Island Jumper 4 Read online

  Island Jumper Book 4

  An Archipelago Series

  M. H. Ryan

  Island Jumper

  Book 4

  By M. H. Ryan

  Copyright 2020

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The island’s geyser had become an alarm clock of sorts for me, waking me up in the early morning hours with a loud gushing sound. The girls were able to ignore the blast and subsequent splatter, never even twitching as the explosion echoed through the forest.

  Happy to leave them sleeping peacefully, I left our house as the warm mist began to blanket the island in a low haze. The emerging sun sent long shadows through the trees, and even the ocean seemed to have a cloud floating off the surface.

  The white sand felt damp against my bare feet, which gave me a firmer footing, something I may need as crocodiles and all sorts of other creatures roamed these islands.

  That was another thing that had changed dramatically since arriving here—my feet. The soles were tougher now. The rocks and broken shells in the sand that once might have given me a reason to pause were barely felt as I headed to the beach.

  The gentle waves lapped over the white sands in a soothing rhythm. I stopped near the water's edge and glanced back at the house, admiring it—and the wondrous things it held inside—for a moment. Then I grabbed the fishing pole and set a piece of mango on the hook, something Benji would protest if she knew, but unlike many things I tried, mango stayed on the hook.

  Not that I needed much of anything to catch a fish with my gift. I lured the fish myself.

  I cast the hook out, watching the weight attached to the line plunk into the water, just in front of a small wave. Then I reached out to the ocean with my extra sense.

  The static of the sea and what it held still took my breath away. During my time here, my gift had strengthened enough that I could now weed through the noise and pluck out single notes. A slithery thing slipped through my thoughts, a peculiar sea creature that felt as if it was avoiding my gift. I concentrated on it, and it rang like a bell, as if I’d hit it with a gong.

  That made no sense, but there it was—another ring or pulse, like some kind of beacon. I tentatively reached for it, and for a second, I felt that resistance that a predator would give, but I pushed through the barrier and was startled by what I found. The thing was hunting, not food or a mate, but for a person. Though—that wasn’t quite right either. It had something directing it, much like the giant crab Shaya’s brother had ridden in on. A feeling that something had been placed on it, or around it, like a second skin. It was using the animal, much like a puppet.

  No, not like a puppet. The fish felt more like a machine ran through the creature. Deep down, I felt the small mind of the fish. It was under a hundred layers of the machine running it. It’s small mind was hiding something, though, and I wanted to find out what.

  I pushed into its mind further and stumbled back as I realized what it was looking for—it was looking for me. Not me exactly me but someone like me, with my ability. And as we both connected, the assumed simple creature realized that it had found what it had been looking for.

  The connection flipped a switch in the creature, and it bolted away from me, excited beyond all comprehension. Its sole purpose was about to be fulfilled. As excited as it was, I knew I had to stop it.

  In a panic, I seized it with my mind. At first, it resisted, as intense a refusal as anything I’d felt from a fish, and I half wanted to call for Emma to help me, but I couldn’t lose one second of concentration. Everything seemed to depend on me not letting this scaled thing get away.

  “Come here, you bastard,” I said, closing my eyes and reaching for it.

  It resisted, but I kept pushing, even as the pain stabbed at my head. It moved toward me in fits and bursts. I mentally dragged it closer to me, getting it to where I knew my hook floated in the water. I forced the idea that it had to swallow that chunk of mango. It moved, thrashing about in the water, trying with a last burst to get away from me, but then I screamed at it. In the moment, I couldn’t tell if I had an audible scream or just one inside my mind—either way, it shocked the thing into obedience.

  It bit the mango on the hook and swallowed.

  I yanked back on the pole, setting the hook, and then pulled the possessed fish to the shallows.

  A long, silver fish, with a yellow stripe running down its side, flopped around on the sand, still attached to the fishing line. It kind of looked like a yellowfin tuna, but with a slender body, though just as muscular. I kept pulling the line until the creature hit the sand just feet in front of me. We made eye contact, and the sea creature stopped moving. I kneeled and touched it on the side, wary of a mouth that could be filled with teeth. A hint of pain hit its body as I touched it. It seized, as if all its muscles were firing off in a continuous charge.

  I searched its inner mind, the small one that had been pushed down to the bottom of its consciousness, and tried to find who did this to it. A blurry image of a middle-aged man appeared, pulling it from the water. He had a brown beard and dark hair, peppered with silver. His eyes looked intense enough to start a fire as he handled the fish. That man… I felt the power in him and the ease of his control over this fish. A power that made mine look like a candle in an inferno. He layered something over the fish, and for a brief moment, he made eye contact with me.

  Blackness hit the fish, and I staggered back. Blood poured from its mouth and out its gills. The yellow-striped fish was dead.

  “Nice catch?” Cass said, walking up to me. “You should have woken me up. I like fishing with you.”

  She had a bright smile that turned to concern as she stared at me.

  “What’s wrong?” Cass asked, the lightness in her voice gone.

  The other girls were making their way down the small ladder off the balcony. They rushed over to us when Cass waved their direction.

  “Something’s wrong with Jack,” Cass said. I didn’t respond.

  Words felt stuck in my throat.

  “What is it?” Sherri asked.

  “That fish,” I said, voice gravelly, pointing to its dead body. “It was searching for me, and when it found me, it tried to flee to get back to…” I didn’t want to say it, because saying it sounded insane.

  “Get back to what?” Aubrey asked.

  “The king,” I said. “He’s hunting us.”

  Chapter 2

  A day had passed since I’d caught that strange silver fish with the yellow stripes and the feeling that another thing was out there at the behest of this king, bothered me. Being ignorant of the dangers out here had become a normal, but a man was searching for us, and I knew his intentions were not good. Shaya had said as much.

  These thoughts weighed on me, but I pushed
them away, even as the girls clapped in excitement over our latest home improvement. Their voices and laughter echoed off the steel walls around us.

  “You were right, Jack,” Cass said, standing at the entry to the bathroom.

  “I’ve never been so ecstatic to see a toilet in my entire life,” Sherri said.

  “You’ve obviously have never been to the rather shady all-you-can-eat Indian food buffet just outside campus,” Aubrey said.

  “No, I would never pollute this temple,” Sherri said, putting her hands on her hips, doing a quick but sexy side-to-side shimmy.

  I had to agree, it was a temple, one that I would happily pray at.

  The bathroom off of the common room had been spared from total collapse. I thought of Mario and his craziness as I stared at the steel bowl. We had crashed this ship into Tar Island, where it had burned for days, black smoke reaching the sky in a high column. We had to get rid of the stones in that manner, and they were gone.

  The ship was the same model as the Veronica, but it wasn’t the Veronica. Fortunately, it had fared better than expected in the fire, a realization that had Sherri near tears. Aubrey and Cass were taking a more scientific approach as they studied the commode and how to remove it.

  “It’s just a few bolts on the floor,” I said, kneeling next to the stainless steel bowl.

  “Oh yeah,” Aubrey said. “You think you can work your magic on those?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Cass said.

  We’d found out that Cass could manipulate metal a few days ago. Since then, she had been working hard on getting stronger in her newfound power. I had to admit, Cass had advanced far quicker than I had. In a matter of days, she was able to connect pipes that gave us actual running water back at the house.

  “Do you need me?” Emma asked.

  “No, I think I can handle this on my own,” Cass said, studying the bowl as she rubbed her chin.

  Emma had become an amplifier to what we were able to do. When we had physical contact with her, our abilities were stronger. She could read every thought in my head when we touched, but that part of her power didn’t work with the girls. Like most of our gifts, I had a feeling that we were just scratching the surface on what she or any of us were capable of. It’s not like anyone handed us a manual on this stuff.

  The only thing even close to a previous knowledge was the small journal we took from Cave Island. Lieutenant Danforth had crash-landed his plane on that tiny island and detailed his journey, a path that seemed similar to mine as he shared the ability to not only feel the animals of the world but also influence them.

  Cass pinched the small bolt pinning the toilet to the floor. She grunted as she turned it. The bolt slowly turned in her fingers, and soon she had it out. It only took her a couple of minutes to get all four off the toilet.

  “Done,” Cass said, dropping the last bolt onto the floor.

  “Nice job,” Aubrey said and raised her hand for a high five.

  Cass went in to slap her hand, but Aubrey moved her hand out of the way before contact.

  “You just had that hand all over the bottom of that toilet,” Aubrey said.

  “Oh, are you scared of this?” Cass said, holding her hand toward Aubrey.

  “Don’t you dare try—”

  Cass didn’t let her finish and proceeded to take swipes at Aubrey with her contaminated hands. Aubrey moved like a trained boxer, dodging her attacks. They were laughing after a few seconds and falling back out of the bathroom. I turned back to the toilet with Sherri and Emma.

  A few days ago, Cass hadn’t been a great member of the group. She had an attitude and was stuck in her own bullshit, but I pulled her free from it, and what emerged was a beautiful woman, inside and out, who worked hard and openly cared for the group.

  On that fateful day, Cass had escaped her old world to be on the Veronica with us in search of… something. Like many of us, I think she found what she hadn’t even known she needed out here, a place to belong and people that you would die for, and I have never seen her happier.

  “I will slap a poop-handed bitch if I have to,” Aubrey said, raising her hand, feigning anger.

  “Okay, I’ll stop,” Cass said, lowering her hand.

  “If you two are done playing grab-ass, can you get back to work?” Sherri said, using her authoritative tone.

  “You two are about as silly as a goose with a top hat,” Emma said.

  Aubrey and Cass came back to us as I had my hand around the toilet. I lifted it, pulling it free from the melted flange. The smell of burned metal and plastic wafted up to us. The pipes under the toilet were covered in black goo. Might have been what was left of the wax ring.

  “Let’s get the sinks and then the tub last,” I said as I carried the toilet into the hall.

  Over the next couple of hours, we dismantled the bathroom and carried it all to our boat tied off to the ship. In total, we grabbed two sinks, one toilet, and a stainless steel bathtub—a feature that wasn’t on the ship that I had sailed with, but captains were always customizing their ships.

  We also collected a few more small pipes from around the ship and as many larger ones as we could carry, all necessary to get the entire bathroom going back home.

  With the boat packed neatly and us worn out from the effort, we pushed off the ship and into ocean waters.

  A small crew made it challenging to get the mainsail open, but we managed and started making good time back to our island, Yin Island. The feel-good island, as Kara would call it. I couldn’t wait to get back there. Even though we’d only been gone for a few hours, I hated leaving anyone behind.

  “Emma, you want to boost me? I want to try some stuff,” I asked.

  “I don’t know…” she said, but her ruse fell apart with a bright smile. “Of course! You know I love seeing into that mind of yours.”

  Emma, gorgeous Emma, set her bat down near me at the back of the boat. Her big-as-the-Texas-sky hair cascaded to her shoulders in waves of blonde. The locks lay over her tanned shoulders and down to the tops of her large breasts. Her sparkly bikini top seemed a size too small as her chest pushed against the fabric, creating cleavage for miles. Now, I wasn’t the biggest breast guy in the world—I liked all parts of the woman—but these were something that I had trouble taking my eyes from.

  She took my hands in hers, and I tried to get rid of my thoughts of her tits, but even thinking of thinking of them made it all the more evident that I was thinking of them. Shit. She smiled and pulled her shoulders back a tad, giving me more to look at.

  Like an eighth and ninth wonder of the world, I couldn’t look away.

  “Jack?” Emma asked. “You wanted to try something?”

  “Sorry, got distracted,” I said.

  “I know…wait, are you picturing me wearing a hoodie?”

  “Just trying to clear my mind,” I said.

  “Well, don’t clear it too much. I like your thoughts,” she said and pushed her girls closer, giving me a stunning view.

  “Stop it,” I whispered. “I want to try something here.”

  “Me too,” she whispered. “I’ve been thinking—I can hear, almost feel your thoughts. I bet that’d be as hot as summer in Hades if we were to…you know.”

  Now I had a whole other form of emotions building as blood started shifting to the lower parts of my body. Emma did this sort of thing a lot when we were touching, but it hadn’t gone any further than just flirting. Not that I didn’t want to—the timing for such things just hadn’t been right.

  “We can make time,” Emma whispered.

  “Get out of my head,” I said, laughing and closed my eyes.

  “I will not, Jack Sawyer.”

  After a few deep breaths and counting all the way to nine, I reached out to the ocean.

  With Emma, the sea opened to me with awesome clarity. The fish, the crustaceans, the predators—even the small stuff like krill—gave off a symphony of emotions and colors, but I was hunting another spy fish. If another one w
ere out there, I’d snatch it up and give it the idea that a shark’s mouth was the best place in the world to be.

  After a minute, I knew no such creature was near us and concentrated on what I really wanted to do: lock into a simple predator fish in the sea. I had a plan to improve my ability. Then I found a perfect match. A long, slender fish with a mouth full of teeth. A barracuda perhaps. A predator fish but small and simple.

  I extended my thoughts into it, trying to make that connection. At first, I felt the resistance, almost like the sound of static while trying to claw my way through a wool sweater. Then it unthreaded and broke open. I got through.

  Holy shit.

  The little guy swam around as I encouraged it to go one direction or another. Then I sent it flying up out of the water. I watched as the fish breached the water a few hundred feet from us.

  It moved in the air, and as it reached the peak, a small shark jumped from the water right under it and clamped its jaws around the fish. The apex predator fell back down into the water with the barracuda in its mouth.

  “Whoa,” I said and reached out to the shark.

  I found it and pushed against it, trying to make that connection again, but instead of a wool sweater between us, it felt more like a chain-link armor. It moved, and I knew I was closer, but I couldn’t get through.

  Grabbing Emma’s hands tighter, I tried again and pushed hard. I felt the pressure building in my head but ignored the pain. If I could get into the head of these predators, then many of these fights would be over before they began. We had more girls to find out there, and I doubted the journey would be any safer moving forward.