Fins 4 Ur Sins (12 page)

24

“STEALS
SOULS
?”
I shake so
hard I can hardly catch my breath. “Killed your family? What are you talking
about?” Water rasps in my tight chest and throat.

His iron clad arm wraps around my
middle and then he tests the cord’s strength behind my back.

“Good—” Satisfaction ripples in
his voice, and he nods. “—No matter what keep this around you. Don’t let go of
it until I say.”

My eyes widen in shock and I begin,
“But—”

“We don’t have much time.” A
muscle leaps in his jaw and he lowers his voice to a steady pitch. “I can’t
discuss your tail right now.” His piercing blue gaze holds me to the present.
“Or the sirens.
But we will, Ellie. We will. It’s too
dangerous to try and swim straight for the hostel. We’ll head back for the
nearest patch of land. Sirens normally return in greater numbers.” A grim expression
lines his chiselled face, making him seem older than normal. “Get moving.”

His grip on my hand is almost
painful.

“If it’s so dangerous why did you
want to take me swimming then?” I ask dully. I can’t help feeling I’ve shifted
to some alternate reality. I have a tail. Sirens steal souls. And obviously
bodies, too. They were going to take mine. I can’t stop shaking.

He stops squeezing my hand and
concern hovers on his brow. “I wanted to take you earlier than today, remember?
Because you were so late in the water, I only had time to teach you one thing.”
He lifts his hand, and using his thumb, he gently wipes the tears from my eyes.
“I wanted to see how you would change. I didn’t know whether you would become a
full mermaid or a hybrid. Don’t cry, Ellie. Calm down. We have to leave.
There’s too much blood here.”

Realisation hits. If he didn’t
save me tonight, the move he taught me earlier in the ocean would have. I used
his technique to break free from the siren’s hold.

He settles the black diving mask
over his face.

I want to say more, how blind
I’ve been, but his strong hand around mine forces me to follow. Together we dip
our heads beneath the silky, dark water. My ripped nightie balloons up and the
sea caresses my stomach in divine sensation. My lungs shift again, rib bones
sliding into place. A grating, popping sensation echoes inside my body. The
water tastes strange and, like he says, there’s too much blood.

Part of me wants to leave him for
a moment to completely explore the sensation of escaping human bonds. Now, I’m
something else. We sink deeper, and my large tail goes straight down, twice as
long as my legs. For once, I want to go deeper.
To the
bottom.
Swim away to an unknown destination; bask in the moonlight on a
tropical island with the soft wash of water at my back.

I scoop out my hands, releasing
his hold and laugh a little. Tendrils of my too-blonde hair float in a cloud in
front of my face. My white skin and his wetsuit clad arms contrast starkly. But
he needs an air tank, and I . . . don’t.

Instinct makes me twist to the
left toward an echo. “Something’s coming,” I say.

On the alert, he follows my line
of sight.

Moonlight turns the particles
into silvery white atoms. A soft glitter emphasises the vast emptiness in the
blue-black depths. Again, an electrical pulse hits my chest and I point into
the open water with a shaking hand. My breathing picks up as I look back to
him.

His eyes glow, but he points in
the opposite direction. I nod, attempting to move my arms in a wide breast
stroke. The flick of my tail halts my progress and the cord snaps me to one
side.

“Help . . .” The plea releases as
a sound and vibration. Oh God, we need to get out of here. How far does sound
travel? I struggle to go forward and clench the cord, trying to pull myself
along. “They’re coming! I can feel them.”

He grasps my hand, drawing me
closer. A slight frown mars his brow. He releases me, makes a wavy motion with his
hand and then points to my tail. He touches his head and does the wavy motion
again. He grabs my hand while plumes of bubbles stream out over his face as he
floats horizontally.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He points his nose down slightly,
head following, fluidly compressing his body as he lifts his head, bends his
knees together in the direction of the ocean floor and then snaps down his
lower legs. His flippers torpedo him forward, streaming bubbles in his wake as he
surges past.

I hang on tight. My right arm
floats out and causes too much resistance, so I pull it in close by my side. I
try to mimic his smooth actions. Scoop my hands, lift up, knees down and then
snap my tail fin. Alternating the motion between us, we glide as one toward the
shore.

The echoes fade until only a
slight disturbance touches the spot behind my ears and chest.

My heartbeat slows and tiny
spurts of electricity zip beneath my skin, lending me more energy. I imagine
what this place looks like in the morning, when the water is as clear as
daylight. The coral, the fish, the way the sun hits the water in golden,
gleaming warmth. Some part of me wants to stay, while another wants to go back
to the old world I remember. Can I ever return?

My hair clouds behind me, water
slipping over my skin as though I were weightless.

I seem to feel the wall long
before I see it. Ripples vanish along my sensitive skin and all the stray
pulses stop. I reverse a few seconds before impact, pulling Lakyn to a halt,
churning water with my tail fin.

Curiously, I look to him. He
normally possesses great control when swimming. He points to the surface. When
we break through, he rips off his mask and heaves a huge breath. “That felt
great,” he says, cracking a wide grin. “I didn’t see the wall. But you would
have felt it. Come on; let’s get you up on the land.”

The way he says ‘land’ strikes me
as odd. However, this whole night has been strange. “How can I get up the
rocks? They’re too sharp and I don’t have legs.” Panic throbs in my voice.

He gestures to farther along the
shore where sand slopes into the water. “Let’s swim over there to the sand. The
cord should stretch that far.”

We swim almost in the slip stream
of a current, and at the first touch of grainy sand on my palms, a massive
groan of exhaustion and gratitude heaves from my lips. “Thank you, Lakyn. Thank
you,” I whisper.

“We’re not out of it yet.” He
helps me slide up the sand, loops the strap of the spear gun over his
shoulders, bends down and with his muscles bunching beneath his wetsuit; he
lifts me into his arms.

He is damn strong. The scent of
the ocean clings to his skin, salty and briny. I momentarily rest my cheek
against his heart and the muscle thumps like a drum. He gently sets me on the
grass beneath a large tree along the shoreline.

“You’re probably not going to
like this,” he says, then makes some kind of knot with the cord, looping the
length around the tree, effectively tying me to the trunk. He crouches before
me. “I have to get the car. It’s parked under a streetlight. Someone might see
you. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“No. Wait! Don’t—”

“I have to, Ellie. If anyone sees
your tail, there will be trouble. You’re better off staying hidden in the
shadows. Hold onto the cord, or put your fingers in your ears and hide. I’ll be
two minutes, tops.” Then he’s gone, stumbling through the darkness as though he
can’t find a firm grip with his feet.

I shuffle and press my butt to
the back of the tree. My heart pounds so loudly it’s all I seem to hear.

And then . . . I look down at the
long length before me. Diamond shaped crystals spark off my tail and I lift my
feet experimentally. The huge fin tail flexes. I stare in wonder at the beauty
of the colours. The tail isn’t something on my skin, the multi-faceted crystal
hues
are
my skin. My thigh muscles show through the filmy matrix. There
seems to be a kind of natural fold where the inside of my thighs would’ve been.
My bones feel different, too, as though they’re one.

The branches stop some of the
moonlight peeking through, but shimmery sparkles still reflect creamy white and
purple every now and then like polished sea glass.

I flip up my tail, and it lands
on the grass with a great thud. I don’t want to take my fingers out of my ears,
but I hesitantly reach out and touch my thigh, then quickly pull my hand away.
I wipe my hand on my nightie and then shove my finger back into my ear. The
tail is slimy and slick and each scale feels hard at the edges.

What’s going to happen when I
change back?
Can
I change back?

Lakyn bursts through the trees at
that moment still in his wetsuit gear. He runs to me, unties the cord and then
pulls it from my waist and over my head.

I take my fingers out of my ears.

“I’ll come back for that in the
morning.” He gestures to the cord and lifts me into his arms, shuffling through
the bushes toward the open passenger side door of a white Hyundai. “Let’s get
you in the car.” He places me on the front seat, picks up my tail fin and tries
to angle it inside the foot space.

“Oh.” My tail doesn’t fit.

He leans across, adjusts the seat
backwards and then slides it all way back until I’m almost horizontal. “That’s
good. You need to stay low anyway.”

He shuts the door carefully,
minding my tail. The boot
opens,
closes and then the
driver’s side door cracks open.
Old car.
He climbs
inside, hands me a few towels and says, “Wrap yourself up as best you can. We
need to get away from here and dry you off. I can’t turn on the headlights
yet.”

“OK.”
But
easier said than done.
I try to get a towel underneath me, but I wobble
like a drunken-man inside a rolled-up Persian rug.

He starts the engine and revs it
far too hard a couple of times. “Just so you know, tonight’s the first time
I’ve ever driven a car.”

I twist to him in alarm. “What?”

“Hang on.”

“Oh, hell.”
I yank down the seatbelt and click it into place. I can’t reach the handle
above the window, so I brace my knees against the dashboard and hold onto the edges
of the seat. The car dips and then jumps over the parklands.

My ribs jump up with it. CDs
scatter in the console, and he leans forward, obviously trying to see through
the windscreen without lights.

“From what I remember on the way
here, it’s going to get rough. We have to go down a bit of a gully.” The car
suddenly cracks, and then everything flies up, including me. The seatbelt locks
before my body slams against the roof of the car.

On the downward thump, my hip
bones grate against my ribs. “Do you have to go so fast?”

He shakes his head. “I’ve never
done this before. You can’t drive because of your tail.
Nearly
at the road.”
He swerves and I slide all the way across, banging my
cheek against his seat and getting a mouthful of leather. Finally, the smoothness
of the road is beneath us and the tyres stop bouncing around.

My sigh of relief whooshes out, although
the car jerks in stops and starts, and my knees repeatedly ram against the
dash.

He switches on the lights. “I’ll
slow down now.” The car jerks again, stops, stalls. “Great.” He sighs and
starts it again.

I shake my head. “Don’t worry;
just go at whatever speed you can.”

He nods and we take off too fast
while I grip the side of my seat, mentally screaming. He casts me a glance.
“Rub yourself down. I don’t know if you’ll turn back, but it’s your best
chance.”

I grab another towel and fiercely
massage the thick fabric into my scales, the friction heating my tail. After I
give the strange firmness a good going over, I touch the scales again. “It
feels tight,” I say, scared. “Uncomfortable.”

“Yes,” he answers.

He hasn’t acted surprised at all.
“Lakyn, what’s going to happen to me? You knew I was going to change, didn’t
you?”

He tenses. “I couldn’t be sure,
but I had to prepare, though you can probably expect the same amount of pain
changing back.”

“So I will change back?” I ask
hopefully, although I’m not too happy about going through that kind of agony
again. “Lose the tail?”

This time, he turns to me fully,
and I yell out, “Watch out! God! Don’t take your eyes off the road, look ahead!”
I squeeze my eyes shut, but when we don’t crash into anything, I open them
again.

He straightens and focuses in
front of him. “Sorry. I don’t know what will happen, Ellie. You’re the first
human being who has transformed into a mermaid in over a thousand years.”

“I am?” I hold a hand to my head
as I try to take in that piece of information.

“Yes.” He turns the car into a
driveway. Luckily, the gates are open or he would’ve driven straight through
them at the speed he’s going. We bounce our way along the pothole-ridden road
to the hostel.

“
There’s
lots of holes here.” I lift my bottom off the seat to ease the blows.

“It’s the earth,” he says
absently.
“Too soft.
If it rains, sinkholes form.” He
stops the car and cuts the engine.

“Oh.” I unclick the seatbelt and
sit up. “So this is your place.” To my right is the water, and a sharp shiver
clenches my muscles. I look around. On my left is an old building.
The hostel.

Lakyn opens his door and the
interior light switches on. He picks up a fresh towel and spreads it out with
both hands. “Come here,” he murmurs. “Look at your tail. It’s so beautiful.
I’ve never seen those colours before.” He pats the opalescent scales closest to
him and then moves down my tail fin with exquisite care.

I bite my lip, wondering how he
knows my skin is extremely sensitive. I swallow and then suck in a hard breath
at my heart-pounding response to his touch.