by Ann Gimpel
“Figured as much when Ketha showed up with leftovers from breakfast,” Viktor said. “How are those calculations coming?” he asked Juan.
“Slow.” The Argentinian cat shifter must have been asleep when Viktor summoned him to the bridge. His normally neat hair hung past his shoulders in tousled curls.
“Did you anticipate this storm?” Moira asked. Tension tightened her gut as she waited for the answer.
“Of course not.” Viktor’s words were terse. “I’d have warned everyone to batten down their cabins.”
“Has to have been spawned by magic.” Karin looked up. “We were trying to sort that out.”
Moira licked dry lips. “This gets worse.”
Every set of eyes in the room zeroed in on her, but she was familiar with being the center of attention in troubled situations. “Evil targeted Tessa,” she said without preamble. “Good thing she mentioned it because we determined it was focused specifically on her.”
A strangled sounding gasp emerged from Ketha. “Did she ward herself?”
“Oh yeah. First thing she did once what was happening became clear, but no one can ward themselves all the time. None of us have enough magic for that.” She stopped to suck in a breath. “We figure since she blocked whatever wanted her, it will switch things up and target someone else.”
Daide turned from where he’d been staring out into the storm. “Do you mean like the time darkness overran me?”
“It’s exactly what she means,” Karin answered his question. “Damn it. Whatever’s out there is strong if it has enough juice to gin up a hurricane-force storm and threaten Tessa.”
“Do you suppose something new came through the fissure?” Zoe asked, sounding rattled.
Juan slapped a hand down on a nearby table. “One thing’s for certain, our instruments are worthless for predicting the course of this storm. My barometer’s rising when it should be dropping like a stone.”
“How far are we from Wrangel Island?” Aura asked her husband.
“Eight or nine days if the weather clears.” Juan scanned the instrumentation again.
“And if it doesn’t?” Moira spoke up.
“Could take double that. Or we might not get there at all,” Juan replied tightlipped.
Worry nipped at Moira. “Where are the sea Shifters? Is that what you were watching through the windows?”
“Welcome to problem number six hundred,” Aura mumbled.
“Huh?” Moira walked closer, not understanding. Remaining upright was hard, so she dropped into a nearby chair.
“We haven’t heard from Leif or his pod since last night,” Ketha said. “I had no idea there might be a problem until I got up here.”
Fear clawed at Moira’s belly, and the biscuit congealed into a doughy lump in her stomach. It was a stupid question, but she asked, “Have you tried telepathy?”
Karin sent an incredulous look skittering her way. “Right out of the box. We started trying to raise them around ten.”
“Sea kicked up a couple of hours after that,” Recco said. He’d turned from the window but still gripped the railing running beneath it. “Seems like more than a coincidence to me.”
Moira unclenched hands that had balled into fists all by themselves. “We have to do something. Help them.”
“How?” Karin nailed Moira with her copper gaze.
“It’s impossible if we can’t locate them,” Zoe reached across to touch Moira’s leg.
Ideas tumbled through her mind. Most departed as fast as they entered when she booted them to make room for ones that had a better chance of being helpful. Thinking on her feet and making decisions on the fly were second nature, but she didn’t have much to work with.
“Can we use the lines to locate them?” she asked.
“The ley lines?” Ketha clarified. At Moira’s nod, she added, “How? We can’t touch them, or we’ll end up fried to a cinder like Rowana.”
“We have to go back to the cave with the lines!” Moira’s bondmate screeched.
“I heard that,” Karin said. “Please tell your vulture it’s brave but foolish.”
“And you tell that puerile wolf-bitch to keep her opinions to herself.”
Moira winced and muttered, “Sorry, Karin.”
Karin made a sour face. “I didn’t hear whatever you’re apologizing for.”
Grateful the vulture had switched to a more private communication channel, Moira retreated to running odds and options. The only one that had any chance of success was her vulture’s idea of returning to the cavern.
Where were Leif and his pod? Had they been captured? Were they already dead? A particularly rambunctious wave almost tumbled her from her chair. Worry grew until her throat thickened with tension. She couldn’t give up because the cards were stacked against her. Not if it meant abandoning Leif to whatever was holding him against his will.
“Moira.”
She looked up at the sound of Karin’s voice. “Uh-huh.”
“It’s possible they decided to leave—”
Moira lurched to her feet, clinging to the table. “Stop right there. He would never do that.”
“We don’t think he would,” Daide said, “but in truth we don’t know our sea kin all that well.”
“Maybe he made peace with Poseidon,” Zoe cut in. “Seems unlikely, but one of the scenarios we tossed around before you got here was Poseidon discovered how faithless his consort is and dumped her.”
“It’s possible.” Recco moved to his wife’s side and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“Aye, ’tis.” She leaned into him.
“I know Leif. He’d never leave without telling us,” Moira insisted. “Which means he’s in big shit trouble, and we’re a bunch of assholes for not doing more to help.”
“Honey, we have enough problems,” Ketha murmured.
“No. Right now we only have one—if you don’t count the storm—and it’s locating Leif and the other dolphins and whales,” Moira said.
“We have to leave now,” the vulture cawed. “Now. Why are you standing around talking?”
“What do you have in mind?” Karin asked, not bothering to modulate the disapproval laced into her words.
“I’m going back to the cavern where we found Amphitrite. Alone, if I have to. I’m hoping to use the magic in the lines to trace what happened to Leif and his pod.” Moira squared her shoulders and looked around the bridge.
“I’ll go with you,” Aura said.
“Not without me.” Juan left the instruments. “I’m not doing much good here anyway. Besides, my cat’s been giving me nine kinds of hell. It knows the guardian.”
A slender flicker of hope kindled deep in Moira. Maybe all wasn’t lost after all.
“I don’t agree with that plan, mate.” Viktor’s tone was cold.
Ketha went to him, bent, and said something into his ear.
Moira didn’t want to waste any more time. “Come on.” She gestured to Juan and Aura and left the bridge. If they followed her, great. If not, she was prepared to go by herself. If she’d been the one missing, Leif would have gone after her. It was the kind of man he was.
How could she offer him anything less by way of consideration and have a prayer of living with herself?
Footsteps clattered down the risers behind her. “How are we going to do this?” Aura demanded. “None of us teleport very well.”
“Not a problem,” Juan cut in. “We turn things over to the animals. They know where to go.”
9
Give Me Blood
A Few Hours Before
Leif and his pod swam through the night, talking and planning. Rather than return to the borderworld where they’d come face to face with the guardian, the group consensus was to search the ocean bottom for one of many openings leading to subterranean ley lines. Prior to his trip to the cavern, he’d always assumed the lines stretching beneath the ocean floor were primary.
Perhaps they were for his kind. It might have been
the reason he couldn’t understand Eiocha—or whoever he’d run into on the borderworld. He, Lewis, and two of the whales had burned through far too much time attempting to come up with a logical explanation of how the lines could exist beneath the sea and in some obscure borderworld, while circling Earth at the same time.
They’d finally decided the general laws of physics and magic didn’t apply in this situation. Splitting into small groups, they’d begun swimming a grid, crisscrossing the ocean bottom. It was time consuming, but at least the sea wasn’t so deep here as to make the task impossible.
“Over there!” Lewis bleated in dolphin-speak.
Leif took stock of his air. He had maybe five minutes left, which would be enough if Lewis had located a portal. Lynda swooshed past, clearly responding to Lewis’s summons. Everyone else was too far away. They’d wait to see if Lewis truly had found something, or if it was another false alarm.
Several had cropped up over the last few hours.
Leif switched direction, swimming fast. Soon they’d be out of time. He didn’t want to create needless worry for those aboard Arkady. If this latest gambit didn’t work out, he’d return to the ship while his pod continued to search. Sand churned up from the bottom by small fish and other creatures turned the water murkier by the second. It was a common tactic meant to obscure their presence from predators, and Lewis cruising past had no doubt alarmed them.
Leif blinked several times to spread the thick, fatty tears dolphins secreted to protect their eyes. A glowing arch faded in and out of view. He stared at it, confused. He’d never seen its like, and it felt out of place. Wrong, somehow.
“Lewis!”
But the other dolphin didn’t answer, no matter how many times Leif called his name. Neither did Lynda, and she’d have spoken up if she heard him—or if she knew where Lewis was. The archway was clearly visible now, pulsing with a warm, silvery glow.
All the other sea life had fled, which added to the creeping wrongness assaulting him. He should leave. Look for the rest of his pod. Alert the ship. But if he didn’t go through the portal, Lewis and Lynda might be lost forever.
A series of notes trilled, swelling around him. Tantalizing, bittersweet, they drew him toward the gateway. More than anything, it reinforced that he was swimming into a trap, but who the hell had laid it? Squeals and bleats joined the notes, but he couldn’t make them out. Was it Lewis and Lynda? Or some other entity mimicking the dolphin language?
The time for hesitation was over. He had to do something. Certainty intruded that if he left this place, he’d never find it again. He might locate this spot, but the gateway would be gone, and Lewis and Lynda lost forever.
Resolute. Determined. He flicked his tail a few times and swam through the shimmering portal. Magic pricked his hide, but it felt warm, welcoming, which had to be an illusion. He had a very bad feeling about what waited within, but he had to do what he could to save his dolphins. Thousands of sea Shifters had died, mostly on his watch. His gut twisted into a hard, bitter knot.
The silvery light flashed once and extinguished, leaving him in pitch blackness. He navigated by echolocation, sending high pitched sounds to bounce off what turned out to be a narrow, twisting tunnel with a definite downward cant. The water warmed as he swam.
His heart beat faster. No way out. The tunnel was far too narrow to turn around, and swimming backward uphill was nearly impossible. The water level fell until the channel developed a definite layer of air. He exhaled through his blowhole and sucked in whatever passed for atmosphere, half expecting it to be poison.
It wasn’t. He filled his lungs with air. It solved one problem, but not the mystery of who’d constructed the gateway guarding this passage. Or what had happened to his sea Shifters. Two more twists, and the channel leveled out, opening into an enormous undersea cavern.
If he’d been in a different mind space, it would have been beautiful. The air sparkled with motes of silver and gold, and cunning rock formations rose from the still, dark waters, spiraling upward as far as he could see.
He honked and bleated, calling for Lewis, for Lynda. No one answered. Awkward in his dolphin body, he invoked the magic to shift. It glistened around him, turning the air iridescent, but he was still a dolphin. Blowing air, he tried again. The shift took him, but painfully slowly. Each part of him ached, burned, and writhed as if a million knives jabbed his flesh.
Did his magic not work here? Would he turn into a screaming, howling mass of protoplasm that wasn’t a dolphin, but not a man, either? Breath shuddered between his clenched teeth as he willed himself to complete the transformation. Too much of him was human to try going back. That would be a sure recipe for disaster. He grunted, determined not to scream his pain into the gleaming air. Still glowing with gold and silver motes, it mocked him with its perfection.
A thought crashed over him. If it was this hard to shift, how the hell would he ever leave this place? His human lungs could never hold enough air to swim through the corkscrew tunnel and an additional hundred fifty feet to the ocean’s surface.
Leif forced himself to remain centered in the moment. The pins-and-needles jabs were lessening. When he took stock, he had arms, legs, a trunk, and a head. Panting with effort, he finished off the transformation. As soon as it was done, the pain ceased abruptly, and he stroked for the nearest shore, determined to locate the other sea Shifters. There didn’t seem to be another way out of this cave, which meant they had to be here somewhere.
His mind was slow, sluggish. The same song that had enticed him from the sea bottom was back. Alluring as any Siren’s summons, it promised peace from his trials. No need to travel north. No need to address the demons holding the fissure open so more of their hideous ilk could invade—and destroy—what the Cataclysm had missed.
Desire to lay his burdens aside swelled within his breast, overpowering in its intensity. He shook himself where he trod water and pulled a primitive ward around himself. Drawing magic hurt, but not quite as much as shifting had. Determined not to give in to the unknown singer, he headed toward shore. It was farther than it looked, and weariness dragged at him.
It took an ungodly amount of effort to keep his warding in place. Clearly it offended the keeper of this place. Finally, when swimming was beginning to feel beyond him, his toes touched rock and then sand. He slogged through water thicker than any salt water had a right to be and pitched onto wet sand, gasping like a landed fish.
Minutes ticked past as he lay there, trying to find the strength to get up and keep going. He had to find the other dolphins, but it would take forever to search the shores of this pool. It was enormous. So large the other side stretched beyond his vision.
“No!” He screeched and brought both fists down on the sand. He hadn’t come this far to throw his life away. He’d come to find Lewis and Lynda.
The dirt he lay on rose around him, forming tendrils that turned into something hard as they wrapped around his prone form. Understanding leapt to the fore, and he scrambled to his feet, snapping off bits of stone that were growing thicker. Blood flowed from his abraded flesh where the dirt had tried to hold him in place.
Goddammit! Was this what had happened to Lewis and Lynda? They’d laid down and been subsumed by the hungry sand? Sand determined to feed itself from their energy?
Places where his blood dripped turned into smoking holes where the sand drank it down hungrily. Tendrils rose around his feet, clearly desperate for more of him. Leif took off at a trot. Standing still spelled death in this place. He drew magic over his ears to block out the escalating music and scanned the shore as he ran.
It didn’t matter if he’d chosen an impossible task. He’d go down fighting. Not let this place absorb his essence. Maybe because he was thinking again, he reached for the other sea Shifters with magic, shifting to his third eye to see more clearly. The solution was so simple, he dunned himself for not coming up with it sooner. Ley lines shimmered, looking healthy as a whale down here. Even better, he felt the dist
inctive pulse of other dolphins through one glistening strand.
Breath shuddered from him. They were alive. He hadn’t figured things out too late after all.
Leif turned back the way he’d come, moving fast. Lewis and Lynda were behind him and not very damned far from the place that had nearly turned into his tomb. He girded himself for what he’d find but wasn’t prepared for two oblong lumps in the sand.
He tripped over one before he realized what it was. Falling to his knees, he dug frantically, scraping dirt, sand, and rocks off Lewis’s prone form. As he cleared debris, shock vied with horror. The same vine-like rocks that had almost trapped him wound around Lewis, holding him to the ground. They’d dug into his flesh, so blood dribbled, pooling around him.
Thank all the gods the vines hadn’t punctured any major vessels, but protrusions stuck into his abdomen, into his lungs, into his groin. Fury filled Leif, and he roared his angst until his outraged howls filled the cavern. At least the fucking Siren thing shut up.
Heedless of pain, Leif shot magic through the bands that held Lewis captive. Rock shattered with a sharp, cracking sound and fell away, forming small piles of rubble. Once all the sharp bits piercing Lewis were gone, Leif grabbed his hands and dragged him to a sitting position. The dolphin Shifter’s head lolled. Leif blasted him with magic.
“Goddammit! Wake up. We have to rescue Lynda.” Leif used the harsh bleats and clacks dolphins employed to depict extraordinary danger.
He got through because Lewis groaned. “What the hell happened to me, mate?”
“Doesn’t matter. Wake up. Something wanted us right where we are, but we are not giving in to it.”
“Where’s Lynda?”
Leif pointed at an oblong hump in the dirt. “Under there. Help me.”
Without waiting for Lewis to reply, Leif clawed dirt off Lynda’s tomb. His fingertips were abraded. Blood flowed from them, delighting the sand. It jumped beneath his hands, anxious to soak in the crimson drops.
Lewis dragged himself to Lynda’s other side, mimicking Leif’s motions. “I must be daft. Hallucinating,” he mumbled. “The dirt can’t be drinking your blood.”