Tempest Rising (30 page)

His words pierced my heart, had tears blooming behind my eyes even as I shook my head
. You can’t keep me locked away forever, Kona. The ocean’s a dangerous place. You can’t protect me from everything.

That’s not what I’m doing. I’m not
, he insisted at the dubious look I gave him.
But if you don’t believe me about anything else, believe me when I say you’re not ready to face her yet.

I—

Don’t.
His voice was harsh now, his eyes nearly black.
Don’t ask me to send you up there. I can’t, Tempest. I just can’t.

He lowered his head, kissed me with bruising force. Then pulled away.
Stay here.
It was a definite order, one that I had no desire to follow despite the fear clawing its way along my every nerve ending. But the look he gave me promised all kinds of trouble if I didn’t listen to him.
I’ll leave Oliwa to stand guard outside the cave and I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.

Be careful.

His wicked grin popped out, despite the seriousness of the situation.
I always am, baby. I always am.

And then he was whipping away, swimming so fast he was little more than a blur in the cave’s darkness. After he left, I sat staring at the four walls of the cave, the acuity of my mermaid vision helping me pick out little details despite the near blackness of my surroundings.

A crab scuttled by, inches from my toes, and against the wall was a bed of clams or oysters—I could never tell them apart in the light, let alone in the middle of a dank, dark cave.

I glanced toward the room’s entrance, wondered if Kona had made it all the way out of the cave yet. Wondered what it was he was going to fight up there.

I wanted to follow him—had planned on it all along—but his last words echoed in my soul. The woman I love. I was the woman he loved. I didn’t know how I felt about that.

Part of me was ecstatic—who wouldn’t be upon finding out that the guy she was falling in love with felt the same way about her? But another part of me was terrified, and angry. How could he tell me that he loved me and then just take off toward almost certain death?

I pushed away from the wall, swam back toward the cave’s entrance. I moved a lot slower than Kona, partly because my eyesight wasn’t as good as his and I was afraid I’d smack into a wall, and partly because I was still making up my mind about what I was going to do.

Oh, I knew what I wanted to do—I wanted to hightail it back up to wherever Kona was and see what was going on—despite the warnings he’d given me. But he’d be furious when he saw me. Even worse, he’d be distracted, and the last thing I wanted to do was get Kona killed because he was too busy trying to protect me to look out for himself.

He loved me. Kona loved me. I hugged the words to my chest like a precious gift as I cautiously approached the first room of the cave. If he came back—
when
he came back—I was going to tell him that I felt the same. That despite everything I had fallen in love with him too.

For a moment, I thought of Mark, and my conscience screamed at me. How could I have done this, just fallen for some other guy when I was supposed to be in love with him? But the longer I was down here, the harder it was to picture his face, to remember what it felt like to be held by him.

Is it the water?
I wondered.
The mermaid in me? Or just the fact that Kona dwarfs every other guy in the room?

I swam a little closer to the cave’s entrance and as soon as I did, weird little vibrations seemed to shimmer through the water. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed them—or would have mistaken them for waves—but my body was different now. The mermaid side picked up on things the human half had no shot at sensing.

Holding out my hand, I let the strange water pattern run over my fingers and up my arm as I tried to figure out what it was. And then, as the vibrations reached my ear for the first time, I realized what I was doing. I was “feeling” the sound of what was going on outside the cave, above me.

The water muted noise down here—one of the many reasons I figured mermaids and selkies talked with their minds—but that didn’t mean that the sound didn’t travel in waves, like some kind of natural sonar. I thought back to what I’d learned in biology, during the lessons on sea animals. Mr. D’Angelo had told us a lot of animals used sonar. My mermaid ear must be able to pick it up like they could, though I still didn’t know how to interpret what it was I was “hearing.”

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t guess. A fight was going on out there, between Kona and the others and God only knew what. I shot to the cave’s entrance, peered out though I knew Kona would be furious if he saw me. But the not knowing was killing me. What if he was hurt? What if he was already dead?

No! I slammed a door on the thought, refusing to believe it. Kona was smart and fast and obviously knew what he was doing when he wasn’t trying to protect me from my own idiocy. Surely he could handle whatever was up there.

And yet—there was a strange feeling in the dark water near the opening of the cave. A strange consistency that made it feel thicker than usual, heavier.

Maybe I should just go check on Oliwa. We could swim out together a little ways and see if we could see anything that was going on—

A black hand reached out of the darkness, grabbed my head, and shoved me—hard—into the cave.

I wasn’t braced for the attack and I flew against the back wall of the cavern, smacking against it hard enough to disorient me for a second. It was all the advantage he needed. I watched in horror as Malu swam toward me, a wicked-looking knife clutched in one of his hands and murder on his face.

What are you doing?
I asked, frantically scrambling along the wall as I tried to put as much distance between us as I could. If I could get outside, get to Oliwa …

Another thought occurred to me as I pictured Kona’s youngest brother, with his ready grin and sparkling eyes. If Malu was in here then he’d somehow gotten past Oliwa. Visions of my new friend lying injured on the ocean floor assaulted me, had me rushing toward the cave’s entrance as fast as I could go.

Malu caught me and sent me spinning back against the wall for a second time.

I’m ending this thing now, before it gets completely out of control.

Seeing as how he was coming at me with the intention of killing me, I was pretty sure things were already out of control.

You don’t want to do this
, I said, then could have kicked myself. I sounded like every too-dumb-to-live heroine who had ever bought it in a horror movie.

Sure I do.
He came a little closer.

That wasn’t the response I’d been hoping for.
Why?
I demanded, even as I tried to formulate a plan. I needed to get out of there, needed to check on Oliwa, because everything inside me was screaming that the strange consistency I’d felt in the water a couple of minutes before was blood. If it was—and he was injured—I had to get him to Kona. But Malu was in front of the cave’s opening. I’d have to swim right by him to reach it—which meant he’d be able to grab me at any time. And frankly, I didn’t relish another spin against the cave walls. Already I could feel a bump rising on the back of my head.

Not to mention that if I actually managed to get by him, I’d end up trying to outrace him, which was patently absurd if he was anywhere near as fast as Kona. I was quick, but without my tail I was in no way able to compete with someone who’d lived his entire life underwater.

Because you’re more trouble than you’re worth. Tiamat has nearly died twice trying to get her hands on you. Once you’re gone, she’ll be safe. We all will be.

Was he for real? He was trying to protect the sea witch from
me
? What had I ever done to her besides defend myself?

I didn’t have time to think about it, because Malu was getting closer. With every step he took toward me, I got a better look at him, and any hope I’d been holding out that I could reason with him—which, let’s face it, wasn’t a lot to begin with—died a quick, painful death. His eyes glittered with the fervor and excitement of a fanatic and his mouth was set into a grim snarl straight out of my nightmares.

No. There would be no reasoning with him and no swimming by him. Which meant my only chance was—

I took off, full speed, toward the back of the cave, zipping from one room to the next without taking the time to look where I was going. I swam by memory, by instinct, until I found myself slamming through the entrance to the seventh and final room.

I only had a few seconds—the element of surprise had bought me that but not much more—and I looked frantically for some place to conceal myself. Some place that would give me a couple of minutes’ respite to try to figure out how I was supposed to get out of this.

But there was no place to hide here, other than in the jagged crevices of the wall. I ran for the biggest one I could find and pressed myself deep inside of it, bowing my back so that no part of me stuck out from behind the rocky edges.

The walls were rough, sharp, and they dug into my shoulders and back, reopening wounds that had just begun to heal. I wondered, for a second, if selkies could smell blood the way sharks could. But I wasn’t planning on hiding in here for any length of time no matter what—just long enough to give myself a chance to regroup.

I ran my hands over the jagged curves of the rock, searching for a crack, an edge, any weakness that might give me a chance of prying loose a piece to use as a weapon. It wasn’t great, but it was the best chance I had. Which wasn’t much against a knife, but dwelling on how screwed I was wasn’t going to make things any better.

And then even that thought was gone as I realized Malu was in the room with me. He hadn’t found my hiding spot yet, but he knew I was here. It was only a matter of time. I had hoped to catch him off guard, had hoped it would take him a little longer to track me so that I could catch my breath and find a weapon, meager though it would be.

But that obviously wasn’t going to happen. My time was up.

My heart was beating so fast that I was sure he would be able to sense it, would find me from the vibrations it alone created. With each second that passed I became more certain of discovery. With each step he took deeper into the room I tried to imagine what it would feel like to die.

My insides started to hum, to vibrate with fear until it was all I could do to stand still. I used my right hand to keep searching for a crack, for some small piece of rock I could break off to use in a fight. But the cave wall was solid and I was shaking so badly that I could barely pull at it anyway.

The humming inside me grew worse, took over me, until I felt like one huge, vibrating guitar string. I didn’t know what it was, had never felt anything like it before. I wondered if it was terror—if this was what the true, absolute fear of dying felt like—and then there wasn’t time for me to think. Wasn’t time for me to do anything but react as Malu’s eyes locked with mine.

He headed toward me, knife raised, and I threw out a hand to defend myself. But as I did, I felt something come from deep inside me, a strange pulse of energy that worked its way up from my center to my arm and then out my fingertips—heading straight at Malu.

It caught both of us unaware and he stumbled backward. I did it again and he almost fell. But the third time he was braced and ready for it and he swam right through it, like a high-speed torpedo on self-destruct.

A scream ripped through my mind as he barreled toward me, all rational thought gone as the need to survive kicked in. At the last possible second I ducked, hitting the cavern floor hard. Malu careened into the wall, but within moments had righted himself and was headed toward me again.

I crabwalked across the floor as fast as I could—I didn’t have time to try to propel myself upward—my fingers desperately searching the ground for something, anything, I could use as a weapon. I was almost against the wall when I found it, a long, razor-sharp piece of shell that sliced deep into my finger.

Ignoring the pain and the blood that was making my already-slick hands slicker, I wrapped my fingers around the shard and waited.

He was almost on me, a look of murderous rage on his face as he started to bring the knife down toward my unprotected jugular. He was bent over, trying to reach me, and I took what I knew was the only opportunity I would get. I sat up abruptly, startling him, jerking my body out of the way of his knife as, screaming inside, I drove up as hard as I could with the shell fragment.

It hit his belly one second before my fist did, piercing through skin and muscles like they were little more than the water that ebbed and flowed around us. It was his turn to scream, then he fell backward, the knife clattering to the ocean floor as he stared at me in disbelief. His hands went to his stomach, where I had buried the shard as deeply as it would reach.

I scrambled for the discarded knife as he yanked at the shell, trying to pull it out. But once my hand closed over the hilt of the knife I wasn’t sticking around to see what happened to him. I swam as fast as I could toward the room’s entrance.