias exclaimed. Everyone stopped. Tobias clambered onto a boulder and pointed to a specific point at the base of the volcano. Basalt chunks of all sizes piled at every nook, but one spot was particularly heavily piled with blockage. The earth trembled again and the man had to hold on tightly to stay planted on the pointy rock. He slid down when the tremor stopped, eyes raised to the trickling mouth. “The entrance to the lair is over there.”
Everything was vibrating. Heat swept over them, smelling of sulfur and soot.
“Alright,” Benjamin said. He jumped up onto the rock and vaulted over, then sprinted to the blocked entrance. Poppy sprang after him, stopping to give Tobias a hand up. They slid down together and hopped precariously over the pockmarked land. Small pools of hot magma bubbled menacingly, interspaced like tidal pools, but with much deadlier contents than crabs.
“Watch out!” Tobias lunged at Poppy and knocked her away from a powerful burst of hot steam. The heat scorched his side, and a flash of something much worse overwhelmed his vision. Something about mottled flesh. A vision of black and red welts and searing pain that made him gasp. He shook his head and his vision cleared to the nearest futures. Whatever it was, there was a dangerous present to worry about, first. “There are geysers here, too. Stay closer to the volcano, but watch the streams that are coming down. They’ll only get faster.”
Poppy nodded and slapped him on the back. “Thanks, T. How’s that eruption coming?”
Tobias bit his lip. His thick brows knit and he rubbed his arm where the heat lingered over his thinned sleeve. “We have time.” He looked upwards and blinked repeatedly, then hollered and started to run with his arms waving. “BENJAMIN! WAIT!”
Mr. Might blinked at him, hands frozen between two large rocks.
“There’s a bomb on the door. If you could carefully clear the way, I will diffuse it.”
“There’s no time to be careful. If Hephaestus Hellfire is in there, we’ll have to grapple with him and who knows how long that will take. This place is—” The ground rattled and the scattered lava pools bubbled louder. Benjamin started throwing rocks again. “The place is going to blow any minute now and I don’t want to be here when it does.”
Tobias lunged forward, despite his senses screaming at him to go back, to get far. “Benjamin, careful! I’ll tell you when it’s due to erupt! I’ll tell you!”
The volcano gurgled, its rumbling scattering their footings again, and another thick portion of hot lava oozed out and began its long crawl downwards towards them. Benjamin started kicking the basalt away more recklessly, using hands and feet together, panic on his face.
Tobias screeched, sensing only danger in the imminent future, and started to run. He tumbled down a drop to the lava pools and dodged a geyser, but no matter where he looked, there was no escape nearby.
“BENJAMIN, STOP!” he shouted, raising his fists. He held his arms protectively over his head.
He jumped away before another geyser could spray, then stumbled over the lava pools, barely keeping his footing. They bubbled and he ran away from them, only getting closer to Benjamin’s recklessness again, and only to be greeted by the result. An explosion scattered the remaining basalt like marbles. Benjamin staggered, swatting the rubble from the air like flies, but Tobias was not so effortlessly strong. He cried out and dove to the ground, because there was no shelter, and there was nowhere to run, and a great boulder was hurtling towards him. He slid in his dive and rolled and tried to curl his legs up to his chest, but he wasn’t fast enough to protect himself. He smacked the device on his wrist and a transparent shield generated, but it wasn’t enough to cover everything.
He screamed.
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