by Jade Kerrion
“Didn’t you?”
Jackson shook his head. “It didn’t show up on any weather report. Came out of a clear sky. Dropped right down on us like a sea titan with a grudge.”
“You believe in those?”
“In what?”
“Titans. Gods. Things like that—in this day and age?”
“Calling me old-fashioned, are you?” Jackson chuckled, but the sound lacked humor. He turned away from Varun to stare out at the Sargasso Sea, an oasis of calm in the heart of the turbulent Atlantic Ocean. “Some things just can’t be explained.”
“With enough time and scientific study, anything can be explained.”
“Like the storm that came out of nowhere?”
“Our instruments aren’t fail-proof. Mistakes happen.”
Jackson chuckled. “So everything we don’t understand can be explained away as ‘we screwed up’?”
“Or we just haven’t had enough time to fully understand it. People want explanations for everything, and as quickly as possible, but life doesn’t always work that way.” Varun managed a rueful smile. “You have no idea how many hours I’ve spent in a laboratory running different tests on seawater, trying to figure out what was wrong—and still, I don’t know the answer.” He followed Jackson’s gaze over the ocean. “But it’s out there, somewhere.”
“And you’re going to find it.”
Varun’s jaw tightened. “Yes.” A splinter of cold lodged in his chest. “It’s dying, Jackson. The ocean—the one thing that has always been able to absorb mankind’s stupidity and excesses—it’s finally failing.”
Jackson stared at Varun. “And you’re scared.”
“Terrified. We have more clean air and water acts in place than ever before; more legislation, more enforcement, more cooperation between governments across territorial waters. We’ve done everything we know to do for the past several decades, and it’s somehow several magnitudes worse.” His eyes narrowed. “Something’s different.”
“Different? You went to school for fifty years, and different is the best you could come up with?”
Varun cracked a smile. “Twenty years, not fifty, and different is both a scientific and technical term. The answer’s down there. I’ll find it.”
“Not obsessed or anything, are we?”
“I grew up around the ocean. I awoke to the sound of waves. Fell asleep to the music of the tides. I could swim almost before I could walk.” Varun drew a deep breath, filling his lungs with the familiar and comforting scent of the sea. In the pit of his stomach, old guilt stirred up fresh surges of regret and sorrow, but he pushed aside the painful memories of his sister and refocused on the present. “Even when I left, I knew I would someday return. I belong here, on the edge of the water.”
He swiveled at the flicker of motion in his peripheral vision. The captain stood at the door of the bridge, her expression inscrutable. For once, she did not have that screeching harpy—parrot—with her.
Their eyes met.
Tension knotted his shoulder muscles. His stomach swirled with uncertainty.
The captain was beautiful in a way that defied description. He could not place her ethnically although her full name—Asherah—hinted at a pagan, Middle-Eastern background. She was not like the mermaids he had seen in his dreams either.
It’s the eyes.
They contrasted with the irritated set of her brow and the sardonic twist of her lips, but he could not quite figure out exactly what was so different about them.
Varun shrugged it off. He would figure it out, or he would not. Either way, it did not matter. His priority was the ocean, not the Veritas’s captain. He turned back to Jackson. “I’ll be heading down in about an hour. I probably won’t need more than an hour or so to gather my first batch of samples. Once I analyze them, I’ll know if I need more.”
“Some of the crew dive too. You want a partner?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s a short, simple dive. At that depth, there isn’t anything big enough in the Sargasso Sea to nibble a toe.” His lips quirked into a smile. “I wouldn’t want to take anyone away from the important job of fixing the freezer.” In spite of himself, he glanced over his shoulder, half expecting a deeper frown on the captain’s face. Instead, he was surprised by her faint hint of a smile.
A voice snapped behind him. “Varun.”
He spun around so quickly he rapped his elbow against the ship rail. “Ondine. How are you feeling?”
Her glare swiveled from him to Jackson. “Still sick and nauseous. What was with that storm last night?”
Varun tried to avert her anger. “We got out of it just fine.”
“Didn’t feel like it to me.” Ondine flung her auburn hair back over her shoulder. “That awful sailing—”
Jackson had opened his mouth to retort, but was forestalled by the captain’s raised hand. Jinn fluttered to rest on the captain’s shoulder and fixed beady black eyes on Ondine. The captain’s fingers flicked a reply; the words came out of Jinn’s mouth. “Since this is not a sailboat, we did not—technically—sail through the storm. A sailboat—any sailboat—would have capsized. Most medium-sized ships would have been broken by the waves. Regardless, I can’t help your weak stomach. Should I call for a med-evac?”
Ondine’s jaw dropped. “Are you kicking me off the boat? You can’t threaten me like that.”
The parrot chortled on the captain’s behalf. “I don’t need or want liabilities on this ship.”
“I hired you. I can fire you.”
“I was hired by Prime International, which owns this research vessel, and I’m under contract for only this trip. My job is to safely return everyone on board to land. Don’t make my job any more difficult than it has to be.”
“My father will hear of this. He can make sure you’ll never get another contract.”
The captain shrugged, indifferent.
Her face flustered, Ondine glared at the captain.
The captain looked at her. The sunlight reflected off the flecks of gold in her eyes.
Ondine recoiled; her bluster and confidence retreated. Her gaze darted between Jackson and Varun, seeking an ally.
Varun’s jaw clenched. “I’m going to get ready for my dive. Give me a hand?”
A strategic retreat was obviously their best exit plan. Ondine followed him down the narrow steel staircase to the laboratory and slouched on a wooden bench beside one of the three large marine holding tanks. The tiles were mostly dry, with only scattered slick patches where the seawater was slowly evaporating. Varun stripped off his clothes to pull on his diving suit.
Ondine huffed, her ire escalating now that she was no longer quailing beneath the captain’s gaze. “How dare she speak to me like that? Doesn’t she know who I am?”
Varun suspected the captain knew exactly who Ondine was.
“How dare she use me as a scapegoat to distract from her lousy skills—?”
“I was on the bridge during the storm. The captain was brilliant.”
“You’re defending her?”
“Stating facts.”
Ondine’s pitch rose an octave. “You’re taking her side?”
“Stating facts,” Varun repeated. “The captain has no tact—I know that first hand—but she’s good at her job.”
“I chartered this boat.”
“Your father chartered this ship,” he corrected. “And the captain has been entrusted with this multimillion-dollar research vessel and the safety of all onboard. You may not like her style or her parrot, but there’s nothing wrong with the job she’s doing—so don’t let your ego get in the way.”
“My…” She spluttered. “My ego?” She shot to her feet, green eyes blazing. “Have you forgotten that my father’s foundation is paying for your research grant?”
Varun’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, Ondine. I’m not a fawning stooge like your former boyfriends.”
“My family owns yours.”
A muscle twitched in Varun’s smooth cheek
. Anger coiled into a hard knot in the pit of his stomach. Ondine did not usually wield her family’s wealth like an ax over his neck—until she was on the verge of losing an argument. “Your family owns my family’s business loans, and even my family home, but your family does not own us. You definitely don’t own my point of view.”
Panic flared in Ondine’s eyes. She had overstepped, and they both knew it.
Varun gritted his teeth. Time to back off. The last time they headed down this path, they had almost broken up. The increasing frequency of their arguments pointed toward the inevitable.
Maybe someday, but not here. Not now. Not on a small research vessel with zero privacy; this was not the place to call it quits on a relationship he had been questioning for months. He drew a deep breath and held it for several moments before exhaling slowly. “What is the problem? This isn’t quite like you.”
Ondine’s brow drew together, and her mouth opened to snap, but suddenly, her taut expression crumbled. “I thought we were going to die. Then you left, and didn’t come back for so long. I thought you’d been swept overboard. Drowned. I don’t know.” Her hands opened and closed helplessly. “I’d never been so afraid. I knew we were going to die, and I just wasn’t ready. I couldn’t—” Her voice cracked.
“Shhh, it’s all right.” Cursing himself silently for being an insensitive ass, Varun wrapped his arms around Ondine’s trembling shoulders. “I’m sorry. I know you’re afraid of the ocean—which makes it even more incredible that you chose to come with me. I should have stayed with you. I nearly drowned trying to get to the bridge, and then the captain reamed me out for being an idiot—which I was.”
“Do you have to dive? Can’t you send one of the ship’s divers and tell them what to get for you?”
“They wouldn’t know what to look for.”
“It feels wrong. The sea’s dangerous.” She pulled back from him. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she hugged herself. A shudder rippled through her slender frame. “It seems like nothing has gone right since we left the port.”
“It was just that one storm.”
“I don’t like it. The captain. The parrot. It’s like a cliché from a bad show.”
Varun burst out laughing. “I promise you, Ondine, no one is going to kidnap us and ransom us for money. That happens way out near Africa. We’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a stone’s throw—although perhaps not literally—from America.”
“I’m not expecting pirates—I meant that it all just feels wrong, somehow.” She pressed her hand against her stomach. “I can’t explain it.”
Even so, he had an inkling of what she was trying to say. Nothing had felt right for a long time, ever since his early research revealed the expansion of the dead spots in the ocean from mere pockets, easily attributed to random chance, to large swathes of devastation. It was like seeing a terrible disease slowly take over and ravage the body of a loved one. “Listen, it’s going to be all right. I’ve dived here before. I know the waters. It won’t be long—less than an hour, I promise.”
I hope.
The water was as clear as Varun remembered, perhaps even clearer with visibility extending beyond two hundred feet. The islands of Sargassum seaweed spread like tentacles into the water—brittle brown instead of warm gold. The seaweed provided a habitat for more than two hundred and forty species of fish and invertebrates, many of them occurring nowhere else beyond the Sargasso Sea, but that day, he saw nothing.
No tiny fish darting through the safe nurseries nestled in the tangle of seaweed.
No invertebrates floating through the water.
Nothing.
The Sargasso Sea was an aquatic desert.
Worse than a desert, for life squirreled away in the desert, hard to find, but still present.
The Sargasso Sea was stripped of life.
The visibility extended hundreds of feet, devoid of microorganisms that typically clouded the epipelagic zone—the surface of the ocean. The crystal blue waters were as clear as death.
Dread clasped around his chest as he swam through the draping ropes of dead seaweed floating lifelessly, unmoving on a current-less sea and against a windless sky. How far did the devastation extend? Was he merely looking at a pocket—a tiny dead zone—or did it spread across the entire 1,100 km width and 3,200 km length of the Sargasso Sea?
Proof. He needed proof and that meant swimming farther, diving deeper. Whatever it took. He needed answers, and he would not find them where everyone else had already looked for them.
Varun swam farther and deeper. The jungle of seaweed thickened and tightened around him like gargled roots of a massive tree.
No longer lifeless drapes of dead seaweed, the Sargassum shifted and swayed.
He paused, his fins kicking slowly against the water. The forest of seaweed was devoid of life, but it was somehow alive. Watchful. Wary.
His heartbeat skidded.
Seaweed brushed against his wetsuit and covered his dive computer. He twisted around in the water. His eyes widened behind his diving mask as the seaweed reached toward him like a probing finger. It was too much. And all wrong.
Varun glanced up. Sunlight glimmered far above him, scarcely visible. He had not realized how deep he dove. He kicked up in a desperate break for the surface. Seaweed wrapped around his ankles, winding up his thighs. Panic swelled, almost blocking his throat. He reached down to pull the ropey seaweed off him, but the plants snaked around him—his arms, his chest.
Only when they tangled around his diving equipment and yanked his mask off his face did Varun realize how much trouble he was in.
Chapter 4
The sea was as calm and placid blue as ever, the air unmoving. On the surface, nothing seemed amiss.
But it had changed. Ashe felt it somewhere inside her—a jolting, harsh note in her perfect attunement with each breath of the Earth.
Her gaze darted over the sea. Varun had yet to surface. Her fingers danced a command.
Jinn screeched, “Jackson, contact Varun. Get him out of the water.”
The first mate glanced around in surprise. “He’s only been in the water for thirty-five minutes. He had planned for least another twenty.”
“Get him out now.”
Jackson’s brow creased, but he reached for the wired communications system. “Varun, this is Jackson. Do you copy? Over.”
Static crackled.
“Varun, this is Jackson. Do you copy? Captain says you have to get out now. Over.” He waited for several more moments. “Varun. Varun? Can you hear me? Varun, say something. Over.” He grimaced. “Nothing. Do we send Dave down?”
Ashe stepped closer to the railing. She raised her face to the caress of the sun and drew a deep breath. Behind her, motion rustled as Dave suited up.
A whisper of air brushed against her cheek, trailing icy tendrils. The salt-infused breeze quivered. Ashe spun around and flung out her hand, stopping Dave before he stepped over the side of the boat. Jinn fluttered and squawked, “No one else goes in.”
“But—”
“It’s not safe.” Ashe shrugged her shoulders, and Jinn flew away to rest on the railing instead. Ashe met Jackson’s eyes. “No one goes in.”
He looked confused but nodded. “Got it. No one goes in.”
Ashe stripped off her windbreaker, kicked off her boots, and climbed onto the railing.
Jackson’s mouth dropped open. “What are you doing? You just said—”
His objection was lost as she cut through the surface of the water, her clean dive scarcely making a splash. It carried her deep, beyond the brown netting of seaweed.
Seawater, the tears of the Earth, enveloped her. She closed her eyes. For nearly three centuries, she had stayed away. It had been easy to blame her new responsibilities as a Daughter of Air for keeping her busy, but in truth, it was guilt—guilt over her choices and guilt over the consequences, most especially over those she had left behind.
Ashe gritted her teeth; there was no real
need for personal guilt. As a species, merfolk were both unforgiving and vengeful, but they only lived for three hundred years. Technically, no one was old enough to personally remember or care about her fateful choice two hundred and ninety-seven years earlier, even though, as a species, they would harbor eternal enmity toward the Daughters of Air.
It’s not really about me. Ashe could not allow herself to be swayed or distracted by her own emotional baggage.
Not when her new responsibilities loomed large and dire.
The water vibrated from Varun’s feeble thrashing. Ashe swam toward him, her body undulating like a mermaid, stamped with instincts and motions almost as old as recorded time. She was not as fast as she had once been with a tail, though, and the tangle of seaweed slowed her down. She twisted around the stringy drapes and through the translucent brown curtains of seaweed until she saw him.
Seaweed wrapped around Varun’s arms and legs, binding him. His head hung, his diving equipment stripped off.
She could not tell if he was alive.
Her mind tripped over several curse words as she pushed through the water. Seaweed suddenly came alive, ropelike coils reaching out to ensnare her.
What did they think she was? A human with no defense against the sea?
She was no longer a mermaid, but she commanded the air. Even in the domain of water, she possessed power. Ashe’s elemental magic whispered out, and the air molecules in the water swarmed to her, surrounding her like a cocoon.
Tendrils of seaweed flicked against her invisible body armor like annoyed fingers, persistent but ineffective.
The vegetation around her quivered, and the motion rippled, cascading and escalating like a vibrating alarm. Thick coils snaked around Varun and pulled him farther away from her—carrying him through the seaweed forest, handing him off as if he were a toy passed from child to child.
Enough of this bullshit.
Ashe squeezed the air molecules out of the water around her. Her mind honed them into a weapon, then flung it.