Fathom (29 page)

Another surge forward and a snapping crack and a strange quiver, from limb to limb.

I knew then that the beast had swallowed another captive. I prayed that it hadn’t been Caleb, but somehow I knew that this was one prayer that couldn’t be answered. I feared that one of my closest friends now held me captive.

And most likely he had forgotten all about me.

Caleb:

Silence enveloped me. Darkness deeper and more horrible than death. I was alone and I could tell I was slipping away. Pain filled every part of my body. My back ached like it had been broken and my arms—I’d never experienced agony so intense. I clung to the pain, used it to stay conscious.

The only other thing I felt was hunger.

Deep and insatiable.

It felt like I had never eaten before. And then I smelled her, wrapped tight in one of my arms. Fresh and tender and still alive. All I had to do was pull her closer, open my mouth and take a bite. I would feel better almost immediately. The pain would ebb like the tides, my limbs would grow back, all the wounds in my back would heal.

All I need do was eat.

I tightened my grip, felt a last gasp of air escape from her lungs. She must have been clinging to it, hoping for an escape. I pulled her nearer until I could see her face.

As soon as I saw her, strange thoughts flooded my mind and a war waged inside me. I needed to eat, but I also needed to let her go. She had already gone so long without breathing, she might not survive, no matter what I did. Why should I waste a healthy Selkie? Still, I forced myself to reposition one tentacled arm, just a bit, so her gills were no longer covered. I could always change my mind and decide to eat her. Later.

This thought pleased me. I watched her and ignored my own pain, waited until her pale blue eyes flickered open. Some part of me thought I would see the welcome gaze of a friend and I longed to see it.

Instead I saw a look of terror on her face.

She screamed. And she fought, trying to break free.

“Caleb, let me go!” she cried, her words coming out like crystal bubbles, floating toward the surface.

Caleb. A word I used to know. It puzzled me. Sent a ripple of fear through my chest. Suddenly I didn’t like this Selkie creature. It was too small. Not worth the chase. I didn’t know why I had kept holding on. Her touch felt like fire.

No.

It felt like love.

That thought burned through me, scorching my skin until I couldn’t bear to hold her any more. I snapped my arm open and released her. She was so weak that she just slid away from me, limp. It would have been easy to change my mind, to snap off her head with a single bite. But I couldn’t. Some part of me was terrified of this tiny beast and the secrets she held. I didn’t like the way she felt or the words she spoke. She was like poison in my mind—she sickened me—so I fled. I turned my back on her and swam away.

I fled as far as I could, to the deepest, darkest part of the ocean.

Hoping, more than anything, that this dreaded Selkie beast would go home and that I would never, ever see her again.

Kira:

I fell through ocean currents, growing colder by the second. I had used my last breath to call out his name and now he was swimming away. Caleb was a monster and it was all my fault, and now I was almost too weak to pull another gulp of oxygen from the sea. My bones felt like wax and my thoughts weren’t connecting. I kept thinking that I would see Caleb and that he would carry me to the surface.

But he was gone.

And I was too weak to swim home.

Darkness thundered in my head and, even though I couldn’t open my eyes, lights burst around me like fireworks. The deeper I sank, the stronger the currents became until finally one of them swept me up; like cold hands, it pulled me through mud and debris. I coughed and choked, the water too thick, my skin scratching against coral and rock. My limbs were growing more numb by the second and now I couldn’t open my eyes, though I longed to see.

Destiny and the bottom of the ocean and a river deep that was going to take me out to sea where I would be lost forever. Already, I stood at the Doorway to Death but the cold current continued to tug at me, the Underworld jealous that I had lived so long on land. The water turned my blood to ice, my muscles stiffened until they felt like stone. Still the current churned onward, towing me across the ocean bottom, up and down valley trenches, through thick tangles of seaweed until they wrapped about my torso like rope. Like snakes, the seaweed coiled around my chest and throat, binding my gills. I was too weak. I couldn’t breathe.

Just then something bumped against my chest.

It forced me to pull air into my lungs.

I gasped. All my muscles tensed with pain.

Something scratched the length of my body, cutting through the knotted seaweed; it loosened and fell away.

Still the underwater river continued to drag me, only now the sea water warmed and the currents turned sweet, no longer heavy with mud. Then I felt the pressure of slick skin against mine—soft nose, whiskers, slippery fins. I imagined that I heard voices, my mother and my sister and my father, all of them calling to me from the shore. But it was so far away and I knew I would never see land again. In my delusion, I thought I was surrounded by an army of Selkies.

But I never saw anyone.

The currents licked my skin—dressed now in a chain mail of iridescent scales—and I imagined that I was bumping alongside a host of other bodies, all of us traveling in the same direction. The fragrance of home came with the tides and I struggled to open my eyes. If I could only see it one last time, maybe that would be enough.

At last, I managed to open my eyes and I saw that I was on top of the ocean now, the moon above me, and there, in the near distance was my beach and the cliff, light pouring down from the house that waited up above.

I stretched one arm over the other, trying to swim. But I was still too weak. Then I saw them all around me, a herd of seals, heads bobbing to the surface one by one, smooth gray skin reflecting in the pale moonlight, dark eyes watching me. One of them swam beneath me. I wrapped my arms about her neck and she pulled me toward the shore. The others circled us and barked, as if in encouragement, as if ready to take her place if she grew weary.

She didn’t stop until my feet touched the sandy ocean bottom.

Then she brushed her nose against my back, nudging me onward.

I plunged through waist-deep water until I was far away from the waves. There I collapsed on the sand.

And I fell asleep. The thunder of the ocean at my back. And home just a few feet away.

•

The water chilled my feet, sea foam hissing, whispering, tickling me back to consciousness. It lapped against me, as if trying to tell me something. My eyelids lifted with great effort, the side of my face resting in the crook of my arm. Weariness and pain and I could only take shallow gulps of air, each one like knives slicing my lungs.

My chest ached from the grip of that monster’s snake-like arm.

Caleb. The monster.

That was when the dream surrounded me and I couldn’t tell whether I was awake or asleep. A woman appeared on the beach, wrapped in starlight, and I watched her approach. A silhouette against night sky, black against black, she knelt down, ran a gentle hand over the head of one of the creatures that still huddled around me.

“Thank you for bringing my daughter home safely,” she murmured.

The creatures barked and frolicked beside her, as if they were old friends. And then finally, as if they realized that I was safe at last, they all retreated into the sea.

A herd of seals.

Or maybe not. Maybe they were something else.

I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t. Pain forced me to be still.

She was at my side then. My mother. As beautiful as the ocean herself. Skin the color of the moon, hair like midnight and eyes like the bay at sunrise. She wrapped her arms about me, her embrace gentle and warm, more wonderful than I had remembered. Salt stung my skin and I glanced down, glad to see that I was wearing human skin again.

She sang to me then, her songs like balm, each of them bringing strength.

Then a light appeared on the shore, bobbing up and down as it grew nearer. A man was approaching us and in the pale light I saw my mother smile. He knelt beside us, wrapped us each in warm, dry blankets. Then he opened a thermos and poured strong hot tea into a mug, took turns holding it to our lips and bidding us to drink.

It was Father Sullivan.

That was when I realized that he must have been my mom’s familiar. That’s why he had her cross, why he seemed to know all of my secrets.

And then I saw another shadowy shape running toward us across the sand. I must have called out to him, maybe when I was drowning or maybe when I first saw the shoreline and realized that I might still live. Maybe we had that same connection that all Selkies have with their familiars, even though we hadn’t talked about it yet.

“Kira!” he called my name, both sorrow and joy in his voice.

He ran, kicking up sand, muscles gleaming beneath the midnight moon until he slammed to a halt right before me.

Sean. My Knight in Shining Armor. My best friend.

That was when I realized that Gram and Riley were right behind him. Gram running faster than I thought she could and Riley at her side, weeping so loud that she could barely catch her breath.

Mom kissed me on the forehead.

“I love you,” she said. Then she wrapped her other arm about Riley, me on the right and Riley on the left, just like we used to sit in the tree house so many years ago.

In that instant, it felt good to be human again.

But even more than that, it felt good to be home.

Kira:

The waves toss and the winds blow and the seas lament. Every night I feel it. The oceans roar and I can’t sleep. So I do what I always do. I get out of bed, the house creaking around me, so old that sometimes even I can’t believe that it still stands.

Everyone else is asleep.

My father and my mother, in their room at the end of the hall.

Gram and the cat, in the room next to mine.

Riley, in the room that used to belong to me.

Sometimes I speak to Sean, with that silent language we have. Even when he’s far away, we can talk to each other now. He wakes up at the same time; he knows what I’m going to do, so he does the exact same thing, in his room.

Together, at the same time, we get out a candle and put it in the window. We quietly say a prayer, then we light the wick, the flickering flame reflecting against the glass, making it almost impossible to see out into the black night.

He’s out there somewhere, wearing monster skin and hunting Selkies. Caleb. I know all the old Irish legends end badly. Someone always ends up with a broken heart because of some mythic creature. The stories claim that humans can’t win.

But then I’m not human, am I?

So I’m not going to stop until I figure out how to set him free.

I stay up until the candle burns down and the light fades away.

Then I go back to sleep. Knowing that ghosts and monsters are real.

In fact, some of them are my very best friends.

MERRIE DESTEFANO is the author of
AFTERLIFE: The Resurrection Chronicles
and
FEAST: Harvest of Dreams
, both published by HarperVoyager. Once upon a time, she was the editor of
Victorian Homes
magazine, founding editor of
Cottages & Bungalows
magazine, and contributing editor of
Romantic Homes
magazine. However, with the help of two fairy godmothers (her agent and her editor), Merrie became a full-time author, and now lives happily-ever-after in Southern California with her husband, a Siamese cat, two German shepherds, and the occasional wandering possum. When not writing, she loves to watch Vampire Diaries, Star Trek and The Walking Dead, and she often attends Comic Con—just so she can hang out with people dressed like superheroes and Star Wars characters. Her blog focuses on the craft of writing and the love of speculative fiction, but you can also find her hanging out on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr.

Author website and blog: www.MerrieDestefano.com.

AFTERLIFE: The Resurrection Chronicles

Bladerunner
meets Jim Butcher in
Afterlife,
a thrilling urban fantasy set in a near-future New Orleans. Chaz Domingue is a professional Babysitter who guides the recently deceased into their new and improved lives. Nine lives are all a person can get—still a powerful group of desperate, high-level Nine-Timers will stop at nothing to possess the keys to true immortality. You can learn more about this tale that blends fantasy, science fiction and mystery by visiting the author’s website at www.merriedestefano.com.

FEAST: Harvest of Dreams

In
Feast
, Merrie Destefano serves up another heaping helping of thrills, shivers and dark romance. Maddie MacFadden, a troubled storyteller, returns to Ticonderoga Falls just prior to Halloween to find her life and her soul captivated by Ash, a cursed immortal and the Lord of the Hunt. You can learn more about this tale of supernatural intrigue and forbidden love by visiting the author’s website at www.merriedestefano.com.

THE PLAGUE CARRIER

Condemned as a runaway and sentenced to work as a Cleaner, fifteen-year-old Anna now spends her days searching for valuables in a field of dead warriors. Her life goes from bad to worse, however, when she stumbles upon a plague carrier, a boy her age who could kill her entire camp with a single drop from the flask he carries around his neck.