by Keri Arthur
I turned and ran for the stairs.
The journey downward took a quarter of the time, though I was sweating and breathing heavily by the time I took off the old lock and swung the gate open. The corridors were shadowed and silent, and I prayed to the Gods of sea and lake that they kept that way. I ran down the hallway, my feet slapping against the cold stone, the sound echoing lightly across the silence.
I grabbed the still unconscious guard from the cell, and once again carried him down to the next lot of cells, the muscles in my back and legs on fire. In the second cell along, I sensed my mother.
I flopped the guard against the wall near the scanner, holding him upright with one hand as I wiped the sweat from my eyes and sucked in great gulps of air. I was shaking so hard anyone would think I’d run a marathon—and I suppose in many ways I had. A marathon of fear. Fear for Trae, fear for the kids, fear that I’d be back too late to free my mom.
After several more deep breaths, I grabbed the guard’s hand and flattened it against the scanner. Again the scanner read his prints, and the light above the door changed color.
I dragged the guard inside the cell, then turned and looked around. The large room was shadowed and quiet. Water trickled softly to my right, the smell of it warm and familiar. Loch water.
So why hadn’t my mother called the loch? She could have, given time and patience.
To the immediate right lay a basic bed. A bedside lamp pooled yellow light across a sparse rug, and highlighted the dust on the cold stone floors. Beyond the bed lay the open bathroom facilities. My mother was in neither the bed nor the bathroom, but she was here somewhere.
“Mom?” I said softly. “It’s me.”
“No.” There was a long pause, as if she were searching for the right thing to say, then, “I told you not to.”
Her words were slurred, her voice filled with a deep sense of weariness and hopelessness. And pain, great, great pain.
It hurt to think that she’d come to such a point where nothing seemed worth fighting for. But it also hurt that she would think I could simply walk away, leaving her here for these monsters to continually prod, and poke, and sample.
I studied the shadows, trying to pin down her location. “I won’t let you die here, Mom. Come on, I’ve
found a way out for us.”
“There is no point. My time is too near.”
Fear clutched at my heart. She had given up on her life. Well and truly given up.
No, part of me wanted to shout. This isn’t like you. We need to fight them. We can’t let them win. Damn it, she’d always been a fighter. Even Dad had acknowledged that. I guess that was part of the reason I’d gone to find her when I was old enough. She hadn’t come, as Dad had promised she one day would, so I’d gone to find and free her. And in the foolishness of youth, had presumed I’d succeed where she had long failed.
What had the scientists done to her that it had come to this?
I finally spotted her silhouette. She was standing near the air-conditioning vent, not facing it but rather with her back to it, so that the slight breeze stirred her hair and flung the dark strands across her face.
For some reason, fear stirred all the more strongly.
“Mom, I won’t leave unless you do.”
“Destiny—”
“No,” I said, more violently than I intended. “There’s no debating this. You’re leaving this goddamn place. They’ve taken you from our lives, taken your life. I won’t let them take you in death as well.”
She was silent for a moment, then sighed. “If you wish.”
“I damn well do wish.”
She hesitated, then stepped forward, and the lampshade’s pale light washed across her face. Or what remained of her face.
My mother had been blinded.
And not just blinded, but disfigured. It almost looked like acid had been splashed across part of her face and her eyes. The left side of her face had an almost melted look, reminding me of the way plastic held too close to a fire softened, then ran. And her eyes—oh God.
I gulped back bile and resisted the urge to look away. One socket had no eye at all. It was just a space filled with scarred and ravaged skin. The other, barely visible under her drooping eyelid, was white. Pure white.
“Not a pretty sight, is it?” she said softly.
There was no bitterness in her voice, no anger, and I think that was even more shocking than what had been done to her.
“Why?” It was all I could say, all I could think to say.
She smiled, though only half her mouth lifted. “They got sick of me trying to escape, so they decided to do something about it. I’ve had a long time to get used to the feel of it, Destiny.”
It certainly explained why they’d never let me see her. I was fiercely glad they hadn’t decided to blind me, as well, and suddenly wondered if Egan had been my savior in more ways than one. After all, I’d done more than my fair share of attempting to escape in the early years of my capture, and blinding me most certainly would have stopped that.
But maybe they figured that having a mutilated female wouldn’t have done their aim to have a breeding pair too much good.
“That’s just—”Words fled. Somehow, monstrous and evil just didn’t seem to cover what they’d done adequately enough. I took a deep breath in an effort to cut the sick churning in my stomach, then said, “Was it deliberate?”
“They intended to take my sight, so yes, but my strength took them by surprise and it went slightly wrong.” Bitterness crept into her voice. “Even after all this time, they are still surprised by the things we do. Despite all their technology, they have not learned that much about us. It is, perhaps, the only blessing in this whole mess.”
Anger swirled through me. “Damn it, Mom, why didn’t you call the loch? Why didn’t you punish the bastards for doing this?”
“Because I can’t.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I can’t call the loch. At first I think it was drugs, but the longer it went on, the more the restriction became a part of my very nature. I can’t control water anymore, Des. It’s been too long, and that part of my soul has shriveled up and died.”
Fear slithered through me. “But controlling water is as much a part of you as flying and fire are to an air dragon. How can your own nature restrict something like that?”
“Because there is a limit to how long a sea dragon can be away from the sea, Destiny. Loch and lake may sustain us for years, but we need to be in the sea if we are to retain the sea in our souls.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddery breath. I’d speculated that this might be the case, but I’d certainly been hoping that it wasn’t true. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re a half blood. Because no one—not even me—really knows how the rules apply to a sea dragon who has the fire of the day running through their blood.” She hesitated. “What was the point in warning you, when the rules might not apply to you? Only . . . it seemed they did.”
A chill ran through me at her words. “How close had I come to losing my powers?”
“Very.” She rubbed her arms lightly, as if similarly chilled. “It took five years for my control to fade, Des, and that was longer than I’d thought possible. I could feel the slip of power in you after eleven years. You were walking the edge of losing your soul when you broke out of here.”
And still she hadn’t warned me. Maybe she simply didn’t want to worry me any further. “So it wasn’t just for Dad’s sake that you wanted me out?”
She smiled gently. “It was for both of you. I didn’t want either of you to suffer.”
“And you think Dad or I don’t want the same for you? Do you think we don’t care whether you die here or die free?”
“Des, the love of my life is dead, and my soul is shattered. The place of my death no longer matters, only death itself.”
The place did matter, because without the dawn ceremony, her soul would be as lost as my dad’s would have been
. It was just more evidence to the fact that she wasn’t thinking entirely straight—and whether it was drugs, or losing the sea, or something else entirely didn’t matter. She might sound reasonable, but she wasn’t.
“And,” she continued softly, “I have no choice in the death matter anyway. The drug they used to keep me calm over the years has done far more than just dampen the abilities I no longer have. Too much has built up in my system and it has poisoned me. It eats away at my insides, and there is no stopping it now. My time is close, Destiny.”
Her words made my heart ache—not just for her pain, but because I was losing her just when I’d finally found her. The family I’d hoped to regain once she was free was nothing more than ashes blowing on the wind. Just like my dad.
I blinked back tears and swept my gaze down the length of her, for the first time noticing how thin she was. Her hands were little more than skin stretched over bones, her ribs and hips protruding. Even if she could have escaped, it was doubtful she’d survive the cold, dark waters of the loch in that condition. There was no padding, no insulation against the cold. And while a dragon’s skin might be designed to protect us against the icy depths, tough hide alone was not enough.
“There may be no stopping it, but that doesn’t mean you have to die here.” I walked over to her and wrapped my arms around her. I might have been hugging a skeleton, but it felt so good to hold her after all these years of not even being allowed to see her. And to have her taken away so soon after finding her . . . Tears stung my eyes again but I blinked them back again. Now was not the time for grief. That could come later, when it was all over.
“It’s so good to see you,” I whispered, when I could.
She hugged me back, her frail arms displaying a surprising amount of strength. “And it’s good to finally be able to hold you, my stubborn, beautiful child.”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the run of more tears, and kissed her ruined cheek. I so wanted to do more, to hug her and kiss her and tell her how much I missed her, how much I loved her, but we just didn’t have the time. Besides, she knew. It was in her touch. In her gentle, mutilated smile.
I pulled away, and tucked my arm in hers. Her skin was like paper. Brittle, icy paper. And not all of the cold in her skin was the night and the nature of a sea dragon. Some of it was the ice of death. I bit back the rise of bile and anger, and forced a calmness in my voice as I said, “Let’s get out of here. Dad awaits, and you know how impatient he can be.”
She laughed softly. “Yes. And I’m afraid it’s a trait our daughter shares.”
“That, unfortunately, is true.”
I guided her past the pool, around the still unconscious guard and through the door, which I closed behind us. The green light I could do nothing about, not without grabbing the guard and using his fingerprints again—and that was time I didn’t want to waste. I had a feeling we didn’t have a whole lot of it left anyway.
Another explosion ripped through the air as we began to walk, and the very walls around us seemed to shake. Dust puffed down from the ceiling. Trae had obviously set timers on some of his explosions. I wondered how he’d managed it. And whether we’d actually have an ancestral home to worry about by the time all his diversions had finally gone off.
“What’s that?” Mom whispered.
“A little something to sidetrack the scientists.” I tightened my grip on her and tried to hurry her steps a little. Though the hallway itself was quiet, my skin itched with the need to be gone, to get out of this place. My luck might have held so far, but my luck had never been that good for long.
A point proven when the sound of rapidly approaching steps whispered across the air.
“Oh, no,” my mother said, her voice cracked and unsteady. “Not now. We can’t be caught now.”
“We won’t.”
The footsteps were coming from the corridor in front of the guard’s box—the one that ran at an angle to this one—and were still some distance away. I stopped, hoping they’d take another corridor, hoping they’d go into one of the other rooms.
They didn’t.
I cursed softly, then guided my mother into the nearest open cell—one that was bigger than some of the others I’d seen. The wide pool was deep, and the dark water smelled fresher than the water in my mother’s cell. The ceiling soared above us, the rafters dark with age and decorated with dust and webs. We might be in the basement, but this room rose the full height of the house. Those were roof rafters above us, not the supports of the next floor.
“I know this room,” my mother said, her nose in the air and nostrils flaring. “They do tests here. Air tests. Underwater tests.”
I didn’t need to ask what those tests were, because I’d been put through a few of them in my time in this place. But never here.
I guided her over to the water’s edge, then gently pressed her down. “Hide in the water. If they come in here and discover us, duck under. You may not be able to use the water’s power anymore, but you’re still a dragon.”
“But you can’t—”
“Mom, just trust me.”
“I do trust you. I just don’t want these monsters catching you again.”
I smiled. “I thought we were the only monsters in this world.”
“Monsters come in all shapes and sizes,” she said grimly. “And many of them are human-born.”
Wasn’t that the truth. “Please, Mom, get into the water. I’ll hide over near the door. With any sort of luck, they won’t even come this way.” Even as I said the words, I didn’t believe them. But as long as she did, nothing else mattered.
She hesitated, then slipped into the cold, dark water. As her sigh of pleasure ran across the silence, I walked behind the door. The footsteps drew closer, not stopping at the guard’s box but moving on quickly. I flexed my fingers, trying to ease the tension creeping through my muscles and wishing I still had the wrench. But I’d put it down when I’d dragged the guard inside Mom’s cell, and I hadn’t thought to bring it with me.
The footsteps came closer, then stopped just outside the door. My breath caught somewhere in my throat and refused to budge, and my pulse seemed to beat in my ears, so loud I swear that person outside the door would surely have to hear it.
For several seconds, the stranger didn’t move. He just stood there, breathing steadily. I couldn’t see him through the crack between the door and the jamb, and he didn’t seem to have any particular scent.
Sweat trickled down my spine. I licked my lips, praying he’d move on. But he didn’t, and it was pretty easy to guess why.
He knew we were in here. Knew because he held one of the receivers. It didn’t matter whether it was my signal or Mom’s, because in the end, we were both here and both caught.
“I know you’re in the water, Aila. Come out where I can see you.”
My breath caught at the sound of his voice, and my stomach began twisting itself into knots.
Because it wasn’t just a guard who stood outside our door. It was the man in charge himself.
Marsten.
The one man I’d been hoping to avoid.
The one man I would probably have to kill if I was ever to have any hope of living a peaceful life.
I flexed my fingers, and forced myself to remain still. He obviously wasn’t standing close to the door, otherwise I’d see him. And until he was close enough for me to see and assess whether he was armed, I had to remain where I was.
“Aila, we know it’s your daughter and her latest flame out there causing problems. If we catch her, we’ll kill her. Unless you come out. Unless you stop her.”
I glanced at the dark pool, saw no ripple in the water, nothing to indicate my mother was there or listening. But his words made me frown. Was Marsten picking up my signal, Mom’s, or both?
And if it were both, why would he say it was me out there causing problems?
Was he trying to bluff us? Or biding his time and waiting for reinforcements? After all, how much more could there
be out there for Trae’s little diversions to blow up?
Urgency pulsed and suddenly my feet were itching with the need to move, to get out of here, while we still had the chance. But until Marsten moved, until I knew whether he was armed or not, that really wasn’t an option.
Neither was standing here waiting.
I looked around the room. There were various cases around walls, but even if they held something that could be used as a weapon, they were all locked, and therefore useless to me. And the scientists still weren’t foolish enough to leave anything that might provide weaponry laying about.
“Aila, you have to the count of three, then I’ll start firing. And who knows just what—or who—I’ll hit?”
My heart jumped into my throat and seemed to lodge there. Yup. He knew Mom wasn’t in here alone.
“One.”
There was no movement from the water. I stepped back. I wasn’t sure where I was going or what I intended to do. I just knew I didn’t want to be near that door when Marsten started firing.
“Two.”
The whisper of a safety being clicked off ran across the silence. Sweat trickled down my spine, and I retreated another step.
“Three.”
Water stirred. Soft ripples of movement ran from the far end of the pool, growing ever stronger as they raced toward us, reaching the end and splashing upward.
“If you want me, Marsten, come and get me. I’m through dancing to your particular tune.”
Though her words were defiant, I could hear the weariness in her voice. The pain. She was closer to joining Dad in the forever lands than I’d imagined.
I blinked back tears, and waited for Marsten’s response. It wasn’t long in coming. Lights flooded the room, their brightness making me blink.
“Come out of the water, Aila.”
“You come into the room, and maybe I’ll consider it.” The words rumbled out of the water, causing little ripples to scurry across its surface.
There was one footstep, then another, and the scent of smoke and sweaty male began to sting the air. Obviously, Marsten had been outside when Trae had begun his diversion.
More steps, then suddenly Marsten was in the room, his silver hair glistening in the brightness as he edged sideways, the weapon clenched in his hands and pointed directly at the water.