Waterfell

by Amalie Howard

  “Your face looks like it’s going to explode,” Jenna explains. “And in the car, your heart was racing so fast, I thought you were running a marathon. You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes,” I snap, and then recoil at the look on her face. Other than stating the obvious with Lo, I tell her the only other thing that’s still bothering me. “Sorry, I’m just worried about the whole ditching thing and...I still feel weird around Lo. I mean, you remember what happened on the boat and everything....”

  Jenna stares at me, her eyes widening with delayed understanding. “You like him.” I nod slowly, my eyes dropping to the floor. Her face screws up and she shakes her head. “But I thought you didn’t—I mean, you gave up a date with him. You told him to back off.”

  “I know what I said, Jenna,” I reply. “I thought I did want him to leave me alone, but it turns out I don’t. He makes me feel confused and fluttery and tongue-tied all in the same moment. I mean, he’s still arrogant and obnoxious, but sometimes I think that’s all a front. But it doesn’t matter, anyway. I really screwed up and he’s with Cara so what’s the point?”

  “You need to tell him.”

  “Why? He’s not interested, anyway.” I pull the strap that connects to the base of my zipper and snap my suit shut.

  “What about the...other thing?” Jenna says slowly. “Can you...be with humans?” I want to laugh but it’s not funny. Something that has always been amusing to me is not so much anymore. There’s nothing humorous in how chaotic I feel whenever I’m around Lo. And I hate the way my stomach dipped when she’d said the word be with him, because I do want that, too.

  “Yes, I’m like you, remember?” I say, cheeks burning at my inner admission.

  Jenna sends me a sidelong glance, eyes narrowing at my flushed face. We’re the same as we’ve always been—two best friends, only now with a huge secret between them, one that will always factor into the way she thinks about me. “On the outside,” she says. “But what about on the inside? I mean, you’re not exactly like us. Right?”

  “What’re you asking me, Jenna?”

  “Can you hurt him? Unintentionally, I mean.”

  “No more than you can hurt Sawyer.”

  “But the other day, with my ear...” She’s fighting for the right words, and I can see the tears welling in her eyes even as what she’d said cut me. “You didn’t mean to and you did.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  Jenna grabs my shoulders. “I’m not saying that to hurt you or for you to apologize. I just don’t want another accident. Or people asking questions about you, because that could be bad, right?” Belatedly I realize that she’s only trying to protect me. It has nothing to do with Lo at all. Or any fear of me for that matter. It’s fear for me.

  “The thing with you happened because I was in my other form. I won’t hurt him, or anyone else. Don’t worry.” I force a grin to my face. “Plus, like I said, he’s not interested so he’s off the hook from Nerissa’s terrible tentacles, anyway.”

  “That’s just it, Riss,” Jenna says. “I think he is. He stares at you all the time, in the cafeteria, in class, in gym, with these really weird intense looks.” She frowns. “It’s kind of creepy actually. Half the time, I wonder if he’s daydreaming, because that stare of his is borderline stalker.”

  “He stares at me?” I say, my heart aflutter.

  “All. The. Time.”

  “If that’s true, how come I never see him do it?”

  “Because you stare at the ground whenever he’s around, remember?” she says dryly. “Come on. Hurry up before they send out a search party.” Jenna pulls on her swimsuit and then her wet suit. I hadn’t thought she could actually go in the water so soon after the ear thing.

  “Are you going in?”

  At my worried look, she smiles. “It’s all good. The doctor said that I have a minor perforation, and I could put some special ear putty in there if I want to go in the water. I’m on antibiotics for any infection,” she says. “Totally minor,” she adds hastily. “Told the doc that I got hit with a hockey stick during practice. He went for it. We’re all good.”

  “Hey, you two,” Sawyer shouts. “Move it! This is surf time, not lady chat time.”

  “Coming!”

  Grabbing our boards from the back of the truck, we follow the boys down the trek to the beach. This is a reef break and can be of the more dangerous surf breaks in San Diego, especially when the surf is as big as it is. Sawyer wasn’t kidding when he said this break only happens every few years. Jenna carries her seven-foot surfboard herself, refusing any help from Sawyer, and I tuck my board under my arm.

  “How are we going to find one another?” Jenna says, staring at the crowded lineup—guess a bunch of other hardcore surfers are as excited about the storm swell as we are. “There’s like a hundred people out.”

  Sawyer consults his watch. “I say we check back here in an hour. Sound good?”

  Walking down the beach, Sawyer says hi to half a dozen people, most of them locals and far older than we are, as well as a few others familiar faces from school. People love Sawyer—he’s naturally outgoing, and being an amazing surfer on top of that makes them like him more. He’s also a local, which means he has a ton of beach credibility. Oddly enough, Lo doesn’t say hello to anyone, but I expect that that’s because he’s still relatively new here. I still can’t look at him, especially after what Jenna said in the bathroom, and keep my eyes on the horizon counting the incoming sets.

  On the beach, I tie my hair into a ponytail and strap on my leash before I paddle out to the lineup. Guilt flashes through me as I remember Echlios’s warning about not leaving school without Speio, but I shrug it off. It’s not like Ehmora or any of her henchmen can attack me with this many people around. The full moon has come and gone, so fish attacks are low probability. And I’m in the ocean—if worse comes to worst, I can defend myself with the best of them.

  Duck-diving beneath a set of gigantic waves, I kick out strongly and paddle hard through the white water, trying to make the most of the slim window between sets to get as far out as possible. Despite my strength, my arms are aching with the strain of it already. It’s tiring but in a good way. The ocean is something I can fight and pit myself against while embracing it at the same time.

  After several minutes of hard paddling, I pull myself into a sitting position. I’m barely winded, but then again, I can breathe underwater—one of the many perks of being me. Lo pulls up alongside me and sits on his board. He, by contrast, is breathing hard, his neoprene-clad chest rising and falling rapidly. His face is flushed and his eyes sparkling.

  “Hey,” he says. “That was gnarly.”

  “Gnarly?” I ask with a grin. “Catching up on your West Coast surf lingo?”

  “Figure it’s universal.” He glances behind us to the waves crashing onto the rocks. There’s already half of a yellow board smashed on top of them. “What do you think, twelve feet or so?”

  “Just about. Those rocks look wicked. You nervous?”

  His wide grin makes my chest constrict. “No way! See you on the flip side.”

  I watch as Lo takes off, barely catching the lip of a massive wave. He disappears on the other side, then pops up with a cutback to do a floater across the top that takes him a few inches off the wave itself. There’s no doubt about it—he’s a class-act surfer. He has so much natural talent that I don’t think even Sawyer is as good as he is. Or maybe I’m just biased because I think everything he does is amazing.

  Shaking my head at my unnatural girlie thoughts, I grin and start paddling. But before I can grab my wave, a grayish-brown fin catches my eye.

  My heart sinks. Already? Usually they don’t show up for an hour or two, after I’ve surfed and am too tired to hold on to my human armor. I look around but don’t see anything. Maybe I’m imagining th
ings, or maybe it isn’t here because of me. I wait for a few more minutes just to be sure, but the surface of the ocean is glassy with no sign of a shark. Paddling for the next wave, I catch it easily, gripping my rails and hoisting myself to my feet as the board’s nose dips downward. My toes grip the wax on the deck of my board and I’m flying across the gigantic face of the wave.

  As the wind whips into me, nothing can take away from this moment. Nothing, not even the black shadow that follows me on the inside of the wave. I sense the shark before I see it on a reverse cutback that brings me nearly nose to nose with its ten-foot bulk. Although they can’t hurt me, they can do a lot to everyone else. And it will be because of me.

  Noting the swarm of people surfing, my sense of responsibility kicks in. With a flush movement, I detach my leash to release my surfboard and dive into the face of the wave, facing the creature head-on. It veers away, sensing that I am a far bigger predator than it is, but I need to make sure that it heads back into deeper water...away from the cove. Breathing through my gills, I swim easily after it, allowing a fine sheen of webbing to connect my human fingers and toes together so that I can swim faster. It’s not a full-morph but just enough to help me keep up with the monster. No doubt my slight transformation will draw other things, but I will be out of the water long before that happens.

  The shark swerves deeper and suddenly I lose it in a bed of long kelp. Disoriented, I twist around. Somehow, I’ve lost my bearings. But I don’t have a second to lose worrying about where I am because I’m face-to-face with a creature that looks like some sort of ancient Greek monster. The bottom half of her body is that of some kind of sea eel while the top half is that of a striking woman with long black hair. Her face is a perfect oval covered in tiny fins, her eyes crimson pools. I’ve never seen this half woman half creature before, but I would know her anywhere, in any form.

  Ehmora.

  But it’s not really her. It’s a glimmer. I know that because she would never face me directly. As the only living heir of the High Court, in person, I can force her to yield to me. She’s not that stupid.

  Several lethal-looking black sea snakes flutter at her sides, two near me. They’re highly venomous, I know, and unlike many other poisonous species, they can control how much venom they inject into their prey, causing anything from localized numbness to death in seconds. A brief childhood memory of one of the Sapphire Court’s Aquarathi dying from an attack of a swarm of sea snakes floods my brain. Their venom had killed him instantly. Although Ehmora is a glimmer, the snakes aren’t. I hide my fear behind a show of bravado.

  “It was you,” I say in our language. “Your snakes killed Renza from the Sapphire Court, just like you killed my father.”

  Ehmora smiles but it is a dead smile, a crack in her features, nothing more. “Ah, yes, that one.” She waves a hand at the snakes around her. “They are good servants. But there’s one thing that they love more than the taste of Aquarathi. Human flesh.” Her threat couldn’t be more obvious. “And your father, well, the rumors are he got himself entangled with a bloom of box jellyfish while hunting. How unfortunate.”

  I ignore her taunt about my father. “You think I care about these humans?”

  Her smile distorts into an ugly grin. “Of course you do. I’ve been watching you with them, but I know you know that already. Your best friend, Jenna, perhaps?”

  “What do you want, Ehmora?” I ask, despite the churning in my stomach at the sound of Jenna’s name on her lips. I don’t deign to address her formally as queen. She is a traitor of the worst kind. Her face twists at my deliberate slight. “Are you going to kill me, too?”

  “No, darling. I need you. But once more, you know that already, don’t you?”

  The woman studies me, bending her head to one side. This time her smile is real and predatory, flashing white through the glassy water. It chills me to the bone, as if I’d just been measured and found to be a larger threat than she’d expected. Good. I thrust my chin out in defiance of her and her stupid pet snakes. Her expression turns stony.

  “I will never give in to you,” I shout, my anger pushing the frond of iridescent thorns on my forehead—my crown—outward. Her blood-colored eyes flash fire but her face remains perfectly composed.

  “You will.”

  “I’ll die before that happens.”

  “That can be arranged, but I have other plans for you,” she says quietly. “But first, you need to be taught a lesson in humility.” She nods at the snakes and then the glimmer vanishes.

  The sea snakes don’t, however, and they crowd around me, their jaws open to obey her last command.

  12

  THE GAUNTLET

  I’m looking into the jaws of death. Several of them.

  At least a dozen of the sea serpents circle me, their eyes as red as their master’s. One drop of the snake’s neurotoxin can kill three humans and would likely make me lose focus. But they can dispense up to eight drops at a time. Twelve of them with eight drops each add up to a number that I can’t afford to mess with.

  Glancing down, I see only murky depths both beneath and above me. There’s no sunlight where we are, which means we are deep. Way deep. I have no idea where I am in relation to La Jolla Cove, but I have no chance against the snakes if I don’t change back. From what Ehmora said, they won’t kill me, but there’s no way I’m playing nice and taking a willing beat-down.

  I’d kill them all for Renza.

  My bones elongate under my human skin with little provocation, following the crown of bones that already shifted onto my very human head. It’s not painful but as my skin modifies into scales that stretch over its new frame and sleekly defined muscle, I feel the pinch of it like a rubber band against my senses, snapping and lengthening. Fins push out wide—fluid rushing around inside of me and expanding outward.

  I flex curled talons and whip my tail. The serpents swim backward to compensate for my new size but don’t flee. Their queen has given them a command and they must obey. Gold-and-green fireworks shimmer along my limbs and torso as I send five glimmers out at once like silent golden shadows. Unlike any other Aquarathi, my glimmers can touch. They can inflict pain...all with the power of my mind. Five of the snakes sink into the murky depths beneath us as the force of my water invades and collapses their brains.

  Spinning, I dispatch three others with the barbs at the end of my tail. Four left. With no concern for their fallen brothers, the remaining serpents attack me at once, and it’s all I can do to not let their teeth get anywhere near my exposed underbelly. But that’s exactly where they go—where they’ve been taught to go, I realize.

  Twisting to the side in a rage, I snap my jaws shut on one of the snakes, feeling its soft flesh give way like putty between them. A sour taste fills my mouth but I swallow the rest of it whole. I shred another in half with a swipe of my hind claws. The other two brush against me but I dive downward, my finned tail propelling me like a torpedo.

  The remaining two follow me but I’m hoping to outmaneuver them. I flip myself backward, catching one of them in the head with a well-aimed tail strike, and the last one gets a glimmer-death of epic proportions.

  Exulted with my victory, I shift back and swim for the surface only to find that my brain feels fuzzy. Twisting around to examine my body, I see the faint trail of iridescence leaking out from twin holes near my lower belly. Crap, one of the suckers got me. I swim harder but it’s no use—I’m nowhere near the surface before my vision starts to blur. I can already feel the onset of muscular paralysis. I won’t die but I’ll be knocked unconscious way before my body can eliminate the toxins.

  Crap. Double crap.

  White stars explode and then the blackness takes over.

  * * *

  Voices surround me. Human ones. Hazy shapes of bodies are moving as my eyelids flutter open. I can’t quite see but I raise a
hand tentatively. They’re fuzzy human hands. My relief is tangible.

  “She’s fine!” Jenna’s voice is shrill. “Just give her some space.”

  “Why is she naked?” That one is Sawyer’s voice.

  “Riss?” Jenna says, leaning down, tugging into place a towel she threw over me after I moved my arm. “I called Soren. They’re coming for you but you need to be still. I got your clothes from the locker. Can you shimmy into these?”

  “What happened?” I ask hoarsely, pulling on the T-shirt and underwear that Jenna hands me awkwardly beneath the towel. My movements are stilted and painful. My entire body—although human—feels battered and bruised. I remember what happened with the snakes but I want to know what Jenna thinks happened, and how I even got to the shoreline alive when I should have been miles away.

  “We regrouped as planned, but you didn’t show,” Jenna explains. “And then Sawyer saw your board cracked on the rocks and we...” She trails off, leaning in down to my ear. “Everyone thought the worst when we couldn’t find you. What happened down there, Riss? Did you...change?”

  “Yes. Later...tell you later,” I gasp. But the truth is, I don’t know what happened down there, especially after the last snake got in its bite. Something or someone found me and dragged me to shore. Was it someone like me? One of us? A friend? Ehmora herself? She said that she didn’t want to kill me.

  I have no idea what happened and it scares the hell out of me. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath to make my Aquarathi blood flush out the rest of the toxins. It’s more condensed in human form so it should work faster. Theoretically.

  “Here, I got a blanket from the first-aid kit in my truck.” My eyes snap open. The voice belongs to Lo. “How is she?”

  “Awake,” Jenna says, tucking the blanket over me.

  “Hey.” Lo’s eyes are as blue as the place I just came from, and full of something I can’t quite place. Concern. Maybe something more. “You okay?” he asks me, and I nod. “Do you remember anything? Anything at all?”