Dark Vengeance by Kristi Belcamino (electric book reader .txt) 📕

from the water and walked up the beach to where we were waiting.

A few people lined up to give her high fives. And at that moment, she was the queen, just like her namesake, the Queen of Sheba.

I took another hit off the pipe. Man. It was some strong weed. But still, I felt good, not sick like from the Amsterdam weed. Instead, I just wanted to grin all the time.

Once Makeda was at the bonfire, she stripped out of her wetsuit and then flung off her bikini without any modesty, pulling on sweatpants and a hoodie near the fire. People parted, and she took a spot warming her hands at the fire. Only then did she meet my eyes and nod in greeting.

After a while, after people stopped coming up to her to talk about her prowess that morning, she looked at me and said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

I was so fucking high. It was wrong. Her friend was dead.

We stayed silent for a while as we walked.

“You didn’t tell them,” I said.

“I’m going to when we get back.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She dipped her head in acknowledgment.

“You’re really good,” I said. “Have you considered going pro?”

My voice sounded weird. It had a slight echo.

She stopped and kicked at the sand with her bare foot. “Used to be.”

“What happened?”

We both turned to face the storm whipping the ocean in front of us.

My hair was blowing back in the wind and it felt amazing, but then again that might just have been the drugs. I noticed that her neat braids kept her long hair sleek down her back.

She clasped her hands before her and pressed them against her mouth.

“The pressure got too much. Instead of being my passion, surfing became a job. Something I had to do. I had all sorts of sponsorships and started hanging with the big names. They plied me with clothing, money, drugs, jewelry, everything. It went to my head.”

She looked over and gave me a wry smile. “I couldn’t handle it. I freaked. Got hooked on drugs. I went off in a restaurant in Hawaii – broke things, screamed, ruined lifelong friendships. Then Bry took me in. I’d met him once, surfing in Sydney. He flew in, picked me up, brought me here, sat with me as I got clean and sober. But then … well, I’m sure they told you what happened.”

“They did. I’m sorry.” She’d lost him after he saved her from herself.

I suddenly wanted to cry. We’d both lost so much.

“He was even better than me. He’d been pro for years, but had the same shitty experience with it that I had and left that life behind. We thought we’d found Paradise here. Soon, word spread and other people who wanted to escape came here, too. It was perfect until X arrived.”

“It’s going to be good again,” I said. “I promise. I’m not leaving until his rule of fear is over.”

She shrugged and gave me a wan smile. She didn’t believe me. That’s fine. She didn’t need to believe me.

I took another drag off the pipe. All of a sudden I wanted to sit down, plop right down on the sand. I was bombarded with terrible memories—of people I had killed, of people I had loved who had died, even visions of how they might have looked when they died, images I did not want in my head. I winced and shook my head.

She raised an eyebrow and looked at the pipe.

“You know that’s not just regular weed, right?”

“Yeah, I figured the THC was stronger than what I was used to, but …” even as I said it my vision began to swim. “I didn’t realize. I’ve only had something like this in Amsterdam, and it put me down for the count for a few hours. I don’t have time for that…”

“You don’t have a choice. That weed was laced. Maybe acid, maybe something else,” she said and shrugged.

Fuck. She was right. All of a sudden, the waves breaking were kaledioscoping and breaking off into fractals. I was tripping. The last thing I wanted to be doing right then.

“Motherfuck.”

She sighed loudly. “David should’ve known better than to hand you that pipe. Come on. Let’s head back. You probably are going to want some place to chill until that wears off.”

“Damn it,” I said. “I need to be sharp. I need to go after him.”

She took my arm. “We got time. Let’s go back to my hut. You can chill there. I’ll fix you some hot tea.”

Makeda’s hut was warm and cozy. She had a small fireplace in one corner that had a makeshift chimney—a pipe that snaked up and out the one window. She had candles everywhere and the floor was basically a pile of mattresses, pillows, and blankets.

In the galley kitchen, she used propane to heat a hot pad and made me tea.

I slunk in one corner of the blanket and pillow fort and closed my eyes, listening to her hum and work in the kitchen area. Closing my eyes didn’t stop the visions, though.

I put a pillow over my face. Of course, that didn’t help either.

Makeda handed me some tea.

“Sometimes the best thing to do is just to go with it. The more you fight it, the worse it can be sometimes. Let that shit fly.”

“I’ve got some really dark stuff in my head, though.”

She looked at me seriously and then nodded. “Yeah, I knew right away you haven’t had it easy. But you’re strong. You can handle it.”

I put my face in my hands. I wasn’t so sure. When I looked up again, she was leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette.

“I’m not sure I can,” I said.

“God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”

“I don’t know if I believe in God anymore.”

She laughed. “How can you not? Look outside,” she gestured toward her front door facing the ocean. It was propped wide open, letting the wind in. The storm had died down and passed, and now there was