Zamir frowned as he glanced over the ship rail. “There are things underwater too.” His scowl deepened. Lots of things.
Ginny approached him. “Still no sign of Kai?” she asked, her quiet tone laden with worry.
“No,” Zamir said. He might have assured her that Kai was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, but how could he, when he wasn’t sure how Kai would fare? Armies of Beltiamatu could easily take on navies of submarines and frigates, but a lone merman?
What could Kai do?
What would Kai have done?
Corey, a machine gun slung around his back, joined them on the deck. “I thought I left all this shit behind when I quit the SEALs twenty years ago. We have a plan?”
It took Zamir several moments to realize that Corey was talking to him. “Not really, but next time, we should steal a faster ship.”
“Aye. That I agree with.”
The wind whipped around the ship, stirring up the waves until Zamir could hardly tell what was happening below. He grimaced, his hands clenching into fists on the rail. They would have little or no warning if a frigate, or a submarine, released a torpedo.
“Here they come,” Corey said mildly, breaking several minutes of tense silence. Frigates appeared on the horizon, looming larger with every second. “That’s plenty of firepower. Them wanting us alive is the only chance we’ve got.”
“Then let’s make that chance go as far as we can,” Ginny said. Her voice did not quaver. Zamir suspected that her patience for being chased and shot at had just about been exhausted. She stared down at her hands, palms open. “What happens to the aether when I die?”
Zamir concealed his wince. “I don’t know. I don’t recommend finding out.”
“I’m not going to live forever.”
“Then at some point, we’ll know the answer. But let’s make sure it’s not today.” Zamir unlocked a steel box screwed into the deck and pulled out his assault rifle. “Ginny, stay with Meifeng. He’ll need someone watching his back.”
She nodded and turned to go.
In that instant, the sea shook.
“What was that?” Ginny demanded.
Zamir stiffened. “Underwater explosion.” He frowned as the ship rode through the aftershocks. “And another… And two more.” He inhaled sharply. “Submarines, but they’re not firing at us.”
Ginny examined his face. “That’s…good, right?”
“That depends on what they were firing at.”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the ocean reared. Waves burst into the sky before cascading down like a massive rainfall. The Endling tossed on the curve of a tidal wave, and Zamir, Corey, and Ginny went sliding across the deck.
Zamir and Corey managed to catch onto the pole in the middle of the deck, but Ginny screamed as she was hurled into the air. Zamir released the pole and lunged for her, grabbing on to her hand, just as Corey reached for his ankle.
The older man grunted, one elbow locked around the pole, the other around Zamir’s leg.
“Don’t let me go!” Ginny screamed, her face pale, her hair streaming wildly in the wind.
Grimacing, Zamir swung his other arm forward, so that he clasped Ginny’s wrist with both hands. “I won’t,” he promised.
Corey grunted again, the sound more pained, and much more desperate. “I don’t know—”
The next wave took the ship vertical.
The motion yanked Corey off the pole. Together, all three of them tumbled toward the edge of the ship and off the rail. Zamir released one of his hands from Ginny’s and grabbed onto the rail as he was thrown past it. Corey and Ginny, one holding on to his foot and the other to his hand, tumbled off the ship, and into the water.
With a thunderous splash, the Endling settled back in the water, sending up a tremendous spray on both sides of the ship. Zamir ground his teeth against Corey and Ginny’s weight. “You first.” He lifted Ginny up, his muscles bunching, until she could grab onto the rail and scramble over. Zamir paused for only a moment, then reached his hand down to Corey. “Come on.”
Corey switched his grip from Zamir’s leg to his arm, and held on tight as Zamir raised him up until he too could grab on to the ship’s rail. Grunting softly, Zamir finally pulled himself up, then grabbed the radio from his belt. “We’re all right,” he said in response to Meifeng’s anxious queries. “Ginny’s going in to you. Don’t let her out on the deck. It’s too—”
Motion in his peripheral vision spun him around as tentacles, wider than entire battleships, rose out of the water to surround the frigates. “The Ancient…”
“What?” Meifeng demanded. His question trailed into stunned silence. “What is…that?”
“A titan,” Zamir murmured. “The…” He searched for an English translation of the Beltiamatu word. “The kraken.”
“Shit. Is it going to eat us?”
“It eats whales. And ships.”
A tentacle smashed down on one of the frigates. Steel snapped beneath the weight of one of the kraken’s tentacles, and the ship plunged beneath the surface. A second was swallowed by a wave. The other frigates tossed, unable to escape as the seas churned around and beneath them. Waves surging out from the maelstrom hurled the Endling forward, away from the disaster unfolding behind them. Even the wind scurried alongside, as if desperate to flee the kraken.
“Where is Kai?” Ginny screamed, the wind snatching her words away the moment they were out of her mouth. “We have to find him.”
“Not until the kraken leaves.” And then there may be nothing left to find.
The wind and waves carried them away from the massacre. The water turned crimson with blood, black and gray with debris. The kraken’s tentacles flailed, their fury unabated.
It seemed to last forever, but in truth, mere minutes.
The kraken had demolished eight frigates, and presumably, whatever submarines accompanied it, within minutes.
The ocean churned for several more moments before the thirty-foot high monster waves settled and spread into white sea foam. The reckless tossing of the Endling stilled into dead calm.
“Can we go back for Kai now?” Ginny demanded.
Zamir’s gaze flicked over the waves. “We don’t have to.” His voice sharpened. “Corey!”
Together, the two men leaned over the rail as four Beltiamatu surfaced—Naia and Thaleia closest to the ship, and Badur between them with his arms wrapped around Kai’s chest. The mer-prince was unconscious.
Zamir and Corey gently drew Kai out of the water and onto the deck of the Endling. Scorch marks scalded Kai’s back, but worse, far worse, was his mangled tail. Blood spilled upon the deck where shards of bone protruded through flesh and scales. “What happened?” Zamir asked, shock lowering his voice into a stunned murmur.
Thaleia leaned over the rail with her tail still dangling in the water. She spoke with obvious difficulty, her voice pitched low to be audible to human ears. “He was leading the Ancient toward the submarines. He was already badly injured. We pulled him away to safety when the humans attacked the Ancient.”
“Thank you for saving his life,” Zamir said.
“But we didn’t…” Thaleia’s voice was choked with despair. “His tail—”
Ginny bit down on her lower lip. “How bad is it? Corey?”
The medic spread his hands. “It’s broken in several places. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to splint it.”
“You can’t,” Zamir said. The deep, wrenching ache in his chest pounded a deafening rush of blood through his brain. He spoke, the words uncensored, through the tangle of emotion; his voice shook. “Tails this shattered don’t heal correctly. He must have been struck directly by the kraken. It’s a miracle he wasn’t killed outright, and that he managed to lead the titan away from the Endling.” From us…
“What should I do?” Corey asked. “Just tell me what to do. Anything I can—”
“Wait…” Ginny straightened. “You say the bones won’t heal.”
> “They won’t,” Zamir confirmed.
“The first time we saw Kai in the tank, his scales were dull and flaking from the abuse and torture. I…gave him legs, and the next time his legs transformed back into a tail, his scales—”
“Were dark again. Glossy. Whole,” Zamir finished. “Do you think...?”
Ginny swallowed visibly. “I don’t think we have any other choices. Either it works, or it doesn’t, but either way, he can’t possibly be any worse off than now.”
“All right.” Zamir squatted beside Kai and shook him gently until Kai’s eyes opened. Glazed with pain, they fixed on Zamir’s face. Zamir wrestled his emotions under control before speaking. “Your tail—”
“I know.”
“Ginny’s going to transform them to legs. Maybe the bones will reform correctly, but we don’t know for certain.”
Kai nodded, his voice weak. Fading. “Do it.”
Zamir glanced up at Naia, Thaleia, and Badur, who perched on the ship’s rail. Thaleia, her face a mask of anguish, reached out to grip Badur’s hand.
Ginny knelt beside Kai and took his hand in hers. She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing as the black and purple cloud took shape in her hands.
Kai’s back arched, and he screamed as his scales peeled away, as if sloughed off in acid.
Corey looked away, his chest hitching. “I’ve seen it so many times, and I can never get used to it.”
The Beltiamatu stared, transfixed; even Badur, who could not see. Naia’s slender body trembled, and tears spilled from her eyes as the raw flesh of Kai’s broken tail melted off the jagged edges of bone. The white of bone started foaming, as if evaporating, then shifted into new shapes.
New bone.
Whole bone.
Ginny, who usually kept her eyes closed through each of Kai’s transformations, stared at him. Wide-eyed, tearless, with the clinical detachment of a scientist, she watched flesh and skin layer over human bones.
Whole human bones.
She clenched her fist, extinguishing the glow of aether.
Kai lay on the deck with two legs instead of a tail—two unbroken legs.
Ginny and Zamir exchanged glances. Everything was working, so far, but they were only halfway through. They would not know if it worked until Kai had a tail once more.
Ginny squeezed Kai’s hand gently. “Are you ready? I’m going to give you a tail again.”
Kai’s head moved from side to side, a barely perceptible motion. His grip tightened on Ginny’s hand, as if to stop her.
“Let him rest,” Zamir interjected. “We’ll have time to try it later.”
“I’ve got him.” Corey enfolded Kai in a large blanket and lifted him up without obvious effort. “You’re not nearly as heavy without your tail. Come, I’ll get you cleaned up and into a warm bed.”
Zamir rose easily as Corey carried Kai to the crew quarters below deck. Only then did he turn to face the three Beltiamatu perched on the rail of the Endling. “You’re a long way from your colony.”
Badur snarled. His voice, deliberately pitched low, sounded even angrier and more threatening than it would have in the water. “Did you think we would let our prince take off with humans, without Beltiamatu watching over him?” He waved his hand over the stench of blood mashed into the deck. Kai’s blood. “Is this how you care for him? Protect him? You send him to certain death—”
Zamir scowled. “Kai does his own thing. He’s as stubborn as his father was.”
Ginny muttered quietly into Zamir’s ear. “As his grandfather, too.” She shrugged when Zamir glared at her. “I just thought I should point it out.”
Zamir returned his attention to the Beltiamatu. “Have you been following us the entire time?”
Naia nodded. “We kept our distance. It was not difficult. Kai was more focused on scouting ahead whenever he swam away from your ship. When we saw the submarines, we realized that they were hunting for you, and we concealed ourselves on them.”
“Surely they picked you up on sonar.”
“If they did, it would only have been for a moment before we rode on their hulls. Nothing untoward happened…until Kai swam toward the submarines, his tail obviously broken, and the Ancient right behind him. The humans fired their underwater missiles on the titan.” Naia shrugged, the gesture gracefully indifferent. “And it heralded the end. We abandoned our places of concealment on the submarine, grabbed Kai, and hastened away from the doomed flotilla.” Her voice trembled, the only crack in her calm facade. “There were several moments when we thought the Ancient would kill us all, if only entirely by accident.” She glanced at the door that led down to the crew quarters, then looked back at Zamir and Ginny. “He was prepared to die for you.” Her gaze focused on Ginny, and agony crept into her voice. “Why?”
“It’s not because he loves me, I can promise you that much,” Ginny said bluntly.
Naia shook her head. “You have visited more pain upon him than anyone ever has, and yet, he reaches for you, takes your hand to anchor him through his agony—”
Ginny’s voice trembled. “I would do anything to stop the effect that aether has on him—”
“So leave him! Leave him to return to his people in peace—”
“Kai will not return to his people without an aether core, and he cannot undertake the dangers of Atlantis alone. Unless you three want to sprout legs, it’s going to be the both of us, accompanying him into the ruins of Atlantis. For heaven’s sake!” Ginny flung up her hands. “Can’t you see that we’re all on the same side?” She strode up to Naia and stared the mermaid in the eye. “The first time I saw Kai in that tank, the only thing I wanted was to release him, to see him, swimming, unbound, unfettered, in the ocean. It is still the only thing I want.”
Naia’s stony expression was unyielding.
Ginny was about to argue some more, but Zamir placed his hand gently on her arm, silencing her. “Do you three plan on following Kai all the way to Atlantis?”
“Yes,” Badur replied immediately. His scowl deepened, but the tremble in his voice spoke to deeper emotions. “Perhaps he’ll someday recognize, and value, the fact that the Beltiamatu place more worth in his life than do the humans.”
Zamir shrugged. “He knows that his responsibilities are yet left undone.” His gaze flicked to Naia. Kai’s many responsibilities…
Chapter 11
The sun rose high over the Endling as it skimmed over the waves. Days had passed without any sign of pursuit, and although Ginny did not dare hope that the cult had given up, she had relaxed enough to stop searching the horizon.
The fact that three Beltiamatu accompanied the ship also helped her feel better; although if she were to pick merfolk to follow her, it wouldn’t have been these exact three.
Naia was aloof and unfriendly—probably over Kai. Badur, blind as he was, was all but useless, although using whatever time-tested techniques the merfolk had developed to follow ships, he kept up effortlessly.
Thaleia, however, was a delight. When she wasn’t alternating with Naia on the task of scouting ahead, she skimmed along the ship, answering Ginny’s questions about Beltiamatu culture. Thaleia’s natural inclinations as a scholar had led her down various paths of study, not all useful to the merfolk, but Ginny didn’t care. It was all fascinating. Already Ginny could see how Beltiamatu culture—which supposedly preceded all human civilization—provided the basis for ancient human practices.
Except one, and Ginny broached it that morning, “What about the tradition of killing the mates of the royal family when the child is born?”
Thaleia’s face tightened. She twisted in the water, her tail propelling her high enough to catch on to the rail. She pulled her tail in beneath her, so that she sat on the edge of the ship, then glanced around as if enjoying the view above the waves.
Ginny suspected, however, that she was fighting to get a handle on her emotions.
“It began thousands of years ago—”
“Before Atlant
is?”
“During. What do you know of our bloody history with Atlantis?”
“I’ve heard bits and pieces from Kai, and from Jacob. I’ve tried to piece things together.”
Thaleia sighed. “Humans were young then, scarcely more than a few generations old, when the mer-king chanced upon a human female. He found her alluring; she found him irresistible. Their son appeared more human than Beltiamatu, although he was blessed with our longevity and the ability to breathe underwater. The mer-king doted on his half-human child, and bestowed on him all the benefits of Beltiamatu royalty—education, wealth. The child did not squander his privilege of his birth, and used it to establish the port of Atlantis as a waypoint—the only one—on the Atlantic Ocean, between the great continents. The mer-king gifted the port with one of our two aether cores, and the port expanded into the greatest city on the Earth, second only to Shulim. The half-human child ruled as god-king.”
Thaleia’s smile was wistful. “He governed well enough, as did his sons after him, but as Beltiamatu blood thinned, the power madness of humans emerged. The Atlantean god-king decided to transform Atlantis from a city into an empire. Their ships ranged far out, attacking human villages and towns on both sides of the ocean. The Beltiamatu observed, but did nothing until the humans braved death, seeking out the mer-king at Shulim to beg for his help in stopping the Atlanteans.” Thaleia’s mouth twisted. “They were, after all, our spawn. Our responsibility.”
She stared down at the lightly tossing waves and sighed again, a scarcely audible sound. “We tried negotiation, which failed. They killed our envoys, cut their bodies in half, and threw the pieces on the great continents at the opposite ends of the ocean.”
“What?” Ginny’s jaw dropped. “That’s a lot of very determined spite. The Atlanteans were really working hard at it.”
“We should have realized then that nothing but all-out war would work, but an extended war between two aether-powered civilizations could have possibly ripped the Earth apart. There was one more option through—”
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