“Your mother or father was born in Faerie.” That explained her strength. “The closer the tie to Faerie, the stronger the magic.” She rubbed the markings covering the fingertips of her left hand together. “I hope I didn’t say anything wrong.” The urge to explain myself to her surprised me. “My gift is like a stream of consciousness. Classifications pop into my head and then they fall out of my mouth.”
“That’s a cool talent.” For the first time since meeting her, the marshal locked gazes with me. Her eyes were bright and as sharp as a knife’s blade. “I’m Thierry Thackeray.”
The name rang a distant bell, but as with Shaw, my brutal travel schedule meant my brain was too stuffed with the names and faces of colleagues for me to skim any details off the top.
She indicated the tarp. “Are you finished with the body?”
“No.” A bitter taste lingered in my mouth. “I need to—” I swallowed. “The condition surprised me. The others were…not like that.”
“I won’t tell you it gets easier.” She patted my shoulder, and raw power zinged down my arm. “It doesn’t, but you do find better ways of coping. My favorite is finding the person responsible and—” as though poised to say one thing, she instead said another, “—I make them pay.”
Despite the heat, a biting chill crept over my skin. I believed her.
Someone called her name, and Thierry excused herself. I breathed easier with her out of touching distance. Suddenly I sympathized with Flipper and her hands-off policy.
I was returning to the body when the ground trembled. I caught myself before turning my ankle in one of the smaller cracks, and pressed a hand to my stomach. Everyone on site had gone still. “You felt that too, right?” I asked the remaining marshal.
He held a finger to his lips. “Shh.”
I shushed.
The quaking began again, harder this time. Splashing broke the silence. I turned my head slowly and spotted Flipper struggling against a thick blackish-purple band encircling her waist. She leaned back in the water, arms slicing in a backstroke that got her nowhere. She kicked her legs—where was her tail?—but she didn’t budge.
“She’s in trouble,” I realized. Then louder, I said, “She’s in trouble.”
The marshal finally pried his gaze from the sink to glare at me. “In about thirty seconds, if she doesn’t get her shit together, we’re all going to be in trouble.”
“What are you talking about?” I flung my arm toward Flipper. “She can’t help us if she can’t help herself.”
A high-pitched shriek gurgled, churning bubbles that frothed the water and obscured Flipper’s torso. No one budged to offer her a hand. Good thing I had two spare ones.
I jumped across a craggy fissure and landed in a wobbly crouch three feet from the water. My ankles quivered, knees locked. Flipper was close, but the edge of the water was closer. The rippling surface mocked me as though the sink were laughing at my cowardice.
Salt burned my eyes, turned my skin sticky. I ran faster than the gulls flew. “Momma,” I screamed over and over until my lips moved in a silent plea for help come too late.
I banished the memories cramping my muscles. I had no time for the paralyzing grief. I should wade into the sink. Hell, I should use one of the ruptured pipes sticking out of the dirt at its edges as a springboard and dive in after her. I should, but I couldn’t. I squatted there, useless and shivering while the earth rumbled and Flipper’s pink crown vanished.
“Ellis,” Thierry shouted. “Get out of there.”
I held my ground. Easy to do with terror seizing my limbs. “Not without her.”
The marshal landed in a tense crouch beside me. “She’s a mermaid. You know how sturdy those are, right?”
Except Flipper was different. Mermaids didn’t exchange tails for legs when it suited them. Mermaids didn’t tuck their hands under their armpits to avoid touching a person who could classify them. There was more to her than bright hair and skimpy clothes. The kid had a secret, a big one if she was willing to take it to her grave, and it was going to get her killed in front of a live audience unless I rallied help.
Each gasp rang across the baked earth, every frantic splash echoed through the silence. Without gills or an oxygen tank, she would drown. I once stood paralyzed on a white-sand beach as a life snuffed out instead of wading in and braving the unknown. Fear be damned, I would never stand by again.
“She’s just a kid.” No one with so much life ahead of them should be robbed of living every moment of it.
As a mermaid, Flipper was in her element as far as the others were concerned. But at this rate her element was going to snap her spine like a twig, assuming it didn’t drown her first.
“I don’t know if I have enough juice for this.” Thierry stood and shook out her arms, and the left one lit up with green light that shone from her runes. “Go stand with the others. I need room to work.”
“I can help.” I fanned the fingers of my right hand, and this time I let the rush of adrenaline nudge my fingernail until it flaked off and the hollow spur curved over my fingertip. I extended my hand toward her. “I’ll need a drop of blood.”
Fingers curling into her palm, she stared at her runes, and their light reflected in her eyes. Blood was a powerful weapon that could fuel harmful spells that targeted the donor. All those grim possibilities washed over her face, but her composure broke when Flipper screamed, and she set her jaw. “Don’t make me regret this.”
Thierry gripped my hand and hauled me onto my feet. “Little pinch,” I warned her as the spur pierced the back of her hand. A drop of blood welled before she healed the wound. Her magic crushed me under a wave that sent me crashing to my knees. Searing pain marked my left hand, and phantom runes danced over my skin.
“Freaking monkeys,” she muttered. “Shaw? Little help here.”
The skin covering my arm stung and tightened. I wasn’t strong enough to act as a conduit for so much power. It was cooking me from the inside. I had to force it out again before it burnt me to a crisp. Instinct guided me to extend my arm toward Flipper. Energy burst from my palm, shimmering across the choppy expanse and leaving steam in its wake. It pierced the surface of the water with a hiss. Flipper cried out as the pulse swept through her. Limbs twitching, her head fell limp on her shoulders.
The thing holding her gargled a furious roar.
Thierry grasped my wrist and slammed my palm into the dirt. “Do that again, and you’ll kill her.”
I nodded to show I understood since my mouth wasn’t working yet, and let the remaining power leach into the soil.
Another shriek made me wince as an eggplant-colored appendage burst from the water. Hundreds of feet long, it whipped through the air and slammed against the cracked earth. The ground buckled under my knees. Fist-sized suction cups speckled the underside of its slimy flesh, but there was nothing for them to grip but loose dirt. The thing couldn’t haul itself out to escape the magically electrified water. Seeming to realize that a heartbeat later, it dove, yanking Flipper under with it.
My nails raked over the crumbling soil. “No.”
“We should have nipped this in the bud years ago,” I heard Thierry say to someone.
“Thierry, no.” The rumble of Shaw’s voice was unmistakable.
“We can’t leave it here,” she argued. “More people will die, and I don’t want those deaths on my conscience.”
“It’s too dangerous,” he growled. “We need to regroup and call for backup.”
“There’s no time.” Her tone rang with finality.
He sighed the words “Be careful” and didn’t try to change her mind again.
Thierry breezed past me and dove into the water. Butterfly strokes carried her toward the center of the sink where she vanished beneath the frothing waves.
A fierce growl poured over my shoulder. A glance back at the incubus dried the spit in my mouth. His skin had gone pale. His fingers elongated into claws that curved with killing edges. The warmth
in his copper eyes had faded to a desolate white, and the soulless weight of his gaze made me believe if my actions had just gotten Thierry killed, I had signed my own death warrant.
A full minute lapsed. Shaw exhaled the seconds under his breath.
Eight tentacles as thick around as my torso exploded from the water. The one cinched around Flipper’s midsection was the dark band I’d noticed earlier, and she hung limp in its grip. Thierry dangled from another, spluttering for air. The others hammered the ground, creating new fissures. Limbs swept out, knocking marshals onto their asses and pounding the dried earth to dust.
I ducked as one of the foul-smelling arms whistled over my head. I whirled to check on Shaw and found him sawing through the flesh with his razor-sharp claws. Ichor wept from the wound, but the creature didn’t give up, and neither did the pissed-off incubus.
The threat to their own roused the other marshals into action. The uninjured ones rallied around Shaw. He abandoned the severed tentacle and took a running leap that ended in a splash. He swam for Thierry and began climbing the arm shaking her like dice in a dealer’s cup, as if whatever was down there wanted to get its Yahtzee on.
I remained crouched in a rigid pose while the team sprang into motion, cutting at tentacles or restraining them while someone else slashed at them. The need to help them beat in my chest, pinched at my temples, but the old fear hit me harder. My eyelids dropped shut, and a cold sweat bathed me.
Warm sand squished between my toes. A sharp pain radiated up my leg, and I plopped down to pick a thin piece of shell from my heel. Fat tears welled as I stared at my crimson-stained fingers. A taunting voice rang over the dunes. I shoved to my feet and limped after a darting shadow. The full moon was our only light. Daddy said it was made of cheese, that the dark spots were holes chewed by space mice. Momma said space mice had eaten his brain.
“Crybaby. Crybaby,” the breathless shadow sing-songed as she barreled into the surf. “Cam is a crybaby.”
Teasing laughter once muted by the crashing waves dissolved into screams.
A stampeding hippo slammed into me and knocked me flying. When I remembered how to breathe again, I sucked down hungry gulps of air. Dirt coated the back of my throat, making me cough as I rolled onto my side. Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been a hippo, but those tentacles were all muscle, and I might as well have been a fly and it the swatter.
I shoved upright and absorbed the chaos surrounding me. Had I really thought this crime scene couldn’t get any worse? Black goo squished through my fingers when I braced in a puddle of congealing blood to get back on my feet. Its magic radiated up my arm. A kraken? In a sinkhole in Nowhere, Texas? Really? Its faint energy tinkled over my skin, and I knew what I had to do.
Of the eight original tentacles, three remained. Two hung suspended over the water. The one squeezing Flipper and the one constricting Thierry. The way Shaw was climbing the latter meant it wouldn’t last much longer. I had to move fast. The third remaining arm swung in wide arcs before slapping the ground then sweeping left to right as it bowled over the marshals in pursuit. My best hope was reaching that one, but I had to hurry. A guy wielding a flaming sword was in hot pursuit of it. No pun intended.
I chased after the swordsman, slipping in muck and stumbling over uneven earth. When I reached him, I yelled, “Don’t sever it.” His glare called me a crazy woman. I didn’t argue, but I did tack on, “Yet.”
He hesitated, and that was opening enough for me. “Help me pin it down.”
Three other marshals rushed the thrashing tentacle, throwing their combined weight on top of it until their dogpile held it immobilized. I rushed over, crossed the fingers on my left hand for luck, then pricked the rubbery hide with my right. My wrists slapped together and stuck from fingertips to elbows, forming a solid limb. Pain blossomed down my arms, through my shoulders, and the pale flesh purpled like bruising.
Magic burned white-hot as it burrowed under my skin, suffusing the muscles with strength to wield my new appendage. My heels clicked together, bound with unseen ropes. From ankles to armpits I formed a solid trunk. My toes stung as the nails elongated, piercing the ends of my boots and plunging deep into the brittle ground to steady me. Soon I commanded a scaled-down replica of the kraken’s tentacle, and I had to pray I was close enough to do some good. I was rooted to the spot. This one-woman rescue mission wasn’t going anywhere.
“Okay.” I struggled against the onset of panic over my limited mobility. “I got this.”
Fudge. Fudge. Fudge. I don’t have this. I never should have shifted to this degree.
The more of my body I altered, the faster I burned through the magic filtered from the source. I didn’t have long before I was drained, and two shifts in one day left my conjoined knees quivering.
“Hold the arm for as long as you can,” I ordered the stunned marshals. “I might need to use it again.”
The slack-jawed group gaped up at me, and one adjusted her weight like she was thinking of jumping me next. It was cat woman. Nice. I didn’t wait for her to make her move. I unfurled my new appendage, reached across the water and grasped Thierry’s leg. Shaw read my intent, nodded once, and severed the limb at his eye level. The sudden drop made me gasp as the muscles in my arm and back strained. One of my toes ripped from its anchor in the ground as I struggled to counterbalance Thierry’s weight. I bent like a tree being uprooted, but then her feet touched the sandy shallows, and the strain vanished.
“Shaw.” Safe on the shore, she picked off suckers that left red welts behind. “Get out of there.”
Nodding, he released the oozing stump and hit the water with a splash. He didn’t resurface. Thierry took a full step forward, her light’s reflection emerald and lethal, but then his head breached the surface, and she hauled him out to stand beside her.
With Shaw out of the way, I cast my arm toward the kraken one last time and lassoed Flipper around the hips. A bestial roar rattled my teeth as the nubs from its severed limbs writhed. The marshals restraining the landlocked appendage shouted as the kraken’s thrashing bucked them. Rescuing Flipper became a tug-of-war with the submerged beast I couldn’t win without ripping her in half.
Limbs quivering from exertion, I cried out, helpless as the heady dose of power taken from the kraken expired. Stinging magic marched over my body, hungry ants nipping at tender skin. Flesh paled. Bones and muscles slid into their natural shape. Ragged toenails shrank to their normal length. The bindings on my arms and legs loosened, and I slipped free of them. Feet numb and tingling, I limped to Thierry. “What’s Plan B?”
“The same as Plan A.” Thierry wiped black fluid from around her eyes. “We get her out of there. I can handle the rest.” She twisted her limp ponytail into a tight bun. “We don’t have much time. As soon as the kraken shakes off the marshals pinning its arm, it’s going to dive. If it goes down, we won’t get Harlow back. No one in their right mind would follow that thing into the sink, and that includes you, even if I have to sit on you to stop you from trying.”
Me? Follow the creature into its home turf? Into the water? My spine turned to jelly at the thought, which would make it hella difficult to swim, because the mind-numbing truth was, I might. I had fought too hard to save Harlow to give up on her now.
Shaw craned his neck. “Rodriguez, get over here.”
“On it, boss.” He was the sword-wielding fae. His scowl bounced between Thierry and Shaw. “If I drop my sword, I want solemn vows you’ll help me retrieve her when this is over.”
Shaw nodded. “Done.”
“Sucker,” Thierry sang under her breath.
He popped her on the ass, and she growled. That move had sexual harassment lawsuit written all over it.
While they engaged in a battle of silent wills, Rodriguez waded knee-deep into the sink. With reverence, he sheathed his blade in a scabbard running parallel to his spine then swam toward Flipper. Reaching behind himself, he drew his sword, and it blazed with flames the sink failed to extinguish. Even t
reading water, it didn’t take him long to hack through the muscular tissue holding her aloft. Hauling Flipper back to shore winded him more than the short battle. Safe on dry land, he dropped to his knees and spread Flipper on her back. He shot me a thumbs-up, which I took to mean she was still breathing.
“Guess it’s my turn.” Thierry set off at a jog toward the final tentacle. “Climb off it, guys.” She made a hurry up gesture. “Stand back or you’ll get fried too.”
The marshals rolled aside and ran a safe distance away long before Thierry’s left hand made contact.
Green light exploded from Thierry’s palm, and the creature’s death scream rattled my eardrums. Its thrashing intensified, and its remaining limb swiped at her, but she hung on and ramped up the light show. The blackish skin peeled where she touched it, flaking off and fluttering on the hot breeze. Joints ripped like torn seams, revealing orange flesh with black veins. The creature gurgled once more then fell silent except for the hissing of seared meat. Thierry wobbled where she stood, but Shaw was there to catch her when she collapsed.
I had to move my tongue around to find enough moisture to swallow. I stared at my hand, flexed my fingers and wondered what the hell I had been thinking borrowing an unknown source of magic from a legacy. Thierry had peeled that creature like the skin off a grape. It was a miracle acting as her conduit, even for those few seconds, hadn’t fried me.
Whistling brought my attention back to Rodriguez. His shirt was fisted in his hand, and he walked away, cleaning his blade with the damp fabric while baby-talking to his sword. Flipper remained motionless on the ground. Another fae—a medic I hoped—leaned over her. She had thumbed Flipper’s eyes open and pressed a palm to the girl’s frail chest. Out of energy, I dragged one foot after the other until I reached her side and collapsed to my knees. Her arm extended toward me, fingers lax. My hand hovered an inch above hers, so close I felt the damp coolness of her skin, but I recoiled.
Comforting or not, Flipper wouldn’t thank me if she woke and discovered that I had touched her and learned her secrets.
Dead in the Water (Gemini: A Black Dog Series Book 1) Page 3