Dangerous Depths (The Sea Monster Memoirs)

by Karen Amanda Hooper

  Yara tilted her head. “Yes, yes, and no. We’ll need a couple of weeks to—”

  “Weeks?” Rownan repeated. “No way. That’s too long. In a couple of weeks Vienna could be dead.”

  “You crazy fools!” I shouted. “She went in there sixteen years ago. She’s already dead.”

  “Shut up, you loveless harpy!” Rownan’s claws shot out and he swatted at me, but I swooped out of his reach.

  “If not dead, she’s an empty shell of herself.” I snapped my teeth at Rownan. “You’re risking Yara’s life for someone who is either gone or soulless.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that!” His nostrils flared as he thrashed his arms. “I hope your wings fall off!”

  “Both of you, stop it!” Yara ordered.

  Rownan kept his eyes on me and spit in the water. Knowing he really wanted to spit at me, I stuck out my tongue at him.

  He rolled his eyes. “Yara will be fine. Even if she does die, Medusa will just send her back again.”

  That thought hadn’t occurred to me, and it momentarily gave me hope, but then I looked at Yara.

  “Not true,” she said. “Medusa and Poseidon set some terms in our bargain too. Medusa made it very clear that I will not get a third chance at life. When I die again, it will be permanent.”

  We were all silent for a few moments. Medusa had reigned over Rathe for hundreds of years. Her sisters had reigned for centuries. How long would Yara live if she didn’t do anything stupid and get herself killed? What would happen to me and my position if Yara was gone?

  “You’re not dying anytime soon,” I told her. I shot Rownan a fiery glare. “Especially not in Harte.”

  “Whatever,” Rownan said. “I’m going to Harte. Today.”

  “No, you’re not!” Yara yelled.

  Rownan dipped under the water and Yara dove in after him. They wrestled beneath the surface. I had no intentions of interfering, but then he used his claws on her. I cried out in pain as he sliced open her chest. I felt her injury as if it was my own. Part of me relished the pain because it meant my connection with Yara was strengthening. The other part of me rushed to her defense and dove down, tearing him off her.

  I grabbed him by his hair, burst out of the water, and flew straight for a colony of jagged rocks. I pinned him down with my talons, screeching and snapping at his face.

  “Nixie, stop!” Yara shouted.

  She wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me off him, but not before I kicked him in the jaw. “Don’t ever hurt her again, you useless seal!”

  Yara grabbed my chin and forced me to look at her. She was angry and flustered. “You didn’t need to attack him!”

  “I’m your siren. My duty is to protect you.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me. I just need you to follow my orders.”

  My wings drooped, but I couldn’t look away from her. How could she say something like that? How could she deprive me of reacting to my natural instincts? “But I—”

  “No arguing.” She let go of me and flew to Rownan’s side. “Are you okay?”

  Rownan’s face and arms were bleeding. He rubbed and stretched his back, but he looked as arrogant as ever. “Just keep your attack bird away from me.”

  I imagined ripping every hair out of his head, making a nest out of it, then setting it on fire with my anger.

  Treygan leaped out of the water and pulled Rownan under so fast that Yara and I were momentarily stunned. Then Yara dove beneath the water, and I followed.

  Treygan had Rownan in a chokehold with one of Rownan’s arms pinned behind his back. He must have seen Rownan attack me and Yara.

  I pumped my fist. Break his other arm!

  Yara was beside them in an instant, pulling Treygan’s hand from Rownan’s throat.

  Apologize to both of them, Treygan commanded Rownan while extending his sight so we could hear his thoughts.

  I’m sorry, Rownan said. You don’t understand how desperate I am to find Vienna.

  Treygan pulled Rownan so close their noses almost touched. I didn’t hear everything Treygan said to him, but I caught his last words: … ever again, I’ll destroy you.

  Please, Yara begged. No more fighting. Rownan, we want to help you, but the violence needs to stop and you need to heal.

  After all that, she still wanted to help Rownan. She didn’t even glance in my direction. She had no consideration for me whatsoever. Our bond meant nothing to her.

  How quickly the tide had turned.

  While I appreciated Treygan defending me and Nixie, I sympathized with Rownan.

  Let him go, I said to Treygan.

  Rownan drifted backward, holding his injured wrist and looking mostly defeated. A few days ago I would’ve strangled him myself for all his lies and deceit. I’d had to hide from the selkies because they wanted to kill me. Now I was part selkie, and I felt a fierce and protective loyalty to him.

  That same instinct burned inside of me for every sea creature: merfolk, selkies, sirens, gorgons, even Sage.

  When I first discovered a snake attached to my head I was horrified, but it didn’t take long for me to grow fond of her. Sometimes I heard whispers in my mind and wondered if Sage communicated like the rest of us did underwater, or if I was just imagining she had a voice. I never could have predicted I would become so attached to a serpent—literally and emotionally. Feeling my affection for her, Sage rubbed against my neck.

  My love for Rathe and its creatures, even those I hadn’t met yet, was almost overwhelming at times. Medusa told me I would inherit her instincts, but had I also inherited her love for this realm and everything in it?

  I didn’t want to fight with Rownan or Nixie. I was terrified to enter Harte, but I couldn’t sit back and wave goodbye and good luck as Rownan went on an eternal vacation to hell.

  You can’t go like this, I told Rownan, swimming closer to him. Let me take you to the Violets so they can heal you.

  I’m fine. I’m going now. If the three of you want to try to stop me, then so be it, but you’ll have to kill me because I won’t give up.

  Damn it, Rownan, Treygan said. You’re injured. Don’t you want to give yourself the best chance of surviving? You need to be as healthy and strong as possible.

  Heartbreak makes me invincible. No amount of physical pain can stop me from getting to Vienna as soon as possible.

  I flashed a worried glance at Treygan, knowing we would never win this argument. Treygan wouldn’t hurt Rownan badly enough to stop him from going into Harte. Neither would I.

  Fine, Treygan said. Be stubborn. We’ll go now.

  I took a deep breath. We were really doing this. My eyes locked with Rownan’s. I nodded in agreement with Treygan. But when you can’t keep up and we have to carry you, expect a resentful I-told-you-so.

  Don’t worry your pearly little head. I’ll keep up.

  You are mad! Insane! Nixie mentally shouted at me. You are throwing away your new position and your entire life.

  You know my philosophy, Nixie. Love until it kills you, because there’s nothing better worth dying for.

  Stheno and Euryale were right, she hissed. You’re not nearly intelligent enough to take Medusa’s place.

  I flinched. I would expect Stheno and Euryale to say something like that, but it hurt to hear Nixie agree with them. We’ll see about that.

  I turned and swam away. Rownan and Treygan followed. I heard Nixie break through the surface. I didn’t know if she would travel to the gate with us or desert me, but it didn’t matter.

  Treygan, Rownan, and I didn’t say anything else to each other as we swam closer to the dark border of Rathe. I had so many things I wanted to discuss with Rownan. I wanted to thank him for helping me on the Triple Eighteen, for enduring torture from Jack so that Treygan and I could be together, and for protecting me from being sacrificed by the selkies. I wanted to tell him his father truly did love him and was proud of him. But everything I had rehearsed in my head didn’t feel adequate. We all sta
red ahead and swam in silence.

  Rownan was first to spot Poseidon’s marker. The rocks were taller than I pictured, but there was no mistaking the black mountain made to look like a trident. That alone should have been a severe enough warning to stay away from it.

  “Never cross Poseidon’s trident,” Treygan recited.

  A legendary proverb we were foolishly choosing to disobey. I realized everything had gone still and quiet. There had been no plant life for miles. No creatures in the sea or air except for us. Even the waves crashing against the rocks made no sound.

  My hands were shaking. I looked at Treygan. His jaw was tense, and he was breathing hard. I glanced at Rownan. I had never seen him so pale. I spotted a vibrant red shimmering in the far distance. Nixie was perched on the ledge of a cliff several peaks to the right of Trident Rock. She hadn’t deserted me after all.

  My tail felt ice-cold beneath the water, probably because all my blood was being used to fuel the supersonic beating of my heart. I stared up at the towering pillars of rock. I tried swallowing, but my mouth was bone-dry. “You’re sure we’re doing this?”

  Treygan squeezed my hand. Rownan gave one firm nod. I took a deep breath, and we swam into a foreboding mist, entering the shadow between two of the spears.

  A burning jolt shot through me. We were thrown backward by a curtain of electricity. The shock was so powerful that we were launched up out of the water. I landed in a hard belly flop that stung the whole front of my body. All of my hair was standing on end. My skin felt like a crackling fire.

  “What the hell was that?” Rownan gasped.

  Treygan shook his head as if trying to shake off the pain. “It felt like lightning hit us.”

  I searched the sky to see if Nixie had created an electrical storm to stop us, but saw nothing except spires of black rock silently mocking us.

  Rownan swam forward again, only to be thrown back even harder. His body flew in an arc as if he had been punched with a powerful uppercut from an invisible giant. He skidded across the water. He was much more shaken up by the second jolt.

  Nixie flew toward us.

  “Stay right here,” I told Treygan. “And don’t let him try again until I get back. We don’t need him shocking himself to death.”

  I flew up into the sky to meet Nixie.

  “I thought this would be one of the most depressing moments of my life,” Nixie said, grinning. She was biting her lip so hard I couldn’t tell if it was bleeding or just her natural shade of crimson. “But Rownan getting trounced a second time was pure bliss.”

  “We couldn’t cross. Do you have any idea why?”

  Nixie shrugged. “No clue.”

  Sage curved forward, her diamond-like eyes blinking at me as her scales warmed against my skin. Sea monster worlds. Part human.

  My wings drooped as I looked over my shoulder at Treygan and Rownan waiting below. I muttered to myself as the truth hit me. “It’s a gate between two sea monster worlds. The three of us are all part human.”

  “What?” Nixie asked.

  Of course. I swooped down to Treygan and Rownan. “We can’t pass through the gateway because we all have human blood in us. Only pure-blooded sea monsters can pass through it.”

  “Ohhhh,” Nixie cooed behind me.

  “No! No way!” Rownan punched the water while yelling like a maniac. Treygan and I let him throw his fit. He deserved to lose control. I would have too if someone had told me there was no way to save Treygan from a damned world.

  I looked at Treygan and tried to imagine it. What if he was in Harte and I couldn’t get to him? Technically, we had only been together for weeks, but our bond was already so strong. Rownan and Vienna had years together before they were separated. How does someone ever accept that they have to give up on reuniting with their soul mate?

  Rownan finally stopped punching and yelling. He clutched his face in his hands. “This can’t be happening.”

  Treygan and I kept silent. Nothing we could say would help. My heart broke for Rownan, but I felt heinous because a big part of me was relieved that we couldn’t enter Harte. If we couldn’t enter, we couldn’t not come back.

  “I’ll kill him.” Rownan dove beneath the water. His tail shot away from us faster than I had ever seen him swim.

  “Where is he going?” I asked Treygan. “Who is he going to kill?”

  Treygan shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Our father.”

  The long swim hadn’t calmed me down at all. Treygan caught up to me and stayed by my side the whole way. He only attempted to stop me once.

  I scrambled up the ladder to the pier. Yara was already standing there, waiting with clothes for us. I pushed past her.

  “At least put some shorts on,” she yelled, trying to keep up with me. “It’s tourist season!”

  I turned around, snatched a pair of shorts from her, pulled them on, and stormed off. Yara and Treygan followed close behind.

  I stomped up the porch steps of Lloyd’s house and kicked the door open. He was sitting in his recliner with a drink in his hand, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “I couldn’t pass through the gate! Do you want to know why?” I leaned down, bracing my arms on either side of his chair. I was so close to his face I could smell the orange juice he was drinking. “Because I’m part human. Because you tainted me with your human blood, and now I can’t save Vienna!”

  Yara and Treygan stayed on the other side of the room.

  “Did you know about this?” I asked through clenched teeth.

  My meddling father said nothing. Just downed his juice and rattled the ice cubes around his empty glass. His silence said it all.

  I grabbed a vase and smashed it on the tile floor. It didn’t put a dent in my anger. I grabbed the side table by Lloyd’s chair.

  “Rownan!” Yara yelled, but I didn’t stop.

  I lifted the table over my head and threw it at the floor-to-ceiling aquarium. The glass cracked, but didn’t break. My chest heaved up and down. My eyes met Treygan’s.

  “Feel better?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He bent down, knocked books off the coffee table, and picked it up. He handed me the table, and I hurled it at the aquarium. The glass shattered. Water and fish poured out onto the floor.

  “Rownan, stop!” Yara sprang forward, but Treygan stopped her.

  “Let him be,” Lloyd said. “At least that’s a mess we can clean up.”

  “How could you do this to me?” I yelled at Lloyd. “Why did you allow me to have hope? Haven’t I suffered enough already?”

  Lloyd shifted in his seat, his joints cracking and popping. “I suspected you might not be able to pass through the gate, but I wasn’t certain.”

  “You should have told me!”

  Yara and Treygan were working together to clean up the aquarium mess, but Yara stepped away to shout in my face. “He can’t meddle, Rownan. At all.”

  “He meddles to protect you and Treygan,” I snarled.

  Yara opened her mouth to argue, but my worthless father cut her off.

  “I should have told you,” he said. “I’m very sorry. There are many things I should have done differently.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  “Ease up,” Yara snapped at me. “He’s in no condition to be yelled at. He feels bad enough as it is, and you’re making things worse.”

  “Worse? How can things be worse? Vienna is trapped in hell, and I can’t even attempt to save her! I’m never going to see her again.”

  Yara’s eyes lowered and she sat on the arm of Lloyd’s chair.

  I glanced at Treygan, but he was busy ushering waves of water and fish into a new stone tank he had just created.

  My knees grew weaker as the truth of my words settled deeper into my soul. I was never going to see Vienna again. She was alone, trapped in the damned realm for eternity.

  I shook my head hard. “No. I refuse to let her be trapped in there.” I started
pacing. “I couldn’t pass through the gate because I have human blood, but a pure mer or selkie could get through. I’ll ask the selkies. Someone will do it.” Even as I spoke the words I knew I was lying to myself. I had asked for volunteers when I first found out where Vienna had gone. No one would go with me, not even her own brother. “Or maybe Delmar or Pango. They’re brave and strong.”

  Treygan and Yara shot each other skeptical glances.

  “What should I do?” I asked desperately.

  No one said anything. The room became hotter. I couldn’t stand around doing nothing, losing more hope with every second. “Please, someone come up with an idea to save the day, because I’m going out of my mind!”

  More deafening silence. Treygan leaned against the wall and stared at the floor. Yara stared at the new stone fish tank.

  Lloyd cleared his throat then reached up and held Yara’s hand. “How’s Koraline doing?”

  My jaw went slack. Then I punched a wall. My fist went through the plaster. “Koraline? I’m standing here begging for help at the most desperate and agonizing point in my entire life, and you’re changing the subject?” I punched three more holes in the wall.

  “Rownan, stop!” Yara stood, but my selfish father kept a grip on her hand so she couldn’t leave his side.

  “I need a drink. Or twenty.” I stomped out the front door, and then slammed it behind me as hard as I could.

  Jack Frost’s was the nearest place with vodka. As much as I didn’t want to see Jack again, I needed a serious fix. Not that any amount of drinking would ever fix my obliterated heart.

  ~

  Physically, I swam alone to the Keys, but memories of Vienna and images of where she was and what might happen to her suffocated me every second. I was almost to the pier near Jack Frost’s when I spotted a blur of green and yellow swimming in my direction.

  I tried to dart away before they saw me, but Pango called out to me.

  Fancy meeting you here, Pango said as we reached each other.

  Merrick’s eyes narrowed. Aren’t you supposed to be in Harte?

  We couldn’t pass through the gate because of our human blood.